WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS TO THE THEORY OF HISTORY

Georges Didi-Huberman's study is concerned with epistemological and ethical questions that arise from visual representations of the Shoah, while Michael Fried's is concerned with the ontological possibilities explored by contemporary art photography. The books have two things in common: an argument against postmodern skepticism, and an insistence that photography has become a field in which questions of history, truth, and authenticity are being explored with particular acuity. Rather than reject even the possibility that photographs have something to tell us about the Shoah, Didi-Huberman shows that they can offer important insights into the difficulties and the possibilities of apprehending some aspects of the past.
Fried shows that contemporary photographic work has taken on the ambitions of high modernism by accepting the challenge of "to-be-seenness." Photography as a "historical practice" does not escape from the difficulties of evidence and of the "constructed" nature of historical understanding; photography functions neither as a pure trace of the past, nor as a mere invitation to spectacle.     

SEISMIC FRAGILITY OF LRC FRAMES WITH AND WITHOUT MASONRY INFILL WALLS

This paper summarises the first phase of the fragility analyses of generic (representative) buildings in the area of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. The study was conducted at Cornell University as a part of the project Loss Assessment of Memphis Buildings (LAMB) for the National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (NCEER). In this study, the fragility analyses focus on low-rise Lightly Reinforced Concrete (LRC) frame buildings with and without infill walls. The obtained fragility curves are compared with those of ATC-13 for different facility classes. Based on the obtained fragility curves, it is concluded that adding masonry infill wails to low-rise LRC frame buildings significantly reduces the likelihood of seismic damage.     

Making Ancient Cities Plausible

The state of archaeological research on ancient cities is presented in three edited volumes, and our understanding of ancient urbanism is undoubtedly advanced. Some venerable questions are renewed, including how and whether ancient cities differ from modern ones. However, the chapters consist mainly of narrowly focused aspects of ancient cities, and there are few interconnecting themes running through each volume. Future investigations of ancient cities will depend on an engagement with modern urban and social theory and from new kinds of comparative studies.