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Professional Mourning: Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and the Remaking of Black Consciousness
Get PDFThis article examines the impact that Billie Holiday’s singing of “Strange Fruit” had on African American audiences from 1939 until Holiday’s death in 1959. It argues that Holiday’s performances embodied and induced a state of collective mourning by way of their politically strategic efforts to frame Black existence as a site of ongoing endangerment and corresponding fear. With carefully crafted, professional expertise, Holiday’s singing generated a feeling of shared vulnerability among her Black audiences and, furthermore, presented that feeling as the very foundation of Black being. Effecting its intended political work, her singing thus prompted some of these listeners to commit themselves to eradicating the social and political conditions that reproduced the pervasive feelings of threat and trepidation structuring their own Blackness
Life on the Edge: The Cambrian Marine Realm and Oxygenation
Get PDFThe beginning of the Phanerozoic saw two biological events that set the stage for all life that was to come: (a) the Cambrian Explosion (the appearance of most marine invertebrate phyla) and (b) the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), the subsequent substantial accumulation of marine biodiversity. Here, we examine the current state of understanding of marine environments and ecosystems from the late Ediacaran through the Early Ordovician, which spans this biologically important interval. Through a compilation and review of the existing geochemical, mineralogical, sedimentological, and fossil records, we argue that this interval was one of sustained low and variable marine oxygen levels that both led to animal extinction and fostered biodiversification events throughout the Cambrian and Early Ordovician. Therefore, marine ecosystems of this interval existed on the edge—with enough oxygen to sustain them but with the perennial risk of environmental stressors that could overwhelm them
Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the \u3ci\u3eCanterbury Tales\u3c/i\u3e
No full textIn this elegantly written study, Nancy Mason Bradbury situates Chaucer’s last and most ambitious work in the context of a zeal for proverbs that was still rising in his day. Rival Wisdoms demonstrates that for Chaucer’s contemporaries, these tiny embedded microgenres could be potent, disruptive, and sometimes even incendiary.
In order to understand Chaucer’s use of proverbs and their reception by premodern readers, we must set aside post-Romantic prejudices against such sayings as prosaic and unoriginal. The premodern focus on proverbs conditioned the literary culture that produced the Canterbury Tales and helped shape its audience’s reading practices. Aided by Thomas Speght’s notations in his 1602 edition, Bradbury shows that Chaucer acknowledges the power of the proverb, reflecting on its capacity for harm as well as for good and on its potential to expand and deepen—but also to regulate and constrict—the meanings of stories. Far from banishing proverbs as incompatible with the highest reaches of poetry, Chaucer places them at the center of the liberating interpretive possibilities the Canterbury Tales extends to its readers.
Revelatory and persuasive, this book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval and early modern English literature as well as those interested in proverbs and the Canterbury Tales.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eng_books/1021/thumbnail.jp
Meridians 23:1 Indigenous Feminisms across the World, Part 1
Get PDFhttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/soc_books/1017/thumbnail.jp
Episode 12: First Engineering Class DC0304
Get PDFThis episode features four alums from the Class of 2004: Caitlyn Butler, Sarah Culver Davis, Nikki Radford, and Meghan Sheehy. They graduated in the first class of engineering students at Smith and they are about to celebrate their 20th Reunion
Gear up, Northampton! A Proposal for Increased Bike Connectivity
No full textThe need for bike infrastructure in urban areas is increasingly crucial as excessive greenhouse gas emissions threaten the climate and public health of millions globally. Therefore, it is imperative to find ways of connecting key areas with zero-carbon transportation. Bicycling is an increasingly popular mode of sustainable transportation, but many urban areas, including Northampton, lack the infrastructure to support safe and equitable bike mobility. Implementing a safe and accessible bike network that encourages commuting via bike will decrease Northampton’s carbon emissions, and aid the city in achieving its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Using data from the National Household Travel Survey, this project identified important community centers in Northampton, such as medical providers and grocery stores. Safe and accessible bike routes were then designed to reduce the city’s reliance on carbon-intensive modes of transportation. The designed routes prioritize accessibility for historically underserved and marginalized communities by utilizing GIS mapping to visualize data on demographics, crashes, and traffic patterns. Consultation with city planners also helped determine effective ways to incorporate these routes onto existing roadways. This project stitches current infrastructure and trails through quieter roadways with less vehicular traffic to provide the foundation for a more connected and accessible bike network that fosters public health, sustainability, and environmental justice in Northampton. This project recommends consulting community members to ensure increased effectiveness and safety before implementing low-cost infrastructure on the proposed routes. Lastly, this study recommends adding protected bike lanes to certain busy streets when city time and budget allow
How Schools Can Bolster Belonging Among Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Youth
Get PDFUsing an intersectional framework, the current study examined how perceptions of school safety and identity valuation influenced Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ+) students’ feelings of school belonging in three schools where the student bodies were predominantly Black. Research on school belonging has focused on the experiences of white LGBQ+ youth or examined disparities in belonging through a singular identity (e.g., exclusively race). Moreover, while research has considered the role of safety in predicting belonging, this work has not considered ways that school context might particularly speak to or affirm the identities of students coming from multiply marginalized groups. To address this gap in the literature, we present a model of school belonging that centers on the experiences of Black LGBQ+ youth. Moderated mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of sexual identity on school belonging through both school safety and identity valuation, and these effects depended on participant race. Recommendations for school programming that attends to the unique needs of Black LGBQ+ students are discussed
Crazy Fish Sing
No full textCrazy Fish Sing is a visual art book that draws inspiration from Suranga Katugampala\u27s Still Here.
This film, situated in an experimental territory on the border between noir and documentary, is shot in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Milan, Italy. Taking readers on a journey through real, imagined, and affective geographies, Crazy Fish Sing offers a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on the making of Still Here and explores the broader cultural and cinematic themes this film raises.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/itl_books/1002/thumbnail.jp
Passages: the Wide-Ranging, Extreme Intrinsic Properties of Planck-Selected, Lensed Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies
Get PDFThe PASSAGES (Planck All-Sky Survey to Analyze Gravitationally-lensed Extreme Starbursts) collaboration has recently defined a sample of 30 gravitationally lensed dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). These rare, submillimeter-selected objects enable high-resolution views of the most extreme sites of star formation in galaxies at cosmic noon. Here, we present the first major compilation of strong lensing analyses using lenstool for PASSAGES, including 15 objects spanning z = 1.1-3.3, using complementary information from 0.″6-resolution 1.1 mm Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and 0.″4 5 cm Jansky Very Large Array continuum imaging, in tandem with 1.6 μm Hubble and optical imaging with Gemini-S. Magnifications range from μ = 2 to 28 (median μ = 7), yielding intrinsic infrared luminosities of L IR = 0.2-5.9 × 1013 L ⊙ (median 1.4 × 1013 L ⊙) and inferred star formation rates of 170-6300 M ⊙ yr−1 (median 1500 M ⊙ yr−1). These results suggest that the PASSAGES objects comprise some of the most extreme known starbursts, rivaling the luminosities of even the brightest unlensed objects, further amplified by lensing. The intrinsic sizes of far-infrared continuum regions are large (R e = 1.7-4.3 kpc; median 3.0 kpc) but consistent with L IR-R e scaling relations for z \u3e 1 DSFGs, suggesting a widespread spatial distribution of star formation. With modestly high angular resolution, we explore if these objects might be maximal starbursts. Instead of approaching Eddington-limited surface densities, above which radiation pressure will disrupt further star formation, they are safely sub-Eddington—at least on global, galaxy-integrated scales
Tungsten Stable Isotope Composition of the Upper Continental Crust
Get PDFTungsten (W) stable isotope data for twenty-four composites made from the fine-grained matrix of glacial diamictites, deposited between the Mesoarchean and the Paleozoic, as well as two Archean tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorites (TTG) are used to refine the W isotope compositions (expressed as δ186W deviations from the NIST 3163 W standard) of the upper continental crust (UCC). To do this we evaluate W isotope fractionation in the diamictites as the result of both magmatic and low-temperature processes. The δ186W values of the diamictites are heterogeneous (0.017 ± 0.011 ‰, 2SE to 0.182 ± 0.007 ‰, 2SE), encompassing the range of previously published values for igneous rocks. We find that δ186W correlates positively with the diamictite\u27s chemical index of alteration (CIA), a measure of the degree of chemical weathering in the provenance, suggesting that the continental regolith (i.e., surface material composed of weathered residues) is isotopically heavy for W. Since W in rivers and ocean water is also isotopically heavy, this suggests that equilibration with Fe-Mn-oxides controls the W isotope composition of surface waters and that such oxides are not important constituents of the regolith, whose W is likely accommodated in clays. Using diamictites with low CIA (\u3c60, n = 9), we calculate an average δ186W of 0.046 ± 0.036 ‰ (2SD) for the UCC, from 2.3 to 0.3 Ga. This average is combined with the TTG data of this study, as well as data from the literature for upper crustal rocks to obtain a representative δ186W value of the UCC of 0.046 ± 0.046 ‰ (2SD). The W stable isotope composition of the UCC is lighter than that of mantle-derived melts (MORB and OIB, with an average δ186W = 0.082 ± 0.026 ‰, 2SD), and much lighter than the weighted average δ186W of intra-oceanic arcs (δ186W = 0.104 ± 0.052 ‰, 2SD), though the spread in the arc rocks is large. The significant difference in δ186W between average intra-oceanic island arc lavas and UCC is intriguing given that continental crust is thought to form primarily via arc magmatism. This difference suggests that not all modern intra-oceanic arcs are representative of those that formed the continental crust. Rather, only arcs that are enriched in incompatible trace elements, which also tend to have lighter W isotope compositions, may have been involved in making new continental crust. Alternatively, there may have been a secular change in the W isotope composition of arc magmas