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The Mathematical Framework of General Relativity
No full textGeneral Relativity is founded on the axiomatic assumption that space and time together form a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold known as spacetime. Within this framework, curvature is encoded by a metric tensor and its associated geometric quantities. This paper develops the mathematical foundations underlying general relativity by introducing line elements, metric tensors, and transition maps on smooth manifolds, and by verifying and discussing elementary solutions to the Einstein Field Equations.Temple University. College of Science and TechnologyMathematic
Karen Hersch: The Roman Wedding [Audio interview]
No full textProfessor Karen Hersch is the author of The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.. Fred Rowland interviewed her on September 20, 2010 about her book. They discuss ancient sources and modern scholarship. She explains the social, legal, and religious significance of the Roman Wedding and its similarities to the modern American wedding. The role of the Roman woman, the significance of the (mythic) Sabine women, and details of the wedding day are covered. The listener will come away with a much greater appreciation of the lives of women in the ancient world.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesGreek and Roman ClassicsLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
David Watt: Antifundamentalism in Modern America [Audio interview]
No full textDavid Watt's book Antifundamentalism in a Modern America (Cornell University Press, 2017) chronicles and analyzes the origins and ongoing conversations surrounding fundamentalism, which began as an oppositional movement to liberal Protestantism in the 1920s and then morphed in the late 20th century to represent a dangerous religious orientation found in most major world religions. Early critics of fundamentalism, the antifundamentalists, were responding to Protestant fundamentalism. As the scholarly and societal conception of fundamentalism shifted, beginning in the late 1970s, so did the arguments and concerns of antifundamentalists. In sketching out the call and response of fundamentalists and antifundamentalists over the last 100 years, Professor Watt interrogates the utility of a term like fundamentalism, which in common usage has come to describe so many different religious phenomena and traditions in all parts of the globe. Fred Rowland interviewed David Watt on June 8th, 2017.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Heather Ann Thompson: Whose Detroit? [Audio interview]
No full textWhen you hear the word “Detroit”, it’s a little like watching a pebble thrown into a pond. First you see the pebble hit the water and then you see the waves echoing from a rapidly disappearing center. Detroit serves as a euphemism for race relations gone bad, or the failure of liberalism, or the wreckage of surburbanization and globalization, or the mismanagement of the auto industry, or the problems of urban America, or the decline of unions. Take your pick. Though always freighted by heavy symbolism, the exact meaning of Detroit depends on your political persuasion. When Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013, the news reporting of this weighty event was very superficial, lacking in historical context and social and racial complexity. In order to correct some of this reporting, Fred Rowland interviewed African American Studies Professor Heather Ann Thompson, author of Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Cornell University Press, 2001), on February 25, 2014 to discuss the history of Detroit.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Bryant Simon: Everything but the Coffee [Audio interview]
No full textTemple history professor Bryant Simon is the author of Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks, published by University of California Press in 2009. It describes how the Starbucks phenomenon reflects many of the social and cultural trends in American society and business. On March 24, 2010, Fred Rowland interviewed Bryant Simon on his book. He discussed the history of the company, the research methods he employed, the coffeehouse tradition, the shrinking of public spaces in America, and how we might renew our civic culture.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearninig and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Patricia Melzer: Death in the Shape of a Young Girl [Audio interview]
No full textProfessor Patricia Melzer is the author of Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women’s Poltical Violence in the Red Army Faction (New York University Press, 2015). By focusing her study on the Red Army Faction (RAF), a West German terrorist group which had many female members, including leaders, Melzer complicates our contemporary understanding of feminism and violence. The RAF committed acts of assassination, bombings, bank robberies, and kidnappings from 1970 to the early 1990s in order to challenge what it saw as the West German state’s support of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. While contemporary feminism is closely linked to positions of nonviolence, this was less the case at the founding of the Red Army Faction, where patriarchy shared responsibility with economic and political structures for women’s oppression. As feminism narrowed its focus to patriarchal violence – especially the personal physical abuse of men against women – the nurturing role of women and the importance of nonviolent political resistance became more essential to feminism’s understanding of itself. Melzer also analyzes the ways German media portrayed the lives and acts of these terrorists through a gendered lens that was very often inaccurate and misleading. This placed the contemporaneous German feminist movement in the delicate position of trying to respond to the misrepresentation of female RAF members while distancing itself from their terrorist acts. Juxtaposing feminism and violence in the Red Army Faction offers valuable insights on the nature of the modern women’s movement. Fred Rowland interviewed Patricia Melzer on April 4, 2016.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesModern Languages, Literature and CulturesLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Adrienne Shaw: Gaming at the Edge [Audio interview]
No full textConcepts like identity, identification, and representation are thrown around pretty loosely when people try to explain the influence of popular media on individuals and groups. Categories like race, gender, sexuality, and class are widely recognized, broadly applicable and, because of this, they are often invoked as a substitute for more nuanced thinking about how individuals relate to media, whether TV, film, or digital games.
Do gay men like particular TV shows because they include gay characters?
Are women more likely to watch football now that there are (a few) female commentators?
Why would women play violent, misogynistic video games?
In Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), Adrienne Shaw complicates this approach by studying “representation in a way that takes into account the fluidity, performativity, and contextuality of identity categories.” In a series of interviews with individuals from marginalized groups, Shaw, an avid digital game player herself, attempts to situate game playing within the overall lived experiences of her subjects. Through this indirect approach, she hoped to gain a better understanding of how, when, and why representation mattered. One of her main goals in writing this book is to help change the way academic and business researchers study identity, identification, and representation. Fred Rowland interviewed Adrienne Shaw on July 11, 2015.Klein College of Media and CommunicationTemple University. LibrariesMedia Studies and ProductionLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
David Mislin: Saving Faith [Audio interview]
No full textLiving in the early 21st century, it might seem a little hard to believe that a century ago liberal Protestantism was the dominant voice of religion in the United States. Of course in a land so vast there were a lot of voices and opinions concerning religion. But in the urban power centers liberal Protestantism had the ears of politicians and business elites. At this same time there were centrifugal forces weakening liberal Protestantism’s institutional grasp. As people poured into growing industrial cities from the countryside and overseas, they were greeted by secular clubs, cultural events, and entertainments that loosened the grip of the church. With so many inhabitants of different races, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, and practices, doubts about specific doctrines and creeds grew. The growing authority of science offered alternative explanations for a whole range of natural and metaphysical phenomena. In Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Cornell University Press, 2015), historian David Mislin explores how liberal Protestantism responded to the pressures of skepticism, doubt, and pluralism. In reaching out to Catholics and Jews of like mind, liberal Protestant leaders were haltingly moving toward what would in the post-World War II world become Judeo-Christian America. Fred Rowland interviewed David Mislin on January 20, 2016.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Bryant Simon: The Hamlet Fire [Audio interview]
No full textA deadly fire raced through the Imperial Food Products factory in Hamlet, North Carolina on the morning of September 3, 1991. As the fire raged, employees found themselves trapped behind chain-locked exits, which led to the deaths of 25 people. Historian Bryan Simon was in a doctoral program at the University of North Carolina in 1991 and he often drove through Hamlet on his way to visit the research archives at the University of South Carolina. Birthplace of jazz great John Coltrane, prize-winning reporter Tom Wicker, and former Philadelphia Eagles Pro Bowl wide receiver and Eagles radio color commentator Mike Quick, Hamlet had been a prosperous railroad junction through the first half of the 20th century until the railroads went into decline. By the 1980s, the city government and its inhabitants were desperate to bring new businesses to town. It was during this time that a Pennsylvania company processing chicken parts into chicken tenders moved to Hamlet. Bryant Simon’s book, The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives (The New Press, 2017), as the subtitle indicates, is about much more than a tragic fire. Instead, Simon uses Hamlet as a microcosm to examine the larger economic and political forces that have transformed the United States. Where policy makers were once focused on creating an economy that produced high manufacturing wages, starting in the 1970s they increasingly turned their attention to an economic model of low wages and cheap products. The fire at Imperial Food Products is part of this story. Fred Rowland interviewed Bryant Simon on January 23, 2018.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
