Temple University Press Journals
Not a member yet
549 research outputs found
Sort by
The Rise of Anchor Institutions and the Threat to Community Health: Protecting Community Wealth, Building Community Power
No full textAcademic institutions are increasingly playing pivotal roles in economic development and community redevelopment in cities around the United States. Many are functioning in the role of anchor institutions and building technology, biotechnology, or research parks to facilitate biomedical research. In the process, universities often partner with local governments, implementing policies that displace entire communities and families, thereby inducing a type of trauma that researcher Mindy Thompson Fullilove has termed “root shock.” We argue that displacement is a threat to public health and explore the ethical implications of university-led displacement on public health research, especially the inclusion of vulnerable populations into health-related research. We further explicate how the legal system has sanctioned the exercise of eminent domain by private entities such as universities and developers.Strategies that communities have employed in order to counter such threats are highlighted and recommended for communities that may be under the threat of university-led displacement. We also offer a critical look at the three dominant assumptions underlying university-sponsored development: that research parks are engines of economic development, that deconcentrating poverty via displacement is effective, and that poverty is simply the lack of economic or financial means. Understanding these fallacies will help communities under the threat of university-sponsored displacement to protect community wealth, build power, and improve health
Making History Matter: Teaching Comparative African American and Latina/o Histories in an Age of Neoliberal Crisis
No full textThis article critically evaluates a comparative ethnic studies course that I have taught at three different universities during the past fifteen years, called “African American and Latina/o Histories.” I am especially interested in the impact this form of education has on participants, many of whom are first-generation college students of color, as well as the ways that course alumni have taken what they have learned in the classroom into their work as community organizers, teachers, prison educators, art workers, parents, and other roles. An overarching concern here is how we can design courses that address the challenges that working-class students face in an era of mass incarceration, anti-immigrant hysteria, and anti-Black racism. As one of my students notes, “The agents of law and order encourage us to live in the shadows and their bulky flashlights keep us hiding.” In the current climate of fear, and in the shadow of family incarceration and deportations that so many of our students live under, how can educators create spaces where students are encouraged to critically examine the world they (we) live in? Equally important, how can students move from rigorous analysis to effective action and civic engagement?
COMMONWEALTH Matters
Get PDF“COMMONWEALTH Matters” introduces COMMONWEALTH ’s new format (including three annual online issues and a hard-copy “Year in Review” compendium of the best articles of the year) and the new publishing partnership between the journal and Temple University Press. It also includes acknowledgments and refers prospective contributors to the journal’s guidelines for submitting manuscripts
Fred Ho’s Wicked Theory and Naked Practice
No full textTo speak of someone as unparalleled often seems trite; in Fred Ho’s case, it seems mandatory. A composer, musician, performance artist, and scholar, he really lived a life beyond categorization. In 2009, with the collaboration of Diane C. Fujino, the University of Minnesota Press published a retrospective anthology of his writings titled Wicked Theory, Naked Practice. Sadly, that volume is now also a memorial: a self-written festschrift. On April 12, 2014, Fred Ho succumbed to cancer, leaving behind an astonishingly innovative body of work. Fred Wei-Han Houn, or Hóu Wéihàn, later more popularly known as Fred Ho, was extraordinary. A virtuosic talent, he was a renaissance person without being limited by the masculinist modifier “man.” Wicked Theory, Wicked Practice offers a cross-section of Ho’s passionate written work over a decade. This collection is divided into four parts: 1) “The Movement and The Self,” 2) “Music Aesthetics and Artistic Production,” 3) “Asian American Pacific Cultural Theory and Criticism,” and 4) “Wicked Theory, Naked Practice.” However, the book really may be read in any order. In fact, tackling it out of order or choosing a random article might be in keeping with the improvisatory quality of much of Ho’s work. It is evocative of a quotation attributed to Cecil Taylor to the effect that “If a man plays for a certain amount of time—scales, licks, what have you—eventually a kind of order asserts itself.
Love beyond the White Lines: Using the Genius of the Harlem Renaissance to Reignite the Once-Forbidden Love between African Americans and Tennis
No full textMy curriculum brings the Harlem Renaissance to life on the tennis court. Foremost in my mind is the need to nurture a collective consciousness that will foster confidence and competence in my students by expanding awareness of the prior successes of African Americans in tennis, linking these to achievements in Black history and culture, and helping them learn from the experiences of contemporary star athletes. In this place, only greatness is celebrated, and it is my fondest wish that only greatness will be inspired. I feel successful if I’m able to get my students to relax and let it flow, literally allowing the ancestors to provide the motivation and confidence to achieve. My highest ambition is to instill in every student not only the knowledge that tennis is now, has always been, and will always be an integral part of African American culture but also the confidence each one needs to discover the greatness that lies within
Sometimes It Does Matter: The 2016 Presidential Primary Election in Pennsylvania
Get PDFSince the first presidential primary was held in Pennsylvania in the spring of 1912, rarely has the state truly impacted the race. A combination of forces, notably the rather late date that it has traditionally been scheduled relative to other states has all but guaranteed that the presumptive nominees of the Democratic and Republican Parties have long ago been selected. As long as this remains the case, it’s difficult to imagine the state’s voters ever being able to winnow a field of candidates, no matter how large or small it is. However, on rare occasions, the lateness of the Pennsylvania’s primary election allows the state’s voters to be one, if not the deciding force on who lays final claim to the nomination. Such was the case on April 24, 2016, when Pennsylvanians essentially settled the contest on both sides, elevating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump toward their ultimate nominations
Leonard Peltier Writes about His Years in a US Prison: My Life Is My Sun Dance as a Literary Text
No full textThis article analyzes Leonard Peltier’s book about his years in prison as a literary work from my perspective as a nonindigenous scholar in Argentina who studies the US racial order. It tracks the author’s concept of prison in the book, a concept which Peltier attributes to his worldview as a Lakota. The concept and the worldview are omnipresent in My Life Is My Sun Dance, not only in the ideas but also in the structure, the mixture of genres, the idea of political struggle and its consequences, the relationship depicted between the author-character and the world inside and outside prison, the idea of language and communication, and also the relationship with nature and the need and building of community inside and outside prison. From the title onward, the “Indian Way” is presented as the center of life for Leonard Peltier, a tool to survive in a panoptic prison and to use in writing—another weapon in the fight for freedom, understanding, and survival. The book itself is one way to not disappear from the world, one way to struggle against the invisibility of prisoners in general and Native American prisoners in particular