10,093 research outputs found

    Marriage record of Williams, Benjamin W. and Lee, Sarah

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    Marriage license for Benjamin W. Williams and Sarah Lee. F. James Williams was the officiant

    Oral History Interview with Roy Williams, October 6, 2011

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    Interview with Roy Williams, an activist and author from Longview, Texas. The interview discusses when Williams first came to Dallas, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Williams' upbringing, how he got into activism, his time in the military, his activism against police brutality, and a lawsuit against the city of Dallas

    The International Trade Center Curacao

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    Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992.Includes bibliographical references.by Bejamin F. Williams, Jr.M.S

    Public worship and practical theology in the work of Benjamin Keach (1640-1704)

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    The late seventeenth century was a critical and fruitful period for the Particular Baptists of England. Severely persecuted following the Restoration, toleration in 1689 brought its own perils. Particular Baptists were fortunate in having several strong leaders, especially the London trio of Hanserd Knollys, William Kiffin, and Benjamin Keach. Such a small and severely persecuted group as the Baptists could afford little time for academic pursuits, thus of necessity most of their theology was practical in nature. Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) was the most outstanding practical theologian among the English Particular Baptists of the late seventeenth century. This dissertation is a study of Keach, in particular his writings on public worship and practical theology. Although Keach was a prolific author, he has been almost completely neglected by scholars. After a biographical sketch of Keach, this study considers his writings on public worship and practical theology. In the area of worship, Keach made two outstanding contributions: First, he was the most vocal apologist for Baptist views on Baptism of his period. Secondly, and more importantly, his hymn writing and defense of hymn singing broke new ground, not just for Baptists, but for English Protestantism, in general. In addition to his contributions in these areas, he also dealt with the laying on of hands and the sabbath day worship controversy. Keach's contributions to practical theology fall into two main groups: his writings that concern religious education and those that deal with polity. In addition to these, Keach's vigorous advocacy of a high Calvinist soteriology are also considered under the rubric of practical theology. Keach's most important (although not his most positive) contribution in this area were his soteriological writings. Although well within the bounds of orthodoxy, some of the tendencies in Keach's soteriology were taken up by the following generation of Baptist leaders and developed into a stultifying hyper-Calvinism that handicapped Baptist evangelism and missions. In the conclusion, Keach's contributions to a theory of practical theology are considered

    Criticality of Regular Formulas

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    We define the criticality of a boolean function f : {0,1}^n -> {0,1} as the minimum real number lambda >= 1 such that Pr [DT_{depth}(f|R_p) >= t] = k. In an unpublished manuscript [Rossmann, 2018], the author showed that a combination of Håstad’s switching and multi-switching lemmas [Håstad, 1986; Håstad, 2014] implies that AC^0 circuits of depth d+1 and size s have criticality at most O(log s)^d. In the present paper, we establish a stronger O(1/d log s)^d bound for regular formulas: the class of AC^0 formulas in which all gates at any given depth have the same fan-in. This result is based on (i) a novel switching lemma for bounded size (unbounded width) DNF formulas, and (ii) an extension of (i) which analyzes a canonical decision tree associated with an entire depth-d formula. As corollaries of our criticality bound, we obtain an improved #SAT algorithm and tight Linial-Mansour-Nisan Theorem for regular formulas, strengthening previous results for AC^0 circuits due to Impagliazzo, Matthews, Paturi [Impagliazzo et al., 2012] and Tal [Tal, 2017]. As a further corollary, we increase from o(log n /(log log n)) to o(log n) the number of quantifier alternations for which the QBF-SAT (quantified boolean formula satisfiability) algorithm of Santhanam and Williams [Santhanam and Williams, 2014] beats exhaustive search

    Raymond Williams and the limits of cultural materialism

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    Cultural materialism has become an influential discipline in recent years, particularly so in 'Renaissance' studies, but also more generally in 'English', as well as departments defined as practising 'cultural' or 'communications' studies. The phrase is usually linked with the name of Raymond Williams, but a cursory examination of Williams's own work quickly establishes that it is a phrase he rarely uses, and only schematically attempts to define. The thesis therefore takes the form of an investigation into the way cultural materialism has come to be understood, by examining in detail the trajectory of Raymond Williams's theoretical development, and how his own engagement with various theoretical positions has helped to set 'limits' on the meaning of cultural materialism. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with some of Williams's earliest work, particularly Reading and Criticism, as a way of investigating how reasonable it is to tag him as a 'Left-Leavisite', arguing that Leavis's undoubted influence is resisted (though not entirely rejected) from a very early stage. The first chapter considers in detail Leavis's work at Cambridge, the influence of Eliot, and the significance of the 'Organic Community'. Chapter 2, which is based around a comparative analysis of Williams's and Leavis's readings of Dickens, argues that Williams rejects the 'organic community' in favour of his 'knowable community'. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with specific 'theoretical' issues: the first, based around a reading of Terry Eagleton's critique of Williams's use of the Marxist metaphor of 'base and superstructure', shows some of the problems which arise from Williams's cultural model, as well as suggesting refinements; the second deals with the influence of Volosinov's theories on Williams. Chapter 6 comes out of Williams's readings of the 'Country-House' poems in The Country and the City, showing how his practice of literary criticism relies on an acceptance of 'ideology' apparently denied in his more 'theoretical' writings. This analysis is extended as a result of investigations into the 'De L'Isle' manuscripts relating to the Penshurst estate. Chapter 7 argues that it is possible to see the work of Fredric Jameson as developing Williams's cultural materialism into Jameson's debates on postmodernism. In the Introduction and Conclusion, I have taken the opportunity to look briefly at the activity of cultural materialism as it has developed since Raymond Williams's death in 1988. The Introduction emphasizes what I see to be important methodological differences between 'cultural materialism' and 'new historicism'; the Conclusion deals with the continuing debate over the value of a cultural materialist approach by considering the 'appropriation' of Shakespeare

    Benjamin W. Beery House

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    Italianate style house built for Benjamin Washington Beery (1822-1892), partner in Cassidey & Beery Shipyard; and wife, Ann Eliza Williams (1827-1865). Served as school and convent of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, 1869-1870. Double piazzas added by James F. Post, architect, when purchased by Col. William Parker Canady (1843-1892), Republican politician who served as Sergeant-at-Arms of the U.S. Senate

    Lines of beauty: propaganda, the poster, and the pictorial trope

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    Propaganda conceived for distribution via the medium of the pictorial poster creates artwork that can be productively examined from an aesthetic as well as political perspective. When this artwork is primarily restricted to conflict propaganda from the second decade of the twentieth century, the temporal and contextual considerations assist in focussing the poster’s role as a functional object, not only within a propaganda campaign but also within the wider visual ecology of an era.For the poster to operate as an effective means of propaganda distribution, the propagandist requires composition that incorporates constructs capable of attracting the viewer. In isolating a particular construct, its manifestation has the potential to be utilised as a tool in the unpacking of the imagery; consequently the concept of a propagandist promotion of an alternate reality as a challenge to a current real, and the prospective movement from one to the other, can be literally and figuratively conveyed via its employment as a pictorial trope. In this regard, the construct deemed to represent not only movement, but movement at its most beautiful thereby forming a focus for attraction, is the serpentine curve that in 1745 William Hogarth scribed and titled the line of beauty (Hogarth, 1997 p6).In concentrating on the poster within the wider genre of early twentieth century visual conflict propaganda, and creating new associations with aesthetic and metaphoric concepts pertaining to the line of beauty, this research becomes the articulation of how each contributory element within the artwork’s construction ‘respectively influences the identity and the economies of the other’, thereby providing ‘a model by which to focus and rethink’ these relationships (Ostrow, 2005 p226). The line of beauty serves as both cause and effect of the process by which the relationships are reconsidered, thus provoking an innovative discourse as to the potential impact of the whole upon the visual culture field

    Saving Rutgers Camden

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    In January 2012, Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, announced that the Camden campus of Rutgers, the State University, was to be severed from Rutgers and taken over by Rowan University. Every major political force in the state, Democratic and Republican, elected and behind the scenes, lined up in support of the plan. Nevertheless, Rutgers-Camden faculty, students, administrators, alumni, and trustees, and their allies, vigorously fought the plan, convinced that it made no sense and would be devastating to the campus and higher education in the State more generally. The campaign opposing the merger with Rowan was popular and political, but it ultimately depended on powerful legal arguments grounded in Rutgers’ distinct and complex history. By the end of June, the merger idea had been defeated. As one assistant professor put it, “The bad guys got outmaneuvered by a bunch of nerds.” This article is a scholarly effort by three faculty participants to make sense of the struggle to save Rutgers-Camden and put it in theoretical context. The article narrates the story of the fight over the proposed merger and carefully analyzes the legal constraints on the plan. It also links the story to important broader questions about legal pluralism, the public/private divide, the relationship between state universities and state governments, and competing visions of the modern university faculty. Through this combination of case study, legal argument, and conceptual inquiry, the article provides a cautionary but hopeful tale about the importance of academic communities defending sound public policy and their own historical rights to self determination against the machinations that can infect our political culture and legislative process.Please direct any questions about this deposit to Charlotte Schneider ([email protected])

    Embeddedness as Condition and Strategy in Contemporary Art and Cultural Production

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    This thesis examines the concept of ‘embeddedness’ as condition and strategy in contemporary art and cultural production. Identifying embeddedness as a motif of contextual proximity and a strategy in contemporary art, the thesis proposes immediacy to be the result of intrinsic mediation. The project’s main concern is how embeddedness is contextualised by the current conditions that authors and cultural producers engage with. The primary question is whether and how embeddedness can convey a critical relation to the mediation that it undertakes. These concerns inform and arise from my work as an artist, and my participation in events, some of which I organise. The project claims that embeddedness in art is a critical condition and an editorial concept or a strategic plan that can be set up by the artist. The investigation begins by looking at conditions of embeddedness by focusing on concepts of subjectivity and by elaborating strategies that I call ‘auto-direction’. For example, concepts of subjectivity are taken up in relation to Richard Serra’s video Boomerang (1974), in which the performer Nancy Holt reflects on her own spoken words, which are fed back with a short delay via microphone and headphones into her ears. Auto-direction, introduced with the example of Steven Spielberg’s initiative of a video diary exchange project between Israeli and Palestinian children, describes the activity of the producer, who self-directs his situated presence. Taking up idioms of embeddedness from artists like Phil Collins, Christian Jankowski and Erik van Lieshout the project examines embeddedness through a comparative analysis between contemporary art, visual culture, media theory, sociology, art theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy. These practices lead to an identification of embeddedness as an author’s immanent exposure, a claim taken up through analysis of theoretical texts and literature by Rosalind Krauss, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gregory Bateson, Hal Foster, Bernard Williams and Alfred North Whitehead
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