119 research outputs found
Park County inventory of critical biological resources: final report
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.April 2001.Prepared by Susan Spackman, Denise Culver, and John Sanderson; prepared for: Park County
Obituary for Dr. William Spackman (1919-2014)
No full textWilliam Spackman, known internationally for his work in the characterization of peat and coal deposits, and the utilization of coals of all types died on March 13, 2014, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Dr. Spackman, Professor Emeritus at The Pennsylvania State University, began his post-secondary education at North Park College in Chicago, where he received the Associate of Arts degree in 1940. He graduated with a Bachelor\u27s degree in botany from the University of Illinois in 1942. During World War II he served at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard applying biological research to marine wood preservation. In 1949 he earned his PhD in biology with a major in paleobotany from Harvard University, where he worked under the guidance of Dr. E.S. Barghoorn, investigating the peculiar characteristics of the Brandon Lignite; Vermont certainly is not known for its coal deposits, but the Brandon ended up being most significant from a paleobotanical point of view. Dr. Spackman spent his entire, and very illustrious career at Penn State, where he developed the Coal Research Section of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences into an internationally acclaimed research facility. According to a history of the Coal Research Section, written in the Penn State Geosciences newsletter by Dr. Spackman, summer 2003, the academic program took root from 1949–1951. Following establishment of classes in paleobotany, palynology, and coal petrology, there came a call from U.S. Steel Corporation in 1951 to assist in the analysis of metallurgical coke production; coke is used in iron ore reduction, and is produced entirely from suitable grades and compositions of bituminous coal. Thus began a decade-long and productive association between US Steel and the coal research group at Penn State. In 1955, the Coal Research Section became a reality, and proceeded to develop ties with Bethlehem Steel, Jones & Laughlin, Inland Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube and a variety of other corporations and agencies. These U.S. steel companies embraced Dr. Spackman\u27s maceral concept that sought to organize coal by rank and composition and employed the knowledge to improve coke and iron making operations. Industrial support, and more than 25 years of funding from the National Science Foundation led to a wide spectrum of research efforts, ranging from defining the petrographic characteristics of coking coals, to understanding the association of uranium minerals with lignites, to appreciating the historical development of peat deposits within the Okefenokee Swamp and the Everglades. Among his many accomplishments Dr. Spackman helped to establish the Catalog of Fossil Spores and Pollen, a research aid that included 44 volumes of illustrations and detailed descriptions of the known fossil taxa of spores and pollen; the Catalog was published at Penn State from 1957 to 1985. He also served as Chair of the Paleobotanical Section of the Botanical Society of America; Chair of the Coal Geology Division of the Geological Society of America; and was a member of the International Commission of Coal Petrology, serving from 1964 to 1975 as President of its Nomenclature Committee. Most notably, in 1980 he became the founding editor of the first research journal devoted to coal geology, the International Journal of Coal Geology. Dr. Spackman was probably best known to most coal technologists as a petrographer and organic geochemist. His publications in periodicals such as Fuel, Energy Sources, and the International Journal of Coal Geology reflect his long association with studies of coal characteristics and utilization. To many others, he is most associated with his work in the Florida Everglades. He was long a proponent of using those wetlands as a modern analog to environments of coal accumulation. In 1964, for example, he was senior author on “Environments of Coal Formation in Southern Florida”, a pre-meeting field guide published in association with the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (Spackman and Thompson, 1964). Later, a widely referenced publication appeared in a GSA Special Paper. That contribution, entitled “Geological and Biological Interactions in the Swamp–Marsh Complex of Southern Florida” (Spackman et al., 1969) helped to establish the ‘glades as a model wetland for understanding peat accumulation. This effort was expanded in 1974 when, once again in affiliation with GSA, and with the considerable assistance of Dr. Spackman\u27s former student, Dr. Arthur Cohen, and colleagues Drs. P.H. Given and D.J. Casagrande, a field guide was written and entitled “A Field Guidebook to Aid in the Comparative Study of the Okefenokee Swamp and the Everglades-Mangrove Swamp–Marsh Complex of Southern Florida”. Dr. Spackman\u27s love of the Everglades never abated, and for many of us the image of him standing at the helm of the Mariscus as it sped across Florida Bay toward the Everglades is most enduring
Colorado Natural Heritage Program 1995 (with material added in 1997)
No full textFrom cover: "Colorado Natural Heritage Program 1995 (with material added in 1997)."15 January 1996.Prepared for: U.S. Forest Service, Leadville Ranger District; by Susan Spackman, Mark Duff, Sandra Floyd
Inventory and status report of American ground nut (Apios americana Medicus) in Colorado
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.Prepared by: David G. Anderson and Susan C. Spackman; prepared for: City of Boulder Open Space
Cirsium perplexans (Rydb.) Petrak (Rocky Mountain thistle): a technical conservation assessment
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.August 31, 2004.Prepared for: the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region, Species Conservation Project; [by] Susan Spackman Panjabi and David G. Anderson
The Somers mutiny of 1842
No full textThis dissertation presents an analysis of the Somers mutiny of 1842
that goes beyond the simple narratives offered by previous studies of the
cruise. The mutiny is examined within the context of contemporary
American politics and social reform, particularly as they related to naval
affairs. These emphases clarify the rationale behind the cruise of the
Somers, and shed light upon the nature of her crew.
The immediate physical environment of the brig is described in
order to reveal the difficulties in its operation, and the destabilising effect
that this had on both the functional and social worlds of the vessel. The
social environment on board is further defined by examining the daily
progress of the cruise with reference to antebellum naval life and practice.
When so combined, these factors clarify the officers' perception of the
mutiny threat, and go far to explain their actions throughout the crisis.
Finally, the dissertation examines the controversy that arose after
the Somers returned to the United States. In particular, the military
courts convened to investigate the mutiny are subjected to critical analysis
since they are fully part of the events that they purported to explain, and
because their proceedings remain the primary source material for
reconstructing the cruise it is necessary to identify their biases. To
conclude, the societal lessons of the Somers mutiny are explored, and an
alternative reading of the event is posed
Recommended from our members
Situating Lives: Autobiography and Social Critique in Contemporary France and Italy
No full text“Situating Lives” bridges the study of autobiography and social theory to demonstrate how, since at least the mid-twentieth century, hybrid forms of narration have used personal experiences to advance critical arguments. In contrast to the scholarly tradition that tends to cast self-analysis as a form of narcissistic confession, this dissertation examines autobiographical texts that foreground social groups and generations across six decades of French and Italian literature. Through historical contextualization and careful analysis of works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Luisa Passerini, Annie Ernaux, and Edoardo Albinati, I argue that the emphasis contemporary life-writing places on social relations attests to a revised understanding of critique, whereby discursive modes of social introspection offer new alternatives to universalist paradigms. The autobiographers-critics discussed herein address social phenomena in their personal narratives based on the internal knowledge they gained as individuals situated within a community. This shift from detachment to immanence in experimental life-writing challenges hierarchical models of political commitment, illustrating how critique is a democratic activity that results from self-understanding.Key to the personal narratives investigated in this study is the way in which these writers represent and interpret social bonds. Each of the four chapters addresses the relationship between collective autobiography and social critique by focusing on the creative modes in which these authors imagine society and intervene in its dynamics. Taking his bourgeois childhood as an example, Sartre casts light on the social grammar that, embodied in everyday practices, intimates to individuals how to relate to one another. In her generational self-portrait, Passerini interrogates the ideological and linguistic mediations that shape both personal experiences and their narration. As she recounts her parents’ life and her own, Ernaux grapples with questions of visibility and agency in low-income milieus, in search of ways to de-singularize the “I” and foster social belonging. In turn, Albinati meditates upon the widespread practices of masculine domination at play in his Catholic education. Such an introspective exercise prompts the author to assess available forms of accountability and social unity within a community fractured by gender violence. Taken together, these chapters point to the richness of critical practices that emerge from situated thinking, as well as to the ambivalences that can arise in interpreting and attempting to reimagine one’s place in society. While accounting for the inseparable ties between individuals and communities, these autobiographers suggest that writing about one’s life means not only engaging with its contexts, but also unfolding its critical implications
The Role of Recreational Reading in High School Media Centers: Four Case Studies
No full textThis paper reports the results of four case studies of recreational reading in high school media centers. Interviews were conducted with media specialists and websites were analyzed for the presence of items related to recreational reading. The four North Carolina high schools in this study participate in a variety of activities to promote recreational reading, including programming, readers' advisory services, and public relations. Common programs include contests, author visits, book groups, and curriculum-related projects. The media specialists suggest books to students and teachers, in addition to offering bibliographies and other indirect readers' advisory resources. Public relations efforts prevalent in the four schools involve booktalks, displays, and book reviews on the media center website. Media specialists also discussed their attitudes toward recreational reading, affirming that they value recreational reading. The librarians cited testing and busy student schedules as reducing the amount of time the students spend reading recreationally
Recommended from our members
Mermaid Without a Tale: Disability, Sexuality, and the Limits of Discourse in Italian Narrative (1975-2009)
No full textDisability as a category of critical discourse and literary critique is only just beginning to find its way to Italian literary and cultural studies. As such, the depths of the newly forming field of Italian disability studies are as yet largely unplumbed – a vast and uncharted sea of hermeneutic possibilities. Rather than offer a diachronic survey of texts, however, this dissertation seeks to untie a series of theoretical knots that characterize representations of the disabled body in recent and contemporary Italian literature, with regards to the relationship between disability, gender, sexuality, and discursive practices. Drawing from Robert McRuer’s “crip theory” and the notion that the disabled body is always already to a certain extent a queer body, I argue that instances of disability in modern Italian narratives inherently act to challenge normative conventions of gender and sexuality. At the same time, alternative embodiments lead to unconventional reading, writing, and speaking practices, a fact which has profound implications for the study of narrative more broadly. The material quality of such practices, so often disavowed or forgotten, is undeniable in the case of the texts examined here, causing the relationships between reader, text, character, and author to be reconfigured. At the same time, the role of voice in narrative undergoes a series of transformations throughout the dissertation, at times problematic and at others liberatory.In Chapter One, I argue that by writing in the place of speech, the deaf protagonist of Dacia Maraini’s La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990) challenges the primacy of the spoken over the written word in Western culture, representing a “language of the body” that is profoundly different from the female symbolic theorized by feminist critics and philosophers. Where scholarship on Maraini’s novel has interpreted Marianna’s deafness and muteness as a metaphor for the silencing of women in a patriarchal order, I maintain that such readings close down fruitful possibilities for interpretation on the basis of disability. Through an exploration of Marianna’s alternative modes of communication, I contend that silence need not be synonymous with an absence of communication, just as text need not signify bodily absence. Chapter Two draws on the shared history of disabled and gendered others, reminding readers that the disabled body and the female body are often discursively rendered as similarly “lacking,” linking them in reciprocal relation. To illustrate the point, I read Maraini’s Donna in guerra (1975) alongside Gabriele Pedullà’s short story, “Miranda” (2009), proposing “literary transability” as an interpretive frame by which to understand instances where “able-bodied” characters simulate disability as a means to escape gendered norms: here, the disabled body is made use of as an icon of deviance that opens the way towards other corporeal transgressions. In both cases, such transgressions are made possible vis-à-vis non-normative discursive practices that are inseparable from disabled corporeal difference, though in the final instance, the disabled bodies and subjects themselves are removed from the scene. Chapter Three argues that the practice of collaborative writing in Stefano Benni’s Achille piè veloce (2003) simultaneously both allows for and appropriates Achille’s authority as a disabled writer, suggesting a more reciprocal relationship than those explored in Chapter Two. Achille’s writing favors process over product, a view that parallels his emphasis on sexual enjoyment over completion, short-circuiting conventions of writing, publishing, and masculine sexuality. He, too, is erased from the final pages of the novel, however, in an example of what David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have termed “narrative prosthesis.”Finally, in Chapter Four, I turn to a reading of autobiographical texts by disabled women authors, each of whom use the figure of the sirena – the siren or mermaid – in order to represent themselves. The subjects analyzed in this chapter each grapple in different ways with the relationship between mind and body, staged upon the partially human body of the mermaid. The mermaid’s coda, as stand-in for both the phallus and the writing pen, reveals a hybridity that bridges gender categories, as well as those of human and animal, oral and written, disabled and non-disabled. Drawing parallels to medical literature on the surgical treatment of the condition “sirenomelia” (fused legs), I argue that the insistence upon the separation of the mermaid's legs combines heteronormative fantasies of controlling the monstrous female body with the normalizing imperatives of medical cure, illustrating the extent to which ableist ideologies undergird and reinforce normative expectations regarding gender and sexuality, and vice versa. While the first two texts discussed in this chapter confirm a conception of disability and feminine sexuality as incompatible, Barbara Garlaschelli’s Sirena: Mezzo pesante in movimento (2001) suggests an integration of the two categories that is effected through the writing of the text itself
Recommended from our members
Contaminating Conversions: Narrating Censorship, Translation, Fascism
No full textIn an idealized formulation, translation and censorship mark opposite points on the spectrum of signification: if translation works to raze boundaries between text and reader, censorship strives to raise them. In scholarship on fascist Italy, this polarized definition was particularly widespread: censorship was cast exclusively as the tool of the powerful, and translation, as a way for intellectuals to smuggle subversive ideas into a xenophobic society. However, despite their apparently antithetical aims, literary historians have found archival evidence to support a more nuanced view of censorship and translation under fascism, and seminal theoretical contributions by Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have led to wide recognition of a chiastic relationship between “repressive” censorship and “productive” translation. If, today, in light of the numerous fields which take translation and censorship as their objects of study (literature, history, psychoanalysis, cultural studies), it were possible to make a single claim about these processes, it would speak to their ability to destabilize notions of discipline, author and text. This dissertation uses these transgressive, polyvalent phenomena to unsettle a rather stubborn boundary in the postwar Italian literary panorama: “fascist” and “antifascist” literature, specifically as it relates to fictionalized wartime narratives by Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957), Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) and Beppe Fenoglio (1922-1963), intellectuals who are key for different yet convergent reasons: Malaparte, who abandoned fascism in 1931, has been depicted as an unscrupulous chameleon; Vittorini, who became antifascist in 1936, has become a symbol of redemptive conversion; Fenoglio, a partisan in the Resistance, has become synonymous with antifascist literature. In bringing together these texts, traditionally understood as reflections of their authors’ politics, my dissertation examines how the rise and fall of fascism is narrativized and suggests that these political conversions—never before considered comparatively—share common anxieties as they attempt to renegotiate boundaries not just between “fascist” and “antifascist” but also between other categories of identity, including race and gender.While my dissertation locates such overlaps in “fascist” and “antifascist” texts, it also identifies a preoccupation with renegotiating boundaries shared by these fascist era texts and their postwar criticism. Perceived as a site for struggle between intellectuals and the regime, censorship and translation maintain their tantamount importance today, as their oppositional definitions—still widely held in the scholarship on Malaparte, Vittorini and Fenoglio—contribute to the reification of the emblematic positions of these intellectuals and their texts. My readings explore the ways in which censorship and translation have shaped perceptions of the texts’ production and afterlife, but also how they inform narrative dynamics. After an introduction to my theoretical methods in Chapter One, in Chapter Two, I look at how categories of sexual and political “integrity” and “violation” intertwine in the plots of two novels by Vittorini, Garofano rosso [The Red Carnation], a famously censored fascist bildungsroman, and Conversazione in Sicilia [Conversation in Sicily], a story of an antifascist awakening, whose stylistic innovations were held to be the result of his experience translating Anglophone literature. As I offer new readings of previously marginalized scenes, I show how the critics’ rhetorical emphasis on the censor’s “violation” of Garofano and the “integrity” of Conversazione has helped construct Vittorini’s emblematic position as a redemptive antifascist convert, obscuring the representations of sexual violence on which the protagonists’ conversion depends. In Chapter Three, I focus on Fenoglio’s Partigiano Johnny [Johnny The Partisan], purportedly born through self-translation from English to Italian, and show how its status as a literary monument to antifascism is predicated upon philological “conversion” efforts to restore the text to its uncensored form and thus tell the “complete” story of the Resistance. I argue that these efforts paradoxically censor a number of suggestive tensions that speak to the trauma of Italy’s civil war. In Chapter Four, I turn to Malaparte’s La pelle [The Skin], a polemical novel still caught in a debate on whether it deserves to be freed of its “cultural censorship.” While the critics debate its “fidelity”" to the “truth” of the war, I explore the text’s construction of its own truth claims, as it represents moments of “translation” between the Allies and the Italians
- …
