Nat King Cole and the politics of race and broadcasting in the 1 950s

For many practitioners, jurists, and free speech scholars, there are few jurisprudential quagmires that can rival the abyss created by obscenity rules and regulations. This historical essay claims that by using the Besant‐Bradlaugh trial as a case study, scholars can combine legal and cultural perspectives in order to understand some of the religious, class, and gender dimensions of obscenity. The essay traces the development of the history of “obscene libel” from Curll's Case in the eighteenth century to the passage of Lord Campbell's Act and the application of the Hicklin test in the Besant‐Bradlaugh trial of the nineteenth century.     

An experimental study of the effect of three speech variables on listener comprehension

Though the scope of Aristotle's Rhetoric is at once broader and more limited than Bacon's theory, the Englishman owes most of his primary rhetorical doctrines to his predecessor. The two philosophers agree on the nature and general function of rhetoric, its place among the arts and sciences, its psychological basis, and the use to which it puts logical, ethical, and pathetic proofs. Some of Aristotle's hints are expanded by Bacon, mainly those regarding the philosophical style, and Bacon often corrects what he takes to be inconsistencies and errors in Aristotle's work. Moreover, because he looks to the past only for material to change and augment, Bacon does original and important new things to Aristotle as he re‐works him for a new English rhetoric.     

From Music Cataloging to the Organization of Knowledge: An Interview with Richard P. Smiraglia

Richard P. Smiraglia shares his personal evolution from early studies in music, to music cataloging, instantiation theory, and knowledge organization. People who have impacted his career and research direction are featured, as well as his work editing such publications as Library Resources & Technical Services, The Soldier Creek Music Series, and his continuing editorship of the journal Knowledge Organization. His contributions to the fields of cataloging, especially music cataloging, and his research in instantiation, domain analysis, and knowledge organization serve to advance Patrick Wilson's notion of exploitative power within a connected universe of knowledge.     

The Via Media of American Museum Practice: Henry Watson Kent and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speculation about the character and purposes of American art museums has occasioned intense debate since their inception—never more so than today. Whether to be elitist or populist, object‐based or audience‐based forms the crux of many heated arguments. This article asserts that, in the midst of competing philosophies, the successful American art museum has in reality grown from an amalgam of ideas that form a via media or middle path, far more inclusive and pragmatic than is usually noted. This comprehensive philosophy is most effectively demonstrated in the work of Henry Watson Kent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during the first decades of the twentieth century. The work of Kent and his colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum is here examined as a paradigm for the via media museum practice that speaks to the aspirations of America's current art museum leadership.     

John Dewey and Museum Education

Abstract Although John Dewey's educational concepts have been discussed previously in relation to museums, his own writing about museums has received little attention. Dewey, who visited museums frequently throughout his life, recognized the powerful educational value of museums. He assigned a central role to museums as integrative components of raw experiences in his educational theory, and he made extensive use of student visits to museums at the Chicago Laboratory School. Early twentieth‐century museum educators and directors applied Dewey's ideas, and advocated a museum education philosophy, based on the progressive education movement, that has significance for current exhibition and educational practice.     

John Dewey's “Wholly Original Philosophy” and Its Significance for Museums

Abstract John Dewey's lifework was to create a philosophy that encompassed both life‐experience and thought. He attempted to construct a philosophical system that incorporated life as it is lived, not in some ideal form. He rejected all dualisms, such as those between thought and action, fine and applied arts, or stimulus and response. An analysis of “experience” (defined as almost synonymous with “culture”) is central to Dewey's writing and leads him to emphasize process, continuity, and development, rather than static, absolute concepts. This paper examines the significance of Dewey's educational views for museum exhibitions and education programs, and his complex definitions of relevant concepts, with special emphasis on his interpretation of “experience.” Dewey's faith in democracy and his moral philosophy require that the value of any educational activity depends on its social consequences as well as its intellectual content, a proposition that is discussed and applied to museums. This argument suggests that exhibitions and programs can strengthen democracy by promoting skills that improve visitors' ability to become critical thinkers and by directly addressing controversial issues, taking the side of social justice and democracy.     

Communication research and the idea of process

The term “process” admits of two definitions in the philosophy of science: one based on a 19th century mechanistic view, the other consistent with quantum relativistic notions. Scholars in speech communication have misused these essentially contradictory definitions. Methodological notions have often been based on a deterministic view of cause while, at the same time, definitions of communication have been based on Whitehead's view of reality as “becoming.” As a result, theory and research have been inconsistent. To implement the contemporary notion of “process,” ideas of methodological rigor based on causal determinism must be substituted by notions of carefulness based on acknowledgement of the observer's involvement in his own observations.     

Diamond Jenness and the National Museum of Canada: 1930–1947

Diamond Jenness (1886–1969), New Zealand born and Oxford educated, is best known in anthropology for his detailed studies of Canadian Inuit and Indian societies and cultures. He published numerous reports and papers and the ground-breaking The Indians of Canada (1932), a classic of North American ethnology. Less well known is his service (1926–1930, 1937–1947) as chief of the Anthropological Division of the National Museum of Canada (NMC), where he made important contributions to furthering Canadian anthropology before the discipline had gained public acceptance or a secure niche in either academia or government. Two facts help to explain why little attention has been paid to Jenness's administrative work and the Division's accomplishments during his tenure. First, his career was overshadowed by that of Edward Sapir, among the century's brightest anthropological lights and Jenness's predecessor as chief (1910–1925). Sapir has been the subject of considerable attention in disciplinary history, including assessments of his formative influence on professional anthropology in Canada during his sojourn at NMC (Cowan et al., 1986; Koerner, 1984). Second, Jenness and his colleagues struggled to maintain the Division's viability at a time when economic depression, government bureaucracy, and world war threatened to reduce professional anthropology to insignificance. Though we are not without tangible proofs of the Division's scientific endeavors during the period, perhaps its more notable accomplishment was surviving the onslaught at all.     

The Gaze and The Spielberg Face: Steven Spielberg's Application of Lacan's Mirror Stage and Audience Response

Through the theoretical framework of Jacques Lacan's “mirror stage,” this study employs statistical analysis to code the frequency with which Spielberg utilizes the “gaze” in his work to emotionally influence viewers by providing them with desirable images of the human face. This study examines if these psychologically desirable images are used with more frequency in Spielberg's successful films, thus providing quantitative support for the assertion that Spielberg “manipulates” his audience through his signature style.     

探索馆创始人的逆转胜人生——《众妙之门:弗兰克·奥本海默和他创造的世界》推介

本文追溯了笔者于1984年拜访探索馆与馆长弗兰克·奥本海默有过一面之缘的难忘回忆,展示了弗兰克·奥本海默跌宕起伏的曲折人生和创建探索馆的教育理念,介绍了《众妙之门:弗兰克·奥本海默和他创造的世界》一书的作者柯尔、导言和各章内容概况,让读者对弗兰克·奥本海默有更为全面、更深层次的了解,从而在博物馆界进一步传播其博物馆教育理念。     

Stuart Hall at the Open University

ABSTRACT

Accounts of the influence of Stuart Hall's thought on subsequent developments tend to neglect his work at the Open University. This unjustifiable neglect is illustrated by the example of his contribution to the course on Beliefs and Ideology, especially his article on 'Religious ideologies and social movements in Jamaica' [Hall, S. (1985). Religious ideologies and social movements in Jamaica. In R. Bocock & K. Thompson (Eds.), Religion and ideology (pp. 269–297). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press].     

Toward a Theory of Simulated Atonement: A Case Study of President George W. Bush's Response to the Abu Ghraib Torture Scandal

In response to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, President Bush delivered an apology that was widely criticized by domestic and international audiences. Nevertheless, the apology succeeded in allowing the President to stop the momentum of negative public opinion following news of the crimes, and to avoid accountability for his role in the crisis. In this essay, I argue that Bush's success stemmed partly from his use of a special subgenre of apologia, simulated atonement. After explaining the strategy in detail, I describe some of the conditions in which it will likely be effective and apply the theory to Bush's statements.     

Aristotle on psychology and rhetoric

When Aristotle's Rhetoric is viewed in the light of his psychological treatise, De Anima, it becomes evident that the latter work both illuminates his conception of rhetoric and reveals the psychological assumptions underlying his theory of persuasion.     

John Dewey's Experience and Education: Lessons for Museums

John Dewey, one of the preeminent educational theorists of our time, wrote Experience and Education 60 years ago, toward the end of his career, as a review of his educational philosophy and the progressive schools it had spawned. Based on the principle that all genuine education comes about through experience, Dewey's ideas are still current and particularly relevant to the theory and practice of museum education. They are, nevertheless, not widely cited within the museum profession. This article comments on Experience and Education, a slim, readable volume, in the hope of giving it wider readership. Major ideas from each chapter of the book are summarized along with comments on their application to various museum issues. Dewey distinguishes two fundamentally opposed ideas: that education is development from within and that it is formation from without. Believing that experience is the basis for education, he basically takes the within position, although he also warns against either-or thinking. Dewey identifies two aspects of experience and two criteria for judging it which have implications for such things as setting exhibit goals, evaluating exhibits, developing exhibit content, and untangling education and entertainment. He goes on to look at problems of implementing experience-based learning such as maintaining social control, moving people from initial impulses to more purposeful inquiry, and developing organized subject matter from individual experiences. All of this applies to museums as well as schools.     

THE RADICAL TYPE?

Despite the central role of the paper in Marxist–Leninist strategy, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had little confidence in either professional journalists, including those who were Communists, or journalism practices, even though journalism, like culture, was recognized as “a weapon in the (class) struggle”. While George Allen Hutt (1901–73) was a leading professional party journalist, his career hit a “glass ceiling”, even as he met the three criteria of Communist journalism theory and earned an international reputation as a newspaper designer. In spite of opposition to his role on the executive of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) because of his party membership, he became the longest-serving editor of the NUJ's periodical, The Journalist. As both a loyal, lifetime Communist and the consummate professional journalist, Hutt's career provides a salient example of the ambiguous position of the middle-class journalist in the proletarian-dominated Communist Party. It was the emphasis on his “technical” ability that appears to have disqualified his candidacy for the Daily Worker's top editorial positions and to have justified support for his editorship of The Journalist.     

‘There is nothing more practical than a good theory’: Conceptual tools for conservation practice

Faced with the growing number of case studies in contemporary art, philosophy provides conservators with a series of conceptual tools that allow to theorize their practice. The notion of intentionality and attentionality borrowed from Genette enables a better understanding of the problems that Dirty Corner by Anish Kapoor (a work vandalized on many occasions) poses. I will show that the conservator deals with the issue of the identity of a contemporary work in a different way from the art historian, and that philosophy is a practical tool to understand the specificity of the former's approach and intervention.     

Understanding Electronic Media Audiences: The Pioneering Research of Alan M. Rubin

One can hardly be considered knowledgeable of uses and gratifications theory without being familiar with the work of Alan M. Rubin. His advancement of our knowledge about the centrality of the individual in the media uses and effects relationship has inspired numerous scholars to add to the body of knowledge guided by uses and gratifications research. The breadth of Rubin's work in this regard is extraordinary, but his devotion to clarifying central concepts of uses and gratifications in his audience-centered research should also be recognized. Rubin's pioneering studies in uses and gratifications remain as benchmarks for scholars seeking to understand electronic media and how engaged audiences relate to media content.     

This is so contemporary? Mediums of exchange and conservation

What conservation strategies can be used for Tino Sehgal's 2005 work This Is So Contemporary, and what are their relations to oral traditions? Sehgal's art leaves no material traces, as the artist resists the use of photos and videos acting as a documentary surrogate for his work. This paper will explore how Sehgal's non-written documentation strategies connect to the work of Yumutjin Wunungmurra, a contemporary artist and ceremonial leader from Northeast Arnhem Land, Australia. The connection will be tracked through the role of caretaker and custodian that features in the workflow of both artists. The paper asks whether the performance-based strategies discussed can support the notion of conservation as a social process with multiple stakeholders.     

The Behaviorist in the Boardroom: The Research of Frank Stanton,Ph.D.

In 1946, at the age of 38, Frank Stanton was named President of CBS. While much of Stanton's work as a corporate executive has been chronicled, his accomplishments as one of America's earliest scholars of radio audience measurement remain neglected in media scholarship. This article reviews Stanton's research efforts between 1933 and 1942, and in doing so it places his work within the contexts of contemporaneous social and psychological media inquiry. Discussions of Stanton's methodological approach, his innovative dissertation, his scholarship, and his collaboration with key figures in the history of communication research are informed by primary and secondary sources.     

John Wesley on rhetoric and belles lettres

Students of public address have long admired the rhetorical works of two of the leading ministers of the eighteenth century—Hugh Blair and George Campbell. Little has been said, however, about the rhetorical theory of another eighteenth‐century preacher, John Wesley. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Wesley's views on rhetoric and belles lettres. Since most of the subjects covered by Blair in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres were also discussed by Wesley in his Journal, Letters, and essays, Blair's pattern of organization is followed here. Hence the study considers Wesley's precepts on taste, genius, style, the speaker's content and organization, delivery, poetry, and historical and philosophical writing.