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"Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City" by John Klaess is a significant contribution to the history of New York hip-hop culture. The book explores the early days of rap radio in New York, when stations like WBLS played a crucial role in shaping the sound and culture of hip-hop. Klaess uses interviews and cassette recordings to provide insights into the inseparable relationship between rap, radio, and diverse listening communities. The book also examines the impact of deregulation on the commercial radio industry and the role of radio in advancing Black social progress. Overall, "Breaks in the Air" offers a valuable perspective on the history of rap radio in New York City. [Extracted from the article]

Adam Lowenstein's book, "Horror Film and Otherness," explores the social relevance and transformative power of horror cinema. Lowenstein argues that horror films can teach us about otherness and illuminate the ongoing evolution of social norms and identities. He challenges Robin Wood's analysis of American horror cinema, offering a more nuanced understanding of the genre's exploration of trauma, alienation, and displacement. Lowenstein engages with theorists and historians to examine the themes of aging, the body, gender, and sexuality in horror films from the 1970s to the present. While the book is comprehensive, it lacks coverage of trans people, which would further contribute to the exploration of otherness. Overall, "Horror Film and Otherness" is a landmark text that highlights the importance of horror in understanding society and the self. [Extracted from the article]

"Black Women and the Changing Television Landscape" by Lisa M. Anderson is a book that examines the portrayal of Black women on television throughout history. Anderson, an associate professor of women and gender studies, builds on her previous work to explore the complex and evolving representations of Black women in media. Using a semiotic approach and drawing on the work of Black feminist scholars, Anderson analyzes specific television shows and personalities from the 1950s to the present. The book goes beyond simplistic judgments and aims to understand the historical and cultural contexts in which these representations exist, as well as the agency of Black women in shaping them. It is a valuable resource for scholars in cultural, media, and television studies. [Extracted from the article]

Approaching the writing of a scene in this way, the authors argue, makes character motivations clear, creates tension and leaves room for either additional obstacles or resolution. Which points to another fundamental premise that Perry and Sanders believe in, namely that every scene needs to have both a goal and an obstacle. I SceneWriting: The Missing Manual for Screenwriters i by Chris Perry and Eric Henry Sanders is an essential primer on the important foundational structure and elements that make a scene - and by extrapolation, a story - work. [Extracted from the article]

Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection: By Jason M. Gibson. The collection in question in Gibson's study is that assembled by linguist and ethnographer T.G.H. ("Ted") Strehlow, now housed at the purpose-built Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs. This brings me to the second innovation that Gibson makes in approaching Strehlow's archive: his decision to focus on the work that Strehlow did with the Anmatyerr. [Extracted from the article]

Fashioning James Bond: Costume, Gender and Identity in the World of 007: LLEWELLA CHAPMAN, 2022 London, NY, Bloomsbury Academic pp. xii + 320, illus., £65.00 (cloth), £19.99 (paper) Bond, James Bond, is synonymous with many iconographic elements, from gadgets and guns to megalomaniac foes with dastardly schemes, but the sharp-suited hero and the bikini-clad Bond girl are undoubtedly some of the franchise's most recognizable icons and absolutely central to its ongoing appeal. But despite being organized by Bond, the focus does not rest exclusively on the hero himself and there is plenty of space dedicated to discussing the costuming of those aforementioned Bond girls, later re-labelled Bond women, his bosses and colleagues, as well as the villains and their inevitable henchmen. [Extracted from the article]

More than 20 years have elapsed since the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC), Pentagon and at Shanksville, PA. Many persons continue to suffer a variety of physical and mental health conditions following their exposures to a mixture of incompletely characterized toxicants and psychological stressors at the terrorist attack sites. Primary care and specialized clinicians should ask patients who may have been present at any of the 9/11 sites about their 9/11 exposures, especially patients with cancer, respiratory symptoms, chronic rhinosinusitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, psychiatric symptoms, and substance use disorders. Clinicians, especially those in the NY metropolitan area, should know how to evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients with conditions that could be associated with exposure to the 9/11 attacks and its aftermath. As such, this issue of Archives contains a series of updates to clinical best practices relevant to medical conditions whose treatment is covered by the WTC Health Program. This first paper in the 14-part series describes the purpose of this series, defines the WTC Health Program and its beneficiaries, and explains how relevant Clinical Practice Guidelines were identified. This paper also reminds readers that because physical and mental health conditions are often intertwined, a coordinated approach to care usually works best and referral to health centers affiliated with the WTC Health Program may be necessary, since all such Centers offer multidisciplinary care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mega sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, Olympic Games and Super Bowl, are often constructed as corresponding sites of bodily tourism, with a shared motivation among some tourists to purchase and consume both commercialized sport and sex. This paper begins by deconstructing the 'common sense' connection between sport tourism and sex trafficking. It recognizes, however, that both sport and sex tourism are grounded in bodily consumption and conquest. That is, both sex and sport tourism rely on the commodification and consumption of the body as currency and fantasy, defined as a libidinal economy. As such, this paper explores the colonial systems of power that enable and perpetuate the commodification of colonized bodies at the intersection of sport tourism and sex tourism. The paper situates this intersection within the colonial matrix of power and the structural hierarchies maintained through the colonial framing of power, race, gender and sexuality. In this sense, tourism is defined as roving colonialism [Sykes, H. (2017). The sexual and gender politics of sport mega-events: Roving colonialism. New York, NY: Routledge]. Using the colonial matrix of power as a theoretical framework, then, we evaluate the libidinal economies of sport tourism and sex tourism and propose a conceptual understanding of bodily labor and exploitation at this unique intersection. By using this conceptual framework, this paper calls for further empirical study that explicitly evaluates the impact of corresponding systems of sport tourism and sex tourism simultaneously at play within national and international sporting events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1970s, a drive towards the diversification of mediums available to artists led to artists working across numerous mediums not usually associated with visual art. While some came to work with sound as a central focus in their practice, most used sound as a medium to be employed in particular artworks for conceptual purposes. The paper is focused on five audio and sound exhibitions presented in New York City between 1978 and 1984. These large group exhibitions were held in alternative art spaces and not-for-profit art galleries and have received little critical attention beyond reviews published in local newspapers and art magazines. As such, these exhibitions have all but disappeared from the history of sound in art and from art history in general. I will argue that this cluster of group shows signal to an emergent practice that was moving past the post-medium condition and conceptual art towards the postmodernism of the 1980s. These exhibitions point to an understanding of sound as a medium of visual art that is at odds with contemporary scholarship in the sonic arts, which favours a music-based understanding of approaches to sound within the art gallery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article "Studying New York City's crime decline: Methodological issues" by David Greenberg. He praises Greenberg for an expertly done job of applying the methodological and data requirements for a research of the New York crime decline. He discusses the advantages of comprehending the temporal aspects that cause crime rates.

The Race Disparity Audit (RDA) was published in 2017 by the then Conservative government of the UK. The proclaimed aims were to 'reveal racial disparities and to help end the injustices that many people experience'. This paper adopts a critical discourse analysis approach to analysing the RDA and associated webpages, to critically examine the government's purported aims. The linguistic analysis reveals a pernicious form of political doublespeak which effects a maintenance of the status quo. In excluding racism as a cause of disparities, the audit acts to de-legitimise anti-racism as part of the solution, thereby preventing actions with the potential to end racial injustices. The analysis is explained by reference to Feagin's (2013. The White racial frame. Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge) White racial frame in institutional operation. The paper concludes by exposing the ramifications of this for future policy development by reference to an education policy development borne from the RDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports results of a field experiment in which two hundred e-mails were sent to authors of recent articles in economics that had promised to send the interested reader supplementary material, such as alternative econometric specifications, “upon request.” The e-mails were sent either by a researcher affiliated at Columbia University, New York or the University of Warsaw, Poland; furthermore, the authors' position (assistant professor) was specified in half the e-mails only. Overall, 64% of the approached authors responded to our message, of which two thirds (44% of the entire sample) delivered the requested materials. The frequency and speed of responding and delivering were very weakly affected by the position and affiliation of the sender. Gender or affiliation of the author, number of citations or journal impact factor or the type of object in question seemed to make no difference. However, authors of published articles were much more likely to share than authors of working papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the U.S. writer and teacher Tom Spanbauer's novel In the City of Shy Hunters by means of theoretical perspectives that embrace both queer and communitarian epistemologies. The novel, set mainly in New York City in the mid-1980s, is narrated in first person by the protagonist and shows how HIV/AIDS, and the elevated social stigma surrounding it, affects different classes and ethnicities, as well as gender, sexual and corporal diversities. It experiments with a particular writing style and teaching method that Spanbauer calls dangerous writing; that is, how to expose our inner life and secrets, which are often related to social taboos. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the connection between dangerous writing, queer studies (Judith Butler, Annamarie Jagose) and community theory (Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot and Roberto Esposito) by adopting a multidisciplinary approach to literary critical analysis. The main result of this study demonstrates that the singularities represented in the novel, who are mostly queer and affected by HIV/AIDS, can create inoperative communities and communities of lovers, open to otherness as well as being spontaneous, antisocial and momentary, with a recognition and acceptance of mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixing Actor-Network Theory, empirical philosophy, and Heidegger's notion of usability, this paper discusses a methodological strategy for approaching and temporarily stabilizing urban life based on an experimental epistemological exercise of decomposing a traffic light in Times Square, New York City, into its practices and relations. This strategy conceives of urban elements and formations as multiplicities of multiple and simultaneous practices and materials (useful things) and pays particular attention to the effervescences and heterogeneous associations they embody and enact. As a contribution to the social approach of knowledge production, this essay explores the creation of concepts using any aspects and components taken from outside, unpacking them as analytical instruments and partial results of multimodal ethnographic practices. In a more concrete scenario, Region of usefulness, a sort of qualitative multiplicity, is proposed here as an unfinished epistemological tool for empirically grasping and representing urban life. It is unfinished since it has to be constantly reconstructed and resignified in relation to other elements and, at the same time, it has to be designed and assembled by following and translating those mixed associations composing urban life, using its modes and affordances as analytical resources for producing objective knowledge, that is, limited, embodied, and temporal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privately owned public space (POPS) are a new type of public space that was first introduced in New York City in the 1960s. POPS have been thoroughly studied in the Anglo-American world; however, little examination has been conducted in welfare states. This paper examines to what extent this type of space is relevant and needed for German cities where the private sector involvement is limited. Survey findings, document analysis, and in-depth interviews indicate that private stakeholders are important partners in the provision of public spaces, and co-produced public spaces like POPS are already part of the urban reality in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenery initiatives, such as green infrastructures (GIs), create sustainable and climate-resilient environments. However, they can also have unintended consequences, such as displacement and gentrification in low-income areas. This paper proposes an integrated machine learning (ML) approach that combines both unsupervised and supervised ML algorithms. First, 35 indicators that contribute to green gentrification were identified and categorised into 7 categories: social, economic, demographic, housing, household, amenities, and GIs. Second, data was collected for all census tracts in New York City. Third, the green gentrification susceptibility was modelled into 6 levels using k-means clustering analysis, which is an unsupervised ML model. Fourth, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used to map the census tracts to their green gentrification susceptibility level. Finally, different supervised ML algorithms were trained and tested to predict the green gentrification susceptibility. The results showed that the artificial neural network (ANN) model is the most accurate in classifying and predicting the green gentrification susceptibility with an overall accuracy of 96%. Moreover, the outcomes showed that the Normal Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the proximity to GIs, the GIs frequency, and the total area of GIs were identified as the most important indicators to predict green gentrification susceptibility. Ultimately, the proposed approach allows practitioners and researchers to perform micro-level (i.e. on the census-tracts level) predictions and inferences about green gentrification susceptibility. This allows more focused and targeted mitigation actions to be designed and implemented in the most affected communities, thus promoting environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wood smoke contains large quantities of carbonaceous aerosols known to increase climate forcing and be detrimental to human health. This paper reports the findings from our ambient sampling of fresh residential wood combustion (RWC) plumes in two heating seasons (2015–2016, 2016–2017) in Upstate New York. An Aethalometer (AE33) and a pDR-1500 were employed to monitor residential wood smoke plumes in Ithaca, NY through a hybrid mobile-stationary method. Fresh wood smoke plumes were captured and characterized at 13 different RWC sources in the city, all without significant influence from other combustion sources or atmospheric aging. Wood smoke absorption Ångström exponent (AAE) was estimated using both a one-component model, AAEWB, and a two-component model, AAEBrC (assuming AAEBC = 1.0). Consistent with the recent laboratory studies, our results show that AAEs were highly variable for residential wood smoke for the same source and across different sources, with AAEWB values ranging from 1.3 to 5.0 and AAEBrC values ranging from 2.2 to 7.4. This finding challenges the use of using a single AAE wood smoke value within the range of 1 to 2.5 for source apportionment studies. Furthermore, the PM2.5/BC ratio measured using optical instruments was demonstrated to be potentially useful to characterize burning conditions. Different wood smoke sources can be distinguished by their PM2.5/BC ratio, which range between 15 and 150. This shows promise as an in-situ, cost-effective, ambient sampling-based method to characterize wood burning conditions. Implications: There are two main implications from this paper. First, the large variability in wood smoke absorption Ångström exponent (AAE) values revealed from our real-world, ambient sampling of residential wood combustion plumes indicated that it is not appropriate to use a single AAE wood smoke value for source apportionment studies. Second, the PM2.5/BC ratio has been shown to serve as a promising in-situ, cost-effective, ambient sampling-based indicator to characterize wood burning conditions. This has the potential to greatly reduce the costs of insitu wood smoke surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered shelter-in-place orders and school closures, many turned to remote schooling as a means for delivering vital instruction while observing public health guidelines. However, the swift shift to remote schooling highlighted an area of significant educational inequity across the United States, especially in urban districts and immigrant households: technology access. Centering the experiences of Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers of emergent bilinguals with disabilities in New York City, this paper presents how technology served as both burden and utility for linguistically-, economically-marginalized families and shares how direct multilingual home-school communication was the most supportive yet scarce resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopted in 2017, the Buffalo Green Code was lauded as a comprehensive urban vision for Buffalo, New York. This form-based code would simplify Buffalo's land use regulations by prescribing what could be built and where, and provide a unified framework for its future. Yet, despite the claims of comprehensiveness, the code left two pressing challenges of the city unaddressed: urban integration of vacant lots and lack of affordable housing. The paper argues that, given these omissions, the code fails to provide a grounded vision, while universalizing reductive fabric-making notions unsuitable for much of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes five elementary statistics projects involving the Covid-19 data made available to the public in csv files by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first project examined data available at the beginning of the covid surge in New York City in spring, 2020, and used the correlation coefficient to estimate the total number of deaths that could be expected as the spike ran its course. The second project is an easy one on the concept of excess deaths and on the mechanics of extracting parts of a data file that answer relevant questions. The data is from a spike in deaths in the particularly bad flu surge in the winter of 2017–2018. The third and fourth projects ask the student to fit a logistic growth curve to observed cumulative numbers of deaths in a spike, like the Covid spikes in New York City and Wisconsin and the nationwide 2017–2018 flu spike. The method is a simple linear regression with transformed variables. The fifth project involves hypothesis testing and judging when a Poisson model might be useful. The paper also documents difficulties and adaptations of the sort familiar to all teachers who have taught during the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the discourses surrounding an ambitious high-school transformation project in a large Canadian city that sought to reimagine education for 21st century learning. It was grounded in a broad review of the latest educational research. While an initial eight schools signed on, by the end of the second year all had left the project. Drawing upon Gee's ([2005]. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York, NY: Routledge; [2014]. How to do discourse analysis: A toolkit. New York, NY: Routledge) tools for analyzing 'Knowledge Building' discourses, we explore how the project's communications produced tensions and contradictions, which reflect similar ones within the global research discourses on educational change. Key elements include strong branding, inconsistent messaging over objectives and ownership, centralized control and external sources of authority, a 'start fresh' ethos, and unfamiliar educational values from systems and design thinking. Ultimately, neoliberal assumptions about the means and ends of schooling embedded in the 21st century change discourses undermined the collaborative and teacher driven stated aims of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how portrayals of American unity (i.e. "we're all in this together") have been received by essential workers on the front lines of the COVID risk divide, and how the pandemic may have contributed to perceptions of class inequality among lower-income workers. In this paper, we draw upon 192 in-depth interviews with precarious and gig-based workers in New York City. We find that during the height of the first wave of the pandemic, precarious workers often expressed frustration over class-based inequalities and antagonism toward elites. Many respondents expressed significant skepticism toward messages that the pandemic has brought Americans together. Instead, workers identified two distinct, class-based realities in New York: elite Americans are able to socially-distance in "mansions," or on "yachts," while precarious workers struggled to weather the storm in "dinghies." Likewise, workers felt "abandoned" by wealthy owners and managers, who fled the city to socially-distanced homes in beach communities and surrounding suburbs. Our findings suggest that low-wage, high-risk workers articulate complex conceptualizations of inequality and convey grievances toward elites during the pandemic. This study contributes to broader literature on perceived inequality, the rise of noxious work, and the social consequences of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze cases of Mexican families in New York, which have experienced exceptional upward mobility while being headed by long-term undocumented immigrants. The focus is on Familia Arias, from Tlaxcala. They are part of a larger group of families who I identified in an amateur football team based in New York. I explain that some of these families are exceptional because out of 53 family-households headed by undocumented or DACA immigrants from Mexico in New York City and Long Island, only half a dozen reported an annual family income above $70,000 USD. Along the paper I explain how individual and group factors in each case combine to promote this upward socio-economic mobility. These mechanisms or processes that promote mobility for long term unauthorized immigrants, strongly interacting around amateur football teams, include (i) transferring binational labour skills, (ii) long-time tenure in jobs or prosperous self-employment, and (iii) positive intra-family dynamics. Stories such as the ones of Marcela and Claudio Arias are part of 92 individual ethnographic cases I developed and collected between the fall of 2014 and the summer of 2017 in two urban counties – the Bronx and Queens – and suburban towns in Suffolk County, Long Island. Almost all of these cases were incorporated into the Mexican Initiative for Deferred Action project, initiated in the summer of 2015, which includes other areas, regions, and counties in New York State and the metro area (screening over 1,700 individuals). The 92 cases studied and developed are mainly short biographies, labour and migratory trajectories of foreign-born Mexicans, most of them unauthorized immigrants, who have been living in New York for an average of 17 years with an estimated median family-household income of $43,000 USD annually. Fútbol, for participants in Queen, in New York City, was a key activity to develop strong local networks in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities accommodate, resist, and negotiate with the spread of so-called 'sharing economy' companies, the question of how these businesses actively construct new markets (or sub-markets) through political mobilization and rhetorical strategy has become increasingly salient. This paper explores the ways in which the home-sharing platform Airbnb has sought to carve out a regulatory and discursive space for operation through the political mobilization of its 'hosts' in New York City. Based on nearly two years of ethnographic research, the paper argues that host clubs are not merely top-down transmission belts for the company's political lobbying strategy; beyond political organizing, they are also sites in which the very practices of hosting through Airbnb are affirmed, rehearsed, learned, and debated. On the one hand, Airbnb host clubs are both physical embodiments of, and mechanisms for, the narrative framing of 'home-sharing' as a particular kind of economic activity that is more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable than the traditional hospitality industry. On the other hand, Airbnb host clubs reveal and reflect the tensions – between hosts and Airbnb, and among hosts themselves – that persist over the practice of home-sharing. As the calls for tighter regulation and increased penalties for illegal short-term rentals continue to grow, however, the question of whether host clubs constitute a viable mechanism for political mobilization and regulatory reform remains an open one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical qualitative study explores the affordances of social justice-oriented education that centers youth of color and their desire to engage in complex and nuanced dialogue concerning social and political issues relevant to their lives. In doing so, this paper focuses on the experiences of six high school girls of color participating in a New York City based nonprofit program committed to social justice, activism, and leadership. Specifically, it investigates their participation in a course as they interrogated power, oppression, and privilege at the interpersonal and institutional levels. Guided by the theoretical underpinnings of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) and figured worlds, this study's findings highlight the necessity of discussions about topics often seen as "taboo" in school spaces. The girls saw the dismissal and/or reluctance to engage with "uncomfortable topics" in schools as an attempt to cover up or shield students from histories and realities that may be harsh but necessary knowledge. The girls also stressed the value of opportunities to share and explore multiple aspects of their identity through the course content and activities. Lastly, the pedagogical practice of taking space and making space allowed girls of color to make sense of their individual and collective experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the life and work of the nineteenth-century French-American artist Victor Prevost. While Prevost's name is familiar to photography historians, the diversity of his artistic accomplishments has not been fully appreciated. An artist celebrated for work in several mediums, Prevost was already making large-format calotypes in 1851 while living in New York City. He was also responsible for innovations in telescopic photography, joining with astronomers at the West Point Military Academy in 1854 to capture a solar eclipse on paper. This paper seeks to broaden knowledge of Prevost's life and work as a commercial artist in New York during the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the New York City subway phenomenon known as "showtime." Using an individuals-in-relation framework and drawing on Marxist and feminist economic perspectives, it investigates the job quality of subway dancing as a type of informal self-employment. The data come from thirty-four in-depth interviews conducted in 2016. The paper contextualizes earnings, hours, and conditions of work by considering the social relations and power dynamics in which they are embedded. While dancers articulate advantages of this work, such as setting one's own schedule and having a creative outlet, they also articulate disadvantages, most notably the risk of being arrested. While the dancers see performing on the subway as productively contributing to New York City, the police categorize this activity as a crime. Through this analysis, the paper provides insights into the broader context of work relations and inequality in New York City. HIGHLIGHTS Empowering aspects of subway dancing include not having a boss and ability to express creativity. Challenges include negative passengers and risk of injury or arrest. Subway dancing highlights lack of quality formal employment for marginalized populations in New York City. Criminalizing subway dancing is an example of criminalization of black male bodies in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A utilidor is a 'system of systems' infrastructural solution to the 'subsurface spaghetti' problem resulting from direct burial of utility transmission infrastructure beneath the public right of way (PROW). The transition from direct burial to utilidors in older, dense American cities has generally not occurred, despite the potential to increase system performance in a long-term, financially and environmentally sustainable manner, because it would require reform of local planning practices and of utility pricing to support financing within a complex regulatory system. Utilidor adoption in New York City (NYC) would be a significant local infrastructure transition, amplifying the need for locality-based research, that would occur while each utility sector undergoes its own infrastructure transitions, thereby increasing the level of regulatory complexity. This paper applies transitions analysis, recursive collective action theory, and capacity to act analysis to NYC's experience with its PROW subsurface spaghetti problem and utilidor implementation to demonstrate a place-based methodology that identifies specific sources of resistance to innovative subsurface design and feasible pathways for resolving them. This methodology would be transferable for application to other American cities or classes of American cities to supplement the limits of generalised subsurface and subsurface resource integration research for practitioner application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early 1980s marks a significant period for modern theatre in Taiwan. It is often heralded as the "renaissance of modern Chinese/Taiwan theatre" through the reinvention of Chinese theatrical traditions, such as the Peking opera. This paper examines the connotations and denotations of "the West," which serves as an important reference or counterpart in theatre practice of the period. An "open body" on stage was highly appraised and requested for theatre practitioners during the time. By historicizing the West in tandem with the concept of the "open body," this paper calls attention to the socio-historical and the geopolitical aspects of the Cold War in Taiwan's "theatrical renaissance." "An open body" was emphasized in the first year of "Experimental Theater Exhibition" in 1980. Wu Jing-jyi, who had experienced working and directing in one of the most famous Off-Off-Broadway theatres, LaMaMa E.T.C in New York, led a series of workshops and training courses in "Lan-ling Theater Workshop" and created a new performing method on the basis of what they coined as "an open body." Lee Kuo-hsiu, Liu Ching-min, Chin Shih-chieh, Lee Tien-ju - most of whom were and still are the leading actors and actresses in Taiwan - among others were all trained and influenced by this method. The magnificent production of the play Hechu xinpei was an example that followed the "open body" performance method. In this paper I make two main arguments. First, without examining closely what an open body signified at the time, the discursive formation of the body in the 1980s theatre renaissance cannot be fully comprehended. Second, I propose that the modern Taiwanese body that is open is simultaneously imbricated in relation to geopolitics, knowledge of Area Studies, and modernity - categories that the United States invented, led and developed throughout the Western bloc in the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration scholars and religious studies scholars have explored generational changes in religiosity. Less clear is the significance of religion in the lives of Black immigrant second-generation youth. Moreover, while there is research on intraracial boundary-negotiations between Black Americans and Black immigrants in the United States, it is rarely discussed in the context of religion. Drawing on interviews with seventy one second-generation West African teenagers in New York City, this paper explores the role of religion in the integration of Black immigrant second-generation youth. I find that religion is a primary tool through which ethnoracial boundaries are maintained between the children of West African immigrants and their Black American counterparts. I spotlight three means through which religion matters for ethnoracial boundaries: congregational demographics, religious codes of conduct and Islamophobia. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that religion is a key component of second-generation ethnoracial identity-formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rock music is an integral part of American culture. This paper presents a study of sensing and analysing over 57,000 rock music live performances between 2007 and 2017. Spatial traces of 575 rock music artists performing in concerts nationwide were collected from a major music streaming platform Spotify. Location-based concert data were analysed to explore economic and geographic factors linked to the landscape of rock music live performance and to reveal the importance of population demographics and leisure and hospitality (LH) economics to the culture and music industries from a spatial aspect. Over 90% of rock concerts between 2007 and 2017 were found in 250 counties. The aim of the study is to specify and develop a model that reasonably accounts for spatial heterogeneity present in the concert data. By regressing rock concert data against demographic data and LH establishment data, ordinary least squares (OLS) models were better fitted in metropolitan counties than non-metropolitan counties. Spatial dynamics of concerts were revealed by local R2 values and the obtained structure in the form of spatial heterogeneity was then explained using geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. High population density and LH services in industry-leading cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston exhibit advantages in explaining rock concert distributions. Findings from the models reflect the live music industry's interrelationships to the LH industry and suggest LH services being essential considerations in selecting concert destinations for rock musicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019/2020 academic year started well with no anticipation of what was in store for the second semester and how the year would end. New students were welcomed on campus and included international students and international faculty members. It was business as usual, a beautiful and colorful fall semester that transitioned into a cold winter season. Spring arrived after a long winter season and it was off to a good start as well until the pandemic hit. This paper reflects on how an institution with multiple sites responded to the pandemic and what the impact of those disruptions were on the core activities of a university. As a university with the largest number of international students and a footprint on every continent, the university had to coordinate its activities around the world to complete the academic year and start another one. The university is the largest private employer in the city with over 50,000 students and more than 19,000 employees. The main focus of this reflection paper is the New York city campus where the author is based and key areas of this reflections include the impact of the pandemic on international students, teaching, research and funding related issues. Activities were normalized through central command instructions and guidance that were sometimes helpful and at other times overwhelming, but the work continued and the academic year was completed. The new academic year started with minor variations on the start dates. For example, the portal campuses at Abu Dhabi started on Sunday 6th September and New York city campus started on Wednesday 2nd September, whilst the Shanghai campus started on Monday the 14th. Reflections include personal impact and experiences within the academic setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the early twentieth century, Park Row was synonymous with New York newspapers. Of the newspapers that left Park Row, the New York Times was notable for having established a geographic landmark that was identified with the newspaper. In fact, by 1906, Times Square had replaced Park Row as a place for New Yorkers to get election night news or to celebrate New Year's Eve. Nevertheless, Times Square did not remain associated with its newspaper namesake, and today a successor to the "zipper" is the last physical reminder of the paper's presence in this area of New York City. Drawing on the Archives of the New York Times Company, this article traces the history of Times Square from the construction of Times Tower through the twentieth century as the Times lost its identity as the neighborhood's namesake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century in New York, the largest newspapers were concentrated along a short stretch of Park Row in lower Manhattan. In this high profile location, the Tribune, the Times, and the World used architecture as a means to forge their corporate identity in the minds of city dwellers. In their efforts to distinguish themselves from one another, and as symbols of their own success, publishers commissioned the leading architects of the day to build them increasingly taller structures for their papers. Using newspapers, personal letters, and architectural plans as source materials, this article demonstrates that the new American form of the skyscraper was at least in part attributable to the efforts of the newspaper industry to convey the ascendancy of the mass media in modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Wide-area power system monitoring based on phasor measurement units allows collecting a set of physical variables for evaluating the system security and stability, as well as for detecting power system disturbances. However, trends, noise and non-Gaussian distribution in measurements are important challenges for carrying out the detection, localization and visualization of power system disturbances. In this paper, a methodology that combines independent component analysis with statistical indices for detecting and visualizing anomalous dynamic events from wide-area measurements is proposed. From the statistical indices, two charts are also proposed to provide a better understanding of the system disturbances. Finally, a set of simulated data obtained from a transient stability model of the New England/New York test system is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon a comparison between four socially innovative housing activism initiatives, this paper makes new theoretical propositions on the nature of social change by bringing together a contextual approach on housing activism and an agency analysis of collective leadership practices. On one hand, this paper analyses how historical and geographical neighbourhood features constrain and enable housing activism. On the other hand, the paper unveils collective leadership practices that democratize socially innovative initiatives and make social change happen. Assuming that housing activism is spatially and institutionally embedded, the paper concludes that some leadership practices not only enable the emergence of such processes but also foster their sustainability and increase their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bike sharing contributes to public health by providing physical exercise opportunities. Meanwhile, the shift of vehicular travel demand to bike sharing may cut vehicular emissions and severe crashes. However, according to each city's different composition of travel modes, the net health benefits are not clear and worth studying case by case. In this paper, we focus on the Citi Bike bike-sharing program in New York City. We modify the Integrated Transport Health Impact Model and assess the net health effects by comparing a baseline scenario (with Citi Bike) against a hypothetical scenario (without Citi Bike). For each scenario, we investigate the overall health effects of the Citi Bike program in the unit of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in three categories: physical activity, fine inhalable particles (i.e., PM 2.5) exposure, and road traffic injuries. The results indicate that the implementation of Citi Bike plays a positive role in improving public health. It is worth noting that the emission reduction due to the shift from vehicular transport to Citi Bike contributes the most health benefit to the public. Hence we further propose a sensitivity analysis of the Citi Bike market share illustrating the potential benefits of promoting Citi Bike among non-users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the implementation of evidence-based MISSION-CJ case management across multiple drug courts in Erie and Niagara County, NY. Participant outcomes, including substance use, housing, employment, mental health symptoms, and criminal justice involvement were assessed at intake and 6-months for 209 individuals. Overall, significant improvements were observed for nights in jail, committing any crimes, past 30-day alcohol and drug use, anxiety symptoms, housing, and employment. Results suggest that MISSION-CJ can successfully be implemented across multiple court settings, and may be a valuable add-on to drug court programs to address unmet mental health needs of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of Félix González-Torres, a contemporary American artist with a retrospective art exhibition held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City from March-May 1995. The author uses the "paper stacks" of the artist to suggest that the artist focused on the process of making art, not on the outcome. Also discussed are the multiple meanings in each of González-Torres's art pieces.

This paper presents a small-area index of the multifactorial phenomenon loosely referred to as gentrification, with application to New York City (NYC). The relative change of key input variables (median family income, median rent and proportions of non-Hispanic white, 20–34-year-olds and adults with a 4-year college degree) was computed from the years 2000 to 2016 for NYC census tracts that are spatially normalized to the year 2010. Raw scores derived from principal components analysis were then spatially smoothed through a fully Bayesian conditional autoregressive model, presenting an innovation over previous methods since it essentially blurs the otherwise artificial tract boundaries and results in a simulated posterior distribution of scores for each tract. The median and upper/lower percentiles provide a point estimate and assessment of uncertainty, respectively, of gentrification for each tract. The mapped index is visually consistent with the general understanding of gentrification in NYC, and the index is positively associated with census tract-level change in home values, as measured separately from a real property database. Although we developed this index as the quantitative part of a mixed methods approach to understanding gentrification in New York City, the methodology is intended to be applicable in other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although creative industries and creative talent have traditionally clustered in established global centres such as London and New York, new forms of independent production, digital technologies and mobilities are reshaping this landscape. Drawing on 87 interviews and participant observation, this paper considers whether independent fashion designers in Canada still need to locate in the established centres to realize their ambitions. It explores how these entrepreneurs choose a 'home base' for their operations and demonstrates how they mobilize three forms of mobility (temporary, mediated, virtual) to access opportunities and resources within Canada's fashion system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Village Voices coverage of Greenwich Village's growing folk music scene. The Village's "folk problem" had three manifestations: the contentious role that folk played in changing the community dynamics of the Village; the issues of taste raised by folk as a new genre of music; and disputes within the folk community over commercialization, popularization, and electrification. The study argues that the Voice 5 approaches to folk expanded readers' notions of popular music journalism and criticism, giving additional insight into the origins, purposes, and methods of critical consecration and serious writing about music. It also contends that the paper's popular music criticism deserves a more prominent place in journalism history, popular music studies, and mass communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many school districts face the empirical challenge of monitoring program quality to assure that all children experience pre-K environments that foster early learning and development. Factors that are exogenous to classrooms (such as evaluation timing) may play a role in estimates of program quality and yet are not fully understood. This paper examines the role of timing in pre-K classroom quality as it was observed in practice by one of the largest school districts in the United States. In the 2015–2016 school year, New York City (NYC) observed 648 of its Pre-K for All programs using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K (CLASS), giving each program an overall average classroom quality rating at one time point. Research Findings: A series of OLS regressions indicated that CLASS scores were lower for programs observed in the fall semester in the domains of Emotional Support and Classroom Organization. Emotional Support also demonstrated a pattern of increasing scores by each month within the fall semester, providing evidence for a relationship-building period between teachers and students early in the school year. Practice or Policy: These findings may be informative for school districts and policymakers who consider using CLASS as an accountability tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homelessness in the United States (US) has been increasing at an exponential rate over the past three decades, and the US has not experienced the current level of homelessness since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition, regulations and policies governing shelters have also increased. Given the historic levels of homelessness and increased bureaucracy, this paper aims to expand on the current literature related to governance of shelters by examining: (1) how families residing in the shelters are impacted by policies related to homelessness and governance within shelters (i.e. shelter rules), and (2) potential points of intervention to improve policy, programming, and shelter governance that better address the growing needs of homeless families. Using a convergent parallel design, we conducted a mixed methods study with caregiver residents and their children (ages 13–17 years), as well as staff, from two family shelters located in a large city in the northeastern US. Findings from the study revealed that policies and programs aimed at assisting homeless families often did not adequately respond to the needs of families (e.g. finding permanent housing), and residents found shelter rules to be overly restrictive. Policy and programming recommendations are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify how public libraries used Twitter in the initial months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis was performed on a dataset of 9,450 tweets published by 38 public libraries in New York City between December 2019 and April 2020. The study showed that 85.5% of the tweets published by NYC public libraries were related to regular library communications, such as announcements of library service updates, book recommendations, suggested readings and activities, celebrations of specific occasions or individuals, and notices of upcoming events. Meanwhile, 14.5% of the tweets published from January/April 2020 were directly and explicitly related to COVID-19. NYC public libraries posted details of the remote library services available during the closure, as well as comforting and socially supportive messages, and provided information about the financial, health, and food-related support available to the community. The findings suggest that during the pandemic, NYC public libraries mostly continued to conduct business as usual and, in doing so, may have brought a valuable feeling of normalcy to the communities they serve during those problematic and strained days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The investigation of complaints against the police is important to law, order and justice. The public expects high ethical standards from its police service and when breaches occur, complaints often follow. How the police respond to complaints can influence the trust and confidence that underpins the civilian-police relationship. This paper examines some of the key issues faced by police services in the management of complaints and reviews the effectiveness of mediation as a measure to rebuild relations. The Los Angeles and New York City Police Departments were selected for the study because there are very few civilian-police complaints mediation programs in operation and these sites had reports on the public record that indicated some success. A qualitative case study approach was used, incorporating public source material and interviews with key informants. The findings show that the inclusion of external mediation in police complaints systems offers complainants a transparent, impartial and often restorative mechanism to resolve complaints. However, any perceived conflict surrounding the independence and equity of the mediation vendor can engender police and complainant mistrust in the process. As such, ongoing public and police education on the aims, process and benefits of mediation is required to sustain its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the 11th International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies forum organized by the William Alanson White Institute in Brooklyn in New York, New York in May 2000. Topics discussed in the congress; Schedule of activities; List of speakers and participants.