American Curiosity

Author : Susan Scott Parrish
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2012-12-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807838891

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American Curiosity by Susan Scott Parrish Pdf

Colonial America presented a new world of natural curiosities for settlers as well as the London-based scientific community. In American Curiosity, Susan Scott Parrish examines how various peoples in the British colonies understood and represented the natural world around them from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth. Parrish shows how scientific knowledge about America, rather than flowing strictly from metropole to colony, emerged from a horizontal exchange of information across the Atlantic. Delving into an understudied archive of letters, Parrish uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world. Although hierarchies of gender, class, institutional learning, place of birth or residence, and race persisted within the natural history community, the contributions of any participant were considered valuable as long as they supplied novel data or specimens from the American side of the Atlantic. Thus Anglo-American nonelites, women, Indians, and enslaved Africans all played crucial roles in gathering and relaying new information to Europe. Recognizing a significant tradition of nature writing and representation in North America well before the Transcendentalists, American Curiosity also enlarges our notions of the scientific Enlightenment by looking beyond European centers to find a socially inclusive American base to a true transatlantic expansion of knowledge.

Author : Mark Zuss
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2011-09-08
Category : Education
ISBN : 940072117X

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The Practice of Theoretical Curiosity by Mark Zuss Pdf

The desire for knowledge is an abiding facet of human experience and cultural development. This work documents curiosity as a sociohistorical force initiating research across the disciplines. Projects generated by theoretical curiosity are presented as historical and material practices emerging as expressions of embodied knowledge and experience. The shifting cultural, philosophical and practical relations between theory and curiosity are situated within classical, medieval, early modern and contemporary communities of practice. The Practice of Theoretical Curiosity advocates for a critical, aesthetic engagement in everyday life. Its purpose is to examine the pedagogical grounds and questions that motivate research programs in the sciences, education, technoculture and post-war social movements. Theoretical curiosity continually resists disciplinary limits. It is a core, embodied process uniting human pursuits of knowledge and power. This inquiry into inquiry itself offers an appreciation of the vital continuity between the senses, perception, and affect and concept development. It is informed by a critical reading of phenomenology as the embodied practice of researchers. This study sponsors a deepening of theory in practice and the practice of theoretical exploration. As a contribution to pedagogical practice, it offers a historical critique of the usually unquestioned philosophical, political and ethical grounds for educational, scientific and social research. The Practice of Theoretical Curiosity profiles significant alliances and persona as agents for the pursuit of novel and often controversial research, adventures and discovery. It claims that the place of technology and the technical is the primary channel for contemporary inquiry. The technosciences of genomics, artificial life and astrobiology are considered as contemporary extensions of a perennial desire to pursue and resist the limits of existing knowledge and representation.

Author : Perry Zurn,Arjun Shankar
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2020-04-14
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781452963624

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Curiosity Studies by Perry Zurn,Arjun Shankar Pdf

The first English-language collection to establish curiosity studies as a unique field From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross-disciplinary study has existed—until now. Curiosity Studies stages an interdisciplinary conversation about what curiosity is and what resources it holds for human and ecological flourishing. These engaging essays are integrated into four clusters: scientific inquiry, educational practice, social relations, and transformative power. By exploring curiosity through the practice of scientific inquiry, the contours of human learning, the stakes of social difference, and the potential of radical imagination, these clusters focus and reinvigorate the study of this universal but slippery phenomenon: the desire to know. Against the assumption that curiosity is neutral, this volume insists that curiosity has a history and a political import and requires precision to define and operationalize. As various fields deepen its analysis, a new ecosystem for knowledge production can flourish, driven by real-world problems and a commitment to solve them in collaboration. By paying particular attention to pedagogy throughout, Curiosity Studies equips us to live critically and creatively in what might be called our new Age of Curiosity. Contributors: Danielle S. Bassett, U of Pennsylvania; Barbara M. Benedict, Trinity College; Susan Engel, Williams College; Ellen K. Feder, American U; Kristina T. Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Narendra Keval; Christina León, Princeton U; Tyson Lewis, U of North Texas; Amy Marvin, U of Oregon; Hilary M. Schor, U of Southern California; Seeta Sistla, Hampshire College; Heather Anne Swanson, Aarhus U.

Author : V.S. Dharmakumar
Publisher : Notion Press
Page : 846 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2019-09-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781645875574

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American Presidents - A Curious Look at a Unique Cohort by V.S. Dharmakumar Pdf

Believe it or not, an American president was arrested for running over a woman with his horse. He was not the only one to be arrested (two more were). George Washington preferred fox hunting with his dogs than going to church. Young Abraham Lincoln fell into a deep ditch and was saved by his dog. And after he was assassinated, his dog `Fido’ also was assassinated. Who was the President who worked as a bartender? And the one who once officially served as an executioner? The President of the United States is considered one of the world's most powerful people, leading the world’s only current superpower. His role includes being the commander-in-chief of the world's most expensive military with the largest nuclear arsenal with the nuclear button on his desk. This book is the result of over a decade of research and writing. It is a comprehensive compendium - a single-volume book, about the 44 men the entire world looked upon as the most powerful men in the world. 44 men who formed the 45 presidencies of the United States of America through 58 quadrennial presidential elections in the 230 years from 1789. This book covers the presidency of the successful liquor distributor and owner of a distillery George Washington, to the presidency of Donald Trump, the oldest, wealthiest man without any prior military or government service experience to ever assume the presidency.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 994 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1880
Category : American literature
ISBN : UOM:39015084572190

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The American Catalogue by Anonim Pdf

American national trade bibliography.

Author : Mario Livio
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2017-07-11
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781476792125

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Why? by Mario Livio Pdf

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—in this “lively, expert, and definitely not dumbed-down account” (Kirkus Reviews) as he explores our innate desire to know why. Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? “Have you ever wondered why we wonder why? Mario Livio has, and he takes you on a fascinating quest to understand the origin and mechanisms of our curiosity. I thoroughly recommend it.” (Adam Riess, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, 2011). Curiosity is not only at the heart of mystery and suspense novels, it is also essential to other creative endeavors, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. In the ever-fascinating Why? Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? An astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience, Livio has firsthand knowledge of his subject which he explores in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.

Author : Kate C. Duncan
Publisher : Seattle : University of Washington Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Art
ISBN : 0295980109

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1001 Curious Things by Kate C. Duncan Pdf

For more than one hundred years, tourists and residents alike have flocked to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, located on Seattle's waterfront. Here a mummy nicknamed Sylvester, a collection of shrunken heads from Ecuador, a two-headed calf, and a mermaid preside over walls and cases crammed with an incredible jumble of souvenirs and trinkets, intermixed with authentic Northwest Coast and Alaskan Eskimo carvings, baskets, blankets, and other artworks. The guestbook records visits by Theodore Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Jack Dempsey, Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, and Queen Marie of Rumania, among many others. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop was founded in 1899 by Joseph E. "Daddy" Standley, an Ohio-born curio collector who came to Seattle in the late 1890s during the Yukon gold rush. Although Native American material vied for space with exotica from all corners of the globe, it soon grew to be the mainstay of the shop, which became identified with the whalebones displayed outside and the "piles of old Eskimo relics" within. Also to be found were baskets, moccasins, ivory carving from Alaska, Tlingit spruce root baskets, Haida "jadeite" totem poles, masks, paddles, and other curiosities from the Northwest Coast. Indians from the Olympic Peninsula brought baskets, coming up to the back door of the shop in their canoes. Others, originally from British Columbia but now living on the flats not far from the shop, carved miniature totem poles by the hundreds and full-size poles on commission. Trading companies supplied Indian curios from the Plains, Southwest, and California. An art historian trained in the classic arts of the Northwest Coast, Kate Duncan became interested in the history of the shop when she learned that it had not only been an active participant in Seattle's 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition but had also been a major source of important Northwest Coast collections in many museums, including, among others, the Royal Ontario Museum, the George G. Heye Collection (now in the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian), the Washington State Museum, the Newark Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History. Granted full access by the present owners - grandson and great-grandson of "Daddy" Standley - to the remarkably complete archives maintained from the time the shop opened, Duncan has provided a fascinating chapter in the history of Seattle, especially in its early years, as well as a significant contribution to the literature on tourist arts and collecting. Kate Duncan, professor of art at Arizona State University, is also the author of Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradition, and coauthor of A Special Gift: The Kutchin Beadwork Tradition and Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.

Author : Daniel Smee,Shoba Sreenivasan
Publisher : Daniel E Smee
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2009-11
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 9780615286983

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Totally American by Daniel Smee,Shoba Sreenivasan Pdf

Can the ordinary American achieve success and fulfillment? The answer is yes. How do we know this? Americans are optimists. Americans are doers. Americans dont give up at the first sign of failure. The stories we love most are those of underdogs who persevere and overcome against all odds. Why is that? We believe in resilience. This book presents a unique approach to successa practical can-do model drawn from army field manuals and woven into a tapestry of ideas from philosophy, psychology, theology, and literature. The military operates on principles and approaches driven to accomplish the missionnot to give up. Success involves taking chances, saying yes to opportunity. You really can be anything you want to be. Anything you dream. Anytime. Only in America. Thats what our flag represents.

Author : Cindy Ott
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2012-12-01
Category : Cooking
ISBN : 9780295804446

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Pumpkin by Cindy Ott Pdf

Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the harvest season and the rural past. They decorate their houses with pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with elaborately carved jack-o'-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any historic ties to the crop. In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfull their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized in the process. And while the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued, and used it. Pumpkin is a smart and lively study of the deep meanings hidden in common things and their power to make profound changes in the world around us.

Author : Ross Posnock
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 373 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1991-11-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780198023067

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The Trial of Curiosity by Ross Posnock Pdf

In this important revisionist study, Posnock integrates literary and psychological criticism with social and cultural theory to make a major advance in our understanding of the life and thought of two great American figures, Henry and William James. Challenging canonical images of both brothers, Posnock is the first to place them in a rich web of cultural and intellectual affiliations comprised of a host of American and European theorists of modernity. A startlingly new Henry James emerges from a cross-disciplinary dialogue, which features Veblen, Santayana, Bourne, and Dewey, as well as Weber, Simmel, Benjamin, and Adorno.

Author : Doug Anderson,Julie Comay,Lorraine Chiarotto
Publisher : Laboratory School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, Ontario Institute for Studie
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-08
Category : Education
ISBN : 0772726434

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Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition: A Resource for Educators: Considering Indigenous Perspectives in Children's Environmental Inquiry by Doug Anderson,Julie Comay,Lorraine Chiarotto Pdf

"The second edition supports a stronger awareness of Indigenous approaches to environmental learning. It offers an encounter with Indigenous perspectives that challenge us to think in very differnet ways about our place in the world. The Indigenous lens in the edition provides a starting point in a conversation that opens educators' eyes to Indigenous perspectives as their students build lasting connections with the natural world." --back cover.

Author : Ezra Tawil
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2018-07-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780812295290

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Literature, American Style by Ezra Tawil Pdf

Between 1780 and 1800, authors of imaginative literature in the new United States wanted to assert that their works, which bore obvious connections to anglophone literature on the far side of the Atlantic, nevertheless constituted a properly "American" tradition. No one had yet figured out, however, what it would mean to write like an American, what literature with an American origin would look like, nor what literary characteristics the elusive quality of Americanness could generate. Literature, American Style returns to this historical moment—decades before the romantic nationalism of Cooper, the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, or the iconoclastic poetics of Whitman—when a fantasy about the unique characteristics of U.S. literature first took shape, and when that notion was linked to literary style. While late eighteenth-century U.S. literature advertised itself as the cultural manifestation of a radically innovative nation, Ezra Tawil argues, it was not primarily marked by invention or disruption. In fact, its authors self-consciously imitated European literary traditions while adapting them to a new cultural environment. These writers gravitated to the realm of style, then, because it provided a way of sidestepping the uncomfortable reality of cultural indebtedness; it was their use of style that provided a way of departing from European literary precedents. Tawil analyzes Noah Webster's plan to reform the American tongue; J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's fashioning of an extravagantly naïve American style from well-worn topoi; Charles Brockden Brown's adaptations of the British gothic; and the marriage of seduction plots to American "plain style" in works such as Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette. Each of these works claims to embody something "American" in style yet, according to Tawil, remains legible only in the context of stylistic, generic, and conceptual forms that animated English cultural life through the century.

Author : Monica Kulling
Publisher : Groundwood Books Ltd
Page : 64 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2017-05-01
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9781554988990

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Mary Anning's Curiosity by Monica Kulling Pdf

The amazing story of how the world’s greatest fossilist found her first huge find at the age of twelve. Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, England. Her father, a carpenter and part-time fossil hunter, taught his children to look for fossils. When her father injured himself and was unable to work, Mary quit school and took up fossil hunting full-time to help support her family, a task that became even more important when her father died, leaving the Annings in debt. At the age of twelve, Mary, with her older brother Joe, found what they believed to be the skeleton of a gigantic crocodile, the Great Croc of the legends. Between dodging her rival fossil hunter the Curiman, and the sheer work of carefully digging out the fossil, Mary took almost a year to excavate what would later be termed the Ichthyosaurus. Mary Anning was uneducated, poor and a woman, but her life’s work of fossil hunting led her to make many discoveries that influenced our understanding of prehistoric creatures and the age of the Earth. In this triumphant novel about scientific discovery, Monica Kulling brings Mary Anning and her world to life for young readers. Key Text Features author's note historical context resources facts further reading

Author : Max O'Rell
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 1891
Category : United States
ISBN : UBBS:UBBS-00119449

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A Frenchman in America by Max O'Rell Pdf

Author : Michael Boyden
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2023-02-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780192868305

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Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics by Michael Boyden Pdf

The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.