Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Outside careers subsidize state legislative service, diminishing the opportunity costs of service. I posit that outside careers undermine the hypothesized Democratic electoral bias in professionalized legislatures, as Republicans have less incentive to select out of legislative service given the availability of this subsidy. I hypothesize that legislators generally hold maintaining outside careers as a goal and, in the absence of restrictions, create institutions to facilitate achieving this goal. I provide empirical support for this assertion through new data on outside careers derived from legislator financial disclosure reports. In addition, I hypothesize that the opportunity costs of legislative service are less a function of party than of individual characteristics (sex, race, age) that determine labor market value. The relative dearth of women Republican legislators in high-salary legislatures raises further doubts about partisan bias; Republican men do not appear to opt out of legislative service, despite higher opportunity costs.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The cumbersome nature of the title of this proposed paper reflects some of the difficulties experienced by Americanists who teach from an American Studies vantage point in departments or programs where they may be the only Americanist and in universities which do not offer American Studies programs. Students will be taking these courses possibly as the only course on the United States they will study. Moreover, such students will probably have little or no academic background in American history, literature, politics, or popular culture. Yet, many of them believe they know American culture because they have seen American television programs or movies. They thus bring a potential set of misconceptions about the United States to their study of a particular aspect of the American experience. It is the job of the lecturer or professor in a particular discipline to help them to contextualize the knowledge they gain about the United States so that the history, literature, or popular culture (the most common areas where courses on the U. S. are offered) become enmeshed in a broader understanding of American society. This means introducing geography, politics, and sociology, as well as the literature, popular culture, history and other disciplines to provide the background that American Studies students acquire as part of their course and which American students acquire in school and from living in the United States.

Because I have taught American Studies and American History in American Studies and History departments in the United Kingdom I am very conscious of the differences A.S. and History students bring to their study of the United States. I find it useful to assign readings from other disciplines in the History courses I teach. These range from introductory surveys and advanced courses on gender, the Great Depression, and women and war to post-graduate and Ph.D. work on social welfare and feminism. My contribution to this workshop examines the ways in which relevant aspects of various disciplines can be incorporated into the historical or other subjects being examined as a means of enhancing students’ awareness of the diversity and complexity of American society. My talk thus focuses on how the use of American Studies’ interdisciplinary methodology broadens and enriches overseas students’ understanding of the United States.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Plato does not only impersonate/represent Socrates, however. He also impersonates/represents Socrates impersonating/representing Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Adeimantus, and Glaucon. Embedding the participants in the dialog in this way, to say nothing of thus embedding its author, invites readers to lose sight of who is truly speaking. Not only is identity thus destabilized but character is too for, insofar as Socrates’ account includes only a small portion of narrative in third-person form and a lot of narrative through mimesis, Socrates is depicted as acting not in the manner of a good man (396e) but of a common one (397a). With Plato impersonating/representing Socrates impersonating/representing his interlocutors, this observation redounds back on to Plato as well. What, if anything, does Plato risk in these representations? What is gained? To answer these questions, this essay stays with the material of Book I to orient the “Plato or Socrates” question away from verisimilitude and/or the pursuit of the factual identity of an author and toward a politics of authorship and authority.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Benedict Anderson argues that nationalist ideas in Asia and Africa are modeled on the ‘modular' forms of nationalism that developed in the Americas and Europe. This paper argues that anti-colonial nationalism is a field of contestation between different ideas and practices. Some of these were indeed based on selective appropriation of Western practices, whereas some of these rejected such ideas and practices and contended that decolonization or emancipation necessarily entailed rejecting the examples set by Western nations. This paper compares the thoughts of Frantz Fanon and M.K. Gandhi, two of the most influential figures in post-colonial thought in the twentieth century as well as active participants in major anti-colonial struggles, and argues that in spite of contextual and ideological differences between them both rejected the Western models of nationalist politics and emphasized a repudiation of colonialism through political and institutional innovations in similar ways. The three major sections of the paper deals with their respective critiques of colonialism and elite nationalism; the prescribed modes of political practice; and the projects of national reconstruction. The unifying thread in each of these three sections is their common concerns regarding negation of colonialism as well as the cultural alienation of the nationalist elite and the necessity of a radical break with Western models of nationalist politics. The concluding section attempts to understand the reasons why their visions of national independence remains unfulfilled.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Martin Ramírez (1895-1963) was a Mexican immigrant to the United States, who was committed to a California mental hospital six years after his arrival, in 1931. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, although the diagnosis is questionable for a number of reasons, and spent the rest of his life as a mental patient. He spent most of his time drawing, and much of his work was saved by a psychology professor who visited him regularly because of his interest in how mental illness is expressed in art. That work eventually ended up on the art market in the 1970s, where Ramírez was classified and marketed as an “outsider artist;” his work is now very well-known and his drawings have sold for as much as $150,000. Based on the extensive fieldwork, interviews, and archival research we conducted, we now have much detailed information about most periods of Ramírez’s life. Up until now, very little was known about the facts of Ramírez’s life, and some of what was accepted as true is actually inaccurate. Over time, a kind of mystery, often far-fetched, was built around his biography, and that mystery has been exploited by dealers, collectors, and critics in ways described recently by Gary Fine in his article ‘Crafting Authenticity: The Validation of Identity in Self-taught Art.’ In this paper, we explore how and why the various actors in the field of outsider art have constructed, mythologized, or ignored his biography, based on their particular interests. We then present an argument for using biography to facilitate an understanding of the narrative elements of Ramírez’s work., and present examples of how his life and the sociocultural and historical context in which he lived are reflected in his drawings.