Results by title

In Hailing the State, Lisa Mitchell explores the methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable, demand inclusion in decision making, and stage informal referendums. Mitchell traces the colonial and postcolonial lineages of collective forms of assembly, in which—rather than rejecting state authority—participants mobilize with expectations that officials will uphold the law and fulfill electoral promises. She shows how assembly, which ranges from sit-ins, hunger strikes, and demands for meetings with officials to massive general strikes and road and rail blockades, is fundamental to the functioning of democracy in India. These techniques are particularly useful for historically marginalized groups and others whose voices may not be easily heard. Moving beyond an exclusive focus on electoral processes, Mitchell argues that to understand democracy—both in India and beyond—we must also pay attention to what occurs between elections, thereby revising understanding of what is possible for democratic action around the world.

Reassessing the man, the movement, and the making of modern Atlanta.

The popular image of Henry W. Grady is that of a champion of the postbellum South, a region that would forgive the North for defeating it and would mobilize its own many resources for hones business and agricultural competition. Biographies and collections of Grady’s essays and speeches that appeared shortly after his death enhanced this image, and for a half-century, Grady was considered the personification of the New South Movement, a movement which promised industrialization for the South, an improved Southern agriculture, and justice and opportunity for black Southerners. As managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution, he espoused the New South throughout the nation and was in demand as a speaker for audiences in New York and Boston.

Through extensive research, focusing on the decade of the 1880s in Georgia, Davis demonstrates that although Grady said all the right things to show that he wished to industrialize the South and that he was committed to the improvement of agriculture and fairness in racial matters, in fact he spent most of his efforts on behalf of Atlanta. His major interest was in making a difference for that city, leaving the rest of the South to enjoy whatever Atlanta could not garner for itself.

William Morrisey unravels Melville’s “loomings” of the great whale, showing them to be important threads of politics and theories of governance. The Young America of Melville’s day valorized popular sovereignty such that moral law suppressed by the majority rule was bringing America to state of being that could only then be ruled by the mightiest of the mighty––the great Leviathan, who reigns in the boundless chaotic sea separated from “stable land.” The force of the created world and the necessary ordering achieved through conquest are dominating themes of Melville’s great tale, but as Morrisey observes approaching the great whale, ruler of the untamable seas, is for captain (ruler) an opportunity to destroy it. But for the sailor (the ruled) being close to the white whale is a moment for understanding, and in turn of being understood. Yet in what sense is being seen, for human beings of moral bearings, not also an impulse to self-impose? “The modern Ishmael wants to see, not to kill, perhaps to be seen, and surely not to be killed. Americans too need to come to terms with the white whale, if they are to perceive reality as it is without bringing destruction upon themselves.” Is Melville proposing an utterly new philosophy of ruler and ruled, of a proper gauge of the immeasurable chaos that is nature?

“Does Melville also intend to be a founder in the ‘New World’?” Morrisey’s study is a compelling look at the early political moments of a new nation, but one that at the time perceived itself as already aging and maturing in the process of political voyage and adventure. Dangers lie ahead, Melville seems to warn, and in his disenchantment of the vigor of the Young America he once endorsed he tells the story of what really happens when democracy is idealized and the surrounding waters of chaos are thereby veiled; and yet also of what happens when one would seek to command the chaos only to transform into the unpredictably destructive prey he pursues, especially under the guise of moral outrage. 

Melville, like Ishmael, urges a new vision of both God and nature, and challenges the notion of rule in all its expressions. Americans, the people of the New World, are invited to be unafraid, but also careful. In wandering as on the open waters one wonders, beyond civic boundaries and conventions, and in that wonder one may finally come face to face with what is good and grand––but in beholding the great white whale, can one resist the urge to conquest, now that he is likewise by the leviathan beholden? Is the rule of man and the coronation of a specific dialectic of power an untenable victory, given that “‘Nature is nobody’s ally’: it wounds or kills any person or nation that violates it, impartially”? 

Morrisey writes with lucidity and weaves together elements of history, literature, politics and perhaps his own affinity for Ishmael’s passenger spirit to reveal just how broad and boundless of a narrative Melville’s Moby Dick truly is.

Power transformers are static devices transferring electrical energy between two circuits with separate systems of alternating voltages, by means of electromagnetic induction. They are used to connect power networks and components with different voltage levels. Transformers are essential components for the transmission, distribution, and utilization of electric power in large power grids, which are facing increasingly demanding requirements for power quality, integration of renewable sources and demand side management. Transformers benefit from the recent technological developments in components, design and construction.