Academic literature on the topic 'Harver Curry'

This chapter examines the case of Harry Foster Dean, whose “The Pedro Gorino: The Adventures of a Negro Sea-Captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in His Attempts to Found an Ethiopian Empire” recounts the tale of his ambition to build a black empire in Africa. Dean's effort led one of the major British participants in the Scramble for Africa to call him “the most dangerous ‘negro’ in the world.” The chapter also addresses the unofficial diplomatic role of William Henry Ellis, a flashy African American millionaire and the first American to visit with Emperor Menelik in 1903. Ellis was not the only African American to visit Abyssinia prior to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. In 1922, A'Lelia Walker, daughter of the famed Madame C. J. Walker and host of a Harlem Renaissance salon, visited Empress Zauditu. Ellis did his best to curry favour with Emperor Menelik but was rumored to be planning to oust the emperor in order to take his seat on the throne.

Already famous at 40, Josef Haydn was searching for new means of expression. The result was his six Opus 20 string quartets, a dazzling set whose new directions put their stamp on every composer who has since attempted the form. For those accustomed to previous quartets, including Haydn’s own, every minor turn was a major surprise, each new direction conveying a sense of the composer’s joy as he reveled in his mastery of his medium. At 40, already a well-respected cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Steven Pinker came suddenly to the world’s attention with his first book of popular science, the bestselling Language Instinct, an embodiment of the linguistic sublime. Emboldened by instant fame, he followed this achievement by following Francis Bacon, making all knowledge his province, telling us how the mind works, why it isn’t a blank slate, and why violence has declined. Not many professors are interviewed by Stephen Colbert; not many can be described as a brilliant lecturer who looks like a rock star: “His curly shoulder-length mane and Cuban heels give him the air of a prog rocker on his third comeback tour. He has a superbly defined jaw, glittering blue eyes and a kilowatt smile which he beams at his class as he switches on the microphone.” Not many professors find themselves on a poster that updates Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens, a gathering of ancient worthies. Figure 10.1 is a depiction easily identified by the caricature’s flowing locks. Raised by middle-class Jewish parents in Montreal, Pinker first distinguished himself as the graduate student of the prominent Harvard psychologist Steven Kosslyn, who said of him: “He was officially my student, but almost from the start we were colleagues.” After studying with Kosslyn, Pinker went on to carve out a successful academic career as an experimental psychologist, first at MIT, then at Harvard, specializing in language acquisition in children. But he was not satisfied as a mere academic star, much sought-after, much honored, destined to shine brightly but not to dazzle.