Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Historic sites – Indiana – Muncie »

This paper utilizes a visitor survey conducted at an open-air museum in New Harmony, Indiana to discuss design guidelines for immersive technologies that support historic interpretation–specifically, the visitor’s ability to experience the past. We focus on three themes that emerged from the survey: (1) Visitors at this site skewed older, with nearly a quarter over 70; (2) Despite literature suggesting the opposite, visitors at New Harmony liked to learn from a tour guide; and, (3) Visitors said they wanted to “experience the past.” The very notion of a single “experience” of the past, however, is complicated at New Harmony and other historic sites because they interpret multiple periods of significance. Ultimately, our findings suggest immersive technologies must be suited for older visitors, utilize the tour guide, and facilitate visitors’ ability to “experience the past” in such a way that they feel immersed in multiple timelines at the same site.

Redline mapping was adopted by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s to help assess its lending risk based on observable characteristics in urban neighborhoods across the United States, but the practice has been criticized for evident racial discrimination in addition to financial risk assessment. Researchers have demonstrated that modern urban tree canopy cover is lower in the historically redlined zones of four US cities. This article focuses on Indianapolis, Indiana, where a HOLC map was developed in 1937. Analysis using a geographic information system (GIS) was conducted in order to detect evidence of ecological legacies of redlining. Using this method, evidence of relatively high-intensity development, low greenspace and forest cover, and disproportionately high incidences of brownfield sites, Superfund sites, industrial waste sites, and Interstate highways were detected in historically redlined zones in Indianapolis. While opportunities for further and more detailed research are considered, the method employed here should be developed such that it is replicable for other cities with redlining histories in Indiana and other surrounding states with comparable spatial datasets. This example protocol can be adopted and refined by various stakeholders to establish where the need may exist for programmatic solutions and to better inform policy recommendations.

Newspapers and the 7:15 Showing Cinemagoing involves planning. Even in the most impromptu instances, one has to consider meeting places, line-ups and competing responsibilities. One arranges child care, postpones household chores, or rushes to finish meals. One must organise transportation and think about routes, traffic, parking or public transit. And during the course of making plans for a trip to the cinema, whether alone or in the company of others, typically one turns to locate a recent newspaper. Consulting its printed page lets us ascertain locations, a selection of film titles and their corresponding show times. In preparing to feed a cinema craving, we burrow through a newspaper to an entertainment section, finding a tableau of information and promotional appeals. Such sections compile the mini-posters of movie advertisements, with their truncated credits, as well as various reviews and entertainment news. We see names of shopping malls doubling as names of theatres. We read celebrity gossip that may or may not pertain to the film selected for that occasion. We informally rank viewing priorities ranging from essential theatrical experiences to those that can wait for the videotape release. We attempt to assess our own mood and the taste of our filmgoing companions, matching up what we suppose are appropriate selections. Certainly, other media vie to supplant the newspaper's role in cinemagoing; many now access on-line sources and telephone services that offer the crucial details about start times. Nonetheless, as a campaign by the Newspaper Association of America in Variety aimed to remind film marketers, 80% of cinemagoers refer to newspaper listings for times and locations before heading out. The accuracy of that association's statistics notwithstanding, for the moment, the local daily or weekly newspaper has a secure place in the routines of cinematic life. A basic impetus for the newspaper's role is its presentation of a schedule of show times. Whatever the venue -- published, phone or on-line -- it strikes me as especially telling that schedules are part of the ordinariness of cinemagoing. To be sure, there are those who decide what film to see on site. Anecdotally, I have had several people comment recently that they no longer decide what movie to see, but where to see a (any) movie. Regardless, the schedule, coupled with the theatre's location, figures as a point of coordination for travel through community space to a site of film consumption. The choice of show time is governed by countless demands of everyday life. How often has the timing of a film -- not the film itself, the theatre at which it's playing, nor one's financial situation --determined one's attendance? How familiar is the assessment that show times are such that one cannot make it, that the film begins a bit too earlier, that it will run too late for whatever reason, and that other tasks intervene to take precedence? I want to make several observations related to the scheduling of film exhibition. Most generally, it makes manifest that cinemagoing involves an exercise in the application of cinema knowledge -- that is, minute, everyday facilities and familiarities that help orchestrate the ordinariness of cultural life. Such knowledge informs what Michel de Certeau characterises as "the procedures of everyday creativity" (xiv). Far from random, the unexceptional decisions and actions involved with cinemagoing bear an ordering and a predictability. Novelty in audience activity appears, but it is alongside fairly exact expectations about the event. The schedule of start times is essential to the routinisation of filmgoing. Displaying a Fordist logic of streamlining commodity distribution and the time management of consumption, audiences circulate through a machine that shapes their constituency, providing a set time for seating, departure, snack purchases and socialising. Even with the staggered times offered by multiplex cinemas, schedules still lay down a fixed template around which other activities have to be arrayed by the patron. As audiences move to and through the theatre, the schedule endeavours to regulate practice, making us the subjects of a temporal grid, a city context, a cinema space, as well as of the film itself. To be sure, one can arrive late and leave early, confounding the schedule's disciplining force. Most importantly, with or without such forms of evasion, it channels the actions of audiences in ways that consideration of the gaze cannot address. Taking account of the scheduling of cinema culture, and its implication of adjunct procedures of everyday life, points to dimensions of subjectivity neglected by dominant theories of spectatorship. To be the subject of a cinema schedule is to understand one assemblage of the parameters of everyday creativity. It would be foolish to see cinema audiences as cattle, herded and processed alone, in some crude Gustave LeBon fashion. It would be equally foolish not to recognise the manner in which film distribution and exhibition operates precisely by constructing images of the activity of people as demographic clusters and generalised cultural consumers. The ordinary tactics of filmgoing are supplemental to, and run alongside, a set of industrial structures and practices. While there is a correlation between a culture industry's imagined audience and the life that ensues around its offerings, we cannot neglect that, as attention to film scheduling alerts us, audiences are subjects of an institutional apparatus, brought into being for the reproduction of an industrial edifice. Streamline Audiences In this, film is no different from any culture industry. Film exhibition and distribution relies on an understanding of both the market and the product or service being sold at any given point in time. Operations respond to economic conditions, competing companies, and alternative activities. Economic rationality in this strategic process, however, only explains so much. This is especially true for an industry that must continually predict, and arguably give shape to, the "mood" and predilections of disparate and distant audiences. Producers, distributors and exhibitors assess which films will "work", to whom they will be marketed, as well as establish the very terms of success. Without a doubt, much of the film industry's attentions act to reduce this uncertainty; here, one need only think of the various forms of textual continuity (genre films, star performances, etc.) and the economies of mass advertising as ways to ensure box office receipts. Yet, at the core of the operations of film exhibition remains a number of flexible assumptions about audience activity, taste and desire. These assumptions emerge from a variety of sources to form a brand of temporary industry "commonsense", and as such are harbingers of an industrial logic. Ien Ang has usefully pursued this view in her comparative analysis of three national television structures and their operating assumptions about audiences. Broadcasters streamline and discipline audiences as part of their organisational procedures, with the consequence of shaping ideas about consumers as well as assuring the reproduction of the industrial structure itself. She writes, "institutional knowledge is driven toward making the audience visible in such a way that it helps the institutions to increase their power to get their relationship with the audience under control, and this can only be done by symbolically constructing 'television audience' as an objectified category of others that can be controlled, that is, contained in the interest of a predetermined institutional goal" (7). Ang demonstrates, in particular, how various industrially sanctioned programming strategies (programme strips, "hammocking" new shows between successful ones, and counter-programming to a competitor's strengths) and modes of audience measurement grow out of, and invariably support, those institutional goals. And, most crucially, her approach is not an effort to ascertain the empirical certainty of "actual" audiences; instead, it charts the discursive terrain in which the abstract concept of audience becomes material for the continuation of industry practices. Ang's work tenders special insight to film culture. In fact, television scholarship has taken full advantage of exploring the routine nature of that medium, the best of which deploys its findings to lay bare configurations of power in domestic contexts. One aspect has been television time and schedules. For example, David Morley points to the role of television in structuring everyday life, discussing a range of research that emphasises the temporal dimension. Alerting us to the non- necessary determination of television's temporal structure, he comments that we "need to maintain a sensitivity to these micro-levels of division and differentiation while we attend to the macro-questions of the media's own role in the social structuring of time" (265). As such, the negotiation of temporal structures implies that schedules are not monolithic impositions of order. Indeed, as Morley puts it, they "must be seen as both entering into already constructed, historically specific divisions of space and time, and also as transforming those pre-existing division" (266). Television's temporal grid has been address by others as well. Paddy Scannell characterises scheduling and continuity techniques, which link programmes, as a standardisation of use, making radio and television predictable, 'user friendly' media (9). John Caughie refers to the organization of flow as a way to talk about the national particularities of British and American television (49-50). All, while making their own contributions, appeal to a detailing of viewing context as part of any study of audience, consumption or experience; uncovering the practices of television programmers as they attempt to apprehend and create viewing conditions for their audiences is a first step in this detailing. Why has a similar conceptual framework not been applied with the same rigour to film? Certainly the history of film and television's association with different, at times divergent, disciplinary formations helps us appreciate such theoretical disparities. I would like to mention one less conspicuous explanation. It occurs to me that one frequently sees a collapse in the distinction between the everyday and the domestic; in much scholarship, the latter term appears as a powerful trope of the former. The consequence has been the absenting of a myriad of other -- if you will, non-domestic -- manifestations of everyday-ness, unfortunately encouraging a rather literal understanding of the everyday. The impression is that the abstractions of the everyday are reduced to daily occurrences. Simply put, my minor appeal is for the extension of this vein of television scholarship to out-of-home technologies and cultural forms, that is, other sites and locations of the everyday. In so doing, we pay attention to extra-textual structures of cinematic life; other regimes of knowledge, power, subjectivity and practice appear. Film audiences require a discussion about the ordinary, the calculated and the casual practices of cinematic engagement. Such a discussion would chart institutional knowledge, identifying operating strategies and recognising the creativity and multidimensionality of cinemagoing. What are the discursive parameters in which the film industry imagines cinema audiences? What are the related implications for the structures in which the practice of cinemagoing occurs? Vectors of Exhibition Time One set of those structures of audience and industry practice involves the temporal dimension of film exhibition. In what follows, I want to speculate on three vectors of the temporality of cinema spaces (meaning that I will not address issues of diegetic time). Note further that my observations emerge from a close study of industrial discourse in the U.S. and Canada. I would be interested to hear how they are manifest in other continental contexts. First, the running times of films encourage turnovers of the audience during the course of a single day at each screen. The special event of lengthy anomalies has helped mark the epic, and the historic, from standard fare. As discussed above, show times coordinate cinemagoing and regulate leisure time. Knowing the codes of screenings means participating in an extension of the industrial model of labour and service management. Running times incorporate more texts than the feature presentation alone. Besides the history of double features, there are now advertisements, trailers for coming attractions, trailers for films now playing in neighbouring auditoriums, promotional shorts demonstrating new sound systems, public service announcements, reminders to turn off cell phones and pagers, and the exhibitor's own signature clips. A growing focal point for filmgoing, these introductory texts received a boost in 1990, when the Motion Picture Association of America changed its standards for the length of trailers, boosting it from 90 seconds to a full two minutes (Brookman). This intertextuality needs to be supplemented by a consideration of inter- media appeals. For example, advertisements for television began appearing in theatres in the 1990s. And many lobbies of multiplex cinemas now offer a range of media forms, including video previews, magazines, arcades and virtual reality games. Implied here is that motion pictures are not the only media audiences experience in cinemas and that there is an explicit attempt to integrate a cinema's texts with those at other sites and locations. Thus, an exhibitor's schedule accommodates an intertextual strip, offering a limited parallel to Raymond Williams's concept of "flow", which he characterised by stating -- quite erroneously -- "in all communication systems before broadcasting the essential items were discrete" (86-7). Certainly, the flow between trailers, advertisements and feature presentations is not identical to that of the endless, ongoing text of television. There are not the same possibilities for "interruption" that Williams emphasises with respect to broadcasting flow. Further, in theatrical exhibition, there is an end-time, a time at which there is a public acknowledgement of the completion of the projected performance, one that necessitates vacating the cinema. This end-time is a moment at which the "rental" of the space has come due; and it harkens a return to the street, to the negotiation of city space, to modes of public transit and the mobile privatisation of cars. Nonetheless, a schedule constructs a temporal boundary in which audiences encounter a range of texts and media in what might be seen as limited flow. Second, the ephemerality of audiences -- moving to the cinema, consuming its texts, then passing the seat on to someone else -- is matched by the ephemerality of the features themselves. Distributors' demand for increasing numbers of screens necessary for massive, saturation openings has meant that films now replace one another more rapidly than in the past. Films that may have run for months now expect weeks, with fewer exceptions. Wider openings and shorter runs have created a cinemagoing culture characterised by flux. The acceleration of the turnover of films has been made possible by the expansion of various secondary markets for distribution, most importantly videotape, splintering where we might find audiences and multiplying viewing contexts. Speeding up the popular in this fashion means that the influence of individual texts can only be truly gauged via cross-media scrutiny. Short theatrical runs are not axiomatically designed for cinemagoers anymore; they can also be intended to attract the attention of video renters, purchasers and retailers. Independent video distributors, especially, "view theatrical release as a marketing expense, not a profit center" (Hindes & Roman 16). In this respect, we might think of such theatrical runs as "trailers" or "loss leaders" for the video release, with selected locations for a film's release potentially providing visibility, even prestige, in certain city markets or neighbourhoods. Distributors are able to count on some promotion through popular consumer- guide reviews, usually accompanying theatrical release as opposed to the passing critical attention given to video release. Consequently, this shapes the kinds of uses an assessment of the current cinema is put to; acknowledging that new releases function as a resource for cinema knowledge highlights the way audiences choose between and determine big screen and small screen films. Taken in this manner, popular audiences see the current cinema as largely a rough catalogue to future cultural consumption. Third, motion picture release is part of the structure of memories and activities over the course of a year. New films appear in an informal and ever-fluctuating structure of seasons. The concepts of summer movies and Christmas films, or the opening weekends that are marked by a holiday, sets up a fit between cinemagoing and other activities -- family gatherings, celebrations, etc. Further, this fit is presumably resonant for both the industry and popular audiences alike, though certainly for different reasons. The concentration of new films around visible holiday periods results in a temporally defined dearth of cinemas; an inordinate focus upon three periods in the year in the U.S. and Canada -- the last weekend in May, June/July/August and December -- creates seasonal shortages of screens (Rice-Barker 20). In fact, the boom in theatre construction through the latter half of the 1990s was, in part, to deal with those short-term shortages and not some year-round inadequate seating. Configurations of releasing colour a calendar with the tactical manoeuvres of distributors and exhibitors. Releasing provides a particular shape to the "current cinema", a term I employ to refer to a temporally designated slate of cinematic texts characterised most prominently by their newness. Television arranges programmes to capitalise on flow, to carry forward audiences and to counter-programme competitors' simultaneous offerings. Similarly, distributors jostle with each other, with their films and with certain key dates, for the limited weekends available, hoping to match a competitor's film intended for one audience with one intended for another. Industry reporter Leonard Klady sketched some of the contemporary truisms of releasing based upon the experience of 1997. He remarks upon the success of moving Liar, Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997) to a March opening and the early May openings of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997), generally seen as not desirable times of the year for premieres. He cautions against opening two films the same weekend, and thus competing with yourself, using the example of Fox's Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997). While distributors seek out weekends clear of films that would threaten to overshadow their own, Klady points to the exception of two hits opening on the same date of December 19, 1997 -- Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Though but a single opinion, Klady's observations are a peek into a conventional strain of strategising among distributors and exhibitors. Such planning for the timing and appearance of films is akin to the programming decisions of network executives. And I would hazard to say that digital cinema, reportedly -- though unlikely -- just on the horizon and in which texts will be beamed to cinemas via satellite rather than circulated in prints, will only augment this comparison; releasing will become that much more like programming, or at least will be conceptualised as such. To summarize, the first vector of exhibition temporality is the scheduling and running time; the second is the theatrical run; the third is the idea of seasons and the "programming" of openings. These are just some of the forces streamlining filmgoers; the temporal structuring of screenings, runs and film seasons provides a material contour to the abstraction of audience. Here, what I have delineated are components of an industrial logic about popular and public entertainment, one that offers a certain controlled knowledge about and for cinemagoing audiences. Shifting Conceptual Frameworks A note of caution is in order. I emphatically resist an interpretation that we are witnessing the becoming-film of television and the becoming-tv of film. Underneath the "inversion" argument is a weak brand of technological determinism, as though each asserts its own essential qualities. Such a pat declaration seems more in line with the mythos of convergence, and its quasi-Darwinian "natural" collapse of technologies. Instead, my point here is quite the opposite, that there is nothing essential or unique about the scheduling or flow of television; indeed, one does not have to look far to find examples of less schedule-dependent television. What I want to highlight is that application of any term of distinction -- event/flow, gaze/glance, public/private, and so on -- has more to do with our thinking, with the core discursive arrangements that have made film and television, and their audiences, available to us as knowable and different. So, using empirical evidence to slide one term over to the other is a strategy intended to supplement and destabilise the manner in which we draw conclusions, and even pose questions, of each. What this proposes is, again following the contributions of Ien Ang, that we need to see cinemagoing in its institutional formation, rather than some stable technological, textual or experiential apparatus. The activity is not only a function of a constraining industrial practice or of wildly creative patrons, but of a complex inter-determination between the two. Cinemagoing is an organisational entity harbouring, reviving and constituting knowledge and commonsense about film commodities, audiences and everyday life. An event of cinema begins well before the dimming of an auditorium's lights. The moment a newspaper is consulted, with its local representation of an internationally circulating current cinema, its listings belie a scheduling, an orderliness, to the possible projections in a given location. As audiences are formed as subjects of the current cinema, we are also agents in the continuation of a set of institutions as well. References Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991. Brookman, Faye. "Trailers: The Big Business of Drawing Crowds." Variety 13 June 1990: 48. Caughie, John. "Playing at Being American: Games and Tactics." Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Hindes, Andrew, and Monica Roman. "Video Titles Do Pitstops on Screens." Variety 16-22 Sep. 1996: 11+. Klady, Leonard. "Hitting and Missing the Market: Studios Show Savvy -- or Just Luck -- with Pic Release Strategies." Variety 19-25 Jan. 1998: 18. Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Newspaper Association of America. "Before They See It Here..." Advertisement. Variety 22-28 Nov. 1999: 38. Rice-Barker, Leo. "Industry Banks on New Technology, Expanded Slates." Playback 6 May 1996: 19-20. Scannell, Paddy. Radio, Television and Modern Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1975. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Acland. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php>. Chicago style: Charles Acland, "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Acland. (2000) Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]).

“I realised some time ago that I am a showgirl. When I perform it is to show the girl, whereas some performers take the approach of caricaturing or ‘burlesquing’ the girl.” (Lola the Vamp) “Perhaps the most surprising idea of contemporary feminism is that women are female impersonators” (Tyler, 1) In recent years, femininity has been the subject of much debate in mainstream culture, as well as in feminist theory. The recent moral panic over “size zero” bodies is only the latest example of the anxieties and tensions generated by a culture in which every part of the female body is subject to endless surveillance and control. The backlash against the women’s movement of the late 20th century has seen the mainstreaming of high femininity on an unprecedented scale. The range of practices now expected of middle-class women, including cosmetic surgery, dieting, fake tanning, manicures, pedicures, and waxing (including pubic waxing) is staggering. Little wonder, then, that femininity has often been imagined as oppressive labour, as work. If women were to attempt to produce the ideal femininities promoted by women’s magazines in the UK, USA and Australia, there would be little time in the day—let alone money—for anything else. The work of femininity hence becomes the work of adapting oneself to a current set of social norms, a work of adaptation and adjustment that must remain invisible. The goal is to look natural while constantly labouring away in private to maintain the façade. Alongside this feminine ideal, a subculture has grown up that also promotes the production of an elaborately feminine identity, but in very different ways. The new burlesque is a subculture that began in club nights in London and New York, has since extended to a network of performers and fans, and has become a highly active community on the Internet as well as in offline cultural spaces. In these spaces, performers and audiences alike reproduce striptease performances, as well as vintage dress and styles. Performers draw on their own knowledge of the history of burlesque to create acts that may invoke late 19th-century vaudeville, the supper clubs of pre-war Germany, or 1950s pinups. However the audience for these performances is as likely to consist of women and gay men as the heterosexual men who comprise the traditional audience for such shows. The striptease star Dita von Teese, with her trademark jet-black hair, pale skin, red lips and tiny 16-inch corseted waist, has become the most visible symbol of the new burlesque community. However, the new burlesque “look” can be seen across a web of media sites: in film, beginning with Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), and more recently in The Notorious Bettie Paige (Mary Harron, 2005), as well as in mainstream movies like Mrs Henderson Presents (Stephen Frears, 2005); in novels (such as Louise Welsh’s The Bullet Trick); in popular music, such as the iconography of Kylie Minogue’s Showgirl tour and the stage persona of Alison Goldfrapp; and in high fashion through the work of Vivienne Westwood and Roland Mouret. Since the debut in the late 1990’s of von Teese’s most famous act, in which she dances in a giant martini glass, the new burlesque has arisen in popular culture as a counterpoint to the thin, bronzed, blonde ideal of femininity that has otherwise dominated popular culture in the West. The OED defines burlesque as “a comically exaggerated imitation, especially in a literary or dramatic work; a parody.” In this article, I want to think about the new burlesque in precisely this way: as a parody of feminine identity that, by making visible the work involved in producing feminine identity, precisely resists mainstream notions of feminine beauty. As Lola the Vamp points out in the quotation that opens this article, new burlesque is about “caricaturing or burlesquing the girl”, but also about “showing the girl”, not only in the literal sense of revealing the body at the end of the striptease performance, but in dramatising and making visible an attachment to feminine identity. For members of the new burlesque community, I want to suggest, femininity is experienced as an identity position that is lived as authentic. This makes new burlesque a potentially fruitful site in which to think through the questions of whether femininity can be adapted, and what challenges such adaptations might pose, not only for mainstream culture, but for feminist theory. As I have stated, feminist responses to mainstream femininity have emphasised that femininity is work; that is, that feminine identities do not emerge naturally from certain bodies, but rather have to be made. This is necessary in order to resist the powerful cultural discourses through which gender identities are normalised. This model sees femininity as additive, as something that is superimposed on some mystical “authentic” self which cries out to be liberated from the artificially imposed constraints of high heels, makeup and restrictive clothing. This model of femininity is summed up by Naomi Wolf’s famous statement, in The Beauty Myth, that “femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society happens to be selling” (Wolf, 177; emphasis added). However, a potential problem with such a view of gender identity is that it tends to reproduce essentialist notions of identity. The focus on femininity as a process through which bodies are adapted to social norms suggests that there is an unmarked self that precedes adaptation. Sabina Sawhney provides a summary and critique of this position: Feminism seems to be relying on the notion that the authentic identity of woman would be revealed once the drag is removed. That is to say, when her various “clothes”—racial, ethnic, hetero/homosexual, class textured—are removed, the real, genuine woman would appear whose identity would pose no puzzles. But surely that is a dangerous assumption, for it not only prioritises certain forms of identity formation over others, but also essentialises a sexual or gendered identity as already known in advance. (5) As Sawhney suggests here, to see femininity only in terms of oppressive labour is implicitly essentialist, since it suggests the existence of a primary, authentic “femaleness”. Femininity consists of consumer “stuff” which is superimposed onto unproblematically female bodies. Sawhney is right, here, to compare femininity to drag: however, female and male femininities are read very differently in this account. Drag and cross-dressing are decried as deliberate (male) parodies of “women” (and it is interesting to note that parodies of femininity are inevitably misread as parodies of women, as though the two were the same). However, those women who engage in feminine identity practices are to be pitied, not blamed, or at least not explicitly. Femininity, the compulsion to adapt oneself to incorporate “whatever society is selling”, is articulated in terms of “social pressure”, as a miserable duty over which women have no control. As Samantha Holland argues, the danger is that women become positioned as “mindless consumers, in thrall to the power of media images” (10). Resisting the adaptations demanded by femininity thus becomes a way of resisting mindlessness, particularly through resisting excessive consumption. This anxiety about female excess is echoed in some of the press coverage of the burlesque scene. For example, an article in the British Sunday paper The Observer takes a sceptical position on some performers’ claims that their work is feminist, wondering whether the “fairy dust of irony really strips burlesque of any political dubiousness” (O’Connell, 4), while an article on a feminist Website argues that the movement “can still be interpreted as a form of exploitation of women’s bodies,” (DiNardo, 1), which rather suggests that it is the purpose of feminism to try and interpret all manifestations of femininity in this way: as if the writer is suggesting that feminism itself were a system for curbing feminine excess. This is not to deny that the new burlesque, like more mainstream forms of femininity, involves work. Indeed, a reading of online burlesque communities suggests that it is precisely the labour of femininity that is a source of pleasure. Many books and Websites associated with this movement offer lessons in stage performance; however, these real and virtual classes are not limited to those who wish to perform. In this subculture, much of the pleasure derives from a sense of community between performer and audience, a sense which derives mainly from the adaptation of a specific retro or vintage feminine identity. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy offers courses in the more theatrical aspects of burlesque, such as stripping techniques, but also in subjects such as “makeup and wig tricks” and “walking in heels” (Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque). Burlesque, like cross-dressing suggests that femininity needs to be learnt: and learning femininity, in this sense, also involves unlearning whatever “one [usually restrictive] size fits all” forms of femininity are currently being sold by the fashion and beauty industries. In contrast to this normative model, the online accounts of burlesque fans and performers reveal an intense pleasure in creating and adapting new feminine identities within a subculture, through a “DIY” approach to femininity. This insistence on doing it yourself is important, since it is through the process of reclaiming vintage styles of clothing, hair and makeup that real adaptation takes place. Whereas mainstream femininity is positioned as empty consumption, and as a source of anxiety, burlesque is aligned with recycling, thrift shopping and the revival of traditional crafts such as knitting and weaving. This is most visible in magazines and Websites such as Bust magazine. This magazine, which launched in the early 1990s, was an early forerunner of the burlesque revival with its use of visual imagery taken from 1950s women’s magazines alongside pinups of the same era. The Website has been selling Bettie Page merchandise for some time alongside its popular Stitch n’ Bitch knitting books, and also hosts discussions on feminism, craft and “kitsch and make-up” (Bust). In the accounts cited above, femininity is clearly not imagined through an imperative to conform to social norms: instead, the practice of recovering and re-creating vintage looks is constructed as a pleasurable leisure activity that brings with it a sense of achievement and of engagement with a wider community. The appeal of burlesque, therefore, is not limited to a fetishistic preference for the trappings of burlesque or retro femininity: it is also defined by what it is not. Online discussions reveal a sense of dissatisfaction with more culturally visible forms of femininity promoted by celebrity culture and women’s magazines. Particular irritants include the low-maintenance look, skinniness, lip gloss, highlighted and layered hair, fake tan and, perhaps unexpectedly, jeans. These are seen as emblematic of precisely stereotypical and homogenising notions of feminine identity, as one post points out: “Dita VT particularly stands out in this day and age where it seems that the mysterious Blondifier and her evil twin, the Creosoter, get to every female celeb at some point.” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 17 2006, 3.32 am) Another reason for the appeal of New Burlesque is that it does not privilege slenderness: as another post says “i think i like that the women have natural bodies in some way” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 8 2006, 7:34 pm), and it is clear that the labour associated with this form of femininity consists of adorning the body for display in a way that opposes the dominant model of constructing “natural” beauty through invisible forms of labour. Burlesque performers might therefore be seen as feminist theorists, whose construction of a feminine image against normative forms of femininity dramatises precisely those issues of embodiment and identity that concern feminist theory. This open display and celebration of feminine identity practices, for example, makes visible Elizabeth Grosz’s argument, in Volatile Bodies, that all bodies are inscribed with culture, even when they are naked. A good example of this is the British performer Immodesty Blaize, who has been celebrated in the British press for presenting an ideal of beauty that challenges the cultural predominance of size zero bodies: a press cutting on her Website shows her appearance on the cover of the Sunday Times Style magazine for 23 April 2006, under the heading “More Is More: One Girl’s Sexy Journey as a Size 18” (Immodesty Blaize). However, this is not to suggest that her version of femininity is simply concerned with rejecting practices such as diet and exercise: alongside the press images of Immodesty in ornate stage costumes, there is also an account of the rigorous training her act involves. In other words, the practices involved in constructing this version of femininity entail bringing together accounts of multiple identity practices, often in surprising ways that resist conforming to any single ideal of femininity: while both the athletic body and the sexualised size 18 body may both be seen as sites of resistance to the culturally dominant slender body, it is unusual for one performer’s image to draw on both simultaneously as Blaize does. This dramatisation of the work involved in shaping the body can also be seen in the use of corsets by performers like von Teese, whose extremely tiny waist is a key aspect of her image. Although this may be read on one hand as a performance of conformity to feminine ideals of slimness, the public flaunting of the corset (which is after all a garment originally designed to be concealed beneath clothing) again makes visible the practices and technologies through which femininity is constructed. The DIY approach to femininity is central to the imperative to resist incorporation by mainstream culture. Dita von Teese makes this point in a press interview, in which she stresses the impossibility of working with stylists: “the one time I hired a stylist, they picked up a pair of my 1940’s shoes and said, these would look really cute with jeans. I immediately said, you’re out of here” (West, 10). With its constant dramatisation and adaptation of femininity, then, I would argue that burlesque precisely carries out the work which Grosz says is imperative for feminist theory, of problematising the notion of the body as a “blank, passive page” (156). If some feminist readings of femininity have failed to account for the multiplicity and diversity of feminine identity performances, it is perhaps surprising that this is also true of feminist research that has engaged with queer theory, especially theories of drag. As Carol-Ann Tyler notes, feminist critiques of drag performances have tended to read drag performances as a hostile parody of women themselves (60). I would argue that this view of drag as a parody of women is problematic, in that it reproduces an essentialist model in which women and femininity are one and the same. What I want to suggest is that it is possible to read drag in continuum with other performances, such as burlesque, as an often affectionate parody of femininity; one which allows female as well as male performers to think through the complex and often contradictory pleasures and anxieties that are at stake in performing feminine identities. In practice, some accounts of burlesque do see burlesque as a kind of drag performance, but they reveal that anxiety is not alleviated but heightened when the drag performer is biologically female. While drag is performed by male bodies, and hence potentially from a position of power, a female performer is held to be both complicit with patriarchal power, and herself powerless: the performance thus emanates from a doubly powerless position. Because femininity is imagined as a property of “women”, to parody femininity is to parody oneself and is hence open to being read as a performance of self-hatred. At best, the performer is herself held to occupy a position of middle class privilege, and hence to have access to what O’Connell, in the Observer article, calls “the fairy dust of irony” (4). For O’Connell however the performer uses this privilege to celebrate a normative, “politically dubious” form of femininity. In this reading, which positions itself as feminist, any potential for irony is lost, and burlesque is seen as unproblematically reproducing an oppressive model of feminine identities and roles. The Websites I have cited are aware of the potential power of burlesque as parody, but as a parody of femininity which attempts to work with the tensions inherent in feminine identity: its pleasures as well as its constraints and absurdities. Such a thinking-through of femininity is not the sole preserve of the male drag performer. Indeed, my current research on drag is engaged with the work of self-proclaimed female drag queens, also known as “bio queens” or “faux queens”: recently, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters has spoken of her early experiences as a performer in a San Francisco drag show, where there is an annual faux-queen beauty pageant (Barber, 1). I would argue that there is a continuity between these performers and participants in the burlesque scene who may be conflicted about their relationship to “feminism” but are highly aware of the possibilities offered by this sense of parody, which is often articulated through an invocation of queer politics. Queer politics is often explicitly on the agenda in burlesque performance spaces; however the term “queer” is used not only to refer to performances that take place in queer spaces or for a lesbian audience, but to the more general way in which the very idea of women parodying femininity works to queer both feminist and popular notions of femininity that equate it with passivity, with false consciousness. While burlesque does celebrate extreme femininities, it does so in a highly self-aware and parodic manner which works to critique and denaturalise more normalised forms of femininity. It does so partly by engaging with a queer agenda (for example Miss Indigo’s Academy of Burlesque hosts lectures on queer politics and feminism alongside makeup classes and stripping lessons). New Burlesque stage performers use 19th- and 20th-century ideals of femininity to parody contemporary feminine ideals, and this satirical element is carried through in the audience and in the wider community. In burlesque, femininity is reclaimed as an identity precisely through aligning an excessive form of femininity with feminism and queer theory. This model of burlesque as queer parody of femininity draws out the connections as well as the discontinuities between male and female “alternative” femininities, a potentially powerful connectivity that is suggested by Judith Butler’s work and that disrupts the notion that femininity is always imposed on women through consumer culture. It is possible, then, to open up Butler’s writing on drag in order to make explicit this continuity between male and female parodies of femininity. Writing of the need to distinguish between truly subversive parody, and that which is likely to be incorporated, Butler explains: Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony (Gender Trouble, 177). The problem with this is that femininity, as performed by biologically female subjects, is still positioned as other, as that which presents itself as natural, but is destabilised by more subversive gender performances, such as male drag, that reveal it as performative. The moment of judgment, when we as queer theorists decide which performances are truly subversive and which are not, is divisive: having drawn out the continuity between male and female performances of femininity, it reinstates the dualistic order in which women are positioned as lacking agency. If a practice is ultimately incorporated by consumer culture, this does not necessarily mean that it is not troubling or politically interesting. Such a reductive and pessimistic reading produces “the popular” as a bad object in a way that reproduces precisely the hegemonic discourse it is trying to disrupt. In this model, very few practices, including drag, could be held to be subversive at all. What is missing from Butler’s account is an awareness of the complex and multiple forms of pleasure and desire that characterise women’s attachment to feminine identities. I would argue that she opens up a potentially exhilarating possibility that has significant implications for feminist understandings of feminine identity in that it allows for an understanding of the ways in which female performers actively construct, rework and critique feminine identity, but that this possibility is closed down through the implication that only male drag performances are “truly troubling” (Gender Trouble, 177). By allowing female performers to ”parody the girl”, I am suggesting that burlesque potentially allows for an understanding in which female performances of femininity may, like drag, also be “truly troubling” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 177). Like drag, they require the audience both to reflect on the ways in which femininity is performatively constructed within the constraints of a normative, gendered culture, but also do justice to the extent to which feminine identity may be experienced as a source of pleasure. Striptease, in which feminine identity is constructed precisely through painstakingly creating a look whose layers are then stripped away in a stylised performance of feminine gesture, powerfully dramatises the historic tension between feminism and femininity. Indeed, the labour involved in burlesque performances can be adapted and adopted as feminist theoretical performances that speak back to hegemonic ideals of beauty, to feminism, and to queer theory. References Barber, Lynn. “Life’s a Drag”. The Guardian 26 Nov. 2006, 10. Bust Lounge. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.bust.com/>. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge, 2004 DiNardo, Kelly. “Burlesque Comeback Tries to Dance with Feminism.” Women’s E-News 2004. 1 Mar. 2007 http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2099>. Dita von Teese. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.dita.net>. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a New Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Holland, Samantha. Alternative Femininities. London: Berg, 2004. Immodesty Blaize. 10 Apr. 2007 http://www.immodestyblaize.com/collage2.html>. Lola the Vamp. 8 Mar. 2006 http://www.lolathevamp.net>. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.academyofburlesque.com>. O’Connell, Dee. “Tassels Will Be Worn.” The Observer 28 Sep. 2003, 4. Sawhney, Sabina. “Feminism and Hybridity Round Table.” Surfaces 7 (2006): 113. Tyler, Carol Ann. Female Impersonation. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. West, Naomi. “Art of the Teese.” Daily Telegraph online edition 6 Mar. 2006: 10. 1 Mar. 2007 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2006/03/06/efdita04.xml>. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. London: Chatto and Windus, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ferreday, Debra. "Adapting Femininities: The New Burlesque." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/12-ferreday.php>. APA Style Ferreday, D. (May 2007) "Adapting Femininities: The New Burlesque," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/12-ferreday.php>.

Area Studies and Study Abroad in the 21st Century The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning. - Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker, Thinking for a Living, xiii Few today would argue with the conviction that nearly every phase of our daily lives is shaped and informed by global societies, corporations, events and ideas. More than ever before, it is possible to claim that we are increasingly aware of the dynamic power and penetrating effects of global flows on information, technology, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and languages. Borderless, spaceless and timeless, such sources of knowledge, it appears, are effortlessly digested and disseminated without clocks, calendars, or physical limitations. It is, of course, a mistake to believe that packages of “instant” knowledge that appear to wing their way at megahertz speeds in and through our earthly lives account for all or nearly all that there is to know—or, more importantly, to learn—about our communities, regions and the globe itself. On the contrary: the “knowing” about how to live, to work, to prosper, or to understand ourselves and those around us is not what educators mean when they speak of intellectual achievement and practical understanding. It is the “learning” about us, our societies and our global knowledge that lies at the heart of the international educator’s life work, and it is the learning that is the most controversial aspect of education. The act of “learning,” in fact, is less objective and more subjective, is less passive and more active, and is less superficial and more profound in each of our lives. By definition, a responsible learner is one who takes on the intellectual challenge and the social and personal obligation to leave this globe a better place for those who follow, who assumes the life work of influencing the lives of others, and who is committed to making the best of every opportunity both within the reach and beyond the vision of the mind’s eye. Study abroad has traditionally been viewed as a time of seeing and viewing, however passively, the differences and similarities of other peoples, societies and cultures. The period of knowing about what others do or say can occur at any time during one’s life; however, the “knowing” of studying abroad is accomplished in the college years prior to the accumulated knowledge about practical learning and living. In this respect, study abroad has been seen as an experience which may or may not invest the students in greater or lesser insights about the peoples, societies or cultures around them. Further, when study abroad is bound up with travel or movement from place to place, it can become a passive act, so much so that travel rather than learning becomes the goal of the study abroad experience. Simply put, the more that one travels, the more, it is argued, one learns. Furthermore, while seen as desirable for “classroom learning,” some would say that no amount of academic preparation appears to be useful in the enterprise of the travel experience, since so many experiences are unpredictable, individualized and, in some cases, arbitrary. From the perspective of study abroad, it might be said that the gods of area studies no longer completely fulfill our students’ needs, while the gods of global studies have not yet fulfilled their promises. Janus-like, international educators look in one direction at a still highly intense and valued picture of local cultures and identities, and in another direction toward an increasingly common culture, economy and society. The former appears to celebrate the differences and “uncommonness” of the human experience while the latter smoothes over the differences to underscore the commonalities and sameness of our contemporary world. The choice appears to be between the particular and the universal, the local and the global. Academic preparations, such as area studies programs, appear to be unnecessary for the individualized forms of learning, such as study abroad. Indeed, since an area studies preparation may raise or strengthen stereotypical perceptions of the overseas peoples, societies and cultures, it has been argued that it best be left aside. In this context, students are viewed as a tabula rasa on which new discoveries from living and studying overseas leave an imprint or impression. It seems that sending as many students as possible in as many directions as possible has become the dominant study abroad objective. Thus, “whole world” presentations and documentation often rely on the “other” as the learning objective with little or no attempt to discriminate or distinguish the levels of learning that such “whole world” immersion entails. In recent times, additional concerns about liability, health, safety and comfort levels have been added to the “pre-departure” orientations and training programs. The “student as self-learner” continues to be viewed and treated as a “customer knowledge-consumer” within both U.S. private and public colleges and universities. In the age of “globalization,” it is the conviction of the editors of Frontiers that knowledge consumption is only a small aspect of the 21st century international educators’ arsenal. More importantly, it will be argued in this special issue on area studies and Study Abroad that the intellectual development of the U.S. undergraduate needs to be enhanced with skills of self-learning and transdisciplinary perspectives on local and regional cultures and languages. The authors contributing to this special thematic issue of Frontiers have been asked to bring their state-of-the-art thinking on area studies to bear on the key question confronting study abroad: How does specialized understanding of geographical and cultural areas of the world enhance and strengthen undergraduate learning on and beyond our campuses? In other words, in what ways do area studies inform overseas learning through the activity of study abroad? The variety of responses demonstrates two principal ways in which area studies has begun to reformulate its goals and strategies. First, area studies reaffirms a commitment to local and regional comprehensive research and teaching, and redefines its mission in terms of the need to come to grips with local knowledge and specific social and cultural practices within a globalized world. Second, area studies specialists question long-held definitions of concepts, including those of “geographical area” and “globalization,” in order to maximize contributions to U.S. undergraduate learning. David Ludden begins our issue with a review of the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation’s understanding of the transition in area studies from the Sputnik era to the globalization era. Ludden notes the faculty dilemma in working in an “area.” He points out the political interests of the Cold War for public funding of such specialized academic skills, skills which, whether funded by the government or not, were and continue to be defined by the scholar first and then by finances. Drawing on his own experience at the South Asia Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Ludden takes the reader through the intellectual rationale for area studies, and how that rationale is being redefined in favor of stronger area studies in the present globalization era. Gregory Kulacki’s study of China and the Chinese experience points accurately to one approach to defining area studies; that is, in terms of the peoples and cultures studied. In a sense, Kulacki makes it clear that Chinese studies is “legitimate” and has authority as long as it reflects the Chinese themselves, their experiences and lives. Ann Curthoys, on the other hand, notes the growing importance of defining Australians and Australian studies not only in terms of the changing experiences of contemporary Australia, but also in terms of the demands of non-Australians, who ask for more precision in defining Australians, their history, society and cultures. Richard Beach and George Sherman take on a more difficult matter, at least from the viewpoint of U.S. faculty and students. Canada is rarely seen as a study abroad site for U.S. students, not only because of its geographical position but also for its cultural and historical proximity. The overall U.S. view, albeit unflattering, is that Canada and Canadians are very much like the U.S. and Americans, so why study in Canada? Beach and Sherman argue that history, languages, and borders do make a difference, both physically as well as culturally. Using the argument of the previous area studies specialists, they are interested in the ways that Canadians have shaped and informed their cultural and social identities in the teeth of U.S. economic and political domination in the region. The implications of globalization are, perhaps, more immediately evident in the Canadian case than in any other world region. U.S. students would do well to observe the processes of adaptation and acculturation first-hand by studying and living in Canada. James Petras gives us a broader vista of regional adaptation to the economic and political forces of globalization with his essay on Latin America. Indeed, Latin America has a dynamic similar to that of Canada due to its physical, cultural and historical proximity to the U.S. It would be a mistake to see Latin America only in terms of the north-south regional dynamics, since Europe, Asia and Africa have also shaped both past and present structures and institutions within that region in ways far more dramatic than has the United States. Study abroad, Petras reminds us, is an excellent way of learning directly about Latin American societies, cultures and politics from Latin Americans themselves, a learning that may be widely different from the official U.S. diplomatic and corporate perspectives. Finally, the very familiar world regions, such as England, offer in some cases more challenges to the U.S. undergraduate than might be expected. Jane Edwards looks at Britain and all that U.S. students may or may not know about that culture and society. The study of Britain lends itself, Edwards argues, to more than the usual challenges, due to the preconceived notions that U.S. students bring with them to, say, London. Understanding the “European-ness” of Britain and its historic relationship with continental Western Europe will justify the need to see Britain as less familiar and more complex, thus necessitating the need to study, visit and live in parts of Britain and Western Europe. In this case, the area does define the country, its identity and culture in a historical interplay of social, cultural and economic forces. David Lloyd, Philip Khoury and Russell Bova invite the reader to return to large regional perspectives through African, Middle Eastern and Russian area studies. David Lloyd presents an analysis of the broad and immediate contexts of African studies. While recognizing the difficulty of establishing consistently causal links between African studies and study abroad in Africa, he delineates the significance of local, experience-based study for the development of collaborative African studies research. Lloyd argues that the benefits of study abroad in Africa to African studies belie the relatively small number of students involved. Further, assessment for funding and other purposes needs to utilize criteria that take into account the challenges of on-site study in Africa and the depth of post-study abroad participation not just in African studies per se, but in other related areas as well. Considering the recent past of Middle East studies, Philip Khoury charts its response to post-Cold War criticism. He illustrates new directions the field is taking towards including different geographic areas, and new emphasis in organizational priorities, noting the importance of funding for providing first-hand contact for students in Middle Eastern studies with scholars from the Middle East. Khoury assesses the impact of recent historical and political events in the area on Middle Eastern studies, and looks toward more inclusive research efforts. Russell Bova examines another region that has undergone considerable political, social and economic change in the 20th century. Having moved from empire to soviet socialist states and now to a confederation of nation states, Russia and, naturally, Russian area studies, offer an excellent example of local and regional complexities both in the nomenclature of the region and in the changes in Russian studies programs. Bova illustrates the need to understand the specific dynamics of local communities in their relationship to larger administrative units such as provinces, states and national capitals. In referring to the “double transition” of contemporary Russia, Bova reminds us that globalization is both a grass roots and elite process with many unlikely “bedfellows” that is also changing more rapidly each decade than had been the case fifty years ago. Finally, Richard Falk and Nancy Kanach collaborate to discuss the ways in which globalization and study abroad are emerging in the post-Cold War period. The sudden shifts of economic and political power make our world more fragile and more difficult to comprehend without considering the “computer gap” that is rapidly leaving whole communities and even nations in a more uneven relationship with the power brokers than ever before. The need to reflect with care and precision through area studies is complemented by the additional pressing need to study, see and learn outside of the U.S. Globalization means promoting study abroad and reaffirming the strengths of local and regional studies. Taken together, these essays invite international educators to reconsider notions of learning before, during and after study abroad. The writers view study abroad as an opportunity for social and intellectual engagement with other peoples and with oneself. The essays point to a variety of ways of intellectually preparing our students for their initial encounters with sets of real-life global experiences. Reflecting on such engagement and encounters allows students to begin to formulate, with increasing sophistication, specific and general concepts about individual differences, local and regional commonalities, and the global transformations of our present era. In light of the current area studies debates, we might also reconsider approaches to pre-departure preparations, create onsite projects, and reorganize the overseas curricula of study abroad programs themselves. In particular, students can continue to benefit from area and global studies programs back on the home campus upon their return, where they can enter effectively into scholarly debates and continue the learning and personal growth that began while they were abroad. Frontiers welcomes comments and suggestions for future special issues. We see ourselves and our field of international education in greater need of close cooperation with our faculty colleagues both in terms of defining the work of international learning, and in terms of formulating and designing international or global programs. We thus invite our readers to see Frontiers as a forum for such academic exchanges, and promise that Frontiers will respond to articles, essays, book reviews and reviews of resources for study abroad with collegial interest and enthusiasm. We wish to thank especially Brian Whalen, Rhoda Borcherding and our other colleagues on the Editorial Board for their support, encouragement and assistance in completing this special issue. We are particularly pleased with the authors and their willingness to listen to our requests and comments. Thomas Ricks, Villanova University Katharine Krebs, SUNY Binghamton Michael Monahan, Macalester College Suggestions for Further Reading Altbach, Philip G. and Patti McGill Peterson, eds. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response. IIE Research Report Number 29. Annapolis, MD: IIE Books, 1999. This slim volume focuses on principal topics for colleges and universities to consider both locally and globally. Philip Altbach and Todd Davis set the tone of the volume with their “notes for an international dialogue on higher education.” Stressing the need for practical education, the authors also raise issues about the role of technology, the increase in “internationally mobile students,” the global role of graduate education, privatization of higher education, committed faculty and the threats of “managerialized” universities. The eight responses to the opening themes address specific issues for China, India, Africa and South Africa, Latin America, Japan and Europe. The work is a very good discussion text for international educators and their area studies faculty colleagues, and also provides a theoretical basis for the design and development of overseas programs. Stephen R. Graubard, ed. “Education Yesterday, Education Tomorrow.” Daedalus. Vol. 127, No. 4 (Fall, 1998). The eleven authors of this issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences build off the Fall 1995 issue of Daedalus and its topic of “American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal.” While neither accepting nor rejecting the thrust of A Nation at Risk, the authors look both at what has occurred over the past three decades, and at what is on the horizon for the next decade. In stressing reforms of systems and innovative ways of learning, the authors’ discussions invite the international educator to address a variety of ways in which students learn and to challenge the system in which they thrive. WWW. NAFSA.ORG/SECUSSA.WHYSTUDY In 1989, NAFSA and COUNCIL created the Whole World Committee (WWC). Initially chaired by John Sommers and now chaired by Mick Vandenberg, the WWC set out to find ways by which U.S. students could and would choose non-European overseas sites for a semester of study and learning. One of the tasks that the WWC accomplished was the creation of four area study essays on Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. Each essay, entitled “Why Study in …,” addresses basic fears and stereotyping of the non-European world regions. The essays then focus on benefits, health and safety, “getting started,” housing, and practical learning in each of these regions. In newly-attached longer versions, the essays also have a bibliography and more informative texts. The shorter versions were published serially in Transitions Abroad. NAFSA has added two additional important essays to this website, on “Class and Study Abroad” and “An African-American in South Africa.” Overall, the readers of Frontiers will be well-advised to access the articles at the website and consider using all the essays in their pre-departure orientation training, faculty area studies discussion groups, and in welcome-back sessions for returning students. Richard Falk. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999. The thesis of Richard Falk’s critique is that “predatory globalization’ has eroded, if not altogether broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century or so” (p. 3). The breaking of that contract resulted from the state’s “deference to the discipline of global capital” and the neglect of the common good. Falk argues that only the “massing of strong transnational social pressures on the states of the world could alter the political equation to the point where the state could sufficiently recover its autonomy in relation to the world economy.” He demonstrates the emergence of a new kind of transnational politics referred to as “globalization-from-below.” In restoring “global civil society,” this new politics will need to move forward with the project of cosmopolitan democracy, including the protection of human rights. For the international educator, creating overseas programs that allow for a better understanding of the interconnectedness of regional and global levels is an admirable goal. More important, however, are those programs that offer U.S. undergraduates insights into “world order priorities” such as global poverty, protection of the planet, the sources of transnational violence, and “responsible sovereignty” in ways rarely found in traditional classroom learning on our campuses. Mark Tessler, Jodi Nachtwey and Anne Banda. Eds. Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. This edited work addresses a wide range of issues involved in the “rational choice” versus area studies debate that is so well elucidated by David Ludden in the opening article of our special issue. Looking at the “area studies controversy” from the perspective of political scientists, the editors’ Introduction underscores questions that we international educators need to address ourselves. It is valuable to wonder about the “uses and abuses” of area studies in planning our overseas programs, or discussing the “internationalization” of our curricula. It is also critical to understand the Eurocentric and overly-simplistic approaches of the social science “rational choice” models. While agreeing that both area studies and the social science theories and methodologies are necessary for a global understanding, the present work places such questions within the context of the Middle East as a stimulus and a model for increasing the value of research about any country or region.

The objective of the study is to propose a strategy to revitalize Muncie's downtown through cultural tourism. This is seen as a critical catalyst to help preserve the historical fabric of the downtown.Muncie's downtown, with its historical and cultural assets, has an opportunity to attract the tourism, convention, and conference business which in turn can support hotels, restaurants, specialty shops, and entertainment establishments.In view of above, this creative project attempts to revitalize downtown through linking and promoting cultural tourism facilities like museums, theaters and festivals, convention and conference centers, and specialty shops.A transport loop connecting the tourist anchors like Ball State University, Minnitrista Cultural Center, and downtown of has been proposed. The tourist routes in Muncie and to East Central Indiana have been identified to enable the visitors to visit tourist destinations easily. Signage, and banners have been proposed along major routes to give proper orientation to visitors and also to enhance the image of Muncie.A strategy has been outlined for the preservation historical buildings through adaptive reuse. All these proposals have been incorporated as an urban design strategy.
Department of Architecture

The purposes of this creative project were (1) to develop a stone conservation plan for some of the markers in the "Old Part" of Beech Grove Cemetery, (2) to bring attention to the plight of a sampling of the cemetery stone markers in the "Old Part," and (3) to provide a written and photographic database for those individuals who are concerned with the preservation/conservation of Beech Grove Cemetery, in the hopes that a conservation plan can be implemented throughout the cemetery.Results revealed that a vast majority of Beech Grove's markers are deteriorating due to several natural factors such as weathering and erosion, as well as to neglect and vandalism. I have included, in this project, 195 stone inventory forms with a correlating map and photograph of those stones surveyed. The results also confirmed my theory that little conservation has taken place in the cemetery. Some conservation efforts that have been applied to the stone markers have further damaged them due to inappropriate methods.
Department of Architecture

The decline in patronage, decrease in building density, and loss in property values suffered by Downtown Muncie, Indiana is a result of competition from shopping malls. This deterioration will continue unless there is a concerted effort by citizens, property owners, and the city to promote commercial revitalization of this area.The National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street Center suggest that communities can achieve commercial revitalization through a four part program which combines organization, design, promotion, and economic restructuring. Mary Jo Ruccio of the National Development Council, suggests that commercial revitalization cannot be successful unless the approach includes a comprehensive plan that addresses a downtown's unique problems.In order to create a functional commercial revitalization strategy for Muncie's downtown, the commercial district's history was reviewed, the existing buildings were surveyed, published historic preservation plans and commercial revitalization plans ware reviewed, and a variety of funding sources were studied. These efforts led to the development of a commercial revitalization strategy that is patterned after the Main Street Center's program. A major component of this strategy is the Downtown Commercial Revitalization Network that is recommended to act as a steering committee for a Downtown Development Director whose sole purpose is to direct downtown revitalization. The strategy recommends residential adaptive-use of the second stories in downtown buildings to promote economic development, and to preserve the historic structures. Low-interest loans with design standards are recommended to provide funds to create this housing stock without damaging the historic fabric. This will supply downtown with regular customers, thus strengthening existing establishments, creating the need for new businesses downtown, and diversifying the economic base.This strategy can be applied to the current downtown revitalization efforts by the City of Muncie. The ideas and general theories can also be applied by small Indiana towns which suffer from economic problems. A comprehensive plan that is tailored specifically for a downtown which account for the organization, design, economic, and promotion needs of downtown will set the course for successful commercial revitalization.
Department of Architecture

This study has examined opportunities for reclaiming industrial brownfield sites for the communities that surround them, recreating derelict sites as community-oriented spaces that increase understanding of and restore pride in industrial and cultural heritage.The study consisted of two primary components. The first phase consists primarily of an exploration of the linkages between landscape/urban design and industrial heritage. This phase also examines and evaluates various design projects that have attempted to celebrate industrial heritage through the adaptive re-use of former industrial sites. The second phase of the study consists of the development of a master plan for the transformation of a derelict industrial site to a community space that interprets and celebrates industrial heritage. This phase includes researching the industrial heritage of Muncie, selecting an appropriate project site within the city, and developing a master plan for the reclamation of an industrial site by the community.A layered design strategy was developed for the selected site, with the end result being a master plan for a new public park. The three elements of the design strategy included industrial heritage, adaptive reuse, and improvements in the surrounding community.
Department of Landscape Architecture

Higher Sites has been designed as a fully functioning business. The appendix of this creative project paper includes Higher Sites' full business plan. The business plan includes projected revenue and profit for the next three years.Higher Sites 101 is a two-part DVD set designed to familiarize new Higher Sites employees with the company. Disc I explains the services that Higher Sites offers to adoptive parents. It also walks the viewer through the process of creating adoption videos using the Higher Sites method. Example videos are included. Disc II is a data DVD that includes full-screen QuickTime movies. The movies demonstrate to the viewer how to perform specific tasks in Final Cut Pro, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. It is necessary for the viewer to watch these QuickTime movies on a monitor that is 21 inches or larger.
Department of Telecommunications

This study has presented a comprehensive overview of the properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places from Pennsylvania and Indiana. The project systematically examines what types of properties are listed on the National Register from each state. The evidence, which was compiled into an electronic database, suggests that property listings did not follow larger social trends. However, the evidence did show that certain events, such as federal legislation and federal tax credits, led to a larger number of properties to be listed at certain times. The research also proved that the State Historic Preservation Offices of Pennsylvania and Indiana have many similarities in the way properties are nominated.
Department of Architecture

The purpose of this thesis is to propose a methodology for documenting historic vernacular houses in Indiana through the Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory. The inventory, or survey, is an essential and primary component of historic preservation. With roughly one half of Indiana's counties remaining to be surveyed, there is great opportunity to improve the quality and usefulness of the surveys as scholarship regarding the built environment advances.The thesis examines the definitions of vernacular architecture and sets forth a working definition which is fairly broad in scope. Vernacular house types found in Indiana are enumerated, described, and illustrated.The thesis then examines Indiana's methodology for documenting historic vernacular houses, and it makes recommendations, based on methodologies from other states, for positive charges.This thesis proposes an interdisciplinary approach to conductingsurveys of historic vernacular houses. It draws heavily from related fields such as folklore and material culture studies as well as from several years of experience working CX1 survey projects.The thesis also examines settlement patterns in Indiana and other cultural, building-shaping factors. The thesis is intended to serve as a guide to the vernacular house types in Indiana for use by field surveyors.
Department of Architecture

The following is a historic and cultural resources survey for the Indiana State Road 26 corridor between Lafayette and Fairmount, Indiana. The main goals of the survey are to examine the historic and cultural resources on State Road 26, and to provide information on its potential as a state byway.The historic and cultural resources survey is divided into four portions- a) a history of the State Road 26 corridor, b) descriptions of the corridor's historic and natural features, c) current issues facing the corridor, and d) ideas on how to market and interpret the corridor. The corridor has been separated into five distinct sections in the study. The study also includes visuals in the appendices to help illustrate the nature of the corridor.
Department of Architecture

The objective of this thesis is to provide the Delaware County Historical Alliance with a maintenance program that will help to preserve the Moore-Youse House Museum. The fundamental steps of inspection, diagnosis, maintenance/treatment, and documentation are discussed and emphasized. These steps provide the basis which underlies the maintenance program.An inspection of the house was conducted. Construction materials and the condition of the building fabric were documented and recommendations made about treatment. Maintenance techniques were discussed and a maintenance schedule was provided to assist in implementing the program. A method for documenting and recording conservation and maintenance work on the structure was also developed.
Department of Architecture

In a perfect learning society, the whole community-from corporate institutions to family units-recognizes and acts upon its responsibility to nurture and create a total learning environment that should extend throughout the lifetime of each member (Senesh, 1991). In contrast, many efforts to reform education in America focus on only one locus of education, the pre/K- 12 school Fortunately, however, some current reforms are broadening their scope. One such example is found in Ball State University's Professional Development Schools Network, which has enlarged the focus of educational renewal by including a museum as one of its official network sites. This two-part museum, Minnetrista Cultural Center and Oakhurst Gardens, brings community partnership to the focus, incrementally enlarging educational environments and experiences beyond the school classroom and toward the ideals of a learning society.The purpose of this study was to describe and understand more fully the conception, planning, and initial implementation stages of this atypical Professional Development Schools (PDS) site, Minnetrista Cultural Center and Oakhurst Gardens. This case study drew from and contributes to the literature in three areas: (a) professional development schools, (b) community education and learning societies, and (c) program planning. Data collection consisted of 23 separate interviews with 12 participants, multiple observations, and extensive document review. Data were then processed through constant comparative analysis. Findings describe more fully this particular case, detailing the conception, planning, and initial implementation of the museum's partnership with the traditional schools (university and pre/K-12) in its community.Three conclusions were derived from the major findings. First, in the conception and planning phases, relationships among individuals were of great consequence in creating and developing Minnetrista Cultural Center and Oakhurst Gardens as a PDS site. Second, in the initial implementation phase of the museum's PDS program, the museum staff struggled to define and communicate the museum's role as a PDS site. Third, these insights, among others, have implications for PDS networks and potential non-traditional PDS sites, museums interested in their educational role, and those interested in nurturing a learning society.
Department of Educational Leadership