Capricious Intentions in Stevie Smith’s Poems and Drawings

Abstract

There is a contradiction in how Stevie Smith saw the relationship between her poems and drawings. On the one hand, she looked at her doodles as vital to her poetry and backed with a great deal of intentionality. She painstakingly cut and pasted them into her drafts and left detailed notes to her publishers when those placements were not to her exact specifications. On the other hand, though, she talked about her doodles as if they were ephemeral and backed only by caprice. This essay argues that Smith’s doodles play at the intersection of intentionality and caprice; in doing so, they become deliberately detachable objects that signify both placed with and when displaced from her poetry. Decisions, whether by Smith or by her editors, to move or remove an image have both subtle and dramatic changes for readers’ experiencing of her poems. This paper relies on archival and published sources to provide readings of several of Smith’s poems including ‘Do Take Muriel Out,’ ‘The Rehearsal,’ ‘The After-Thought,’ and ‘Not Waving but Drowning.’ In their continual ability to be removed and reattached to her poetry, Smith’s doodles destabilize the texts that they supposedly compliment, while at the same time also revitalizing them by allowing them to remain open to new interpretations.     

Recalcitrant spoiler? Contesting dominant accounts of India’s role in global trade governance

India is frequently cast as a troublemaker and blamed for the breakdown of the Doha Round. This article provides a critical re-reading of India’s trade policy and its position in multilateral trade negotiations. It challenges the widespread characterisation of India as a recalcitrant spoiler, intent on derailing trade liberalisation at the WTO. It shows that with the emergence of its highly-competitive, export-oriented services sector, India became one of the leading advocates of global services trade liberalisation in the Doha Round. Yet, not unlike the traditional powers, India’s offensive trade interests are also combined with significant defensive concerns in agriculture.     

Who Are Truant Youth? Examining Distinctive Profiles of Truant Youth Using Latent Profile Analysis

The present study explored the heterogeneity of truant youth to provide a more nuanced examination of the nature of adolescent truancy and examine distinct profiles of truant youth as they relate to externalizing behaviors. Latent profile analysis was employed to examine the heterogeneity of truant youth by using a nationally representative sample of 1,646 truant adolescents (49.8?% female) from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Five key indicator variables were utilized to identify latent classes: school engagement, participation in school-based activities, grades, parental academic involvement, and number of school days skipped. Additionally, multinomial regression was employed to examine the relationship between latent truant youth classes and externalizing behaviors. Four classes of truant youth were identified: achievers (28.55?%), moderate students (24.30?%), academically disengaged (40.89?%), and chronic skippers (6.26?%). Additionally, group membership was found to be associated differentially with marijuana use, fighting, theft and selling drugs. Results from the present study suggest that truant youth are not a homogenous group, but rather present with different risk profiles as they relate to key indicators, demographic characteristics and externalizing behaviors. Implications for practice, policy and future research are discussed.     

‘I Had the Men from the Start’: General Benjamin Butler's occupation of New Orleans

Existing historiography asserts that General Benjamin Butler manipulated conceptions of gender in his issuance of General Order 28 in Union-occupied New Orleans during the American Civil War. This article examines how women were prosecuted under General Order 28, using the imprisonment of Eugenia Phillips as a case study. Furthermore, the article proposes that Butler's manipulation of gender in General Order 28 must be considered alongside his manipulation of race in ‘Butler's Fugitive Slave Law’ in order to more fully understand the interplay between the politics of identity and the politics of occupation in the American Civil War.     

Departmentalization,migration, and the politics of the family in the post-war French Caribbean

This article examines the ways in which metropolitan French officials attempted to deal with the “population problem” in Martinique and Guadeloupe after they became overseas departments (DOMs) of France in 1946. Warning of a demographic crisis in the Antilles, French administrators targeted what they saw as a loose family structure and promoted European family values of Christian marriage and a stable nuclear family. The government justified smaller social subsidies to citizens of the new DOMs by citing the supposedly problematic nature of the Caribbean family and its difference from the French norm. In 1963 the government initiated a wave of emigration to the metropole through an agency called BUMIDOM which was to decrease birth rates in the Antilles and provide much-needed unskilled labor in France itself. Although the impact of emigration on the birthrate is unclear, one lasting legacy of this period was the acute sense of injustice many Antilleans felt at being treated unequally by the state. While birth rates have gone down in the DOMs it had little to do with the acceptance of European family models.     

The effects of corrosive substances on human bone, teeth, hair, nails, and soft tissue

Abstract: This research investigates the effects of household chemicals on human tissues. Five different human tissues (bone, tooth, hair, fingernails, and skin/muscle/fat) were immersed into six different corrosive agents. These agents consisted of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, lye, bleach, organic septic cleaner, and Coca‐Cola^® soda. Tap water was used as a control. Tissue samples were cut to consistent sizes and submerged in the corrosive liquids. Over time, the appearance, consistency, and weight were documented. Hydrochloric acid was the most destructive agent in this study, consuming most tissues within 24 h. Sulfuric acid was the second most destructive agent in this study. Bleach, lye, and cola had no structural effects on the hard tissues of the body, but did alter the appearance or integrity of the hair, nails, or flesh in some way. The organic septic cleaner and tap water had no effect on any of the human tissue tested during the timeframe of the study.