So much honest poverty in England
To be “honest” and poor in 1870 England, a man had to demonstrate the willingness to work and readiness to support a family, aka “welfare liability.”
“These were the marks of working-class male citizenship, and in the context of an expanded suffrage for working class men, the state developed policies to provide deserving men assistance to maintain their honest poverty,” explains Marjorie Levine-Clark, associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Levine-Clark is putting the finishing touches on her book, So Much Honest Poverty: Gender, Work and Welfare Liability in England, 1870-1930.
A faculty development grant is supporting Levine-Clark by providing both a research assistant to conduct quantitative analysis for two chapters, and funding for a two week trip to London and Stafford, where record offices house collections necessary for her research.
Not only will the book expose disadvantages experienced by women in reference to work and welfare in 19th century Britain, “My study emphasizes that poverty and unemployment have restricted men’s abilities to act out dominant models of masculinity, even while men were acutely aware of cultural expectations.”
Levine-Clark anticipates her book will be submitted to academic press by the end of 2009.
Analyzing the Chicago price theory
The Chicago-style approach to economics, known as “Price Theory” because of the fundamental role that prices often play, has shed light not only on the most fundamental topics of traditional economics such as consumption, saving, taxation, regulation. It also pioneered the use of economic tools in studying a wide range of other human behavior such as crime and corruption, discrimination and marriage.
However, Steve Medema, professor of economics, points out that to date, there has been no systematic historical analysis of the evolution of the Chicago price theory. With the help of a faculty development grant, he aims to remedy this.
“The project will fill this void by tracing the development of Chicago price theory from its origins in the 1920s to the present,” Medema says. “I will produce a multi-volume collection of classic reading in Chicago price theory and a $300,000 grant proposal for the NSF [National Science Foundation] to support the next several years of research.”
The grant funding will, among other things, enable Medema to travel to Chicago to work in the University of Chicago archives and to hire two graduate research assistants to gather and select materials for the project.
The project will generate a stream of refereed journal articles and a book-length history of Chicago price theory to be published by a major university press, he notes.
Exploring Heidegger and religion
In translating German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s 1924-1925 text Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, Robert Metcalf found sustenance for his preoccupation with the philosophical critique of religion.
The translation and a faculty development grant have enabled Metcalf, associate professor of philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to present an invited paper on “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Religion” at an international conference on Heidegger and Religion in Germany.
“The opportunity to present on Heidegger and religion is fortuitous,” Metcalf says. “The meeting in Germany was instrumental in furthering my research agenda as well as my teaching of the Philosophy of Religion course [at UC Denver].”
The presentation in Germany was one of several that Metcalf has given on related papers “The New Critique of Religion: Same as the Old Critique?” “Religion in a Global Context” and Philosophical Responses to Religion After 9-11.”
“These papers address the highly-publicized recent writings on religion by the authors known collectively as the ‘New Atheists,’” he explains. Metcalf’s work critiques these authors for their view that religious beliefs amount to propositional claims about the natural world that can be refuted by scientific research or even ordinary experience. “What these authors miss in their accounts is the hermeneutic character of religion: the fact that any religious beliefs allow for a range of competing interpretations.”
Climate and human evolution in Laetoli
The Laetoli in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the Arusha Region of northern Tanzania is Charles Musiba’s palaeoanthropological research home. It is also believed by many to be the home of human origin.
Unsurpassed in beauty and historical significance, this remote palaeoanthropological site is a mystery when it comes to its ecological history. “Current interpretations of Laetoli past environments range from mesic open savanna to woodland with forest galleries,” says Musiba, assistant professor of biological anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “However, most ecological interpretations tend to be too broad and lack the stratigraphic fidelity that can allow us to understand climate variability and its effect on human ancestors.”
Aided by a faculty development grant, Musiba and Tiffany Terneny, anthropology instructor, are embarking on an interdisciplinary field research project exploring whether combined geologic, biostratigraphic and paleoanthropoligical data can resolve these varied interpretations of Laetoli’s past environments. “The uniqueness of Laetoli as an ecological significant site in eastern African makes it particularly well suited for our research that attempts to link long-term climate change to human evolution.”
Mapping a trail for international studies
For students of international studies, drawing connections between theories learned in the classroom and today’s central debates can be confusing. That’s why it’s important that students have access to some kind of comprehensive resource that can summarize and relate difficult concepts and theories in political science and international relations.
Thorsten Spehn, full-time instructor of political science, is designing a map that will enable students to better navigate the thorny field of international studies. By creating a series of linked Web pages on the UC Denver server Spehn will help students, faculty and the larger scholarly community more thoroughly understand how the key political issues facing the United States and the world today can be linked to theoretical approaches in the field of international relations.
The project will additionally provide employment for two students: A graduate student in political science will serve as a research assistant while a second student qualified in intermediate Web page design will develop the project site online.
Spehn is confident the project will support University initiatives in advancing research. “Web based research continues to evolve and is profoundly altering the way we think about the process of acquiring knowledge,” Spehn says.