Art Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Art - Assignment Example The characters in the painting according to me are husband and wife but the painter confirmed that the painting is about a father and his daughter. (Guardian 2002). If she is the daughter of the man in the painting, then the painting can be interpreted in another way, the painting goes to show that she has no control of her life and she is dominated by her father, she should have got married long back but that’s not quite the case when one looks at the painting. Age has taken a toll on the woman in the painting and she should have got married long back, the same is probably making her depressed and reluctant to make eye contact. In this picture the husband has a stern serious look on his face, which represents his position as a provider. This also could represent an angry farmer who has worked too many years in the fields and would like to retire from his duties. Unfortunately I haven’t done any research regarding this picture and feel if I did look at what other people were saying it may change my own representation. I haven’t heard any background on this particular picture, but I have seen it many times. When I look at the painting, I think of the Amish culture, the women with their hair back, straight laced and abiding, having no voice as far as family decision making is concerned. The men with their serious duties as a provider, having most of the authority in regards to household and discussions are concerned. Many people continue to live in this way, but most are in rural areas of the country. The painter has depicted a painting that can be seen in varieties of ways. This representation of a man and women allow the viewer an open pallet for interpretation and imagination. If I had to label a title on this painting it would say â€Å"An American Couple.† I am not sure why I chose that but it was the first vision I created.

LIB 316 Week 3 Final Research Paper Rough Draft Essay Example for Free

LIB 316 Week 3 Final Research Paper Rough Draft Essay Final Research Paper Rough Draft. For Week Three you are responsible for writing a rough draft for your Final Research Paper in which you analyze a specific historical theme we’ve studied as it is developed in two literary works read or discussed in the textbook during the semester. Use the â€Å"themes† list below as a guide and then once you have chosen the theme you want to examine, select two literary texts where you feel this theme is best reflected. You can choose any two texts read in this course but the selections must be from the course textbook. Your draft and final version should be organized around a thesis statement about the theme and your selected literary works. Select one of the following themes for the Final Research Paper: ? Democracy and reform movements ? Workers and the Industrial Revolution ? The â€Å"woman question† ? The â€Å"white man’s burden† ? Imperialism and the colonial project ? The Great Depression ? The impact of technology on 20th century warfare ? Holocaust/genocide ? Cold War ? Nationalism ? Totalitarianism ? Decolonization ? Race racism ? Environmentalism and climate change ? Globalization ?Hybrid national identities ? Dystopia ? Magical realism Get a map of the college campus and find and visit the important places on campus. You can get valuable information on school-specific scholarship opportunities in this way. Colleges commonly give scholarships to students who are accepted. By going to the admissions office and talking to the officer there, youll be able to know if youre getting the best deal on your education. The file LIB 316 Week 3 Final Research Paper Rough Draft To download this tutorial follow the link https://bitly. com/1wySLOi Get a map of the college campus and find and visit the important places on campus. You can get valuable information on school-specific scholarship opportunities in this way. Colleges commonly give scholarships to students who are accepted. By going to the admissions office and talking to the officer there, youll be able to know if youre getting the best deal on your education. Business General Business Final Research Paper Rough Draft. For Week Three you are responsible for writing a rough draft for your Final Research Paper in which you analyze a specific historical theme we’ve studied as it is developed in two literary works read or discussed in the textbook during the semester. Use the â€Å"themes† list below as a guide and then once you have chosen the theme you want to examine, select two literary texts where you feel this theme is best reflected. You can choose any two texts read in this course but the selections must be from the course textbook. Your draft and final version should be organized around a thesis statement about the theme and your selected literary works. Select one of the following themes for the Final Research Paper: ? Democracy and reform movements ? Workers and the Industrial Revolution ? The â€Å"woman question† ? The â€Å"white man’s burden† ? Imperialism and the colonial project ? The Great Depression ? The impact of technology on 20th century warfare ? Holocaust/genocide ? Cold War ? Nationalism ? Totalitarianism ? Decolonization ? Race racism ? Environmentalism and climate change ? Globalization ?Hybrid national identities ? Dystopia ? Magical realism

What does it mean to be an Individual? :: essays research papers

I am afraid that this is more a long question rather than an answer. What exactly does it mean to be an individual? Or are we even individuals? I suppose what is meant when we say we are individual is that we have individual thoughts, as really our actions throughout our life are far from individual or unique. They may seem to be but really they are not. If this is true though then we rarely get our individualism out, if what is seen is not individual. We think ourselves more individual than say an ant, but then is it possible for their to be a thing that would class itself as more individual than us, and if so in what ways would that thing be different and what would make it more individual? I said previously that maybe only our thoughts are individual, but does this even hold to be true? Our thoughts are there usually to fulfil a certain action, even if the most silly action. Take for example a fear of spiders as a thought. I suppose this isn't exactly silly but it does fulfil the action of protecting someone from what they see as a danger. Our thoughts may be slightly different and so too are our personalities, but really don't they seem to fulfil the same task, the highest up being to survive. Obviously this is taking a broad view, but since our thoughts lead to generally the same goal, then is it only the slight difference in thoughts to achieve the goal that make us individual, and if so, are we really that individual since ultimately our "individual" thoughts lead to the same thing? Since it is our actions that let us interact with others, such as in sports or other things, maybe it is that our individual side is alone, being away from others and only in our own thoughts. This may not be totally true since one can share their thoughts, but looked upon from higher up, say from a worldly view, then this is only the sharing of opinion, with many different means reaching the same end; growing closer to the other person through interaction and the show of individualism. Another example of such a thing is any type of art, be it music, painting, poetry or any other type. These kind of things are regarded by some to be the greatest show of one's individuality as they may think that each brush stroke in a painting shows some of your personality.

House Hold Chores Essay

Children should not have to work or help with household tasks; their only responsibility should be to study Helping family with household tasks causes no harm to either adult members or children. On the other hand, housework enables children to learn a number of important life skills and to avoid social evils. After school time, children are able to assist their parents with simple household routines such as tidying their own rooms, cooking simple dishes &washing clothes. Such activities teach children essential knowledge and practical experience for their life. During a holiday cooking competition, the winners are the children who are used to doing household tasks in their families. Another example is involvement in daily chores providing children with numerous lessons learnt: time management, awareness of needs, limitations, responsibilities, encouragement them to recognize dos and don’ts. Requesting/ instructing a child to clean his or her dirty shoes after coming from school or to clear up the table after meal doesn’t mean demand him or her to do a hard business, but instead these need to be done. It is obvious that children attributed their knowledge and fundamental skills to housework aiding and implementing. Furthermore, social evils are completely avoidable by assigning housework to children in their free time. Idle children are an underlying cause of easily engaging in harmful activities such as: online games, violent games, fighting and even gambling without any consideration. In a family, simple responsibility allocations do not only maintain them occupied but also raise their consciousness. For instances, children spend most of their spare time taking care of flowers around their house leaving them no opportunities to involve in internet games instead educate them to appreciate and protect nature. The more homework assignments to children, the more knowledge they gain and the less social evils to be addressed. In conclusion, studying is necessary during childhood but participations in household tasks are not bad ideas. Parents give children household chore means giving them valuable chances to experience and protecting them from evils.

Racial Profiling Essay

Introduction What is racial profiling? The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defines racial profiling as â€Å"the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin† (2005). Do not confuse racial profiling with criminal profiling; criminal profiling is usually practiced by police in which they use a group of characteristics that are associated with crime to target individuals (ACLU, 2005). Examples of racial profiling include using ones race to target specific drivers for traffic violations and pedestrians for illegal contraband; another prime example is the targeting of Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians since 9/11 in regards to minor immigrant violations without any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (ACLU, 2005). Without a doubt, racial profiling occurs on a daily basis all over the world; however let’s focus on racial pr ofiling in the United States and specifically right here in our homeland, Michigan. Background & History When did racial profiling first begin? Even though racial profiling still exists today, it is not a recently new phenomenon. Racial profiling can date back to the 1700s when slavery was a common way of life for many African Americans. Like present-day racial profiling, one’s skin color is what has made them subject to discriminatory treatment from law enforcement (Rushing, K., 2013). In South Carolina, white men policed the black slaves on plantations and hunted for escaped slaves; this was referred to as â€Å"slave patrol†. Most slaves were not free, and if they were they had to carry freedom papers or a pass to prove that they had permission to be off of the plantation (Rushing, K., 2013). If a black person was found to have run away they were beaten, whipped or even killed as the consequence. Even into the 20th century, after slavery, blacks were again forced into another form of involuntary servitude called convict leasing; this is where they were leased to work fo r private companies, whether it be on plantations or railroads and coal mines (Rushing, K., 2013). Regardless of what the 14th amendment states in the Constitution, laws were still broken and applied differently to blacks and whites. This became a major issue when the War on Drugs began in 1982. Reagan wanted to stop drug use and sales with ruthless sentencing  laws; they focused on urban black neighborhoods to promote anti-drug efforts. Although the prison population tripled there were substantial racial disparities; in 2010 the US Bureau of Justice Statistics indicated that black males had an imprisonment rate that was nearly seven times higher than white men (Rushing, K., 2013). And the rate of incarceration among black women was almost three times that of white women; a Human Rights Watch study in 2009 showed that blacks are arrested at much higher rates than whites even though they commit drug offense at comparable rates (Rushing, K., 2013). Racial profiling isn’t spec ifically focused on drug offenses but focuses on any form of crime being committed by any person who isn’t of white decent. There are many notorious instances where racial profiling has occurred including bicycling while black and brown in Eastpointe, Michigan, walking while black and brown in New York City, and gang database racial profiling in Orange County, California. In Eastpointe, 21 young black youths were stopped by police because they were riding their bicycles through a white suburb. The ACLU joined the suite against Eastpointe, Michigan, to represent the youths. They argued that the â€Å"bicyclists were stopped in this predominantly white suburb of Detroit because of their race and not because they were doing anything wrong† (ACLU, 2005). In 1996 a memo sent to the Eastpointe City Manager had a statement from the former police chief that he instructed his officers to investigate any black youths riding through Eastpointe subdivisions. Through extensive searching of police logs, it was found that Eastpointe had over 100 incidents between 1995 and 1998 just like this one (ACLU, 2005). In New York City’s police department report in December 1999, the stop and frisk practices showed to be greatly based on race. In NYC, blacks make up 25.6% of the city’s population, Hispanics 23.7% and whites are 43.4% of NYC population. However, according to the report, 50.6% of all persons stopped were black, 33% were Hispanic, and only 12.9% were white. As you can see, more than half of the individuals who were stopped were black, 62.7% to be exact (ACLU, 2013). In Orange County, California Latinos, Asians and African Americans were more than 90% of the 20,221 men and women in the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking System (ACLU, 2013). Clearly this database record shows racial profiling occurred when the total population in the database made up less than half of Orange County’s population. This is when the California Advisory Committee of the  U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the ACLU stepped in. One other instance of racial profiling I’d like to discuss occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona. A court ruled in May 2013 that â€Å"sheriff Joe Arpaio’s routine handling of people of Latino descent amounted to racial and ethnic profiling†; according to CNN, the sheriff’s office had a history of targeting vehicles with those having darker skin, examining them more strictly and taking them into custody more often than others (CNN, 2014). Judge Murray Snow ordered a monitor to oversee retraining in this office and to create a community advisory board to prevent further racial profiling; retraining and monitoring the sheriff’s office will cost the county $21,943,107 over the next year and a half (CNN, 2014). As you can see from the information above, racial profiling is still an issue in present America. In today’s policing environment especially, race relations is one of the most important issues and challenges; to the point of state legislatures contemplating bans on racial profiling, mandate data collection, require police officer training, make funds available for video cameras in police cars and other measures to help put a stop to racial profiling (Portis, E., 2001). Issues/Problems a. Why racial profiling is an issue b. What problems have resulted from racial profiling i. Death c. What problems have occurred because of racial profiling II. Racial Profiling & the Law a. Past/Present laws on racial profiling in Michigan i. House Bill 4927- Racial sensitivity training & retrain officers guilty of racial profiling, along with instructing Michigan’s attorney general’s office to investigate stop & search patterns (Police Foundation, 2005). b. Past/Present court cases in Michigan c. Public attention i. Racial profiling costing Arizona $22 million – to retrain officers and monitor the retraining (CNN, 2014). III. Conclusion a. Solutions to racial profiling i. Retraining police departments Sources: American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU]. (2014). Racial Profiling: Definition. Retrieved February 21, 2014 from: https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling-definition CNN US. (2014). Racial profiling costs Arizona county $22 million. Retrieved February 21, 2014 from: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/us/racial-profiling-payments/ Portis, Ervin. (2005). Racial Profiling: The State of the Law. Retrieved February 20, 2014 from: http://www.ethicsinstitute.com/pdf/Racial%20Profiling%20State%20Laws.pdf Rushing, Keith. (2013). Dissecting the Long, Deep, Roots of Racial Profiling in America. Retrieved February 20, 2014 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith- rushing/dissecting-racial-profiling_b_2740246.html

Knowledge of Organizational Management

Knowledge of Organizational Management Introduction Leadership in profit making and non-profit making organizations has been under study for the past one century. As a result, there have been various theories explaining effective leadership in profit and non-profit making organizations. Leaders have been defined as being individuals with lots of impacts on others to act in a manner that will ensure attainment of organization’s goal or objective.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Knowledge of Organizational Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More However, there has been no enough information explaining the application of such leadership theories in business setting. In addition, the strength and weaknesses of contemporary leadership models have not been exploited fully. As a result, this easy critically demonstrates an application of my knowledge of organization management by synthesizing the information from different readings and class work into work and life experience in organization management. Primary Leadership Theories According to Yuki (1994), â€Å"the main primary leadership theories used in profit and non-profit organizations are Trait Theory, the Behavior Theory and the Contingency Theory. Current leadership theories being researched are Transformational and Servant Leadership.† (Yukl, 1994) Trait Theory: this theory assumes that people are born already having traits which are inherited from generation to another in their lineage. There are some traits which are suited for leadership while others are not. As a result, proponents of this theory try to differentiate different traits in leaders who have been perceived as being great. They have tried to research on physical traits like the leaders’ height as well as psychological like temperament. At long last, their studies have proved the fact that there exist no universal traits of such leaders. However, there are some traits which were found to be of much significance for any leader. Such traits include â€Å"Adaptable to situations, Alert to social environment, Ambitious and achievement-orientated, Assertive, Cooperative, Decisive and Dependable,† (Science.jrank.org 2011) among others. On the other hand, the theory identifies various skills required by any leader in order to be termed as great. Such skills include, â€Å"Clever (intelligent), conceptually skilled, Creative, Diplomatic and tactful, Knowledgeable about group task, Organized, Persuasive, and socially skilled.† (Science.jrank.org 2011) Behavior Theory: it has been stipulated that, behaviors are significant for any leader. This is because; it has been assumed that, behaviors are very important as compared to physical characteristics or mental traits. Studies have found that â€Å"Two types of behavior correlate with great leaders, according to the theory: the ability to organize a task and the ability to express consideration for subordinates.† (Rowe 2007)Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Contingency theory: according to this theory, the most significant quality of any great leader is his or her capability to respond to any contingency that he or she is faced with. Some of these significant contingencies include â€Å"respect level, kind of trust felt by workers for the leader, the level at which the leader can organize any task ahead of him or her, as well as the control over reward and recognition processes for his/her subordinates.† (Science.jrank.org 2011) Servant and Transformational Leadership Theory: this theory states that, â€Å"leaders who are transformational have the ability to impact their subordinates by being examples and much inspiration by him/her-self.† (Jago 1982) Such leaders usually motivate their subordinates to an extent that they end up performing above and even bey ond their job stipulations. Servant leadership on the other hand denies leaders the privilege position, by giving them a responsibility position. This gives them the responsibility of achieving best possible results for the organization they are working for, the subordinates as well as customers or clients. Applications of Various Leadership Theories in Business Settings There exist no single leadership theory that has been applied in business, but in case there is a single application of leadership theory, no matter the process, leaders have brought success in business. However, the difference comes in the processes under which one brings such success. Successful business operations depend much on leadership theories. Such theories have been applied in casting visions, motivating employees as well as positive change implementation. Leadership theories like transformational and behavior theories have been applied directly in the development management of corporate culture in any org anization. In such a manner, such theories have been applied in training effective leaders in business operations to â€Å"produces productive systems, satisfied employees and a positive public image.†(Yukl, 1994) Leadership theories like trait and behavioral theories have been used in the creation of highly productive as well as enjoyable business settings. This is based on the fact that, they have been in a position to bring up leaders who have the ability of defining â€Å"business vision statement, goals and standards the company will uphold.† (Science.jrank.org 2011) These theories have been used to fulfill the responsibility of encouraging both feedbacks as well as change implementation. Such theories have been addressing conflict resolution issues as well as making wise decisions concerning business environments.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Knowledge of Organizational Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Leadership theories have been very helpful in the process of identifying leadership types in business settings. Some of these leadership types include, â€Å"authoritative leaders, who operate solely, making executive decisions that are communicated to lower-management and implemented throughout the company. Democratic business leadership relies on employee feedback and participation to make decisions and brainstorm.†(Jago 1982) Democratic leadership has copied more from transformational leadership theory by ensuring that business leaders are in a position of giving tasks to different teams, while still overseeing other tasks. Leadership theories like trait, behavior, contingency and others, have shown leadership qualities like integrity, communication skills in business settings. Leaders having such qualities have been exceeding their expectations, apart from living up to the standards of their expectations. Business leaders have applied such qualities i n effective communication both at personal and organization’s levels; they have also been in a position of foreseeing issues like success, apart from having the ability to plan for difficulties in advance. Leadership theories have been applied in business particularly in the creation of â€Å"an effective organizational structure, satisfied employees and a positive public image.† (Jago 1982)This is based on the fact that, Leadership theories have been responsible for combining systems as well as policies that have been established in any business setting. In one way or the other, apart from inspiring and guiding employees, employees have also find greater satisfaction as a result of â€Å"vision, direction and reward which produces purpose and fulfillment.† (Rowe 2007) Companies have used leadership theories in the process of creating public image. This has been due to well thought out external communication. Such theories have been in apposition of taking care of clients and ensuring healthy business relations. However, it should be noted that, the application of leadership theories in business setting is a growth process which might require continual training as well as development through seminars, reading books as well as joining network accountability groups. Strengths and Weaknesses of Contemporary Leadership Models Contemporary leadership models have the ability of developing visions as well as inspiring followers to attain a certain goal. Managers following contemporary leadership models like transformational as well as charismatic models have the ability to lead passionately as well as enthusiastically.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This is because; the models have the ability to equip such managers with convincing power, hence they can convince their subordinates to accept changes that have been recommended. As a result, their subordinates remain committed to the completion of necessary work for organization transformation. On the other hand, leadership models increases dependence on leaders. Though such leaders have the ability to attract followers that need inspirational along with energetic guidance, such followers might be convinced by leadership models to follow their leaders blindly. This is because; followers might place lots of emphasis on pleasing their leaders, other than attaining a long term objective. Such models can also lead to abuse and misuse of powers. It is true that leaders following leadership models usually come out of risky situations as they usually inspire their followers to take chances that might lead to innovations and creativity. However, such leaders may â€Å"use their powers to make positive impacts in organizations, some leaders exploit their totalitarian control by manipulating situations for their own gains. Subordinates may obey leaders without considering the long-term impacts as these leaders are so convincing and inspiring.† (Science.jrank.org 2011) Last but not least, such models are only based on theoretical statements, not putting into practice the real life managers as well as leaders undergo while undertaking their operations. Conclusion In conclusion, though there isn’t enough information explaining the application of primary leadership theories in profit and non-profit organization, this essay has provided at least some information concerning primary leadership theories used in profit as well as non-profit organization. It has also outlined how such theories have been applied in business settings. Apart from addressing the strength of contemporary leadership models in day to day leadership strategies, the essay has also addresse d their weaknesses. With is kind of synthesized information, organization leaders can achieve more in their organization, as compared to their job descriptions. References Jago, G. (1982). Leadership: Perspectives in theory and research. Management Science. 28(3): 315-336. Rowe, W. (2007). Cases in Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Science.jrank.org . (2011). Leadership The Rise of Contemporary Leadership Theory. Retrieved from: https://science.jrank.org/pages/9943/Leadership-Rise-Contemporary-Leadership-Theory.html Yukl, G. (1994). Leadership in Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Personal Essay on Changing Schools Essays

Personal Essay on Changing Schools Essays Personal Essay on Changing Schools Essay Personal Essay on Changing Schools Essay When I found out I was changing schools I felt like my whole world was going to end. I did not want to leave my old school and my friends. My dad received a job opportunity and was transferred to another state so my family and I did not have a choice but to go. So much anxiety built up inside as I realized that I had to make new friends at a new school. Also, being aware that I had to retake a class because some of my credits did not transfer. When I did began my first week of school my whole life changed for the better. On the first day of school I cruised into class thinking to myself, â€Å"I can most likely make this new school thing work.† The first desk I saw was open so I sat in it. The teacher called me to the front of the class. I was really nervous as the palm of my hands became sweaty as I walked to the front of the class. She politely stated, â€Å"Class we have new student. Her name is Sarahlyn Argrow.† I went back to my desk with a smile on my face. When t he bell rang I went to my next class which was economics. Economics was one of the classes I had to retake because it didn’t transfer over from my other high school. I met my best friend till this day Leya Ferguson in my economic class. As I am sitting in the front of the class a girl came and sat in the desk right next to me. â€Å"Hey what is your name? Are you new here?† she questioned. â€Å"Hi my name is Sarahlyn Argrow and yes I am new here.† I delightedly replied. We continued the conversation. We both were able to get to know each other very well. We started going to the movies, mall, and just hanging out. We got along well. We even tried out for the cheerleading team together; an experience I will never forget! We both made the team and have been the close of friends ever since. Making new friends wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Making the cheerleading team came with a lot of great things. The team was very nice and they welcomed me onto the team with open arms. I became captain and so did my friend Leya. Coming onto the cheerleading I thought it was going to be hard to find my place on a new team. I was used to being around with the girls at my old school. However, the transition was very easy and I became comfortable very quickly. When I changed to a new school my perspective changed on the situation. I made a great best friend that is still my best friend. I made the cheerleading team and made more amazing friends. I had to retake a class but exceeded in it so it was not bad at all. Thinking back on it, if I had not changed schools I do not know how my life would be like. I realized that sometime good things come out of change and a lot good things came out of my situation. From my experience through this journey I learned that when something changes it can be for the better and not always for the worse. So I am thankful till this day.

The Best Time Management Tips for Busy Professionals

The Best Time Management Tips for Busy Professionals Running a business is no easy feat! As an entrepreneur, you need to handle intense workload in a dynamic business environment. No matter how much work you have, all you have got are just 24 hours to manage them all! What if you fail to cope up with the workflow within the stipulated time?Relax! You don’t need to get disappointed.Maybe you are trying your best, but there is always room for improvement. It’s high time that you master some time management techniques to run your business smoothly. If you don’t have a brilliant plan, you can’t manage your time effectively.When complex tasks seem to be daunting, take your time. Break extensive tasks into manageable parts. Delegate tasks to the experts, and get more things done in less time. Even if you can’t complete everything at once, at least you can make the progression steady. Proceed with the tasks in such a way, so that the progress can be measured periodically.Putting a plan in place will help you achieve today what you’d otherwise put off until tomorrow. Revisit the plan regularly and make adjustments to it when needed.Remember that true productivity isn’t measured by the amount of time you remain busy. It’s about how efficiently you can perform to achieve the desired result.Thinking how to manage your time effectively? We have made your work simpler!The VA team at MyTasker has developed a comprehensive infographic on 17 Time Management Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs. These tips will help you strengthen your business strategies so that you remain stress-free.Go through the following infographic and get to know how to manage your time effectively!

The business environment of ARM along with an appraisal of the Essay

The business environment of ARM along with an appraisal of the organizations strategy - Essay Example According to the study conducted ARM may see itself in the PC Market in direct competition with Intel. Intel, initially operated in the PC Market and both the companies, though manufactured microprocessors, catered to different markets entirely. Intel had strong hold over the PC industry while ARM boasted sales in the mobile industry. However, in the recent years, with the PC market coming to a cooling phase, Intel has decided to enter the mobile market and make competition tough for ARM. The possibility of new entrants in the market is quite low. New entrants in the case ARM are only occurring in the shape of Intel that previously went with capturing the PC market; and even though Intel is a huge company as compared to ARM, it will still be facing difficulty in competing with ARM. This makes threat of new entrants low. There are two reasons behind the low threat of entrants. Firstly, ARM has been able to develop a near monopoly in the cell phone market. The buyers of ARM are satisfi ed with ARM at this point of time and do not wish to switch to new substitutes. Another reason is that ARM has developed specific software that work with its microprocessors; and asking buyers to switch would be asking to invest money and time in understanding and adapting to different software that could complicate issues. Threat of Substitute Products is medium for ARM. At this point of time, the threat of substitute products is balanced for ARM. While the semiconductor industry is quite competitive with the presence of industries such as Intel, Samsung, Toshiba etc, ARM is able to generate revenues because of its software and licensing. This makes it difficult for competitors to replace the ARM chips in 95% of the cell phones (Clara, 2012). Manufactures of cell phones have adapted to the technology of ARM and do not wish to switch over to substitute products that may not generate the same value as that of ARM. The cost of switching over to substitute products is quite high for th e buyers which include additional risk; but this is counterattacked by the presence of giants in the semi-conductor industry that could take hold of the ARM market with some effort. Bargaining Power of the Buyers: Bargaining Power of the Buyers in the case of ARM is quite high. This is because the buyers mainly include chipmakers such as Qualcomm, who would likely produce their own semiconductors if the prices of the chips exceed further. At the moment, ARM is generating profits through royalty and license fees on the chips that it sells with royalty as low as 1 percent for each chip (D’ Altorio, 2010). Bargaining Power of the Suppliers: Bargaining Power of the Suppliers in this case is medium. This is because ARM does not manufacture its own microprocessors but is dependant of outside suppliers. ARM has its own RISC chips that are energy efficient and sell the most; therefore supplier power is low as compared to the buyer power Competitive Rivalry: From the above analysis, w e can conclude that competitive rivalry for ARM in the cell phone market is low but in the semiconductor industry, ARM ranks quite low in terms of its sales. ARM enjoys a significant power in the market due to its licensing but other than

Moulding Techniques for a Brake Caliper Assignment

Moulding Techniques for a Brake Caliper - Assignment Example End products are normally component products applicable in various industries and applications. Below are samples of brake calipers of the various make of vehicles. It is also known as expandable pattern casting (EPC). LFC involves the substitution of a low solidity foam prototype by liquid metal. It offers the capability of a direct production of nearly any multifaceted geometry including sophisticated cavities and undercuts without tapers and the requirement for considerable completed work (Bhattacharjee 201). Compared to the conservative sand casting methods it has an environmental and economic advantage. The actual LFC-system applies patterns of expandable polystyrene (EPS) for manufacturing applications. These patterns, directly designed to shape, are engrossed in a molding case with binder less sand. The fluid metal, which is dispensed into the molds of the downspouts, vaporizes the EPS model, which is specifically substituted by the metal (Bhattacharjee 201). With the opportunity of assembled prototypes very sophisticated shapes can be generated and the castings can be replicated with amazing dimensional accuracy. Pattern making: The first material needed for pattern production is EPS. The first step in the LFC-procedure is the pre-enlargement of EPS beads. After maturing the beads are gusted into a mold producing the pattern part. The mold is then heated up with steam to expand the beads more and tightly fit the hole of the mold. Hot vapor and enlargement of the beads make them to weld together (Bhattacharjee 201). Cluster assembly. Complicated parts involving hidden cavities and undercuts cannot be molded in one operational step, but are accumulated from pattern sections into a complete pattern. Amalgamation techniques used are heated platen welding, gluing and plugging. In order to augment the effectiveness of the total process, numerous patterns are joined into a cluster and provided with a common gate structure, also made of EPS.

The Issues with Infrastructure Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Issues with Infrastructure - Research Paper Example Unfortunately, the need to build new infrastructure comes at a time when we are dealing with economic deficit. The paper will look into account, the major issues with our infrastructure, including effects of terrorism and natural disasters, funding for departments and new policies aimed at involving private sector in building the new infrastructure. Terror attacks have come up as a new threat against our society and security has emerged as a primary factor to be embedded in our current infrastructure. Security has new found priority, in particular after September 11 attacks. We had to make severe changes in different sectors of infrastructure to reduce the threat. One such example can be seen at airports. Increased traffic has caused congestion at most airports and they have become exceedingly crowded places along with aging infrastructure including runways. Security measures have contributed towards the problem and we see installments of new scanners and surveillance equipment all a round. They have opened up a new fundamental requirement for security and eaten up heavy investments. Terror threats have changed the normal procedures to security centric setup and have left a footprint on the old infrastructure that is modified to incorporate security features. The infrastructure in place for natural disaster includes early warning systems to give government a chance of implementing safeguards. Besides these monitoring systems, rescue teams are elaborately tasked and standard operating procedures for each are very well defined.

Did asteroids kill the dinosaurs Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Did asteroids kill the dinosaurs - Coursework Example Many scientists currently believe that a large asteroid impact caused such devastation on the planet that nearly all of the higher life forms, including the large dinosaurs, were killed off. This is evidenced by a large crater found outside of Chicxulub, Mexico, which is also known as the Yucatan crater because it is found at the end of the Yucatan peninsula. At first, however, the main source of evidence for this theory was the existence of a layer of irridium dust found in many places all over the planet. This element is not commonly found in large amounts on the Earth's surface, and its presence in a single band at a similar depth in a number of different soils could mean that a large asteroid containing irridium crashed into the Earth and scattered dust all over the planet (York 2006). When the Chicxulub crater was eventually found, it turned out to be an elongated crater from a hit that most likely involved a low angle of impact. This further supports the irridium evidence since the low angle of impact means that the asteroid would have basically exploded, sending its pieces flying, as well as throwing up a huge cloud of dust and debris (Hecht 1996). The asteroid theory states that the dinosaurs would have been killed as a result of this dust cloud. The dust cloud was so enormous as to have risen into the atmosphere and been swept around the planet by the circulating air currents. The sunlight would be blocked out by this dust cloud, reducing the ability of plants to photosynthesise and create energy off of which they could live. Since plants are at the bottom of nearly all of the food chains on Earth, without the energy provided to them through photosynthesis, animal life struggled to find enough food. Most of the dinosaur species were large and heavy, requiring huge amounts of plant life to support their energy needs; as the plants died out, so did the dinosaurs, leaving only the relatively much smaller mammals and birds. In addition, this cloud caused t he temperature all over the planet to drop, directly killing off many dinosaur species (York 2006). However, no actual physical evidence exists that the asteroid which struck at Chicxulub was responsible for those changes. The fossil record of that era is scarce, and some of what does exist suggests a much longer and drawn-out extinction event than is usually suggested with the asteroid extinction theory. This claim, though, is based on studies performed in the Far East, especially China, which is far from the suggested impact site. Perhaps the fossil record at this location suggests a slower extinction because it is far from the impact crater and so the climate changes and plant life die-off happened slower (Zhao et al. 2008). Climate change is another suggestion for what could have killed off the dinosaurs. Most dinosaurs were what is known as ecothermic reptiles, taking in their heat from the environment rather than making it themsevles as mammals and birds do. In addition to the direct effects of the temperature dropping, the climate change would also have affected plant life in the same way that climate change after the asteroid would have. However, the ultimate cause of this climate change, other than if it were caused by the

The strategy of Cathay Pacific (Customer Loyalty) BA (Hons) in Essay

The strategy of Cathay Pacific (Customer Loyalty) BA (Hons) in Business Administration - Essay Example In order to sustain in the competitive global market, the airline services significantly needed to acquire great proportion of loyalty and satisfaction from the customer. However, this high competition has proved to be an advantage for the travelers as they get chance to travel for low cost. With every airline service offering better product quality, lower price and promotional offers, the competition became even tougher. Since there is numerous number of airlines in the international routes, it gets harder to reap on profits .It is a saddening fact that the event of September 11 attack has impacted the airline industry in a very destructive way. It not only decreased the passenger traffic but also hiked up the airfares to make things worse. Eventually, the global recession made the airline industry struggle to subsist in the market and maintain their profit ratio. Subsequently, the only way to boost the sales was to gain customer confidence and loyalty. In order to gain customer’s satisfaction and loyalty, the airline industry initiated to make use of the marketing mix and its 7Ps.Since only a right marketing strategy can increase the customer’s loyalty and satisfaction; the airline services rested their trust on the 7 ps of marketing mix model. The 7 elements of marketing mix like product, process, price, place, physical evidence, people and promotion was sure the best concept for them. For this reason, the airline companies started to come up with promotions, advertising campaigns, frequent flyer programs and many online services to melt the mind and hearts of customers. They assured the customer that they would not regret for choosing their service as they are the best in the market in respect of price and comfort. Many airline services experienced that the customers definitely responded well to their marketing strategies and this enabled them to at least cover up their operating

Did asteroids kill the dinosaurs Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Did asteroids kill the dinosaurs - Coursework Example Many scientists currently believe that a large asteroid impact caused such devastation on the planet that nearly all of the higher life forms, including the large dinosaurs, were killed off. This is evidenced by a large crater found outside of Chicxulub, Mexico, which is also known as the Yucatan crater because it is found at the end of the Yucatan peninsula. At first, however, the main source of evidence for this theory was the existence of a layer of irridium dust found in many places all over the planet. This element is not commonly found in large amounts on the Earth's surface, and its presence in a single band at a similar depth in a number of different soils could mean that a large asteroid containing irridium crashed into the Earth and scattered dust all over the planet (York 2006). When the Chicxulub crater was eventually found, it turned out to be an elongated crater from a hit that most likely involved a low angle of impact. This further supports the irridium evidence since the low angle of impact means that the asteroid would have basically exploded, sending its pieces flying, as well as throwing up a huge cloud of dust and debris (Hecht 1996). The asteroid theory states that the dinosaurs would have been killed as a result of this dust cloud. The dust cloud was so enormous as to have risen into the atmosphere and been swept around the planet by the circulating air currents. The sunlight would be blocked out by this dust cloud, reducing the ability of plants to photosynthesise and create energy off of which they could live. Since plants are at the bottom of nearly all of the food chains on Earth, without the energy provided to them through photosynthesis, animal life struggled to find enough food. Most of the dinosaur species were large and heavy, requiring huge amounts of plant life to support their energy needs; as the plants died out, so did the dinosaurs, leaving only the relatively much smaller mammals and birds. In addition, this cloud caused t he temperature all over the planet to drop, directly killing off many dinosaur species (York 2006). However, no actual physical evidence exists that the asteroid which struck at Chicxulub was responsible for those changes. The fossil record of that era is scarce, and some of what does exist suggests a much longer and drawn-out extinction event than is usually suggested with the asteroid extinction theory. This claim, though, is based on studies performed in the Far East, especially China, which is far from the suggested impact site. Perhaps the fossil record at this location suggests a slower extinction because it is far from the impact crater and so the climate changes and plant life die-off happened slower (Zhao et al. 2008). Climate change is another suggestion for what could have killed off the dinosaurs. Most dinosaurs were what is known as ecothermic reptiles, taking in their heat from the environment rather than making it themsevles as mammals and birds do. In addition to the direct effects of the temperature dropping, the climate change would also have affected plant life in the same way that climate change after the asteroid would have. However, the ultimate cause of this climate change, other than if it were caused by the

Stress Management in Law Enforcement Research Paper

Stress Management in Law Enforcement - Research Paper Example Objective The Objective of this paper is to look into the importance of stress management in the law enforcement organizations and focus on the implementation techniques by the law enforcement agencies in contrast to the private organizations for managing this menace for their employees’ performance. Methodology Stress Management is quite generic topic which is wide spread over various professions. There is no profession or social activity in which stress is not produced. However there is an interaction among the people and there is a thinking capability of each person that distinguishes one from another, stress is there. Thus in order to approach the purpose of this paper, secondary research data is prominently used. There is a good material available online which needed to be carefully read and understood to extract the findings behind the main topic. Stress Management in law enforcement is interesting in the terms it has grown more important as the criminal activities around the globe are increasing nod thus more accountability surrounds the law enforcement personnel and police officers causing a state of mental stress. In order to find out the implementation activities by law enforcement agencies in order to train their staff to effectively cope up with the stress produced in their daily routine or in the cases of unpredictable incidents is studied through the journals and articles on this topic. As per Law Enforcement Stress Program, topics like anger management, self confidence, self esteem, performance stress; accountability handling and relationship building envelope the overall topic of stress management in law enforcement for which perception based strategies as well as action based strategies are employed. What is Stress? In any field, wherever there is a person to person contact, conflicts are the natural things to happen. People are reluctant to accept other’s opinions and the fact that every person is independent and different in terms of the perspective, he looks towards an issue creates conflicts. These conflicts are the primary reason of mental distress that we refer as stress. Stress keeps the person buy in unwanted distress of mental state and therefore it affects the capability of a person to focus or even think about a particular task. This advisedly affects the performance of a person in any activity he performs. This is also important to note that stress is not just an instantaneous state of the mind. Rather a mind can undergo stress that can affect the mental power and capability to focus for the lifetime. The state of stress keeps a person thinking about some particular issue with no direction and sometime even nothing is under focus but even then the mind is under stress. Mental stress does affect and propagates itself into physical stress too. Hence, a person under stress condition is unable to perform his or her tasks with a value addition input. There are various indications of persons who are under stress. However, these indications may differ from one person to another and also depend upon factors such as internal or external conditions. Some of these internal conditions are psychological pressure, cut-throat competition and incompetency issues. External conditions may be in the form of stressful conversation s with colleagues, bosses,

The Impossibility in the Quest for Adventure Essay Example for Free

The Impossibility in the Quest for Adventure Essay Growing up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, James Joyce experienced the hardships plaguing Irish society first-hand. Born just forty years after the Great Famine, he frequently heard about the mass suffering that killed over a million of the Irish people. This suffering continued even decades later as his family lived in dire poverty and constant struggle. To escape such harsh and stifling conditions, Joyce spent much of his youth wandering the streets of Dublin. As a result, many of his struggles and realizations mirror the struggles and realizations of the characters in his short stories. In Eveline and A Little Cloud, Joyce emphasizes the futility he found in the quest for adventure in order to escape reality. In his short story Eveline, Joyce illustrates the impossibility of escaping from the harsh realities of a difficult home situation and an abusive father. Joyce describes how even though Eveline was nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her fathers violence(33). However, not only is she physically in danger but she is also emotionally suffocated by her difficult and restricted life. For example, she has to give all of her wages to her father, keep the house together, and watch over her two younger siblings. This suffocation exists throughout the story, through the image of the dusty cretonne. Joyce describes how Eveline would [lean] her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of the dusty cretonne(35). Symbolically, Eveline is suffocated by her feelings of nostalgia and obligation to stay home and fulfill her domestic duties. She thinks about running off with her lover Frank to Buenos Ayres to escape this stifled environment and make her happier and more fulfilled. At the same time, however, she constantly struggles with the idea of leaving home. Joyce emphasizes the impossibility of escape throughout the story as Eveline [weighs] each side of the questions(32). She notes that on one hand, leaving home would mean she would leave the people she had known her whole life and would also prevent her fulfilling the promise she had made to her dead mother to stay. She also worried about what people would say if she ran away with Frank. However, only a few sentences later, she expresses her desire to travel to a distant unknown country where she would be married and where people would treat her with respect(33). Evelines conflict climaxes at the end of the story when she cant bring herself to board the ship to Buenos Ayres with Frank. Joyce describes how all the seas of the world tumbled about her heart and how Frank would drown her(36). Just as the dusty cretonne of her home situation is suffocating, Evelines quest for adventure and escape from that situation make her feel as if she is drowning. In both cases she emblematically cannot breathe. In the end, her nostalgia, promise to her mother, and her fear of the unknown that prevent her from fulfilling her quest for adventure and relieving her from her everyday struggles. Little Chandler in Joyces short story A Little Cloud has a similar epiphany. He too is lured to the quest for adventure but eventually realizes the futility in his pursuit. His desire to escape from the ordinariness of his life is first seen when he meets with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher who has traveled the world and become a successful journalist. As Gallaher talks about his experiences, Little Chandler reflects on what stood in his way of becoming what he wanted to be in life-a poet. He comments that he was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever done, or could ever do yet he questions what stood in his way. After he returns home he thinks more about Gallehers adventures and compares them to what he sees as his dull existence. For example, as he looks at a picture of his wife he notes that the composure of [her] eyes irritated and repelled him. He also notices that they had no passion, especially when compared to the rich Jewesses that Gallaher had described so vividly. Little Chandler noted how their dark, oriental eyes were so full of passion and asked himself why had he married the eyes in the photograph?(81). At this point, Little Chandlers desire for adventure is seen most clearly. He asks himself could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher?(81). As he holds his child in his arms his question is answered; he realizes that his quest is hopeless. As the child cries, the poems that Little Chandler had been reading become less and less auditable. The poems, written by a romantic Irish poet, seem to represent the possibility for Little Chandler to escape. As the childs cries take over the poetry, reality also takes over the possibility of adventure and escape for Little Chandler. He now realizes that he is in fact a prisoner for life(82).

Does Herzbergs Motivator And Hygiene Factor Theory Apply Tourism Essay

Does Herzbergs Motivator And Hygiene Factor Theory Apply Tourism Essay Motivation is a driving force that gives an individual the zeal to undertake a task. Taiwan has experienced success in managing its technological and other traditional sectors due to the motivation that it gives to employees. Managers are aware that the control system of running business is non-motivating to the employees (Fulton, Maddock, 1998). They believe in giving individual responsibility for them to utilize their ability. According to Herzberg, work achievements, recognition, responsibility, and growth are motivating factors to employees. The theory is not limited to any form of culture and does not consider any. The theory of Herzberg is much applicable in Taiwan since they believe in giving individuals responsiveness (Silverstein, 2007). Taiwan believe in giving individuals the chance make use of their knowledge to explore their capability and ability. Employees have the chance to advance and grow in Herzberg hygiene theory. According to Herzberg, if the hygiene factor is t aken into consideration it could help in eliminating peoples dissatisfactions. Herzberg believes that employees get responsibility based on their level of ability, which is the same principle that managers in Taiwan use. They give employees responsibility based on an employees level of skill and knowledge (Pophal, 2002). Herzbergs theory is based on the satisfying factors, which is the motivation, and the dissatisfaction factor that is the hygiene. According to Herzberg, the hygiene factor help in dealing with dissatisfactions on the side of employees or the employers. The theory states that various factors may cause dissatisfaction to the employees, which eventually may lead to poor performance. Herzberg believes that the hygiene factors that cause dissatisfaction are strict work supervision and tight company policies (Herzberg, Frederick Herzberg (Author) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ º Visit Amazons Frederick Herzberg Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central Mausner, Snyderman, 1993). Most of the employees are unable to perform well under such conditions. They feel suppressed and unmotivated to use their skills. Managers in Taiwan are aware of the facts that employees need space to use their skills without strict supervision and need to be trusted to make decision on behalf of the company. Just like Herzberg states, that company policy may be dissatisfying, Taiwanese give their employees the chance and the stake in policymaking (Silverstein, 2007). Herzberg hygiene theory poses challenging tasks to employees as a way of increasing their capability in utilizing their knowledge, which is a tactic used by managers in Taiwan. The managers believe in employees full ability utilization therefore, they give them challenging tasks so that they can use their knowledge and learn more. Additionally, Herzberg believes that appreciation is an employee motivation that helps in utilizing his ideas and skill fully. Taiwan is a soaring country as rated for it high performance. Employees in Taiwan are highly rewarded for their job improvement and excellent work performance. They get bonuses as incentives in work places, which are powerful motivators (HerzbergFrederick Herzberg (Author) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ º Visit Amazons Frederick Herzberg Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central , Mausner Snyderman, 1993). To some extent, the hygiene factor is rough to employees that are not able to utilize their full ability. This is because Herzberg suggests that employees who are unable to utilize their skills to the fullest should be replaced. In Taiwan, most of the employees are aware of replacement facts for failure of skill and knowledge utilization therefore, go extra miles in whatever tasks they take. On the other side, Herzberg hygiene factor recommend promotion to employees for their well performance as a way of motivation. This factor is similar to that of Taiwanese because promotion is based on the performance of an individual employee. The fact that they get promotion for their improvement and performance, employees in Taiwan are so eager to learn and acquire knowledge and skills. It is a fact that most of the employees learn through the e-learning program at their work places. To them promotion is a motivating factor that make them be always at their best. Employees in Taiwan compete among themselves to produce good results and give the best services since they know there are rewards. Personal growth and achievement according to Herzberg is important and employees in Taiwan work towards that for the short-term and long-term rewards (HerzbergFrederick Herzberg (Author) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ º Visit Amazons Frederick Herzberg Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central , Mausner, Snyderman, 1993). Motivation is an important aspect of work performance and result satisfaction for the organization. Therefore, it is worth studying and putting into considerations. Managers and employers should learn the behaviors of their employees and understand the motivating factor of each. According to Herzberg, motivated employees have the energy and will to be productive which, eventually help in organizational survival (Pophal, 2002). Taiwan managers are keen on the role that their employees perform so that they can motivate them. Managers understand that motivated employees perform well. The managers are aware of the fact that an increased income makes money a lesser motivator. This means that work that interest them is more of a motivator (Bruce, Formisano, Anne Bruce (Author) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ º Visit Amazons Anne Bruce Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central Pepitone, 1998). Motivation helps in eliminating tension in the work place. Managers and employees are well able to communicate and make decisions together with a clear focus. Additionally, motivation encourages employees to learn more and acquire knowledge and skill. These employees are able to stand any challenges that arise thus being competitive. Taiwan has a cross cultural in its work environment which is a very important issue of consideration because of the adjustments. This means that globally the managers should study what motivate employees across different cultures. On the other side, managers learn the best econometric models that can impart cross-cultural environments and bring satisfactions to the employees (Bruce, Formisano Anne Bruce (Author) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ º Visit Amazons Anne Bruce Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central Pepitone, 1998). The motivating factor in on culture is different from another. Once companies study the motivating factors, they are able to adopt open system of management that gives employees greater autonomy. Herzberg motivation-hygiene factors are considered over other motivation theories because it pinpoints the dissatisfying needs. The lower categories of Maslows hierarchy of needs are similar to Herzberg hygiene factor. The difference is that the hygiene factors lead to dissatisfaction for their non-fulfillment. Two companies were tested from Taiwan and outside. Shih and Chinerawat developed an econometric model to test the two-factor theory of Herzberg. There was sufficient satisfaction from the model, which also reviewed that, the application of hygiene factor different cross cultures (Chinerawat, 2009). Herzberg hygiene factor was reviewed to impact considerable satisfaction in the cross-cultural work setting in the companies of test. Finally, the question of what would be the impact of the hygiene factor on the Taiwan industries is crucial. This is because different cultures have different motivating factors. Employees from Taiwan and those working in Taiwan but different cultures act differently. Herzberg hygiene factor caters for all cultures because it deals with the issue of work satisfaction. These help managers to understand different cultures and appreciate them with the aim of improving the competitiveness of different employees (Chinerawat, 2009). In conclusion, Herzberg states that hygiene factor is not directly proportional to work. That is because if bad working conditions lead to unsatisfied workers. Managers ought to understand that every individual employee is unique and is motivated differently. Taiwanese managers have learnt that money is not always a motivating factor and have sought other factors. This has led to their enormous success in the electronic fields compared to other countries. The managers have borrowed a leaf of Herzberg Hygiene factor to know what motivates and satisfy their employees. Taiwanese understand that a self-fulfilling factor increase productivity and improves performance (Chinerawat, 2009).

The Symlar San Fernando Valley Earthquake of 1971 :: Seismology natural disaster

Earthquakes are best described as a shaking or vibration of the ground caused by breaking of rock. Sometimes they are very strong and other times you would hardly notice them. This shaking occurs when stress that builds up in the crust is suddenly released as the crust breaks free and/or slides against the other pieces of crust. Earthquakes may also be thought of as the breaking of a popsicle stick by applying pressure to both ends at the same time. Should you try this experiment , you will feel the pressure build up as you apply more force until the stick snaps. When the stick snaps you will feel an instant of pain at your fingers as the stress reduces and energy waves move throughout the stick. When the earth's crust is placed under similar types of stress, binding as the stress builds, it will also snap and release the energy into the surrounding rocks, 'ooch'. Thinking about earthquakes will become more clear if you try another experiment. Experiment Find two regular red bricks, or any color will do. Place them on the table side-by-side touching each other. Now push them together with a little bit of force and slide one past the other while applying the force. You will find that they do not slide past each other very easily while applying a force to push them together. As you manage to force the bricks past each other, you may notice by feeling and hearing a vibration and a jerking type of movement. You have simulated an earthquake . Now set a small toy , a rubber eraser, a coin or other item on each of the bricks and do the experiment again. You can see that the objects bounce, fall and move about as the bricks slide past each other. Taadaa! You have created an earthquake in the toy world! Now place one of the bricks one on top of the other. Put some toys on top of the upper brick and slide the top brick across the bottom brick. This is called a 'thrust' fault when one piece of crust slides over top of the other. This is much mo re like what happened during the Sylmar earthquake. Are the toys O.K.? Unfortunately, this is what happens in the real world too. Real Life The vibration and jerky movements cause things to fall, bounce around and sometimes break.

Psle in Singapore Debate Essay

In this commentary, I chose my artefact as a newspaper article on PSLE stress because of many reasons. 1) I had always harbored a strong interest on what everyone is saying about this hot topic and it seemed very interesting, stating just one problem that Singapore currently face. 2) Other than that, it is a topic that is easy to research, unlike some historic things which are little-mentioned (e.g. the banana note, the merdeka talks,etc) 3) Last but not least,it is a topic that is widely discussed on and more sources can be found My view on the issue of PSLE Singaporeans have long since been debating whether to remove PSLE. I personally do not think that PSLE should be removed. On the issue of abolishing PSLE, my concern is if we do not have the PSLE, when it comes to the entrance to secondary schools, how do you decide who goes to which school? I sometimes wish we were a bit like Hogwarts in Harry Potter, where you have the sorting hat that decides which house you go to. But in reality, we do not have a sorting hat and how do we decide who goes to which school? If you did not do it according to grades and scores, how would you do it? Another way would be to do it geographically, where you go into the secondary school nearest to your home, but if you did that, everybody will be fighting to be in the primary school near the secondary school you want to be in. PSLE assess how much you have learnt over the six years in primary school and then allocates you to a secondary school according to your abilities and/or choice. If you remove it, you might as well say to remove all exams. On abolishing PSLE, let’s presume we do away with it, then how do we decide who goes to which school? If which school you are going is decided on ‘does the Principal know your father or your mother?’ then it’s not a very meritocratic system nor is it acceptable. It is totally, I think, against Singapore’s system. If it is to be decided by the distance and you live very near a very good school, can you imagine the pressure to enter a primary school that is near the secondary school you want to go to. If a sudent had done very badly, but he or she stays very near a good secondary school, he would get in, but a person who did better and stays lets say 10km away would not be able to enter if according to that policy. Imagine how disapp ointed he or she will feel. One question, is that fair? No doubt many people would say it is not.There is a whole range of scenarios that will come up if Singapore removes PSLE as the sorting exam. The question is how will Singapore deal with it? The real angst about PSLE is the pressure, and the real reason why you have the pressure is that parents perceive that certain schools will give the advantage of getting into university. So, the answer would maybe be to try to make sure that across the board, every school is a good school and that society should change their mindset that a child needs to get into a good school in order to get into university ( which acoording to a survey, is a goalfor many paents. One of the goals of the Singapore government would be ( I think)to make sure that no matter which school students go to, you have a chance to get into a university and even if you do not get into a university, the other options are also pathways to success. I hope that under this system, each person can be the best he or she can be, whether or not that person has a university degree. Why is PSLE bad? 1)Poor education system However, just because I do not think PSLE should be removed doesn’t mean that I totally think it should remain the same. I think, PSLE should not have such a big effect on what type of school a secondary student goes to. In PSLE, the focus tends to be on the aggregate score, which reports each student’s overall performance in comparison with the entire cohort. It’s called a T-score, or transformed score. It’s derived through a certain computation and basically provides a ranking of the entire cohort.* The T-score itself doesn’t actually tell the student how well he has performed in each subject or across all the subjects. In affect, it is a queue number. Thus, I think, to put the stress off the students’ shoulder a little. PSLE should form only about 35% of the final grades. This system also has its benefits as the students will not be so focused on the final examination. They might slack for five years and only start to really work when they are in primary 6. I have the same opinion on all the other major exams too. Also, more weight should be placed on continual assessments, conducted on every semester. Everything is more manageable when it is broken into small parts. This will reduce stress amongst students, and allow individual topics to get the attention deserved. Right now, PSLE encourages parents and students to â€Å"spot† possible exam questions, and prepare for those to the exclusion of all else. If every year’s mark have a large part in the final grade, the students will be more encouraged to work hard and it will be more competitive, resulting in better and smarter young Singaporeans, allowing the country to prosper more. This can happen if we followed the education system that I mentioned other than using other means like, tuition, etc†¦ 2)Encourages poor methods of studying Also, PSLE studying and actual learning have had a bad divorce. The methods common to passing PSLE are: †¢ Ask how, not why. †¢ Don’t experiment or try to be original. Follow what’s worked before, and just copy. †¢ Learn only exam topics. Treat everything else as unimportant. †¢ Memorize model answers, as if they’re cheat codes for a video game. Teachers who try to stray from the path are hammered down. There’s no room for exploration, discourse, or general knowledge. It’s not that students are unaware of this. They know these are bad teaching methods. But the importance of PSLE results overshadows their awareness. When an exam threatens to determine most of a child’s future, fear drives the curriculum (this has happened to me before) On the topic of tuition Ideally, the aim of the education system is that you should be able to pass your exams without tuition. That said, many parents still think that it is necessary for children to have tuition in order for them to do better; not in all the schools but certainly in a percentage of them. My view is that it should not be the case that because you cannot afford tuition you should not be able to pass your exam, which is why MOE has introduced the Learning Support Programmes in schools, mentioned by Minister of education minister Heng at the last Committee Of Supply Debate. The schools are putting a lot more resources to help students who have difficulty with subjects to help them level up. People generally think that Singapore has a good education system and that we are not deprived of a good education. But I do get the sense that many people think that the learning field is not level. The running track (describing the field in which where Singaporeans learn) is the same for everybody. It is just that those from the less affluent backgrounds are coming on with the plain sneakers and the one from the better affluent ones are coming with the branded sneakers which give you more comfort and support. The idea is that, if the playing field is not equal because there are some students who come from families with better resources, then for those students who do not come from families with better resources, at least you help them to level up so that they get a chance to do well. How can Singaporeans adopt a less stressful approach to the PSLE? I like to make a distinction between status and stature. Status is about our relative importance or merit in comparison to other people, who might or might not be better than yourself; assessment sometimes will tell us about academic status. In contrast, stature is inherent, not comparative. It’s about doing the best that you can, and recognising your intrinsic potential. Assessment should also help us develop our stature, and not our status. I know from my own experience how a drop of status badly affects my confidence. I hope this for every teacher and parent: To think and work hard about raising the stature of your children, and not just try to raise their status. Conclusion My conclusion for this is that the PSLE should not be scrapped but should be changed to a better and less stressful exam. So, the format should be changed to one more like the O levels. In the O levels, how well you do within a grade does not matter, just as long you get that particular grade. Once you score an A1, you will not be disadvantaged when compared to a student who has scored A1 with a higher score. I think this should be the model system for the PSLE. Thus , I end my commentary and hope (emphasis) you have enjoyed reading it.

Developments in 3 Dimensional Art in 20th Century Essay

Three dimensional art works went through a heavy period of transition through the 20th century. At the start, sculpture could be summed up in Johann Gottfreid von Herder’s consideration of sculpture as â€Å"a harsh reality. † Unlike painting and the other traditional media, sculpture was being redefined, both formally and technically. Painting, despite the many innovations and explorations that occurred in the 20th century, was still oil and pigment put on a flat surface. But sculpture, rather 3 dimensional arts, became so much more dynamic and expansive. There was no requisite to make 3 dimensional artworks to be made of traditional materials like stone, bronze or wood; but instead, they could-and were-made of anything. One major development was installation art. Installation art was three dimensional works that was meant to engage and transform the exhibition space or whatever is in proximity to the work itself. Land art is the outdoor equivalent of this phenomenon. Installation can be considered coming into real prominence during the 1970’s, but has its roots all the way back with Marcel Duchamp’s readymade sculptures The genre can include traditional and everyday materials, as well as new media such as video, audio, and performance. Before the nomenclature of installation was coined, these types of works were also called environments, project art, and temporary art. Its primary focus is to have the work of art exceed traditional media through the escaping of flat, square frames, and pedestals with isolated objects. Instead, it attempts to immerse the viewer, the environment, and all its other adjunct factors in as a part of the art. For this reason, most installations are considered to have no definite specific media. Instead, it is said that time and space are the only persistent elements of this type of work. The overwhelming element of installations developed from Richard Wagner’s revival of Gesamkunstwerk in his operas. He incorporated every element of art to completely overwhelm the viewer. This is the intent of the installation artist. In another vein, three dimensional arts, particularly the more traditional genre of sculpture, the element and philosophy of minimalism became dominant with the vanguard of David Smith. David Smith is a primary example of this. His sculptures were some of the most original and simplistic sculptures at the time. Among the greatest American sculptors of the twentieth century, David Smith was the first to work with welded metal. He wove a rich mythology around this rugged work, often talking of the formative experiences he had in his youth while working in a car body workshop. Yet this only disguised a brilliant mind that fruitfully combined a range of influences from European modernism including Cubism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. It also concealed the motivations of a somewhat private man whose art was marked by expressions of trauma. Smith was close to painters such as Robert Motherwell, and in many respects he translated the painterly concerns of the Abstract Expressionists into sculpture. But far from being a follower, his achievement in sculpture was distinctive and influential. He brought qualities of industrial manufacturing into the language of art and proved to be an important influence on Minimalism. Collage was an important influence on Smith, and it shaped his work in various ways. It inspired him to see that a sculpture, just like a paper collage, could be made up of various existing elements. It also encouraged him to combine found objects like tools into his sculptures; it later influenced the way he contrasted figurative motifs and informed the way he assembled the large-scale geometric abstract sculptures of his last days. One of Smith’s most important formal innovations was to abandon the idea of a â€Å"core† in sculpture. This notion was pervasive in modern sculpture, fostering an approach that saw sculptural form springing from a center that was almost imagined to be organic and alive. But Smith replaced it with the idea of â€Å"drawing in space. † He would use thin wire to produce linear, transparent sculptures with figurative motifs at their edges. Later he would use large geometric forms to create structures reminiscent of the vigorous gestures of the Abstract Expressionists. One of the means by which Smith sought to keep the viewer at a distance from his sculptures – emotionally and intellectually – was to devise innovative approaches to composition. These were aimed at making it difficult for the viewer to perceive or imagine the entirety of the object at once, forcing us to consider it part by part. One method he used was to disperse pictorial motifs around the edge of the sculpture, so that our eyes have to move from one element to another. Another was to make the sculptures look and seem very different from the front than they do from the side. He completely redefined the construction methods of sculpture, using a blow torch to weld instead of casting—the normal way to make sculpture. As a result, much of his work is highly original, and it is considered that he has a strong relation to painters. The method he uses is, in fact, more closely related to painting than the typical act of sculpture. He adds separate pieces of scrap metal and welds them together. He also pushed the boundaries subjectively in sculpture, producing some subjects that were never produced in three dimensional arts before. Later on, he also began using a sander—which helped define the texture found on his cubi series. It was through this man that American sculpture was defined. Minimalism was his main influence in these later designs, in which he stripped forms of all their excess elements to give it the bare minimum representation. David Smith’s career encompasses a range of styles, from the figurative expressionism of his early relief sculptures, to the organic abstraction of his Surrealist-influenced work, to the geometric constructions of his later years. In this respect, he drew on many of the same European modernist influences as his peers, the Abstract Expressionists. And, like them, one of his most important advances lay in adapting the language Even with David smith and the minimalist movement, there were still more stylistic developments in the 20th century. There was also a resurgence of figurative art during this period. IN 1960, art critic Pierre Restrany wrote a manifesto for a group who called themselves the new realists, and called for a new way of perceiving the real. The term nouveau realisme, or new realism, has long been tied to the specific claims made by the critic Pierre Restany about the Paris-based art group he promoted. Restany convinced Arman, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Daniel Spoerri, Martial Raysse, Jacques de la Villegle, Raymond Hains, and Francois Dufrene to sign on initially, and then added Cesar, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Gerard Deschamps, Mimmo Rotella, and Christo. His 1960 manifesto characterized their art as affirmatively summoning â€Å"the whole of sociological reality, the common good of human activity, the large republic of our social exchanges, of our commerce in society. This movement led to a newfound interest in the human figure, which seemingly disappeared during the popularity of abstract expressionism and minimalism. To this group any image could be incorporated into the art of the new realists. They had a similar goal as the makers of installations—to bring the world of art closer and more applicable to real life. Therefore they tended toward realistic artwork. In the field of figurative art, they often focused on outside objects of the figure for identification, in an attempt to avoid the â€Å"traps of figurative art:† petty bourgeois and Stalinist social realism. These artists also began a more collective attitude towards art, sometimes making works in collaboration with each other, with the intent of displaying the works anonymously. This massive new development in three dimensional work is partially due to the photograph making the realistic image somewhat obsolete, and thus at the beginning of the century an urgency of abstracted and eventually non representative work began to develop. Later on, abstract expressionism pushed boundaries even further to challenge the process of making art. By the time the sixties come around, artists are on the edge of these two frontiers, and some manage to push the boundaries even further, exploring the process more through building installations out of anything and making sculpture from scrap. Others, however, feel a drought in the art world and call for a new, innovative way to display the real. All in all, disinterest in realistic images and a thirst for exploration are what mark the midcentury three dimensional art scenes.

Nature Writing, and the Problem of Canonical Elision Essay

The research paper is quite possibly the most common assignment in English courses at CGU. For tips on how to approach your research papers, see our brochure on Writing in English Courses. The Paper| The struggle now being waged in the professoriate over which writers deserve canonical status is not just a struggle over the relative merits of literary geniuses; it is a struggle among contending factions for the right to be represented in the picture America draws of itself. (Tompkins 201) In 1850, with the help of her well-known father, James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper publishedRural Hours, a natural historical account of one year in the Otsego Lake area of New York state. I mention her father’s name in order to situate Susan Fenimore Cooper in literary history, or, more accurately, to position her book in relation to our understandings of literary history. For truthfully, if literary history were faithful to the developments of, and reactions to, literature of the past, Susan Fenimore Cooper’s name would be well-known to all scholars of nineteenth-century American literature. Her book was immensely popular both in America and abroad; it went through six printings by 1854, the publication year of Thoreau’s Walden. Rural Hours was reissued with a new chapter in 1868, reprinted again in 1876, and then abridged by 199 pages and reissued in 1887. When critics praised Rural Hours1 and the volume sold well, Susan Fenimore Cooper achieved literary fame as a writer of natural history. However, while many of her contemporaries knew her name, most scholars in the 1990s know only of her father. Why this oversight in the construction of literary history?2 In 1968, David Jones, a visitor to the Otsego Lake region in New York, reissued the 1887 edition of Cooper’s book. In his introduction he compares Rural Hours to the canonically established Walden and claims, â€Å"Rural Hours is not, like Walden, a multi-level book† (xxxvii). Instead Cooper’s text, Jones asserts, â€Å"tells us as [well] as a book can†¦how a representative part of the rural northeastern United States looked, sounded,  smelled, and even felt in the middle of the nineteenth century† (xxxvii-viii). Admittedly, portraying a location so fully is no small task, and although Jones intimates that Rural Hours provides enjoyable light reading, he clearly believes that Thoreau’s text far surpasses Cooper’s in its complexity and depth. I want to suggest that Jones’s evaluation of Rural Hours overlooks subtle but important textual intricacies, that Cooper’s text is multi-levelled, and is, in fact, concerned with much more than the local flora and fauna of the Otsego Lake region. One problem in determining the literary value of Rural Hours lies in our inability to classify its genre. The book takes the form of a nonfictional journal, but Rural Hours cannot be classified as autobiography in the traditional sense of one writer imparting the story of his or her life experiences. Cooper portrays her outside world as much as her personal experiences, and she relates her writings to her community more than to her own life. One is tempted to call Rural Hours â€Å"nature writing† and, in fact, her contemporary supporters do classify her text as such, but Cooper’s text does not meet the typical criteria for this genre, either. This is in part because of the imprecision of definitions of nature writing itself. Critics generally agree that nature writing is non-fictional prose in which the writer functions as an observer of the outside world, attempts to represent that outside world in language, and typically, reflects on the process of giving language to the natural world. It is commonly agreed that nature writing also evinces the author’s reflections of his or her individual spiritual growth. Sharon Cameron, in writing about Thoreau, suggests that â€Å"to write about nature is to write about how the mind sees nature, and sometimes about how the mind sees itself† (44). In his recent study of several nature writers, Scott Slovic echoes and expands Cameron’s definition: â€Å"[Nature writers] are not merely, or even primarily, analysts of nature or appreciators of nature–rather, they are students of the human mind† (3). We find, then, that according to our current definitions, â€Å"nature writers† write about their environment, but they also consider their personal relationship to it. Therefore, a writer like Cooper, who concerns herself more directly with her surroundings and less with her personal  reactions to them, somehow does not quite fit the criteria for the genre. How can a book such asRural Hours, rich with observations on the botany, ornithology, and natural history of an area, not be considered nature writing? I submit that we have been trained to read books about the natural world and the human relationship to it in ways that affect our abilities to find value in texts that deviate from the canonical Thoreauvian form–a form based on personal reflections regarding one’s relationship with nature, one’s connection to the community, the difficulties of conveying perceptions through language, and, most importantly, perhaps, the process of forming identity. When contemporary readers realize and examine the expectations that they bring to Rural Hours, and willingly suspend those expectations, thereby allowing the text to reveal its own agenda and voice its own concerns, they will discover that Cooper’s work is rich with insights regarding nineteenth-century America’s social, natural, and historical politics. Rural Hours is not so directly involved in exploring â€Å"how the mind sees nature† or â€Å"how the mind sees itself.† Instead, Cooper concerns herself with the ominous task of giving words to each aspect of her natural surroundings and to exploring the implications of this environment not for herself as an individual, but for her larger community, and ultimately, for the entire nation. We must ask, then, not only if Rural Hours has literary value, but also if we as critics can consider expanding our current conceptions of nature writing to accommodate a book such as Rural Hours. In his attempt to summarize what he considers to be the weaknesses of Cooper’s book, Jones quotes a description of autumn in Rural Hours and uses Cooper’s words to create an analogy concerning her prose: autumn, like Cooper’s prose, is â€Å"variable, changeable, not alike twice in succession, gay and brilliant yesterday, more languid and pale today† (xxxvii). â€Å"As literature,† Jones further explains, â€Å"Rural Hours varies from ‘brilliant’ in one passage to ‘languid and pale’ in another† (xxxvii). Jones offers very little support for this critical assessment of the book and, therefore, I cannot help but wonder why he truly found the narrative to be â€Å"languid and pale.† As we will see, Jones’s explanation for the â€Å"weakness of Miss  Cooper’s work† is circular and underdeveloped, and supports the conventional notion that quality nature writing portrays less of nature, and more of the author’s engagement with the natural world. Further examination of his criticisms will help to explain the exclusion of Rural Hours from most records of literary history. Jones explains, â€Å"[Cooper] brought realism and vitality to her portrait of rural life by revealing its ‘variable’ and ‘changeable’ nature, to be sure, but the very act produced a major flaw in the book† (xxxvii). Jones here suggests that Cooper’s realistic portrayal of the natural world is the very downfall of her book. However, her narrative dedication to the natural world, to its vitality and constancy, necessitates that portions of the text be purely descriptive. Jones thus seems to contradict himself: the â€Å"one level† at which Cooper’s text is â€Å"unsurpassed,† he asserts, is in its ability to so accurately and faithfully describe the natural world. This strength, however, is also the weakness of the book. Finally, Jones does not define this â€Å"flaw† at all; instead, he proceeds to discuss Thoreau’s Walden. Jones assumes throughout his introduction that Thoreau’s book is far superior to Cooper’s, that readers ofRural Hours will agree with this assessment, and that, therefore, his assessment requires no justification. This method of reasoning also presupposes that Walden and Rural Hours afford the same criteria for judgement, or, that they exhibit similar attempts at representing nature.3 If Cooper and Thoreau actually engage similar projects, this assessment is valid. If, however, these writers differ in their purposes, or represent–and react to–the natural world in distinct ways, then we need to examine these criteria of evaluation. How do we approach a text that attempts to represent the natural world on its own terms? Have we been taught to read texts whose straightforward depiction of the natural world is, seemingly, their main goal?4 If, as Jones suggests, Cooper’s prose remains so loyal to her subject that it is too realistic, and therefore borders on boring, we need to ask how we expect Cooper to represent nature so as to hold our attentions and why her  contemporaries were not also bored by her book. Many questions arise: what are contemporary readers’ expectations of writing that engages the natural world? How do our expectations differ from those of readers in the nineteenth century? Assuming that readers bought and consumed Cooper’s text because they found interest in both its subject matter and its perspective, how does Cooper’s direct conveyance of the natural world reflect her culture’s interests and concerns?5 What is the role of nature in such a text, as opposed to the role of people? How often do we require that a â€Å"realistic† portrayal of nature be replaced by metaphor or symbolism, thereby preventing â€Å"languid and pale† prose? How often do we want to read specifically about nature, and how often are we more interested in exploring the human presence in nature? Finally, is Rural Hours actually poorly written, or boring? Such questions, originating from an attempt to understand the immense success and warm reception of Rural Hours in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, cause us to examine our conceptions of how writers should relate to nature, how their relations should be represented through language, and how we–as readers–should read such texts. Read within our common understandings of nature writing, a conception that stresses writings influenced by the Romantics, Cooper’s prose may seem languid and pale, but if we approach Cooper’s text in other ways, as I will demonstrate, we will discern the richness of Rural Hours. Interest in writing that depicts the environment has increased in recent years. Clearly, texts such as Emerson’s â€Å"Nature† and Thoreau’s Walden have dominated our reading lists, but studies such as Cecelia Tichi’sNew World, New Earth and Annette Kolodny’s The Lay of the Land and The Land Before Her investigate the history of American interest in the environment and invite us to consider a variety of literary forms as important in understanding how Americans have related to their natural environment through the centuries. Tichi states, â€Å"Consistently since the seventeenth century [environmental reform] has formed an integral and important part of our cultural and literary history† (x). American interest in the land infiltrates our earliest documents, as Tichi proves in her study. In early  America, â€Å"the American spirit and the American continent were bonded ideologically,† and arguably continue to be bonded ideologically, albeit in different ways (Tichi ix). Another important study of Americans’ conceptions of the wilderness as reflected in literature is Bernard Rosenthal’s City of Nature. Rosenthal’s study focuses on Cooper’s predecessors and contemporaries, and concludes that two ideas of nature emerge in the writings of the American Romantics. He locates one idea of nature in the conception of wilderness as the space to be assumed by the emerging American city. The second idea of nature concerns the â€Å"new religious myth,† an individual journey into nature for the purpose of establishing what Rosenthal terms â€Å"the city of the self† (27). Put another way, â€Å"two irreconcilable connotations emerged as the most important definitions of the word nature†: one in which â€Å"nature represented commodity being transformed into civilization,† and one in which â€Å"nature became the metaphor for a new spiritual mythology† for the nineteenth-century individual (Rosenthal 31).6 Rosenthal suggests that, during the nineteenth century, the majority of Americans conceived of nature in this first way, and that most of the American Romantic writers worked within the second understanding of nature (71).7 These two conceptions of nature largely inform our readings of nineteenth-century texts that center, in some way, around the natural world. We have been taught not only to conceive of the natural world as a metaphor for our own society, but also to read texts that depict the natural world in terms of what they impart regarding the individual human spirit.8 We therefore approach texts that describe the natural world and that share personal reflections regarding the landscape with the expectation that they will either consider â€Å"the transformation of nature into its purest form, civilization,† or that they will explore nature â€Å"as spiritual place,† as the site of â€Å"an interior journey to a private place† in the spirit (Rosenthal 18), or that the author will attempt both visions of nature. 9 As readers we are taught that while purely descriptive prose may be poetically beautiful, it is boring, contains no metaphor or symbolism, and therefore lacks importance because it does not pertain to individual  spiritual growth. In the words of a colleague, â€Å"We skim over the flowers and birds and pretty things and look for what really happens.† However, what â€Å"really happens† often happens within the descriptive prose that we overlook. In relying on metaphor for our readings of such texts — either the metaphor of nature as civilization or nature as self — we fail to investigate the implications of capturing nature in language or the process by which a writer envisions elements of nature and transforms that vision into linguistic representation. We fail, finally, to ask how this investigation into the natural world functions not only for the individual or for society, but for the natural world itself. At this point, some may accuse me of oversimplifying nature writing; some may argue that metaphor and symbolism are the more complicated ways in which authors employ language, and that to dismiss these linguistic forms is to reduce nature writing to the parroting of knowledge of natural history, or the meaningless naming of colors, sounds, and sights. I am not, however, suggesting that nature writing texts not be considered for their metaphorical value, only that we consider the implications of only considering them in this way. Susan K. Harris makes a similar point in her study of nineteenth-century women’s sentimental novels written between 1840 and 1870: There appears to be an unspoken agreement not to submit nineteenth-century American women’s novels to extended analytical evaluation, largely†¦ because the evaluative modes most of us were taught devalue this literature a priori. (44) While Harris’s study focuses on fictional writings, the implications of her study for the study of nature writing and Susan Fenimore Cooper’s text are multiple and deserving of some attention. Harris finds that the criteria upon which scholars often scrutinize texts in order to determine their literary merit and the methods they employ in â€Å"analyzing† texts disregard important alternative aspects of texts. Harris suggests reading texts through a method she calls â€Å"process analysis,† a method of reading and interpreting a text that â€Å"foregrounds the relationship of the literary critical task to the critic’s stance in her own time† (145) and that considers the public, political and social context from which the  text emerged.10 Harris explains her belief that it is â€Å"important to establish the terms of the debate(s) in which the text participates the positions it takes, and how these positions are embodied in its textual structure† (46).11 Thus, as the language of the text is foregrounded, we look at the text as â€Å"both reactive and creative,† and disregard the traditional concern that the text â€Å"self-consciously embody ‘timeless truths'† (45). A text such as Cooper’s Rural Hours faces many of the obstacles in contemporary criticism that the sentimental novels that interest Harris face, especially when considered as part of the category of writing that has come to be called nature writing. Not only does Cooper’s book adopt a prosaic style that is contrary to those of canonized texts, but her book also forms part of a genre that itself is not very well established in the canon. She is, finally, a woman writing in a denigrated style within in a genre largely ignored by traditional scholarship. As critics have only recently begun to realize, historical and contemporary writers who represent their relationships to their surrounding environments exemplify differing ways of using language, and the linguistic methods these writers employ to represent and conceive of the natural world reflect, in complicated ways, the ideological implications of our cultural conceptions of nature. An understanding of the content of such writings, the issues they raise, and the methods of linguistic construction they employ will enable us, as literary scholars and historians, to realize how our language reflects our attitudes toward the earth, and more pointedly, how such attitudes have determined, prevented, or justified our actions against, and reactions to, the earth. The traditional approaches to such texts consider â€Å"timeless truths† in the forms of metaphors concerning nature as civilization or journeys to nature as journeys to the self. But these views often neglect to consider the author’s interest in the political and social opinions of the time concerning the proper relationship of society and the earth, and how writers in our society throughout history have coded such opinions in language.12 Studies such as Harris’s often center on cultural conceptions of gender in women’s fiction.13 The recent critical focus on issues of gender differentiation has lead contemporary critics to ask if women â€Å"naturally† relate to the outside world differently than men. In keeping with this interest, Annette Kolodny suggested in her 1975 study,The Lay of the Land, â€Å"that women’s writings and linguistic usages have all along been offering us alternate means of expression and perception† (ix) and that an examination of women’s writings on the subject of nature could yield better understandings of American conceptions of the wilderness. Kolodny also states that â€Å"a conscious and determined struggle to formulate for themselves the meaning of their landscape characterizes the writings of nineteenth-century Americans† (Lay of the Land 71). Certainly both Cooper and Thoreau’s texts engage in this struggle, although their engagements take different forms. Although I am not aware of any critical investigations as to whether Cooper’s and Thoreau’s alternative narrative styles are based in gender differences,14 most recent critics of Cooper (of which there are few) do seize on the issue of gender when exploring her text. Unlike Jones, they quickly dismiss Thoreau from their studies, and instead suggest that Cooper’s text presents a representative depiction of woman’s relationship to the natural world in nineteenth-century America.15 The most recent study of Rural Hours appears in Vera Norwood’s Made from This Earth, in which the author devotes a chapter to Susan Fenimore Cooper and her arguable influence on the women nature writers subsequent to her.16 Norwood argues that Cooper represented a â€Å"literary domestic,†17 a woman writer who wrote to deliver the â€Å"scenes and values of middle-class homes to a wide readership† (27). Thus, Norwood suggests, Cooper used the occasion of her book not only to describe her natural surroundings, but also to impart valuable lessons to her readers in a non-threatening manner. Norwood asserts that Cooper turned to nature to discover what nature teaches about the roles of women in the domestic realm.18 For example, Cooper describes robins and praises the mother robin’s dedication to her young, implicitly suggesting that human mothers should emulate the robin’s self-sacrificing nature (Cooper 39-40/Norwood 37-8). Thus, Norwood sees a conversation in Rural Hours, a dialogue that Cooper creates in her text between the  natural and human worlds in which gender roles in nature inform and enlighten gender roles in human society. Finally, Norwood claims that Cooper â€Å"was consumed with understanding what nature suggests about female roles and family responsibilities, and how gender definitions and familial arrangements help people comprehend what they see in nature† (37). Cooper does occasionally focus on gender roles and responsibilities in Rural Hours, but to state that she is â€Å"consumed† with such issues greatly exaggerates her narrative interests. As Norwood points out, Cooper ruminates on the devoted mother robin, but she also, interestingly, refers to the â€Å"voluntary imprisonment† of the mother, and to her â€Å"generous, enduring patience† (Cooper 40). While this patience is clearly â€Å"a noble attribute of parental affection† for Cooper, the scene leaves her somewhat incredulous and stunned by the mother’s consistent, uncomplaining waiting: Cooper admits this is a â€Å"striking instance† of parental devotion (40). While she may advocate human parental devotion, she also recognizes that the natural world is more willingly generous than the human world,19 and that whereas humans can learn from nature, there are also aspects of the natural world beyond human comprehension.20 Interestingly, and perhaps even provocatively, Norwood does not point out that the voluntarily imprisoned mothering robin is accompanied by the â€Å"male† of the â€Å"little family,† who â€Å"occasionally relieves his mate by taking her place awhile† and â€Å"exerts himself to bring her food, and to sing for her amusement† (40). Cooper includes his participation in her description of â€Å"voluntary imprisonment†; his is also a â€Å"striking instance† of parental affection. If Cooper invokes the mother robin as a testament to giving mothering, her invocation of the father bird suggests his necessary assistance around the â€Å"nest.† Ultimately, then, to read Cooper’s text in terms of its interest in gender affords some intriguing insights: Cooper clearly remains within her position as a middle- to upper-class â€Å"lady† throughout her narrative and, just as clearly, seeks confirmation of gender divisions and domestic roles from the natural world.21 These instances, though, are rare in Cooper’s  text. The themes and issues that arise more often in Rural Hours concern the establishment of a national identity and history, and while Cooper does not divorce her gender from the concerns that inform her larger agenda, she also does not encompass her interest in nationalism within explorations of domesticity. Certainly one aspect of Cooper’s desire to explore the natural world in order to formulate a national identity concerns the place of women in society, but to read Rural Hours solely in terms of its attempt to explore the implications of gender roles as exemplified in the natural environment greatly simplifies the complexities and layers of Cooper’s book. I do not wish to suggest that traditional feminist readings of Cooper’s text are unwarranted or unnecessary, nor that such readings will prove unproductive. I do believe, however, that reading Cooper’s book through too narrow a focus is hazardous not only in seeking to establish her in the canon of â€Å"serious† and â€Å"teachable† writers, but also in that such a reading sidesteps many larger cultural issues that her text engages. A critical reading of Cooper’s text should investigate her representations and explorations of gender roles in mid-nineteenth century America as well as her other complex and overt concerns, such as the creation of an American history, the treatment of American Indians, the problems of deforestation, and the religious connotations of the natural world, all of which fall under the rubric, in Cooper’s text, of the establishment of a national identity.22 As Jones points out, the majority of Cooper’s text contains descriptions of her surroundings. Her reflections are not always couched in metaphor, as Jones also suggests, but this does not detract from the value of Cooper’s text, nor does it indicate that Cooper does not entertain significant issues in her writing. Cooper’s descriptions of her surroundings reflect and embody her larger concern for the development of a national identity based in the land. In her view, the establishment of a national identity is linked to individual conceptions of the land, its flora and fauna, its people, and the relationship of the country’s peoples to the land. Cooper depicts the landscape of Otsego Lake, relates the history of the land and  its peoples, and describes the indigenous plants, animals, and waters of the area in an attempt to create an identity of place. The landscape, and the life the land supports, create the identity of this place. Cooper’s â€Å"literature of place†23 serves not only to create a natural identity for the Otsego Lake region, but also to assert the need for a similarly constructed national identity. The creation of a national identity, then, is the â€Å"cultural work† of Cooper’s text; she seeks to locate the â€Å"natural† identity of her new nation. Cooper’s development of this theme — a national identity rooted in the landscape — is subtle and calculated, but a scrupulous reading of Rural Hours reveals the careful construction of Cooper’s text. The opening pages ofRural Hours share observations that reflect the intentions of the book as stated in Cooper’s 1850 preface: The following notes contain, in a journal form, the simple record of those little events which make up the course of the seasons in rural life. In wandering about the fields, . . . one naturally gleans many trifling observations. . . The following pages were written in perfect good faith, all the trifling incidents alluded to having occurred as they are recorded. (Preface) In her first chapter, we read of the coming of spring: snow thaws, buds appear, robins return to the area. These are seemingly â€Å"little events,† â€Å"trifling† in their lack of worldly significance. One almost immediately notices, however, the pride Cooper takes in plants and animals â€Å"peculiar† to her â€Å"native land,† those that are uniquely America’s own. In contrast to the European robin, â€Å"our robin never builds [a nest] on the ground† (21), and the â€Å"pretty† white-bellied swallow, which â€Å"has been confounded with the European martin† is, Cooper assures, â€Å"peculiar to America† (56). Cooper also explains the uniqueness of American plants, complaining that the â€Å"wild natives of the woods† are often crowded out by European plants that were introduced by the colonists and that â€Å"[drive] away the prettier natives† (81).24 In her discussion of autumn in America, Cooper ruminates, â€Å"Had the woods of England been as rich as our own† English writers would  have praised the season in their writings long ago (336). Instead, â€Å"one is led to believe that the American autumn has helped to set the fashions for the sister season of the Old World† (335). American writers’ reflections on the landscape have encouraged English writers to do the same, Cooper suggests. These â€Å"trifling† observations begin to speak together, and we find Cooper asserting the importance of knowing the natural forms indigenous to one’s place. Thus, for Cooper, determining which birds, animals, and plants are native to America, as well as which of these are unknown to Europeans, helps to define the American landscape, and therefore helps to establish a national identity. She takes pride in her land and in its natural wealth. Cooper also mourns the losses that her land incurs, suggesting that any depletion of the natural aspects of a place drastically alter its identity. Like her seemingly innocent cataloging of natural plants and animals indigenous to America, which emerges as a plea for national pride and definition based on the natural world, her repeated lamentings of disappearing or decreasing portions of the natural world emerge as a plea for the preservation of the wilderness. Like Cooper’s gently emerging concern for identifying indigenous plants and animals, Cooper gradually develops this theme of loss throughout her text. â€Å"Little events,† when taken cumulatively, have large implications. Cooper observes wild pigeons in early March, for instance, and recalls a previous season when â€Å"they passed over the valley in†¦ large unbroken flocks several miles in extent succeeding each other.† Then she remarks, â€Å"There have not been so many here since that season† (18). The reader might dismiss this observation due to its early position in her book, but as one progresses through the text and continually comes across this motif of longing for previous times when–somehow–nature was more complete, one realizes that Cooper is truly concerned about the changes taking place in her surroundings. Her concern becomes much more overt, but not until much later in the book.25 Cooper’s seemingly minor concern for the losses of groups of  birds or plants culminates in her consideration of the rapid deforestation occurring in the country.26 She returns to the subject many times throughout the course of Rural Hours and, further along in the book, strongly criticizes people for their careless use of timber: One would think that by this time, when the forest has fallen in all the valleys — when the hills are becoming more bare every day–when timber and fuel are rising in prices, and new uses are found for even indifferent woods–some forethought and care in this respect would be natural in people laying claim to common sense. (213-14) Clearly, Cooper is warning her contemporaries by suggesting that they discontinue the destruction of trees for purposes of fueling their homes. The continual destruction of the forests so radically alters the landscape that Cooper cannot conceive of continued deforestation. She not only seeks to educate her audience regarding the benefits of preservation; she also makes the preservation of the American landscape a moral imperative. This moral duty for national preservation becomes linked to Cooper’s feelings regarding the â€Å"red man,† or Native Americans (93). Again, Cooper subtly portrays this sense of the loss of the indigenous peoples early in Rural Hours. When standing beside a clear running spring, she states, â€Å"one seems naturally to remember the red man; recollections of his vanished race linger there in a more definite form than elsewhere† (93). The rolling, clear water somehow evokes the â€Å"vanished† race: â€Å"yesterday they were here, to-day scarce a vestige of their existence can be pointed out among us† (94). However, later in Rural Hours, Cooper more overtly conveys her feelings regarding the colonists’ treatment of the indigenous peoples, which she finds integral to the colonists’ treatment of the landscape. While viewing a forest grove, she laments: â€Å"It needs but a few short minutes to bring one of these trees to the ground† (193). She reminds her readers that entire generations will come and go in the time that it takes for one of these mature trees to reach such magnificent heights: The stout arm so ready to raise the axe to-day, must grow weak with age, it must drop into the grave; its bone and sinew must crumble into dust long before another tree, tall and great as those, shall have grown from the  cone in our hand (193-94). In the same paragraph, Cooper calls for a reinstitution of wilderness, claiming that the wild deer, the wolf and the bear â€Å"must return from beyond the great lakes,† and then, significantly, that â€Å"the bones of the savage men buried under our feet must arise and move again. . . ere trees like those† ever appear again, so large, so wild (194).27 The mistreatment of Native Americans emerges as a large theme in Cooper’s text. She advocates retaining the names they gave to places and portions of the natural world, partly because of the beauty in â€Å"Indian words,† which â€Å"[unite] both sound and meaning† (484). In the creation of a national identity, Cooper intimates, the power of names is very suggestive: names reveal history and meaning, and the Indians words capture both elements. She argues against re-naming places not only due to the beauty of the Native American’s languages, however, but also because she believes that somehow European-Americans owe the indigenous peoples something. The refrain of loss that resonates throughout Cooper’s text reaches its climax in the following passage. I quote at length to impart Cooper’s passion: There are many reasons for preserving every Indian name which can be accurately placed; generally, they are recommended by their beauty; but even when harsh in sound, they still have a claim to be kept up on account of their historical interest, and their connection with the dialects of the different tribes. A name is all we leave them, let us at least preserve that monument to their memory; as we travel through the country, and pass river after river, lake after lake, we may thus learn how many were the tribes who have melted away before us, whose very existence would have been utterly forgotten but for the word which recalls the name they once bore. (485) As these words suggest, Cooper’s concerns in Rural Hours are far-reaching. Cooper finds little distinction between the establishment of a national identity based in the uniqueness of the land, the preservation of the wilderness, and the maintenance of the influence of indigenous cultures.28 The â€Å"natural† history of this place and its people provide its meaning. These enmeshed issues resonate even more strongly when Cooper places them in accordance with her religious ideals. Although her Christianity by no means permeates the text, its presence offers a cohesion between her many areas of interest. Cooper envisions each and every aspect of the natural world as belonging to part of God’s plan for Americans. For example, while admiring a particularly beautiful sky, Cooper says, At hours like these, the immeasurable goodness, the infinite wisdom of our Heavenly Father, are displayed in so great a degree of condescending tenderness to unworthy, sinful man, as must appear quite incomprehensible- entirely incredible to reason alone–were it not for the recollection of the mercies of past years, the positive proofs of experience†¦.What have the best of us done to merit one such day in a lifetime of follies and failings and sins? (73-74) I do want to stress that these moments are rare in Cooper’s text, that her homilies are short and few, but that they clearly convey her sense of wonder about the natural world.29 She finds value in each aspect of the natural world, and seeks to preserve the world as a testament of her faith in God. While maintaining the Puritan notion that the â€Å"new world† was intended for the colonists to cultivate, and that their duties included imparting Christianity to the Native Americans,30 Cooper also stresses the need to balance the human presence on, and cultivation of, the land with careful preservation of it. She envisions a society that works with the land, not against it, and that creates a national identity based on its intimate knowledge of, and respect for, the natural world. She suggests this balance between humans and nature lightheartedly, saying â€Å"Many birds like a village life; they seem to think man is a very good-natured animal, building chimneys and roofs, planting groves, and digging gardens for their especial benefit† (63). But she also asserts the seriousness of her belief in admiring her village, â€Å"rural and unambitious,† and â€Å"quite in proportion with surrounding objects† (114). Cooper further explains her belief in a â€Å"rural ideal,†31 a sustainable balance between civilization and nature, in an essay collected in The Home  Book of the Picturesque, which was published in 1851: The hand of man generally improves a landscape. The earth has been given to him, and his presence in Eden is natural; he gives life and spirit to the garden. It is only when he endeavors to rise above his true part of laborer and husbandman, when he assumes the character of creator, and piles you up hills, pumps you a river, scatters stones, or sprinkles cascades, that he is apt to fail. Generally the grassy meadow in the valley, the winding road climbing the hill-side, the cheerful village on the bank of the stream, give a higher additional interest to the view; or where there is something amiss in the scene, it is when there is some evident want of judgement, or good sense, or perhaps some proof of selfish avarice, or wastefulness, as when a country is stripped of its wood to fill the pockets or feed the fires of one generation. (82) This interest in creating a national identity based upon a balance of civilization, nature, and the preservation of religious ideologies forms the basic underlying motif in Cooper’s text. While her words often convey seemingly simple observations about her surroundings, Cooper’s linking of the natural world and the human treatment of it with the necessity of establishing a national conception of the proper human relationship to nature forms a complex, intricate portrayal of the myriad concerns of nineteenth-century life. Rural Hours also reveals how issues surrounding the formation of national concepts of environmental treatment were intertwined with the establishment of pride in a new country. Additional readings of Rural Hours will undoubtedly uncover themes and tropes unexplored in the present essay. In order for this to occur, however, we must continually ask ourselves how our preconceptions may prohibit finding value in texts that do not meet established, too often unchallenged, criteria for judgements. One can approach Rural Hours, finally, as a natural history engaged in creating the story of a region and as an attempt to appreciate nature on its own terms: not as a commodity for human use, but as beautiful, powerful, and suggestive of God’s greatness. In writing a balance between humans and nature, Cooper sets an agenda not only for her region, but for the country as a whole. Her text is filled with natural history, but it also expounds upon the concerns of an age in America’s  history. As such, it greatly contributes to our understandings of the human presence on the land. Sample Research Paper for an English Course| [1]. Cunningham offers an overview of critical reactions to Rural Hours (339-40) as do Jones (xvii-xxv) and Norwood (27). BACK [2]. The reading of Cooper’s text that follows, as well as my consideration of issues of literary historiography and canon construction owes much to Jane Tompkins’s work, as suggested by my epigraph, but also to Cathy N. Davidson’s study, Revolution and the Word. There Davidson states, â€Å"The issue here is not that literature provides an inaccurate reflection of history but that no documents can simply be ‘read’ as if they were objective, scientific data produced or preserved as some pure product of a people and the abiding record of their time. The record always suppresses more than it tells. Why, we must ask, are certain records kept in the first place? Why are they saved? The whole process of historiography, the archive itself, must be subjected to rigorous analysis. Who is keeping the records and for what purpose? Who is writing, to whom, and why?† (Revolution 2). These are some of the issues and concerns I will address with regard to Susan Fenimore Cooper and Nature Writing. BACK [3]. In her study, Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal, Sharon Cameron considers Thoreau’s attempts at representing nature in his journals, and also contrasts this to Walden. BACK [4]. Obviously, I do not think that Cooper’s and Thoreau’s text engage nature similarly. While both writers reflect upon their surroundings and offer descriptions of elements of the natural world, each writer raises his/her own personal areas for concern. Chapters such as Thoreau’s â€Å"Where I Lived†¦Ã¢â‚¬  and â€Å"Economy† are totally absent from Cooper’s record of days. Sections concerned with environmental peril, such as Cooper’s reflections on the hazards of deforestation, which I will discuss later in this paper, are unparalleled in Thoreau’s text. While certainly some similar criteria exist for comparison, Thoreau’s Walden is finally a philosophical investigation of individual man’s â€Å"economy† and â€Å"wakefulness,† in Thoreau’s sense of those words, and Rural Hours does not concern the individual so much as the nation, or the community. Together, these texts offer interesting insights into different conceptions of the natural world in relation of humankind in mid-nineteenth century  America. BACK [5]. Jane Tompkins writes, â€Å"The text that becomes exceptional in the sense of reaching an exceptionally large audience does so not because of its departure from the ordinary and conventional, but through its embrace of what is most widely shared† (xvi). Like Tompkins, I assume that when many readers buy and read a book, they find value in that book, and that when a book’s success is marked by many reprintings and re-issuings, this reflects a cultural interest in the subject matter and in the implicit concerns of the book. BACK [6]. In both conceptions of nature, there is a religious ideology informing notions of meaning and direction. As Tichi so aptly explores in her New World, New Earth, the colonists conceived of the land as God’s gift to them, and their taming of the wilderness as therefore ordained by God. BACK [7]. Rosenthal states, â€Å"In America, the abstractions called nature came to be defined as the civilization that emerged from the wilderness; for the Romantics, who found their vocabulary in the country they inhabited, nature came to be equated with the civilization of the self, the world of inner vision† (71). He divides European and American Romantic writers in this way, but then admits the difficulty of such a radical division, especially when considering Thoreau’s Walden. Ultimately, Rosenthal suggests, American writers conceived of nature in both ways, as their texts reveal. BACK [8]. It interests me that the books of Cooper’s contemporary writers whom we do read in literature classes — Emerson, Thoreau, and, in a particularly daring syllabus, Margaret Fuller — were not nearly as successful during their lifetimes as Cooper’s. Furthermore, as many recent critics of nature writing note, the writings of these three authors more often concerned the human world than the natural world. What does it mean that readers in the nineteenth century were more interested in Cooper’s more focused portrayal of the natural world than in Thoreau’s symbolic and metaphorical vision of nature? BACK [9]. I do not mean to criticize Rosenthal for instituting these methods of reading texts that portray nature. Most readings of the canonical texts that engage nature maintain his model of two alternative ways of seeing the importance of nature, and I appreciate his clear delineation of these versions. BACK [10]. Another important context in which to examine such a text is in its relation to the literary heritage from which it originates. This seems especially crucial when considering a  text such as Cooper’s, because she was so clearly influenced by the place of literature in American society. Her father concerned himself with establishing a literary history in the country; Susan Cooper was extremely well-read (as her text evidences: see pgs. 220, 226-7, and her numerous references to writers), and the theme of the construction of a written history of America surfaces in Rural Hours. An analysis of Cooper’s thoughts regarding literature and the contribution her text will make to an emerging literary tradition in her country would certainly prove valuable in understanding the cultural interest in creating an American literary heritage. BACK [11]. Jane Tompkins raises very similar questions in her 1985 study, Sensational Designs. Tompkins asserts that contemporary critics often read our modern-day concerns into older texts — â€Å"questions about the self, the body, the possibilities of knowledge, the limits of language† — instead of heeding the text’s own concerns, such as the â€Å"religious beliefs, social practices, and economic and po litical circumstances† that may have influenced the author and her contemporaries. BACK [12]. Harris delineates the critical implications for such an approach; although, again, her focus is nineteenth-century women’s sentimental novels: â€Å"Structure and language, then, are the dual focuses of process analysis. Each demands three levels of study: the first, contextual, places the text within its own time; the second, rhetorical, examines narrator/narratee contracts and the ways in which the text may play with cultural significances; the third, retrospective, searches for traces of changing consciousness, building blocks for an ideologically self-conscious literary history. Together, they offer a paradigm that produces evaluative as well as investigate questions† (59). BACK [13]. Such studies, in addition to Harris’s, include Cathy N. Davidson’s Introduction to her edition of Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, and Jane Tompkins’s study of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in her book, Sensational Designs. Much contemporary feminist criticism similarly engages issues of cultural definitions and determinations of gender roles. BACK [14]. Critics inevitably mention Thoreau in their analyses of Rural Hours, but they mention his text as a benchmark, as a starting-off point (see Cunningham 341, Jones xxxvii, Norwood 26, and Patterson 2). It is very interesting that Thoreau’s text is used to describe Cooper’s when Cooper’s text preceded his, and her text sold well, whereas his did not. BACK   [15]. For such examinations, see Cunningham and Maddox. Cunningham’s essay is the older of these two (published in 1944), and celebrates Cooper’s prominence in Cooperstown while expressing frustration with Cooper’s â€Å"failure to face the obligations of her talent† (348). Cunningham speculates on reasons why Cooper’s Rural Hours was not followed up with more book-length writings, and suggests that â€Å"neither her immediate family circle nor the century into which she was born gave a woman freedom to develop creative talents† (349-50). Cooper’s family kept a very strict hold on both her personal and business affairs, and family duties perhaps curtailed her writing. Maddox’s study, which appeared in 1988, states that the strongest theme in Cooper’s writing is the American woman’s duty as inheritor and guardian of a legacy left by pioneering males. Woman is keeper of nature, maintainer of harmony and balance between nature and culture, and it is woman’s responsibility to ensure the harmony between the domestic and external realms. BACK [16]. Norwood bases her reading largely on Lucy B. Maddox’s study and focuses on similar motifs in her reading of Cooper’s text. BACK [17]. Norwood credits Mary Kelley with this phrase (Norwood 27). BACK [18]. Norwood’s tone and overall reading of Cooper’s text perplex me, as will become clear in this paper. On this particular point, for instance, Norwood explains Cooper’s conjoining of home and nature in a disparaging comment: â€Å"So, parasol in hand, Susan Cooper sallied forth from her domestic hearth to the gardens and woods of her home to speak to all Americans about their native land, in a voice blending lessons from the woman’s sphere with knowledge garnered from the scientist-naturalists whose company she kept and books she read† (30, emphasis added). Norwood writes to praise Cooper’s text, but moments like this one seem to belittle Cooper’s position and purpose. Furthermore, Cooper did not merely parrot the books she read and the naturalists with whom she spent time; in fact, many of Cooper’s references to other naturalists serve to correct their mistakes and to challenge their previous findings. Finally, Norwood overlooks many of the complexities in Cooper’s text, and perhaps too willingly accepts Lucy B. Maddox’s views o f Cooper’s text. BACK [19]. This remarkably â€Å"generous† quality of the natural world is, I will argue, a recurring theme in Rural Hours. BACK [20]. I will return to this theme in Cooper’s text later in this paper. BACK [21]. The publishing business at this time emphasized  Cooper’s status as a â€Å"lady† in their first editions of the book: Cooper was not named as author, but rather Rural Hours was â€Å"By a Lady.† Norwood considers the implications of the author’s anonymity (Norwood 27). BACK [22]. Hans Huth offers an insightful reading of the role of national identity in writings of this period. BACK [23]. Pamela Regis asserts a tradition of works and writers that comprise this â€Å"literature of place† genre. See her Describing Early America: Bartram, Jefferson, Crevecoeur, and the Rhetoric of Natural History (xii). BACK [24]. William Cronon’s study of the ecology of colonial New England confirms many of Cooper’s observations regarding plant life and also supports and provides reasons for some of her concerns regarding deforestation practices in nineteenth-century A merica. Cronon’s text is an interesting compliment to Cooper’s first-hand depiction of the imperiled landscape. BACK [25]. I cannot help but believe that Cooper intentionally placed this overt cultural criticism late in the book. Readers became engaged with her text, enticed by her â€Å"lady-like† view of Otsego Lake and its community, drawn in by her â€Å"trifling† observations and records of â€Å"little events,† and then Cooper subtly weaves in her threads of cultural criticism, hidden, as it were, between the plants, birds, and trees. Her society could easily overlook any questionable criticisms Cooper made because they were so buried in Cooper’s text. BACK [26]. Cronon also investigates the rapid deforestation occurring at this time in his Changes in the Land (pp. 108-126). BACK [27]. Cooper experiences a similar desire for a return to an earlier, wilder state of the land in her essay, â€Å"A Dissolving View.† In a fantasy, her view of a rolling, but populated, landscape dissolves into wilderness replete with forests. Finally, though, the â€Å"dissolving view† of her title is implicitly, of course, the dissolving wilderness. In a particularly direct passage, Cooper asserts â€Å"Indeed it would seem as if man had no sooner mastered the art of architecture, than he aimed at rivalling the dignity and durability of the works of nature which served as his models† (84). BACK [28]. Cooper clearly supports the indigenous cultures; however, she also reinforces the white man’s â€Å"duty† in â€Å"educating† and â€Å"civilizing† them. â€Å"This general fertility, this blending of the fields of man and his tillage with the woods, the great husbandry of Providence, gives a fine character to the country, which it could not claim when the lonely savage roamed through  wooded valleys. . .† (224). Later, she states, â€Å"The time seems to have come at last when their own eyes are opening to the real good of civilization, the advantages of knowledge, the blessings of Christianity† (181-82). BACK [29]. This devotion to God and his creation also, I believe, helps explain Cooper’s distance from the natural world. She admires the creation, but has no need to participate in the creation of the world. She seeks only to preserve the work of God, to thank him for his giving to her â€Å"despite our. . .unworthiness† (72). BACK [30]. See Tichi for an exploration of many documents from early America, including sermons and letters, that share this view of the continent. BACK [31]. This is Patterson’s phrase for Cooper’s conception of a relationship between human culture and the natural world. BACK Works Cited| Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. 2nd. ed. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Cameron, Sharon. Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Cooper, Susan Fenimore. â€Å"A Dissolving View.† in The Home Book of the Picturesque: Or American Scenery, Art, and Literature. Introduction by Motley F. Deakin. Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1967. (Facsimile Reproduction) pp. 79- 94. – -. Rural Hours. New York: Putnam, 1850. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. 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City of Nature: Journeys to Nature in the Age of American Romanticism. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Slovic, Scott. Seeking Awareness in American N ature Writing: Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Addey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden in The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Tichi, Cecelia. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.