Performing Racial Uplift
Did you watch last night's Grammy Awards? This week's review highlights the work of Black activist and music teacher E. Azalia Hackley and the power of “musical social uplift.”
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Posted on January 28, 2019 in Review of the Week
Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era and beyond : redefining humanity’s purpose in space
Neal, Valerie. Yale, 2017
270p index, 9780300206517 $40.00, 9780300227987
Is the United States at the end of the human spaceflight era? This question serves as the overarching framework of this interesting book, which provides a cultural and social history of the Space Shuttle Era (1981–2011). The “Heroic Era” of human spaceflight commenced in the 1960s and became part of the Cold War; during this time, NASA received large amounts of federal funding. The Shuttle Era began with the utilization of less expensive and more routine human spaceflight, with the shuttle serving as a “space truck.” After the 1986 Challenger explosion, the purpose of the shuttle was transformed into a science laboratory vehicle and the builder of a space station. Neal, who chairs the space history department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, critically recounts the endless cycle of strategic planning at NASA (sometimes by different groups, at the same time) and how this flawed approach never seemed to reach a new vision for moving forward. In 2017, indeed, there is no coherent plan for a future human space program in the United States. This book is one of the best this reviewer has read on the state of space policy and the future of NASA—it is highly recommended.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: J. Z. Kiss, UNC-Greensboro
Subject: Science & Technology – Astronautics & Astronomy
Choice Issue: Dec 2017
Did you watch last night's Grammy Awards? This week's review highlights the work of Black activist and music teacher E. Azalia Hackley and the power of “musical social uplift.”
Posted on in Review of the Week
To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, this week's review provides an extensive, educational guide to Holocaust films
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This week's review proposes the idea of "post-Chineseness," challenging the essentialization of Chinese identity.
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In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this week's review unpacks racial disparities in healthcare and the impact of racism on the well-being of Black Americans
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