The young boy in Francisco de Zurbarán’s (1598-1664) Saint Peter Nolasco Recovering the Image of the Virgin of El Puig (1630) has been suggested to be either Zurbarán’s son, Juan de Zurbarán (1620–1649), or the son of James I of Aragon, Alfonso of Castile (1229–1260). Despite visual dominance, most scholars do not address the boy, and those who do offer conflicting identifications. This paper bridges the gap between these varying opinions, and concretely identifies the most formally important figure in this commission that defined Zurbarán’s career. The argument is built on the writings of Zurbarán scholar Martin S. Soria, as well as a comparison to Zurbarán’s body of work at large, primarily his tendency to create from life, and his suspected self-portrait, The Crucified Christ with a Painter (1650). I conclude that the child in the piece is likely a culmination of Juan and Alfonso and explore the implication of Zurbarán depicting his child in the noble and pious role of James the Conqueror’s son, paying witness to the rediscovery of the Virgin of El Puig. The combined figure of Juan and Alfonso gains significance through an exploration of historical context surrounding the legend of the Virgin of El Puig and its key figures. By drawing parallels between 17th-century Spanish colonialism contemporary to Zurbarán’s time and 13th-century Reconquista depicted in the painting, Zurbarán uses this composite figure to assert a vision of his lineage as triumphant and divinely favoured. Ultimately, this paper continues and expands upon Soria’s writings on the subject, and places Zurbarán within a Baroque tradition of artists, such as Velázquez, who used painting to assert their profession as divinely-inspired, nobel, and distinct from craftsmen.
While most like to consider college and university campuses safe from discrimination, research demonstrates this is unfortunately not true. We know students with minority group status experience discrimination on campus at an alarming rate. Years of research has demonstrated the negative effects of experiencing discrimination on students’ well-being, sense of belonging, and future aspirations. However, research has also shown positive impacts that faculty relationships can have on students’ motivation, academic achievement, persistence, and aspirations. Faculty serve as institutional agents within the university, so they have considerable influence over students’ satisfaction with their university experience and overall wellness. Thus, this study investigates the extent to which college students’ trust in faculty acts as a buffer against the negative impacts of discrimination. Results of this research indicate a strong relationship between experiencing discrimination and feelings of stress and decreased sense of belonging, and that increased stress and decreased belonging negatively affect students’ future aspirations. However, our findings demonstrate that trust in faculty mitigates the negative effects of discrimination and can reduce feelings of stress and increase feelings of belonging, thereby increasing students’ future aspirations. Our findings demonstrate the important role faculty play in creating an affirming climate for students on college campuses.
Interactive product prototyping has been widely taught in industrial design studio courses to prepare design students in dealing with dynamic interactions of using digital products. While it requires the integration of design and technology, the lack of systematic approaches of the studio curricula creates a great challenge for students who are not familiar with technology in creating interactive prototypes successfully. A theoretical framework is developed from the human-machine interaction model and the sequential flow of task analysis methods. Based on this framework, a human-machine interaction (HMI) flow diagram is proposed with which interaction elements, relationships, and flows are specified and categorized. The flow diagram is utilized to create a storyboard and an allocation flowchart subsequently. A structured design process based on these methods was applied to an interactive product design studio course in an undergraduate industrial design program. Students created working prototypes of interactive products, following the structured design process consisting of an HMI flow diagram, a storyboard, and an allocation flowchart. 104 students (87.4%) among 119 succeeded in translating their ideas to functioning circuits. 74 students (62.2%) successfully integrated electronics components into working physical prototypes while 30 students (25.2%) just made the circuits work. The structured design process makes a transition from initial ideation to programming smooth and incremental. This helps students without previous programming experience to understand the logic flow and to develop algorithms. The HMI flow diagram is useful for analysis, concept development, and the specification of interactions, and helps students to grasp the effect of interactive features on user experience.
An expanded version of "The Future of Conflict: Neurowarfare", both of which discuss emerging neurotechnology, neuroscience, and their implications for war, politics, medicine, ethics, and society.
An overview of Walter A. McDougall's 1997 book "Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776" with some concluding thoughts.
This is part one of a mini-series attempting to grapple with US grand strategy and the potential need for its re-assessment. The goal of this series is to introduce readers to grand strategy, ideally prompting more to grapple with US grand strategy and grand strategy more broadly. The author is fleshing out their own ideas, so don’t take the work as gospel, but rather as a starting point for your own journey.
In part one, an overview of the current state of US grand strategy is given. In part two, grand strategy is defined as a concept, a more detailed argument for the need of reassessment is put forth, and resources on grand strategy are listed for interested readers. In part three, four typologies of US grand strategic thought are summarized and contrasted with what US grand strategy has arguably been since the end of WWII. In part four, some general thoughts on the means and ends of reassessing US grand strategy will be described. Additional articles on grand strategy may appear over time.
In the 1960"s and 1970', when most of these unfinished essays were written, I was a free thinking architecture student who perceived a fundamental disconnect within diverse institutions, including Architecture and Education and Money - Banking. I had an intuitive feeling that architecture is more than a visual aesthetic, rather a holistic social experience. The everyday objects with which we interact are an integral part of our social disposition and social wellbeing. The attempt is to develop a method for understanding some previously largely ignored aspects of environmental design – the role of Common Objects as a communication facilitator.- Eric M. Lee
