Fashionable Females: Women,Clothes, and Culture in New York

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2010 ‘American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity’ exhibition explored the evolution of female fashion from 1890–1940, a period when the role of women in society developed rapidly. This article examines two of the cultural roles that fashion helped to define: the heiress figure of the 1890s, and the 1920s flapper. Both types of fashion identity had a distinctive look, such as the corseted waist and moulded silhouette of the 1890s dresses, and the shorter skirts and dropped waist of the later flapper fashions. Focusing on these two models of womanhood, the article explores the idea of fashion more generally in two novels that discuss these figures: the heiress in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) and the flapper in Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).     

New York: The Animated City

Abstract

The urban landscape of New York City is one that is familiar to many, but, through the medium of animation, this familiarity has been consistently challenged. Often metamorphic, and always meticulously constructed, animated imagery encourages reflective thinking. Focusing on the themes of construction, destruction, and interactivity, this article seeks to cast critical light upon the animated double life that New York City has lived through the following moving image texts: Disney’s Fantasia 2000 (1999), Patrick Jean’s computer-generated short Pixels (2009), and Rockstar Games’ open-world blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV (2008).     

New York State's Prostitution Statute:

In 1978, New York State upgraded its "patronizing a prostitute" statute from a violation to a misdemeanor offense. It was expected that upgrading the law would accomplish essentially two goals: deter prostitution by giving the police incentive to arrest patrons, and end the disparity that existed between the prositution and patronizing statutes, as prostitution had been a misdemeanor offense since 1969. These goals were not accomplished. An analysis of prostitution arrest information from Buffalo, New york, for the years 1977 through 1980, shows that the Buffalo city police arrest practices did not change despite the 1978 reform of the prostitution statute. In particular, women continued to be singled out for prostitution arrests more often than men. In addition, despite constitutional prohibition of gender based discrimination, New York State courts have not been persuaded to find unconstitutional the differential enforcement practices of the prostitution statute. One Buffalo criminal court, for example, approved gender based discrimination on the basis of insufficient police staffing. The end result was that while the new statute was to be gender neutral, the application of the law was not; police nonenforcement of patron activity perpetuated discrimination against women.     

美国纽约大都市区治理:经验、教训与启示

伴随着经济全球化、市场化、网络化发展趋势,突破城市行政区划边界的大都市圈,已经成为我国新型城镇化和区域经济发展的战略选择.建立健全跨行政区管理体制,是我国推进大都市圈建设的一项紧迫性议题.中国大都市圈跨界治理模式的建构,不能照抄照搬西方模式,需要理性分析,要借鉴经验、吸取教训,探索形成发挥中国制度优势、符合中国国情的治理新模式.通过总结美国纽约大都市区治理模式的经验和教训,就我国如何推动大都市圈跨界治理改革提出相关策略.     

Book Review: A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time. By Flaherty,Michael G. New York: New York University Press, 1999, 230 pages,paperback, ISBN: 0814726879

Qualitative Sociology -     

Book Review: Heroic Efforts: The Emotional Culture of Search and Rescue Volunteers. By Lois,Jennifer, New York: New York University Press, 2003. 233 pages,paperback. ISBN: 0814751849

Qualitative Sociology -     

Book Review: Integrity. Stephen L. Carter,Harper Perennial,New York, 1996

Sociological Practice -     

Employment and mental hospitalization: the case of Buffalo, New York, 1914-55

This paper explores the connection between employment trends and state mental hospital admissions first presented by Brenner in Mental Illness and the Economy. The analysis is based on employment data for the Buffalo SMSA and admissions to the SMSAs only major public psychiatric hospital for the years 1914 to 1955. We employ a series of specifications in time-series analyses. Our findings contrast with Brenner's; unlike his analysis, ours indicates that employment is positively related to admissions. Consistent with other previous research, hospital capacity is also found to be important in predicting admissions. We offer a number of interpretations for the results, in particular noting the need for the examination of the stressful effects of work itself, not merely its loss.