The Skin of Modernity: Primitivism and Tattooing in Literature.

This dissertation locates the representation of the tattooed body in Euro-American modernist literature within a discursive genealogy that begins with the tattoos acquired at Tahiti in 1769 by the Endeavour crew during James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. This approach both reconfigures our understanding of how tattooing has been made to engage with notions of race, sexuality, criminality, and class and contests the atemporal nature of primitivist evocations of indigenous tattooing. The tattoo is an embodied trace that resignifies the conditions of its transmission into Euro-American culture. I examine Melville’s first novel Typee as an early example of the primitivist representation of Pacific tattooing in literature. In his beachcomber narrative, Tommo positions Marquesan tattooing as an incomprehensible semiotic system that can overwhelm western cultural signs. Beachcombers were the first Euro-Americans to display their tattooed bodies for profit; this project enters the modernist period through the sideshow and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood. With the tattooed performer Nikka as a central figure, Barnes uses “freak show discourse,” which I define as the tension between the performative construction of the “freak” identity and the essentialization of bodily difference in the sideshow, to open the space for the characters’ imagined genealogies, counternarratives in which they are not contained by essentialist constructions. In the “Eumaeus” episode of Ulysses, I examine the intersections of tattooing, queer sexuality, and primitivism in the representation of the sailor D.B. Murphy. The primitivist lack of specificity in Murphy’s stories is intimately connected to the ambivalent sexualized signs that proliferate on and around him; the episode codes the tattooing operation itself as a homosexual experience. The project ends with a discussion of cultural exchange and appropriation in the context of Albert Wendt’s novel The Mango’s Kiss and the “contemporary tribal” tattoo designs of Leo Zulueta. “The Skin of Modernity” offers a broader understanding of primitivist appropriation in the modernist period and includes overlooked histories of encounter and exchange. No instance of appropriation exists without its evasions, elisions, disavowals, history, and genealogy. This dissertation traces such narratives.PhDEnglish Language and LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111452/1/moches_1.pd

Middle and Late Pleistocene environmental history of the Marsworth area, south-central England

To elucidate the Middle and Late Pleistocene environmental history of south-central England, we report the stratigraphy, sedimentology, palaeoecology and geochronology of some deposits near the foot of the Chiltern Hills scarp at Marsworth, Buckinghamshire. The Marsworth site is important because its sedimentary sequences contain a rich record of warm stages and cold stages, and it lies close to the Anglian glacial limit. Critical to its history are the origin and age of a brown pebbly silty clay (diamicton) previously interpreted as weathered till. The deposits described infill a river channel incised into chalk bedrock. They comprise clayey, silty and gravelly sediments, many containing locally derived chalk and some with molluscan, ostracod and vertebrate remains. Most of the deposits are readily attributed to periglacial and fluvial processes, and some are dated by optically stimulated luminescence to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6. Although our sedimentological data do not discriminate between a glacial or periglacial interpretation of the diamicton, amino-acid dating of three molluscan taxa from beneath it indicates that it is younger than MIS 9 and older than MIS 5e. This makes a glacial interpretation unlikely, and we interpret the diamicton as a periglacial slope deposit. The Pleistocene history reconstructed for Marsworth identifies four key elements: (1) Anglian glaciation during MIS 12 closely approached Marsworth, introducing far-travelled pebbles such as Rhaxella chert and possibly some fine sand minerals into the area. (2) Interglacial environments inferred from fluvial sediments during MIS 7 varied from fully interglacial conditions during sub-stages 7e and 7c, cool temperate conditions during sub-stage 7b or 7a, temperate conditions similar to those today in central England towards the end of the interglacial, and cool temperate conditions during sub-stage 7a. (3) Periglacial activity during MIS 6 involved thermal contraction cracking, permafrost development, fracturing of chalk bedrock, fluvial activity, slopewash, mass movement and deposition of loess and coversand. (4) Fully interglacial conditions during sub-stage 5e led to renewed fluvial activity, soil formation and acidic weathering

Magnetic properties of the Old Crow tephra: Identification of a complex iron titanium oxide mineralogy

International audience[1] The mineralogy and grain-size distribution of the Fe-Ti oxide population of the Old Crow tephra bed, outcropping at the Halfway House loess deposit in central Alaska, are characterized through multiple low-and high-temperature magnetization experiments. The characterization is facilitated by heavy liquid separation of the bulk sample into a low-density ( 0.8 and may play an equally important role as magnetic indicator of titanomagnetite. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability of low-temperature magnetism to locate a 1 mm thick tephra bed dispersed in loess over 10 cm depth, through the identification of very low concentrations of a titanohematite phase with y = 0.9. The potential for advancing regional correlation of sedimentary deposits through the identification of Fe-Ti oxides common to tephra beds by low-temperature magnetism is illustrated in this study. INDEX TERMS: 1540 Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism: Rock and mineral magnetism; 1512 Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism: Environmental magnetism; 1519 Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism: Magnetic mineralogy and petrology; 8404 Volcanology: Ash deposits; 5109 Physical Properties of Rocks: Magnetic and electrical properties; KEYWORDS: low-temperature magnetism, frequency and amplitude dependence of AC susceptibility, ilmenite-hematite and magnetite-ulvospinel solid solution series, tephra, stratigraphic correlatio

Millennial‐scale climatic change during the Last Interglacial Period: Superparamagnetic sediment proxy from Paleosol S1, western Chinese Loess Plateau

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94646/1/grl12218.pd

Rock-magnetic proxies of climate change in the loess-palaeosol sequences of the western Loess Plateau of China

Results of the first detailed study of the climate proxy record in the loess-palaeosol sequence at Xining—one of the few palaeoclimate sites in the currently arid western Loess Plateau of China—illustrate the importance of making many types of rock-magnetic measurements other than susceptibility. A multiparameter approach yielded confirmation that here, as elsewhere in the Loess Plateau, the susceptibility enhancement in palaeosols was caused primarily by ultrafine magnetite and maghaemite. Nevertheless, magnetic enhancement was caused not exclusively by changes in relative grain size, but also by variations in concentration and mineralogy of the magnetic fraction. The effects of concentration variations were removed through normalization of susceptibility and anhysteretic remanence with saturation magnetization and saturation remanence, respectively. The resulting signal was ascribed more confidently to variation in magnetic grain size, which in turn was interpreted as a better proxy of pedogenesis than simple susceptibility. Variations in magnetic mineralogy were also determined to constrain interpretations further. The data were then used to discuss climate history at Xining. Finally, results from Xining were compared with other western sites and contrasted with eastern sites. In summary: (1) data is presented from a new Loess Plateau site which also appears to yield a global climate signal; (2) a demonstration is made of a more rock-magnetically robust way to separate concentration, composition and grain-size controls on susceptibility and other magnetic parameters; and (3) models are provided for inter-regional comparisons of palaeoclimate proxy records.This research was funded by the US National Science Foundation (grant EAR9206024 with travel supplement) and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (grant 49272426). Dr Han's stay at the Institute for Rock Magnetism was supported in part by the University of Minnesota Graduate School, and his international travel expenses were provided by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation. This paper is contribution number 9411 of the Institute for Rock Magnetism, which functions with the support of the W.M. Keck Foundation, the US National Science Foundation, and the University of Minnesota

Reconstructed Malacothermometer July Paleotemperatures from the Last Nine Glacials over the South-Eastern Carpathian Basin (Serbia)

In this study, the compiled malacological record of the two most important loess–palaeosol sequences (LPS) in Serbia was used to reconstruct the Malacothermometer July Paleotemperature (MTJP) of the last nine glacials. The sieved loess samples yielded shells of 11 terrestrial gastropod species that were used to estimate the MTJP. Veliki Surduk (covering the last three glacial cycles) and Stari Slankamen (covering the last fourth to ninth glacial cycle) LPSs previously lacked the malacological investigations. After the sieving, a total of 66,871 shells were found, from which 48,459 shells were used for the estimation of the MTJP. Through the studied period, the reconstructed MTJP was ranging from 14.4 °C to 21.5 °C. The lowest temperature was recorded during the formation of the loess unit L5, equivalent to the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12. The second-coldest summers were occurring during the MIS 16 glacial. Although the warmest glacial was L8 (MIS 20) according to MTJP, these July temperatures might be overestimated due to only two samples from the poorly preserved L8 unit. The malacological material derived from the loess units at Veliki Surduk and Stari Slankamen LPSs showed great potential for July temperature reconstruction, as the comparison with other regional records showed similar climate changes. Further work is necessary to validate the age scale of the oldest samples, and a higher resolution sampling could lead to more detailed July temperature fluctuations, as was shown for the youngest glacial in this study. Likewise, estimating the July temperature using different proxies (e.g., pollen) from the same LPSs could be used to confirm the observed climate trends

Geologie, Paläontologie und Geochronologie des Eem-Beckens Neumark-Nord 2 und Vergleich mit dem Becken Neumark-Nord 1 (Geiseltal, Sachsen-Anhalt)

Den Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit bilden die Ergebnisse sedimentologischer, palynologischer, malakologischer und chronometrischer Untersuchungen an Sedimenten aus dem Zentralbereich des Paläoseebeckens Neumark-Nord 2. Die interdisziplinären Untersuchungen an dem 11 m mächtigen Hauptprofil A und benachbarten Profilen zeigen übereinstimmend, dass die limnische Sedimentation vom Ende des Saale-Komplexes über die Eem-Warmzeit bis in die Weichsel-Kaltzeit erfolgte. Das Profil lässt Seespiegelschwankungen mit einer generellen Tendenz der Verflachung und Verlandung sowie wechselnde Sedimentationsraten erkennen. Durch die palynologischen Untersuchungen sind außerdem mit Erosion und Sedimentumlagerungen verbundene Hiaten festgestellt worden. Eine von Laurat et al. (2006) und Mania et al. (2008, 2010) im Profil ausgewiesene zusätzliche Warmzeit, die durch eine Kaltphase von der Eem-Warmzeit separiert und zudem jünger als das Interglazial von NN1 sein soll, existiert nicht. Vor allem die palynostratigraphische, aber auch die malakologische Koinzidenz der Becken NN1 und NN2 belegt die Gleichaltrigkeit der Ablagerungen. Somit ist in Neumark-Nord zwischen der Saale-Grundmoräne der Zeitz-Phase und den periglaziären Bildungen der Weichsel-Kaltzeit nur eine Warmzeit nachweisbar, das Eem. Dies wird durch neue geochronologische Daten eindeutig verifiziert. Daher können die zuletzt von Mania et al. (2010) dokumentierten Lagerungsbeziehungen, nach denen die Beckenfolge von NN2 über der von NN1 liegen soll, nicht bestätigt werden. In Neumark-Nord werden die klimatischen Besonderheiten des Mitteldeutschen Trockengebietes während der Eem-Warmzeit deutlich. Insofern bietet der Vergleich der Eem-Vorkommen von Neumark-Nord, Gröbern und Grabschütz ein Lehrbeispiel für die standortspezifische Variabilität benachbarter synchroner Warmzeitprofile.researc