Bridgewater Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, May 2017
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Bridgewater Review Volume 36 | Issue 1 Article 1 May-2017 Bridgewater Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, May 2017 Recommended Citation Bridgewater State University. (2017). Bridgewater Review. 36(1). Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol36/iss1/1 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Bridgewater Review In this issue: Also in this issue: A LOOK AT TOTAL BORIANA MARINTCHEVA Voices on Campus: SOLAR ECLIPSES on What’s New with the Flu CLAIRE CULLETON on Irish Art at the Olympic Games by MARTINA ARNDT J. MICHAEL BODI on International Standardized and Testing and American Education Book Reviews by Seeking the Northern Lights JENNY SHANAHAN, Photo Essay by JASON EDWARDS, TIMOTHY WENSON HEATHER MARELLA, and STEVEN YOUNG Discovering Jerusalem’s First Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif by BEATRICE ST LAURENT MayVolume 2017 36, Number 1 May 2017 BRIDGEWATER STATE UNIVERSITY1 Waiting for the King Artist: Betsy Scarbrough, Mixed Media Collage, including painted wallpaper, original artwork and photographs (Photographed by Ezechiaste Pompilus) Credits for Author Photographs Martina Arndt (by Naty Alzate); Claire Culleton (by Debra-Lynn Hook); Betsy Scarbrough is Administrative Jason Edwards (by Amber Edwards); Heather Marella (by Andrew Holman); Assistant in the Department of Andrew Holman (by Frank Gorga); Jenny Shanahan (by John Winters); Accounting and Finance Beatrice St Laurent (by Alex Brey); Tim Wenson (by Kate Ricciarelli-Wenson); and Steven Young (Briarwood Studio). 2 Bridgewater Review Bridgewater Review Volume 36, Number 1 May 2017 2 Editor’s Notebook EDITOR Andrew C. Holman Andrew C. Holman History & Canadian Studies 4 Total Solar Eclipses: Why I Observe Them and How You Can Too ASSOCIATE EDITOR Martina Arndt Ellen Scheible English 10 What’s New with the Flu? EDITORS EMERITUS Boriana Marintcheva Michael Kryzanek 13 International Standardized Testing: Political Science & Global Studies The Measurement Problem William C. Levin J. Michael Bodi Sociology 17 PHOTO ESSAY Barbara Apstein Seeking the Northern Lights English Timothy Wenson Brian Payne 23 Discovering Jerusalem’s First Mosque on History the Haram al-Sharif and Capitalizing Jerusalem DESIGN in the Seventh Century Philip McCormick’s Design Beatrice St Laurent Works, Inc., North Easton, Mass. 29 VOICES ON CAMPUS Irish Art at the Olympic Games Claire Culleton 33 BOOK REVIEWS Wrestling with God with Foer and Melton, Jenny Shanahan Can We Bridge America’s Political Divide? Jason Edwards A New Light on Trees, Heather Marella From Mozart to Messiaen: Reflections on a Lifetime of Music, Steven Young On the Front Cover: Total Solar Eclipse 2015 (Svalbard, Norway). Photograph by Miroslav Druckmüller, Shadia Habbal, Peter Aniol, and Pavel Štarha. Printed with permission. Bridgewater Review is published twice a year by the faculty and librarians of Bridgewater State University. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies ofBridgewater Review or Bridgewater State University. Letters to the Editor are encouraged and should be sent to: Editor, Bridgewater Review, [email protected] Articles may be reprinted with permission of the Editor. ©2017, Bridgewater State University ISBN 0892-7634 May 2017 1 gene; it merely compares snippets of Editor’s Notebook one’s DNA makeup to snippets of the DNA makeups of others known to be Andrew C. Holman of certain ethnicities and seeks similari- or the past three years I have been an admirer ties). In this way, curious consumers are told that they are “54% British” or of a one-hour weekly television show on PBS “23% Oceanic” or whatever. According called “Finding Your Roots.” The host is to data from Kalorama Information, F family-tree-related at-home DNA- distinguished Harvard history professor and public testing services will generate $350 mil- intellectual Henry Louis Gates Jr, who, with the lion by 2020. help of a crack team of researchers and the science The upshot of this is what Maud of a DNA-chromosomal-testing service called Newton called in a June 2014 Harper’s magazine piece “America’s Ancestry “23andMe,” traces the ancestry of invited celebrities. Craze.” The term “craze” suggests In a dramatic sequence of steps, the host reveals to each a passing fad or fetish – a social episode’s subjects, through prepared “Books of Life,” phenomenon that has emerged quickly. So why now? Some of our interest in the often unexpected and always emotional facts of this endeavor comes from its novelty. their family histories. Actor Dustin Hoffman learns We want to know our ethnic makeup because now we – almost all of us – can. that his grandfather was murdered in the USSR by the The “science” is now widely available. Bolshevik secret police; comedian Bill Hader is told But there are longer-term, pent-up that he descends from English royalty; legendary Civil causes, too, that stem from some of the darker chapters in American Rights activist John Lewis learns of his great-great history. Slavery and the conquest grandfather’s record as an early Black-voting registrant of First Nations peoples obliterated the knowledge of Black and Native in Reconstruction-era Alabama. It’s emotional. Gates ancestors, some of which (it is hoped) told one NPR interviewer in 2012, “People cry.” can be reconstructed using what we might call the “New Genealogy.” And The program has been a great success allow interested inquirers—for $99 and others, like war-era British “Home because its appeal is something much the safe return of a cotton-swab test Children,” adoptees, and families of deeper than celebrity voyeurism and kit—to reach back beyond traceable Holocaust victims, now have new tools the cliff-hanging uncertainties of well- and nameable ancestors and learn what to help describe what had previously staged drama. Interest in family history, chromosomal analysis can tell them been unknowable. “A new world has long the province of the superannu- about their ethnic origins. (Note: the opened up,” Newton writes, “for… ated and supported by well-heeled and “science” of this sort of DNA testing anyone else cut off from her origins” religiously motivated institutions such is fuzzy. This chromosomal test isn’t (31). It’s exciting. as the Church of Latter-day Saints, searching for a specific tell-tale ethnic has exploded in the past half-decade. Genealogy is in vogue, and it’s no longer just your grandmother’s hobby. It is, in fact, big business. For a subscrip- Most of us have expectations tion fee, online genealogy-research services like Ancestry.com and about our ethnicity, have already MyHeritage sell access to searchable imagined our own “race.” And digitized databases such as census, birth and death records, and make finding so revising or contradicting answers to elementary genealogy que- ries fast and easy. What’s more, DNA- those preconceived truths can research services like AncestryDNA be unsettling. 2 Bridgewater Review means little if we haven’t experienced the lived condition, or paid the social price of those who, for all of their lives, have been identified as members of disadvantaged groups of people. In the end, as University of Alberta Native Studies professor Kim Tallbear told a PRI interviewer last fall, it matters less who we claim to be than “who claims us.” Still, for Gates, the discomfort of these blood revelations is at the center of the political mission of the New Genealogy. By demonstrating scientifi- cally that there is no such thing as racial purity, that we are all mixed beings, digital and genetics research will, as he said, “revolutionize our concept of race in America” and break down barri- ers (Newton, 33). There’s something comforting in that assertion. If Gates is right, ethnic heterogeneity is the common trait that connects Americans. This idea, now backed by science, has potential for redefining what it means to belong in America – for both claim- ing heritage and being claimed by it. Today, when a new brand of xenopho- bia has emerged in this country, fueled by fear-mongering over immigration and border control, reactions to social- justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, the export of American jobs, Still, there are potentially unantici- sensationalized family-history research and the continued specter of radicaliza- pated consequences for at least some of and activated new political meanings tion and terror, “othering” is on the this new enthusiasm for genealogical for it. rise and anomie threatens to trump inquiry. In the old days, family-history community. In a modest way, the New Who am I? Who can I claim to be? research was most often a solitary Genealogy (and the political message it These questions are at the core of and incremental pursuit, a plod- can bring) counters that awful wind. family research and they have never ding, time-consuming pastime that been wholly innocuous or benign. involved a great deal of correspond- Most of us have expectations about ence, travel to libraries and archives and our ethnicity, have already imagined family-history centers, and hours upon our own “race.” And so revising or hours of winding through microfilm contradicting those preconceived truths perched awkwardly, head inside a can be unsettling. “We’re talking about boxy metal reader. Old-school gene- blood,” writes Newton, and “we’re alogists constructed their family trees supposed to pledge allegiance to blood” painstakingly; unexpected discoveries (32). What does it mean,