Books by "Jason M. Smith"

4 books found

Rituals of Resistance

Rituals of Resistance

by Jason R. Young

2007 · LSU Press

In Rituals of Resistance Jason R. Young explores the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region of Georgia and South Carolina during the era of slavery. The choice of these two sites mirrors the historical trajectory of the transatlantic slave trade which, for centuries, transplanted Kongolese captives to the Lowcountry through the ports of Charleston and Savannah. Analyzing the historical exigencies of slavery and the slave trade that sent not only men and women but also cultural meanings, signs, symbols, and patterns across the Atlantic, Young argues that religion operated as a central form of resistance against slavery and the ideological underpinnings that supported it. Through a series of comparative chapters on Christianity, ritual medicine, burial practices, and transmigration, Young details the manner in which Kongolese people, along with their contemporaries and their progeny who were enslaved in the Americas, utilized religious practices to resist the savagery of the slave trade and slavery itself. When slaves acted outside accepted parameters -- in transmigration, spirit possession, ritual internment, and conjure -- Young explains, they attacked not only the condition of being a slave, but also the systems of modernity and scientific rationalism that supported slavery. In effect, he argues, slave spirituality played a crucial role in the resocialization of the slave body and behavior away from the oppressions and brutalities of the master class. Young's work expands traditional scholarship on slavery to include both the extensive work done by African historians and current interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies, anthropology, and literature. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources from both American and African archives, including slave autobiography, folktales, and material culture, Rituals of Resistance offers readers a nuanced understanding of the cultural and religious connections that linked blacks in Africa with their enslaved contemporaries in the Americas. Moreover, Young's groundbreaking work gestures toward broader themes and connections, using the case of the Kongo and the Lowcountry to articulate the development of a much larger African Atlantic space that connected peoples, cultures, languages, and lives on and across the ocean's waters.

Adaptive Compensation of Nonlinear Actuators for Flight Control Applications

Adaptive Compensation of Nonlinear Actuators for Flight Control Applications

by Dipankar Deb, Jason Burkholder, Gang Tao

2021 · Springer Nature

This book provides a basic understanding of adaptive control and its applications in Flight control. It discusses the designing of an adaptive feedback control system and analyzes this for flight control of linear and nonlinear aircraft models using synthetic jet actuators. It also discusses control methodologies and the application of control techniques which will help practicing flight control and active flow control researchers. It also covers modelling and control designs which will also benefit researchers from the background of fluid mechanics and health management of actuation systems. The unique feature of this book is characterization of synthetic jet actuator nonlinearities over a wide range of angles of attack, an adaptive compensation scheme for such nonlinearities, and a systematic framework for feedback control of aircraft dynamics with synthetic jet actuators.

Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management

Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management

by Jason S. Link, Anthony R. Marshak

2022 · Oxford University Press

By examining a suite of over 90 indicators for 9 major US fishery ecosystem jurisdictions, the authors systematically track the progress the country has made towards advancing EBFM and making it an operational reality, lessons which are applicable to oceans globally.

Complex TV

Complex TV

by Jason Mittell

2015 · NYU Press

A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as formulaic and convention bound. Complex TV offers a sustained analysis of the poetics of television narrative, focusing on how storytelling has changed in recent years and how viewers make sense of these innovations. Through close analyses of key programs, including The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Mad Men the book traces the emergence of this narrative mode, focusing on issues such as viewer comprehension, transmedia storytelling, serial authorship, character change, and cultural evaluation. Developing a television-specific set of narrative theories, Complex TV argues that television is the most vital and important storytelling medium of our time.