INQUIRY

INQUIRY • Volume 19, 2015
to France’s campaign to retain Algeria, the architects of
American counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq looked only
to the doctrinally unstable initial years of the Algerian war,
which spanned from 1954–1958, to the detriment of the
final four years. This study focuses on those pivotal and
final years of the Algerian insurgency when France pursued
a joint strategy of indigenous empowerment and sweeping
raids to devastating effect. In order to successfully employ
the lessons of Algeria against modern insurgencies, it is
necessary to investigate the entirety of the conflict and to
understand that the United States cannot defeat insurgents
by buying their loyalty but must instead use every resource,
military and economic, at its disposal.
One Big Soul: The Unity of Bill Viola’s Going Forth by Day
Alex Greenberger, Art History
Sponsor: Professor Shelley Rice, Photography and Imagining,
Tisch School of the Arts
American artist Bill Viola (1951– ) is known for his
videos that ponder life’s biggest questions: e.g., the mysteries
of birth and death, humanity’s connection to nature and
the role of spirituality today. It is clear that what Viola does
differs from the work of many socio-politically concerned
contemporary artists. Scholars are therefore sometimes
unsure how to study his work. In Going Forth by Day (2002),
Viola’s most ambitious work to date, he brings together five
videos that seem unconnected: a woman and rescue workers
search for her son in the aftermath of a flood, an old man
dies as his belongings are shipped off, people walk through a
forest, an apartment building explodes with water and a birth
is abstractly shown. Although these videos’ narratives have
little in common, Viola brings them together so that these
disparate parts are unified as a whole installation, a process
that is then mirrored by the viewer’s own spiritual journey
through the work. By relying on non-Western spirituality, art
from both the West and outside it, the history of the sublime
and video theory, it can be suggested that with Going Forth
by Day, Viola attempts to reconnect humanity with its world.
Glocalizing Expressway Conversions: From Brooklyn-
Queens Expressway to Public Urban Tech-Park
“Midline”
Jesslyn Guntur, Urban Design and Architecture Studies
Sponsor: Professor Mosette Broderick, Art History
Since the 1970s, more than two dozen American cities
have participated in the “Expressway Teardown Movement”
and permanently dismantled outdated expressways
or replaced them with a community-building, economically
viable and environmentally sustainable alternative.
However, still more cities have been too sidetracked by
misplaced priorities, conflicting interests and financial
hesitancy to realize the wide-ranging benefits of expressway
conversions. This has been most evident in the case of the
Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) in Brooklyn Heights,
New York. This project aims to convince Brooklyn Heights
constituents to glocalize the “Expressway Conversion
Movement” with the BQE by supplanting one of its threetiered
cantilevered lanes with the Midline, a sustainable,
urban technology-based public park. The author uses literature
reviews, newspaper periodicals, technical manuals and
global case studies to clarify the necessity, desirability and
feasibility of the conversion. Ultimately, this project shows
the estimated community benefits of the Midline to offset the
cost of implementation. Research on the implications of the
Midline offer a significant contribution to the field of urban
design by challenging the forum to consider revitalization
of active yet outdated infrastructures—as opposed to passive
conversions of abandoned or deactivated spaces—for
improving community life.
A Call to Arms: John Oliver’s Democratic Engagement
with His Audience
Alexandra Heffern, Global Liberal Studies
Sponsor: Professor Matt Longabucco, Liberal Studies
Contemporary news media suffers many maladies:
covert bias, obsession with entertainment and information
overload to name a few. In response, political satire exposes
and remediates these flaws. The impact of satire on politics
was explored by Amber Day in her article Satire Might
Not Sway Votes, but That Isn’t the Point. Day explains that
when examining satirical impact, short term observations
use a flawed understanding of healthy democratic activity.
Instead of short term markers, like voter turnout, to judge
success, Day proposes that, “the very idea of a democratic
system is premised on the existence of an informed and
engaged citizenry.” American politician Thomas Jefferson,
Wendy Brown, professor at the University of California in
Berkeley and Michael Schudson, professor at Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Journalism, all have theories
that elaborate on a healthy citizenry. A combination of their
ideas creates a new model for contemporary citizen engagement.
With this reconstructed definition of an informed
and engaged citizenry, it is possible to move forward and
analyze the efficacy of satirists in enacting change over
traditional news journalists. Ultimately, John Oliver of Last
Week Tonight is offered as a model for future development
within the field of satire.
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