St James Farm

Formerly owned by the nephew of Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, Chauncey McCormick. More info here.
In 1920, Chauncey and Marion McCormick purchased St. James Farm as a private retreat to accommodate their interests in horses and dairy farming. The McCormicks’ son, Brooks, later transformed St. James Farm into a renowned equestrian facility. Brooks McCormick sold St. James Farm as a life estate to the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County in 2000. The Forest Preserve District officially took possession of the 607-acre property in 2007.

Museum of New Mexico :: Segesser Hide Paintings

via media.museumofnewmexico.org

Segesser I and II were painted on hides, likely bison, that had been tanned to make them supple, pumiced so that the grain was no longer visible, and sewn together to form a large canvas. The hides do not exhibit any distinctive ground or gesso layer under the paint.

Some scholars believe that the Segesser Hide Paintings were created in New Mexico, where imported canvas was rare and processed hides were used for a variety of purposes, including paintings on hide, or reposteros, that were exported to Mexico.

[An American Studies] Race and Insanity?

Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marc...Image via Wikipedia
Many of us are familiar with mental illness because these afflictions are so common they can strike our closest family members. Certainly, one of the most misunderstood mental illnesses is schizophrenia, which many mistakenly believe is "split personality" — it's not. Psychiatrist Jonathan Metzel, has written a provocative book that relates our recent discussions of race, discrimination, and perception to this particular mental illness.

In an interview embedded below, he argues that before the 1960s, schizophrenia was "a disease of docility", predominately affecting white women. But during the Civil Rights Movement, all that changed, especially in the media, movies and prescription drug ads.

But the key change was in the DSM-II, the handbook psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illnesses. Specifically, words like "hostility" and "aggression" were added to the definition of paranoid schizophrenia. And guess what? The actual diagnosis of schizophrenic African-American men climbed suddenly.

Since then, those words have been taken out of the latest edition of the DSM, but research has shown that schizophrenia had been over-diagnosed in African-American men ever since.

Think again about our class discussion on "invisible" factors and institutional racism. What conclusions can you draw now?


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