Birmingham

On April 12, 1963, eight white clergymen of Alabama issued a statement titled “A Call for Unity” condemning the demonstration in Birmingham led by Martin Luther King Jr. as a part of the civil rights movement. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was King’s response to that statement. The Alabama clergymen put forward four major blames against the demonstrators: being outsiders, untimely, extremists and having a willingness to break laws.  King brings forward religious references and responds to each of these blames like a true man of religion. So this paper studies the religious aspect of his ideological “I”.

The Birmingham accent, also known as Brummie, enjoys a very bad reputation in Great Britain. It was suggested that its intonation is responsible for the stigma in the first place (How to speak Brummie, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A496352, 2001). Since Birmingham intonation differs from standard British intonation, and because intonation is indeed pragmatically meaningful for the perception of speech, two experiments at Adam Mickiewicz University were carried out to verify the hypothesis. The first one was to answer if Brummie is indeed disfavoured when compared to other dialects. The subjects listened to three Brummie speakers and three speakers of different accents of English, and rated the perceived attractiveness, friendliness and intelligence of the recordings on a 5-point Likert scale. The accent, as expected, was deemed the least attractive and intelligent. The second, core part of the experiment investigated to what extent intonation is responsible for this bad perception of Brummie speech. This time, the subjects were to listen to two versions of the speech sample of a given accent. The first version contained only intonation (the speech was unintelligible), and the second one included only segmentals (intonation was removed from the signal). The modifications were made using the methodology of Van Bezooijen and Gooskens (J Lang Soc Psychol 18(1):31–48, 1999) in PRAAT. The results of the two versions of each recording were then compared. On the whole, it turned out that Brummie intonation is indeed seen more negatively than RP intonation.

Concerned with popular music heritage, memory, cultural policy and of course heavy metal (and other genres),  'Music Heritage, People and Place' was a public symposium organised in response to the Home of Metal season of exhibitions and events in Birmingham UK in 2019.

The event took place on Friday 13th September 2019 at Birmingham City University.

Home of Metal (HoM) is a heritage project created and led by the Capsule organisation.

Launched in 2011, supported by volunteers, building a crowd-sourced archive and curating a range of popular public events in Birmingham and the Black Country, HoM seeks to highlight and celebrate the value of Heavy Metal music and culture and the role in it of founding artists from the English midlands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Judas Priest. Open to all, this public symposium brings together researchers, policy makers, heritage and creative workers and musicians. Its experts situate HoM in relation to wider issues and opportunities focused on popular music in order to understand its value and impact at home and abroad.

The day featured a keynote presentation on Rockheim, Norway's National Museum of Popular Music and closed with a panel discussion of plans for a dedicated heavy metal collection and museum in Birmingham.

Throughout the day, presentations covered aspects of heavy metal heritage as well as other genres and projects dedicated to exploring, preserving and exhibiting popular music history and the making of place.

Midlands Metalheads Radio (MMH) were on site to capture and share discussion, ideas and to provide the day's soundtrack.

Attendees were invited to contribute to a special edition of the journal RIFFS: http://riffsjournal.org/

In: Gill R., Pratt A., Virani T. (eds) Creative Hubs in Question. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

This chapter explores the character and specificity of Impact Hub Birmingham (IHB) through the lens of its online presentation, assessing its objectives, organisation and activities. Analysis frames IHB in terms of its status as social enterprise, detailing how this manifestation of ‘the hub’ idea engages individuals in debate and supports a particular idea of entrepreneurship that connects to wider of issues and urban disjuncture. The chapter explores the specificity of Birmingham as a setting for IHB and its commitment to place in relation to a discussion of the hub and co-working idea. A penultimate section locates projects cultivated within IHB in the context of critical perspectives on social enterprise initiatives. Conclusions reflect on the ambition of this iteration of the Impact Hub network, as well as the commitment and verve of its participants that offers a progressive space for social innovation whatever its limits in addressing the city’s considerable social and economic problems.

Using a unique data set which linked material from a multitude of sources, this research determined whether an association existed between education and subsequent achievement, in the Blue Coat Charity School in Birmingham between 1780 and 1850.
The research followed the life course of pupils at the school from the time they were admitted to the time they left and then throughout their working lives to measure the extent of intragenerational and intergenerational social mobility. Subsequently, the mobility was then correlated to the extent of their educational achievements to determine whether their education enabled them to acquire a higher status role or
move into a higher social class.

The study found that the school provided quality education in comparison to other schools in the locality, and evidence suggests that overall those boys who excelled academically were more likely to obtain a beneficial apprenticeship. However they did not necessarily need academic skills to succeed and secure a degree of social mobility as the social capital they also acquired within the school was found to be as
beneficial – if not more so – than their educational achievements. For the girls there was little sign that their education enhanced their status.

The Birmingham accent, also known as Brummie, is, possibly, the most stigmatized accent in the British Isles. It has been found the least preferred of all the accents examined in various language attitude studies (Giles, 1970, Hiraga 2005 or Coupland and Bishop 2007) that considered criteria like prestige, friendliness and intelligence. There is no one simple answer to the question why certain varieties are perceived worse than others. Apart from obvious connotations with their users, accents are also evaluated on the basis of their phonetic traits (van Bezooijen and Gooskens 1999). Lay observers proposed that in the case of Brummie this trait is its intonation (How to speak Brummie 2001).

Brummie intonation differs from standard British intonation. In particular, Birmingham English often uses rising tones where RP uses falls, that is, in declarative sentences (Cruttenden 1994). In Cruttenden’s terms these rises are „rise-plateaus” and „rise-plateau-slumps”. Ladd (1996), however, interprets Brummie declaratives as stylised low rises and its questions as rise-falls. These, in turn, convey negative attitudes in standard British intonation (O’Connor and Arnold 1967), which would go in line with arguments declared by folk linguists.

Two experiments in the form of an Internet questionnaire have been carried out among university students at the School of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. The first part of the experiment was to answer if Brummie is indeed disfavoured when compared to other dialects. The subjects listened to three Brummie speakers and three speakers of different accents of English English, and rated attractiveness, friendliness and intelligence of their pronunciation on a 5-point Likert scale. The Birmingham accent was deemed the least attractive and intelligent.

The second, core part of the experiment investigated to what extent intonation is responsible for this bad perception of Birmingham speech. This time, the subjects were to listen to two versions of a speech sample of a given accent. The first version contained only intonation, the second one only segmentals. The modifications were made after Van Bezooijen and Gooskens (1999). To attain an intonational version of a speech sample, a lowpass filter at 350 Hz was used. Thus, the speech was unintelligible, and only intonation was heard. In the segmental version, all the pitch points were removed but for one which was then placed at 109 Hz, i.e., an average pitch level for all speakers. Intonation was, therefore, flattened. All modifications were performed in PRAAT. Then the results of the two versions of each recording were compared. It turned out that some results do indeed suggest that rising tones may be conducive to bad reactions towards the Birmingham accent.

The exhibition of the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard at Birmingham Museum and Gallery is reviewed along with the accompanying publications ‘The Staffordshire Hoard’ and ‘Beasts, Birds and Gods: Interpreting the Staffordshire Hoard’ and the dedicated Staffordshire Hoard website. The exhibition is praised for its innovative approach in developing flexible displays, which can adapt to the findings of ongoing research, but criticized for the unclear juxtaposition of reconstructed and original artefacts, and cramped space within the ‘Treasury’. The publications are considered excellent, combining beautiful photography with modest cost, whilst the website is a useful additional resource containing a detailed gallery of photographs of use to both the serious scholar and student.

KEYWORDS
ANGLO-SAXON, EARLY MEDIEVAL, STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD, HOARDS, MATERIAL CULTURE, ANGLO-SAXON ICONOGRAPHY, MUSEUM STUDIES

Some readers wiH find aspects of the book taxing. Although discussions of the selected works are most often insightful, the text is not always an effordess read. The point has been raised again and again that academic crides have to be aHowed to write in a speciaHzed language geared at academic professionals, but it can stiH be discouraging when a cridc's construcdon of language threatens to obfuscate important ideas. Of greater concern is the Hmited range of works selected: the study seems so preoccupied in arguing for the representadon of faithful vision in recent postmodern novels that it suggests a deficiency in the works of less avant garde African American noveHsts. For example, there is no specific mendon of Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Lesson Before Dying, or any of his other novels, nor a consideradon of novels by such writers as J. CaHfornia Cooper, but the study spends time radonaHzing the presence of African American faithful vision in novels by Charles Johnson despite the professed influence of a Buddhist phHosophical world view in his work and his preoccupadon with EHison's Invisible Man. It is important to ask what else other than a common racial heritage makes the phHosophical vision that governs Johnson's wridng something that is akin to Baldwin's. The study seems to imply that if a postmodern novel authored by an African American writer offers some form of engagement with reHgious or metaphysical issues, it is then possible to radonaHze the presence of an African American faithful vision in the work. If one discounts the author's racial idendty, one might be able to suggest that a novel such as Can't Quit You, Baby, by the white Mississippian EHen Douglas, also contains strains of what might be caHed African American faithful vision.

This text was written for the anthology of responses to the question “What is the art of Birmingham?” as part of The Birmingham Show, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, 31 January–11 April 2015, curated by Ruth Claxton and Gavin Wade.

It is an autobiographical reminiscence on how Birmingham shaped my view of art and how to make it and think about it.

The full anthology of responses to “What is the art of Birmingham?” is online at: http://issuu.com/eastsideprojects0/docs/set_1_full_pdf
Installation shots of the exhibition are online at: http://eastsideprojects.org/exhibitions/birmingham-show-/

Vital Statistics. Edmund was the Cambridge Senior Wrangler of 1900, or the highest scorer in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. His numerous publications before his death justified people's high expectations of him. Anonymous, 'J E Wright obituary', Bryn Mawr Alumni Quarterly, April 1910, pp33-34. 10 This is indicated by Passenger Arrival Manifests from the United States Department of Commerce, as Wilmer was a foreign national and had to register on entering the country. 11 Although 'graduation' today implies the awarding of a degree, Wilmer France, like all women at the time, was not entitled to receive a degree from Cambridge University on account of her sex. Her completion of the programme at Girton, passing the Classical Tripos in the second division, upper class, equipped her for entry into her doctoral studies. The only degree she ever received was her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Last year the BBC aired a documentary called Lost Boys? What’s Going Wrong for Asian Men? The ‘Asian men’ of the title turned out to be, more specifically, Muslim men, and more specifically still, Muslim boys from Bradford. What, the documentary repeatedly asked, is wrong with these boys from Bradford?

There were many underlying assumptions veining the documentary, including the supposition that there is something wrong with these men/boys. But above all, ideas of segregation and integration were at its heart, as they tend to be in virtually all mainstream discourse about first, second, third generation ‘immigrants’ (Muslims in particular), forming a kind of accusation: “Why do they segregate themselves?” “Why don’t they integrate?”  What is it that ‘they’ are apparently segregated from? What do they not apparently integrate into? The response to this is equally vague, but usually seen as sufficient: Britishness.

This piece of writing is an experiment in digressive and peripatetic cultural studies that follows a thought path around the city of Birmingham in England. Instead of constructing an argument it tries to perform a mode of enquiry that could be sensitive to the ‘simultaneous non-synchronicity’ of culture, and could craft a form of writing adequate to history’s torn and crumpled state. It doesn’t try to claim preferential treatment for such a practice, merely a marginal place for such a practice within cultural studies.

Although frequently expressed in EBV-positive malignancies, the contribution of the oncogenic latent membrane proteins, LMP1 and LMP2, to the pathogenesis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is not fully defined. As a key effector in EBV-driven B cell transformation and an established "transforming" gene, LMP1 displays oncogenic properties in rodent fibroblasts and induces profound morphological and phenotypic effects in epithelial cells. LMP1 functions as a viral mimic of the TNFR family member, CD40, engaging a number of signalling pathways that induce morphological and phenotypic alterations in epithelial cells. Although LMP2A plays an essential role in maintaining viral latency in EBV infected B cells, its role in epithelial cells is less clear. Unlike LMP1, LMP2A does not display "classical" transforming functions in rodent fibroblasts but its ability to engage a number of potentially oncogenic cell signalling pathways suggests that LMP2A can also participate in EBV-induced epithelial cell growth transformation. Here we review the effects of LMP1 and LMP2 on various aspects of epithelial cell behaviour highlighting key aspects that may contribute to the pathogenesis of NPC.

ABSTRACT The 1939 airport terminal at Birmingham was one of the final acts of interwar aviation architecture and one of the most distinctive. To allow passengers to board or disembark from aircraft, a pair of wings was attached to the side of the building to facilitate so-called ‘dry boarding’. This paper will describe the international context for this interesting feature, one which would not be repeated after the Second World War. Interestingly, such obvious referencing to flight in the architecture of airports during the interwar years proves to be surprisingly rare, though examples in other types of building will be discussed. The Birmingham terminal comes at the end of the development of a network of British airports in the 1920s and 1930s, and this programme will also be examined to explain this interesting building’s place in it.

It is possible for a GA to have two stable fixed points on a single-peak fitness landscape. These can correspond to meta-stable finite populations. This phenomenon is called bistability, and is only known to happen in the presence of recombination, selection, and mutation. This paper models the bistability phenomenon using an infinite population model of a GA based on gene pool recombination. Fixed points and their stability are explicitly calculated. This is possible since the infinite population model of the gene pool GA is much more tractable than the infinite population model for the standard simple GA. For the needle-in-the-haystack fitness function, the fixed point equations reduce to a single variable polynomial equation, and stability of fixed points can be determined from the derivative of the single variable equation. We also show empirically that bistability can occur on a single-peak landscape where there is selective pressure toward the optimum at every point of the sea...

Published in Chris Poolman & Elizabeth Rowe, The Balsall Heath Biennale, pp.39-47. This essay reflects on Poolman Rowe's 'Balsall Heath Biennale' project in the context of my experience working in the same area during the 1970's and changing attitudes to 'community art' and 'public art'.

This article begins to address the gap in the quantitative literature on Conservative electoral decline in Northern English cities. Focusing on Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, and Birmingham and using local election and census data, this article maps the changing dynamics of Conservative support in Northern English cities from 1958 to 2003. It finds significant local variation in the extent to which Conservative vote share can be attributed to structural factors, and in the rate of Conservative decline. It also finds significant differences between the cities, even when controlling of electoral and socioeconomic factors. Context does indeed matter.

The History Network is an international social group aimed at increasing interaction between academics and the general public by convening social gatherings, museum trips, book readings, informal symposia and a whole host of other activities.

We currently have branches in Berlin and Birmingham (UK) with a combined membership of 160 people (as of 14.01.15). We are seeking to expand both our membership base and number of branches.