@article{smith_2018, title={BRAIDED ENVIRONMENTS: A CALL TO EXPLORE RHETORIC AND MATERIALITY THROUGH AUGMENTATIVE TECHNOLOGIES}, volume={4}, ISSN={["2457-8827"]}, DOI={10.24193/mjcst.2018.6.01}, abstractNote={This research proposes that augmented reality technologies have the capabilities of intertwining natural spaces, material spaces, and networked (or immaterial) spaces together through the author's original idea of the between, which can in turn be used to further explore rhetorical discourse and im/materiality and bolster emerging discourse within the digital humanities. By using a variety of contemporary research on diverse topics within augmented reality and the humanities, such as the inside/outside model and the regenerative/transformative concept (each proposed by Victoria Gallagher in her works on visual rhetoric), as well as an examination of current augmented reality applications (Wikitude and Pokémon Go), the author argues that emerging applications in AR can offer scholars a variety of possibilities to explore new media and the humanities, as well as more interdisciplinary fields such as public spaces, natural spaces, digital spaces, rhetoric, science, technology, and critical cultural theory.}, number={2}, journal={METACRITIC JOURNAL FOR COMPARATIVE STUDIES AND THEORY}, author={Smith, Steven}, year={2018}, month={Dec}, pages={5–19} }
 @article{smith_2018, title={Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination: Animation, Storytelling, and Digital Culture}, volume={13}, ISSN={["1746-8485"]}, DOI={10.1177/1746847717752604}, abstractNote={Eric Herhuth’s Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination: Animation, Storytelling, and Digital Culture takes its place alongside Donald Crafton’s Shadow of a Mouse (2012) and Suzanne Buchan’s The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom (2011) in reintroducing the relationship between aesthetics and animation to a readership perhaps less familiar with more canonical publications such as Jayne Pilling’s A Reader in Animation Studies (1997) and Maureen Furniss’s Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (2008). While some works, like Scott Bukatman’s The Poetics of Slumberland (2012), explore animation history, Herhuth uses phenomenology and aesthetics to examine how, while stimulating and transforming the senses, the digital animations of Pixar Animation Studios offer the possibility of addressing cultural anxieties in today’s society. Herhuth uses aesthetic concepts such as the uncanny, the sublime, the fantastic, and sensations of taste and becoming (or evolving) to explore various feature-length films, including Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy (dir. Lasseter, 1995; Lasseter, Unkrich and Brannon, 1999; Unkrich, 2010), Monsters, Inc. (dir. Docter, Silverman and Unkrich, 2001), The Incredibles (dir. Bird, 2004), and Ratatouille (dir. Bird and Pinkava, 2007). By considering some of Pixar’s most popular films and the relationship between form and cultural value, Herhuth argues that ‘Pixar narratives, characters, and worlds are engaged in what Jack Zipes calls a “civilizing process,” or the human need to adjust society and adjust to society in the midst of a changing world’ (p. 11). In other words, Herhuth, building on Jack Zipes’s argument, contends that Pixar films are akin to traditional fairy tales in the ways that they offer the possibility of subverting society and shaping cultural behaviors. Considering the book’s underlying concern with the impact of aesthetic concepts on subjective experience and cinema’s role in shaping social norms, Herhuth uses animation as a means to ‘affirm the value of aesthetic and humanistic inquiry’ (p. 16). His book is thus aligned with recent works in animation and film studies (Andrew, 2011; Leslie, 2014; Sobchack, 2007) as well postmodernism and aesthetics (Ngai, 2012; Shaviro, 2009), which taken together have pursued aesthetics in contemporary art and media. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Herhuth addresses the ‘process of judging, for knowing and evaluating the particulars of the world’ through an aesthetic analysis of contemporary pop-culture animation (p. 25). Chapter 1, ‘Aesthetic Storytelling: A Tradition and Theory of Animated Film’, provides both the historical and theoretical perspectives through which Herhuth will locate his work in subsequent chapters. Here, he claims that animation has not only a technological or industrial history, but also an aesthetic one (p. 18). He explains this by examining previous works in animation studies that 752604 ANM0010.1177/1746847717752604AnimationBook reviews book-reviews2018}, number={1}, journal={ANIMATION-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL}, author={Smith, Steven}, year={2018}, month={Mar}, pages={85–88} }
 @article{edwards_smith_2018, title={The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture in the United States}, volume={78}, ISSN={["1471-6372"]}, DOI={10.1017/S0022050718000608}, abstractNote={We examine the role of irrigation in explaining U.S. agricultural gains post-1940. Specifically, we analyze how productivity and farm values changed in the western United States as a result of technological and policy changes that expanded access to ground and surface water. To statistically identify the effects, we compare counties based on their potential access to irrigation water defined by physical characteristics. We find areas with access to large streams and/or groundwater increase crop production relative to areas with only small streams by $19 billion annually, equivalent to 90 percent of the total annual increase in the western United States after 1940.}, number={4}, journal={JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY}, author={Edwards, Eric C. and Smith, Steven M.}, year={2018}, month={Dec}, pages={1103–1141} }