Browsing by Author "Weinberg, Robert E."

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    An Enlightened Island: Original Vision, Community Politics, and the Failure of Bitcoin
    (2017) Yao, Eric; Weinberg, Robert E.; Murphy, Marjorie
    One of the first paradoxes of Bitcoin was how the community would uphold Satoshi’s original vision and founding principles after its creation. Despite much recent scholarly discussion on the idea of Bitcoin, intellectual history of money, and optimistic, progressive historiography, little has been written to answer the question of whether Bitcoin has succeeded in its original vision. The article argues that Bitcoin has failed to remain civil libertarian, radically democratic, and equal and open due to community politics and an ensuing civil war over the block size debate and the future of the blockchain. In addition to drawing from two historicizations, Yap stone money and the Enlightenment, the article sources online social archives to support the thesis that various actions by the Bitcoin community during the civil war overturned and failed the original vision.
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    The Tale of a Tour: Solomon Mikhoels, Itzik Fefer, and the Soviet Encounter with American Jewry
    (2016-08-03) Petchenik, Molly Beryl; Weinberg, Robert E.
    In June 1943 Solomon Mikhoels and Itzik Fefer, members of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, embarked on a tour of the United States and several other countries. The aims of the tour were to raise funds for the Red Army, and to improve American perceptions of the Soviet Union. Reactions to the tour in the American Jewish community can be gauged through coverage of the events in the American Jewish press. These publications represent a wide range of political viewpoints, contributing a variety of perspectives on the tour. Aside from newspapers, another major presence in the events of the tour was that of American Jewish organizations. Like the press, these each had a political agenda of their own, which added to the complexity of relationships within the American Jewish community, and relations with the Soviet Union. This work investigates the significance of the tour in the Soviet Union and the United States. In particular, it views the tour and discussions surrounding it as a point of entry into understanding the landscape of tensions animating American Jewry and its reckoning with the Soviet Union during World War II.
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    'This Little City': Constructed Colonialism at the 1922 Colonial Exposition of Marseille
    (2013) Ranshous, Allison; Weinberg, Robert E.
    This paper explores the intersection of race and French colonial policy at the 1922 National Colonial Exposition of Marseille, which occurred in the midst of Europe's "exposition fever," during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I posit that the Exposition introduced the paradox of formal, constructed colonial exhibits that were posed against the backdrop of a thriving French city reaping the economic benefits of its colonial exploitation. I also address the question of whether or not native colonial workers, artists, and artisans could be considered truly "modern" if they were continually provincialized and racialized by French colonialists during the event. In my conclusion I argue that further study of this unique colonial narrative can shed light on questions of modernity and representation in the microcosm of the Exposition.