Background
Mason, Peter Ian was born on March 20, 1952 in Bellfonte, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Robert Stanley and Abelle (Dinkowitz) Mason.
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book
Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic
( When European travelers went overseas in the sixteenth ...)
When European travelers went overseas in the sixteenth century, they encountered unfamiliar lands, peoples, and sights. These travelers had to re-present these encounters to Europeans for whom they stood for the unfamiliar -- the "exotic." But the exotic, according to Peter Mason, is not something that exists prior to its "discovery." Rather, he points out, it is the very act of "discovery" that produces the exotic as such. In Infelicities Peter Mason explores the texts, paintings, drawings, photographs, and museum displays in which the exotic has been represented from the early modern period to the present. He describes the unique iconography that Europeans developed to represent the exotic and the means they employed to display it once artifacts were brought to Europe. In both instances, the exotic object is taken out of its original context and given a meaning and significance it never had; this new meaning and significance, Mason argues, are derived from the imposition of European cultural values and the need to recontextualize the object in a European setting. To differentiate the "exotic" from the "other," Mason says that in understanding the "other" there is engagement and interchange; in encountering the "exotic" it is a one-sided effort at understanding: the exotic object never gives up its meaning. The title of the book, Infelicities, comes from philosopher J. L. Austin, who used the term to refer to what happens when something goes wrong on the occasion of an act of utterance. For Mason, this "doctrine of infelicities" seems applicable to European encounters with the exotic and the efforts to represent thoseencounters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801858801/?tag=2022091-20
Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic by Mason, Peter (1998) Hardcover
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011829UHM/?tag=2022091-20
The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology
( In the Mammoth Room of Charles Willson Peale's Philadel...)
In the Mammoth Room of Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia museum, the reconstructed skeleton of a mammoth stands beside that of a mouse. This juxtaposition, write Florike Egmond and Peter Mason, is symbolic of the two approaches to history which they seek to reconcile. In The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology, Egmond and Mason aim to rescue morphology from abstraction and microhistory from the taint of triviality. They explore the theoretical relationship between the microhistorical method of paying careful attention to revealing details and the morphological method of looking for homologies among cultural artifacts or texts from different places and times. Drawing on both textual and visual material, the authors offer a series of microhistorical examinations of a surprising variety of phenomena, among them a legal dispute between spouses in sixteenth-century Holland, a curious ritual punishment for capital offenses, and the reassembly of the Peale mammoth skeleton for public display in 1800. Along the way, they offer an extended commentary on structuralism, post-structuralism, microhistory, and new historicism. "The book succeeds very well, both as a theoretical statement and as an exercise in the method espoused. The authors have made an important advance in the direction of scholarship. The greatest success of the book is in its work of methodological synthesis, its ability to stretch beyond disciplinary boundaries to illustrate new possibilities of morphological analysis that is neither history nor anthropology exactly but a nearly seamless merging of the two. The scholarship is quite up-to-date and superbly employed." -- Edward Muir, Northwestern University
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801854784/?tag=2022091-20
- Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other (Anthropology's major concern has always been the enc...)
Peter Ian MASON
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PETER MASON, American Lawyer, Partner of FREEBORN & PETERS, specializing in the field of Antitrust, Banking, Computer Law, Corporate, Employee Benefits, Employer Liability, Environmental Commercial Litigation, Products Liability, Regulated Industries, Mass Tort Defense, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Mergers and Acquisitions, Taxation and Venture Capital, Oil and Gas, Real Estate and Securities.
Education
Bard College (Bachelor of Arts, 1973). Boston University (Juris Doctor, cum laude, 1976).
Career
Bar: Illinois 1976, United States District Court (northern district) Illinois 1976, New York 1981. Association Rooks, Pitts, Fullagar and Poust, Chicago, 1976-1980, 81-83, Shearman & Sterling, New York City, 1980. Partner Freeborn & Peters, Chicago, 1983-1997, chairman operational committee, 1983-1996.
Director United States Robotics, Incorporated., Chicago, 1983, Eagle River Interactive, Incorporated., 1995.
President, COOMay & Speh, Incorporated., Downers Grove, Illinois, 1997.
Achievements
Works
book
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The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology
( In the Mammoth Room of Charles Willson Peale's Philadel...)
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Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic
( When European travelers went overseas in the sixteenth ...)
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Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other
(Anthropology's major concern has always been the encounte...)
- Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic by Mason, Peter (1998) Hardcover
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The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology
Membership
Member American Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Young President Organisation (Chicago west chapter), Union League.
Connections
Married Margaret Ellen Bremner, July 9, 1983. Children: Henry Graham, Ian Peter, Peter Alistair.
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Born
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Nationality
American -
Religion
Episcopalian -
Political Party
Republican
Career
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1976
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1981