Digital Commons Network^™

Building The New Babel Of Transnational Literacies: Preparing Education For World Citizens, Xiaobo Wang

English Dissertations

The transnational diasporas in a technological world that is postmodern and posthuman mean both exciting diverse communities and challenging problems. On the one hand, globalization brought human beings the convenience of exchanging ideas, doing business, and building a better world together. On the other hand, the political economy of nation states that shaped non-translational ideologies, created at the same time conflicts and misunderstandings among citizens from different parts of the world.

Responding to the current transnational clashes in flow (information dissemination) and contra flow (surveillance and control of information flow) of our information age, this dissertation builds up a transnational ...

Generalizability Revisited: Comparing Undergraduate Business Students To Credit Union Managers, Michael P. Mcdonald, Darrell Parker, John Leaptrott, Sara J. Grimes

Sara J. Grimes

This paper looks at the use of college students in survey research. Specifically examined is the use of undergraduate business school students to generalize to adult populations of practicing managers. Some studies suggest that such generalizations are valid, while others argue that generalizations need to be undertaken with caution. The differences between particularistic research and universalistic research are discussed. The findings from a study of 69 undergraduate business majors and 67 practicing credit union managers are presented. In summary, the current study finds that the two groups are very different in terms of two well researched personality constructs: locus of ...

Generalizability Revisited: Comparing Undergraduate Business Students To Credit Union Managers, Michael P. Mcdonald, John Leaptrott, Darrell Parker, Sara J. Grimes

Sara J. Grimes

This paper looks at the use of college students in survey research. Specifically examined is the use of undergraduate business school students to generalize to adult populations of practicing managers. Some studies suggest that such generalizations are valid, while others argue that generalizations need to be undertaken with caution. The differences between particularistic research and universalistic research are discussed. The findings from a study of 69 undergraduate business majors and 67 practicing credit union managers are presented. In summary, the current study finds that the two groups are very different in terms of two well researched personality constructs: locus of ...

Registered Savings Plans And The Making Of Middle-Class Canada: Toward A Performative Theory Of Tax Policy, Lisa Philipps

Lisa Philipps

Campaigning politicians and elected governments across Canada’s political spectrum strive to position themselves as defenders of the middle class. This is to be expected given the large proportion of the Canadian population that self-identifies as middle class. Since the term lacks precision, it is a claim that can accommodate a wide range of policy proposals. Tax policy serves as a prime vehicle for making this appeal to middle-class voters. Undoubtedly, any tax reform proposal can be examined critically to evaluate its likely distributional impacts and how well these map onto specific definitions of the middle class. This Article attempts ...

On The Politics Of Coalition, Elena Ruíz, Kristie Dotson

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly

In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of the philosophical role “method” plays in MacKinnon’s argument, and by reframing her critique of juridical neutrality and objectivity as epistemic harms. In the second section ...

North And South — A Look At Walcott's Midsummer, Patricia Ismond

Kunapipi

I propose in this paper to look at a new area of concern which appears in Walcott's poetry since he left Trinidad to reside in the United States.' The two volumes appearing since then, The Fortunate Traveller (19^2) and Midsummer (1984), are interesting for what they document of his responses to this change of scene. Most outstanding in this respect is the heightened awareness, on Walcott's part, of the contemporary reality of an international milieu, turning as it does on the axis of relations between the super powers and the Third World, between the metropolitan North and ...

The End Of A Nation: Warithuddin Muhammad And Muslim Identity In The Nation Of Islam, Derek R. Galyon

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee

Warithuddin Muhammad’s tenure as the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) saw the attempted implementation of universalist doctrine that differed significantly from the particularism practiced by the movement’s founding prophet, Elijah Muhammad. Despite an apparent desire to distance the movement from Elijah Muhammad’s teachings of the intrinsic link between Blackness and Islam, race remained important for both Warithuddin and his followers. By partially embracing universalist interpretations that purported to view each race as inherently equal from an Islamic viewpoint, Warithuddin could easily be characterized as having tried to “deracialize” the Nation of Islam. With this shift ...

Abortion: A Woman's Private Choice, Erwin Chemerinsky, Michele Goodwin

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Critical Race Theory And International Law: Convergence And Divergence, Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon

No abstract provided.

All Kindreds Shall Be Blessed: Nephite, Jewish, And Christian Interpretations Of The Abrahamic Covenant, Noel B. Reynolds

All Faculty Publications

A review of current and traditional scholarship regarding the covenant God made with Abraham combined with a thorough review of Book of Mormon references shows that the Nephite understanding varies in important ways from traditional Christian and Jewish interpretations. However, some of the insights of contemporary scholarship are more compatible with the Book of Mormon perspective.

Advice And Consent Vs. Silence And Dissent? The Contrasting Roles Of The Legislature In U.S. And U.K. Judicial Appointments, Mary L. Clark

Mary L. Clark

No abstract provided.

Separation Anxiety: International Responses To Ethno-Separatist Claims, Diane F. Orentlicher

Diane Orentlicher

This Article examines international legal, political, and institutional responses to separatist movements that are based on national identity. Drawing on the insights of non-legal disciplines into the relationship between national identity, popular sovereignty, and state formation, the author argues that international law governing the establishment of new states is outmoded. Shaped centuries ago by principles of Roman law that assimilate territorial sovereignty to ownership of private property, this law has failed to adapt to profound transformations in prevailing conceptions of sovereignty. The author's central claim is that international law's recent endorsement of democratic rights has far greater significance ...

Media Review: Rising To The Challenge: The Transition Movement And People Of Faith, By Ruah Swennerfelt, Ann Amberg

Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies

Ann Amberg reviews Rising to the Challenge: The Transition Movement and People of Faith, by Ruah Swennerfelt.

The Epistemology Of Esoteric Culture: Spiritual Claim-Making Within The American Neopagan Community, Marty Laubach

Marty Laubach

Non-institutionalised religious communities within western esotericism, such as New Age or Neopagan subcultures, are dynamic marketplaces for knowledge construction that may appear to be chaotic and governed only by the rule of caveat emptor. However, a close examination reveals authorization processes developing along similar lines as those followed by scientific empiricism during the seventeenth century. Claims of esoteric knowledge are developed from psychism experiences, and are authenticated by examining the claimant’s social standing, the narrative structure of the claim and the interests of the claimant and the judge. Such claims are authorized by incorporation into collective action, publications, workshops ...

Democracy At Work: Moving Beyond Elections To Improve Well-Being, Michael Touchton, Natasha Borges Sugiyama, Brian Wampler

Brian Wampler

How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this paper, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. The result is a new understanding of how different aspects ...

Democracy At Work: Moving Beyond Elections To Improve Well-Being, Michael Touchton, Natasha Borges Sugiyama, Brian Wampler

Michael Touchton

How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this paper, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. The result is a new understanding of how different aspects ...

Who Cares About Islamic Law?, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The legal transplant in the Arab world, perhaps even in the Islamic world writ large, hasn’t had much luck by way of close study in US legal academia. Compared to its scholarly treatment in other non-Western contexts, such as Latin America and East Asia, the absence is glaring. This was not for want of scholarly interest in law in the Arab/Islamic world. Much has been published on Arab constitutions for instance, and you’ve had a few speakers in this lecture series, opine on the topic. Nor has there been lack of scholarly interest in types of legislation ...

The Work Of Paule Marshall Today, Kelly Baker Josephs

Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal

No abstract provided.

Interpreting Sati: The Complex Relationship Between Gender And Power In India, Cheyanne Cierpial

Denison Journal of Religion

This essay stresses the importance of context sensitivity when considering seemingly controversial issues. Cierpal uses the act of Sati, widow burning, to illuminate the need for such context sensitivity. The controversial act takes place when one’s husband dies. Sati is literally translated to “virtuous woman,” and the wife performs the ritual in order to serve, provide for, and protect her husband. Sati can bee seen as a “ritual necessary in order to regain and achieve ultimate devotion to her husband.” Many Western feminist scholars question whether a woman exercises agency in making this choice, yet these scholars often fail ...

The Baha'i Faith In America, 1893-1900: A Diffusion Of The American Religious Zeitgeist, Joshua Rager

Denison Journal of Religion

This article argues that while the Baha'i faith may appear to be very exotic and distinct from traditional American Protestantism, it is actually very representative of the American religious zeitgeist, or "spirit of the times." The founder of Baha'i was Baha'u'llah, but the man who was primarily responsible for bringing the faith to America was the Syrian Kheiralla. He was educated at an American Bible university, and spent much of his life in the United States. Eventually, he self-identified as American. Furthermore, the faith that he brought with him to the United States was not orthodox ...

Changes In Sufism In The American Context, Patrick Hamilton

Denison Journal of Religion

This article considers the ways in which Sufism has altered since entering the American context. While in Islamic countries, Sufism's atypical rituals and interpretations of the Qur'an often made it a target of mainstream Islam. Once Sufism arrived in the United States, however, it rapidly began to change as practitioners no longer had to consider the pressures of a largely Islamic community. This does not mean, however, that there is no pluralism within Sufism in the United States. While early generations of immigrant Sufis remain more strongly tied to a traditional Islamic heritage, many of the Euro-American converts ...

Michael J. Shapiro. War Crimes, Atrocity, And Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015., Janine Hartman

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Michael J. Shapiro. War Crimes, Atrocity, and Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015.

Guide To The Rev. Paul John Rich Collection, 1894-2008 (Bulk 1963-1978), Lenora Robinson, Orson Kingsley

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

Paul John Rich III was a minister at the First Parish Unitarian Church in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts from 1962-1978. He resigned from the Church on June 28, 1978 after a number of lawsuits and complaints were filed against him.

This collection consists of documents, photographs and other ephemera from and about Rev. Paul John Rich and the East Bridgewater First Parish Unitarian Church (referred to as “Church” in Box and Folder list) from roughly 1894-2008, some Church-specific materials are prior to Rev. Rich’s tenure, but the bulk of materials date from 1963-1978.

Guide To The First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church Of Bridgewater Collection, 1717-Current, Lenora Robinson

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

The First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Bridgewater started in what was then called the “South Parish” of Bridgewater. In 1717, John Washburn deeded two acres of land “to the inhabitants of the southern part of Bridgewater to build them a meeting house” and to use part of the land for a burial ground. The first meeting house, built in 1717, was enlarged in 1741. A second meeting house was built in 1760.

The Church and Bridgewater State University have a long history of collaboration as neighbors. The first Principal of the Bridgewater Normal School, Nicholas Tillinghast, was a Deacon ...

Aids And Empire: Setting: The Conditions Of A Pandemic, Cora Walsh

Denison Journal of Religion

Walsh criticizes the imperialistic tendencies of the United States for not only helping to create an economic and social system that stratifies wealth, but also creates such deplorable conditions of the poor that their physical well-being is also jeopardized. This is seen most profoundly in sub-Saharan Africa where the AIDS pandemic has hit most violently. Furthermore, Walsh is disappointed in the United States for creating an atmosphere of inefficient humanitarian response. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. frequently gave government resources to conservative Christian groups that practice such things as abstinence only responses, making effective treatment ...

Organized Women In Afghanistan: The Key To A Universal Understanding Of Human Rights, Stephanie Hinkle

Denison Journal of Religion

Hinkle connects the non-Western world with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, released by the United Nations in 1948. The author disproves the assumption that this declaration is only applicable in the West through the example of Afghani men and women, particularly those who have devoted themselves to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA.) The crimes being committed against women in Afghanistan were frequently ignored by the wider world, particularly before the United States launched its military campaign there. Feminism, Hinkle argues, has an unfortunate history of believing itself to be a construction of the West, and applicable ...

Who Reads Bishop Butler?, David White

David J. White

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. "The work of the Bishop Butler Historical Society is, informally, “to spread the word by and about Bishop Butler.” The Society takes Bishop Butler’s work to be a paradigm of philosophy. None of his works were written for purely academic reasons. All his publications derived either from the discharge of his duties as a priest in the Church of England or from an attempt to advance himself in that career. Thus, by the pragmatist standard, they made a difference in the world."

History And Politics In The Thought Of Karl Jaspers, Nathan Wallace

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A relatively overlooked but important work, The Origin and Goal of History, by Karl Jaspers is examined with regard the intellectual history of its development and influence, and its structure and prospects for contemporary and future relevance for political theory. Emphasis is placed on the argument that the central aspect of the work has been neglected in recent, important literature: its connection of a universal historical narrative with a theory of contemporary politics.

The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) is one of Egyptian cinema’s most prominent leading actors, with work spanning three decades of critical films that informed a generation’s visual register of masculinity. However, the beginnings of his career were marked by public skepticism around his place as a leading actor due to him being “too dark” and “too poor”; as his career continued to flourish, those very markings of racing and classing Zaki because a foundation for increasingly stamping his public image with the “authenticity” of an Egyptian citizen. At a particularly neoliberal moment in the Egyptian economy, that of the early ...

Judicial Opinions As Public Rhetoric, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.