Arts and Humanities Commons^™

An Empirical Examination Of Contemporary American Spiritualism And Mediumship At Lily Dale, New York, Diana Ali

Western Research Forum

American Spiritualism is an American religion that was born in 1848 in Hydesville, New York. Its central principles state that there is life after death and that mediums have the capability to communicate with discarnate beings. Mediums are persons who claim they can communicate with the dead. Today, Lily Dale, New York is the largest surviving community of American Spiritualism, with a population of mediums that host an annual festival that draws large crowds from around the world upwards of 20,000-30,000 visitors. The author of the present interdisciplinary study outlined a historical overview of American Spiritualism and conducted empirical research …

The Fear And Biopolitical Control Of The ‘Terrorist Other’, Percy Percy Sherwood

Western Research Forum

“I think Islam hates us,” Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in a CNN interview in March 2016, conflating the religion with ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Trump’s statement exemplifies the prevailing fabricated enemy and resulting Islamophobia in the context of the ‘global war on terror.’ Since 9/11, powerful actors are using abstractions, ideologies, and narratives—that are usually defined along racial lines—to conjure up a fear so permeable that it serves to legitimize massive levels of violence in the name of self-righteousness. How do the racist abstractions, ideologies, and narratives that are associated with Islam and Muslims produce fear and insecurity …

White-Collar Working Class: The Ambiguous Identity Of Canadian Telegraph Operators, Michael Feagan

Western Research Forum

Were telegraph operators members of the working class or the business class? Were they skilled or unskilled? Were they labourers or executives-in-training? Was a job as a telegraph operator a temporary stepping stone or a lifelong career? Was it a job for men or for women? Telegraph operators were suspended somewhere between all these poles. The telegraph operator occupied a “liminal space” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century economy: a transitory position between management and labour, between skilled and unskilled labour, between men’s work and women’s work, between the white-collar office and the blue-collar factory floor. The ambiguous …

From Expectation To Experience: My Changing Identity As A Chinese International Student, Yin Wang

Western Research Forum

From Expectation to Experience: My Changing Identity as a Chinese International Student

Background:

This autobiographical narrative inquiry investigates what we can learn from my experience as a Chinese international student in both writing and art-based ways, which can inform Chinese international students’ expected supports that can improve their mental wellbeing. The study asks: Are my pre-departure expectations for studying in Canada different from the realities? If so, how and why are they different? And, what is my changing identity to be a Chinese international graduate student? The data sources of the study are my autobiographical memories, posts, blogs, journals, drawings …

Taking Back Control: Memes, Trump, 4chan, Gamergate, And The Rise Of The Alt-Right, Cam Fediuk

Western Research Forum

Background

My thesis’s impetus is the rise of reactionary discourse on the internet, collectively known as the alt-right. As with the traditional right, the alt-right is anti-feminist, anti-immigration, and anti-political-correctness, but unlike its predecessor, is also anti-establishment, anti-religion, pro-Donald Trump, and thoroughly engaged with and immersed in the meme-based political discourse of digital media.

Hypothesis

I argue against the cyber-utopianism proposed by Douglass Rushkoff and other early internet theorists; I argue that, while the internet has made memes central to political discourse, the rise of laissez-faire social media platforms has not made the digital generation more enlightened, or tolerant, …

Analyzing Sentiment In Twitter Tweets As A Basis For Music Creation, Jeff Lupker

Western Research Forum

Analysis of the sentiment associated with different words has long been used as a pre-compositional tool by various composers through their use of the words of poets, lyricists or writers in creating their music. While the interpretation of any given word and its relation to music might have loosely followed some implicitly accepted notions amongst composers, there was no accurate method for qualifying each word according to its sentiment in standard usage. More recent research measuring individuals’ evaluation of text has led to a quantitative ranking of words in terms of properties concerning sentiment. My current research is an attempt …

Text Mining In Chinese Ancient Attires, Lu Wang

Western Research Forum

Starting from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) when writing system appeared in China, clothing was recorded as symbols to denote social statuses. The hierarchical signification of clothing remained in the following dynasties until the end of imperial China in 1911. The imperial period produced twenty-five official dynastic histories with rich corpuses on the subject of attire, documenting regulations and prohibitions of detailed dress code, a subject being scarcely studied and treated with assumptions today. This research will use text mining tools to identify descriptive words of clothing that reflect Chinese hierarchal ideology from the twenty-five histories. The method is to …

Critical Citizen Engagement: The Black Pete Controversy, Anti-Racism Activism, And Limits To Citizenship In The Netherlands, Lianne M.A. Mulder

Western Research Forum

Background

This research analyses the engagement of Dutch citizens with a migration background in anti-racism activism, specifically activism against the blackface caricature Black Pete. It aims to answer how and why their citizenship is questioned when they become critical participants of civil society, and how this relates to the history of Dutch colonialism, the denial of racism, and the self-image of white Dutch people as ‘good, tolerant, and innocent’ despite evidence to the contrary.

Methods

The research is based on literature and field research and uses a theoretical framework based on critical race theory, citizenship studies, and decolonial theory.

Results …

Creative Subversion: Challenging Sociocultural Silencing In Schools, Kelly Bylica

Western Research Forum

Grounded in the goal of troubling the silence that often pervades spaces of inequality in schools, this action research pilot study examined the role soundscapes might play as a catalyst to open spaces for dialogue that recognizes and interrogates the injustices and oppressive structures present in many schools and communities (Gutstein, 2006). Soundscapes have become more common in music classrooms as a way to encourage students to compose without the restraints of standard notation. Originally intended to help “young children to listen to and use the sounds of their own lives and environments as the basis of what were called …

P13. Wagner's Use Of The Formal Lament For King Mark In Tristan Und Isolde, Julie Anne Nord

Western Research Forum

Background: The composer Richard Wagner often expressed his distaste for “number” operas and other contrived forms used in the Italianate works of his forerunners and contemporaries. In place of these operatic conventions, Wagner drew upon the Tragedy of Ancient Greece to propose a “total artwork” (Gesamtkunstwerk)) with no contrived breaks for conventional form. Despite, or perhaps because of, his aversion toward operatic formal conventions, Wagner turned to one such form for his music for King Mark in Tristan und Isolde.

Methods: This poster demonstrates Wagner’s use of lament tropes from the poetry of Greek Tragedy and from …

P09. Bearing Witness: Auto/Biographical Portraiture As Testimony, Gina Snooks

Western Research Forum

In this poster, I examine auto/biographical portraiture as medium through which to theorize women’s experiences of sexual trauma and the potential healing power of sharing personal experience narratives. In doing, so, I align with scholars who contend that auto/biographical photography is a performative act that provides a way to grapple with aspects of personhood that may be rooted in difficult and/or traumatic experiences (Spence 1996, Nuñez 2013, Shaughnessy 2015). I draw also on scholarship that understands shared storytelling as a valuable strategy through which to “call attention to the vulnerabilities” that some women may “endure in silence and shame” (Jones, …

P24. The Birds And The Beats: Perception Of A Beat In An Avian Model, Brendon Samuels

Western Research Forum

Background: Beat perception is a complex cognitive skill that enables humans to “feel” the beat in music, and is an essential component of synchronization of behavior and dance. The mechanisms in the human brain that facilitate beat perception are not entirely understood, and have only been studied thus far using non-invasive techniques. Some animals, such as songbirds, also seem to be able to detect a beat in rhythms, though this has never been formally tested independent of motor synchronization.

Methods: An operant experiment is used to assess if European starlings, a type of songbird, are capable of categorizing …

P28. Canadian Jewish Women And Girls On The Homefront, 1939-1945, Jennifer Shaw

Western Research Forum

Background: The following presentation explores the roles and experiences of Canadian Jewish women on the Canadian homefront during World War Two. Despite knowing much about the lives of women in this time period in general, we do not know much about the experiences of particular groups, and how they differed from the majority of women.

Methods: Using first-hand accounts gathered from Canadian Jewish women, as well as archival materials, this presentation explores the different ways Jewish women and girls participated in the war effort and experienced the war years.

Results: While acknowledging that some of their experiences …