Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Bang, Lexus P. Davis

SURGE

I am afraid
Your black skin. My skin. Our skin is one skin.
A skin that say Bullseye.
Shoot.
I am innocent.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I am waiting for someone to notice that we are dead.

[excerpt]

The Humanities, Brain Science And The Unforgiving Minute, Raymond L. Forbes

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Many independent authors from a wide variety of disciplines have come to a similar, if somewhat startling, conclusion; that we are currently at another “tipping point” in human history. Our arrival at this particular juncture in time seems to be the consequence of a potent mix of past trends and contemporary forces. Collectively, these energies act to feed exponentially growing technical and social change. In addition, there appears to be some agreement by thoughtful observers that the turmoil of our present epoch can be personified by four factors: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity More specifically, the technical and societal changes …

Queerly Faithful: A Queer-Poet Community Autoethnography On Identity And Belonging In Christian Faith Communities, Eric Van Giessen

Social Justice and Community Engagement

In a cultural climate characterized by increasing polarization and hostility towards difference, the lives and bodies of those standing at the intersection of religious and marginal sexual identities are actively shaped by and reshaping our social and cultural landscape. Cultural narratives that conflate religion with oppression and pit religion against ‘progressive’ political movements create artificial divisions that undermine the efforts of LGBTQI+ people of faith to effect change in their communities by pressuring them to compartmentalize—or closet— their spiritual or sexual selves. These constructions also reinforce discourses that claim there are no queer people in faith communities and no people …

I Am Me, Vanessa C. Martinez

SURGE

You say my accent is interesting It shows I’m not you I don’t understand your words even though I grew up knowing I am me and you are you I guess what I’m saying is well, what do you mean? When you say that my accent is interesting Are you trying to get to know me or assign me an identity? Is the nopal que tengo en la frente a symbol too ambiguous to fully convince you? When you’re unsure, do my words comfort you? Because they are connected to the deserts and the cacti that are linked to the …

Lost Weight, Alyssa Froehling

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

No abstract provided.

Obu Professor Margarita Pintado Wins International Poetry Award, Anna Hurst, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Dr. Margarita Pintado, assistant professor of Spanish at Ouachita Baptist University, recently won first prize in the poetry category of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture’s (ICP) 2015 Literature Awards for her manuscript “A Girl Who Looks Like Me.”

Ouachita To Host Poet George Drew For Reading April 4, Rachel Gaddis, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Ouachita Baptist University’s Department of Language and Literature will host poet George Drew on Monday, April 4, for a reading beginning at 6 p.m. in Hickingbotham Hall’s Young Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Drew is an author and poet originally from Mississippi whose work has been published in journals across the country. His poetry has recently been anthologized in “The Southern Poetry Anthology, II: Mississippi,” and his collection “American Cool” won the Adirondack Literary Award for the best poetry book of 2009.

Lost Weight, Alyssa Froehling

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

No abstract provided.

Strange Fruit: Race, Terror, And The War On Terror, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This poem examines drone warfare as a form of lynching. “Strange Fruit” links the deaths of Pakistani children Zeerak and Maria Khan to the murders of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, documented in the most infamous lynching photograph in U.S. history.