Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

American Populism Shouldn’T Have To Embrace Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Public ignorance is an inherent threat to democracy. It breeds superstition, prejudice, and error; and it prevents both a clear-eyed understanding of the world and the formulation of wise policies to adapt to that world.

Plato believed it was more than a threat: He thought it characterized democracies, and would lead them inevitably into anarchy and ultimately tyranny. But the liberal democracies of the modern era, grudgingly extending suffrage, have extended public education in parallel, in the hope of cultivating an informed citizenry. Yet today, given the persistence and severity of public ignorance, the ideal of an enlightened electorate seems …

Honor And Compromise, And Getting History Right, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly does not have a Ph.D. in history, although he does have two master’s degrees, in Strategic Studies (from the National Defense University) and in National Security Affairs from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. So perhaps it was simply that he believed what he said about the Civil War this past Monday on Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News ‘Ingraham Angle’ was so innocuous that he could also believe that it wouldn’t even become a blip on anyone’s radar screen. (excerpt)

Digital Scholarship, With Undergraduates, In The Library, R.C. Miessler

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Three different Pennsylvania liberal arts colleges, Lafayette, Gettysburg, and Bucknell, have adopted library-led summer internship models as part of the effort to teach students about research using digital methods. Panelists from these colleges discuss perspectives on designing, leading, and adapting such programs, and on collaborating within and between institutions.

Successes And Challenges In Growing And Sustaining An Undergraduate Digital Scholarship Program, R.C. Miessler

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In July of 2017, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library completed the second iteration of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship, a library-led, student-focused program that introduces students to digital scholarship tools and methodology. Librarian R.C. Miessler discusses the successes and challenges of supporting a growing digital scholarship program, with a focus on its future sustainability and a vision of its expansion into a campus-wide initiative.

What All Americans Should Know About Women In The Muslim World: Clarifying Stereotypes About Muslim Women In Morocco, Alexandra M. Krain

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

The stereotypes about Muslims in Morocco as well as Morocco in general are widespread and often incorrect. The present paper combines both scholarly review and personal experience to clarify stereotypes about public space, work, education, and personal life, focusing specifically on women. Hopefully, this analysis will assist in educating the public about Muslims in Morocco and reveal the under-appreciated similarities between Moroccan and American women.

Active Resistors: The Women Of Post-Revolution Iran, Sofia E. Mouritsen

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

In this paper, I challenge the notion that Muslim or Middle Eastern women are passive acceptors of discrimination. After examining how Iranian women resisted governmental discrimination following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I consider a number of factors that may have led to the reversal of some of these discriminatory policies in the 1990’s. How much of an effect did women’s demands for equality have on the government’s decisions? This question of effectiveness introduces a longtime debate between Islamic feminists, who advocate for working with the theocratic government and using Islam to frame their demands for equality, and secular feminists, who …

Winning The Game: Muslim Women And Sport, Claire F. Benstead

Student Publications

Female Muslim athletes face a number of obstacles when playing sports, both at home and abroad. For example, those who wear hijabs may be banned from playing a sport in certain countries or international arenas because their headscarves are deemed unsafe by the organization’s standards. By contrast, they may be required to wear a headscarf in other countries if they wish to compete publicly. By examining case studies from a variety of sports and countries, this paper explains how female athletes have worked to overcome these obstacles and fought for equality and the right to join the game.

Climate Change And Migration: The Intersection Of Climate Change, Migration, And Gender Through Policy, Bridget E. Mccallum

Student Publications

This article explores the intersectional nature of the issue of climate change, especially as it relates to migration. Both migration and climate change are issues of global significance, with benefits and burdens distributed unevenly across gender, racial, and class lines. This intersectional approach takes note of the unequal power structures at play when attempting to combat these issues with policy.

Levels Of Media Consumption And Muslim Intolerance, Kathryn E. Cushman

Student Publications

Exploring the various factors that lead to Muslim intolerance, specifically the role of media consumption and the control variables of age and education levels

Factors Influencing The Evolution Of Chinese Disaster Relief Efforts, Lucas W. Gaylor

Student Publications

Disasters are life-altering events for any country. Every country around the world suffers from various kinds of disasters, whether produced by natural or human forces. The impact that these disasters have on people’s lives makes the topic of disaster relief and management a critical one for all governments around the globe; China is certainly no exception to the importance of disaster relief policy. As a country that has fallen victim to many disasters in recent memory, its disaster relief policy is one that has been analyzed at length by scholars around the world. In this piece, I seek to analyze …

Seismic Waves, Aubrey L. Kamppila

Student Publications

I was studying abroad in Florence, Italy on November 9, 2016, when I awoke to the news that Donald Trump had been elected President. To say it was a shock was an understatement, like many Americans, I had never dreamed the scenario possible. At that moment, I felt more powerless and disconnected from my country than ever before. For the next few weeks, I struggled to comprehend how I personally could combat the assault on my political views and values, what stand I could take, and what impact it might have. Finally, on one of many emotional phone calls with …

Thinking Digitally, Together: Models For Digital Scholarship At Gettysburg College, Amy E. Lucadamo, R.C. Miessler, Lauren E. White

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Systems Librarian R.C. Miessler, College Archivist Amy Lucadamo, and senior Lauren White, discuss how Musselman Library has been involved in digital scholarship conversations and activities at Gettysburg, and invite discussion on how a campus-wide model for digital scholarship could emerge.

The Rusher Who Wouldn't Take The Knee, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

No law requires the playing of the National Anthem at the outset of professional sporting events. Also, no law requires people to stand when the anthem is played, or that people to sing along—although federal law does mandate that we “should face the flag and stand at attention . . . right hand over the heart,” and that “men not in uniform . . . should remove their headdress with their right hand” (36 U.S. Code § 301).

But there is nothing in the statute which says that one cannot use posture as a means for what ESPN called “demonstrating …

Review Of "Macho Row: The 1993 Phillies And Baseball's Unwritten Code", Jack Ryan

English Faculty Publications

This is a review of William C. Kashatus's Macho Row: The 1993 Phillies and Baseball's Unwritten Code, an account of the misfit bunch that almost returned World Series glory to the City of Brotherly Love.

Review Of "Masters Of The Games", Jack Ryan

English Faculty Publications

A review of Joseph Epstein's Masters of the Games, a collection of essays, profiles, short stories, and opinion pieces about sports.

Jing Li, Associate Professor Of Chinese Language And Culture, Musselman Library, Jing Li

Next Page

In this first Next Page column of the 2017-18 academic year, Jing Li, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, shares recommendations for Chinese folktales that will help readers “see China in plural forms,” her favorite book to give as a gift, how she got her hands on magazines and comic books to read for fun during her childhood in China, and much more.

Monuments Ought To Be Considered Case By Case, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

In a press conference last week President Donald Trump made this contribution to the escalating debate about monuments and memorials to American heroes who, by today’s reckoning, failed a moral test.

The statue debate is inherently emotional and when it comes to keeping certain statues up or pulling them down, it riles people up —including Donald Trump. However, it is important to separate President Trump’s intemperate and often factually inaccurate remarks at Tuesday’s press conference from the statue controversy as it is currently playing out. (excerpt)

Courts And Executives, Jeffrey L. Yates, Scott S. Boddery

Political Science Faculty Publications

William Howard Taft was both our twenty-seventh president and the tenth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court -- the only person to have ever held both high positions in our country. He once famously commented that "presidents may come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever" (Pringle 1998). His remark reminds us that presidents serve only four-year terms (and are now limited to two of them), but justices of the Supreme court are appointed for life and leave a legacy of precedent-setting cases after departing the High Court. Of course, presidents also leave a legacy of important …

Un Nouveau Miracle Économique Ivoirien?, Vincent Hiribarren, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Questions à Abou Bamba, associate professor d’Histoire et d’Etudes Africaines à Gettysburg College (Etats-Unis). Il est l’auteur de African Miracle, African Mirage: Transnational Politics and the Paradox of Modernization in Ivory Coast (Ohio University Press, 2016).

Developing A Community Of Practice Among Undergraduate Digital Scholars, R.C. Miessler, Janelle Wertzberger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship (DSSF), a library-led, student-centered introduction to digital scholarship. For 10 weeks, a cohort of three undergraduate student fellows were introduced to digital tools, project management, research skills, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship, with the culmination the creation and presentation of a digital scholarship project. While the DSSF program is a library initiative, it drew support from partners from across campus, leveraging instructional support and the experience of digital scholarship practitioners from multiple departments to implement a broad curriculum in digital scholarship. The partners—who included …

Bringing Stories To Life By Sharing Archival Material, Christina M. Noto

Student Publications

Last summer I researched the experiences of women at Gettysburg College during the pivotal decade 1965-1975 with the support of a college grant, the Koble Fellowship, a ten-week humanities based faculty-mentored research project. I tracked women's experiences at the college during this period and designed a digital scholarship project to share their stories. As a history major and as a feminist, a project about the history of women and their activism on campus nicely complemented by interests. (excerpt)

H.V.: The Cuban Revolution Through One Man’S Life, Isabel Valiela

Spanish Faculty Publications

This paper aims to illustrate the many ways in which the Cuban Revolution shaped the lives of the Cuban people by focusing on one man’s life from his childhood in the early part of the revolutionary period to his final departure from Cuba in 2006. H.V., as I call him, now lives in Barcelona, Spain. He is a man of humble rural origins who moved to Havana in his youth, where he benefitted from various government programs related to education, sports and job training. He and his family were initially very pro-revolutionary, but in the 1980’s he began to observe …

#Dssf16+1: Library-Led Digital Scholarship For Undergraduates At A Small Institution, R.C. Miessler, Keira B. Koch, Julia C. Wall, Lauren E. White

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Librarian R.C. Miessler and Digital Scholarship Fellows Keira Koch, Julia Wall, and Lauren White were invited to speak to at the Pennsylvania Library Association, College and Research Division, Spring Conference about their experiences with the first cohort of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship.

Commentary: Will The Courts Make Trump's Presidency Less Imperial?, Allen C. Guelzo, James H. Hulme

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Nearly three months ago, Donald Trump assumed a presidency that, for more than a century, had grown seemingly endless discretionary powers. And he did so in company with Republican majorities in Congress and in 32 state legislatures -- all of which should have made his decisions unassailable.

Instead, he has been stymied and embarrassed by resistance from a federal judiciary that has twice halted executive orders on the most prominent issue of his presidential campaign. So, will the federal judiciary become the wall against which Trump bleeds away the power not just of his own presidency but of the “imperial …

In Solidarity, Musselman Library, Salma Monani, Sarah M. Principato, Dave Powell, Brent C. Talbot, Charles L. Weise, Bruce A. Larson, Scott Hancock, Mckinley E. Melton, David S. Walsh, Jennifer Q. Mccary, Kristina G. Chamberlin

Next Page

This edition of Next Page is a departure from our usual question and answer format with a featured campus reader. Instead, we asked speakers who participated in the College’s recent Student Solidarity Rally (March 1, 2017) to recommend readings that might further our understanding of the topics on which they spoke.

Ike's Leadership Lessons For New President, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

Just days into his presidency in the winter of 1953, Dwight Eisenhower met with his advisers and discussed a challenge from within the majority Republican caucus. If mishandled, it could have endangered his program for a stronger America.

The issue, as he later related, was the demand of conservative Republican legislative leaders that Eisenhower "balance the budget immediately and cut taxes no matter what the result." [excerpt]

Bisous, Elay E. Echavarria

Student Publications

A short piece exploring the cynical relationship between a boy and the environment he was raised in. This piece provides a quick glance into how personality traits are created in those who were raised by abusive parents.

Schisms: The Inherent Dangers Of Religious Variance Within A Single Faith – An Analysis Of Intra-State Conflict In The Modern World, Benjamin E. Hazen

Student Publications

This essay explores the relationship between religious variance within a single faith and the frequency of intra-state conflict. Specifically, an emphasis is placed on Sunni and Shia conflict within the overarching umbrella of Islam. Utilizing the most recent empirical data in conjunction with other scholarly research, it can be hypothesized that the more diverse a state is within a single subset of one particular religion, the more frequent the incidence of intra-state conflict is as well.

Enlightenment, Latin America, Age Of Revolutions, Spanish America, Brazil, Katherine A. Lentz

Student Publications

An essay analyzing the effect of Enlightenment thinking on the political and societal elite of the colonial Spanish and Portuguese Americas, and the subsequent colonial revolutions.

Women And Peace: Female Political Empowerment & The Prevention Of Civil Violence, Piper D. O'Keefe

Student Publications

Today conflict mainly occurs within nations (as opposed to between nations), and the importance of women in creating and maintaining peace (which can be most simply defined as the absence of violence) through informal and formal leadership roles has also become known, offering much for the possibility of the reduction of violence within nations. Testing this relationship through a Poisson regression for the hypothesis that countries that have higher political empowerment for women will have less civil violence in their nations than countries with a lower level of political empowerment for women, this study is able to reject the null …