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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Salafism And Takfirism In Tunisia Between Al-Nahda’S Discourses And Local Peculiarities, Pietro Longo Nov 2016

Salafism And Takfirism In Tunisia Between Al-Nahda’S Discourses And Local Peculiarities, Pietro Longo

Faculty Journal Articles

This Working Paper aims at analyzing the discourses about the takfiri movements that rose in Tunisia after the Jasmine revolution. The victory of the Islamist party al-Nahda at the NCA elections in October 2011 provoked concerns about the rise of salafi groups. Between 2011 and 2012 several politicians, businessmen and journalists were accused of kufr by the salafi group Ansar al-Shari‘a. The reaction of Tunisian society was strong and even inside the NCA a debate on the future of takfirism broke out. The discussion between deputes sitting in the NCA ended with the adoption of the Constitutional provision that forbids …


Waiting For A Place: At Gravedigger’S Pub, Jeffrey Alan Tolbert Jul 2016

Waiting For A Place: At Gravedigger’S Pub, Jeffrey Alan Tolbert

Faculty Journal Articles

In this essay I consider how place can defeat our attempts to analyze it by become meaningful to us in ways that exceed the scope of our scholarly interests and methods. Discussing my fieldwork at a Dublin pub, I touch on the concepts of sense of place, nostalgia, and the importance of human relationships that form in places even in the context of what might be considered "failed" research.


Islam And The West Global Challenges, Concerted Responses, Reda Shehata Jun 2016

Islam And The West Global Challenges, Concerted Responses, Reda Shehata

Faculty Journal Articles

A bird’s eye view, even with a fleeting glance at Will Durant’s stupendous classic on the “story of civilizations” throughout its (11) volumes (1938) from the dawn of history to modern European history in the late 18th century (the French revolution) would immediately reveal how challenging and formidable is the task of encapsulating successive epochs, eras of civilization through the history of mankind within a such a time frame of some 14-16 weeks or sessions and courses dedicated to reviews, analyses on the Dialogue of civilization, Eat and West encounter.


Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields Jun 2016

Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The late Meiji period (1868-1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic …


Re-Building Coal Country: A Church/University Partnership, Carl Milofsky, Brandn Green Mar 2016

Re-Building Coal Country: A Church/University Partnership, Carl Milofsky, Brandn Green

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper describes a developing partnership between a church-based service learning center and a university initiative to build a field station in a low-income community in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It is a case study of how secular and religious institutions have been collaborating to achieve the shared goal of improving social conditions in specific communities. The theoretical focus of the paper is on how a change from a “glass is half empty” to a “glass is half full” perception of the community opens new possibilities for change. This paper concentrates on the story of one partnership as …


The King Sitting Backward In His Chariot, Lisa Sabbahy Dr. Jan 2016

The King Sitting Backward In His Chariot, Lisa Sabbahy Dr.

Faculty Journal Articles

Ramesside Period kings covered temple walls with decorative relief detailing their military expeditions and subsequent victories, included in these reliefs were new types of scenes with new details , including one scene in which the king sits backward in his chariot , receiving live captives and cut off body parts as proof of his victory. This article presents the evidence for this particular chariot scene , and discusses the meaning and use of it as an icon of victory.


Sex And The Perceived Effectiveness Of Flirtation Techniques, T. Joel Wade, Andrea Feldman Jan 2016

Sex And The Perceived Effectiveness Of Flirtation Techniques, T. Joel Wade, Andrea Feldman

Faculty Journal Articles

Three studies were implemented in order to ascertain how men and women flirt with potential partners, and whether or not there are sex differences in which flirtatious actions are considered most effective. Study 1 (n = 40) and Study 2 (n = 60) sought to discover the actions that men and women, respectively, engage in to indicate romantic interest to a partner. Study 3 (n = 126) sought to determine which flirtatious acts from women and men are perceived as most effective. Men were expected to rate women’s flirtations that suggest sexual access as most effective and women were expected …


A Brain System For Auditory Working Memory, Sukhbinder Kumar, Sabine Joseph, Phillip E. Gander, Nicolas Barascud, Andrea R. Halpern, Timothy D. Griffiths Jan 2016

A Brain System For Auditory Working Memory, Sukhbinder Kumar, Sabine Joseph, Phillip E. Gander, Nicolas Barascud, Andrea R. Halpern, Timothy D. Griffiths

Faculty Journal Articles

The brain basis for auditory working memory, the process of actively maintaining sounds in memory over short periods of time, is controversial. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in human participants, we demonstrate that the maintenance of single tones in memory is associated with activation in auditory cortex. In addition, sustained activation was observed in hippocampus and inferior frontal gyrus. Multivoxel pattern analysis showed that patterns of activity in auditory cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus distinguished the tone that was maintained in memory. Functional connectivity during maintenance was demonstrated between auditory cortex and both the hippocampus and inferior frontal cortex. …


Attentional Flexibility And Memory Capacity In Conductors And Pianists, Andrea R. Halpern, Clemens Wöllner Jan 2016

Attentional Flexibility And Memory Capacity In Conductors And Pianists, Andrea R. Halpern, Clemens Wöllner

Faculty Journal Articles

Individuals with high working memory (WM) capacity also tend to have better selective and divided attention. Although both capacities are essential for skilled performance in many areas, evidence for potential training and expertise effects is scarce. We investigated the attentional flexibility of musical conductors by comparing them to equivalently trained pianists. Conductors must focus their attention both on individual instruments and on larger sections of different instruments. We studied students and professionals in both domains to assess the contributions of age and training to these skills. Participants completed WM span tests for auditory and visual (notated) pitches and timing durations, …


Does Skin Color, Facial Shape, And Facial Width To Height Ratio (Fwhr) Play A Role In Black Male Facial Evaluation, T. Joel Wade Jan 2016

Does Skin Color, Facial Shape, And Facial Width To Height Ratio (Fwhr) Play A Role In Black Male Facial Evaluation, T. Joel Wade

Faculty Journal Articles

The present research sought to determine how skin color, facial shape, and facial width to height ratio (fWHR) affect ratings of 10 Black male facial shapes. Based on evolutionary theory and prior research, the rectangular, quadratic, inverted trapezium, and pentagonal faces were hypothesized to receive the highest attractiveness, dominance, maturity, masculinity, strength, and social competence ratings. Additionally, faces with higher fWHRs were expected to receive higher dominance, strength, and masculinity ratings. Smaller, round or oval faces were hypothesized to receive highest warmth ratings. The results were partially consistent with these hypotheses. The examination of the effect of skin color was …


Perceived And Induced Emotion Responses To Popular Music: Categorical And Dimensional Models, Yading Song, Simon Dixon, Marcus T. Pearce, Andrea R. Halpern Jan 2016

Perceived And Induced Emotion Responses To Popular Music: Categorical And Dimensional Models, Yading Song, Simon Dixon, Marcus T. Pearce, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Music both conveys and evokes emotions, and although both phenomena are widely studied, the difference between them is often neglected. The purpose of this study is to examine the difference between perceived and induced emotion for western popular music using both categorical and dimensional models of emotion, and to examine the influence of individual listener differences on their emotion judgment. A total of 80 musical excerpts were randomly selected from an established dataset of 2,904 popular songs tagged with one of the four words "happy," "sad," "angry," or "relaxed" on the last.fm web site. Participants listened to the excerpts and …