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Syriac Chant And The Limits Of Modality, Sarah Bakker Kellogg 2018 San Francisco State University

Syriac Chant And The Limits Of Modality, Sarah Bakker Kellogg

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo, by Tala Jarjour. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0-190-63525-1.


Facilitating Community Participation With Palestine Refugees: An Exploratory Study Of Unrwa, Tiffany Rene Baccus 2018 SIT Graduate Institute

Facilitating Community Participation With Palestine Refugees: An Exploratory Study Of Unrwa, Tiffany Rene Baccus

Capstone Collection

Community participation plays an important role in reversing the traditional power dynamic between service providers and beneficiaries. However, the level of community participation facilitated by organizations in their initiatives often varies greatly. This study sought to understand how and to what extent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) West Bank Field Office can best facilitate community participation with Palestine refugees through its initiatives. Data collection took place at two levels: the strategic and camp level. The strategic level included interviews with a representative from the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Department of Refugee Affairs (DORA) as well as nine staff …


Film Review: L’Insulte (The Insult), Renee Michelle Ragin 2018 Duke University

Film Review: L’Insulte (The Insult), Renee Michelle Ragin

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Though the civil war (1975-1990) has long since ended, Ziad Doueiri’s contemporary Lebanon remains embroiled in conflict. In The Insult, a personal dispute between two individuals on either side of an ethno-political divide threatens to reignite national conflict. Under normal circumstances, such a storyline might seem improbable, but the realities of the post-war environment in Lebanon render it plausible. With a series of provocative, if difficult to answer questions, The Insult joins a robust corpus of post-1990 Lebanese films meditating on what, if anything, it means to be “post-war” in Lebanon.


Integrated Mental Health Care In Education For Syrian Refugees: An Exploratory Study, Emily Goldstein 2018 SIT Study Abroad

Integrated Mental Health Care In Education For Syrian Refugees: An Exploratory Study, Emily Goldstein

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Trauma-inducing experiences during conflict can significantly impede the ability to function and effectively learn in the classroom; thus, it is essential to integrate mental health services into the school setting for refugee populations. This study investigated the state of integrated mental healthcare for Syrian refugees in Jordan by surveying Syrian students on their attitudes towards seeking mental health and interviewing educators on their classroom practices. The scope of the study was extremely limited, as data was collected on only 21 students and 5 educators in one school and a number of biases could have skewed the results. It was found …


The Impact Of Foreign Involvement On Political Reform Organizations In Jordan, Sravya Tadepalli 2018 SIT Study Abroad

The Impact Of Foreign Involvement On Political Reform Organizations In Jordan, Sravya Tadepalli

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper assesses the impact of foreign involvement on the effectiveness of political reform organizations in Jordan. Through the qualitative analysis of the democratization work of completely foreign-funded international organizations, partially foreign-funded Jordanian organizations, and Jordanian organizations that do not receive foreign funding, derived from several interviews conducted with democracy practitioners in international and local NGOs, political activists, scholars, and others, this paper examines the effect of foreign involvement on organizational strategies, credibility, and effectiveness, ultimately arguing that foreign involvement (and conversely, the lack thereof) has several effects on the way political reform organizations have carried out their activities. This …


Women’S Divorce Rights In Jordan: Legal Rights And Cultural Challenges, Helen David 2018 SIT Study Abroad

Women’S Divorce Rights In Jordan: Legal Rights And Cultural Challenges, Helen David

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research aims to examine women’s divorce rights in Jordan examining the topic both through their legal rights as well as through the cultural challenges and stigma that divorced women face. The research is focused specifically on the rights of Muslim women, who have to file for divorce through the Shari’a court system, in Jordan that are Jordanian nationals. The literature used in the research provides background insight into Jordan’s tribal system, family law in Jordan, and psychological theories that relate to group therapy and self-efficacy in divorced women. The researcher hypothesizes that despite the many socio-economic and legal reasons …


Declining Versus Increasing Access To American Aviation Technology: Syria And Saudi Arabia In The 20th Century, Andrea L. Stanton 2018 University of Denver

Declining Versus Increasing Access To American Aviation Technology: Syria And Saudi Arabia In The 20th Century, Andrea L. Stanton

Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

This article uses Syria and Saudi Arabia as contrasting examples of how different Arab states interacted with United States aviation technology, involving aviation technology companies, airline corporations, and government officials as they worked to develop civil and military aviation capabilities after World War II. It considers the role played by airline companies like TWA, the impact of the shift from military to commercial aviation technology among companies like Boeing, and the fallout from regional political developments like the Iranian Revolution. These factors all placed varying constraints on the two countries’ ability to draw upon American sources for airplanes and other …


Oral Fluency Through Writing, Janae Campbell, Stephen J. Moody 2018 Brigham Young University

Oral Fluency Through Writing, Janae Campbell, Stephen J. Moody

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Learning a second language is difficult. While learning, writing and speaking are treated as though they are two totally separate things. It is evident that people do not speak the same way they write, but that does not mean that speaking and writing should be divided. What if it was possible to create written assignments that would help increase the oral fluency of the learner? This would make home-work assignments more efficient by optimizing how students use their time studying at home. It would take away the pressure of having to learn all verbal communications within the confines of the …


Divining Gospel: Classifying Manuscripts Of John Used In Sortilege, Jeff Childers 2018 Abilene Christian University

Divining Gospel: Classifying Manuscripts Of John Used In Sortilege, Jeff Childers

Graduate School of Theology

The texts of Christian scripture find their way into a variety of ancient artifacts. The manuscript form has been the most widespread, yet manuscripts manifest distinct patterns of organization and structure according to their different purposes. Many include companion texts sharing the page with that of scripture—texts that gloss, provide commentary, give liturgical direction, or otherwise assist the reader in understanding or using scripture. In many instances, pages containing scripture have acquired additional texts over the years–e.g. marginal notes, corrections, claims of ownership, prayers, and fragments of other texts. One of the least well-studied phenomena is the sort of artifact …


Waging War On The Womb: Women’S Bodies As Nationalist Symbols And Strategic Victims Of Violence In Susan Abulhawa’S Mornings In Jenin, Noora Badwan 2018 Seton Hall University

Waging War On The Womb: Women’S Bodies As Nationalist Symbols And Strategic Victims Of Violence In Susan Abulhawa’S Mornings In Jenin, Noora Badwan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Nationalism is a patriarchal construct that clearly delineates women’s roles in the social structure, and assigns female bodies specific roles in the nationalist, social, and political narratives, albeit passive ones; ironically, as integral to nationalism as women are, they are only ever pawns used by the state, never equal participants. They are often assigned the role of the mother figure who produces new citizens to populate the nation and who are expected to raise them to be “good citizens” and offer them up to the state as potential tools. The mother figure is a nationalist icon who is also often …


"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian McLaughlin 2018 Brigham Young University

"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This paper considers the role and construction of golden age myths in seventeenth-century debates about how to renew the flagging Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and preachers prescribed radically different solutions based on which golden age they idealized—whether the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century or the reign of Sultan Suleiman in the sixteenth. Throughout most of the 1600s, the pendulum swung back and forth violently depending on which faction had the sultan’s ear. Charismatic mosque preachers like Kadizade Efendi whipped up Istanbul crowds against coffee, while advice writers such as Koçi Bey urged expelling “outsiders” from the military …


Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai 2018 Asia-Pacific International University

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been …


Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz 2018 University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolutional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.


The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond 2018 University of Massachusetts Amherst

The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The subversion of East and West in Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle" Adile Aslan seeks to show how Orhan Pamuk plays with the theme of East versus West in his third novel The White Castle (1985), with the aim of de-essentializing both concepts. In 1928, Perso-Arabic script, in use for centuries as the main writing system in the Ottoman Empire, was replaced with Latin alphabet (accompanied by an intensive Turkification of the Ottoman language in the coming years) as a part of a larger modernization-Westernization project in the new nation state, a move which effectively …


Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear? Tools And Suggestions For Digital Data Protection, Jedidiah C. Anderson, Erik Skare, Courtney Dorroll 2018 Furman University

Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear? Tools And Suggestions For Digital Data Protection, Jedidiah C. Anderson, Erik Skare, Courtney Dorroll

The Qualitative Report

The developing cyber-infrastructure has provided new tools, methods, and opportunities to conduct research. However, the Snowden leaks and subsequent developments proved that the same infrastructure has made all-encompassing surveillance possible – posing new challenges for researchers when engaging with those they are obligated to protect. As the cyber-infrastructure simultaneously opens up new possibility-spaces for circumventing structures of surveillance, while drawing on the authors’ own experiences, this article presents a number of tools and suggestions that will aid the researcher to engage more responsibly and safely with the research subject digitally.


Adapt Or Die! The Social And Economic Dynamics Of Japan’S Animation Industry, You Pan 2018 University of San Francisco

Adapt Or Die! The Social And Economic Dynamics Of Japan’S Animation Industry, You Pan

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research explored and discussed about Japanese animation industry, past, present, and possibilities to a better future. While there is existing literature on Japanese animation, this research will focus on a case study that will discover the bright side of Japanese animation market, while addressing the existing problems within the animation industry or potential issues at present times. By illustrating the existing and potential issues as well as the bright side, the objective of this research is to help the Japanese animation industry to survive under the depressive economic environment. My research will identify reasons for low productivity of high …


Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury 2018 CUNY Graduate Center

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …


Classical Literature And The Retroaction Of Socialist Ideology—The Sovietization Of A Medieval Georgian Epic Poem And Its Mysterious Author, Diego Benning Wang 2018 Princeton University

Classical Literature And The Retroaction Of Socialist Ideology—The Sovietization Of A Medieval Georgian Epic Poem And Its Mysterious Author, Diego Benning Wang

Madison Historical Review

Shota Rustaveli, presumed author of the medieval Georgian epic poem vepkhistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther's Skin), was one of the most celebrated cultural and historical figures in Soviet Georgia. However, not much is known about Rustaveli apart from his work. In this essay, I argue that a series of policies under the Soviet government transformed Rustaveli into a national symbol of Georgia, but the celebration of Rustaveli and his poem scarcely deviated from the ideological guidelines of the Soviet state. In discussing the impact and legacy of the Soviet promotion of Rustaveli, I purport to highlight the "national in …


Education And The Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, And Democracy, Mohammed Abullatif Alharbi 2018 Andrews University

Education And The Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, And Democracy, Mohammed Abullatif Alharbi

Faculty Publications

The Arab Spring has brought about major changes in the Arab region in many aspects, including education. The researchers aim to present the state of education after the Arab Spring revolutions and compare it with what was before these revolutions. The book has been divided into three main sections. The first section discussed the state of education before the Arab Spring by highlighting some of the teachers’ practices in the classroom. The second section presents some calls for reforming youth education in countries such as Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia. The last section, which contains three chapters, explores the education of …


Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein 2018 Chapman University

Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

Instructors of Israeli history or literature, like professors in other areas, complain about students’ use of Wikipedia—and with good reason. Unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, many Wikipedia articles contain information that is both incomplete and wrong. Most instructors will warn their students that relying on Wikipedia is a sure recipe for failing assignments. Yet there is a way to mobilize this giant encyclopedia for pedagogical purposes. When students in Israel Studies classes are assigned to edit Wikipedia articles, they achieve multiple goals: they gain critical reading skills, shape public knowledge about Israel, and engage in active learning. This article explains how to …


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