Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Mount Mitchell: An Adventurer Searches For The Dispute That Named The Highest Peak East Of The Mississippi, Lisa Ballard

Appalachia

Writer Lisa Ballard hikes the trails of North Carolina's 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell and researches the history behind the mountain's name.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other: Differences Between The New Deal And Great Society, Brayden T. Gallagher

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

This paper examines the differences between the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, challenging the prevailing interpretation that the latter administration was the logical continuation of the former. Through comparative historical analysis of policy and rhetoric, the research finds that, despite clear similarities such as expanded government involvement and social welfare programs, the two initiatives diverged significantly. The New Deal prioritized economic recovery through short-term job creation while often tolerating or reinforcing racial inequality. In contrast, the Great Society directly confronted systemic racism and struck at the roots of poverty through education, …

Beasts Of Burden: Human Dignity And Roman Slavery In The Silver Age Latin Literature, William Deloach

Ex Sapientia Loqui

This article evaluates rhetoric used to describe enslaved persons in Petronius's Satyricon and Statius's Silvae through the lens of human dignity. Human dignity is evaluated through ancient and modern lenses, drawing upon Cicero's conception of civilitas and contemporary views by luminaries such as George Kateb and Michael Rosen. Silvae and Satyricon utilize conceptions of dignity to uplift the value of slaves, though in some cases the opposite is also observable. Overwhelmingly, the two works lean towards recognizing enslaved persons' dignity rather than rejecting it.

Land Epistemic Ethic: Exploring The Complex Intersection Of Human Bodies, Land, And Identity In Middle Belt Nigeria Cosmologies, Fwangmun Oscar Danladi

International Journal on Responsibility

The Indigenous cosmologies of Nigeria’s Middle Belt emphasize the relationship between human bodies and the land, transcending Western epistemological binaries and revealing profound socio-religious insights into environmental responsibility. Practices such as the burial of newborns’ umbilical cords, often dismissed as animistic or fetishistic, embody a sacred connection to the land that emphasizes belonging rather than ownership. Using an autoethnographic approach, this study critically examines these cosmologies and identifies how the sacredness of land can serve as a repository of communal memory and potential. By reframing land not as a possession but as a relational entity, this research challenges dominant narratives …

Angkringan Names In Semarang: A Linguistic Landscape Study, Nurul Maghfiroh, Suhandano Suhandano, Aprillia Firmonasari

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

The article reveals the linguistic landscape study of angkringan names in Semarang City. It covers language preference, language inference, and language preservation on signages. Researchers collected 140 pictures of angkringan signages from 10 sub-districts of Semarang. Observation and interviews are also conducted to obtain comprehensive linguistic landscape data. Qualitative analysis indicates that there are two naming patterns: monolingual and bilingual. The monolingual analysis identifies that the most preferred language code is Javanese, followed by Indonesian, English, and Sanskrit. Meanwhile, in the bilingual pattern, the dominant language combination used is Indonesian-Javanese, followed by Javanese-English, Javanese-Indonesian, Javanese-Dutch, Sanskrit-English, and Sundanese-English. Meanwhile, angkringan …

Saltfish And Seedcake: Examining Fantasy Through Food Studies, Isabella Martins-Simonsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Although mundane and often overlooked in reality, in fantasy, food, like all other things, is entirely symbolic. Therefore, considering food closely when analyzing a fantasy text offers unique insights into the world being developed, the characters within that world, and the author’s own understanding of both the real and “secondary” world. In this paper, I consider the foods of Earthsea, Narnia, and Middle Earth to offer various perspectives on the worldbuilding and examine the implications of different foods in these well-known settings. For example, the tea served in Narnia creates a fantasy world that is more normal than the strange …

Patriots And Protestant Dissenters: Early Religious Disestablishment In Revolutionary South Carolina, Nathan James Shull

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

In 1778, the newly independent government of South Carolina broke with more than a century of precedent and disestablished the Church of England by enacting Article XXXVIII of its State Constitution. This thesis weaves together the interconnected stories of Patriots such as William Tennent, Christopher Gadsden, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Oliver Hart, Richard Furman, and William Henry Drayton, demonstrating how they converged on disestablishment. While the historiography has focused on one or another religious or political group, this thesis asserts that an array of South Carolinians from across the political spectrum coalesced around disestablishment as a pragmatic solution to a variety …

Inequality And Well-Being, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Theses

Human well-being has been a topic of interest to philosophers at least since the time of Aristotle, and well-being has also been a core concern of social scientists since the birth of the discipline in the late 18^th century. Some theories of well-being include economic inequality as a factor, and multiple ways to measure this factor have been developed; as with well-being, there is no single best measure of economic inequality and the choice of which measure to use may be based on both theoretical and practical reasons. I argue that income inequality should always be included as a …

“Das Muttermal” - “The Birthmark” - “דער מוטער־צײכן”, Kristin K. Mlay-Kuhns

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

“Das Muttermal / The Birthmark / דער מוטער־צײכן” is a trilingual work of transcreative poetry that stages translation as a method of mourning, cultural memory, and feminist inheritance. Composed first in German and then translated into English and Yiddish, the poem explores the catastrophic rupture of maternal loss and the slow transformation of trauma into understanding. The central metaphor of the birthmark—Muttermal, the “mother-mark”—figures the maternal body as both wound and connective tissue, binding ancestors and descendants through a physical trace that persists across generations, geographies, and languages. Formally, the project demonstrates how translation unveils the layered meanings embedded in …

When The Metamorphosis Turns White: Kafka Reimagined In Igoni Barrett’S Blackass, Bisola J. Ajibade

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Igoni Barrett’s Blackass (2015) has frequently been described as a “race-rewrite” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915). This framing has shaped much of the critical conversation surrounding the two texts. While these approaches productively illuminate questions of identity and biopolitics, less attention has been paid to situating both texts across the intersecting contexts of German modernism and Nigerian postcolonial literature. This article provides a close comparative reading of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Igoni Barrett’s Blackass in order to examine how Kafkaesque elements are reconfigured within a contemporary postcolonial Nigerian context. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of minor literature, alongside …

Wesleyan Hall Work Preserves Part Of University's History, The Timesdaily

Documents

Preserving Wesleyan Hall at UNA

Lisa Cristiani: A Survey And Analysis Of Her Musical Travels Through The Russian Empire (1848-1853), Emilia González Dorantes

LSU Master's Theses

Information about French cellist Lisa Cristiani (1825–1853) and her travels through Imperial Russia has mainly reached us thanks to two articles in French periodicals published around the first decade since her death. These sources prioritized the journey itself, centering the narrative on her travels rather than on her musical activities. Recent scholarship on Cristiani has expanded our previously limited knowledge about her life. Scholars such as Hoffmann (2011) and Deserno (2018) have focused on biographical and feminist analysis, and DeVries (2014) has unveiled new documents from Russian sources. Nonetheless, a detailed examination of her musical performances within Imperial Russia has …

Interview With Orca Award Winner Paul Olson, Unl English; Literature, Curricular Reform, Great Plains Studies, Mark A. Griep, Paul A. Olson

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Paul Olson was awarded the ORCA in 1984. He was born in 1932 in Washburn, Wisconsin. During his youth, his family also farmed in Nebraska and South Dakota. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. Next, he earned a master’s in English from the University of Nebraska, had a Fulbright fellowship to spend a year at London University in England, and earned his doctorate in medieval and Renaissance studies from Princeton University in New Jersey. In 1957, he joined UNL as an assistant professor of English and was soon promoted to full professor. One of his …

Essays On Effect Of Remote Work Opportunities On Migration And Gender Gap, Aghairza Mammadov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the expansion of remote work has reshaped key dimensionsof labor market behavior in the United States. By relaxing traditional constraints on where and how people work, remote job opportunities (RJOs) have the potential to alter both geographic mobility and labor market inequality. The first chapter focuses on how remote work affects internal migration patterns, while the second chapter examines its implications for gender differences in employment and wages.

Chapter 1 examines how the expansion of remote job opportunities shapes internal migration patterns in the United States. The expansion of remote job opportunities has decoupled employment from …

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 28, Issue 2 Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

George C. Roberts Award Recipients

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Submission Guidelines

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Call For Papers: 97th Annual Conference Of The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Editor-In-Chief's Note, Surekha Rao

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Engaging Spiritual Growth Across The Generational Divides Using Cross-Generational Co-Mentorship, David F. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis examined the problem of the tendency for older adults to slow down in spiritual growth. The project instituted relationships between older and younger individuals in a Cross-Generational Co-Mentorship system, which allowed two individuals from different generations to engage in spiritual disciplines in a one-on-one format in a small church context. The purpose of this study was to foster spiritual growth and wellness through individual interactions and to enhance their engagement in various ministry opportunities. The study created intergenerational relationships that fostered spiritual growth in both the older and younger participants. The study engaged various types of literature on …

Sacred Geography And The Restoration Of Divine Presence: The Garden Of Eden, Egypt, The Wilderness, And The Promised Land In The Theology Of The Torah, Gary Ryan Perry

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation argues that the Torah presents redemption through a progressive spatial framework in which sacred geography reveals the restoration of God’s dwelling among His people. The narrative movement from the Garden of Eden to Egypt, the Wilderness, and finally the Promised Land forms a theological arc that structures the Torah’s presentation of covenant, priesthood, and divine presence. The Garden of Eden establishes humanity’s original royal priestly vocation within sacred space. Egypt functions as an anti-garden, where abundance and provision exist apart from a covenant relationship with God. The Wilderness represents a redemptive restart, in which Israel is formed through …

Ongoing Exile In 1 Peter, William J. Bynum

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In his first epistle, Peter employs the biblical theme of ongoing exile as a controlling metaphor to depict his readers’ circumstances. By doing so, he situates those readers as participants in the overarching biblical storyline of God’s restoring through Jesus Christ what man has lost through sin. The shape of that grand narrative is anticipated in what has called “the Deuteronomic scheme of sin–exile–restoration.” Using the idea of an ongoing exile followed by restoration, the writer of 1 Peter accomplishes two vitally important objectives. First, he shows his mostly Gentile readers’ experiences to be participation in exile like that of …

The Unsovereign Citizen: The Reconfiguration Of Rights And Belonging In Fascist Italy, Roberta Pergher

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Modern political thought tends to associate citizenship with democracy, equality, and political participation. This article demonstrates that citizenship can be profoundly important also for authoritarian rule. In Fascist Italy, citizenship remained central to political life, not as a vehicle of democratic participation, to be sure, but as a category through which the regime redefined belonging, hierarchy, and sovereignty. Drawing on citizenship legislation, imperial ordinances, racial laws, police reports, and ministerial commentary between 1912 and 1943, this article shows how the dictatorship hollowed out liberal citizenship within the peninsula, stratified it across imperial territories, consolidated it across diasporic populations, and ultimately …

The Courts Closest To The People: The Battle Between Populism And Democracy In The U.S. District Courts, Shruti Rana

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The U.S. district courts have emerged as a critical site of contested terrain amid the chaos and controversies consuming American law and politics since the start of the second Trump administration. This article examines these frontline courts through the theoretical lens of populism, arguing that they have become a critical institutional flashpoint in the populist assault on constitutional democracy in the United States. As the courts closest to the people, the district courts occupy a unique structural position: They are the fact-finding courts, the most geographically dispersed and professionally diverse tier of the federal judiciary, and often the first institutional …

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Reviewers And Referees

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Editorial History

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Publish With Mssj?

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.