Digital Commons Network^™

The Local Outsider: Sleeping Sickness Drug Trials, Social Exclusion, And Responses Of Women In The Uyui District Of Tanzania, 1964-2005, Hamisi M. Machangu

Journal of International Women's Studies

Unethical practices in sleeping sickness drug trials conducted in the Uyui District of Tanzania from 1964 to 2005 resulted in physical and psychological disabilities among participants and contributed to the social exclusion of its women participants. Although these practices are understood to have caused disabilities, existing studies have overlooked their contribution to the social exclusion of women. Drawing from both primary and secondary sources, this article treats the impact of such practices as a window to examine the nature and dimensions of social exclusion of women with disabilities and how these women responded to social exclusion at the grassroots level. …

Bodies And Beyond: Reading Liminal Corporealities In Ambai’S Short Stories, Keerthana S

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article demonstrates how the Indian writer Ambai’s short stories construct counter-narratives to phallogocentric structures, opening up fresh avenues of theoretical engagement in the cultural context of Tamil Nadu, India. Despite advancements towards gender equality, cultural symbols and metaphors such as tali (ornament worn by Tamil women denoting their marital status), karpu (chastity), and veera tai (valorous mother), often govern the lives of women to a great extent. I argue that Ambai’s stories both resist the hegemonic constraints of such cultural symbols and also endeavour to reconfigure them. Ambai’s renderings of cultural semiotics enable women to experience their bodies removed …

Recasting The Sacred: Gendered Embodiments In The Shadow Puppet Theatre Of Kerala, V. K. Karthika

Journal of International Women's Studies

Tholppavakkoothu, traditional leather shadow puppetry from Kerala, a southern state within India, has long been performed in temples as a sacred ritual. This ritual art form was a male-dominated performance in which ideas regarding physical purity (in connection with menstruating female bodies) excluded women from participating. Such patriarchal codifications were challenged when Pentholppavakkoothu, an all-women leather puppetry troupe, emerged in 2021, as it not only took the art outside temple premises but enabled the participation of women in the making and performance of the art. This paper critiques the gender dynamics within Tholppavakkoothu, analysing how cultural rituals and body politics …

“I Painted It This Way Because I Belong Nowhere”: Using Body Mapping To Explore Gender, Subjectivity, And Resilience Among Afghan Immigrant Women In Iran, Mina Naji, Ali Mehrabi, Ehsan Aghababaeec, Treena Orchard

Journal of International Women's Studies

This qualitative study explores how second-generation Afghan women born and raised in Iran create belonging and identity despite gender, legal, and cultural barriers. Although they represent a large part of the Afghan community in Iran, their daily embodied experiences are rarely discussed in migration or gender studies. Using body mapping and semi-structured interviews conducted with four women aged 18–40, this study examines how displacement and everyday exclusion shape their feelings, identities, and coping mechanisms. The visual and narrative data show how inequalities in education, family life, and social position are felt and carried within the body. At the same time, …

Feminist Reflexivity In Practice: Addressing Positionality And Building Sisterhood Through Fieldwork With Black Migrant Sex Workers In Istanbul, Yeliz Kendir-Gök

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article addresses feminist reflexivity and researcher positionality in ethnographic fieldwork with undocumented Ugandan women sex workers in Istanbul’s Tarlabaşı and Aksaray neighborhoods. Drawing on fourteen months of immersive research, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and reflexive journaling, the study examines how both the researcher and participants engaged in strategic forms of resistance within racialized and gendered urban spaces. The analysis is grounded in a feminist epistemological framework that draws on Kandiyoti’s notion of patriarchal bargaining and Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts. Findings reveal how participants and the researcher used subtle forms of resistance, such as strategic silence or performative …

Rural Banditry In North Central Nigeria: The Experience Of Women In Affected Communities, Joseph Egidi Igbe, Tersoo Asongo, Evaristus Akpanke Ushie, William Okon Williams, Patrick Owan Bisong

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study examined rural banditry in North Central Nigeria, focusing on women’s experiences in affected communities. The study specifically looked at women’s experiences with poor health, sexual violence, and physical harm caused by rural banditry and militancy in the study area. The study employs Kate Millet’s feminist theory of patriarchal power and structure to frame its theoretical standpoint. Four hundred women informants were selected through stratified random and purposive sampling techniques, and data were obtained using a questionnaire and eight in-depth interviews. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequency tables, while simple linear regression was used …

Penal Protection For Women In Jordan: How Compatible Are International Agreements And Jordanian Legislation?, Hasan Altarawneh, Hamzeh Abu Issa

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article analyses the degree to which Jordanian penal legislation conforms to international human rights standards regarding the protection of women from violence, specifically the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations Bangkok Rules. Jordan has implemented legislative reforms targeting gender-based violence; however, these reforms are incomplete, disjointed, and frequently misaligned with international standards. This study employs a doctrinal methodology to analyse Articles 292–311 of the Jordanian Penal Code and associated procedural rules, assessing their substantive and procedural provisions in relation to international legal obligations. This analysis includes rulings from the …

Whose Rules, Whose Rights?: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Legal Protections In Wartime, Sadaf Shabbir

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article critically analyzes conflict-related systematic sexual violence (CRSV) within the frameworks of international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocols. Moving beyond viewing CRSV as an isolated atrocity, it situates sexual violence within the historical and political roots of conflict, using case studies from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Syrian Arab Republic. The analysis demonstrates how sexual violence operates as a weapon within exploitative wartime economies, where institutional collapse and illicit resource networks enable the commodification and control of women’s bodies. Furthermore, the article introduces a sectarian lens to the study of CRSV, …

Migration Narratives Of Ukrainian Women In South Tyrol: A Comparison Of Pre- And Post-War Experiences, Giulia Isetti, Irem Güney-Frahm

Journal of International Women's Studies

Through qualitative interviews with Ukrainian women who migrated to South Tyrol, Italy before and after the 2022 Russian invasion, this paper explores the experiences, motivations, challenges, and integration strategies of these migrants. Findings highlight the gendered nature of migration, as Ukrainian women often face occupational downgrading, in which they are forced to work in low-skilled sectors due to language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, and labour market discrimination. Social integration remains a challenge particularly among post-war arrivals. Unlike other Orthodox Christian migrant groups, respondents report weak communal solidarity, although individual acts of support from local organizations and colleagues mitigate isolation. Finally, the …

Examining The Impact Of Individual And Group Piano Instruction On Students’ Learning: Teachers’ Perceptions, Pavithra Madapatha

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Group and individual piano instruction are the most common piano teaching approaches in Sri Lanka. This research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how these techniques help to improve students’ learning skills. The study was based on qualitative data gathered through in-depth interviews from five (05) piano teachers. Teachers were selected using the purposive sampling technique. Thematic analysis method was used to analyse the interview data. The themes included are: (1) advantages and disadvantages of individual piano teaching; (2) benefits of group piano teaching; (3) challenges of group piano teaching; (4) teaching approaches and strategies used under each method …

Student Senate Meeting Minutes February 25, 2026, Student Senate-Winona State University

Student Senate Meeting Minutes

This document is the official Winona State University Student Senate Minutes for February 25, 2026.

Limitations Of Genetic Testing, Tony N. Jelsma

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Knowing about a pathogenic variant may sharpen our awareness of our mortality, but it should not fundamentally change our perspective on life."

Posting about the advantages and disadvantages of genetic screening from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Limitations of Genetic Testing

Numenor, The Mighty And Frail: Proceedings Of The Tolkien Society Seminar 2023 (2025), Ed. By Will Sherwood, Douglas Charles Kane

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Douglas Charles Kane, of Numenor, The Mighty and Frail: Proceedings of The Tolkien Society Seminar 2023 (2025), ed. by Will Sherwood

Shifting Focus: Youth Sports And Mental Health, Tara Boer

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Ultimately, athletes should be encouraged to develop their identity holistically. They are athletes, but they are first and foremost children of the King."

Posting about protecting mental health while participating in sports from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Shifting Focus

The Role Of Motion Graphics In Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Infographics Design, Hussein Mohammad Al-Omari

Middle East Journal of Communication Studies

An infographic's primary objective is to satisfy the demands and expectations of its audience by presenting information in a logical and intelligible way. Recent developments in graphic design techniques have made several intricate techniques approachable by artists and designers, elevating the design process to a sophisticated profession that transcends media boundaries. Static infographics and animated infographics feature the same material; however, animated infographics have the benefit of displaying information via continuous motion and animated sequences rather than in static components or separate stages, and that’s because of the special features of animation, which attract a wider audience. They are also …

Charity Simone, Mark Naison, Anthony Abd-Al Shafi Rosado

Oral Histories

Simone’s path to leadership was inspired by her late mentor, Charles Foster, who encouraged her to be an active voice in their community. After seeing issues with building maintenance and a lack of clear communication, Simone ran for office and was elected Treasurer of her Building Association in 2023. Through this role, she noticed that community work is complex and needs navigating different opinions, yet the experience ultimately reinforced her belief that community is a “verb.” To her, it is an intentional, ongoing action that requires showing up every day to hold the system accountable.

A significant aspect of Simone's …

Voices Of Sorrow And Strength: University Glee, Belle Voix And Stevenson High School Advanced Choir; February 22, 2026, Tim Fredstrom, Andrew Bruhn, Roland Hatcher, Kirstin Snelten

School of Music Programs

This is the one hundred and third program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

February 22, 2026

Sunday Afternoon

3:00 p.m.

Volume Cxlv, Number 14, February 20, 2026, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

A Decolonial Approach To International Education: Insights From A Cal Poly Global Program In Palermo, Sicily, Elvira Pulitano, Iyad Jamaly

csuglobalaction

This article presents a critical intervention in the current debates about decolonizing international education. It is based on a Global Program in Palermo, Sicily, offered by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in summer 2023. As both program creator/director and student participant in the program, the authors rely on their personal experience and insights along with expertise in coloniality and decolonial theories. The article focuses on a series of pedagogical activities led by a young group of migrants and refugees who, in the city of Palermo, have come together to form two associations designed and structured to offer new contemporary models …

University Ai At Work: The Impact On Personal Document Creation, Vanessa Reyes, Alec Mullender

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This international study examines the use of AI tools provided through university-issued platforms in the US and Canada. The authors aim to discover how embedded AI tools in the university workplace affect the daily creation of personal documents within their digital workspaces. Using University-Issued Tools, such as Outlook, Teams, and all other Microsoft Suite Products, this study places a hyperfocus on time, efficiency, accuracy, usability, functionality, and how the embedded nature of AI tools facilitates working conditions, functions, intentionality, and purpose.

Key research questions are: (1) How do embedded AI tools support daily work processes? (2) In what ways do …

Reading Hair As A Document, Bhuva Narayan

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper is an exposition of the documental being, becoming, and unbecoming of hair, wherein I argue that although human hair is a corporeal material, and an object that can be viewed through various perspectives and theories, it can also be read as a document imbued with meaning, intention, and perception by humans, and fulfills Suzanne Briet’s criteria (Briet, 2006; Buckland, 1997) for an object to be considered a document: it has materiality (it must be a physical thing), intentionality (intended as evidence), needs processing (to be made part of a documentary system), and is an object of phenomenological perception …

Reading Ourselves: Self-Documentation, Infamy, And Collective Health In Brazilian Peripheries, Asy Pepe Sanches Neto

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores self-documentation as a social instrument for surviving misrecognition and constructing situated forms of care. Drawing from Foucault’s Lives of Infamous Men, it examines how lives become visible only when touched by power, through brief administrative inscriptions. Building on Documental Fixity (Sanches & Day, 2020), the argument shifts from the stabilizing power of documents to the anticipatory actions of those who know they are read. Rather than asking what a document is, I treat “document” as a modeling frame imposed upon things to manage indexicality. From passports to school uniforms, documentation organizes visibility and authority. In racialized and …

Cerebral Documents And Algorithmic Sensemaking: Searching For Expressions In Human And Artificial Cognitive Collaborations, Rebekah L. Cowell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Generative Artificial Intelligences (AIs) and current advanced large language models (LLMs) are algorithmically designed to generate text-based conversations as conversational agents (CAs), by replicating human language and conversational communication. Pairing human cognition with generative computationally coded cognition. We have never been here before: cerebral and artificial information collaborations and processing producing expressions that may or may not become visible as second-hand/secondary source documents.

Sensemaking or sense(un)making is a unique autonomous human drive cognitively, our information processing is sensemaking in action and expressions and articulations are evidence of the sensemaking cycle. Documentation [expressed or articulated through various mediums] are a product …

Representing The Apparatus In Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Chemical Abstracting Literature, Evan F. Kuehn

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The rise of abstracting services in the 20th century is usually associated with the explosion of original scientific research and its attendant journal literature. The abstract was a tool of information dissemination and access for increasingly expansive and international work. What is often overlooked, however, is the correlation between original research and the technologies that made these advances available. Scientific apparatuses were, however, documented from the beginning, and were also a part of the rise of abstract literature in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In this paper I examine the development of abstracts for apparatuses and patents in …

One Love: An Exploration Of The Rhetoric And Culture Of Bob Marley’S Lyricism, Kaitlyn Vasilko

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Sky High Reggae (SHR) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting multicultural community connections by ensuring access to reggae music by Bob Marley and other artists that centers on global healing. SHR helps build up reggae artists, minority business owners, other nonprofit organizations, and community members through art events, concerts, and classes, all with a focus on cultural awareness. SHR aims to “enrich lives through music” (Sky High Reggae, 2022) and also partners with local schools to provide access to art supplies to “empower youth through supporting creative expression.” While conducting research on the culture of reggae music and the …

Collateral Damage: Parental Incarceration As Family Punishment, Hatim M. Husainy

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

The United States stands alone among UN members in refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That absence reflects a deeper failure: the American legal system continues to allow parental incarceration to inflict punishment on children who have committed no crime. This paper explores how the structure of U.S. mass incarceration—especially within Black and Native American communities—conflicts with both domestic legal ideals and international human rights standards. It calls for legal and policy reform that recognizes families as indivisible social units and restores justice to those most affected by incarceration’s collateral damage.

Confinement And Consent: A Comparative Analysis Of Sexual Abuse In Finnish And U.S. Prisons, Madison A. Greico

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

The Bangkok Rules and The Basic Principles for The Treatment of Prisoners are a specific outline of protections and rights for individuals( Bangkok specifically about women) within prisons adopted by the United Nations compromising states. While The United States is a leader in the United Nations and adopted this set of rules, their failures of commitment are extremely apparent. Every year, thousands of prison rapes occur behind bars in New York alone by the very guards meant to protect them. In Finland, another United Nations member, however, has virtually no record of sexual abuse within their prisons. In investigation of …

Food Councils And Federal Committees: Community Responses To Inaction On Food Insecurity By Government, Kevin O'Connell, Liam R. Rupprecht

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Food insecurity is a devastating force in the United States, as shown by its destructive impact on vulnerable groups like children, racial minorities, and those in poverty. Non-white urban communities of color especially have significantly higher rates of household food insecurity due to systemic racism in American food systems. Despite the prevalence of these factors, they are consistently overlooked by public and private forces. Federal efforts have failed to resolve the issue, leaving it to local “food council” organizations that attempt to help through advocacy and charity. These groups face a difficult task: how can they work to mitigate food …

Teaching Undergraduate Human Rights Research Through The Arts, Humanities, And Social Sciences, Alexandra Moore

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

A note from guest editor, Alexandra Moore.

John Hersey High School Symphonic Band And Isu Wind Symphony: Februar 18, 2026, Spencer Hile, Anthony C. Marinello Iii, Wesley Anderson

School of Music Programs

This is the ninety-seventh program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

February 18, 2026

Wednesday Evening

7:00 p.m.