Digital Commons Network^™

A Detailed Case Study Of Unusual Routines, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

Everyone working in organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. In such cases it is normal for people to find ways of completing their work in such a way that hey can get around, or just simply avoid, the procedure or system that has caused the problem. This is an unusual routine – a recurrent interaction pattern in which someone encounters a problem when trying to accomplish normal activities by following standard organizational procedures and then becomes enmeshed in wasteful and even harmful subroutines …

Introduction: Thoughts And Ideas On The Intersectionality Of Identity, Theodorea Berry, Michelle Jay, Marvin Lynn

Faculty Publications

An introduction to the journal is presented which the editor discusses an article on critical race feminism by Venus E. Evans-Winters and Jennifer Esposito, a report on critical race theory and critical pedagogy and a review of literature on the educational experiences of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S.

Wire In The Blood, Crime Drama With A British Flair, Leslie Eliason

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Americans love a good murder – as long as it takes place on television and the perpetrator is apprehended within an hour. Crime dramas are one of the most popular genres of programming available today, a trend that shows no sign of waning. Megan Larson of Media Week wrote in 2004 that eight of the top twenty five shows on network television were crime related. She also noted that the series Law and Order was entering its fifteenth year – quite a feat in the here-today-gone tomorrow world of broadcast television. The most recent Nielsen ratings indicated that seven of …

Remember The Titans, Historical Fact Or Fiction?, Amy S. Tate

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

In the late 1990s, screen writer Gregory A. Howard wrote a screen play called Remember the Titans, based on the true story of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Jerry Bruckheimer and Walt Disney Pictures bought the script based on the fact that it is a true story, but much of the film‟s content is fictional. Gregory Howard admitted to ESPN writer Jeff Merron that “he made some big assumptions when writing his script” (qtd. in Merron 5). Though the film is not entirely historically accurate, it is successful because it appeals to Americans through its intense emotional …

Communally Discerning A Covenant Of Hospitality For The Care Of Children At Westview Boys' Home, Ron Bruner

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This project addressed the lack of a covenant defining the practice of hospitality towards children for team members of Westview Boys’ Home. The purpose of the project was to facilitate the creation of such a covenant. The Westview ministry team already claimed hospitality as a strength; the hope was that reframing the ministry around this strength would improve the quality of care for children and the quality of life for the community. Invited into a communal discernment process (the methodology), the ministry team invested weeks in the examination of biblical texts, theological tradition, personal and communal narratives, cultural trends, psychological …

Engaged Pedagogy And Critical Race Feminism, Theodorea Berry

Faculty Publications

The article describes the engaged pedagogy of cultural critic and scholar bell hooks in the context of the experiences that the author gained from a group of African American pre-service teachers in a social foundations course. It provides an overview of critical race feminism, which acknowledges the importance of storytelling and addresses the intersections of gender and race, and explains its significance to preparing African American pre-service teachers. It concludes with a discourse on engaged pedagogy from a critical feminist perspective which enables teacher educators to support the lived experiences of students who are socially marginalized.

Negotiating Cultural Identities Through Language: Academic English In Jordan, Anne-Marie Pedersen

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article discusses how a group of multilingual scholars in Jordan negotiate multiple linguistic and cultural affiliations. These writers' experiences demonstrate the varied ways English's global dominance affects individuals' lives. The scholars find both empowerment and disempowerment in English, viewing English as linked to Western hegemony in some situations and as de-nationalized and de-territorialized in others.

Discursive Construction Of Identities Of Young Homosexual Males., Zainon Shamsudin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This dissertation reports a study addressing the issue of identity construction of four young Malay homosexual men in Malaysia.  Through their narrative discourse of their life experiences and aspirations, this study explores these participants‟ linguistic repertoire and discursive strategies in the formation, negotiation, and establishment of their identities. The narrative data were gathered through a semi-structured interview-cum-conversation which allowed the participants to express sentiments about their lives in a heterosexual dominated society.  Using an adapted framework of discourse-historical approach of Critical Discourse Analysis proposed by Reisigl and Wodak (2009), this study analyzed the participants‟ emergent language use and discursive strategies …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Construction Of The Ideal Woman's Body Image In Print Advertisements., Pauline Tan Ching Lin

Student Works (2010-2019)

The purpose of this research was to investigate i) what are the words used to describe the non-ideal female body and the ideal female body, ii) what are the qualities and values associated with the ideal female body; iii) How does the social practice and discursive practice influence text production and interpretation. The data for this study consists of 132 print advertisements that featured services offered by slimming centres obtained from The Star and The Sun newspapers. Fairclough’s (1995a) three dimensional framework was adopted to analyze the data for this study because this framework enables the researcher to examine the …

Removing The Checks And Balances That Hamper Democracy: Play And The Counter-Hegemonic Contradictions Of Grand Theft Auto Iv, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Grand Theft Auto IV provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider the outcomes when textual play and game play not only intersect, but operate in concert. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked to each other and to the social commentary which contributes to the game's story, humor, and thematic unity. This article considers the modes of textual play in Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as the locations and situations when players encounter them while playing the game. It also explores the subversive of potential of textual play as it relies on and departs from game play, and attempts to …

Deceptive Cultural Practices That Sabotage Hiv/Aids Education In Tanzania And Kenya, Mary Oluga, Susan Kiragu, Mussa K. Mohamed, Shelina Walli

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

In spite of numerous HIV/AIDS‐prevention education efforts, the HIV infection rates in Sub‐Saharan Africa remain high. Exploring and understanding the reasons behind these infection rates is imperative in a bid to offer life skills and moral education that address the root causes of the pandemic. In a recent study concerning effective HIV/AIDS‐prevention education, conducted in Tanzania and Kenya among teacher trainees and their tutors, the notion of mila potofu (defined by educators as ‘deceptive’ cultural practices) emerged as a key reason for educators’ difficulties in teaching HIV/AIDS prevention education in schools and for high HIV infection rates. Since these cultural …

Exploring Links Between Well-Being And Interactional Sense-Making In Married Couples’ Jointly Told Stories Of Stress, Jody Koenig Kellas, April R. Trees, Paul Schrodt, Cassandra Leclair-Underberg, Erin K. Willer

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Narrative theorizing suggests that narrating stress, difficulty, or trauma can be beneficial for improved mental health, yet extant research tends to consider narrating stress as an individual or psychological construct. However, in close relationships, people often experience shared stressors and jointly tell their shared stories of difficulty to others. Thus, joint storytelling processes likely also relate to individual health. We tested this expectation using a series of actor-partner interdependence models and path analyses in a study that included 68 couples’ video-recorded joint storytelling interactions. Findings primarily indicate relationships between husbands’, wives’, and couples’ storytelling behaviors and husbands’ mental health. Generally …

Chronotope And Regional Chinese Independent Films, Jingya Liu

Lingnan Theses

This thesis aims to re-categorize Chinese independent films from a region-based perspective as a critical response to existing literature on Chinese independent films. This thesis analyzes three independent films made in three different regions of China in order to investigate regional Chinese independent cinema as a recently rising phenomenon: respectively, Jia Zhangke’s Xiaowu (1997) made in Shanxi Province, Ying Liang’s Taking Father Home (Bei yazi de nanhai, 2006) in Sichuan Province, and Robin Weng’s Fujian Blue (Jinbi huihuang, 2007) in Fujian Province.

By using Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (literally time-space) as the fundamental framework and exploring the many aspects of …

當代中國文化明星的製造 : 變動的文化生產場, Weizi Huang

Lingnan Theses

本文借助並修訂了布爾迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的理論框架，透過對中國大陸二十世紀九十年代以來文化明星的製造進行研究來理解變動中的文化生產場 (field of cultural production)，並探討在其間知識分子作為的新可能。文化明星問題之所以值得特別研究，首先是由於它處於當代中國文化生產的中心，涉及到電視、圖書、平面媒體、互聯網等不同的文化生產次場域（sub-field），以及製作人、 出版人、文化明星本人、“粉絲” (fans) 和批評者所代表的不同力量。考察圍繞著製造文化明星的複雜的關係網絡，正可以勾勒出當代中國變動的文化生產場域的概貌。其次，文化明星的產生和生產是對九十年代以來知識分子危機的一種回應，是知識分子問題的變奏。理解了文化明星的製造機制，有助於尋找在當下的文化生產場中知識分子作為的新可能。

本文選取余秋雨、易中天、于丹和韓寒四個個案進行深入分析。余秋雨是公認的第一個最成功的文化明星，對其案例進行研究揭示了文化明星產生的歷史轉變。易中天和于丹的案例則代表著著一種可以複製的成熟的文化明星製造模式的出現。韓寒的形象及製造是一種有別于以上主流文化明星的另類模式。

本文綜合運用多種研究方法，包括對十幾名相關的文化生產者進行訪問，組織了一個針對粉絲的焦點小組（focus group），並且到電視節目錄製現場、出版 社和大型書店進行參與式觀察。此外亦有歷史檔案梳理和文本、話語分析。 最終，本文繪製出了不同的文化明星在當代中國文化生產場中的位置，反思了現有文化明星生產模式的後果，並對知識分子/文化生產者參與文化生產提出有針對性的建議。

Slums, Slumdogs, And Resistance, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Conflicting Identities And Ideologies: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The National Japanese American Memorial To Patriotism During World War Ii, Kaori Yamada

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis is a rhetorical criticism of the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II, located in Washington, D.C. It was erected on November 9, 2000, to memorialize Japanese Americans who were forced to move to the relocation camps and Japanese American soldiers who died as members of the U.S. armed forces during WWII. Examining the intended meaning of the Memorial by its creators is not a central focus of this study. Rather, I investigate how interactions among the rhetoric of the Memorial, social contexts, and audiences create multiple meanings.

The first analytic focus is the symbolic …

Volume 12, 2010, Ellen Hazelkorn, Nora French, Wolfgang Truetzschler

Issues

No abstract provided.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’S Decolonizing Ritual De Conocimiento, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work makes up one of the many Chican@ works that contribute another history, a history repressed by the national discourses on both sides of the border. Influenced by antecedents of U.S. Hispanic Literature who superposed “official” history with another history, Chicano activists had already enacted a retrieval of pre-conquest histories to revive their people’s historical consciousness. As Saldívar-Hull states in “Mestiza Consciousness and Politics: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La frontera,” the publication of Borderlands/ La Frontera distinguished itself from the Chicano movement’s as it unveiled the curtain that hid the Aztec goddesses and kept aspects of pre-conquest history …

Face Needs, Intragroup Status, And Women’S Reactions To Socially Aggressive Face Threats, Erin K. Willer, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Given the potential negative consequences of being a recipient of such behavior, the role of positive face needs, intragroup status, and the face-threatening nature of social aggression in predicting cor-relates of negative affect experienced as a result of being a target of SAFTs, including the face threat of the response, forgiveness, and well-being was investigated. On the basis of the survey responses from 199 college-aged women, findings indicated that targets’ positive face needs and intragroup status are directly and indirectly associated with forgiveness and overall well-being. Implications for these findings in relation to theorizing about face and intragroup identity as …

Refugees As People: The Portrayal Of Refugees In American Human Interest Stories, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study combines discourse analysis and narrative analysis (Yin 2007) to examine top US newspapers’ coverage of refugees in American human interest stories. I find that the refugees are presented (a) as prior victims; (b) as in search of the American Dream; and (c) as unable to achieve the American Dream. As human-interest features, the stories provide a largely positive portrayal of individual refugees and their families. However, the human interest stories also depict refugees as current victims of the American economic crisis; deeply frustrated by their inability to achieve the American Dream. Together these discourses represent a narrative of …

Perang Melawan Kemiskinan, Paulus Wirutomo

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

No abstract provided.

Chinese Culture In Western Shadow: Sichuan Shadow Puppetry, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

The Negative Images Of Nursing Portrayed On Grey’S Anatomy, House And Er And Its Effect On Public Perception And The Contemporary Nursing Shortage, Jacquelyn Bishop

Health Sciences Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Myth And History In The Poetry Of Osundare, Christopher Anyokwu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Myth and History in the Poetry of Osundare" Christopher Anyokwu examines the interrelation of myth and history from an African perspective. Anyokwu analyzes the poetry of one of Africa's most prolific and decorated contemporary poets, Niyi Osundare. Osundare is a third-generation Nigerian poet whose work is based on Yoruba oral tradition and informed by Marxist ideology. Osundare's poetry demonstrates the so-called "return-to-roots" neo-traditionalist ethos in modern African writing. Osundare's attitude to myth, ritual, and other African animist categories is intriguingly complex, ambivalent, and giving rise to charges of ideological irresolution and culturo-epistemic bifurcation. As a champion of …

Empty Ritual: Young-Adult Stepchildren’S Perceptions Of The Remarriage Ceremony, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Jody Koenig Kellas, Cassandra Leclair-Underberg, Emily Lamb Normand, Tracy Routsong, Matthew Thatcher

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This qualitative study investigated 80 young-adult stepchildren’s talk about one of their parents’ remarriage ceremony. The remarriage event was celebrated in six types of ritual enactments, five of which celebrated the couple’s marriage and one of which was family-centered in its celebration of the beginning of the new stepfamily. Three factors led stepchildren to find the remarriage ceremony empty: (i) a ritual form that was too traditional or not traditional enough; (ii) a ritual enactment that failed to pay homage to either the stepchild’s family of origin or the stepfamily as a unit; and (iii) a ritual enactment that failed …

Beyond Ethnocentrism In Communication Theory: Towards A Culture-Centric Approach, Eddie C. Y. Kuo, Han Ei Chew

Research Collection Office of Impact

Communications scholars have been challenging the universality of Eurocentric scholarship, which they argue to be a form of intellectual imperialism imposing its provincial ideals and masquerading these as universal. As an answer to Eurocentricity, Asiacentricity proposes to place Asian values and ideals at the center of inquiry to see Asian phenomena from the standpoint of Asians as subjects and agents. This article critiques this Asiacentric agenda and critically examines the implications and premises of this paradigm. It suggests instead that a culture-centric paradigm be adopted to avoid an Asian version of the Eurocentricity crisis. The article advocates the adoption of …

Playwriting In Three Major Nigerian Languages, Isaiah Ilo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Playwriting in Three Major Nigerian Languages" Isaiah Ilo analyzes the frequency of playwriting in Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, the three major Nigerian languages, which together hold about a half of the country's estimated population of 140 million. Ilo uses a case study to contrast the importance of the languages, their evolution as literary languages, and their official status with a role in education. Ilo locates the significance of these factors next to an inventory of the plays and a listing of the writers to demonstrate the neglect of the mother tongue by experienced Nigerian dramatists. The study …

The Metaphor Of Assimilation In Rabéarivelo's Poetry, Yasser Khamees Ragab Aman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Metaphor of Assimilation in Rabéarivelo's Poetry" Yasser Khamees Ragab Aman discusses the impact of the metaphor and the policy of assimilation in the poetry of Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo, who swings between a desired image of a superior France based on a mythically archetypal symbol of a patron and a reality which, as a matter of course, distorts the image of a good-natured colonizer. Aman traces the influence of French Symbolists such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Laforgue on Rabéarivelo's poems and discusses to what extent these influences help make an assimilé of the poet. In Aman's interpretation …

Space In Cardinal's Au Pays De Mes Racines And Goytisolo's Coto Vedado, Laura Dennis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Space in Cardinal's Au Pays de mes racines and Goytisolo's Coto vedado" Laura Dennis discusses the ways in which two memoirs of the late twentieth century treat exile and diverse spaces as part of a quest for a place in which to live fully and freely. Juan Goytisolo's Coto vedado and Marie Cardinal's Au Pays de mes racines constitute particularly rich treatments of space and exile and the ways in which these intersect with questions of culture, gender, and power. Dennis uses Henri Lefebvre's theories of abstract and differential space together with Gillian Rose's feminist study of …

Adams's Quest For The Unity Of Knowledge, Karl Shaddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Adams's Quest for the Unity of Knowledge," Karl Shaddox discusses Henry Adams's lesser known work, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, as a continuation of the historian's attempt at unifying knowledge in The Education. Whereas unification in The Education was proposed by historicizing force, whether religious or molecular, Adams's effort in The Degradation employed a scientistic approach to history. Using Josiah Gibb's research on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, Adams felt he had provided a natural explanation of social and historical change — and thus the elemental connection between matter and mind. Critical opinion has not been receptive to …