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Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Addiction: The Colonization Of Rituals, Matthew Prokopiw

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What is addiction? Since its transformation as a word in the late 19th century, not only has it taken on the form of a scientific concept, but it also contains a complex social-historical component that tells a story of how and why addiction is now conceived of as a harmful and deviant behaviour. The objective of this text is to highlight how addiction fundamentally eclipses scientific discourses and instead functions as a social concept in the interests of colonization – comprised of forces of State and capitalism. Based on a critical reading of Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane …

America’S Lethal Dilemma: Legitimating Old Methods Of Execution In An Era Of Abolition, Kyle Ward Letteney

Masters Theses

American capital punishment has been facing new opposition from abroad. In 2011 the European Union (EU) placed an embargo on the export of the primary lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental. Since the 2011 embargo, the 32 American states with the death penalty have been unable to obtain additional quantities of sodium thiopental and have since depleted or nearly depleted their supply, prompting a discussion of alternatives. This study analyzes that discussion. Specifically, the analysis of pro-death penalty rhetoric used by Tennessee state politicians who have recently taken steps to retain the death penalty despite the ongoing controversy surrounding the death …

Constructing ‘Farmer’ And ‘State’ Identities In Moral Discourses About Semi-Subsistence Agriculture In North-East Brazil, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

Anthropological analysis elucidates how discourses about agriculture in one North-east Brazilian community reflect relational roles of citizens and the state, the position of farmers in society, and the relationship of individuals to their work. In these discourses, farmers are positioned as moral, hard-working, autonomous citizens, justifying their participation in low-paying activities. The declining numbers of agricultural workers is explained as a result of individual laziness or government irresponsibility. In using these discourses to take stances publicly on agricultural issues, speakers assign responsibilities and moral status to agents. In constructing rural identities, such moral discourses emphasise the symbolic value of subsistence …

Remaking Nature In Montana: Topophilic Considerations Of Wolves And Wolf Trapping, Andrew Myers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 2011, after nearly forty years of federal protection, the gray wolf was removed from the Endangered Species List in Montana and its management entrusted to the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. The implementation of public trapping seasons in 2012 as a method to control wolf populations has further inflamed an already embroiled debate. The purpose of this research was to investigate how the presence of wolves and wolf trapping impacts human attachments to landscapes of “nature” in Montana by focusing on the following questions: What are the public’s social constructions of wolves? What are the public’s social constructions of …

Discourse As Social Process In Outdoor Recreation And Natural Resource Management: Arguing, Constructing, And Performing, Monika Marie Derrien

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the language-based, discursive processes through which meanings and experiences are socially constituted in outdoor recreation and natural resource environments. Language use and discourse are seen as interactive, constructive processes, approached through the theoretical perspectives of argumentation, social constructionism, and performance.

Three qualitative studies, based in data collected at Acadia National Park and forest-related sites throughout Vermont, comprise this dissertation. The first study uses rhetorical analysis to examine the ways National Park Service managers and community leaders argue for the meanings and management of dark night skies in and around Acadia. The second study examines how national park …