Digital Commons Network^™

Zoological Garden, Sarah Stoddard

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Working Out Salvation History In The Book Of Mormon Politeia With Fear And Trembling, Alan Goff

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Maxwell Institute for the Study of Religion has released another book in its series The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions. This book by James E. Faulconer more than ably engages five core elements of the book of Mosiah, exploring their theological implications. Faulconer puzzles through confusing passages and elements: why is the book rearranged so that it isn’t in chronological order? What might King Benjamin mean when he refers to the nothingness of humans? And what might Abinadi mean when he declares that Christ is both the Father and the Son? The most interesting parts of the introduction …

Moses 6–7 And The Book Of Giants: Remarkable Witnesses Of Enoch’S Ministry, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Book of Giants (BG), an Enoch text found in 1948 among the Dead Sea Scrolls, includes a priceless trove of stories about the ancient prophet and his contemporaries, including unique elements relevant to the Book of Moses Enoch account. Hugh Nibley was the first to discover in the BG a rare personal name that corresponds to the only named character in the Book of Moses besides Enoch himself, a finding that some non-Latterday Saint Enoch scholars considered significant. Since Nibley’s passing, the growth of new scholarship on ancient Enoch texts has continued unabated. While Nibley’s pioneering research compared the …

Little Denmark In Nebraska, David Hendee

The Bridge

No charming Old World architecture. No Main Street decorated with Danish flags flapping in the breeze. No annual ethnic festival celebrating Danish roots. And it can’t be found on a map. But a small cluster of farms and ranches carved out of the prairie by Danish immigrants in sparsely settled western Nebraska in the late nineteenth century has maintained its identity as “Little Denmark” long after the homesteaders and their families assimilated into American culture. This obscure and remote Little Denmark was founded, flourished, and faded in the shadows of other Nebraska communities with vibrant Danish populations and institutions— Blair, …

Modeling Continental-Scale Outdoor Environmental Sound Levels With Limited Data, Katrina Lynn Pedersen

Theses and Dissertations

Modeling outdoor acoustic environments is a challenging problem because outdoor acoustic environments are the combination of diverse sources and propagation effects, including barriers to propagation such as buildings or vegetation. Outdoor acoustic environments are most commonly modeled on small geographic scales (e.g., within a single city). Extending modeling efforts to continental scales is particularly challenging due to an increase in the variety of geographic environments. Furthermore, acoustic data on which to train and validate models are expensive to collect and therefore relatively limited. It is unclear how models trained on this limited acoustic data will perform across continental-scales, which likely …

Remnant Or Replacement? Outlining A Possible Apostasy Narrative, Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph M. Spencer

BYU Studies

Since early in the twentieth century, it has been common for Latter- day Saints to speak of a “Great Apostasy” that occurred in the centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such a general apostasy has been viewed as providing the basic motivation for the Restoration, begun in earnest with Joseph Smith’s First Vision in 1820. The traditional apostasy narrative has centered on the argument that the church founded by Jesus Christ once possessed the same organization, doctrine, and authority restored in the nineteenth century but that, over time, these crucial components were either lost or corrupted. It …

“In Their Promised Canaan Stand”: Outlawry, Landscape, And Memory In C. C. A. Christensen’S Mormon Panorama, Jennifer Champoux

BYU Studies

What do Robin Hood and Joseph Smith have in common? This article examines C. C. A. Christensen’s Mormon Panorama according to themes of outlawry in Anglo-Saxon literature, revealing insights into the nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint understanding of exile and sacred space in relation to both the landscape and to America. In Christensen’s paintings, the moral rightness of Latter-day Saints is contrasted with injustice by both government officials and local vigilantes, thereby equating outcast status with righteousness and true justice. In collating early stories of persecution and miracles, and presenting them with an aura of objective truth, the Mormon Panorama helped shape …

Lost Sheep, Lost Coins, And Lost Meanings, Jenny Rebecca Rytting

BYU Studies

Three of the best known and most loved of Jesus’s parables occur together in the fifteenth chapter of Luke as a response to the Pharisees’ disapproval of Jesus’s association with sinners: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin (also known as the lost drachma or lost groat), and the lost (or prodigal) son. In the teaching and preaching traditions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these parables (especially the first two) have primarily been interpreted as a call for missionary work, particularly reactivation. For example, President David O. McKay suggested that the three parables represent …

Prepare For Takeoff: Improving Asset Measurement And Audit Quality With Drone-Enabled Inventory Audit Procedures, Margaret H. Christ, Scott A. Emett, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Auditors increasingly employ technologies to improve audit quality. Using a design science approach, we examine whether using drones and automated counting software can improve audit quality and thereby improve financial reporting. We assess three dimensions of audit quality—efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of audit documentation. We provide evidence that auditors can perform inventory counts with these technologies much more efficiently than they can with manual techniques, decreasing count time in our study from 681 hours to 19 hours. At the same time, auditors can maintain or improve audit effectiveness with these technologies, decreasing error rates in our study from 0.15% to …

Corporate Governance And Tax Avoidance: Evidence From Governance Reform, Jon Kerr, Richard Price, Francisco J. Román, Miles A. Romney

Faculty Publications

Prior literature struggles to find evidence in U.S. settings to support the Desai and Dharmapala (2006) theory on how corporate governance affects tax avoidance. Most studies rely on equity incentive compensation as their governance proxy. We use a Mexican setting to examine this association and find firms with stronger governance engage in less tax avoidance. We rely on both a hand-collected governance index and governance reform to show improved corporate governance pushes tax avoidance toward a new equilibrium. Supplementary analyses show associations between governance and tax avoidance are greatest for tax-cost-sensitive familyowned firms and non-cross-listed firms with naturally weaker governance. …

Jack Weatherford. Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World, Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is divided into three segments. Part one tells the story of Genghis Khan’s birth in 1162, his rise to power on the steppe, and the influence of the steppe in shaping his mindset. Growing up in this wilderness helped fashion the personality which led him to consolidate many warring tribes into a single Mongolian country by 1206. Furthermore, unifying these diverse ethnic groups into a Mongolian nation provided Genghis Khan an excellent model which he replicated in the rest of the world. Part two is devoted to the …

Sustainable Civilization: Informatization Strategy, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The article proposes strategic aspirations for the development of sustainable civilization, which are based on organizing the Geoinformatics Steering System, which will monitor civilizations based on established indexes measuring the state of civilization. This monitoring must have a uniform system on many levels of human organization, from the enterprise (company) to regions, countries, continents and the world. The condition for this organization is the creation of the World Civilization Organization because the current efforts of people and countries are chaotic.

The Human Search For A Sense Of Wholeness, Ross R. Maxwell

Comparative Civilizations Review

How can we characterize a civilization? From an economic point of view, a civilization consists of a system of interacting fulltime interdependent specialized occupations. From a cultural point of view, on the other hand, a civilization consists of what Ben Nelson, the late president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (1971-1977), called a civilizational complex, a structure that developed from the blending of multiple cultures.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew, Editor-In-Chief

Comparative Civilizations Review

It has always seemed somewhat ironic that the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations has never agreed on the exact definition of the single word arguably most central to its mission: “civilization”.

Building Bridges With Language And Culture In Russia (Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad): Focusing On Intercultural Sensitivity, Alla Kourova, Florin M. Mihai

Russian Language Journal

In our progressively globalized world, the need to build bridges between people of different languages and cultures has grown exponentially. The phrases globalization , global citizen, and increasingly interconnected world are frequently present in public discourse (Kulturel-Konak, Konak, and D’Allegro 2017). Educators can potentially play a core role in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps between people, groups, and institutions. Closing these gaps was the main goal of the Building Bridges with Language and Culture in Russia project. The project was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) program, which aims to improve US intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural …

Using Authentic Online Resources In Russian For Stem Coursework For Novice Through Superior Level Learners, Molly Thomasy Blasing

Russian Language Journal

This article makes a case for incorporating STEM content into Russian language courses at the Novice through Superior levels of proficiency. The author presents models of asynchronous learning activities based on authentic online resources developed for a Russian for STEM pilot course taught during the COVID-19 pandemic. These lessons can be employed in online or face-to-face courses to prepare students to speak, read, write, and understand the language of STEM fields in Russian.

Review: “The Nose”: A Stylistic And Critical Companion To Nikolai Gogol’S Story, Sara Jo Powell

Russian Language Journal

Ksana Blank’s companion to Gogol’s “The Nose” is an excellent new resource for students of Russian language and literature. The book consists of two sections: the first, a series of annotations to the story’s text, and the second, several short essays on a wide range of related topics. Finally, readers are provided with a carefully selected bibliography of secondary sources, which will be particularly valuable for those new to Gogol research and criticism.

After Whose Order? Kingship And Priesthood In The Book Of Mormon, Avram R. Shannon

BYU Studies

The Book of Mormon represents itself as a strand of Israelite and Judahite religious tradition that flourished somewhere in the New World. Its acceptance by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as scripture means that the Book of Mormon forms part of the essential worldview of the Church. It certainly informs practice and liturgy in the Church, as the adoption of the sacrament prayers from Moroni 3 and 4 as the regular sacrament prayers for the Church indicates.1 The interpretive road is not one-way, however. Just as the Book of Mormon informs and undergirds much of the teachings …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Humorous Spaces And Serious Magic In William Baldwin’S Beware The Cat, Ashley Jeanette Ecklund

Quidditas

When spaces transform in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, the transition is marked with humor, consistently signaling magic to follow. As an amalgamation of folklore, including magic that manifests around, for, and through cats, Baldwin’s work offers adventure, laughter, and danger alike. Some cats are diabolical, worshiping or holding the soul of a witch; however, their wit constitutes a jocular contrast to that of our interior narrator, Maister Streamer, whose quotation above demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of St. Augustine’s beliefs. Though Beware The Cat was published at the start of the early modern period, the folklore it contains speaks …

“Same-Sex Marriage?! What Next Polygamy?”: Mormonism In Us Political Culture, K. Mohrman

Mormon Studies Review

In his dissent to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision

that determined marriage was a right that could not be constitutionally

denied to same-sex couples under the Free Exercise and

Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice

John Roberts queried, “if ‘[t]here is dignity in the bond between

two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to

make such profound choices,’ . . . why would there be any less dignity

in the bond between three people, who in exercising their autonomy,

seek to make the profound choice to marry?”1 In …

Red Balloon, Paris Nilson

Inscape

I am born in a grocery store for the purpose of something important. The moment of my birth is not a large one, and it is not thought of afterward. I live and die in one breath. Today, as with all coming days, is meant to see how long that initial intake will last me. I am, at every edge, a beginning. I am so round and airy like a globe, it is ironic that I should never have been anywhere. This sudden virility is pregnant with a gaseous content; I am imbued with an upward pull, a magnetic longing. …

The Fable As A Global Genre: Marie De France, Ulrich Bonerius, Don Juan Manuel, And Kalila And Dimna, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

As much as recent scholarship has tried to develop a new approach toward world or global literature, the essential problem continues that in those efforts simply writers and poets from the various countries and continents are placed side by side without any consideration of inter- and transdisciplinarity, if not shared meaning and critical exchange. Drawing from the tradition of medieval fable literature, however, we face a truly productive approach in recognizing what global literature could really entail since the various writers across the continents addressed, broadly speaking, the same issues and fundamentally agreed on the critical values in all of …

The Book Of Moses As A Temple Text, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In this fascinating article, Jeff Bradshaw details how the Book of Moses might be understood as a temple text, including elements of temple architecture, furnishings, and ritual in the story of the Creation and the Fall. Bradshaw shows how the second half of the Book of Moses follows a general pattern of a specific sequence of covenants that will resonate with members of the Church who have received the temple endowment. The story of Enoch and his people provides a vivid demonstration of the final steps on the path that leads back to God and exaltation.

Task Adherence: An Agentic Perspective On Task-Focused Dedication In An Interrupting Work Environment, Tanner Skousen, Justin Ames, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Purpose – Knowledge workers live and work in a technology-enabled, push-notification world full of interruptions that create information overload, often requiring these workers to utilize task switching as a mechanism to meet multiple competing tasks’ demands. Previous research has examined both the positive and, more often, negative effects from interruptions and task switching on knowledge workers’ performance. However, this paper aims to examine knowledge workers’ agentic approach to managing interruption signals and consequent task switching to remain dedicated to the task at hand.

Design/methodology/approach – Using an inductive grounded theory approach, we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with knowledge workers …

Journalism As A Public Good: How The Nonprofit News Model Can Save Us From Ourselves, Rosalie Westenskow, Edward L. Carter

Faculty Publications

At a time when many U.S. newspapers find themselves at the edge of a financial precipice, The Salt Lake Tribune’s recent transformation into a 501(c)(3) public charity presents a potentially promising route to economic safety for other daily newspapers. Although the nonprofit, tax-exempt model has been an increasingly popular one for new media outlets, the IRS’s bestowal of such status on a major daily newspaper marks an historic event—one that other newspapers, and their legal counsel, can learn from. This Article outlines several issues such practitioners and owners should be aware of as they consider taking the leap to …

Testing The Effect Of Aquarium-Based Learning On Patron Acceptance Of Evolutionary Theory, Jamie Jensen, Ethan R. Tolman, Spencer G. Shumway, Liam S. Williams

ScholarsArchive Data

This is data collected prior to and directly following an intervention at a public aquarium in Idaho surrounding the reconciliation of evolution with religious audiences.

Teaching Italian Romanticism Through Philately And Choral Works, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

Philately and choral works can be excellent integrative pedagogical tools when teaching Italian Romanticism at the undergraduate level. In the classroom, postage stamps provide an historical narrative for students and can help clarify the political, artistic and cultural mood of the time. The intrinsic symbolism of stamps represents the way a nation wants to be seen by the rest of the world. Instrumental and choral music, in their infinite combination of tones, combine sound with sung words, creating an artistic subtext that reveals the complexity and variety of human aesthetic expression. For the current generation of students accustomed to visual …

Can User Interface Design Choices Alter Perceptions Of Time Passage?, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

When a task is dull, time seems to unhelpfully dilate. This can have serious impacts on job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover – all of which impact employee well-being and the bottom line. Without changing the task, could a user interface take advantage of psychology-driven, theoretically-supported design decisions to make time seem to contract? If such is the case, we might, without much cost, partially alleviate employee suffering due to task fatigue and disinterest by making simple changes to the user interface. While psychology research and user interface design have intersected abundantly in extant literature, no study has empirically tested whether …

“Lions On The Beach”: Ernest Hemingway And Postcolonial Representations Of Cuba As A ‘Dark Shadow’ Of Spain, Laila Jackson

ScholarsArchive Data

Hemingway represents both Spain and Cuba in very different lights, despite the similarities inherent in the countries. As a colonial holding of Spain until 1898, and a U.S. holding until 1902, Cuba is an off shoot of Spanish culture, with differences based on the indigenous people conquered in the 1500s. Though unsurprising, it is interesting that both nations drew Hemingway’s attention. For Hemingway, Spain represented this noble beauty, this majestic heaven on earth, even while in the midst of war. When he writes about Spain, Hemingway waxes romantic. However, this attitude isn’t reflected in his writings about Cuba, which focus …