Digital Commons Network^™

Environmentally Related Urbanization And Violence Potential, Christina Bagaglio Slentz

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

In contrast to historical examples in which urban increase is accompanied by the pull factors of wealth and development, post-industrialized sub-Saharan African urbanization patterns are characterized by a lack of economic growth, confounding experts. Simultaneously, African conflict scholars have observed a major geographical shift in African conflict onset, moving out of rural regions and into urban centers. Recognizing the effects of increasing climate variability and threatened agricultural livelihoods, this study hypothesizes perceived economic advantage in cities induces human movement with potential for over-urbanization dynamics that exacerbate civil unrest.

To investigate, a Panarchy theoretical framework of nested adaptive cycles is used …

Media Effects On Cultural Perceptions As Seen In Food Media And Food Cultures, David Williams Tortolini

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Everyday people all over the world watch food media. These engagements happen through multiple media outlets -- both new and old -- such as documentaries, streaming platforms, and television. Through these outlets, viewers can immerse themselves in a group’s culinary culture from the comforts of their residences. What happens when viewers engage with these cultures has been fabricated for consumerism and hegemonic balancing. This thesis will examine and critique how these platforms have created conditions for a change in cultural definitions and representations. Audiences in the United States are shown these changes when they are shown a specific group's cultural …

Narratives From Appalachia: The Current Stories Of Lgbtq Community College Students, Todd A. Cimino-Johnson

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

LGBTQ students are ubiquitous on community college campuses across the United States. The exact number of LGBTQ students is unknown and often their needs are ignored. LGBTQ students face harassment and discrimination at higher rates than other minority groups. This study was conducted to gather the current narratives of LGBTQ students attending community colleges in the Appalachian Region. This study aimed to determine what LGBTQ students are experiencing on community college campuses across Appalachia. Fifteen students took part in a one-on-one semi-structured interview for this qualitative study. All students were currently enrolled in a program of study when the interviews …

Critical Media Literacy And Black Female Identity Construction: A Conceptual Framework For Empowerment, Equity, And Social Justice In Education, Petra A. Robinson, Ayana Allen-Handy, Kala Burrell-Craft

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the issues of knowledge production, which interrogate and disrupt dominant narratives that subjugate Black females related to their identity. We contextualize our discussion through the lens of critical consciousness and critical media literacy by exploring the role of popular media in identity development/imposition for Black females. We outline issues of Black female identity politics by framing them through the description of critical media literacy as a 21st century literacy, with Black Feminist Theory as our theoretical lens. Similar discussions have remained centered in the field of Media Studies and there has been inadequate attention to these issues …

Author Biographies

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Reducing Objectification Could Tackle Stigma In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From China, Youli Chen, Jiahui Jin, Xiangyang Zhang, Qi Zhang, Weizhen Dong, Chun Chen

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Stigmatization associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is expected to be a complex issue and to extend into the later phases of the pandemic, which impairs social cohesion and relevant individuals' well-being. Identifying contributing factors and learning their roles in the stigmatization process may help tackle the problem. This study quantitatively assessed the severity of stigmatization against three different groups of people: people from major COVID-19 outbreak sites, those who had been quarantined, and healthcare workers; explored the factors associated with stigmatization within the frameworks of self-categorization theory and core social motives; and proposed solutions to resolve stigma. The …

The Digital Gaze: Anthropomorphic Reflections Of Future Posthuman Reality, Joshua Nieubuurt

English Faculty Publications

The human world continues to be ever more entangled with the nebulous realms of the digital. The digital lives of humans are constantly viewed, analyzed, and organized by the use of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as tools of governments, institutions, and corporations. Digital-machines are able to harvest massive swaths of data from users the world over including discursive elements and biometrics; accumulating the essences of what it means to dwell in a digital world. Although such digital-machines, and the algorithms on which they operate, are becoming more and more complex, they are still viewed as a tool …

The (Mis) Representation Of Racialized Minorities: Barbie Dolls As Social Problems In India, Namrata Ashvinbhai Bhadania

English Faculty Publications

The relation between commodities and consumers is directly related to the transactional relationship between kids and their interaction with the toys. The paper aims to critique how female representation through Barbie Dolls in popular culture shapes female identity. Production and consumption of Barbie dolls in India became a way of socializing mechanism to educate young Indian girls on the concept of beauty. A notion of beauty is attached to blue eyes, skinny waist, and fair skin giving rise to “American Exceptionalism” (Madsen, 2009, p. 14), where the model nation conceptualizes itself though national identity where perceiver compels to transform themselves …

Society Doesn’T Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games As Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, popular and scholarly commentators have been looking for speculative and/or dystopic literary works that might provide analogues for the Trump-era. Perhaps the most famous of these was the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this regard, though, video games remain an underexplored fictional form. With its exaggerated and parodic satire of an America ruled by the corruption and greed of extreme right-wing populism, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) offers a speculative fiction that players can enact as well as imagine and simulate as well as prepare. Thus, reading the …

Toward A More Perma(Nent) Conceptualization Of Worker Well-Being? A Cross-Cultural Study Of The Workplace Perma Profiler, William P. Jimenez, Xiaoxiao Hu, Rebecca Garden, Xiaofei Xie

Psychology Faculty Publications

We examined the factor structure of the recently developed worker well-being measure the Workplace PERMA Profiler and relationships between PERMA dimensions (i.e., positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, accomplishment) and job performance (viz., task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors benefiting individuals and the organization at large). The measure exhibited metric (i.e., weak) invariance across samples of participants from the U.S. (N = 284) and China (N = 420). Additionally, for participants who responded to both the Workplace PERMA Profiler and the performance measures, there was a general pattern of positive PERMA–performance relationships across both …

Comparative Review On Information And Communication Technology Issues In Education Sector Of Developed And Developing Countries: A Case Study About Pakistan, Aasma Akram, Moshin Nazir, Tayyaba Batool, Muhammad Imran Zulfiqar, Maria Nazir, Habiba Azhar, Sadia Murawwat

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The use of information and communication technology is very beneficial in the education sector because it can enhance the quality of education. However, the implementation of ICT in the education sector of developed and developing countries is a challenging task. This paper explains the comparative study of ICT issues in the education sector of developed and developing countries. In particular, we compare issues between Pakistan and high-tech countries. Our study reveals the fact that the education sector is facing numerous ICT problems that are based on culture, finance, management, infrastructure, lack of training, lack of equipment, teacher’s refusal, and ethical …

Language Revitalisation In Gaelic Scotland: Linguistic Practice And Ideology, Woloyat Tabasum Niroo

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Through their native languages, certain groups of people claim political, social, geographical, and ethnic identity and a legal base for their existence. Colonialism, however, has vanished minority spoken languages in many parts of the world. Additionally, despite claims of a “global village,” the advent of internationalization has further isolated indigenous languages in some parts of the world. Revitalizing and preventing those languages from dwindling from their spoken communities is crucial for scholars of linguistics, sociology, cultural studies, and education. Dunmore, in the book Language Revitalisation in Gaelic Scotland: Linguistic Practice and Ideology, offers profound perspectives on preventing the potential …

I Told You That To Tell You This: Metagaming And Metacognition In The Hybrid Classroom, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper theorizes the use of play and gamified methods to foster metacognition, or strategies for learning and learning about learning, in online graduate instruction. In the process, it calls into question the determinism of “serious” games as being the only means of facilitating metacognition. Ultimately, by adopting metagame approaches—that is, approaches based on0 goals and achievements that are external to the game and/or are developed by the players themselves—metacognition can and does occur because students participate in the development of the rewards. Moreover, any metagame feature ultimately becomes a commentary so that an approach based on metagaming offers its …

Holy Stitches Batman, Or, Performative Villainy In Gothic/Am, A. Luxx Mishou

English Theses & Dissertations

Holy Stitches, Batman, or, Performative Villainy in Gothic/am is an interdisciplinary examination of gothic affect and deviant fashion in the narrative construction of villainy. It asks not just what a villain looks like, but what it means to look like a villain. A villain is a character who consciously and purposefully deviates from standards of normativity in order to pursue their own, often criminal, interests. The signifier of “villain” articulates a different purpose – an adversarial relationship with normativity that guides personal identification. Not exceptional to a gendered cultural system, they are informed by the societies in which they operate, …

Drag Incorporated: The Homonormative Brand Culture Of Rupaul's Drag Race, Nathan T. Workman

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This thesis argues RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR, 2009–) positions itself as a homonormative pathway to LGBTQ+ social inclusion through privileging neoliberal selfbranding and commodity activist practices that reify privileged raced, classed, and sexuality identity markers. Utilizing interdisciplinary and intersectional cultural studies methods to conduct a textual analysis, I examine how RPDR produces homonormative LGBTQ+ identities through the commodification and standardization of drag cultures. In conversation with existing RPDR scholars, I critically survey RPDR’s gender biases and prosocial messaging as an example of brand culture’s reification of hegemony and homonormativity within LGBTQ+ communities. This research considers the …

Brochure: 43rd Annual Literary Festival, 2020: Grit And Grace, Shara Weber

43rd Annual Literary Festival at ODU: October 4-8, 2020

No abstract provided.

Black Teachers’ Collective Wisdom As Social Justice Pedagogy: A Black Feminist Narrative Analysis, Jacqueline Cora Boone

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

In this age, 21st century, where social issues surrounding race and gender are impassioned and escalating, black feminists and Black Feminist Theory are leading the charge in bringing salience through activism and engagement. Doing post structural qualitative research aims to dismantle a myth of scientific knowledge that emphasizes triangulation and transferability of research with the use of multiple representations of experience. This research investigates critical issues in qualitative research, specifically the ontological challenge that researchers commonly encountered in depicting experience and social reality. The turn to experience and lived stories has expanded the modes of qualitative research by hearing marginalized …

Playing On The Threshold: Topological Chronotopes And Video Games, Michael Joseph Piero

English Theses & Dissertations

This study argues that the chronotope—literally “timespace”—is a useful, flexible heuristic for understanding how video game timespace is ideology, often encoding hegemonic norms of heteronormativity, misogyny, sovereign power’s control of bare life, and dualistic thinking. Adapting and reforging Mikhail Bakhtin’s “chronotope of the threshold,” I track the topological movements of threshold chronotopes across a series of games and game genres that reveal threshold experiences of play, ontology, and justice. This work of theory takes into account video game mechanics, interfaces, narratives, iconography, and materiality within the context of a player’s experience as a player-reader given to a bodily-rooted play with …

Counterpublics, Abled Sex, And Crip Discourses On Twitter: A Discourse Analysis Of Conversations Of Sexuality And Disability, Claudia Garcia Mendoza

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

We live in an era in which essential conversations occur online. Social media has become the official voice of presidents and corporations. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, uses Twitter to address public issues and make policy announcements. Similarly, alternative voices have emerged from social media and evolved into public debates, social movements, and massive mobilizations (e.g., Gerbaudo, 2012; Tufeksi, 2017). The community gathering opportunities of social media (boyd, 2011; Parks, 2010; Chambers, 2013) and the possibilities to generate collective knowledge (Jenkins, 2004) stress the necessity to continue to expand the research in digital spaces.

It is important …

Repression Of Tick Microrna-133 Induces Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptide Expression Critical For Anaplasma Phagocytophilumsurvival In The Vector And Transmission To The Vertebrate Host, Ellango Ramasamy, Vikas Taank, John F. Anderson, Hameeda Sultana, Girish Neelakanta

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The microRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators of gene expression. In this study, we provide evidence for the first time to show that rickettsial pathogen Anaplasma phagocytophilum infection results in the down-regulation of tick microRNA-133 (miR-133), to induce Ixodes scapularis organic anion transporting polypeptide (isoatp4056) gene expression critical for this bacterial survival in the vector and for its transmission to the vertebrate host. Transfection studies with recombinant constructs containing transcriptional fusions confirmed binding of miR-133 to isoatp4056 mRNA. Treatment with miR-133 inhibitor resulted in increased bacterial burden and isoatp4056 expression in ticks and tick cells. In contrast, treatment with …

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.

The Convergence Between Cultural Psychology And Developmental Science: Acculturation As An Exemplar, Seth J. Schwartz, Ágnes Szabó, Alan Meca, Colleen Ward, Charles R. Martinez Jr., Cory L. Cobb, Verónica Benet-Martínez, Jennifer B. Unger, Nadina Pantea

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present article proposes an integration between cultural psychology and developmental science. Such an integration would draw on the cultural-psychology principle of culture–psyche interactions, as well as on the developmental-science principle of person↔context relations. Our proposed integration centers on acculturation, which is inherently both cultural and developmental. Specifically, we propose that acculturation is governed by specific transactions between the individual and the cultural context, and that different types of international migrants (e.g., legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, crisis migrants) encounter quite different culture–psyche interactions and person↔context relations. We outline the ways in which various acculturation-related phenomena, such as …

Media Trust In America: Examining The Perspective Of Va College-Age Individuals, Ryan Whitmer

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

National statistics have been gathered for decades on public trust in mass media. Yet today, at a critical point in American history, this trust is on a severe decline. Are these findings reflective of the rising generation— that is, college-age youth? Data collected from college students in Southern Virginia reveal that there are significantly different opinions, particularly in the areas of overall trust and on the belief that trust can be restored. Additionally, college-age students show partisan divides opposite to the national average, as well as no variances between gender or race. These findings make it abundantly clear that actions …

The “Science” Of Story Structure, Diana Witt

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Stories are immensely human. They help us learn and understand cultural and social contexts. The stories that we tell, see, and read have profound effects on our ideas and emotions, causing us to have visceral reactions. Stories are truly at the crux of how people relate to each other. In this talk, I will explore the necessary elements of stories and why they are effective. Storytellers across all mediums build plot and characters to make an audience care and draw them in. Authors and screenwriters have theorized about the main structures into which all stories fall. In modern media, story …

Wait ‘Til You See It From The Back: Twerking As An Expression Of Sexual Agency, Mariah M. Johnson

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper attempts to examine racism, respectability politics, and its relation to twerking. With the use of research by Gilbert Herdt, Stanley Cohen, Marshall McLuhan, Dr. Tamura Lomax, Patricia Hill-Collins, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and many others to put the use of Black women as modern day folk devils into perspective.

Trigger Warning: Racism, Sexual Assault

A Feel For The Game: Ai, Computer Games And Perceiving Perception, Marc A. Ouellette, Steven Conway

English Faculty Publications

I walk into the room and the smell of burning wood hits me immediately. The warmth from the fireplace grows as I step nearer to it. The fire needs to heat the little cottage through the night so I add a log to the fire. There are a few sparks and embers. I throw a bigger log onto the fire and it drops with a thud. Again, there are barely any sparks or embers. The heat and the smell stay the same. They don’t change and I do not become habituated to it. Rather, they are just a steady stream, …

Terrorists, Zombies, And Robots: The Political Unconscious, Thematics, And Affectual Structures Of The Post-9/11 American Fear Narrative, Nathanael J. Cloyd

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the post-9/11 American fear narrative across media and genre. First, it proposes the concepts of the fear narrative, the primary fear theme, and the secondary fear theme. Second, it proposes that the fear narrative has a long tradition in American culture, in which its themes have adapted and evolved in historically sedimented layers of development. Third, it proposes that American fear themes change depending on its historical context of production, its cultural regime, its genre, and the form of media in which it is expressed. To help uncover the political unconsciousness of the American fear narrative, it …

The Game Studies Crisis: What Are The Rules Of Play?, Marc A. Ouellette, Steven Conway

English Faculty Publications

Though no field or discipline’s historical vector presents itself as a strictly linear building of knowledge, the historical trajectory of Game Studies is problematic: certainly not linear, yet also not even multiplicious or rhizomatic. Instead, we are cyclical. Past debates often re-emerge, zombie-like, muttering the same arguments, often encased in binaries as endemic to our field as they are to the objects we study: unbridgeable disagreements on fundamental concepts; incompatible ontologies and epistemologies; incommensurability writ large. We view this as a chronic issue which has of late culminated in a crisis, exacerbated by changing institutional prerogatives championing multidisciplinary approaches and …

Introduction: The Politics, Praxis, And Performativity Of Teacher Neutrality, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Modelling Silicate - Nitrate - Ammonium Co-Limitation Of Algal Growth And The Importance Of Bacterial Remineralisation Based On An Experimental Arctic Coastal Spring Bloom Culture Study, Tobias R. Vonnahme, Martial Leroy, Silke Thoms, Dick Van Oevelen, H. Rodger Harvey, Svein Kristiansen, Rolf Gradinger, Christoph Voelker

OES Faculty Publications

Arctic coastal ecosystems are rapidly changing due to climate warming, which makes modelling their productivity crucially important to better understand future changes. System primary production in these systems is highest during the pronounced spring bloom, typically dominated by diatoms. Eventually the spring blooms terminate due to silicon or nitrogen limitation. Bacteria can play an important role for extending bloom duration and total CO2 fixation through ammonium regeneration. Current ecosystem models often simplify the effects of nutrient co-limitations on algal physiology and cellular ratios and neglect bacterial driven regeneration, leading to an underestimation of primary production. Detailed biochemistry- and cell-based models …