Digital Commons Network^™

Public Philosophy Of Technology, Dylan E. Wittkower, Evan Selinger, Lucinda Rush

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Philosophers of technology are not playing the public role which our own theoretical perspectives motivate us to take. A great variety of theories and perspectives within philosophy of technology, including those of Marcuse, Feenberg, Borgmann, Ihde, Michelfelder, Bush, Winner, Latour, and Verbeek, either support or directly call for various sorts of intervention—a call that we have failed to adequately heed. Barriers to such intervention are discussed, and three proposals for reform are advanced: (1) post-publication peer-reviewed reprinting of public philosophy, (2) increased emphasis on true open access publication, and (3) increased efforts to publicize and adapt traditional academic research.

Strategy Use Of Russian Pre-Service Tefl University Students: Using A Strategy Inventory For Program Effectiveness Evaluation, Alla Zareva, Anna Fomina

English Faculty Publications

The focus of the present study is on identifying categories of learning strategies that are mostly used by Russian university students in an English Linguistics Program with a TEFL concentration. The more specific goal of the study is to offer a model of evaluation of the effectiveness of TEFL-oriented programs in terms of the language learning strategies their students use and recognize as pedagogically applicable to their EFL environment. To this end, two groups of students were compared on their self-reported frequency of strategy use -- 1st year students (n = 23), who had just entered the program, and 4th …

Introduction: A Game's Study Manifesto, Jason C. Thompson, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

In the epigraph to this collection, we return to a foundational text of the western literary canon, Homer’s Odyssey, and see in Penelope’s “bow contest” an illustrative moment in the history of game culture. Having fought in the Trojan War and having survived his ten-year trek home, the weary Odysseus cannot simply show up—the returning hero must rout the odious suitors whom Penelope has forestalled. In order to buy more time for vengeance, Odysseus disguises himself as an old beggar; in order to buy more time for deferral, Penelope creates an unwinnable game: she will marry the suitor able …

Gay For Play: Theorizing Lgbtq Characters In Game Studies, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Despite, and perhaps because of, popular press reactions to stereotypical depictions of beefy boys and busty babes in video games, the realm of gender, sex, and sexuality remains a lacuna in the emerging field of game studies. Of particular interest is the notion of performance and the ways this impacts both on gender and on game play. The combination might be expected to offer a very interesting way of approaching LGBTQ characters in digital games, especially given the recent inclusion of such characters in some popular and well-studied game franchises, including Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar 1997-present), Jade Empire (BioWare 2005-08) …

Use Of Undergraduates As Participants In Clothing And Textiles Research, Kim K.P. Johnson, Sharron J. Lennon, Jung Mee Mun, Jayoung Koo, Angella Kim, Dooyoung Choi, Nayeon Yoo

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Social science researchers (e.g., psychology, marketing) have questioned the practice of using undergraduates (UGs) as research participants; by the end of the 20th century, the use of UGs in consumer behavior research was trending upward. Peterson (2001, p. 451) reported that for the Journal of Consumer Research, “the percentage using college students has steadily increased, from 23% in the first volume to 89% in the most recent volume.” Further, he noted that “86% of the empirically based articles appearing in the Journal of Consumer Psychology since its inception in 1992 have employed college students as subjects” (p. 451). Similar figures …

Redacting 'M. C. Escher And The Magen David', W. C. Bamberger

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Late in 2006 I received a query from Rob Reginald at Borgo Press asking if I would be interested in gathering my scattered essays and publishing them as a collection. My relationship with Rob had begun nearly twenty years earlier: in 1993 he had published my second book, William Eastlake: High Desert Interlocutor. Rob had left the publishing business for a few years, but now he was back. Borgo had become an imprint of Wildside Press (specialists in Fantasy and SF titles), and Rob was quickly adapting to the new protocols of publish-on-demand, e-books, et al. He …

My Own Private Ontology For A Poetics Of Sound: I Thought You Said It Was Sound / How Does That Sound, Stephanie Gray

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

As a poet obsessed with sound, as well as one with a hearing loss, in the past couple years I wrote two series of works that invoke sound, though one could say that I didn’t dive into them per se thinking about sound. How does that sound? Or just because I have a hearing loss, as some people sometimes infer. (Though it is partly so.) When asked to think about the origins of these works, or how they exist in the world, or how they exist at all, I started to ruminate on it and it truly felt …

Amplification, Rusty Morrison

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

I didn‘t hear what I would call the voice of his death before my father died, or the voice of her death before my mother died. Neither did I hear it in the months after their deaths. I did begin to hear silence differently, but it wasn‘t a difference that I associated with death; it seemed instead that I was hearing more of every silence that was life.

The Enemy Was Waste, Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

"My Father’s Thrift." When I was a child, the unnamed enemy was “waste.” My father went around the house turning off lights when we left a room, or sometimes urged us out of a room where a light could be extinguished. He saved the soap ends and crushed them together for continued use. We children got new clothes rarely, and made old shoes last. You can bet we cleaned our plates—nobody had to remind us about the starving Armenians. My parents were “thrifty”—that was the positive word they used. What they were avoiding—“waste”—that word was heard only, very …

Diatom Proteomics Reveals Unique Acclimation Strategies To Mitigate Fe Limitation, Brook L. Nunn, Jessica F. Faux, Anna A. Hippman, Maria T. Maldonado, H. Rodger Harvey, David R. Goodlett, Philip W. Boyd, Robert F. Strzepek

OES Faculty Publications

Phytoplankton growth rates are limited by the supply of iron (Fe) in approximately one third of the open ocean, with major implications for carbon dioxide sequestration and carbon (C) biogeochemistry. To date, understanding how alteration of Fe supply changes phytoplankton physiology has focused on traditional metrics such as growth rate, elemental composition, and biophysical measurements such as photosynthetic competence (Fv/Fm). Researchers have subsequently employed transcriptomics to probe relationships between changes in Fe supply and phytoplankton physiology. Recently, studies have investigated longer-term (i.e. following acclimation) responses of phytoplankton to various Fe conditions. In the present study, the coastal diatom, Thalassiosira pseudonana, …

Phosphorus Cycling In The Sargasso Sea: Investigation Using The Oxygen Isotopic Composition Of Phosphate, Enzyme-Labeled Fluorescence, And Turnover Times, Karen Mclaughlin, Jill A. Sohm, Gregory A. Cutter, Michael W. Lomas, Adina Paytan

OES Faculty Publications

Dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) concentrations in surface water of vast areas of the ocean are extremely low (<10 nM) and phosphorus (P) availability could limit primary productivity in these regions. We explore the use of oxygen isotopic signature of dissolved phosphate (δ¹⁸O_PO4) to investigate biogeochemical cycling of P in the Sargasso Sea, Atlantic Ocean. Additional techniques for studying P dynamics including ³³P-based DIP turnover time estimates and percent of cells expressing alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity as measured by enzyme-labeling fluorescence are also used. In surface waters, δ¹⁸O_PO4 values were lower than equilibrium by 3–6%, indicative of dissolved organic phosphorous (DOP) remineralization by extracellular enzymes. An isotope mass balance model using a variety of possible combinations of …

Policy-Making Under Evo Morales: Explaining Ethnopopulist Redistributive Measures In Bolivia, Luis Ferreira

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The Evo Morales administration has radically transformed the Bolivian state since his election in 2005. As a result of Morales' indigenous identity and overt ethnic tensions in this state, there is a perception that this factor plays a decisive role in Bolivia's policymaking. However, as the 'renegotiation' of the hydrocarbon industry in 2006 demonstrates, ethnopopulism and political survival provide the most comprehensive approach to predicting the policies of the current Bolivian government.

The resistance to liberalization efforts, the success of redistributive measures and the role identity has had in Bolivia explains why this approach to policy-making has allowed Morales to …

Foreign Languages & Literatures Times, Department Of World Languages & Cultures, Old Dominion University

World Languages & Cultures Times

Fall 2012 issue of Foreign Languages & Literatures Times, newsletter of ODU's Department of World Languages & Cultures.

Graduate News, Office Of Graduate Studies, Old Dominion University

Graduate News

October 2012 issue of Graduate News from the Office of Graduate Studies (now, ODU Graduate School).

Contributors, Marc Oullette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 12, issue 4 of Reconstruction.

Toward A Concept Of Post-Postmodernism Or Lady Gaga’S Reconfigurations Of Madonna, Danuta Fjellestad, Maria Engberg

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

How can we describe the landscape of what is increasingly referred to as post-postmodernism? Is post-postmodernism but a revision (however significant) of postmodernism or is it a new, perhaps even original, episteme? As must be clear from the title, the article takes Ihab Hassan’s much discussed essay “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism” as its point of departure, but proposes a double revision of his chart. First, it supplements the chart with a set of concepts used to designate post-postmodernism. Second, it provides a re-vision of the very layout of the chart, arguing with Johanna Drucker that form is constitutive …

Of Zombies, Aids, And 'Africa': Non‐Western Disease And The 'Raciocultural' Imagination, Richard Brock

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This essay investigates the “raciocultural”—a term designating the slippage between, and mutual construction of, “race” and “culture” within discourses of quasi‐biological determinism—as a means of exploring Western representations of non‐Western disease as “foreign” threats to Europe and North America. It suggests that the raciocultural is at once a colonial‐era construction and a reflection of contemporary trends that have seen racist discourse become increasingly displaced onto the notion of the “cultural.” Investigating a range of texts including news media, literary texts, and interactive entertainment, the essay focuses on representations of “African” space as biologically and culturally “infected” in order to examine …

Reading Duhamel, Kocot, And Lease With Altieri's The Particulars Of Rapture, Thomas Fink

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Since at least the early eighties, Charles Altieri has been a major scholar-critic of contemporary poetry, and Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry (1989) extended the scope of his reputation to Modernism and its intersection with visual art. Throughout his career, he has been engaged with literary theory; perhaps because he has articulated alternatives to prevailing trends in Poststructuralism, New Historicism, and Cultural Studies, the critical mainstream has not always granted Altieri’s subtle, dialogically complex work in this area a substantial hearing.

Brochure: 35th Annual Literary Festival, 2012: Words With Teeth, Shara Weber

35th Annual Literary Festival at ODU: September 30-October 5, 2012

No abstract provided.

Assessing Blood Culture Contamination, Deborah Harris

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem of this study was to evaluate blood culture collection procedures utilized at the study hospital to determine the cause of the high contamination rates.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Is This Where It All Began?, Jacinta Maria Matos

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is arguably the most influential political novel of the twentieth century, providing us with a set of concepts and a vocabulary to discuss the state’s totalitarian control of the individual. As such, Orwell can be seen as one of the founding fathers of literary representations of a threatening urban space which functions as the microcosm of a global, totalizing and dystopian reality. His seminal contribution to the discourse of (in)security and surveillance has been widely recognized. David Lyon is one among the many theorists who place Orwell at the top of the list of early …

Contributors, Susana S. Martins, Susana Araújo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 12, issue 3 of Reconstruction.

Beautiful, Unethical, Dangerous': Screening Surveillance And Maintaining Insecurities, Adam Brown, Tony Chalkley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster hit, The Dark Knight (2008), the roguish caped crusader builds a massive computer system to locate his arch-nemesis, the Joker, using sonar technology. After being called on by Batman to use the system and assist with the pursuit, the deeply moral CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox, reluctantly agrees to help just one time, but threatens to quit immediately afterwards. The film’s subsequent climactic scenes are thus played out in a cityscape under surveillance, both thematically and aesthetically, with Batman’s (anti)heroic exploits only possible through his (temporary) establishment of a virtual “surveillancescape.” Yet there …

Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The singular—maybe more aptly put as the pre-eminent—image that occurs when reading Gaming Matters is that of duelling dualisms. While this is a tried-and-true method of covering a topic, from the dissoi logoi to “The Owl and the Nightingale” and beyond, it is the site and the subject of these apposites that makes for an intriguing if (intentionally) unsettling read. The very title of the book makes the exercise of reading (and likely of writing) a part of and apart from this process. Gaming Matters stands as both call and catalogue. Gaming matters, most certainly, in terms of its audience, …

Exploring Hope And Quality Of Life: A Proposal For A Group Art Therapy Hope Intervention For Individuals Diagnosed With Lupus, Paige Scheinberg

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

As a result of the importance of hope and quality of life in disease management for individuals who have been diagnosed with lupus, there is support in the literature for the need for an effective intervention that targets these constructs with this population. The efficacy of art therapy in meeting the physical, mental, and emotional needs of diverse populations is also supported in existing research, making this an ideal form of treatment for lupus patients. In an effort to fill a gap in the literature on the relationship(s) between lupus, hope, and art therapy, this study was created. The original …

Modes Of Resistance: A Critical Discussion Of Hey Baby, Derrais Carter, Holly Kearl, Jerrod Koon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In recent years, street harassment has garnered a significant amount of public and scholarly attention. Activist campaigns to spread awareness on this issue and promote women’s public safety have shaped laws along with cultural understandings of gender and power. In 2010, integrated media artist Suyin Looui offered her contribution to this discourse through a game titled Hey Baby. Designed as a first person shooter, Hey Baby allows the player to experience street harassment.

This roundtable places Hey Baby in conversation with two activist-scholars concerned with street harassment. Holly Kearl is the founder of StopStreetHarassment.org and author of Stop Street …

Level Up—A Case For Female Gamers, Kuljit Brar

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The paper addresses the notion that video games are perceived as a boys-only territory, looking into the reasons why there is a significant lack of female presence both inside games – through characters and plotlines – and outside games in the form of female gamers. The discussion examines the hazards female gamers face in attempting to enter virtual play spaces that are unwelcoming to them, and what is at stake if the video game industry continues down a male-centric path. Diagnosing the causes of these maladies, the paper focuses its attention on determining how the makers of video games can …

Contributors, Marc Ouellette, Jason Thompson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 12, issue 2 of Reconstruction.

An Examination Of Alcohol Expectations And Social Desirability In Fraternity Members On American College Campuses, Pietro A. Sasso

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Males who are members of American college fraternal organizations remain one of the heaviest drinking populations among college students (Wall, 2006). Within fraternities, alcohol use is ceded to social status (Larimer et al., 1997). This culturally ingrained alcohol misuse has confounded interventions and programming to address this phenomenon and response to these attempts have been low or nonexistent by fraternity members. This study investigated alcohol expectations and social desirability among fraternity members. It was hypothesized that as members enter and remain in the fraternity culture, distorted expectations and socially desirable behaviors may occur as demonstrated by differences between pledges and …

Behind The Silk Screen A Critical Analysis Of Translators, (In)Visibilty, And Alternative Translation Environments, Justin Charles Sprague

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The act of translation is one that is riddled with difficulties, and the labor that the translator performs is equally as difficult. Translators must simultaneously grapple with linguistic issues from languages being incongruent as well as the aspects of language embedded with culture. These complexities have given rise to the study of translation and the struggles that translators face. What often goes unnoticed, however, are the ways in which the habitus of translators informs their cultural labor. Likewise, their position as cultural intermediaries between a target and source culture illuminate challenges that are not explicitly answered or even addressed in …