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An Investigation Into The Relationship Between An Engineering Manager's Purpose-Seeking Beliefs And Behaviors And The Engineering Manager's Perception Of Employee Creativity, Initiative And Purpose-Seeking Behavior, Charles Burton Daniels

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Organizations have placed an overwhelming emphasis on extrinsic motivation of its workforce, normally in the form of financial incentives, in an attempt to assure individual and organizational high performance. While a significant level of financial resources is expended in this attempt to predict and influence employee behavior, no objective evidence exists of a favorable return of investment. In fact, the primary impact of most extrinsic motivation might actually be demotivation – the opposite of the intended use.

In this research the prevailing literature was examined and a conclusion about the power of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation was synthesized to …

Reproductive Biology And Recruitment Of Xiphopenaeus Kroyeri In A Marine Protected Area In The Western Atlantic: Implications For Resource Management, Ariádine C. Almeida, J. Antonio Baeza, Vivian Fransozo, Antonio L. Castilho, Adilson Fransozo

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The potential of a recently established marine protected area (MPA) in the Western Atlantic, Brazil, as a 'seed production' and nursery ground for Xiphopenaeus kroyeri, an intensively exploited penaeid shrimp, was investigated in an attempt to reveal any future benefit of this new MPA to adjacent populations experiencing heavy exploitation. Overall, we observed that males and females >12 and 20 mm carapace length, respectively, contributed the most to reproduction in the studied population. Reproductive activity of X. kroyeri was continuous at the MPA; 2 annual reproductive peaks were recorded from March to April and from November to December, which were …

"We Should Have Brought The Tank": Hypermediated Interactivity In Red Vs. Blue, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Machinima, the practice of adapting recorded video game play into short films, highlights an often unacknowledged but significant shift in the consumption of video games and represents a key and underexplored intersection between the two leading theoretical camps. Considering the landmark series Red vs. Blue through the lens of Bolter and Grusin's propositions about "new" media's relationships with other forms offers an entry point for theorizing not only machinima but also the intersections between the ludology and narratology positions in games studies.

Editor's Introduction: Playing For Keeps: Games And Cultural Resistance [Special Issue], Marc A. Ouellette, Jason Thompson

English Faculty Publications

This edition is as much about Game Studies as it about the games being studied. At its heart there are really two impulses behind the collection of critical thought we have been fortunate enough to gather for this issue of Reconstruction. First, there is the sense that games can’t do anything. Second, there is the sense that games don’t do anything. Their origin (and the underlying biases) makes these sentiments particularly intriguing. In the simplest terms, these premises delineate competing camps, as well. Roger Ebert notoriously asserts that video games will never be art (Ebert). Similarly, and yet quite differently, …

An Interview With Francisco Ortega, Creator Of Crossing The Bridge, Observance: The Board Game, And H1-B: The Board Game, Marc Ouellette, Jason Thompson

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Grazing On Synechococcus Spp. By The Red-Tide Dinoflagellate Karenia Brevis: Implications For Bloom Dynamics In The Gulf Of Mexico, Leo A. Procise

OES Theses and Dissertations

Karenia brevis, the toxic dinoflagellate responsible for massive red tides in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), causes fish kills, shellfish poisoning, and acute respiratory irritation in humans. Bloom initiation and maintenance have been linked to the physical environment as well as various nutrient input mechanisms. To date, efforts to quantify nitrogen (N) sources fueling K. brevis blooms in the GOM have not included mixotrophic grazing although many dinoflagellates, including K. brevis, are known to be capable of mixotrophy. This dissertation reports field and laboratory results demonstrating that natural bloom populations and K. brevisisolates from the West Florida …

Activism And Anagnorisis, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

As I mull the current issue – a wonderful collection of open submissions and a terrific supplement on “post-9/11” developments, about both of which I feel too intellectually impoverished to write adequately – I am filled with mixed feelings, thoughts and even theoretical positions. This last is kind of inescapable given my best efforts to put theory into practice whenever and wherever possible. The two cannot and should not be inseparable, at least for anyone who claims to be even the most remotely involved in Cultural Studies. And yet, I know that this is the area where Cultural …

Nikita Mikhalkov’S Cinematic Verdict On Contemporary Russia, Yuliya Ladygina

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

After the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Putin’s administration reacted promptly to the new rhetoric in Washington and, in turn, re-branded Russia’s campaign in Chechnya as a clear-cut conflict of backward Islamic terrorists assaulting civilized Russia. As a result, the entire Chechen nation and its struggle for political independence has been systematically misrepresented and maligned in the Russian mass media, particularly in film and television. While an abundance of scholarship has examined what sorts of stories Western film and TV drama have been telling about war and terror, and what kinds of …

A Theory Of Brand Ww2, Jonathan M. Bullinger, Andrew J. Salvati

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Myths about the Second World War, grounded within stores of knowledge, often act as narrative templates to be drawn upon by collective memory. These myths and memories are transformed and commodified in a reductive manner into a brand encompassing simplistic narratives, easily recognized visual signifiers (including logo, colors, and associated symbols), and emotional cues that connect with the audience. This posits a theory that what most individuals today interact with is not a fragment of memory related to World War Two but rather a reductive representation sold as BrandWW2.

Talking To Yourself: Garfield Minus Garfield As An Introduction To Techno-Companionship, Andy Engel

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

A year ago while surfing the Internet, I came across a website called Garfield Minus Garfield (GMG), operated by artist/businessman Dan Walsh. Walsh received notoriety for his adaptations of the popular Garfield comic strip in which he removed its title character [1]. This act results in Garfield’s human counterpart, Jon Arbuckle, alone and talking to himself in the now empty space of the strip. A radical transformation occurs because of Garfield’s deletion that serves to emphasize the crucial role Jon and Garfield’s relationship plays in our perception of the world within the strip. Walsh begins the site with …

Contributors, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 4 of Reconstruction.

American Circus Re-Invented: Queering Cirque Du Soleil, Michael Johnson, Jr.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

During Cirque Du Soleil’s twenty-six years, Cirque has challenged the traditional concept of the circus as American’s have come to understand it, by delivering entertainment and spectacle that dramatically differs from circuses like those organized by memorable pioneers P.T. Barnum & Bailey©, or Ringling Brothers© whose roots are found in the earliest history of the circus. The distinguishing hallmark of all Cirque Du Soleil performances is the notable absence of these traditional circus characteristics, supplanted with theatricality, conceptually distinct musical scores, colorful architectural backgrounds, aerial and perpendicular acrobatics, stylized choreography, puppetry and martial arts. The artistic vision promulgated …

War On Terror By Other Means: The Media Industries After 9/11, Graham Barnfield, Philip Hammond

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This Reconstruction supplement is the latest phase of a process that, formally speaking, began as the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center crept into view. One of the supplement’s editors, Phil Hammond, organized the September 2010 Screens of Terror conference at London South Bank University, to initiate a discussion of how the news and entertainment industries had responded to the crisis. Many of the conference contributions were collected in Hammond’s anthology, published on September 11, 2011.[1] Meanwhile both editors set to work on compiling a special issue of Journal of War and Culture Studies …

Intercultural Accommodation Of Ethnic Minority Consumers: An Empirical Examination Of The Moderating Effects In Service Encounters, Sarah Mady

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The current study proposed a model of intercultural accommodation and nine emergent hypotheses grounded in three theories: Accommodation Theory, Distinctiveness Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The study expected that the offering of a service in the minority consumer's language and by an ethnically-similar service provider will lead to favorable service quality perceptions, in the absence of any intervening variables. Ethnic minority consumers were also expected to differ in their perceptions of service quality when intercultural accommodation efforts were or were not offered given a number of intervening variables. The proposed model and the nine hypotheses were assessed via a …

Iron Limitation Of A Springtime Bacterial And Phytoplankton Community In The Ross Sea: Implications For Vitamin B12 Nutrition, Erin M. Bertrand, Mak A. Saito, Peter A. Lee, Robert B. Dunbar, Peter N. Sedwick, Giacomo R. Ditullio

OES Faculty Publications

The Ross Sea is home to some of the largest phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean. Primary production in this system has previously been shown to be iron limited in the summer and periodically iron and vitamin B-12 colimited. In this study, we examined trace metal limitation of biological activity in the Ross Sea in the austral spring and considered possible implications for vitamin B-12 nutrition. Bottle incubation experiments demonstrated that iron limited phytoplankton growth in the austral spring while B-12, cobalt, and zinc did not. This is the first demonstration of iron limitation in a Phaeocystis antarctica-dominated, early …

On Getting Lost In A Good Book: Bibliomania And The Harry Potter And Twilight Series, Erin Hollis

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Beginning with the common assertion that both the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series have had a positive effect on the reading practices of children, teenagers and adults, this article examines Bibliomania in relation to the Harry Potter and Twilight series in order to interrogate the validity of such an argument. It is easy to find articles, blogs and Amazon.com book reviews that marvel at each of the series’ ability to foster a passion for reading in previously resistant readers, but such a statement erases distinctions between the effects each series has on readers and fails to examine what …

Editors’ Introduction: Gender And Popular Fiction, Cameron Leader-Picone, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When literary critic Nina Baym wrote, in 1978, that scholars need to question the influence of gender on “the grounds upon which certain hallowed American classics have been called great,” it was a controversial assertion. [1] It still is, and no less true. In the ensuing decades, as the field of women’s studies expanded and a new level of critical attention was paid to the role of gender in popular culture, studies of popular fiction led the way. A number of our authors in this issue of Reconstruction draw upon Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, which was …

Contributors, Cameron Leader-Picone, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 3 of Reconstruction.

A Cross-Cultural Study Of Korean And American Children’S Human Figure Drawings, Suhyun Tess Lee

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Children’s human figure drawings (HFDs), known as one of the most widely used drawing assessment techniques, reflect various aspects of understanding children and some studies indicate that children’s HFDs are affected by cultural and environmental factors. Yet, the data collected are out of date or the studies predominantly included children from Western cultures. The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural impact on children’s HFDs from a non-western culture to promote a cross-cultural perspective in the field of art therapy.

In this quantitative study, 23 HFDs were collected in an elementary school setting in South Korea. Drawings were …

You'll Never Walk Alone: The Scales Of Identity Of Celtic Football Club Supporters, Neil Conner

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

How and why a person chooses to support a specific sports team/club is more complex than one might imagine. Historically, this selection was primarily established based on a number of socially constructed identities associated with geographic location and the ideas of place and space. This formed a dynamic relationship between the team and the supporter that was relentlessly renegotiated. In today's globalized world, these multifaceted decisions take on additional intricacies as place and space become amplified by growing global cultural exchanges. This ethnographic study will examine how these recent transformations have affected how supporters of the Glasgow Celtic Football Club …

The 'Metalanguage' Of Race And The (Post) 9/11 Moment: Words Never Said, Trimiko Melancon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Drawing upon "Mission Accomplished," a commemorative commercial, and Lupe Fiasco’s song and music video "Words I Never Said," this article examines the degree to which these particular texts serve as narratives that speak to the "metalanguage" of race and racialized enactments, especially as these relate to U.S. racial/ethnic/national identity, in (post) 9/11 cultural productions. While each of these texts toys with race, providing a context in which to interrogate (post) 9/11 sensibilities, their engagements of race and racial politics are varied. Read collectively, they illuminate the ways race, its politics, and racial representations in a (post) 9/11 moment are interpolated …

A Rare And Chilling View': Aerial Photography, Militarized Aeromobility, And Biopower In The Visual Culture Of '9/11', Caren Kaplan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This essay inquires into the vexed matter of the visual culture of catastrophic events by situating a small group of aerial photographs of the damaged and collapsing World Trade Center Towers not only in the tradition of war reportage and photojournalism but also in the historical practices of military airpower in the expanded sense of “aeromobility.” The aerial images were taken by an amateur photographer in an NYPD aviation unit on a routine patrol on the morning of September 11, 2001 and submitted to the “9/11” Commission to be deposited, eventually, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the …

Enduring Impact: The Crisis Fetish In Post-9/11 American Television, Christine Muller

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Commonly, those who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event – whether that event involves a near-fatal car accident or the live broadcast of the September 11, 2001 hijackings – have responded, “The world is different now. It’s like a whole new place, and things will never be the same.” These entirely disparate events provoke a similar reaction because of the nature of trauma itself. As psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman and others have argued, trauma shatters the most fundamental assumptions that govern functional daily living, leaving survivors and witnesses questioning what they really can know about and do in this world. …

9/11 Goes To The Movies: The Mythological Reverberations Of The 'Day That Changed America', Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo, Carmen Lugo-Lugo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this article, we pair our previous work on the discourse and ideology residing behind, and acting to construct, the "War on Terror" and "9/11"—and their attendant links to matters of race, sexuality, and citizenship within a post-September 11, 2001 United States—with an examination of Hollywood mainstream films as post-9/11 cultural products. In post-9/11 films, we find both an examination of the events of September 11, 2001 and the "American" response to those events, as well as the emergence and reinforcement of "9/11" as a culturally defined and produced lens for the "American" experience in a post-September 11, 2001 world. …

The Tragic Mulatto Revisited: Post 9/11 Pakistani-American Identities In H. M. Naqvi’S Home Boy And Mohsin Hamid’S The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Bidhan Chandra Roy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

South Asian diasporic fiction has been widely celebrated for its representation of culturally hybrid characters that challenge fixed conceptions of ethnic and racial identity. Two recent novels by Pakistani diasporic writers, however, expose the political limits of discourses of cultural hybridity following the events of 9/11. This paper explores 9/11 as a seminal event in the representation of South Asian diasporic identity in H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy and Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It proposes that following 9/11 the marginality of Pakistani diasporic identity is more profitably read in light of a precursor to the hybrid - the …

Re-Writing Ourselves In The Wake Of 9/11, Mark Noonan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Following 9/11, V.S. Naipaul claimed that the novel's time was over, for only nonfiction "could capture the complexities of today's world." Nonetheless, a steady stream of novels began appearing seeking to frame a useful response to unimaginable terror and heartbreak including Colum McCann’s Let the World Spin, DeLillo’s Falling Man, John Updike’s Terrorist, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. This essay examines several of these works to discuss how …

Therapeutic Gaming And 9/11, Joyce Goggin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In 2003, a group of computer designers unveiled 9/11 Survivor, a video game MOD that they had created using the Unreal Game engine. This game, which places the player in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, boasts a story-line and gameplay that are rudimentary at best. The player’s avatar is almost invariably a businessman who is unable to find an escape route, so that the only choice players have is to perish by fire or plunge to their inevitable deaths [1].

Looking Elsewhere, Wendy Kozol

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Amid the vitriolic nationalist responses to 9/11, social critics as early as fall 2001 observed that the mainstream media’s self-absorbed focus on the attacks has served to deflect many Americans’ attention from the complex historical impact of U.S. foreign policies. Either implicitly or explicitly, these critics of 9/11 discourse have called for Americans to "look elsewhere" in order to avoid reproducing a victim narrative. If the relentless focus on 9/11 reinforces a nationalist myopia, looking elsewhere is, however, no guarantor of recognition, much less of accountability. After all, photographs of veiled women in Afghanistan readily turned women into symbols of …

Contributors, Christopher Schaberg, Kara Thompson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 2 of Reconstruction.

A Cultural Approach To Understanding Professional Experiences Of Foreign-Born Faculty In U.S. Educational Leadership Preparation Programs, Iryna M. Khrabrova

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate professional experiences of foreign-born faculty members serving in U.S. educational leadership preparation programs utilizing a cultural approach to discern their lived experiences related to professional life. Cultural values reflected in professional life experiences were explored. The information gathered through phenomenological approach was used to analyze the influence of national background on the professional experiences of foreign-born faculty in educational leadership preparation programs.