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Annual Research Report, 2010-2011, Office Of Research

Annual Research Reports

Annual report of collaborative research projects of Old Dominion University faculty and students in partnership with business, industry and government.

Liminal Practice In A Maturing Writing Department, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph]

In Spring 2011 I was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant to "consult, collaborate, and inform" on the future of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg, located in the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications department (hereafter, RWC) was a pioneer in writing instruction in Canada, where it became the first unit to establish itself independently as a department with a full-‐time faculty committed to both teaching and scholarship in writing and rhetoric. It remains a rare phenomenon on the Canadian higher education scene, where studies …

Contributors, Angela Flury, Hervé Regnauld

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 1 of Reconstruction.

Whitewash: Nationhood, Empire, And The Formation Of Portuguese Racial Identity, Manuela Mourao

English Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the origins and development of Portuguese racial identity as reflected in chronicles of the Portuguese first contacts with Africa and the East and in the context of the nation's cultural history. Starting in the late 1400s with the arrival of Vasco da Gama's ships in India, and continuing well into the sixteenth century with the establishment of commercial outposts along a number of coastal areas in the Indian Ocean, the interaction between the Portuguese and the non-Western world had a significant impact on the cultures of all nations involved and, this article contends, on the formation of …

Editor's Introduction: Activism And Anagnorisis, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

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 Studies fails …

Untranslatable Realities, Eva Repouscou

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Contemporary multilingualism reflects the structure of a mutable assemblage that contains compatible and conflicting components. This paper examines the terms of translation regarding the unstable condition of social and spatial figurations. Nicolas Bourriaud’s “The Radicant” and the work of other theoreticians offer a counterpoised viewpoint for a closer examination of the efficacy of translation. In addition, an overview of certain examples of contemporary art contributes to the argument that the untranslatable is the new abstraction.

Call Center Cultures And The Transnationalization Of Affective Labor, John Muthyala

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper examines how the transnationalization of affective labor has become central to the Information Technology (IT) of our global world. It studies the role of American culture in call centers in India, a crucial sector of the IT industry linking the U.S. to technopolises in several countries across the world. The documentary Diverted to Delhi, which focuses on the setting up and managing of call centers, shows how a particular itinerary of culture gets deployed in order to train potential employees to learn English, become familiar with American culture, develop new professional identities by adopting Western names, and …

Review Of Translation In Global News, By Esperança Bielsa And Susan Bassnett, Kevin Howley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It has become commonplace for academics, news workers, politicians and pundits to lament the crisis of contemporary journalism. Buffeted by threats to advertiser-supported business models, declining audience numbers and, most damning of all, a yawning credibility gap between the public and the press, so-called legacy journalism faces enormous challenges from within and outside of the newsroom [1]. While such volatility is troubling for professional journalism, this condition has helped reinvigorate the field of journalism studies.

How “Struggling” Readers Engage In Literacy Events In Middle School Science: An Analysis Of Interactions In Literacy Events, Kristin Cartwright Palmer

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

This study examined opportunities for participation and learning for "struggling" readers in a sixth grade science classroom. Literacy practices, language differences, activity structures, and the social and cultural identities and associated practices and everyday funds of knowledge of both "struggling" and nonstruggling readers in one sixth grade science classroom were documented and analyzed using a qualitative research design. Over sixteen hours of audio and video recordings as well as numerous student work samples were transcribed and analyzed. Analyses of the classroom interactions and artifacts documented in this study revealed several important affordances available in the context of this classroom related …

Florida Straits Deglacial Temperature And Salinity Change: Implications For Tropical Hydrologic Cycle Variability During The Younger Dryas, Matthew W. Schmidt, Jean Lynch-Stieglitz

OES Faculty Publications

The prevailing paradigm of abrupt climate change holds that rapid shifts associated with the most extreme climate swings of the last glacial cycle were forced by changes in the strength and northward extension of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), resulting in an abrupt reorganization of atmospheric circulation patterns with global teleconnections. To determine the timing of tropical Atlantic atmospheric circulation changes over the past 21 ka BP, we reconstruct high resolution sea surface temperature and δ¹⁸O_SW (a proxy for surface salinity) records based on Mg/Ca ratios and oxygen isotope measurements in the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber from …

Meridional Shifts In The Marine Itcz And The Tropical Hydrologic Cycle Over The Last Three Glacial Cycles, Matthew W. Schmidt, Howard J. Spero

OES Faculty Publications

Paleoproxy studies show a strong correlation between tropical climate and high-latitude temperature variability recorded in the Greenland ice cores over the last glacial cycle. In particular, abrupt cooling events in the Greenland Ice Sheet Project II δ¹⁸O ice record appear synchronous with a southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the Atlantic, a weakening of the Indian and East Asian monsoon systems, and a strengthening of the South American monsoon system. Because this high-to-low-latitude climate teleconnection significantly alters the tropical hydrologic cycle around the globe, it plays a critical role in regulating global climate on glacial-interglacial …

Apparel And Its Impact On Self-Perception, Autumn Heart

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem if the study was to determine if alterations in one's dress has an impact on an individual's self-concept.

Contributors, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 10, issue 4 of Reconstruction.

Irresolute Intermediaries: Television, Memory, And Weird Frontiers, David Lewkowich

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The task of narrating our memories is a difficult and virtually impossible undertaking, especially since it is often those moments we cannot recall that, in the end, may prove be the most formative. In this paper, I look at what it means to narrativize reminiscences of the televisual viewing experience, as banal encounters that nevertheless shed light on the fragmented nature of our relations in the social world. Despite the ubiquitous presence of television in our everyday lives, its worth is rarely interrogated at the level of the writer/researcher’s subject and of memory. This piece looks not at the substance …

Evolution, Popular Culture, And The Nature Of Scientific Knowledge, James Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article presents a view of science that counters the teleological and authoritative way in which it is presented in arenas of popular discourse ranging from public schools, science magazines (such as Wired), community meetings, and popular books written by scientists. Noting the strange conflation of “evolution” (a branch of science) and “science” (as a way of thinking), the essay presents psychoanalytic and scientific arguments that suggest that evolution is equated with science in the public because evolution represents the return of the repressed element that founds any discourse which seeks to remain self contained. In science, this repressed …

Whose America Is This, Anyway?: Class, Identity, And The Critical Voice In Cultural Texts, Mike S. Dubose

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article, by exploring an interesting and noteworthy event (a 1989 clash over identity and accusations of racism between Living Colour and Guns N’ Roses) which spanned multiple venues (from radio to magazines to the concert stage, when both bands opened up for the Rolling Stones), challenges the way scholars read and use cultural artifacts as texts, thereby creating an artificial hierarchy between "the interpreted" and those who possess "the right to interpret.

The Art Of War Reporting: Theorising Contemporary Embedded Journalism As Public Discourse, Jay Reid, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While war and conflict have always been present to some extent throughout history, since the September 11, 2001 attacks in America there has been a rise in overseas conflict and troop deployments under the banner of ‘The Global War on Terror’. For the Australian public, these conflicts take place overseas in the far reaches of the Middle East, a place to which few have first hand contact, leaving them reliant on the media establishment to inform them of events (Taylor 63). Questions however have been raised about the current forms of wartime journalism, with many in the industry …

Making Over Myth: The Rhetorical Use Of The Puritan Conversion Narrative In Kitchen Nightmares, Joseph Bowling

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

John Rodden, in his analysis of the rhetoric of narrative in 1984, argues that the characters in the story are secondary to the narrative, which itself participates in and provides support for larger cultural myths (155). Though Rodden discusses overtly fictive literature, the same can be said for the simulacra of reality TV: a genre of television in which each episode follows a formula that obscures the individual contestants. The Fox reality television show Kitchen Nightmares is such a formula-driven show, one with rhetorical narrative structure. The show, which portrays a struggling restaurant owner saved by a professional …

Editors’ Introduction: What Is Outsider Criticism?, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard published the results of a study he was commissioned to write for the Conseil des universités du Québec in which he made the claim that, in a university system devoted to functionalism rather than experimentation, “it is safe to assume that responsibility for [experimentation] will devolve upon extrauniversity networks.” This proclamation may have been shocking to university administrators, who have often equated the university with knowledge as if such a linking were inevitable, but from Lyotard’s perspective of a growing, capitalist-fueled technocracy, and now ours, in which this technocracy has grown in size and …

Veni, Vidi, Wiki: Expertise As Knowledge And A Technocratic Generation, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This project stems from two intersecting strands. The statement, "I can always find out," neatly summarizes the intersection. Not surprisingly, it has two distinct but simultaneous meanings. The first, in which "always" means "every time," considers the ways in which the ability to find knowledge has become synonymous with expertise and examines the elements that have fostered this situation. In this regard, factors such as the range of software and hardware-from Wikipedia and FAQs to cellphones and Ipods-which anticipate or "think" for the user but also require constant updating are both rationale and outcome for their youthful consumers. When combined …

Constructing The Shitting Citizen, Deanna Grant-Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Art activism uses visual and performance art to promote social and environmental agendas. In this paper, I explore attempts to raise awareness of sanitation issues at the global, local and personal level using scatological art. I focus on the successes of the open-air public art exhibition set up in the Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) central business district to celebrate World Toilet Day in 2008. The art in this exhibition featured included one hundred toilets decorated to raise awareness of global sanitation issues and the distribution of promotional materials featuring scatological images including postcards and stickers. Given the subject matter and intent, …

Politicising Queer Issues And Activism: Disciplinarity, Biopolitics And The Means By Which Activist Issues Enter The Public Sphere, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper explores ways of understanding how an activist 'issue' is politicised by examining and analysing lesbian/gay and queer community politics. The paper focuses on the contrast between (1) the wyas in which queer political activism has taken up and politicised the issue of same-sex marriage rights as one of seeking equality and foregrounded as the queer issue of the 2000s; and (2) the issue of queer youth suicide and self-harm which is arguably one of the most under-represented yet ethically most urgent issues within GLBT discourse carrying greater risk and impact on the most marginal and least visible of …

Activism As Fetishism: A Pamphlet Essay For Activists, Ann Deslandes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

15-page, tri-fold pamphlet created by the author to present research she did for her dissertation on the ethics and politics of solidarity.

Review Of The Mc5 And Social Change: A Study In Rock And Revolution, By Mathew J. Bartkowiak, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When I saw the announcement for Mathew Bartkowiak’s book, The MC5 and Social Change, I had two immediate thoughts: a) damn, somebody beat me to it and b) I just hope it is not a book done by some kid who only just discovered the MC5 and thinks he invented them. After opening the book I discovered that Bartkowiak had probably anticipated this sort of reaction from people like me. First, he does not write yet another biography or history of the band but instead offers a critical look at the MC5's controversial position among politically-charged music and …

Veni, Vidi, Wiki: Expertise As Knowledge And A Technocratic Generation, Marc A. Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This project stems from two intersecting strands. The statement, "I can always find out," neatly summarizes the intersection. Not surprisingly, it has two distinct but simultaneous meanings. The first, in which "always" means "every time," considers the ways in which the ability to find knowledge has become synonymous with expertise and examines the elements that have fostered this situation. In this regard, factors such as the range of software and hardware--from Wikipedia and FAQs to cellphones and Ipods--which anticipate or "think" for the user but also require constant updating are both rationale and outcome for their youthful consumers. When combined …

Contributors, Marc A. Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 10, issue 2 of Reconstruction.

Arcadian Rhythms: Gaming And Interaction In Social Space, Jason Tocci

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Based on research conducted in four locations, this article describes the social organization of the neighborhood arcade. While cognitive and neuropsychological strains of game studies describe selection of and engagement with games in terms of innate dispositions, the playing styles and social behaviors of arcade patrons suggest strongly culturally-informed motives in selecting games, potentially understood through Bourdieu's notion of habitus. Though the arcade potentially represents an open, social environment, arcade patrons erect social boundaries between hobbyist gamers and "casual" visitors who game less frequently. The games that arcade visitors select may be informed less by spatial reasoning skill or attraction/aversion …

Concealing Screens: Consent, Control And The Desiring User, Kirsty Best

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article traces the contemporary cultural history of consent to information control. It argues that in order to begin to understand why people consent to the loss of control over their digital devices we need to see users as desiring subjects positioned at a cultural moment where the digital information screen has been enlisted as a central driver of both utility and pleasure, but where its architectural ability for additional functional control remains obscured.

Genre, Database, And The Anatomy Of The Digital Archive, Elizabeth J. Vincelette

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to define shared characteristics of literary digital archives, specifically to explore how conceptual and structural qualities of such archives express generic qualities. In order to describe digital media such as database or digital archives, scholars resort to metaphors, and this study offers the metaphor of anatomy as a generic inscription with historical and methodological implications. The definition of the anatomy genre draws from Northrop Frye's in Anatomy of Criticism, in which Frye describes how anatomies are characterized by proliferating lists, the mixing of prose and non-prose forms, and self-reflexivity--under the guise of knowledge …

Cellular Immunity In Mouse Models Of Viral Encephalitis, Christina Dawn Steel

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

Evidence is presented herein that intranasal application of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) caused acute infection of the murine central nervous system (CNS) with associated morbidity and significant mortality in mice. However, VSV encephalitis was not invariably fatal, suggesting that the CNS contained a professional antigen-presenting cell (APC) capable of inducing or propagating a protective antiviral immune response. To examine this possibility, we administered VSV via the intranasal route and then characterized the cellular elements that infiltrate the brain as well as the activation status of resident microglia, cells widely believed to represent the major APC population in the CNS. To …