Digital Commons Network^™

About The (W)Hoopla: A Few Pedagogical Thoughts About The Super Bowl Ritual, Tim Anderson

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In an era of fragmentation it's the only media program left that has any kind of mass ritual component. Which, of course, is not only why so many debate its contents but why and how we, as scholars, should approach the program.

Wire In The Blood, Crime Drama With A British Flair, Leslie Eliason

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Americans love a good murder – as long as it takes place on television and the perpetrator is apprehended within an hour. Crime dramas are one of the most popular genres of programming available today, a trend that shows no sign of waning. Megan Larson of Media Week wrote in 2004 that eight of the top twenty five shows on network television were crime related. She also noted that the series Law and Order was entering its fifteenth year – quite a feat in the here-today-gone tomorrow world of broadcast television. The most recent Nielsen ratings indicated that seven of …

Remember The Titans, Historical Fact Or Fiction?, Amy S. Tate

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

In the late 1990s, screen writer Gregory A. Howard wrote a screen play called Remember the Titans, based on the true story of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Jerry Bruckheimer and Walt Disney Pictures bought the script based on the fact that it is a true story, but much of the film‟s content is fictional. Gregory Howard admitted to ESPN writer Jeff Merron that “he made some big assumptions when writing his script” (qtd. in Merron 5). Though the film is not entirely historically accurate, it is successful because it appeals to Americans through its intense emotional …

Cosmopolitanism, Globalization And The Field Of Adolescent Literacy, Helen Harper, Thomas W. Bean, Judith Dunkerly

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

In this article we discuss the current nature and circumstances of cosmopolitanism and what it means to the field of adolescent literacy. Drawing on contemporary scholarship, cosmopolitanism is understood as: 1) the local experience or condition of globalization, what has been called ‘internal globalization,’ and, 2) as a disposition or sensibility that ensures productive and peaceful relations in light of globalization or any circumstance that creates dynamic and culturally diverse contexts. From a critical review of the key documents in the field, we argue that for many adolescents their lives and literacies now, and especially in the future, will be …

The "Place" Of Rhetoric In Aggadic Midrash, David Metzger, Steven B. Katz

English Faculty Publications

An essay is presented on the examination of Aggadic midrash as a particular mode of Jewish rhetoric. It offers a discussion of the utility and merit of aggadah within rabbinic literature which require a cluster of analysis of a larger collection of imagery to identify the dominant themes. The author explores on how textualization is treated as steps in the establishment of discursive spaces, which is limited by scripture, tradition, or the authority of the rabbis.

Removing The Checks And Balances That Hamper Democracy: Play And The Counter-Hegemonic Contradictions Of Grand Theft Auto Iv, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Grand Theft Auto IV provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider the outcomes when textual play and game play not only intersect, but operate in concert. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked to each other and to the social commentary which contributes to the game's story, humor, and thematic unity. This article considers the modes of textual play in Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as the locations and situations when players encounter them while playing the game. It also explores the subversive of potential of textual play as it relies on and departs from game play, and attempts to …

Contributors, Nate Hinerman, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 10, issue 1 of Reconstruction.

Gaming At The End Of The World: Coercion, Conversion And The Apocalyptic Self In Left Behind: Eternal Forces Digital Play, Deborah Wills, Erin Steuter

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy game based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' best-selling eschatological novels, an immensely popular series featuring embattled Christians fighting evil at the world's end. The spin-off game allows players to "wage a war of apocalyptic proportions" against the Antichrist's minions. The players defend themselves with prayer and hymn-singing; if spiritual means fail, however, more violent tactics are invoked as Christian alliances evolve into the military units of the "Tribulation Force." This merging of what the game's website calls "physical and spiritual warfare" has generated among critics the label "kill or convert"; the …

Editors' Introduction, Nate Hinerman, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

At a time when many in the U.S. and around the world encounter religion as a polarizing subject, one especially revered by some and utterly contested by others, this special issue of Reconstruction explores questions arising at the intersection of religious experience and popular culture. To engage the relationship of religion and popular culture requires discipline-based, trans-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary approaches in order to interpret these broad ranges of human experience. As a result, the articles in this issue demonstrate a myriad of methodological approaches.

Bisphenol A Blood And Saliva Levels Prior To And After Dental Sealant Placement In Adults, Joyce M. Zimmerman-Downs, Deanne Shuman, Sharon C. Stull, Robert E. Ratzlaff

Dental Hygiene Faculty Publications

Purpose: This study examined the effects of a widely used (Delton® Pit & Fissure Sealant – Light Cure Opaque, DENTSPLY Professional, York, PA) pit and fissure sealant material on bisphenol A (BPA) levels in blood and saliva, among both low and high–dose groups over time.

Methods: A convenience sample of 30 adults from the Old Dominion University population were randomly and evenly divided into 2 independent variable groups: a low–dose group (1 occlusal sealant application) and high–dose group (4 occlusal sealant applications). A 2 group, time series design was used to examine the presence and concentration of BPA in serum …

Variations In Synechococcus Cell Quotas Of Phosphorus, Sulfur, Manganese, Iron, Nickel, And Zinc Within Mesoscale Eddies In The Sargasso Sea, Benjamin S. Twining, Daliangelis Nunez-Milland, Stefan Vogt, Rodney S. Johnson, Peter N. Sedwick

OES Faculty Publications

The quotas of P, S, Mn, Fe, Ni, and Zn in individual Synechococcus cells collected from the surface and deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) layer of three mesoscale eddies in the Sargasso Sea were measured using synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microscopy. Cells in a mode-water eddy had significantly higher P (57 +/- 10 amol) and Mn (28 +/- 7 zmol) cell quotas than cells collected from a cyclone (22 +/- 2 amol and 10 +/- 1 zmol, respectively) or anticyclone (25 +/- 3 amol and 18 +/- 3 zmol, respectively). Conversely, Ni and Zn quotas were significantly higher in the cells from …

American And Chinese Personality Traits And Task Load In Simulated Flight Crews: Individual And Team Level Effects, Matthew Edward Loesch

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Understanding the impact of pilot interpersonal dynamics may be crucial for flight team success as well as the prevention of air crash disasters. Achieving optimum performance from flight teams requires limiting unnecessary pilot task load. This study examined American and Chinese simulated flight crews. Factors believed to affect cockpit interpersonal dynamics and subsequent crew task loads were pilot personality and nationality. Pilot personality, team personality elevation, team personality variability, and team nationality were analyzed for their potential impact on task load perceptions. Twenty-four American, 23 Chinese, and 23 mixed nationality two person teams were created and used for comparisons. Increasing …

A Seasonal Study Of Dissolved Cobalt In The Ross Sea, Antarctica: Micronutrient Behavior, Absence Of Scavenging, And Relationships With Zd, Cd, And P., M. A. Saito, T. J. Goepfert, A. E. Noble, E. M. Bertrand, Peter N. Sedwick, Giacomo R. Ditullio

OES Faculty Publications

We report the distribution of cobalt (Co) in the Ross Sea polynya during austral summer 2005-2006 and the following austral spring 2006. The vertical distribution of total dissolved Co (dCo) was similar to soluble reactive phosphate (PO(4)(3-)), with dCo and PO(4)(3-) showing a significant correlation throughout the water column (r(2) = 0.87, 164 samples). A strong seasonal signal for dCo was observed, with most spring samples having concentrations ranging from similar to ~ 45-85 pM, whereas summer dCo values were depleted below these levels by biological activity. Surface transect data from the summer cruise revealed concentrations at the low range …

Nutrient Cycles And Marine Microbes In A Co2-Enriched Ocean, David A. Hutchins, Margaret R. Mulholland, Feixue Fu

OES Faculty Publications

The ocean carbon cycle is tightly linked with the cycles of the major nutrient elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon. It is therefore likely that enrichment of the ocean with anthropogenic CO2 and attendant acidification will have large consequences for marine nutrient biogeochemistry, and for the microbes that mediate many key nutrient transformations. The best available evidence suggests that the nitrogen cycle may respond strongly to higher CO2 through increases in global N2 fixation and possibly denitrification, as well as potential decreases in nitrification. These trends could cause nitrification to become a nitrogen cycle "bottleneck," by increasing the flux of N2 …

Contributors, Alan Clinton, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 9 issue 3 of Reconstruction.

Transmaturities: Gender Trouble As Tentative Analogue For Maturity Trouble, Diederik F. Janssen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Recent contributions to queer studies have been marked by what can provisionally be called a turn toward time, specifically time's various normative condensations around issues of community formation, most notably with respect to the family and the subculture. While the specter of time often seems suspended between elite contemplation and public imagination, the emergent rubric of temporalities, explored in GLQ's special issue (2007;13/2-3), announced a possibly radical moment in which genders can be analyzed as breaking down "over time" politically and taxonomically, perhaps to the effect that deconstructive momentum realized in the context of gender/sexuality may facilitate …

Mutating Masculinity: Embodying The Hu(Man) In The Hills Have Eyes, Rebecca Hawkins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Discussing gender identity in the female warriors of kung fu films, critic Kwai-cheung Lo asks, "Does maleness automatically produce masculinity? Is there a kind of masculinity independent of the biological male? Can the women who kill in action cinema occupy a position that has been historically thought of as exclusively masculine" (138)? In this paper, I am asking similar questions regarding the construction of masculinity in the male victim of a horror film. Since the slasher film genre rose to popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, horror films have often been accused of reveling in voyeuristic misogyny (a …

Review Of Extreme Metal: Music And Culture On The Edge, By Keith Harris-Kahn, Scott Inniss

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Since the appearance in the early 1990s of Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology and Robert Walser’s Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, there has been a relative dearth of serious, book length inquiries into this often maligned musical form. Keith Harris-Kahn’s Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge offers not only to rectify this situation but more specifically to perform a cultural analysis of those much more aesthetically radical and socially marginalized metal subgenres—death, doom, and black metal as well as grind and metalcore—that have emerged since the …

Icons And Genre: The Affordances Of Livejournal.Com, Jennifer Grouling Cover, Tim Lockridge

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The proliferation of Internet discourse - texts ranging from personal publishing platforms to comment-driven conversations - has led to the explosion of new genres. But will this explosion of genre also lead to the implosion of genre theory? In this paper, we seek to play with genre theory, to explore its relevance and test its limits by dealing with one particular type of online text: the blog. We ask not only what are the affordances of the blogging medium, but also what are the affordances of genre theory? What view of these texts does it offer us, and …

The Genealogy Of Electracy: An Interview With Gregory L. Ulmer, Gregory L. Ulmer, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Better Living Through Reality Tv: Television And Post-Welfare Citizenship [Book Review], Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The very first thing I can say about Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship is that I cannot wait for the authors to consider adding a Canadian version – more on that later – since they include British reality shows. Admittedly, many of these last shows have been successful enough to lead to Americanized versions. In considering reality television, the Laurie Ouellette (no known relation) and James Hay seem to sacrifice one of the oldest, and currently largely underexamined as such, varieties of the reality television, the game show. This is not to say that "new" game …

Fieldwork And Interdisciplinary Research, Vibha Arora, Justin Scott-Coe

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Central to ethnographic construction and production of knowledge(s) is the fieldwork experience and the location of the knower. Anthropological fieldwork conventionally privileged knowing the Other and the going elsewhere. As a spatial practice, fieldwork refers to "a specific style, quality, and duration of dwelling"; that is distinguished from travel (Clifford 1997: 22). Territoriality of the field and prolonged immersion in the locality defined this fieldworker conducting fieldwork in the field (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). The growing acceptance and recognition of mobility among communities and the interface of the local and the global in everyday life of an individual …

Technology And Women's Lives: Queering Media Ethnography, Irmi Karl

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article offers a re-examination and re-articulation of ethnographic approaches towards the study of media audiences and the consumption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In particular, it aims to highlight the challenges faced by researchers undertaking fieldwork in so-called familiar cultural settings. Based on insights gained from a longitudinal study into the ICT consumption practices of female-headed households in Brighton, UK, it seeks to re-vitalize the ethnographic imagination by asking: how can we, in an age of mobile media cultures, consolidate on- and offline encounters and overcome anxieties around boundary crossings expressed through the prevailing heteronormative frameworks …

Object Knowledge: Researching Objects In The Museum Experience, Elizabeth Wood, Kiersten F. Latham

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper investigates an interdisciplinary perspective on museum research, offering a new orientation and methodology for fieldwork. It begins from the stance of "object knowledge", which describes the ways of knowing that come from human interaction with and study of physical objects. Next, is the documentation of the power of objects to define the lived experience of time, place, and identity, presented with an applied and theoretical perspective on tangible objects and their relationship to lived experience. Through object knowledge we argue that museums can better understand their impact and influence on visitors and define the ways that objects and …

Contributors, Vibha Arora, Justin Scott-Coe

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about editors and contributors to articles in volume 9, issue 1 of Reconstruction.

Complicated Conversations Between Interviewing And Psychoanalytic Theory, Rachel Hurst

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The lyrebird is an endangered Australian creature, almost a strange peacock with a steely grey body and tail feathers flanked on either side with an ostentatious whorl. What makes this bird unique is that in order to attract a mate, the lyrebird sings a song that consists of every notable birdsong, forest noise, or human-generated sound the bird has ever heard, sung in a sequence composed by the bird. The lyrebird faithfully mimics these noises in timbre and resonance, and repeats them exactly as they were originally heard: the impersonation is so good that it fools practically all …

On S. Nutall And A. Mmembe, Eds. Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, Sandy Marshall

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In their edited volume, Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe, offer their readers a glimpse of contemporary Johannesburg from multiple vantage points, combining to create a singleness of vision that reveals a fractured and layered modern metropolis. However, the cohesiveness that binds this book should not be mistaken for theoretical fixity of the African metropolis. Recognizing that city forms "outpace the capacity of analysts to name them" (25), the editors of Johannesburg seek to unfix rather than fix the meanings of African modernity. As promised in the title, Johannesburg is depicted as elusive, uncontainable and …

Searching For Conscientização: Mentoring Fieldwork In International Service-Learning, Lauren Jones, Jonathan Arries

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The article discusses the methodology of the College of William and Mary's Modern Language and Literature's Summer Institute in Nicaragua, a service-learning course designed for current and prospective teachers of English as a Second or Foreign Language. The leaders of the course were a doctoral student in Social Sciences and Comparative Education and an associate professor in Hispanic Studies with a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction. The multidisciplinary training of the course leaders and Paulo Freire's concept of conscientização informed both the academic content of the three-week course and their process approach to mentoring students' independence as they conducted their …

Practice In Mediated Space: Engaging 'Hobbiton' And Its Visitors Through A Constructivist Media Anthropology, Robert Moses Peaslee

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper calls for a (re)emphasis in site-specific, open-ended investigation of individual experience as a viable and valuable strategy across disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities, especially in the face of ongoing trends toward globality, hybridization, convergence, and destabilization of symbolic and material culture. The paper is particularly interested in reporting on the application of such methodologies toward investigating the media-tourism complex, a constellation of government, industrial, and personal activity which relies on globally mediated conceptions of place and practice and which represents a dynamic and ever-present field of symbolic and actual capital within which consumers operate and …

The Impact Of The 101s: A Guide To Positive Discipline Parent Training: A Case Study Of Kindergarteners And Their Parents In Bangkok, Thailand, Piyavalee Thanasetkorn

Theses and Dissertations in Early Childhood Education

To reduce using corporal punishment with children, the need to introduce alternative ways for parent practices has been requested by Thai parents. However, empirical research of parents' use of positive practices to discipline their young children has been limited in Thailand. Given the effectiveness of positive discipline as an accepted method in order to improve children's social and academic competencies in U.S., a cultural extension of positive discipline techniques to Thai culture is of interest. This study investigated the effectiveness of The 101s: A Guide to Positive Discipline training on Thai positive parenting skills to increase the quality of …