Digital Commons Network^™

Modifying The Miller Test To Supplement Board Of Education V. Pico: A Novel Approach For Resolving Censorship Cases In School Libraries, Michael Lee

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

In recent years, the increase in book censorship laws and attempts in school libraries across the United States has led to concerns about the propriety of such censorships. This has drawn much attention to the Supreme Court’s decision in Board of Education v. Pico, which established the standard for evaluating the constitutionality of removing books from school libraries. Yet, by analyzing, under the Pico standard, the constitutionality of Texas, Florida, and Illinois’s laws pertaining to book censorship, this Note demonstrates that the Pico standard is practically limited and difficult to apply. Therefore, a more applicable test for analyzing the …

Artificial Intelligence, Machines, Devices, And Robots: Mobilizing Humanness And Intelligence In The American Techno-Landscape, Carlos A. Batres

Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnographic inquiry of artificial intelligence (AI) in the techno-landscape of three major metropolitan areas in the United States. It traces the ways in which both experts and non-experts talk about their interactions with AI via machines, robots, and other devices, and how the ways in which people deal with AI-technologies have come to shape how we think about our own ways of going about doing things. The goal is to discern what the social ramifications of this technology may be as relationships and relations are formed betwixt and between people and artificially intelligent things.

Co-Ethnic Voting And The Analysis Of Trust Levels In Nigeria, Ayorinde Olanrewaju

Research Papers

Hale's (2008) relational theory posits that when less politically relevant ethnic groups experience marginalization and exploitation from the dominant ethnic groups, it creates an orientation in which these groups trust only their co-ethnics in distributing patronage and public goods. To what extent do variations in institutional trust among ethnic groups influence co-ethnic voting behavior? I argue that levels of trust in the president can be understood as one of the conditions under which voters use ethnic identity to decide their vote choice. When trust in a co-ethnic candidate is high, members of an ethnic group will prefer to vote along …

Walking Billboards: The Copyright Landscape Of Tattoos In Professional Athletics, Taylor Ingram

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

Though tattoos have traditionally been viewed negatively, in the last decade, tattoos have become a popular form of self-expression. Thus, the increasing prevalence of athletes adorned with body art has sparked legal debate on tattoo ownership, protection, and commercialization. This Note briefly outlines tattooing and copyright law histories and provides an overview of copyright law today. As copyright claims by tattoo artists have, until recently, been widely settled out of court, this Note will provide an analysis of the only case to proceed to a jury trial. Based on the above, this Note asserts that tattoos are copyrightable. It further …

'Crowned With The Wreath Of Immortality': Martyrdom, Death, And The Afterlife In North African Religious Discourse, Matthew William Egbert

Dissertations

This dissertation explores North Africa’s role in the development of its own religious discourse, specifically with regard to martyrdom, death, the afterlife, and other eschatological themes. Historians of early Christianity and Islam often depict the region as peripheral, but it was actually a crossroads where pre-existing traditions met new ideas to develop unique, localized versions of these religions. More often than not, these emphasized a pursuit of martyrdom and veneration of saints. This longue-durée study covers a vast timeline, spanning the pre-Christian period to the late Fatimid Caliphate. Its central focus, however, is the Donatist schism that divided North Africa …

The Effect Of Altitude On Decomposition: Toward An Understanding Of The Postmortem Interval In The Rocky Mountain Region Of Colorado., Christiane Irene Baigent

Dissertations

The estimation of postmortem interval (PMI) is a critical component of medicolegal death investigation. An accurate PMI estimate has the potential to influence the allocation of investigative resources, establish the probative value of associated biological and material evidence, shape the analytical framework applied to skeletal analysis, and inform cause and manner of death. Forensic anthropologists are often tasked with PMI estimation throughout all stages of decomposition and typically rely on categorical phases of soft tissue and skeletal change purported to correspond to broad estimates of elapsed time. In an attempt to improve precision, Megyesi et al. (2005) developed the Total …

Investigating Native Bamboo Practices For Reservoir Conservation And Habitat Restoration, Taryn Elizabeth Ann Bieri

Theses

Reservoirs are an important resource for both humans and wildlife. They provide drinking water, recreational opportunities, wildlife habitat and more. A major issue land managers face on reservoirs is shoreline erosion leading to water quality impairments, sedimentation, and habitat loss. Traditionally, riprap has been used to mitigate this issue, but is costly and has limited ability to provide habitat. A promising measure to mitigate shoreline erosion and provide habitat is the establishment of giant cane [Arundinaria gigantea (Walt.) Muhl], on shorelines. Giant cane, a bamboo species native to southern Illinois and the southeastern United States, forms monodominant stands called canebrakes. …

Collective Memory And Creative Subjectivity: A Living Conversation, Alexandra Katherine Goodall, Alba Torres Robinat

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article is the record of a dialogue between two artists and Expressive Arts therapists, Alba Torres Robinat and Alexandra Katherine Goodall. They chose to undertake this conversation in the form of letters that were written back-and-forth over a period of time in a shared document, which places their correspondence in the tradition of epistolary writing. This decision to write the article as letters lends the conversation an immediacy, a warmth, a sense of time, distance and familiarity, and a feeling of intimacy.

The authors invite readers to witness the deepening of a relationship and the development of their conversational …

The Russian Orthodox Church And Russia's Military Nuclear Complex: A Time Series Analysis, Myla Burton

Research Papers

In recent years, the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian military has garnered significant scholarly attention. Notable contributions from Adamsky (2019) and the Garrards (2008) assert the integral nature of this relationship. This research paper builds on this research by examining the relationship between the level of Orthodox religiosity in the Russian public and the Russian nuclear complex. This research provides a foundational step towards a deeper understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church’s navigation within Russia’s religious market. The primary objective is to better understand the connection between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia’s military-nuclear complex. The …

Psychology In A Podcast Context: Do Brand Personality Perceptions And Social Nudges Explain Consumers’ Behavioral Intentions To Subscribe To Breaking Points?, Stephen D. Berry

Dissertations

Two psychological variables are of interest in the study of consumers: brand personality perceptions (per social cognition, beliefs that brands exhibit human-like attributes) and nudges (per behavioral economics, an attempt to influence behavioral change that benefits the consumer without taking away their right to choose). However, no known research exists about whether these variables explain behavioral intentions to consume podcasts, specifically. This is relevant because perceptions of mass media brands are historically negative, and consumers increasingly seek out independent media (e.g., Breaking Points). Therefore, this dissertation’s purpose was to use Breaking Points as an example to study the influence of …

Religion And Political Orientation: An Examination Of Intolerance, Tyler Campbell

Research Papers

With the recent upsurge in challenges to the public’s ability to speak in certain settings, the presence of various college curricula, and the inclusion of certain books in public libraries and schools, the contemporary political climate demonstrates a need to look at intolerance. Using the Stouffer (1955) battery of intolerance data in the General Social Survey (GSS), we examine the relationship of religious affiliation, religiosity, and political orientation with intolerance. The analyses shows that fundamentalist religious denominations exhibit intolerant attitudes more than other denominations. Likewise, the analyses indicate a positive relationship between higher religiosity and intolerance. Unexpectedly, political moderates showed …

A Study Of Policies And Responses To Chronically Absent Students In Illinois High Schools In The Four Southern Most Regions Of The Illinois Associaiton Of School Administrators, Charles Shain Crank

Dissertations

No abstract

“‘State Of War’: British Racial Construction, New World Slavery & The Impact Of Somerset’S Case In The Anglo-American Diaspora", John David Kemp

Dissertations

On Monday 22 June 1772, the English jurist William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, delivered his oral verdict as Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in the famous case involving the enslaved Afro-British servant James Somerset to declare that only an Act of Parliament could legalize domestic bondage and that Somerset was a free man. For the estimated 15,000 captives living in the English metropole, Somerset v. Stewart effectively undercut the Anglo-Atlantic slavocracy that had hid behind legal technicalities and extrajudicial decrees defending domestic bondage since the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In order to offer a …

Breaking Barriers: Exploring Women's Identities And Challenges Around Work Through Photos And Reports In Delhi Ncr, Sonal Vij

Research Papers

This paper explores the relationships between women and their work in India's Delhi National Capital Region. Using a journalistic ethnographic research approach, the study examines women's experiences from different socioeconomic backgrounds, professions, and castes. The research aims to understand the complex dynamics of female relationships at work, focusing on how women negotiate and resist patriarchal structures. The research uses participant observational techniques and involves spending time with the participants in their workplaces, observing their interactions, capturing them on camera, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The data is analyzed thematically to identify the patterns and themes that emerge from the participants' experiences. …

Kukama Radio: The Politics And Aesthetics Of Indigenous Media In Peruvian Amazonia, Gabriel Torrealba Alfonzo

Dissertations

This dissertation is about the political and aesthetic dimensions of Indigenous media in Peruvian Amazonia. It explores how Kukama media-makers use aesthetic mastery to engage in three key political fields in Amazonia: indigeneity, historicity, and environmentalism. I specifically examine the audiovisual discourses and media-making practices coming from an Indigenous radio station called Radio Ucamara, located in the town of Nauta in Northeastern Peru (Loreto region). Drawing on place-based ethnography and digital research methods, I analyze the way this radio station instrumentalizes multiple digital and non-digital media forms to make visible (and also audible) their identities, violent histories, and cosmological worlds …

Acting Locally: Vegetable Gardening In Southern Illinois, Aimee L. Trojnar

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the everyday practice of home and community vegetable gardening in a small southern Illinois city. The project engages with questions of how diverse elements of practice interact over time in the development of both gardens and gardeners, dwelling particularly on how the material agency of nonhumans contributes to what emerges. Combining a broad investigation of societal influences and constraints involved in gardening practices with a granular focus on material interactions in the garden, I consider the kinds of relationships individuals forge with the nonhuman environment in a modern, Western context and how they do so. Understanding such …

Voices From The Street: The Perception Of Crime, Disorder, And Police In Chicago Neighborhoods, Courtney Boyce

Research Papers

How do Chicago residents feel about police, crime, and disorder? Using qualitative interviews with 20 Chicago residents, this study examines the ways Chicago residents perceive and feel about police, crime, and disorder in their neighborhoods. The relationship between perceptions of police, crime, and disorder is compared to the way it is framed in the broken windows theory by Wilson and Kelling (1982). The first research question addresses how residents understand the relationship between police officers, policing, and crime in their Chicago neighborhoods. The second research question focuses on how residents understand the relationship between disorder, other neighborhood characteristics, and crime. …

Fritz Lang's Critique Of Capitalism Through Body Language In "Metropolis", Nathan Bailey

Honors Theses

This honors thesis argues that Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis contains nonverbal narrative elements (including body language, architectural proxemics, and phallic imagery) that align the film with Marxist class structures. The film provides a moral epigram, “the mediator between head and hands must be the heart,” which this paper aims to define through a Marxist lens. This thesis narrates Metropolis’ verbal and nonverbal narratives through observing intertitles in the film alongside the elements that perplex the viewer and overload the senses. The aim of this paper is to notice where the head, hands, and heart make …

Cultivating Community: Investigating Performances Of Community In Ecovillage Settlements, Alex Lockwood

Dissertations

This dissertation considers the subject of ecovillages, intentional ecologically-oriented sustainable communities developed in the U.S., and the different understandings of community involvement, structure, and challenges that members of these communities confront in their efforts at managing these time and labor-intensive settlements. Informed by the work of performance ethnographers and critical phenomenologists, I consider twelve interviews I conducted on-site and electronically with people living in ecovillage settlements. Taking these interviews and my own observations from on-site visits to two ecovillages as entry points, I conducted a phenomenological analysis informed by a critical phenomenological ethos of these accounts, highlighting five motifs that …

Decoding The Public Service Announcements (Psas) Of Hiv/Aids: Evaluating Botswana's Aids Messages And Their Impact On 15 - 24 Ages, Enole Ditsheko

Dissertations

The study is grounded in the concept of “Start where the people are” (Nyswander, 1956) which suggests that effective health campaigns that promote prevention strategies to enhance the quality of life for those targeted must be rooted in the prevalent cultural practices and religious values of the receivers of the slogans, themes, and taglines. Health campaigns that superimpose the values of the outsiders promoted as universalized solutions have limited effectiveness.

Sub-Saharan Africa has only 1.3 billion people out of an estimated eight billion of which China and India each recording above two billion, cumulatively accounting for more than half of …

Missing The Boat: Black Americans And The Struggle To Stay Afloat In A Nineteenth Century Ocean Of Ideas, Jodie Salazar

Research Papers

This paper explores the effects of various social movements on Black Americans in the nineteenth century. This examination is used as an historical background of a larger Reacting to the Past pedagogical game design set in Chicago at the time of the World's Columbian Exposition. The focus of this work explores ideological views on colonization, immigration, and citizenship, as well as the various laws and viewpoints which worked to oppress Black Americans after Emancipation.

Chicago Automated Red Light Enforcement Policy, Hailey Blanchard

Research Papers

As the use of automated speed enforcement expands, public debate remains over questions of equity around camera placement. When technological advances are made often the social impact lags behind the economic or legislative impact. In this paper, I examine the social equity of Chicago, Illinois speed camera enforcement. In this paper, I review the policy of red-light speed cameras in Chicago and the enforcement. Using publicly available data on the location of speed cameras and data on traffic accidents, I examine the placement of speed cameras in Chicago. I find that serious accidents are more likely in areas with higher …

Tracing The Roots Of Resistance, Collective Action And Solidarity Among Igbo Women, Sebastian Ukoh

Theses

Most societies have always achieved balance through some internal mechanisms. Achieving gender balance and drawing lines without letting what we may term the "stronger sex" domineer the "weaker sex" is not always easy. Among the Igbos of South Eastern Nigeria, the women have always pressed home their demands without fear. We will be looking at how they have done this for more than a century, especially at the onset of the British colonial enterprise.

Termination Of Parental Rights And An Assessment Of Rights To Subsequent Children In The State Of Illinois, Kayla C. Ranta

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

In the United States, it is considered a fundamental constitutional liberty for a parent to be able to control the upbringing of their children. Under this construction, unless a parent’s care reaches the extent of abuse or neglect, affecting a child’s health, welfare, or safety, they should be free to parent their child(ren). Yet, despite this construction, a finding of parental unfitness as to one child will allow an Illinois family court to terminate the parental rights of that individual toward all subsequent children. This process does not currently have any exceptions for parents whose circumstances have changed or who …

A Probable Case Of Osteosarcoma: A Differential Diagnosis Of Cancers In The Ancient World, Katherine A. Hosick

Honors Theses

Ongoing archaeological investigations at the North Tombs Cemetery, Tell El-Amarna, Egypt, have, to date, yielded a skeletal sample of 141 graves and at least 252 individuals that have been recovered, representing the non-elite responsible for erecting, and inhabiting a new city (c. 1353 BCE) (Dabbs, 2020) . Recent data on the recovered remains show a trend toward pathological changes in the skeletons attributable to occupational stress-related injuries, specifically those associated with demanding physical labor. One individual (Individual 1154), who was buried wrapped in textile, as is typical of the cemetery exhibited an abnormal bony abnormal bony proliferative lesion on the …

Your Health; Your Responsibility, Angel Sanders

Research Papers

Many believe racism doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, racism is still present, it’s evident in the black community when looking at health. Statistics show that black women specifically encounter more health issues than other races. This thesis touches on generational trauma, feminism, and health collectives. This is a tool for a person looking to heal themselves and start a new health journey. This research assures you don’t have to do this alone and is a step toward mitigation in the black community.

Globalizing Sexual Violence: Charting A Path For Future Research, Adam J. Whiteside

Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research

Sexual violence is a global issue with devastating consequences. Existing research primarily focuses on its prevalence globally or how countries understand sexual violence. Additionally, media reports often misrepresent sexual violence, fail to capture its complexities, and ignore larger gender issues at play. This article synthesizes extant research using a feminist intersectional approach to provide a basis for comparing how sexual violence is discursively constructed globally. More specifically, how historical, cultural, and socioeconomic discourses underscore the perpetration and media framing of sexual violence. To this end, I reviewed 49 articles on sexual violence in India and South Africa with an eye …

2021-2022 Annual Report, Southern Illinois University Board Of Trustees

Annual Report Archive

No abstract provided.

How Single Mothers Navigated Changes In Role Strain And Role Conflict In Rural Areas During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Scott Miller

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The Disputed Nation: Catalan And Spanish Nationalism Through The Lens Of Documentaries, Mary Black

Research Papers

No abstract provided.