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I'M Sorry, Cindy Argiento

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Blog

Sometimes the lessons learned in life are more important than lessons learned in school. I learned about love not from a book, but by my parent's example.

Old And Gray, Randi Mazzella

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Blog

It's Saturday night, and I am out with my husband and a few other couples for dinner. The restaurant is dimly lit and the menu has tiny print. I push the menu arm's length from my face, then I pull it closer to my face. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. My tablemates are also doing the menu dance. Then, in a synchronized movement, my girlfriends and I pull out readers so we see our options.

A Writer's Disneyworld, Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Blog

"I promise to use my time wisely, to enjoy the omelet bar in moderation and to wear the robe with honor," one applicant pledged. "The residency," another wrote, "would be a writer's Disneyworld for me." From LA to New York City and Anchorage to Des Moines, writers weighed in on why they deserve to be "robed" in plush, custom-embroidered bathrobes and receive the ultimate gift - the luxury of time to write.

Drumroll! Introducing Preliminary Judges, Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Blog

We have lined up nearly 50 top-notch preliminary judges to review and rank the entries in "A Hotel Room of One's Own: The Erma Bombeck | Anna Lefler Humorist-in-Residence Program." The judges, all established writers, will narrow the field to 10 funny writers for judging by Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry and best-selling novelist Adriana Trigiani. All entries are blind-judged.

Modeling Resilience In Resettled Syrian Refugees With Disabilities, Nicholas Sherwood

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Since 2011, the ongoing conflict in Syria has displaced millions of individuals, many of whom are now resettled across foreign borders. The US currently hosts 21,000 Syrian refugees, and of these, at least 5,000 have a form of disability. Furthermore, many US-based resettlement agencies currently experience strain providing the specialized care required by many of these resettled Syrian refugees with disabilities (RSRD) in large part due to austerity measures imposed by the US Federal government. This research project asks of RSRD themselves: given the limitations placed on your care providers, what personal sources of strength do you utilize when you …

Ethics And Methods Of Human Rights Work: Exploring Both Theoretical And Practical Approaches, Shayna Plaut, Maritza Felices Luna, Christina Clark Kazak, Neil Bilotta, Lara Rosenoff Gauvin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore both theoretical and practical approaches to methodologies and ethics as it relates to human rights work.

The goal of the workshop is to create a dynamic space that encourages participants to share and learn from our own experiences navigating the messiness of human rights ethics and methods. We specifically address formal education and systems and structures so that we may all design, do and teach research and practice related to human rights in a more critical and sustainable manner. We recognize the tensions of creating research, programs and advocacy that is seen as “legitimate” to educational …

Professional Resistance Of Lawyers: Defending Human Rights And The Rule Of Law In Hong Kong After Umbrella Movement, Yan-Ho Lai

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Purpose: Against the backdrops of deteriorating human rights protections and the rule of law after the unprecedented Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, this paper investigates the roles and impacts of mobilised legal profession in resisting China’s authoritarian rule over and defending domestic human rights regime in Hong Kong. This paper argues that, despite the legal profession of Hong Kong becomes further divided under the political and economic statecraft, lawyer activism as a professional resistance becomes a new force to resist the political intervention of the rule of law as well as deepening the cultural and institutional foundations of the rule …

Contesting Human Rights Defenders At The Un Human Rights Council, M. Joel Voss

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights defenders are being increasingly targeted across the globe. The rise of nationalist, populist regimes is of great concern to both human rights defenders and those that advocate for the rights of defenders. The problem is not only of domestic concern. The UN Human Rights Council, the UN’s preeminent human rights institution, is also seeing an increasing number of attacks on defenders, both in formal settings like discussions on resolutions and the Universal Periodic Review process and informally, through threats to participants at the Council.

This paper attempts to better understand and predict which states will both try to …

Reclaiming Impact In The Age Of Awareness-Raising For Human Rights, Azadeh Pourzand, Ali Arab

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In the last decade, the practice of awareness-raising for human rights has appeared as notably common across the board. Nevertheless, widespread awareness-raising has not necessarily always resulted in meaningful and sustainable impact. Accepting that awareness raising is not a panacea, we challenge the global collective fascination with big impact, while considering the power of small strategic impact that invests in education, and building alliances, and has the potential to last and to expand by way of gradual encroachment through contextually-defined grassroots means natural to its course.

Empowered through social media, advocates are increasingly enthusiastic about reaching massive audiences by way …

International Surrogacy Arrangements: A Human Rights Case, Marisa Araújo

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The scientific development in Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART), especially IFV solutions, are promoting the development of our reproductive options. Surrogacy is now one of these solutions and new ethical and legal problems arise.

Domestic Laws have the most different positions. If there are countries that admit surrogacy arrangements, even commercial ones like the Florida State in the USA (and the particular case of India); others criminalize these procedures and others, like the UK (and Portugal), have a middle term position.

Considering the frontier zone in which surrogacy takes its place, the debate is more exuberant since the concrete legal solution …

Using A Human Rights Framework For Regulating The Internet Of Things: The Critical Role Of Human Rights Advocacy, Adam Todd

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the billions of technical devices around the globe that connect to and communicate through the Internet. These devices collect, store and share vast amounts of valuable data. With the advent of 5G (fifth generation cellular network technology), IoT is expected to grow even more dramatically over the coming decade and likely to change our lives in ways we have yet to imagine.

IoT holds the promise of advancing human rights by facilitating the technology that can lead to a healthier, cleaner, and more sustainable environment, and greater access to education, better healthcare, capital, …

Human Rights And The Smart City, Tina Reuter

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper examines how technological solutions, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and smart city initiatives can become avenues to produce urban spaces that reflect fundamental human rights values such as non-discrimination, equality, and access for all.Cities today are drivers of human rights activity and serve as hubs for technological advances, political and economic innovation, and social justice. Nevertheless, the inclusion of marginalized communities continues to be a challenge. ICTs and smart city initiatives are often cited to foster urban integration, to improve citizen participation in decision-making processes, and to enhancecommunity resilience. At the same time, using technologies can amplify social …

Critiquing And Constructing Hre In Higher Education, Sarita Cargas, Kristina R. Eberbach, Glenn Mitoma, Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, Sandra Sirota

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore the histories of human rights programs in various institutional contexts; share promising practices and current challenges in the areas of teaching, research, and engagement; and present a draft roadmap for collaborative efforts to advance HRE in colleges and universities. The steering committee of the University and College Consortium will address these themes and present outcomes from a meeting of human rights higher education programs that takes place in August 2019. That meeting included representatives from more than a dozen leading US human rights programs, and featured in-depth and candid discussions of the past, present, and future …

Engaging And Mobilizing Men To Promote Women's Human Rights, Rus Ervin Funk

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Over the past twenty years, there have been increasing of and progressively more effective efforts to engage, mobilize and organize men in support of advancing women’s human rights. The Declaration from the UN conference on Women in Beijing, the Declaration from the UN Report on, and the UNHCR Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women all make powerful statements as to the need to engage men and boys in efforts to promote and enhance gender equality and women’s human rights. Most recently, the UN HCR agreed upon Declaration 35/10 (2017) outlined in very concrete and specific ways that male …

Grassroots Globalism: Human Rights Cities And Local Human Rights Implementation, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This presentation reports on how local human rights activists are mobilizing around the United States's 2019-2020 Universal Periodic Review process in the UN Human Rights Council. Organizers with the US Human Rights Cities Alliance have been promoting "UPR Cities" to engage local activists in work to document local human rights conditions and develop recommendations for a national civil society stakeholder report that will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council. The UPR Cities serves three key purposes: First, it helps inform and inspire local and trans-local mobilization and alliance building around a human rights framework, advancing analyses of the …

Delinking The "Human" From Human Rights: Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism And The Future Of Human Rights, A. Kayum Ahmed

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights discourses are deeply embedded in an epistemic anthropocentricism that centers the human in human rights. However, conceptions of what constitutes the human are being eroded through the development of artificial intelligence, bio-hacking and transhumanism, all of which, support the emergence of new kinds of humans.These emergent humans include the enhanced human who possesses abilities that compel us to reconsider the parameters of humanness, as well as computer systems that demonstrate characteristics thought of as uniquely human. The blurring of the divide between human and machine therefore compels us to reconsider our understanding of the human in human rights, …

Connection, Interaction, Inspiration — Our Roesch Library, Paul Benson

Materials from the University of Dayton Magazine Website

Provost Paul Benson reflects on the strength and adaptability of libraries in his remarks during the Sept. 27, 2019, dedication of the Roesch Library renovation, dubbed "Roesch Refresh."

Moving Forward From Tragedy, Lauren Durham

Materials from the University of Dayton Magazine Website

Two months after a mass shooting in Dayton, campus continues to care for its own and talk about how to stay safe and well.

Power And Participation In Philanthropy: Human Rights As A Goal Or A Process?, Katy Love, Diana Samarasan, Allistair Mallillin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This session will examine why it is critical — when addressing human rights — to break down traditional funder approaches and barriers in favor of participation, transparency, accountability, and collaboration.

Grassroots Activism In Resolving Intractable Human Rights Problems: Theory And Case Studies From Ghana And Barcelona, Mette Brogden, Phyllis Taoua, Rashid Abubakar Iddrisu, Durado Brooks Jr, Francis M. Abugbilla

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Five presentations comprise this panel discussing grassroots activism in resolving intractable human rights problems. Presenters will provide case studies, theoretical framings, and practical steps to create salutogenic trajectories toward healthy societies and communities where marginalized people can realize human rights and freedoms to attain lives "they have reason to value" (cf. Amartya Sen). The Ghanaian and U.S. presenters include academic researchers, human rights practitioners, and independent artist/filmmakers.

Addressing Mass Atrocity In Chile: Learning And Unlearning As A Function Of Social Memory, Irving Epstein

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In this presentation, I reference a chapter, that is taken from my newly published book, Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse: Essays on Fear and Loathing in Response to Global Educational Policy and Practice (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). I argue that when schools fail to address issues of social memory or basic existential questions involved in the pursuit of meaning-making for the purposes of understanding human rights issues, popular support evolves for other institutions to fill the void. Through examining the case of Chile, efforts to memorialize victims of the Pinochet dictatorship occur in the absence of robust initiatives to address …

Cultivating Political Engagement On The Migrant Trail, Abby Wheatley

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In this paper, I examine the political dimensions and possibilities of the Migrant Trail, a 7-day, 75-mile collective walk from Sasabe, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona that seeks to witness and contest the dangerous and sometimes fatal conditions created by US border enforcement. I conceptualize the Migrant Trail as both a space of encounter (encuentro) and a pedagogical space that facilitates learning by exposing the consequences of prevention through deterrence strategies that weaponize the desert to control migration. As an autonomous political intervention, the Migrant Trail acts politically by reframing relations between people and creating a political space for dialogue that …

Institutionalizing Rights: The Rise And Fall Of The Human Rights Paradigm In Managing Migration, Todd Scribner

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In a December 2018 message to a gathering in Rome, Pope Francis challenged attendees to place “human rights at the centre of all policies,” even if it meant going against the grain of popular opinion. The occasion for his message was the 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, at least rhetorically, placed human rights at the center of the international order. Three years after its proclamation, the United Nations used the Universal Declaration as a key pillar on which it built its Convention Related to the Status of Refugees, thus making human rights a …

Innovations In Corporate Accountability, Joanne Bauer, Paul Rissman, Charity Ryerson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Where corporate actors are behind human rights abuse, how do we hold them accountable? How can victims access remedy, and what means do we have to deter corporate crime? This dynamic conversation will explore the potential emergent strategies in the field of human rights that aim to address the shortfalls of past efforts, and consider the many challenges that remain.

Innovative Collaboration To Further Community Self-Determination, Matthew Currie, Amaha Sellassie

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The built urban environment is the product of more than a century of policy decisions that have both intentionally discriminated and have had the effect of discriminating, against African Americas, immigrants, the work class, low income individuals and other undesirables. While more than fifty years have passed since the passage of civil rights legislation in the United States, individuals in today’s cities are living out our discriminatory legacy.

In Dayton, Ohio, a new movement has risen from the community to disrupt the legacy of de jure and de facto discrimination by the collaborative efforts of the impactive individuals, neighborhood leaders, …

Fiscal Citizenship: How Can Tax Efficiency And Isonomy Aid In The Promotion Of Economic Rights, Social Participation, Political Accountability, And Cultural Diversity?, Gustavo Voeroes Dénes

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

According to the World Inequality Report 2018 (WID 2017), Brazil is one of the few countries that has not recently displayed an increase in income inequality, having instead sustained it on persistently very high levels, actually composing the world’s “inequality frontier”. While such levels of inequality may be partly attributed to poor distribution of property rights, human capital endowments, and specificity of labor relations, a significant part of it is undoubtedly due the national fiscal system’s reduced distributive capacity, compromised by one the worst taxation systems in the world. Occupying the 184th position out of 190 countries in the World …

Counter-Diffusion: Does Russian Propaganda Wind Up In America?, Christopher F. Patane, Marc S. Polizzi

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Does the norm diffusion process work in reverse? Specifically, does the success of the Russian government in building counternarratives and counternorms to reinforce its authoritarian government mean they have the ability to diminish successful human rights advocacy in the United States? This project examines whether the rhetoric used to justify anti-LGBT policies in Russia are broadcast and adopted by anti-LGBT groups in the United States. In the United States, public support for LGBT civil rights is often cited as a success story in the adoption and diffusion of human rights norms. Often, this is used as evidence of broadening norm …

How Can Human Rights Activism Help Tackle Economic Inequality? Lessons From Mining Affected Communities In South Africa, Allison Corkery

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The dramatic rise in socioeconomic inequality produced by neoliberal globalisation has provoked a crisis of confidence in the human rights community and inspired a wave of debate about whether human rights have anything meaningful to offer in advancing economic justice. The pessimistic view argues human rights are inadequate for challenging socioeconomic inequality because they are too closely aligned to Western liberalism and too uncritical of the rise of capitalism. The more optimistic view does not dismiss these critiques entirely. It argues that they are only valid for particular (arguably dominant) types of human rights praxis, however. Failing to acknowledge this …

Optothermal Microbubble Assisted Manufacturing Of Nanogap-Rich Structures For Active Chemical Sensing, Farzia Karim, Erick S. Vasquez, Yvonne Sun, Chenglong Zhao

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Guiding analytes to the sensing area is an indispensable step in a sensing system. Most of the sensing systems apply a passive sensing method, which waits for the analytes to diffuse towards the sensor. However, passive sensing methods limit the detection of analytes to a picomolar range on micro/nanosensors for a practical time scale. Therefore, active sensing methods need to be used to improve the detection limit in which the analytes are forced to concentrate on the sensors. In this article, we have demonstrated the manufacturing of nanogap-rich structures for active chemical sensing. Nanogap-rich structures are manufactured from metallic nanoparticles …

Memoria Y Resistencia: Sharing Ud Experiences At The Encuentro To Close The School Of The Americas, Mary Niebler, Christina Baker

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

At UD, our Catholic and Marianist values inform us to uphold the human rights of all people, especially those whose agency has been diminished by unjust laws and corporate government policies. Guided by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, including solidarity with the poor, we seek ways to join together to bring about a more peaceful and just world. The annual SOA Watch Encuentro, a peaceful protest to close the School of the Americas (SOA), is such a movement.

Established in 1946, the SOA has operated at Fort Benning, Georgia since the 1980s. Technically closed in 2000, it immediately reopened …