Digital Commons Network^™

Archaeobiogeography Of Extinct Rice Rats (Oryzomyini) In The Lesser Antilles During The Ceramic Age (500 Bce–1500 Ce), Marine Durocher, Violaine Nicolas, Sophia Perdikaris, Dominique Bonnissent, Gwenola Robert, Karyne Debue, Allowen Evin, Sandrine Grouard

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

During the Ceramic Age (500 BCE–1500 CE), Lesser Antilles rice rats (tribe Oryzomyini) made up a significant portion of the diet of Caribbean islanders. Archaeological excavations across the archipelago resulted to the discovery of large quantities of remains from to these now extinct taxa. It offers a unique opportunity to investigate the past biogeography of this taxon of high cultural and ecological importance. We have studied 1,140 first lower molars originating from 40 archaeological sites across eleven islands of the Lesser Antilles archipelago using two-dimensional geometric morphometric approaches to establish spatiotemporal pat-terns relying on phenotypic variations. This study identified three …

A Civil Society: The Public Space Of Freemason Women In France, 1744–1944, James Smith Allen

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

A Civil Society explores the struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France’s civil society and its “civic morality” on behalf of women’s rights. As a vital component of the third sector during France’s modernization, freemasonry empowered women in complex social networks, contributing to a more liberal republic, a more open society, and a more engaged public culture.

James Smith Allen shows that although women initially met with stiff resistance, their induction into the brotherhood was a significant step in the development of French civil society, including the promotion of …

A 3d Point Cloud Deep Learning Approach Using Lidar To Identify Ancient Maya Archaeological Sites, Heather Richards-Rissetto, David Newton, Aziza Al Zadjali

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems allow archaeologists to capture 3D data of anthropogenic landscapes with a level of precision that permits the identification of archaeological sites in difficult to reach and inaccessible regions. These benefits have come with a deluge of LIDAR data that requires significant and costly manual labor to interpret and analyze. In order to address this challenge, researchers have explored the use of state-of-the-art automated object recognition algorithms from the field of deep learning with success. This previous research, however, has been limited to the exploration of deep learning processes that work with only 2D …

Adjusting, Appeasing, And Rearranging: How Agriculture Teachers Reconcile The Demands Of The Profession, Haley Q. Traini, Becky Haddad, Josh Stewart, Jonathan J. Velez

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

A teacher shortage continues to plague the SBAE profession. While this shortage has been quantified and explored from the perspective of individual teachers, little research has taken a systemic approach to the problem of the SBAE teacher shortage. We posit the teacher shortage problem as inextricably linked to a convoluted job description and growing list of competencies required to be a successful agriculture teacher. The teachers in this qualitative study shared their navigation of the process of reconciliation within their landscapes of practice and regimes of competence. Using hermeneutic phenomenology, themes of adjusting, rearranging, and appeasing emerged as the key …

What Determines The Success And Failure Of Environmental Crowdfunding?, Takahiro Kubo, Diogo Veríssimo, Shinya Uryu, Taro Mieno, Douglas Macmillan

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Online crowdfunding can help address the perennial financial shortfalls in environmental conservation and management. Although many online crowdfunding campaigns fail to collect any funds due to not achieving their targets, little is known about what drives success. To address this knowledge gap, we applied a mixed-methods approach to data from 473 successful and failed campaigns hosted on the online crowdfunding platform Readyfor. We found that fundraising performance varied by topic, with campaigns on pet animal management outperforming those focussed on landscape management and sustainable use. We also found that marketing strategies associated with online findability and increased reach through social …

Introduction To Doing Fieldwork At Home: The Ethnography Of Education In Familiar Contexts: In The Field At Home; Onward, & Bibliography, Loukia K. Sarroub, Claire Nicholas

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this volume, we attempt to better understand ethnographic research on education in local contexts wherein the researcher has regular contact and social relationships with the intended research participants. Recent disciplinary trends find ethnographers increasingly engaged in research in settings familiar to them, such as their own workplaces, leisure spaces, neighborhoods, and communities. The study of such practices illuminates interconnected methodological, ethical, and analytical dilemmas. It also offers opportunities for methodological innovation, explicates and challenges the effects of educational policies and practices, and interrogates and develops theories about educational structures, policies, and experiences. Our aim is to highlight the agency …

Learning From The Land: Creating Authentic Experience-Based Learning That Fosters Sustained Civic Engagement, Ted Martinez, Kevin Gustafson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Grand Canyon Semester (GCS) presents an excellent test case for exploring the success of Honors Semesters in meeting the goals articulated in this contribution to the NCHC Monograph Series: the transferability of skills and the interrelation of integrated learning, experiential education, and civic engagement. GCS began in 1978 as a partnership of Northern Arizona University (NAU), Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP), and the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) that would offer a place-based, experiential, immersive Honors Semester program. Students came from across the country to live onsite at Grand Canyon and NAU and to take interdisciplinary courses taught by NAU …

The Merits Of Applied Learning, Michael Rossi

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In the fall semester of my senior year in 1998, twenty-two years before the time of this writing, I participated in the National Collegiate Honors Council’s Honors Semester in Thessaloniki, Greece. I still remember this experience as vividly as if it were yesterday: a four-month long study at Aristotle University in which half our time was spent walking through Thessaloniki’s medieval streets and modern boulevards; interacting with the people on a daily basis in the limited (but workable) Greek we knew; and making a number of weekend excursions—beginning on Wednesday evenings for us—to surrounding areas: Athens, Pelion, the beaches of …

Acts Of Interpretation: Pedagogies Of Inquiry, Bernice Braid

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

[T]he world is not given, it is not simply ‘there.’ We constitute it by acts of interpretation. —Jonathan Z. Smith, 1988

In Nadine Gordimer’s 1970 novel A Guest of Honour, the central white figure, diplomat James Bray, is asked by a newly installed Black president to shift from the diplomatic sphere to organize educational structures for a newly minted Black national constituency. Intelligent, sensitive, and empathetic, Bray considers his own sophisticated background in the context of this semi-literate Southern African country and thinks: “What was needed was perhaps someone with a knowledge of the basic techniques of learning. Someone …

Building Bridges In Interdisciplinary Team-Taught Honors Seminars, Laurence Carlin, Heike Alberts

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study presents perceived advantages of thematic, teamtaught interdisciplinary seminars for first-year honors students. Two student cohorts (n = 174) surveyed in two subsequent years (2018, 2019) weigh in on the challenges and benefits of different team-teaching models. Three first-semester offerings on the themes “Food,” “Creativity,” and “Social Justice” are evaluated. Results indicate that most students (70.1%) recognize the understanding of multiple perspectives to be the greatest benefit of the team-taught seminar. Other perceived benefits include the acquisition of additional information (21.3), cultivation of critical thinking (13.2), and the ability to make transdisciplinary connections (10.9). Data suggest that the degree …

The House Mouse Mus Musculus In Mongolia: Taxonomy, Status, And Ecology Of A Neglected Species, Rico Appenborn, Katrin Lammers, Bettina Harr, Davaa Lkhagvasuren, Ravchig Samiya, Michael Stubbe, Hermann Ansorge

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

Although the house mouse as a common and widely distributed species is probably best-studied among small mammals, there is a lack of fundamental knowledge regarding species identity, morphology and ecology in Mongolia. Consequently, this study provides results of basic biological research on the Mongolian house mouse. A total of 172 specimens have been studied based on samples collected during the period 1962 to 2016. Using genetic and morphological markers, the taxonomic examination resulted in classification as Mus musculus musculus LINNAEUS, 1758. To characterize the Mongolian house mouse, three fur color traits and 23 metric body and skull traits were analyzed. …

The Effect Of News Format And Personal Relevance On Affect, Sophia R. Morrow, Hannah M. Hood-Johnson, Brianna L. Scandell, Matthew P. Newman, Grace E. Fink

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Research titled The Effect of News Format and Personal Relevance on Affect by Sophia R. McMorrow, Hannah M. Hood-Johnson, Brianna L. Scandell, Matthew P. Newman, and Grace E. Fink in UReCA: The NCHC Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Activity, 2021, pages 25-52.

Abstract

Considering the ubiquitous news coverage of COVID-19, it is important to examine the relationship between news consumption and affect, an important aspect of mental health. This study examined how news format and personal relevance influence affect. Participants watched 15 minutes of news clips or read their text transcriptions, which had either high personal relevance (e.g. COVID-19 …

Meditations In An Emergency: Collaborating Online In Narratives Of Illness And Care, Jayda Coons

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article describes a collaborative writing project involving narratives of health and caregiving. An interdisciplinary seminar titled “Narratives of Illness and Care” examines literary and medical narratives to better understand disease, therapeutic communication, empathy, and the social determinants of health. During the COVID-19 crisis, however, the instructor adapted course structure and curricular assignments to help students make meaningful connections with their immediate circumstance. The author reflects on the significance of the project during a time of global upheaval and suggests changes for future iterations.

To Influence?: Exploring The Socio-Ecology Of Zoo-Morphic Imagery On The Northern Colorado Plateau, Ralph J. Hartley

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

TO INFLUENCE?: EXPLORING THE SOCIO-ECOLOGY OF ZOO-MORPHIC IMAGERY ON THE NORTHERN COLORADO PLATEAU

Figurative zoo-morphic imagery is but one of a broad variety of created morphologically distinct depictions that can be used, both in isolation and in complexly configured modes of communication, to exploit the sensory responses of viewers. While contemporary observations of zoo-morphic petroglyphs and pictographs (i.e. rock-art) elicit varied interpretations and assignments of meaning relative to broader re-constructions of past socio-cultural systems, it is often assumed that the imagery reflects the creator’s intimate knowledge of behavior and habitat of the subject. In contemporary and recent historic times communicating …

Teaching Digital Cultural Heritage And Digital Humanities The Current State And Prospects, Sander Münster, K Fritsche, Heather Richards-Rissetto, F Apollonio, B Aehnlich, V Schwartze, R Smolarski

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digital literacy and technology education has gained much relevance in humanities and heritage related disciplines during the recent decades. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to examine the current state of educational programs in digital cultural heritage and related disciplines primarily in Europe with supplemental information from the US. A further aim is to highlight core topics, challenges, and demands, and to show innovative formats and prospects.

Modelling Acoustics In Ancient Maya Cities: Moving Towards A Synesthetic Experience Using Gis & 3d Simulation, Graham Goodwin, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeological analyses have successfully employed 2D and 3D tools to measure vision and movement within cityscapes; however, built environments are often designed to invoke synesthetic experiences. GIS and Virtual Reality (VR) now enable archaeologists to also measure the acoustics of ancient spaces. To move toward an understanding of synesthetic experience in ancient Maya cities, we employ GIS and 3D modelling to measure sound propagation and reverberation using the main civic-ceremonial complex in ancient Copán as a case study. For the ancient Maya, sight and sound worked in concert to create ritually-charged atmospheres and architecture served to shape these experiences. Together …

The Role Of Forensic Anthropological Techniques In Identifying America's War Dead From Past Conflicts, William Belcher, Calvin Y. Shiroma, Lesley A. Chesson, Gregory E. Berg, Miranda Jans

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Scientific Analysis Directorate of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is a unique entity within the U.S. Government. This agency currently houses the world's largest, accredited skeletal identification laboratory in the world, in terms of the size of the scientific staff, global mission, and number of annual identifications. Traditional forensic anthropology is used for the formation of a biological profile (biological sex, stature, population affinity/ancestry, and age) as well as trauma and pathologies that may be compared with historical records and personnel files. Since World War II, various scientists associated with DoD have conducted …

The Role Of Forensic Anthropological Techniques In Identifying America's War Dead From Past Conflicts, William Belcher, Calvin Y. Shiroma, Lesley A. Chesson, Gregory E. Berg, Miranda Jans

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Scientific Analysis Directorate of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is a unique entity within the U.S. Government. This agency currently houses the world's largest, accredited skeletal identification laboratory in the world, in terms of the size of the scientific staff, global mission, and number of annual identifications. Traditional forensic anthropology is used for the formation of a biological profile (biological sex, stature, population affinity/ancestry, and age) as well as trauma and pathologies that may be compared with historical records and personnel files. Since World War II, various scientists associated with DoD have conducted …

New Old Stones At Antiochia In Rough Cilicia: A Novel City Name And A Proposed Visit By Hadrian And Sabina, Michael C. Hoff, Rhys F. Townsend, Timothy Howe

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This article considers the evidence of newly discovered inscriptions from Antiochia ad Cragum in western Rough Cilicia and proposes two distinct observations: one, the city had an additional civic name different from that which is most commonly known; and two, the emperor Hadrian and Sabina may have visited the city and region during their journey from Egypt to Athens in 131 CE.

The excavations at the Roman-era city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the Turkish south coast have been ongoing since 2005, and since the beginning inscriptions have been discovered that shed helpful light on the history of the city. …

Disrupted Identities And Forced Nomads: A Post-Disaster Legacy Of Neocolonialism In The Island Of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Edith Gonzalez, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Jennifer D. Adams

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the forced evacuation of the island of Barbuda due to Hurricane Irma, the Barbudan people have experienced an exile and return to a ‘new’ geographical, political, and economic context, albeit on the same island. With the specter of climate change and the potential impacts on island communities and nations, we use Barbuda, sister island of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles, to examine the trajectory of nomadic identities as they navigate changes that threaten contemporary land relationships and culture. Since its first permanent settlement in the 17th Century, the island geography of Barbuda has been fundamental to …

Explanations For Brazil’S Inequality Reduction From 1989 To 2015, José N. Cabrera-Schneider

Nebraska Anthropologist

Latin America has been known for its persistent inequality, and the explanations of its origin vary greatly. However, in recent years (the 1990s to early 2010s) inequality in Latin America decreased significantly. In this paper, I focus on the inequality trends in Brazil to look for particular drivers that reduce inequality. Among the essential drivers are education; a reduction in the income gaps between gender, race, geography, and formality; and types of income, such as income from labor or income from conditional cash transfers. However, the effect of the drivers is not always the same, especially for education.

China’S Three Gorges Dam: Development, Displacement, And Degradation, Trent M. Carney

Nebraska Anthropologist

China’s state-led push towards modernization and enhanced economic growth has been marked by environmentally unsustainable practices, the results of which are still being combated today (Sapiro 2001). The construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Hubei province, China, represents the largest civil engineering project of the modern era. The dam is capable of generating one-sixth of China’s total electrical capacity; however, China’s attempts to go green come at a substantial cost. (Gleick 2009; Morgan & Waretini 2013; Paerl et al. 2011; Xu et al. 2013). Some of these consequences include increased geologic activity: the forced resettlement …

Tourism’S Impacts On Local Populations, Morgan Glup

Nebraska Anthropologist

This writing serves to discuss the various impacts of tourism on local populations. Despite the growth of the tourism industry, only a handful of anthropological studies about the impact of tourism on local populations exist. Therefore, this writing is focused on the study of tourism by anthropologists as there is much about tourism that lends itself well to being studied from an anthropological perspective. Issues relevant to anthropology such as political economy, social change, and cultural identity are directly affected by tourism. A brief overview of the work done by anthropologists on tourism and local populations is discussed. Many anthropological …

Anth 110: Introduction To Anthropology: A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Memo, Taylor A. Livingston

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio examines the extent to which the learning outcomes for Introduction to Anthropology (ANTH 110) were met through course assessments. The primary goal of this course is for students to engage with anthropological content, by introducing students to an anthropological perspective, which requires looking at issues from multiple contexts (holism), and having students add this to their “tool kit” to help them make sense of what they believe, why they believe it, and how to make sense of the world around them and their place in it. The alignment of outcomes and assessment was analyzed through an examination of …

Integrating Dynamic Systems Theory And City As Text™ Framework: In-Depth Reflections On ‘Lens’, Ron Weerheijm, Patricia Vuijk, Bernice Braid

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

City as Text™ provides a semi-structured learning environment in which small groups of people are challenged to examine parts of a city through “mapping, observing, interpreting, analyzing, reflecting.” In 2014, I (Ron Weerheijm) attended a City as Text (CAT) Faculty Institute in Lyon. During an early session on the hills overlooking the eastern part of Lyon, our group observed a Basilique, the Notre Dame de Fourvière (1872–1884; interior finished 1964). Having a degree in architecture, I looked at this church from architectural and historical viewpoints. I was puzzled. In a quick scan, many different styles competed for my attention, hurting …

Invited Dialogue: Mapping The Intersections Of Religion, Literacy, And Public Schooling For Displaced, Immigrant, And Refugee Children: A Conversation With Loukia K. Sarroub, Jennifer D. Turner, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Drawing on her award-winning research, Dr. Loukia K. Sarroub explains how teachers can help displaced, immigrant, and refugee youth navigate literacy, religion, and success in public schools.

This column features Dr. Loukia K. Sarroub and her award-winning research on how Arab Muslim refugee and immigrant youth navigate religion, gender, and literacy in school. Dr. Sarroub is a professor of literacy studies, education, and linguistics, and she serves as the graduate programs chair in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was the recipient of the LRA Edward B. Fry Book Award for All …

"The Lady From North Carolina": The Perils And Limitations Of External Expertise, Aprille J. Phillips, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This paper examines a state department of education’s (SDE) decision to contract a consultant to “turnaround” schools, per a logic of outsourcing for external expertise. Our ethnographically informed case study explores whose knowledge had the most worth in diagnosing areas for improvement and identifies this case as part of a trend to rent competencies, under a neoliberal guise of efficiency, but at the expense of system capacity or learning.

What Educators In Mexico And In The United States Need To Know And Acknowledge To Attend To The Educational Needs Of Transnational Students, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This chapter from the edited volume "The Students We Share" explains to both US and Mexican audiences that a persistent number and proportion of K-12 students continue to circulate between both countries and thus that it is a challenge for both countries' education systems—including teacher preparation, curriculum, assessment, etc.—to see how students' knowledge and experience from the other system is both salient to their new schooling in a new country and valuable for how it will contribute to their future means for negotiating adulthood.

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Identity Development In Learning To Teach Science: A Multi-Site Case Study, Deepika Menon, Saiqa Azam

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate preservice elementary teachers’ science teacher identity development during their participation in the field-based science methods course and a year after. Grounded within the Feiman-Nemser’s thematic framework of learning to teach, this study utilized a case study approach aimed to examine the experiences that contributed to formation of science teacher identities of two participants uniquely positioned in the teacher education programs at the two sites, USA and Canada. Data collected over a year included science autobiographies, reflective journals, interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts. The analysis of the data revealed that experiences and …

Reconstruction Of Ancient Microbial Genomes From The Human Gut, M. C. Wibowo, Z. Yang, M. Borry, A. Hubner, K. D. Huang, B. T. Tierney, S. Zimmerman, F. Barajas-Olmos, C. Contreras-Cubas, H. Garcia-Ortiz, A. Martinez-Hernandez, J. M. Luber, K. Reinhard Et Al.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.