Digital Commons Network^™

Remnants Of An Ancient Forest Provide Ecological Context For Early Miocene Fossil Apes, Lauren A. Michel, Daniel J. Peppe, James A. Lutz, Steven G. Driese, Holly M. Dunsworth, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith, William H. Horner, Thomas Lehmann, Sheila Nightingale, Kieran P. Mcnulty

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The lineage of apes and humans (Hominoidea) evolved and radiated across Afro-Arabia in the early Neogene during a time of global climatic changes and ongoing tectonic processes that formed the East African Rift. These changes probably created highly variable environments and introduced selective pressures influencing the diversification of early apes. However, interpreting the connection between environmental dynamics and adaptive evolution is hampered by difficulties in locating taxa within specific ecological contexts: time-averaged or reworked deposits may not faithfully represent individual palaeohabitats. Here we present multiproxy evidence from Early Miocene deposits on Rusinga Island, Kenya, which directly ties the early ape …

Using Non-Dietary Gastropods In Coastal Shell Middens To Infer Kelp And Seagrass Harvesting And Paleoenvironmental Conditions, Amira F. Ainis, René Vellanoweth, Queeny G. Lapeña, Carol S. Thornber

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Archaeologists analyzing shell middens typically focus on larger (>2 cm) mollusks to examine subsistence practices, impacts on littoral habitats, and paleoenvironmental conditions as well as a host of other natural and cultural phenomena. Small (<2 cm), non-dietary gastropods in archaeological shell middens also provide important clues regarding human resource procurement in littoral areas and coastal paleoenvironments. We present data from two sites on the California Channel Islands to demonstrate the range of information that can be gained by analyzing small gastropod shells. Identifications revealed the remains of over 4500 non-dietary small gastropods from 75 taxa. Human harvesting of marine macrophytes is suggested by the presence of 18 species that are predominantly associated with seaweeds and seagrasses. Quantification measures revealed high diversity and equitability indices, oscillating taxonomic richness, and decreasing densities through time at both sites. Likelihood ratio tests revealed differences in assemblage composition between Early Holocene and later components at one site, and demonstrated similarities in the relative composition of non-dietary shell assemblages between both sites during the Middle Holocene. Incorporating detailed studies of less conspicuous “incidental” shellfish remains in archaeological midden studies has the potential to contribute to our understanding of past human land use practices and littoral paleoecology. Our findings are applicable to archaeologists working in coastal settings around the world, as well as marine ecologists interested in intertidal paleo-habitats and kelp forest ecosystems.

University Manual 2013-2014, Uri Faculty Senate

University Manual Archive

No abstract provided.

Urinformed Summer 2014, Urinformed

URInformed: The URI Employees' Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Urinformed Winter 2014, Urinformed

URInformed: The URI Employees' Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Urinformed Fall 2014, Urinformed

URInformed: The URI Employees' Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Intercultural Communication Competence: Summary Of 30-Year Research And Directions For Future Study, Guo-Ming Chen

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter attempts to record the pulse of the trend by reporting our research on the subject of intercultural communication competence in the last 30 years from three perspectives: (1) The literature review of the concept was selectively and representatively made; (2) the conceptualization and measurement of the concept was proposed through the process of model building and instrument development; and (3) challenges and directions for future research on the concept embedded in the impact of new technology were also stipulated.

Disconnected/Connected: On The ‘Look’ And The ‘Gaze’ Of Cell Phones, Ian Reyes, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Jennnifer Bonoff

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Informed by nonparticipant observations of public cell phone use, we offer a Lacanian theorization of common social scenes involving mobile communication technologies. Identifying paradoxes of the mobile mediascape, such as connected versus disconnected and public versus private, we turn to Lacan’s distinction between the look and the gaze to read and reconcile these tensions. Moving beyond understanding cell phones as fetish objects, we use Lacan’s theory of the gaze as a means to understand the existential dilemma, a lack of being, which underwrites the pleasures of consumption. At the heart of the matter is how cell phones mobilize users’ desires …

Impacts Of Management On Fisheries Diversity As A Factor Affecting Social Resilience In Communities Of The Southern New England Region, Tarsila Seara

Open Access Dissertations

The present research aims at examining potential impacts of fisheries management on the diversity of species exploited by fishermen in Southern New England, and examining the relationship between this diversity and the resilience of fishermen and, consequently, communities in adapting to changes in their social and physical environments. One way fishermen are able to adapt to environmental and socio-economic changes is through diversification of the catch. The current study argues that certain management plans, especially those focused on limited entry strategies, have been reducing fishermen’s adaptive flexibility, therefore reducing fishermen’s resilience and that of their communities. Two hypotheses were developed: …

Uri Undergraduate And Graduate Course Catalog 2014-2015, University Of Rhode Island

URI Course Catalogs Archive

This is a downloadable PDF version of the University of Rhode Island course catalog.

Assumed To Be Black: A Critical Examination Of Being Ascribed A Racial Status On A Predominately White Campus, Shontay Delalue King Francis

Open Access Dissertations

Colleges and universities continue to add diversity and internationalization as major components of their strategic planning efforts. Students from various racial, ethnic and national backgrounds are expected to live and work together in an intellectual environment while bringing with them various views of race and culture that are maintained through varying myths and misconceptions. This study looked at the technical and cultural definitions of what it means to be ‘Black’ in the U.S. and the stereotypes of being classified within that racial category.

The goal of this research study was to understand the experience of students from the African Atlantic …

Teaching Postcolonial Literature In An Elite University: An Edinburgh Lecturer’S Perspective, Michelle Keown

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This reflective essay explores some of the pedagogical challenges I have faced in teaching postcolonial literature and theory at the University of Edinburgh. There are particular social dynamics at work at Edinburgh that make engaging with intersectionality, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism, a rather complex endeavor. Edinburgh is a Russell Group university, and our undergraduate constituency is overwhelmingly white, middle class and British, with a high proportion of students coming from British public-school backgrounds. Many of these students approach postcolonial writing with well-meaning liberal intentions, but often adopt what Graham Huggan (2001) would term an exoticizing perspective …

Self-Control And Adverse “Drinking” Consequences, Barbara J. Costello, Bradley J. Anderson, Michael D. Stein

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Most research on adverse alcohol consequences such as problems with health, work, and relationships focuses only on alcohol use itself as a cause of these outcomes. However, Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) self-control theory holds that alcohol use and these negative outcomes are likely to have a common cause–low self-control. Tests of hypotheses derived from self-control theory show that self-control predicts negative drinking consequences better than combined measures of alcohol dependence and frequency and quantity of drinking. This suggests that various forms of risk–taking behavior and negative outcomes can be conceptualized as indicators of underlying levels of self-control.

Exploring Social Resilience In Marine Protected Areas – A Case Of Indonesia‘S Coral Triangle, Abdul Halik

Open Access Master's Theses

The term ―resilience‖ has a very long and rich history. The term itself received a widespread attention since Holling‘s seminal paper in 1973 on system ecology. Since then, the term resilience has been widely used and defined in many academic disciplines. The examination of social resilience in the context of overall coastal community resilience has been developed during the last few years. Such studies have been important in determining factors influencing the acceptance of MPAs in resource dependent communities.

The concept of social resilience has been defined mostly at the community level, and less so at the individual level. In …

Opting-In Online: Participants’ Perceptions Of Knowledge Construction In Public Forum Communities, Jennifer C. Lee

Open Access Dissertations

This project examines knowledge making and sharing amid special interest forums, specifically, online forums for herp (reptile and amphibian) hobbyists. In doing so, it addresses a gap in rhetoricians’ understanding of publicness: its effect on writing and people’s perceptions thereof. Few studies measure public writing unless its telos is change or activism. Additionally, despite increased rhetorical scholarship focusing on new media, much current research on forums situates them in classroom-based learning and collaboration, neglecting online forums that are open to public access. This project is a naturalistic inquiry using qualitative methods to explore collaborative public writing that occurs in discourse …

Textiles, Community, And University Engagement, Mary Elizabeth Corrigan

Open Access Master's Theses

Rhode Island is home to many historical societies, small museums, and historic houses that include textiles in their collections. The University of Rhode Island (URI) Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design department (TMD) offers a masters program in historic textiles and costume. The density of small cultural institutions that have textile or costume collections in Rhode Island provides an opportunity for the URI TMD Department to position itself as a locus for engagement, education, and research in Rhode Island and beyond. University-community collaboration is not a new development. States founded land-grant universities to serve as resources for their communities, though the …

Aural (Re)Positioning And The Aesthetics Of Realism In First-Person Shooter Games, Ryan P. Laliberty

Open Access Master's Theses

The following study is concerned with how immersive experiences are constructed in first-person shooter (FPS) video games through the implementation of “realistic” audio. Bringing together the three fields of video game studies, sound studies, and science and technology studies in its theoretical framework, this study approaches FPS games as commodities, marketed for their capabilities towards providing the player with an immersive and realistic experience, and constructed in particular ways, for particular ends. The first part of this study explores the context of FPS game audio development, from the earliest days of video games in the mid-twentieth century, to the current …

Wedding Dress Purchase Intentions Of Tattooed Brides, Sarah Yang

Open Access Master's Theses

A tattooed bride faces internal and external influences that may affect her choice of dress. She also will face the decision of whether to hide or show her tattoos on her wedding day. A review of literature revealed that the history of tattoos, contemporary tattoos, and history of weddings have been comprehensively researched (Fenske 2007; Koch, Roberts, Armstrong, and Owen 2010; DeMello 2003; Mo 2000; Ehrman 2011). However, the topic [of tattooed brides has not been explored. Discussion threads on several wedding blogs indicate that tattooed brides have faced the issue of whether to hide or show their tattoos and …

Frontier Theory And The Reconquista: The Role Of Laws In Defining The Frontiers Of Medieval Spain, Alan Nicholas Witt

Open Access Master's Theses

Statement of the Problem: Recent historians have argued that the term “frontier” and the related concepts of frontier societies or zones (as used by scholars of medieval Spain in particular and the Middle Ages in general) are all amorphous and ill-defined concepts, lacking predictive value because of their conflicting usages by different historians. Is it possible to create a solid foundation for the term “frontier” so that it can be utilized in historical discourse? Do any of the elements of the frontier hypothesis as it was originally conceived hold up when applied to contemporary medieval notions of the frontier?

Methodology …

Napoleon's Siege Of Acre: A Reevaluation Of The Historical And Archaeological Record, Morgan L. Breene

Senior Honors Projects

The modern port of Akko, Israel, has been essential to movement and trade in the eastern Mediterranean since the Hellenistic period, and used as a harbor since the Neolithic. Its many incarnations and occupations over the centuries are documented by the cultural material laying on and under the bed of the harbor, and it is an area of great fascination for historians and underwater archaeologists. One particular pivotal event in the modern history of the port, however, continues to beguile researchers.

Napoleon's failed siege of Acre (modern-day Akko), Israel in the spring of 1799 was a turning point in his …

Virtuality As Place And Process, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Ian Reyes

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Virtual worlds are conventionally understood as representational places, or alternate realities more or less set apart from the real world. However, in considering new and emergent technologies, such as social media sites and augmented reality devices, which complicate any easy distinction between virtual and real, we contend that virtuality should also be understood as a matter of process, or the means by which virtualisation is realised. Focusing on theorisations clustered around Baudrillard’s theory of simulation, we compare Baudrillardian concepts to other possible theorisations in order to shed light on practices including transmediation and information management at the dawning of the …

Curricular Affairs Committee Report #508 With Appendices, University Of Rhode Island Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Committee Reports and Appendices

No abstract provided.

Public Services Annual Report 2012-2013, Deborah Mongeau

Public Services Reports

Annual report of the Public Services Department of the University of Rhode Island Libraries.

Participatory Culture At The Echo Park Film Center, Jennifer Ann Rosales

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The Echo Park Film Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit media education organization, teaches underprivileged youth how to comprehend and make media in order to empower them to speak and be heard. Due to the organization’s nonmainstream media courses and its connection to its community, the Center is able to create a participatory and socially inclusive environment that teaches young people a particular form of media-making and comprehension. In this article, I explore the participatory culture created at the Echo Park Film Center through an observational study of its “Origins” course and a contextual analysis of the organization’s methods and philosophy.

Developing Multimodal Academic Literacies Among College Freshmen, Gloria E. Jacobs

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article describes a semester-long freshman learning community in which multimodal texts were used as primary texts along with traditional texts to support students’ academic literacy skills. Analysis shows that an expository video created by students contains elements of academic literacies and qualities of multimodal texts. An unexpected finding was the presence of play within the process and product. These elements combine to create multimodal academic literacies. The author argues that multimodal academic literacies should be taught alongside traditional essayist forms in order to create rich learning opportunities.

Using Blogs To Teach Strategies For Inquiry Into The Construction Of Lived And Text Worlds, Amanda Haertling Thein, Tim Oldakowski, Deann Long Sloan

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This paper describes a teacher-researcher collaboration aimed at teaching students strategies for inquiry into the constructed nature of lived and text worlds – a pedagogical objective consistent with goals of media literacy. As an introduction to these strategies, students were asked to engage in a commonly used media literacy tool – a blog – to explore the socially and culturally constructed aspects of their own lived worlds. As students blogged, they were also asked to examine the represented worlds in a literary text – To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee 1960). Research discussed in this paper examines the specific affordances of …

Journal Usage Report For Fiscal Year 2013, Michael A. Cerbo Ii

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Journal usage for the University Libraries are listed alphabetically by authority title. The report includes the usage statistics taken from each vendor and incorporated in Serials Solutions 360 Counter.

The report is broken down monthly for fiscal year 2013 and shows each journal's usage per month and the cost per use for the year, if available.

Refworks Usage Statistics Through June 2013, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

RefWorks is a subscription-based, online software product that helps researchers save, organize, and format bibliographic citations. This report provides monthly statistics on the usage of RefWorks by the University of Rhode Island community from 2002 through June 2013. Data provided includes: user type summary, focus area summary, references created per month, accounts created per month, all user accounts by user type, all user accounts by focus area, last quarter number of accounts by user type, reference type detail, all references by focus area, last quarter references by focus area, last quarter references by user type, all references by user type, …

Serials Solutions Subject Search Report 2012-2013, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Statistics on the total number of Serials Solutions subject searches at the University of Rhode Island Libraries by month for 2012-2013. Shows how many times the A-Z full text electronic journal list (at http://zu4tq4pb5v.search.serialssolutions.com/) was browsed by specific subjects.

Serials Solutions Click-Through Statistics By Provider And Database 2012-2013, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Statistics on the total number of database and journal-level clicks, by provider and database, of Serials Solutions tools at the University of Rhode Island Libraries by month for 2012-2013. Clicks may have originated from the A-Z full text electronic journal list (at http://zu4tq4pb5v.search.serialssolutions.com/), from OpenURL links ("360 Link"), or the 856 fields of Serials Solutions-generated MARC records ("360 MARC Updates").