Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk As A Tool For Experimental Behavioral Research, Matthew J. C. Crump, John V. Mcdonnell, Todd M. Gureckis

Publications and Research

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is an online crowdsourcing service where anonymous online workers complete web-based tasks for small sums of money. The service has attracted attention from experimental psychologists interested in gathering human subject data more efficiently. However, relative to traditional laboratory studies, many aspects of the testing environment are not under the experimenter's control. In this paper, we attempt to empirically evaluate the fidelity of the AMT system for use in cognitive behavioral experiments. These types of experiment differ from simple surveys in that they require multiple trials, sustained attention from participants, comprehension of complex instructions, and millisecond accuracy …

From Toxic Tours To Growing The Grassroots: Tensions In Critical Pedagogy And Community Development, Celina Su, Isabelle Jagninski

Publications and Research

Structural inequalities in American public education are inextricably tied to deep-seated patterns of racial and economic segregation. Children in poor neighborhoods are less likely to have the household resources, neighborhood institutions, or school amenities necessary for a good, challenging education. In response, a growing number of organizations have launched initiatives to simultaneously revitalize neighborhoods and improve public education, emphasizing youth participation as an essential component in their efforts. We draw upon ethnographic data from two such organizations to examine their practice of place-based critical pedagogy in community development. We focus on how they engage marginalized, “hard-to-reach” youth via (1) experiential …

Rethinking Civil Rights And Gender Violence, Julie Goldscheid

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Big Data In The Social Sciences, Steven Ovadia

Publications and Research

This article explores the role of big data in the social sciences and reviews some online sources of large data sets.

Unhinged: Kairos And The Invention Of The Untimely, Robert Leston

Publications and Research

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge from the timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as the potential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation? This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints because it has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print, the apparatus of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating …

Dialogue In The Margins, Cheryl Hogue Smith, Nicole Callahan

Publications and Research

This article demonstrates how, through our conversations about holding dialogues in the margins of student papers, we realized that there can sometimes be an advantage to moving students into the margins, where their marginalia constitute a productive and active dialogue about their own thinking.

Juan Rodriguez And The Beginnings Of New York City, Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, Tom Weterings, Leonor Alvarez Francés

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Aplicabilidad De La Tipología De Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas Al Género De La Memoria De Máster En Un Contexto Transcultural De Enseñanza Universitaria, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

The aim of this paper is to compare the rhetorical functions gathered from the citations of (14) fourteen master´s theses written by seven Spanish and seven Philippine authors. A typology of nine categories was used in order to identify the cultural rhetorical differences that exist in the use of citation from the contrast between contrasting this element in the Philippine and Spanish cultures. The methodology used is textual analysis of the linguistic context of these citations and its subsequent classification within these nine categories. The results show that there are quantitative and qualitative differences between the cultural conventions of citations …

Social Class And Learning Disabilities: Intersectional Effects On College Students In New York City, Ashleigh B. Thompson

Publications and Research

Purpose - Previous quantitative research documents that college students with disabilities do not attain higher education at rates equal to their nondisabled peers. This qualitative study posits that socioeconomic status (SES) is a determinant of this discrepancy, and explores how SES and disability shape the college experience of New York City (NYC) students with learning disabilities (LDs), specifically.

Methodology - Research findings from semi-structured interviews with students with LDs (n = 10) at a low-SES and a high-SES colleges are presented against the backdrop of administrative data from NYC baccalaureate-granting colleges (n = 44), disability staff surveys (n = 21), …

Creating Room For A Singularity Of Our Own: Reading Sue Lange's "We, Robots", Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

The accessibility of Lange’s text might mitigate against recognizing its importance. Lange’s simple sentence structure and direct communicative mode convey a presently overlooked logical moral assertion: the impending Singularity is not a male-dominated patriarchal domain. The Singularity, in other words, should not be construed in a manner which excludes women and feminism. This assertion is patently obvious. But, nonetheless, it is often ignored. Before I read Lange’s novella as a description of the Singularity which feminists can embrace, I include the following background information: 1) a discussion about why the discourse relating to the Singularity needs to be expanded and …

The Officialization Of Spanish In Mid-Nineteenth-Century Spain: The Academy’S Authority, Laura Villa

Publications and Research

This chapter addresses the role played by language and schools in the history of Spain’s nineteenth-century liberal nation-building project. Both the Spanish language and the public school system were strategic sites where national consensus could be built and, consequently, the achievement of linguistic homogeneity through education became a central goal for the state. In particular, I examine the conditions that favored the linguistic norms developed by the Royal Spanish Academy and the debates that surrounded their officialization and imposition in the emerging national school system. While the historiography of Spanish has traditionally described the selection and implementation of the RAE’s …

Inscriptional Evidence Of Pre-Islamic Classical Arabic: Selected Readings In The Nabataean, Musnad, And Akkadian Inscriptions, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book investigates the ancient roots of Classical Arabic through detailed tracings and readings of selected, Pre-Islamic, ancient inscriptions from the Northern and Southern Arabian Peninsula. It provides detailed readings of important Akkadian, Nabataean, and old Arabic Musnad inscriptions, including Namarah and the Epic of Gilgamesh inscriptions. The book provides clear inscriptional evidence indicating that Classical Arabic was predominantly utilized in the major population centers of the greater Arabian Peninsula, including Mesopotamia and the Levant regions, many, many centuries before Islam. In his book, the author presents several important new readings. Among them, a new reading of two important Classical …

Estudio Transcultural De Las Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas En El Género Académico De La Memoria De Máster, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Trascendencia De La Ortografía En La Clase De Español Como Lengua Extranjera Y Su Aplicación Didáctica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This article proposes a reflection on the importance of spelling for the speaker in his own native language and in learning a foreign language by a non-native speaker. First, from a cognitive perspective, the difficulties encountered by a foreign learner in the processing of spelling in both the following ways: phonological and orthographic are examined. Further, it is studied how the literal orthography and the phraseology affect the meaning of the text. Likewise, the relevance that these mistakes bring in the sociocultural field is analyzed. Finally, a performance model is recommended with some specific didactic methods to fill in the …

Beyond Physical Space: Implementing A Virtual Learning Commons At An Urban Community College, Heba Elsayed, Carlos Guevara, Rebecca Hoda-Kearse, Isabel Li, Kate Lyons, George Rosa, Varun Sehgal

Publications and Research

The administration, faculty, and staff at Hostos Community College strive to improve students’ computer and information literacy skills while meeting the distinct needs of Millennials. In 2007, Hostos initiated a project to reconfigure physical spaces throughout the campus (areas in the Library, Academic Learning Center, Educational Technology Office, and Academic Computing Center) and establish a unified virtual space, creating a cross-divisional entity: the Information Learning Commons (ILC).

This case discusses the formation of the ILC Committee, the group that envisions and manages physical ILC spaces’ renovation and also develops virtual spaces; the planning and implementation of physical learning commons spaces; …

Positioning Library Data For The Semantic Web: Recent Developments In Resource Description, Kimmy Szeto

Publications and Research

Recent developments in resource description standards and technologies have aimed at moving cataloging practice to the web environment and making library data available for exchange and reuse on the Semantic Web. As the library community looks outward and forward, library standards and technologies are converging with Web practices in three areas: content description, data models, and data exchange. This article captures the essence of the core standards and technologies that underlie the daily work of practitioners of library service, including Resource Description and Access (RDA), Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), the Linked Data environment, Resource Description Framework (RDF), and …

Lgbt Community Faces Stigma, Stereotypes, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Into The Heart Of The Great Wilderness: Understanding Baldwin’S Quarrel With Négritude, Christopher Winks

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Greece In Crisis: An Interview With Despina Lalaki, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Critical Information Literacy And The Technology Of Control: The Case Of Armenia, John Carey, D. Aram Donabedian

Publications and Research

As direct providers of information literacy, librarians can help patrons analyze the social and economic forces involved in the creation and use of information. This chapter will discuss why critical information literacy and critical pedagogy are especially important in the Armenian context, with its unique historical, cultural, and geopolitical concerns. The authors will document how the Armenian government has used cutting-edge Internet controls to block online content or misdirect users. We will also examine how Armenians perceive the independence of their available media and explore current efforts by telecom, publishing, and governmental concerns to restrict Internet freedom. The authors suggest …

Shifting Diversity Perspectives And New Avenues For Representative Bureaucracy, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

This work explores the meaning of diversity for bureaucratic representation. In light of the United States becoming an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society, attitudes and approaches toward diversity are likewise shifting. It is important to consider the way we think and talk about diverse representation, which in turn, contributes to different actions and policies within federal agencies. To evaluate this process of meaning-making, federal policy seeking to increase representation in the following Executive Orders: 13078, 13163, 13171, 13518, 13548, and 13585 is analyzed. Prime emphasis is devoted to the most recent and comprehensive efforts, Executive Order 13583: Establishing a …

Democratizing Indian Popular Music: From Cassette Culture To The Digital Era, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

The history of Indian popular music constitutes in itself a significant development in modern culture, as this set of genres—especially but not only in their Bollywood forms—have been cherished by hundreds of millions of listeners not only in South Asia but internationally as well. At the same time, the trajectory of Indian popular music represents a dramatic case study of media culture as well, as its patterns of ownership, consumption, and even musical structures themselves have been conditioned by technological changes. Most striking is the way that a highly monopolized, streamlined, and homogeneous popular music culture dominated for several decades …

Queering The Catalog: Queer Theory And The Politics Of Correction, Emily Drabinski

Publications and Research

Critiques of hegemonic library classification structures and controlled vocabularies have a rich history in information studies. This project has pointed out the trouble with classification and cataloging decisions that are framed as objective and neutral but are always ideological and worked to correct bias in library structures. Viewing knowledge organization systems from a queer perspective, however, challenges the idea that classification and subject language can ever be finally corrected. Engaging queer theory and library classification and cataloging together requires new ways of thinking about how to be ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities who …

On Kripke's Puzzle About Time And Thought, Rohit J. Parikh

Publications and Research

We discuss a variant of a puzzle introduced by Saul Kripke.

Language, Politics, And History: An Introductory Essay, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This book chapter examines different articulations of language and history and introduces a new configuration that focuses on the political dimension of language.

Effects Of Hypertension And Diabetes On Sentence Comprehension In Aging, Dalia Cahana-Amitay, Martin Albert, Emmanuel Ojo, Jesse Sayers, Mira Goral, Loraine Obler, Avron Spiro Iii

Publications and Research

Objectives. To assess the impact of hypertension and diabetes mellitus on sentence comprehension in older adults.

Method. Two hundred and ninety-five adults aged 55 to 84 (52% men) participated in this study. Self-report mail survey combined with medical evaluations were used to determine eligibility. Multiple sources were used to determine whether hypertension and diabetes were present or absent and controlled or uncontrolled. Sentence comprehension was evaluated with two tasks: embedded sentences (ES) and sentences with multiple negatives (MN). Outcome measures were percent accuracy and mean reaction time of correct responses on each task.

Results. Regression models adjusted for age, gender, …

Hemispheric Processing Of Vocal Emblem Sounds, Yael Neumann-Werth, Erika Levy, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

Vocal emblems, such as shh and brr, are speech sounds that have linguistic and nonlinguistic features; thus, it is unclear how they are processed in the brain. Five adult dextral individuals with left-brain damage and moderate– severe Wernicke’s aphasia, five adult dextral individuals with right-brain damage, and five Controls participated in two tasks: (1) matching vocal emblems to photographs (‘picture task’) and (2) matching vocal emblems to verbal translations (‘phrase task’). Cross-group statistical analyses on items on which the Controls performed at ceiling revealed lower accuracy by the group with left-brain damage (than by Controls) on both tasks, and …

Linguistic Emancipation And The Academies Of The Spanish Language In The Twentieth Century: The 1951 Turning Point, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

In this article, the author focuses on the conference of academies of the Spanish language that took place in Mexico in 1951 and analyzes the discourses on language as well as the views on the linguistic institutions that emerged in the course of the conference. The reasons for the Real Academia Española´s absence are addressed and so is the initiative by Mexico´s president Miguel Alemán.

Popular Music Studies And The Problems Of Sound, Society And Method, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from …

Nous And Aisthēsis: Two Cognitive Faculties In Aristotle, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

In disagreement with Claudia Baracchi's controversial thesis that there is a 'simultaneity and indissolubility' if not an 'identity' of intelligence (nous) and perception (aisthēsis) at the core of Aristotle's philosophy, I will argue that Aristotle maintains a fundamental distinction between these cognitive faculties. My goal in this paper is to examine specific parts of two central and complex passages, VI.8, 1142al2-30 and VI. 11, 1143a33-bl5, from the Nicomachean Ethics to show that Baracchi's view is unpersuasive. I will show that Aristotle considers nous to be a different capacity than mere perception and one through which particulars …