Digital Commons Network^™

After Bureaucracy (Reviewing The New Constitutional Order By Mark Tushnet), Michael C. Dorf

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Acoustic, Kinematic, And Auditory Perceptual Characteristics Of Clear Speech, Kristin L. Greilick

Masters Theses

This study characterized the speech motor transformations that underlie speech clarity changes in a group of 49 healthy young speakers. Clarity judgments based on auditory perception of the speech samples were determined by a panel of 30 undergraduate and graduate students. This study specifically aimed to characterize (1) the auditory-perceptual judgments of clarity, (2) the acoustic measures of clear and causal speech, (3) the temporal and spatial features of articulatory movements of clear and casual speech, and (4) test the hypothesis that auditory perceptual scaling of clarity (perceptual salience) would be associated with kinematic indicators of physical effort.

Results suggested …

Native Speakers' Attitudes Toward The Use Of Spanish By Non-Native Speakers: From George W. To J. Lo, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This investigation of native speakers' attitudes toward the use of Spanish by non-native speakers considers the following questions: Do native speakers consider the public use of Spanish by non-native speakers to be inappropriate? Do Latino non-native speakers provoke a more favorable response? Do native speakers believe Latinos have an obligation to know Spanish? What factors correlate with native and heritage speakers' attitudes toward ethnicity and language choice? Data were collected via a questionnaire distributed to students at post-secondary institutions in ten states. The findings provide insights into the attitudes of native and heritage speakers, a rapidly growing population in the …

Swimming In Symbols, Ben Spackman

Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011

Review of Alonzo L. Gaskill. The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Essential Guide for Recognizing and Interpreting Symbols of the Gospel.

Warm Ashes: Issues In Southern History At The Dawn Of The Twenty-First Century, Christopher Paul Anderson

Civil War Book Review

Living history

Searching the past for clues about the present

The Networking Economic Effects Of Whiteness, Brant T. Lee

American University Law Review

Network economic analysis provides an important and intuitive explanation of racial inequality. In short, Whiteness is Microsoft's Windows operating system, or the QWERTY keyboard, or the standard (non-metric) measurement system, and difficult to dislodge for many of the same reasons. Network effects explain how the establishment of a dominant market standard 1) can be contingent on historical context, 2) does not necessarily derive from superior intrinsic merit, and 3) exhibits strong self-reinforcing characteristics that can maintain the dominance of the standard in perpetuity, even in the absence of any explicit or conscious determination to maintain it. All of these factors …

A Drug Free America? A Web Page Discourse Analysis, Darrin Kowitz

Masters Theses

Using the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research will seek to identify the ways in which social power is exercised through the creation and manipulation of linguistic categories within the text of the web page for the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA). A preliminary examination of the web page identified three general mechanisms of power at work for the PDFA, the use of authority, fear inducement, and identity manipulation. The use of these mechanisms will be analyzed to explain ideological hegemony as the adoption of cognitive categories by individuals from social-structural, or institutional, sources.

A Combined Crisp And Fuzzy Approach For Handwriting Analysis, N. Mogharreban, Shahram Rahimi, M. Sabharwal

Computer Science Publications

This paper presents an off-line writer-independent handwriting analysis system which utilizes both classical crisp and fuzzy methodologies to output possible personality traits of the writer. The design deploys an analytical handwriting analysis approach based on two primitives, the baseline and the slant angle of the characters. The objective of the design strategy is to present a group of parameters for handwriting analysis based on the text. These parameters allow for the classification of writing into different categories which could be used as a preliminary step for outputting the personality traits of the writer. Two parameters, the baseline and the slant-angle, …

The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule In The Río De La Plata, Bret Gustafson

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Barbara Ganson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. xii + 290pp., maps, illustrations, appendices, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8047-3602-2.

Ascertaining The Importance Of Neurons To Develop Better Brain-Machine Interfaces, Justin C. Sanchez, Jose M. Carmena, Mikhail A. Lebedev, Miguel A.L. Nicolelis, John G. Harris, Jose C. Principe

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the design of brain-machine interface (BMI) algorithms, the activity of hundreds of chronically recorded neurons is used to reconstruct a variety of kinematic variables. A significant problem introduced with the use of neural ensemble inputs for model building is the explosion in the number of free parameters. Large models not only affect model generalization but also put a computational burden on computing an optimal solution especially when the goal is to implement the BMI in low-power, portable hardware. In this paper, three methods are presented to quantitatively rate the importance of neurons in neural to motor mapping, using single …

Intertribal Conflicts And Customary Law Regimes In North Africa: A Comparison Of Haratine And Ait 'Atta Indigenous Legal Systems, Anna Martinez

Student Thesis Honors (1996-2008)

Although the Haratin live throughout North Africa, this paper focuses specifically upon the Haratin of the Tafilalt Oasis region of southern Morocco. Section one is devoted to the social history of the Haratin in order to 'locate' their position in modem Moroccan society. In particular, this section examines the multi-dimensional aspects of their identity, including the process of naming, and the exclusion of their indigenous identity by the majority of Moroccans. This section also scrutinizes the affect of race and class on the formation of Haratin identity. Section II discusses the Ait 'Atta Berber tribe's customary law and their political …

Is Feminist Humor An Oxymoron?, Janet M. Bing

English Faculty Publications

Is the subject of feminist humor male oppression or a celebration of the female experience? This paper argues for the latter and suggests that inclusive jokes can be more effectively subversive than divisive ones. As long as women's jokes focus on men, male definitions, and male behavior, women are marginalizing females, even if their jokes target males. In addition, divisive jokes can strengthen prevailing beliefs about essential female-male differences. However, when straight feminists make jokes and laugh about the shared experiences of females rather than on oppressive male behavior, then feminist humor, like lesbian humor, becomes an agent for change.

Know-How, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In daily life we not only speak not only of knowing facts but also of know-how. We may not only judge that someone knows that the stock market is in decline, that an avalanche is imminent or that ice is not marble but also that someone knows how to make money on the stock exchange, knows how to survive an avalanche or knows how to carve a realistic life-sized human figure from a block of marble. Ryle (1949, 26-60) first drew attention to analysis of know-how and argued that know-how does not consist of propositional knowledge. He went on to …

The Law Merchant In The Modern Age: Institutional Design And International Usages Under The Cisg, Clayton P. Gillette

Chicago Journal of International Law

All participants seem to agree that this debate cannot be resolved on an all- or-nothing basis. Plain meaning will sometimes minimize total contracting costs, as will the incorporation strategy some of the time. It is less clear whether the cases in which one strategy dominates are so pervasive as to warrant its applicability to all cases, lest the costs of discovering exceptions prove too great. What is missing from the debate, however, is a taxonomy of the conditions under which trade usages would be sufficiently precise, observable, and verifiable as to warrant their incorporation. In this Article, I begin that …

The Relative Costs Of Incorporating Trade Usage Into Domestic Versus International Sales Contracts: Comments On Clayton Gillette, Institutional Design And International Usages Under The Cisg, Avery Wiener Katz

Chicago Journal of International Law

Clayton Gillette's paper on the use of trade usage in reported disputes arising under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ("CISG") presents a challenge to recent scholarly critiques of modern contractual interpretation. As Gillette explains, much recent writing by economically influenced US scholars in contracts and commercial law has argued in favor of more formalistic methods of interpretation, and against the overwhelming trend of the last half of the twentieth century: a trend toward a more contextual interpretative approach that takes into account a variety of evidence, including the business purpose of the transaction, …

Parading Protestants And Consenting Catholics In Northern Ireland: Communal Conflict, Contested Public Space, And Group Rights, Dominic Bryan

Chicago Journal of International Law

After several hours of stalemate when the RUC stopped the parade from marching through a Catholic area of Portadown, several hundred more Protestants joined the demonstrations. In response the RUC drafted in extra riot police as tension grew after all entrances were blocked off by the RUC to prevent the march. Hundreds of police officers used Land Rovers to close off the routes while Republicans blocked the Garvaghy Road along which the Orangemen traditionally parade after the annual service at Drumcree Parish Church, just outside the County Armagh town. The 800 Orangemen remained outside the church hoping they might be …

Disloyalty Among Men In Arms: Korean War Pows At Court-Martial, Elizabeth Lutes Hillman

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

History, Ethnography, And Politics In Amazonia: Implications Of Diachronic And Synchronic Variability In Marubo Politics, Javier Ruedas

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The idea that indigenous Amazonian societies have been and are essentially egalitarian has been criticized in recent years. This essay critiques frameworks for the study of power in lowland South America by examining diachronic and synchronic variation in Marubo political organization.  First, I analyze change over time in Marubo politics and how it relates to population fluctuations linked to contact situations.  Based on this analysis, I argue that the small, atomized villages that twentieth-century anthropologists perceived as typifying indigenous Amazonia were products of the historical processes of political organization. Next, I show that leaders of different Marubo villages range from …

Darrell A. Posey (1947-2001), Warren M. Hern

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Perspectival Anthropology And The Method Of Controlled Equivocation, Eduardo Viveiros De Castro

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article argues that doing anthropology means comparing anthropologies. Comparison is not just our primary analytic tool, it is also our raw material and our ultimate grounding, since what we compare are always and necessarily, in one form or other, comparisons. If, as Marilyn Strathern suggests, culture consists in the way people draw analogies between different domains of their worlds, then every culture is a multidimensional process of comparison. Likewise, if anthropology studies culture through culture, then, following Roy Wagner, whatever operations characterize our investigations must also be general properties of culture. Intracultural relations, or internal comparisons, and intercultural relations, …

Overcoming The Totalitarian Past, Sergey Averintsev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Benjamin, Agamben, And The Paradox Of Translation, Paolo Bartoloni

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Benjamin, Agamben, and the Paradox of Translation," Paolo Bartoloni offers a theoretical discourse on translation that goes beyond the traditional precincts of linguistics and literary theory as well as the disciplines of cultural studies and postcolonial theory. Bartoloni argues that more recently, the discourse on translation has begun to incorporate epistemological concerns, dealing not only with language but also with subjectivity and ethics. At the root of this theoretical articulation of translation are the essays "The Task of the Translator" ("Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers") by Walter Benjamin and other reflections on translation by Martin Heidegger, especially in …

Haruki Murakami And The Ethics Of Translation, Will Slocombe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Haruki Murakami and the Ethics of Translation," Will Slocombe argues that despite the fact that Murakami has gained world-wide popularity recently, there has been little critical attention to his works outside of the comparatively narrow area of Japanese studies. Slocombe proposes that Murakami is too important an author to be limited in this way because of his definition of "translation." For Murakami, translation delineates an operative ethics between Self and Other, a dialogue that is not only between different languages and cultures, but also between the private and political spheres, and between different individuals. Slocombe discusses Murakami's …

Medieval Cosmopolitanism And The Saracen-Christian Ethos, Marla Segol

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Medieval Cosmopolitanism and the Saracen-Christian Ethos," Marla Segol argues that in Floire et Blancheflor and Aucassin et Nicolette, two medieval Occitanian romances, the writers work actively to incorporate Islamic culture and its accomplishments into a hybrid communal identity. The hybrid elements of this identity are demonstrated in two ways: first, through the portrayal of mixed couples and second, through depiction of a biculturally constituted landscape and culture. Intercultural relations between the characters are dramatized through the structures of religious conversion. Each romance features a mixed couple, with one member Christian and the other, formerly Muslim but converted …

The Writer's Journey Into Solitude : Self-Discovery In Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Robinson Crusoe And Friday, Rabia Abdul Salim Madhi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The idea of physical solitude often implies metaphysical solitude, and it is this spiritual state of detachment or self-enclosure that usually arouses the widest range of moral responses. Physical solitude is a metaphorical focus for an attitude that relates to self and society. In my thesis, however, I am primarily interested in the concept of solitude as a vehicle facilitating a journey of inward exploration into the mystifying labyrinth of the self in search of truth. In this sense, solitude becomes a condition enabling consciousness to achieve spiritual insight and truth with respect to the nature of self and world.

The Indian Child Welfare Act And Iñupiat Customs: A Case Study Of Conflicting Values, With Suggestions For Change, Andrea V. W. Wan

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Push-Pull Factors Of Undocumented Migration From Bangladesh To West Bengal: A Perception Study, Pranati Datta

The Qualitative Report

Movement is an integral part of human existence. While talking about transborder migration from Bangladesh to India, we are, however, aware that this is a controversial subject. The partition of Bengal in 1947 was the cruelest partition in the history of the world and caused forced illegal migration from erstwhile East Pakistan. It is estimated that there are about 15 million Bangladeshi nationals living in India illegally. West Bengal has a border running 2,216 km along Bangladesh. The present study highlights push-pull factors of illegal Bangladeshi migration based on perceptions of respondents obtained from a qualitative survey done on the …

Who Are "The Japanese"?: Negotiation Of Identity Among Nikkei In Brazil, Chihiro Nagasue

Masters Theses

When Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil in the beginning of the 20th century, they recognized, for the first time, that they were "Japanese" and different from other ethnic people since it was rare for them to meet ethnically foreign people in Japan. In the ethnically and linguistically foreign country of Brazil, the Nikkei have had to constantly redefine their identity by resisting and accommodating dominant pressures and ideologies such as the Brazilian assimilation policies before and during the Second World War as well as the essentialist ideology of Nihonjinron (what it means to be Japanese). As a result of globalization, …

Ambivalence About Treason, George P. Fletcher

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Use And Abuse Of The Laws Of War In The War On Terrorism, Marco Sassoli

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Symposium