Digital Commons Network^™

Isolated Spaces, Fragmented Places: Caryl Phillips’S Ghettos In The Nature Of Blood And The European Tribe, İ.Murat Öner, Mustafa Bal

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This study focuses on Caryl Phillips's deviant Othello character in The Nature of Blood and his transformation and perception of and in the ghettoized space of Venice in a geocritical scope. Geocriticism provides us with genuinely unique approaches to explore real-and-fictional space of Venice in The Nature of Blood (a fictional work) and The European Tribe (a non-fictional work), and other literary and non-literary materials. Interdisciplinary methods of geocriticism also help us analyze the cartographies and continuously changing spatial relations and discover unseen power correlations by using various cultural discourses such as architecture, philosophy, sociology, and geography. By applying geocritical …

Taylor: A Magazine For Taylor University Alumni, Parents And Friends (Summer 2014), Taylor University

The Taylor Magazine (1963-Present)

The Summer 2014 edition of Taylor Magazine, published by Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

Reaching The Nations Through Our Cities, Chris Clayman

Great Commission Research Journal

While the American public perceives New York City to be a post-Christian environment, reality is that the city is moving into a post-secular existence largely influenced by religious immigrants. These immigrants are symbolic of a new era in pioneer missions—one in which migration, transnationalism, globalization, and urbanization pose newer challenges and opportunities than uncharted geographies, isolated societies, and foreign cultures. “Reaching the Nations Through Our Cities” proposes that the next challenge for missionary pioneers is reaching busy, hidden, influential unreached peoples who have migrated to cities. Based on several years of research on the immigrant populations in Metro New York, …

Raquette Lake News, Summer/Fall 2014, State University Of New York College At Cortland

Outdoor Education

The Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education's Raquette Lake Newsletter, published in Summer/Fall 2014.

Geocriticism At A Crossroads: An Overview, Mariya Shymchyshyn

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the article I will outline some of the methodological and theoretical development in late twentieth-century criticism that led to the spatial turn in the humanities. In particular, I will concentrate my attention on the concepts of space in the works of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, and I will pursue how they influenced literary theory, causing the emergence of "geocriticism" (e.g., in the work of Robert Tally, Bertrand Westphal, Eric Prieto) or, using another term, "literary geography" (e.g., in Franco Moretti). I will argue that the postmodern condition generated an alertness to space …

How To Do Narratives With Maps?: Cartography As A Performative Act In Gulliver’S Travels And Through The Looking Glass, Emmanuelle Peraldo, Yann Calbérac

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The articulation between literary text and space has been significantly redefined thanks to two major theoretical turns. Because of the spatial turn that marked the humanities and social sciences from the 1980s onwards, time - inherited from the Enlightenment's ideal of progress - is not the main category of analysis any longer: space has replaced it (Soja, 1989). The spatial dimension of objects is now at the core of critical and analytical preoccupations: all fields of knowledge (and not only geography) are now invited to reconsider space, places and mapping. Literary studies reflect this paradigmatic shift as can …

Transgression, Boundaries, And Power: Rethinking The Space Of Postcolonial Literature, Dustin Crowley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Space, Henri Lefebvre tells us, is a tool for thought and action. Space enables and space constrains. Alongside history and metrics like race, class, and gender, space demands our attention as a foundational feature of social production and struggle. In the decades following Lefebvre's provocatively suggestive text The Production of Space, interest in spatial studies has burgeoned across academia, and literary studies are no exception. Though still relatively nascent, spatial literary studies has already been established on firm ground by works like Robert Tally's Spatiality and Bertrand Westphal's Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces. These and other …

Locating The Limits And Possibilities Of Place, Jessica Maucione

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Theoretical debates regarding space and place, their usefulness and limits, are complicated by the too often presumed "givenness" of the terms [1]. Despite their slippage into one another—conceptually as well as a result of inconsistent or interchangeable use of space and place—many theorists in several disciplines employ spatial or placial metaphors, even as they undertake a discussion of space and/or place. On the other hand, clear designations between space and place frequently prove overly simplistic. For some, space and place are in direct opposition—Yi-Fu Tuan writes, "Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one …

Eternal Return And The City/Country Dynamic In Milan Kundera’S The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Adam Mckee

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The concept of the division between country and city has been of interest to cultural critics since the beginning of urban experience. Perhaps the most complete history of this binary is the landmark work The Country and the City (1973) by Raymond Williams. In this work, Williams attempts to thoroughly document this dynamic split throughout the history of British literature. Williams traces the way in which the country and the city have been portrayed as existing across a radical cleavage and the influence of industrial capitalism on the ideological binary at play in this deployment. Remarking on the …

Rethinking The Beginning: Toni Morrison And The Dramatization Of Liminality, Michelle Dreiding

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Beginnings in Toni Morrison's novels enact an uncanny moment of disorientation. They are beginnings in medias res, and, more importantly, beginnings of spatial deictic uncertainties that leave a reader with the absence of a stable system of reference. They enact the predicament of a beginning that precludes the fantasy of an absolute point of origin. Morrison's beginnings self-consciously advocate an imperative to engage in a continual process of re-reading, of revisiting the initial disorientation so as to avoid a "conclusion to living." (Nietzsche) I want to argue that it is in these liminal moments of beginnings of novels that …

Contributors, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 14, issue 3 of Reconstruction.

Becoming Nomadic: The Radical 'Demonic' Geographies Of M. Nourbese Philip’S Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey Of Silence, Kate Siklosi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When the protagonist of M. NourbeSe Philip's novella Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (1991) resolutely declares that she will "open a way to the interior or perish," (7) she is at once reappropriating a colonial expression of geographic domination while enacting a "demonic" respatialization of African cultural representation. The statement, taken originally from Scottish missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone's travel diary, (re)presents the colonial metaphor of Africa as the unknown "dark continent" and its embedded representation of the eroticized black female body. This "opening of the interior," a central motif of Philip's text, thus announces …

Firm As A Coordination System: Evidence From Offshore Software Services, Kannan Srikanth, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

To examine what, if any, are the differences in how activities are coordinated within versus between firms, we conducted interviews with 32 project managers regarding 60 projects in the offshore software services industry. Uniquely, our projects were sampled along two dimensions: (1) colocation versus spatial distribution and (2) delivery by groups of individuals from a single firm versus from multiple firms. Our evidence suggests that in colocated projects, the same broad categories of coordination mechanisms are used both within and between firms. However, there is a qualitative difference in how geographically (i.e., spatially) distributed projects are coordinated within versus between …

Discriminatory Maintenance Of Reo Properties As A Violation Of The Federal Fair Housing Act, Stephen M. Dane, Tara Ramchandani, Anne P. Bellows

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Geology Of The Upper Androscoggin River Region, Bethel, Maine, To Shelburne, New Hampshire, J. Dykstra Eusden, Woodrow Thompson, Kitty Breskin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ultimately, I argue that one important response to the demise of race-based affirmative action should be to incorporate the experience of segregation into diversity strategies. A college applicant who has thrived despite exposure to poverty in his school or neighborhood deserves special consideration. Those blessed to come of age in poverty-free havens do not. I conclude that use of place, rather than race, in diversity programming will better approximate the structural disadvantages many children of color actually endure, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. While I propose substituting …

Regional Connections 2: Economy, Jeremy Young, Shelia A. Martin, Meg Merrick, Robert Smith

Metroscape

This article provide Part 2 of our discussion of the connections among different parts of the region by exploring how our economy—in particular, employment in our region’s key economic clusters—creates important economic connections among the cities and counties in the region.

Part 1: http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10978

Grid Based School Enrollment Forecasting, Richard Lycan, Charles Rynerson

Publications, Reports and Presentations

In this paper we will show how a simple model that is normally based on data for school attendance areas –elementary, middle, and high school, or perhaps planning areas, can be implemented for small grid areas roughly the size of a city block.

Open Access Data In Polar And Cryospheric Remote Sensing, Allen Pope, W. Rees, Adrian Fox, Andrew Fleming

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper aims to introduce the main types and sources of remotely sensed data that are freely available and have cryospheric applications. We describe aerial and satellite photography, satellite-borne visible, near-infrared and thermal infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar, passive microwave imagers and active microwave scatterometers. We consider the availability and practical utility of archival data, dating back in some cases to the 1920s for aerial photography and the 1960s for satellite imagery, the data that are being collected today and the prospects for future data collection; in all cases, with a focus on data that are openly accessible. Derived data …

Evidence-Based Decision Making In Coastal Oregon: Increasing The Effectiveness Of Policy And Management Decisions, Kaitlin Goldsmith

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

Changing climatic conditions, demographics, and land uses are projected to alter the provisioning of ecosystem services in estuarine, coastal and nearshore marine ecosystems, necessitating mitigation and adaptation policies and management. The current paradigm of siloed research efforts occurring in parallel to, rather than in collaboration with, decision-makers will be insufficient for the rapid responses required to adapt to and mitigate for projected changing conditions in coastal areas. Here, I suggest a different paradigm: one where research begins by engaging decision-makers in the identification of priority research needs (biophysical, economic, and social), and in which researchers analyze and present data in …

Accessibility-Based Transportation Planning: Literature And Applications For Shrinking Cities, Joanna Ganning

TREC Final Reports

For 15 years, scholars have claimed that accessibility-based transportation planning was at the brink of becoming a new paradigm, and yet this hope remains unrealized. Its implementation may lag due to vague definitions when compared to mobility, or because those who would benefit from accessibility-based planning lack political power to rally its support. Possibly, the lag in implementation reflects the missing linkages between theory and application for many contexts. This literature review synthesizes knowledge regarding the applications for accessibility-based transportation planning for shrinking cities along the themes of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. While residents in shrinking cities might especially …

Assessing Transit Fare Equity In Utah Using A Geographic Information System, Steven Farber, Keith Batholomew, Xiao Li, Antonio Paez, Khandker M. Nurul Habib

TREC Final Reports

The goal of this study is to develop and apply a new method for assessing social equity impacts of distance-based public transit fares. Shifting to a distance-based fare structure can disproportionately favor or penalize different subgroups of a population based on variations in settlement patterns, travel needs, and most importantly, transit use. According to federal law, such disparities must be evaluated by the transit agency, but the area-based techniques identified by the Federal Transit Authority for assessing discrimination fail to account for disparities in distances travelled by transit users. This means that transit agencies currently lack guidelines for assessing the …

Increasing The Supply Of Affordable Housing: Expanding Affordable Housing Policy In Albuquerque, Nm, Erin Callahan

Architecture and Planning ETDs

Providing affordable housing in the United States involves coordination between the federal, state, and local levels of government. Local jurisdictions must ensure that all requirements are met in order to receive funding. In Albuquerque, NM, this includes the production of a Consolidated Plan to satisfy federal requirements, and an Affordable Housing Plan to satisfy state requirements. However, even when the requirements are satisfied, the amount of funding available is never enough to create enough housing to meet the needs of the population. The objective of this study is to show how the supply of affordable housing in Albuquerque can be …

Changing Water Availability During The African Maize-Growing Season, 1979-2010, Lyndon Estes, Nathaniel W. Chaney, Julio Herrera-Estrada, Justin Sheffield, Kelly K. Caylor, Eric F. Wood

Geography

Understanding how global change is impacting African agriculture requires a full physical accounting of water supply and demand, but accurate, gridded data on key drivers (e.g., humidity) are generally unavailable. We used a new bias-corrected meteorological dataset to analyze changes in precipitation (supply), potential evapotranspiration (Ep, demand), and water availability (expressed as the ratio P/Ep) in 20 countries (focusing on their maize-growing regions and seasons), between 1979 and 2010, and the factors driving changes in Ep. Maizegrowing areas in Southern Africa, particularly South Africa, benefitted from increased water availability due in large part to demand declines driven primarily by declining …

Autism Assessment Scale For Children (Aasc): The Development Of A Dsm-V Aiigned Questionnaire To Screen School-Aged Children For High Functioning Autism, Christine Hebert

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the latent factor structure underlying the Ellis Functional Assessment (EFA) for children with high-functioning autism (HFA), to compare the latent factor structures for under-identified subgroups of children (older children, gifted children, female children), and to design a pre-screening assessment for HFA based on those results. The scope of the study is limited to children who have been identified as having HFA and whose parents completed the EFA while patients of a mid-Atlantic clinical practice specializing in autism spectrum disorders. The methodology uses preliminary factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to both analyze …

Investigation Of Policies, Environmental Impacts, Consumption And Fate Of Plastic Bags, Kam Lun Kwong

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Shopping with plastic bags in supermarkets is an indispensable part of life for citizens in many developed countries. There are not only 10 billion plastic bags given out in the UK but also huge amounts consumed in other countries. However, this great consumption poses adverse impacts on the environment. Due to the characteristics of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bags, bags deposited in landfill sites are not degraded naturally. Plastic bags are also photo permeable and highly transparent, making it easy for them to mimic jelly fish. Marine organisms may consider them as jellyfish for food, Moreover, seabirds may be trapped by …

Synthesis Of H-Branch Alkanes, Michael Wilde

The Plymouth Student Scientist

The complex composition of petroleum and the chromatographic challenge it presents has led to its study becoming a key field in contemporary scientific research. Rising concerns over the impact of petroleum within the environment have spurred the need to fingerprint and identify individual oils in order to understand its fate within the environment. The complexity of petroleum lies solely in its origins and thermal processes it undergoes during formation, resulting in it containing hundreds of thousands of different, unknown organic compounds. The majority of petroleum is observed in GC analysis as a ‘hump’ of unresolvable peaks; this characteristic hump is …

A Method To Define Requirements For System Of Systems, Randy Gene Walker

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop and apply a systems-based method for defining System of Systems (SoS) requirements using an inductive research design. Just as traditional Systems Engineering (TSE) includes a requirements definition phase, so too does System of Systems Engineering (SoSE); only with a wider, more over- arching, systemic perspective. TSE addresses the design and development of a single system with generally a very specific functional purpose enabled by any number of subcomponents. SoSE however, addresses the design and development of a large, complex system to meet a wide range of functional purposes enabled by any number …

From Pastorals To Paterson: Ecology In The Poetry And Poetics Of William Carlos Williams, Daniel Edmund Burke

Dissertations (1934 -)

Modernist poet William Carlos Williams died in 1962 - a landmark year in the history of the modern environmentalist movement. He did not live to see contemporary culture come to the deeper appreciation of humanity's place in the world which we now know as ecology. This dissertation will argue, however, that supporting his entire oeuvre of poetry are philosophical and poetic underpinnings which resonate strongly with - and usefully anticipate - our modern understanding of the interpenetrative relationship between natural and culture, human and nonhuman. I begin by tracing the roots of Williams's "ecopoetics" back to the father of Williams's …

Resilient And Regenerative Design In New Orleans: The Case Of The Make It Right Project, Amy Oliver, Isabelle Thomas, Michelle M. Thompson

Planning and Urban Studies Faculty Publications

According to Swiss Re, there are currently approximately 180 urban disasters globally per year. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the vulnerability of cities and the ability of humans to exacerbate the magnitude and intensity of man-made and/or natural hazards. The changes produced after a disaster can imply multiple adverse impacts including health risks, disruption to energy and water supply, and ecological imbalances. Post-disaster reconstruction, in this context, provides not only the necessity for a community to return to its pre-disaster state, but as Burby states, a “window of opportunity” to enhance resilience, and, in essence, to ‘regenerate’. These ‘windows of opportunity’ allow …