Digital Commons Network^™

Sexual Polymorphism And The Hyoid Bone: The Potential For The Identification Of Transgender Individuals From Skeletal Remains, Hermes M. Wilson

McNair Scholars Research Journal

The purpose of this research is to explore the potential use of the hyoid bone for sex estimation as a way to increase the accuracy in the identification of deceased transgender individuals from skeletonized remains. Being able to recognize transgender status from the hyoid bone could be crucial to the positive identification of these individuals, to provide closure for families, and to seek justice in situations of foul play. The program Amira 3D™ 2023 was used to create 3D models of the hyoid bone and to take measurements to determine whether transgender individuals can be differentiated from phenotypical, cisgender male …

Where Does The Church Stand In Today’S Mental Health Landscape?, Noah T. Mursu

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

Religious involvement in care for those living with mental illness has been going on for centuries, and perspectives on it have changed throughout the years. This literature review evaluates the place of religious groups, mainly Christian churches, in today's mental health situation by considering past and present involvement. It incorporates sources regarding different eras of mental hospital reform, modern perspectives of mental health clinicians and clergy, and the current gaps in mental health support among a variety of groups, including veterans, African Americans, and people in developing countries. This review then considers potential future involvement, especially considering how these gaps …

Structuring Extra-Classroom Pedagogical Partnership To Support Truth Telling For Equity And Inclusion: Recommendations For Practice, Alison Cook-Sather, Elena Marcovici

Education Program Faculty Research and Scholarship

Equity and inclusion efforts are undermined by individual and institutional inattention to the lived experiences of an increasingly diverse college student population. Extra-classroom, student–faculty/staff pedagogical partnerships can foster truth telling about and the development of practices that support diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. In this practice brief, we offer recommendations for (1) developing pedagogical partnership projects and programs, (2) dedicating regular meetings to supporting student partners in sharing the truths of their lived experiences, (3) scaffolding faculty and staff partners’ listening to and acting on the truths student partners tell, and (4) sharing truths more widely.

The Unique And The Universal In International Studies Theories From The Global South, Michael H. Allen

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is Landscape Queer?, Kate Thomas

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tracing The Desert Island: Atlantis, Unknowability, And Colonial Imagination, Edwige Crucifix

French and Francophone Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

This contribution studies the myth of the desert-ocean in Pierre Benoit’s 1919 [1920] hit novel L’Atlantide. Locating the mythical lost continent in the Sahara, the novel catered to the period’s exoticism while serving colonial ideology. While the desert was materially crucial for the Empire, it also provided new symbolic ground, becoming a favored locus of the colonial imagination as a site of extreme hostility, due as much to its climate as to its anticolonial activity. As the ultimate colonial fantasy, the desert also paradoxically provided fertile ground for a contrapuntal utopian discourse, apparent when reading Benoit’s novel in light …

Cataloguing Minerals, Part Two: Re-Imagining Mineral Catalogue Descriptions To Address Colonial Legacies, Carrie Robbins, Selby Hearth, Marianne Weldon, Aha Anderson, Rosa Bieber-Stanley, April Chernila, Helen Christ, Hannah Cosgrove, Morgan Hanson-Rosenberg, Carly Hill, Maya Hofstetter, Emily Lazo, Izzie Ludlow, Samantha Lyster, Rachel Myers, Jasper Nash, Georgia Reed, Julia Saint- Amour

Geology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Minerals are uniquely tied to colonialism, labour, and environment; however, those relationships have traditionally not been described in mineral catalogues – an omission that limits curators’ ability to account for mineral histories. This paper re-imagines mineral cataloguing practices to restore historical, cultural, and environmental contexts that were stripped away. We describe the roles of citations; linked data; provenience and provenance histories; non-standardized and ‘unapproved’ nomenclatures; positionality; and the need to label archival silences. We examine the risks and practical limitations that arise in attempting to turn this colonial tool against itself. In discussing these issues, we contribute to ongoing dialogues …

A Failure Or Success?: A Qualitative Analysis Of Post-Disaster Relocation Among Survivors Of 2010 Floods In Pakistan, Muhammad Siddique Akbar, Saeed Ahmad, Muhammad Rizwan Safdar, Farhan Navid Yousaf

Sociology and Anthropology Student Research

In Pakistan, the enormous 2010 floods inflicted unprecedented destruction to 0.5 million houses in South Punjab. This study was conducted in Muzaffargarh, a district of the Punjab province of Pakistan, one of the worst affected areas during the 2010 floods. As an adaptation and disaster risk reduction measure, an International NGO in collaboration with the Government of the Punjab province constructed 1274 houses for flood-affected communities. The houses were allocated through a lottery method. Initially, the allottees moved to the new settlements for the sake of possession. However, over time, it was observed that many flood-affected individuals sold out or …

Speculative Enquiries: The Third Annual Conference Of The European Culture And Technology Laboratory., Connell Vaughan, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Noel Fitzpatrick

Conference Proceedings

The third annual conference of the ECT Lab+ was held over three days in November 2023 in Limassol at the Media Arts & Design Research Lab (MADLab), Cyprus University of Technology. The conference brought together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields to explore ways of enquiry that enrich (non-)positivist ways of knowing as well as post-structuralist critique towards them. Given the political, representative and epistemic crises of the current times, there is a need for transdisciplinary responses to overcome siloed thinking of academic fields of study and offer solutions by revisiting questions of speculation as …

Examining Menstrual Health Experiences In Philadelphia, Pa: A Qualitative Investigation, Allison Casola, Oriana Pando, Lynette Medley, Brianna Kunes, Nya Mcglone, Olivia Rea

Department of Family & Community Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: While menstruation is a physiologic process, it remains highly stigmatized. Despite the sheer number of menstruators, menstruation is a highly individualized experience, with wide variation in duration, symptoms, and management. This wide variability lends itself to large disparities in access to menstruation management products and subsequently the lived experience of menstruators.

OBJECTIVES: The research team sought to understand lived menstrual experiences, symptoms, management tactics, and commonly used and desired resources among 20 cisgendered women aged 18-45 years in Philadelphia.

DESIGN: This project was a qualitative research study.

METHODS: We used a collaborative, community-based participatory research approach with No More …

Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey Report On The 2019 And 2021 Field Seasons Burial Hill And Carver Street, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, David B. Landon

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In May and June of 2019 and 2021, a field school from the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with Plimoth Patuxet Museums (formerly Plimoth Plantation) and the Town of Plymouth, undertook their final two seasons of work as part of Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey. Excavations had been taking place yearly in Plymouth since the summer of 2013. The 400th anniversary (1620- 2020) of the founding of Plymouth Colony, New England’s first permanent English settlement, provides a unique opportunity to revisit our scholarly understanding of the Colony’s history. Working with …

Racial Classifications In Higher Education Admissions Before And After Sffa, David E. Bernstein

SMU Law Review

Hundreds of law review articles have discussed the legality of affirmative action programs. Virtually all of them begin with the implicit assumption that the racial classifications used in these programs are legitimate and uncontroversial (an assumption I challenge in my 2022 book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications In America). That assumption has been undermined by Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (“SFFA”).

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 6–3 majority, asserted that the underlying classifications are “imprecise in many ways” and “opaque.” He quoted Justice Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, which criticized the classifications …

Race Preferences, Diversity, And Students For Fair Admissions: A New Day, A New Clarity, Maimon Schwarzschild, Gail Heriot

SMU Law Review

This Article traces the legal path to the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina (2023), from the famous Bakke case in 1978 to the Grutter decision twenty-five years later. It reviews the shifting fortunes of the “diversity” rationale for racial preferences in higher education and assesses the widening—rather than narrowing—gulf between the Court’s majority and the dissenting Justices on the issue of racial preferences.

After half a century of closely contested Supreme Court decisions, some of them seeming to point in opposing directions, others relying on fragmented pluralities among the …

Why Broker Novel Concepts Into Economic Sociology? Transcending The New Economic Sociology, Aaron Z. Pitluck

Faculty Publications – Sociology and Anthropology

This Current Sociology Monograph draws together six articles that broker novel concepts into economic sociology. To orient this enterprise, this article examines the concepts of creativity and novelty in social theory and explains why it is challenging work to broker concepts across intellectual communities. To understand the existing boundaries across which one could broker, it next describes how the subfield of economic sociology has been shaped by the separation of economics and sociology as distinct fields, which ultimately led to a decline of sociologists studying the economy. Two counter-acting organizational forces that sought to institutionalize a subfield of economic sociology …

The Art Of Re-Presenting : Power And Agency For Black Women Amid Trauma, Oppression And Everyday Life, Diane Carol Vermette

Wayne State University Theses

In this thesis, the work and lives of seven Black American women artists who created artwork in the twentieth century are explored to discover how they have used their work to represent Black women in America. Using four critical concepts: Double Consciousness, First, Second, and Third Wave Feminism, Black Feminist Thought, and Intersectionality, several critical questions are answered in order to discover the historical and social context in which they worked and how this affected their ability to reflect the lives, struggles, hopes, and identities of themselves and other Black women. Using the word re-presenting as a signifier of how …

Digital Art In A High School Art Classroom: Entanglements And Becomings, Nicholas Garrison Leonard

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism can expand understandings of cognition and creativity in the digital art high school classroom. Increasing advancements in digital technologies are presenting ontological and epistemological questions regarding the nature of cognition and creativity which current dominant approaches to art education are ill-equipped to address. Furthermore, over the past decade, the field of art education has called for an increased need in research addressing digital artmaking technologies. Since art education pedagogy in the United States has an established history of being inflected by popular theories of the …

Ivermectin Mda For Malaria Control And Plasmodium Species Diversity In Burkina Faso, Julia Ellman

Public Health Theses

Malaria is a major cause of mortality globally, but particularly in Africa and among children. As the growth of drug resistance threatens current malaria control and treatment strategies, novel interventions are needed to combat the recent increase in cases. Ivermectin is an endectocide that has been historically used to treat neglected tropical parasitic diseases through mass drug administration (MDA). Recently, it has been demonstrated to have a lethal effect on mosquitos, suggesting its potential as a valuable vector control strategy. RIMDAMAL II is a cluster randomized control trial that was conducted in southwestern Burkina Faso in 2019-2020 to evaluate the …

Constructing The Birthing Body Across The 20th Century: A Thematic Analysis Of Infertility Disorders In The New England Journal Of Medicine, Nicola Davis

Public Health Theses

Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) is a medical subspecialty primarily concerned with birth care, reproduction, and gynecological health. OB/GYN practice plays a historically significant role in the treatment of infertility and reproductive disorders as cultural ideologies of fertility and motherhood have been co-constructed alongside the development of OB/GYN medical practice and knowledge. These constructs inform obstetric practice and serve as a framework for contemporary reproductive care. Modern birth care in the medical setting often reinforces a myriad of issues including stigmatization of birthing people’s bodies, over-medicalization of birth, obstetric racism, and obstetric violence. This paper focuses on the evolution of particular …

Rukeyser Biannual, No. 1 (Winter 2024), Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive

Rukeyser Biannual

No abstract provided.

Assemblages And Actor Networks In The Borderlands - The Apposition Of Reproductive Rights Along The Mexican-American Border, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

In 1971, Sarah Weddington argued Roe v. Wade as a class action on behalf of pregnant women living in Texas, many of whom, including herself had to flee the State to obtain an abortion in Mexico. In 2021, Texas enacted S. B. 8, otherwise known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which created a private cause of action for injunctive relief and statutory damages awards against any person assisting in and any physician accused of performing an abortion, thus reigniting the cross-border flows that historically have made Mexico a haven for runaway enslaved people and pregnant persons heading south to freedom. …

Climate Action Now: How To Fuel A Social Movement, Lama Lteif, Gia Nardini, Tracy Rank-Christman, Lauren Block, Melissa G. Bublitz, Jesse R. Catlin, Samantha N. N. Cross, Anne Hamby, Laura A. Peracchio

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our research develops a framework that explores how to fuel the climate movement by accelerating grassroots, community-based climate action. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, our framework identifies the psychological mechanisms that encourage and motivate people, both individually and collectively, to take climate action, thereby contributing to our understanding of how to advance social action and propel a social movement. Our climate action framework builds on: (1) individuals we describe as climate upstanders who rise up to take climate action with like-minded others, and (2) communities of climate upstanders who engage in collective action aimed at addressing the climate crisis. …

The Politics Of Naming A Field: Evolution, Controversies, And Strategies Around What We Call “Women’S Studies”, Sydney Lemire

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies M.A. Final Projects

The name “Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,” WGSS, is a name rooted in politics and the academy, evidenced by the evolution of the phrasing even in the field’s relatively short history. In an environment where WGSS is under attack from both neo-fascist policies and neo-liberal budget cuts, we must be certain to put our best, most representative foot forward. This project explores (1) the state of the field’s name today and how it has evolved, (2) why this nomenclature is unstable and contradictory, and (3) what the politics of naming reveal about the changes in the field, the challenges it …

State Governance And Less-Skilled Migrant Workers In South Korea, Weejun Park

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines the migration governance of South Korea with a focus on the immigration of less-skilled migrant workers. While geographers and broader social scientists have explored this topic, previous studies have two main foci: 1) individual immigrants and their activities; and 2) migration policy development. Despite these studies’ contribution to the scholarship, there seems to be a relative lack of interest in the South Korean state as a potentially crucial actor in governing less-skilled migrant workers. To address this gap, this dissertation draws upon (political) geography, related social sciences, and interdisciplinary fields such as border studies, migration studies, and …

Heritage Values And Community Perception : A Look Into The Historic Ruins Of Dinajpur Rajbari, Murchana Madhury, Labanya Sarker

NAKHARA (Journal of Environmental Design and Planning)

The establishment of the value and effective protection of historical ruins comprises a subject of rising interest, as evidenced by an increasing amount of research involving several disciplines. In Bangladesh, debates on the relevance of such abandoned, degraded, deformed, or empty structures—unlike other intact monuments in heritage studies—rarely take into account the attitude of the locals towards these ruins. Analyzing the case of Dinajpur Rajbari, Bangladesh, the paper intends to explore the value ascribed to historic ruins by the surrounding community. The study uses a case study approach built on Mason’s value typology, which has widely contributed to the identification …

The Racial Attitudes Of White Students At A Christian Institution, Jarad Russell

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

This phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews to understand the lived experiences and racial attitudes of White students at a Council for Christian Colleges and Universities institution as they related to Black people. The participants were asked about their past experiences with Black people, their discussions with family about race, their present understanding of terminology related to race and racism, and their desire to support racial justice in the future. Through this study, three categories of students emerged: those that had taken steps to educate themselves on matters related to race and racism, those that were just beginning to understand issues …

Digital Restlessness: Student Social Media Misuse As A Problem Of Worship, Scott Busby

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

No abstract provided.

Paideia: A Mentorship Framework For Training Aspiring Pastors To Lead In Our Changing World, David Beavis

Doctor of Leadership

There is a pastoral leadership crisis in the US. With the convergence of pastors aging out, burning out, moral derailment, or simply choosing another career outside of pastoral work, there is a great need to raise up the next generation of pastors. However, traditional institutions for training pastors (such as seminary or bible college), though important, are not sufficient in and of themselves for producing future pastors. We live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world with novel pastoral challenges perpetually emerging. But our normative pastoral training assumes a world (Christendom) that no longer exists.

What is required is …

Inquiro 12 (Front Matter), Inquiro Staff

Inquiro (undergraduate research journal)

pp. -7

Letters from the editors: https://www.uab.edu/inquiro/issues/current-issue/letter-from-the-editors

Tips From Sir Cluckerton: Effective And Fun Social Media With A Library Mascot, Allison Boswell, Laura Pitts

Research, Publications & Creative Work

In 2021, the Houston Cole Library (HCL) at Jacksonville State University (Jacksonville, AL) added a mascot to enhance social media posts, and the result has been successful. HCL’s simple low-cost mascot has consistently stimulated positive interactions between the library staff/faculty and students, community members and university officials. HCL’s library mascot has created a cult-like following that watches and comments on his adventures. This current discussion indicates how any library can create their own mascot regardless of budget restrictions and time commitments.

Preservice Eal/D Teachers’ Relational Agency During Online Paired Practicum, Hongzhi Yang, Andrew Ross

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

There is scant research on preservice English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) teachers’ paired practicums in an online context. Underpinned by Cultural Historical Activity Theory, this paper explores how preservice EAL/D teachers exercise their relational agency during online paired practicums. Data were collected from five preservice EAL/D teachers’ weekly journals written during their paired practicums and interviews after they completed their paired practicums. Following the key components of relational agency, the thematic analysis highlights the dialectical relationship between preservice teachers’ relational agency and different types of collaboration, evidenced by the formation of mutual objects, tool mediation, and shared …