Digital Commons Network^™

Femo Loquens: Gendered Memory, Afrosofian Thought, And The Speaking Woman In Present-Day Burkina Faso, Diweng Mercy Dafong

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

In order to analyze how female Burkinabè writers and filmmakers contribute to the decolonial endeavor of recovering knowledge, voice, and historical agency following colonial disruption, this paper introduces the idea of femo loquens, a gendered extension of homo loquens as theorized by François Ngoa Kodena. I contend that fiction makers like Apolline Traoré in her movie Sira, Monique Ilboudo in her novel Carrefour des veuves, and Roukiata Ouedraogo in herr novel Le petit mari serve as sofian thinkers whose artistic creations interact with gendered memory and postcolonial realities, drawing on Kodena's Afrosofian philosophy, which emphasizes epistemic plurality, cosmological rootedness, …

Contextualizing Inclusion And Connection In An Absurd World: An Analysis Of Albert Camus’ The Plague, Peter Akongfeh Akongfeh Agwu Ph.D, Peace Onwanua Ph.D., John Ogidi Acha

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Scholars have extensively analyzed Albert Camus’s The Plaque, while interpreting its narrative through existential and absurdist lenses. However, little literature is recorded on how the novel contextualizes themes of inclusion and human connection amidst an absurd world. This study addresses this gap by examining the dynamics of solidarity and shared resistance among the characters within the framework of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. The aim is to ex-ray how Camus reconciles the tension between the absurd and the human need for meaning through collective action and emotional bonds. A qualitative methodology is employed, involving a close textual analysis of the …

Cultural And Social Inclusion In Sexe Et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle Au Maroc By Leïla Slimani: A Critical Perspective, Juliet N. Elikwu Dr.

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Several published studies on Leïla Slimani's Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie sexuelle au Maroc have extensively examined the themes of sexual taboos and the challenges facing women in Moroccan society. But, limited attention has been given to her portrayal of cultural and social inclusion through the testimonies and narratives of marginalized women in academic discourse. This study seeks to analyze the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within the framework of cultural norms and patriarchal structures depicted in the work. The study draws on a qualitative methodology centered on close textual analysis. The theoretical framework integrates Michel Foucault’s concepts of power …

Closing Night, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Closing Night (2026), directed by Cody Fern.

Hollywood And The Nazis On The Eve Of War: The Case Of The Mortal Storm, Rachel Gordan

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Alexis Pogorelskin, Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).

A Poetic History: Islamic And Japanese Parallels In Film, Joshua Polanski

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of David Sander, A Poetic History: Islamic and Japanese Parallels in Film (Bloomsbury, 2026).

Cloud: Between Paris And Tehran: Kiarostami/Corbin/Lacan, Heba Arafa Abdelfattah

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Joan Copjec, Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran: Kiarostami/Corbin/Lacan (MIT Press, 2025).

Eternity, Leah R. Sisk

Journal of Religion & Film

This film review of Eternity was developed from an essay on how the film demonstrates the nature of choice, including William James's notion of a leap of faith.  The original essay was submitted for an undergraduate Philosophy and Religion class on American Pragmatism at Western Carolina University.

Nothing Is As It Should Be: Estrangement, Threshold-Crossings, And Cosmic Struggle In David Lynch’S Blue Velvet And Lost Highway, Susanne Wigorts Yngvesson

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines estrangement as a structuring existential and aesthetic principle in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Lost Highway (1997). Through close, plot-attentive readings intended to remain accessible to readers unfamiliar with Lynch, it argues that the films stage three interlocking dynamics: becoming a stranger to oneself, the fracturing of the ‘ground’ of ordinary existence, and life as a cosmic struggle in which human agency is partial and contested. Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be provides the main theological–philosophical lens, clarifying how anxiety, non-being and courage shape scenes of desire, violence and transformation. Film-theoretical work on thresholds and cinematic …

Misread Before Being Known: Race, Religion, And Institutional Non-Inquiry In Abrogation, Franklin Livingston

Journal of Religion & Film

Institutions often arrive at certainty before they arrive at knowledge. This article names that mechanism institutional non-inquiry — the organizational habit through which visual and cultural assumptions substitute for direct verification, allowing identity classifications to solidify before the subject meaningfully enters the encounter. Unlike prejudice, racialization, or established theories of pre-reflexive social perception, institutional non-inquiry isolates the organizational encounter itself as the specific procedural moment at which collective interpretive habits make inquiry feel unnecessary. Examining Abrogation (2024), a micro-budget American independent feature following Daud Khan, a Brown Pakistani-American infectious disease specialist whose movement through evangelical, civic, and federal institutions repeatedly …

Moving On: Purgatorial Seriality And Unanswered Prayer In Lost’S “Ab Aeterno”, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

“Ab Aeterno” (Lost, 6.09) distills the series’ religious logic with unusual explicitness by staging theodicy not as doctrine but as narrative procedure. This article argues that the episode converts Catholic sacramental form (confession, absolution, and penitential address) into a serial ethics of endurance in which closure is structurally deferred. Richard Alpert’s confession establishes a subject who seeks an authorized word that would stabilize suffering, yet the priest’s refusal (“I can’t”) installs a theology of unanswered prayer that becomes the template for Richard’s long durée of waiting. Jacob’s “cork” parable then supplies a katechontic justification of restraint: evil is not abolished …

Between Icon And State: Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

Remembering the 80th anniversary of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Иван Грозный (Ivan the Terrible, 1944/1945), it is crucial to re-examine Eisenstein’s work, including his last film that became an unintentional ‘testament’ to cinema. Eisenstein’s mastery has been pivotal for understanding cinema and film language, the way this language operates, constructs and deconstructs and communicates historical realities. This paper focuses on a film that was made in two parts, Part I in 1944 and part II in 1945, to investigate Eisenstein’s approach to the subject of history, nation and religion. The research considers how this master of cinema contemplated intricate ideas and …

A Metaphorical Passage To God: Simone Weil And Robert Bresson, V. G. Voigt Hogg Phd

Journal of Religion & Film

VOIGT HOGG_Abstract (REVISED)_Journal of Religion & Film_30 April 2026

This article contrasts the metaphysical and religious philosopher Simone Weil’s concepts of attachment and detachment with auteur director Robert Bresson’s method of subtraction. It argues for a commonality in their philosophy and cinema, that guides the reader or viewer respectively, to perceive a metaphorical passage to God through the lived experience of suffering. The article considers by what means does Weil and Bresson share a mutual commitment to understanding the state of the soul in affliction, while also acknowledging an opposition in the interpretation of detachment in relation to suicide. The …

Documenting The Ineffable: A Comparative Analysis Of Mystical Representation In Kimiavi’S The Garden Of Stones And Western Sufi Documentary, Hessam Abedini

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines how documentary film attempts to represent mystical experience through comparative analysis of Parviz Kimiavi's The Garden of Stones (1976) and American documentaries featuring Samuel Lewis, particularly Sunseed (1973). Rather than assuming terms like "sacred" or "authentic," the study grounds its analysis in empirical definitions from William James, historical scholarship by Carl Ernst and Annemarie Schimmel, and literary theory from Fatemeh Keshavarz. Through detailed examination of specific scenes—Darvish Khan hanging stones from dead trees, Lewis leading ecstatic dances—the article demonstrates how different cinematic strategies approach documentary's epistemological limits when confronting ineffable experience.

The analysis corrects historical misunderstandings about …

The Lived Experiences Of Philanthrocapitalism: Recentering Borrowers’ Experiences In Microloan Discourse, Holli Schlukebir

PNHA Review

With 1.7 billion adults worldwide alienated from traditional financial structures(Drake, 2018), increasing their access as a method of building financial mobility is increasingly dominating discourse around international development; within this philanthrocapitalist conversation is the ever-popular model of microloans. By examining recently published articles documenting women receiving microloans, this prevailing assumption of philanthrocapitalism compared to the borrowers’ testimonies collected in the case studies listed above. In examining whether microloans increase some alienated women’s income-generating activities in developing areas, the conversation is redirected to borrowers lived experiences and the contextual factors that influence economic mobility. The following analysis attempts to answer the …

On The Violence Of The Letter: Toward A Theory Of Writing, Piers Kelly

Criticism

The Violence of the Letter: Toward a Theory of Writing by Melanie McMahon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023.

There's No Vision Like Low Vision: Living With And Serving Those With Macular Degeneration And Stargardt Macular Dystrophy, Paul B. Freeman Od

Optometric Clinical Practice

Book Review: Perski T, There's No Vision Like Low Vision: Living with and Serving Those with Macular Degeneration and Stargardt Macular Dystrophy, Inicio Press, 2025. 306 pages, Paperback, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-998315-48-2, Kindle $9.99 ISBN 978–1– 998315– 49–9

Appreciation As World-Building: A Location-Based Virtual World Rendered From A User's Signed Ledger Instead Of Purchasable Cosmetics, With Location-Verified Content Creation And Read-Only Remote Visiting, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We disclose a location-based gratitude application built from geotagged user photographs. Each user's persistent virtual world, terrain and avatar, is rendered deterministically from that user's signed contribution ledger rather than furnished with purchasable cosmetic virtual goods: there is no store and no path from money to appearance, which lets a scheduled annual reset of ledger balances remain a forgiveness rather than a confiscation. Cosmetic forms unlock non-regressively on the first qualifying ledger pattern, with no display of locked items or progress, and a design-time test requires that unlockable sets not form a ranking ladder. Creating content, whether a capture or …

The Grace That Settles Nothing: Sacrifice-Witness Without Discharge — Food Image Recognition With Per-Species Lifespan Facts, A Quantity-Blind Meditation Recommendation, And A No-Balance Data Schema To Prevent Moral Licensing, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify a mindful-eating and gratitude-meditation application in which a food-image recognition model resolves a meal photograph into its source species; each species is shown individually, at species level, with its typical farmed age at harvest and its typical natural lifespan, with uncertainty stated and no total computed. The application then recommends a walking or sitting meditation in a fixed form, issued by an automated agent and never scaled to what was eaten. The data schema holds no balance, score, streak, duration or total between consumption and practice, only an append-only log of moments, so the practice cannot function as …

The Gift Operation: Forward-Only Transfer (Pay-It-Forward) As A Design Criterion Distinguishing Gift Circulation From Exchange In Peer-To-Peer Reciprocity Systems, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We disclose a design criterion for peer-to-peer gift, reciprocity and gratitude systems (pay-it-forward schemes, time banks, complementary currencies, peer-recognition ledgers): classify each transfer by where the recipient's next transfer goes. A transfer passed onward to a third party is generalized reciprocity, a gift that circulates; a transfer returned to its source in a return that settles the account is balanced reciprocity, an exchange, to be named as one. The criterion is applied to one institution's mechanisms (an earmarked, forward-only, non-withdrawable money balance; funded time together; tagged physical gratitude artifacts; gift codes; a common pool emptied on a fixed annual date), …

The Unpaid Relay: A Transfer-Only Intermediate State For Item-Level Digital Gift Vouchers, With Chain-Of-Custody Records, Donor-Identity Suppression, Role-Addressed Thanks And No Referral Compensation, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify an item-level digital gift voucher (a prepaid claim on one specific good at one merchant) with a transfer-only intermediate state. The payer directs the voucher not to a recipient but to an intermediary who cannot redeem it: the intermediary's only available operation is to pass it on, and on passing it becomes an ordinary redeemable voucher held by the recipient. Non-redeemability is enforced by the state machine rather than by policy: redeem, and any conversion to store credit or refund, is absent from that state. One record carries the chain of custody (payer, intermediary, recipient). The payer's identity …

Collective High-Intensity Physical Load And Team Performance In The Fifa U-20 World Cup Chile: Match-By-Match Analysis Of Finalists, Khalid El Mouahid, Salim Khairi, Paweł Chmura, Amine Arfaoui

Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity

Background: This study aimed to compare the physical and technical-tactical performance profiles of the two finalist teams (Argentina and Morocco) at the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2025 and to examine the relationships between individual physical loads and collective match performance. Materials and Methods: An observational comparative design was applied using official FIFA match reports. Seven matches per team were analyzed. Physical variables included total distance, distances covered in speed zones (Z3–Z5), high-speed running, sprint distance, and maximal speed, while technical-tactical variables described offensive, defensive, and collective behaviors. Between-team comparisons and correlation analyses were conducted using appropriate parametric and non-parametric procedures. …

Selected Determinants Of The Health Quality Of The Diet Of Women Practicing Aerobic Sports, Maria Gacek, Paulina Mazur-Kurach

Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity

Background: In the context of the importance of nutrition for health and exercise capacity, this study was conducted to assess selected determinants of the health quality of the diet of female athletes training in one of the gymnastics disciplines—aerobic gymnastics. Materials and methods: The study was conducted among 112 women aged 19 to 30 using several research tools, including the Beliefs and Eating Habits Questionnaire KomPAN, the Generalised Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). Statistical analyses were performed using Spearman's correlation coefficients, at a significance level of α = 0.05. Results: The median score for the …

Law School Announcements 2026-2027, Law School Announcements Editors

Announcements

• Officers and Faculty
• The Law School - History
• Programs of Instruction
• Curriculum
• Student Activities and Organizations
• Funds and Endowments

Willingness To Pilot Under Varying Weather And Tower System Conditions: Mediating Effects Of Risk, Nathan Royal Schultz

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The implementation of Remote Tower Systems (RTS) within the National Airspace System (NAS) offers potential improvements in operational efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability; however, its success depends on pilots' willingness to operate in such environments. This study examined the effects of tower system type (RTS vs. Traditional Tower Systems [TTS]) and weather conditions (visual meteorological conditions [VMC], marginal visual meteorological conditions [MVMC], and instrument meteorological conditions [IMC]) on pilots’ willingness to pilot (WTP), while also evaluating the mediating role of perceived risk (PR). Grounded in Paul Slovic’s Risk Perception Theory (RPT), this research employed a quantitative experimental design using a factorial …

Ai Student Survey 2026

AI Survey Datasets

Student survey conducted by the University of Memphis AI Pedagogy Taskforce on generative AI.

Ai Pedagogy Faculty Survey 2025 Prelim Data Results

AI Survey Datasets

Faculty survey on AI knowledge and usage conducted in 2025 by University of Memphis AI Pedagogy Taskforce.

Gardner-Webb, The Magazine 2026, Fall (Volume 61), Noel T. Manning, Gardner-Webb University

Gardner-Webb, The Magazine

Gardner-Webb, The Magazine, previously titled The Webb Magazine, focuses on alumni news and campus events from Gardner-Webb College; now Gardner-Webb University. This issue includes articles on the inauguration of President Nate Evans, the awarding of the Excellence in Teaching Award to Dr. Paula Qualls, and student/alumni accomplishments featuring Bethany Durham, Walter Medina, Andrea Hartman, Ulises Martinez-Ceballos, Carson Willoughby, Andrea Stampone, and Dr. Evan Moffitt.

Kinetiscan: Evaluating A Browser-Based Monocular System For 3d Gait Analysis, Thu Tran '29, Stephen Agyemang '28, Rueben Addison

Annual Student Research Poster Session

Gait analysis is a useful tool for early detection, diagnosis of neurological and orthopedic conditions, and rehabilitation support. The gold standard for assessment of gait requires laboratory motion capture systems. The system requires calibrated cameras, reflective markers, specialist software, and professionals to operate. For these reasons, gait analysis is expensive and inaccessible in some clinics, schools, and home settings where continuous or early monitoring would have a significant impact. KinetiScan addresses this gap with just a single ordinary camera. This browser-based system uses transformer architecture to perform 2D-to-3D mapping. When provided with distance and height entries, KinetiScan outputs the 3D …

Moral Language Analysis And The Archives Of Sexuality, Phoenix R. Crane, Calvin Mensel '27, Claire Collins '28

Annual Student Research Poster Session

This project was based primarily in Greencastle, IN, with regular research trips to Indiana University in Bloomington to conduct in-person, archival research at the Kinsey Institute. During these visits, the team explored the Institute’s scholarly collections on sexuality, particularly on subjects related to queer women’s sexuality, criminal trials, and the occult. Extensive notes were taken – recording gender issues and language patterns, specifically. Three promising collections were identified to compare – abortion trials, obscenity trials, and murder trials. Guided by Moral Foundations Theory, differences were hypothesized in how journalists’ language emphasizes the five facets of morality across the three contentious …