Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Communicative Solutions To The United States' Political Polarization, Codey Albers

Honors Projects

In 2016, political polarization in the United States reached levels unprecedented in the last three decades. This paper analyzes over thirty sources in an attempt to explore the extent to which the political divide exists in the US, to discover some possible reasons for the severe polarization, and to offer a list of possible solutions to the problem, solutions that everyday citizens can enact to contribute to a more open, discursive, and respectful society where all views can be heard, respected, and where democracy can thrive. Using a critical communication approach, this paper explains complex communication theory using language accessible …

Learning To Pray The Lord’S Prayer For Spiritual Transformation At Tachikawa Church Of Christ, Naoyoshi Fukushima

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis describes a project to lead the members of Tachikawa Church of Christ to learn and experience the power and blessings of praying the Lord’s Prayer for spiritual edification and maturity. The program consisted of eight weeks of learning the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer and doing spiritual exercises. To provide a theological foundation for this project, I delivered eight sermons on the Lord’s Prayer with strong emphasis on the relational nature of the prayer.

Those who engaged in the spiritual exercises were given opportunities to experience joy, peace, and correction as they tried to live in harmony …

Three Generations Of Southern Food And Culture, Margaux E. Novak

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

n/a

With Liberty And Justice For All, Analisa Goodmann

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

n/a

Parallels Between The U.S. And Russia: The Trump Administration, Andrew S. Langmeier

International ResearchScape Journal

Russia has come up repeatedly in discussions of Donald Trump and the current U.S. administration. In time for the 100^th anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution, this paper aims to describe the importance and interconnectedness of image, information, hegemony, and power by exploring connections between the U.S. and Russia. An interdisciplinary approach drawing from fields such as cultural studies, linguistics, and anthropology will be applied to selected events and actions of the Trump administration. This study provides a method of framing US political events against Russian history and contemporary reality.

The American Pickers Demonstrates Communication Skills, Jeffrey Brand

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity prepares students to identify persuasive communication practices in non-classroom environments and to view reality-based television programs as a learning platform for understanding communication theories and concepts. Using selected scenes or an entire episode from a popular reality-television program, American Pickers, students can observe how Mike and Frank establish a rapport with new customers, get to know them and their stories, negotiate sales, interact with each other as a team, and leave with a new relationship (client) and connection intact. The purpose of this exercise is to help students observe these initial contacts and relationships as they develop on …

Men’S Rights Activists And The Ray Rice Domestic-Violence Case: Using Critical Communication Pedagogy To Counter Hegemonic Masculinity, David H. Kahl

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Some groups in society communicate in ways that attempt to marginalize others. One such group is the Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) who use language to attempt to normalize the subjugation of women through its rejection of feminism. This activity is designed to engage students in a dialogue about MRA’s response to the domestic-violence incident involving Baltimore Ravens’ running back Ray Rice and his fiancé, Janay Palmer, in a hotel elevator. Specifically, the activity allows students to learn about MRA members and their hegemonic ideology, to examine/view the domestic-violence incident, and to use critical-communication pedagogy (CCP) as a means to examine …

"I Don't Always Look At Memes, But When I Do, It's For A Class": Using Memes To Demonstrate Language Rules, Jocelyn M. Degroot, Hannah Coy

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity uses Internet memes to demonstrate the pervasiveness of language rules and culture’s effect on language in online culture. Numerous introductory communication courses include a discussion on verbal communication that focuses on language rules and the effects of culture on verbal communication. The most relevant language rules for memes are the regulative rules that guide action and how we use language (Cronen, Pearce, & Harris, 1979). In this exercise, students analyze and evaluate language rules present in popular online memes. The students identify the language rule utilized in each of a pre-chosen set of Internet memes and generate at …

Speaking Of Genocide: Double Binds And Political Discourse, Benjamin Meiches

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Genocide scholars have always argued over the best definition of genocide. However, recent genocide studies have begun to emphasize both the ‘contestable’ nature of genocide and, paradoxically, call for clear or rigid definitions of the term. This article evaluates this tension by examining the act of defining genocide as a type of epistemological practice. Placing the act of definition in the context of a complex socio-linguistic system, the article shows how genocide discourse is subject to a variety of demands and pressures. These pressures, internal to genocide discourse, inadvertently promote restrictive and paradoxical formulations of the concept. To illustrate this …

Leftist Militant Songs And War Of Position In Lebanon (1975-1977), Mohamad J. Hodeib

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay looks at the emergence of a generation of leftist militant songwriters against the backdrop of a revolutionary moment that influenced political and cultural landscapes in Beirut during the 1970s. After the Arab military defeat against Israel in 1967, the conjuncture of the Lebanese and Palestinian revolutionary movements in Lebanon fostered a revolutionary moment that manifested itself on different levels, including art and cultural expression. I look at the development of leftist militant songs, a genre, attitude, and approach to song production and performance that came to be at the intersection of radical theatre, poetry, and music. Productions by …

Brüno Is So Gay, Thomas Duering

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Few comedians are as willing to confront American culture‟s greatest taboos for the sake of a joke as Sacha Baron Cohen. Baron Cohen originally gained popularity in America with his adorably ignorant and bumbling character, Borat. According to Biography.com, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a surprise smash, bringing in more than $128 million at the box office”. Because of Borat‟s success, Baron Cohen is now known for a unique style of filmmaking in which his characters present themselves to people under false premises in an attempt to catch funny reactions on …

The Medical Student Manifesto, Ye Kyung Song

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Under neoliberal education systems, medical students are unable to critically engage and develop a critical consciousness because they are forced to master standardized test-taking skills and memorize medical minutiae. As insider-outsiders, medical humanists and bioethicists can shed light on the culture and power dynamics inherent in medical education. Furthermore, the medical humanities could teach medical students to critically reflect on their own human values, and to become ethical and humanistic physicians in the face of the hierarchical culture of biomedicine and neoliberal university administrations. Medical educators, through critical pedagogy, can liberate the medical student and create the potential for changing …

“On Your Feet!”: Addressing Ableism In Theatre Of The Oppressed Facilitation, Caitlin E. Ray

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed workshops strive to be inclusive and democratic; however, the facilitation of such workshops may actually limit inclusiveness when facilitators assume a certain level of physical ability in its participants. By considering disability scholarship and Universal Design pedagogy, I introduce specific ways in which facilitators can be more inclusive to the diversity of bodies in our workshops. I also include an example Image Theatre activity that applies my disability-conscious suggestions.

Social Movement Literacy: A Conceptual Overview, Jason Del Gandio

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

This article provides a conceptual overview of social movement literacy (SML). The purpose of SML is to help the general public become more proficient at reading and understanding the nature and function of social movements. Social movements are invaluable contributors to our collective lives, but very few people—outside of activists and specialized academics—consciously educate themselves about movement activity. SML is envisioned as an interdisciplinary, public pedagogy endeavor that brings together both scholars and activists in the attempt to establish core skills and knowledges that enable people to recognize, discuss, perhaps participate in and, if need be, intelligently critique the ideologies, …

Poetry Slammin’ In The Slammer: Questioning The Limits Of Arts-In-Corrections, Rivka Rocchio

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Through the process of creating—specifically of shaping new worlds of possibility through poetry and the performance of it—the arts may offer gaps in the punishment of incarceration and attempt the reclamation or claiming of individual expression. But what are the limits of artistic expression in a highly monitored and surveilled location? This reflective essay explores a performance of slam poetry by ten inmates inside Arizona's Eyman State Prison for an audience of twenty-five prisoners. Using Keoni Watson’s winning poem as a frame, Rocchio questions the reported impacts of the slam and the larger culpability of arts-in-corrections in simultaneously supporting and …

Prison Is Not…But It Can Be…, Keoni K. Watson

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

This poem is a clarion call to action to confront our perceptions about what prison is and what it can be. The poem asks the reader to explore how they experience the “prison industrial complex” in their own lives, and how they might shift their views through perspective-taking to create a more holistically integrative prison experience for themselves and others. The value of the poem lay within the context in which it was created: written by person-first prison inmate Keoni Watson—during a three month performative workshop facilitated by Rivka Roccio at an Arizona State Penitentiary—to be performed as a spoken …

“I’M Not Talking To You” “You Don’T Have To!” Trans/Scripting The Bland-Encinia Case, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

This manifesto and trans/scription is a response to the specific violence that occurred between a Black female driver (Sandra Bland) and a white police officer (Brian Encinia) in Texas in July 2015 which resulted in Bland’s death. As an urgent #BlackLivesMatter concern, the author considers post-structuralist theories of identity and trans/scription as resources to inform identity performance and trans/imagination with more opportunities for life-giving rather than life-taking results. The author provides a series of questions and challenges to Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners for trans/scripting and trans/imaging moments of racial discrimination and terrorism for long-term rehearsal into, through, and beyond …

Setting The Stage For Black Choice: Theatre Of The Oppressed As Container For Resistance, Black Joy, Quenna L. Barrett

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

This reflective essay utilizes examples of a Theatre of the Oppressed-based program with high school teens on Chicago’s South Side to illustrate how those teens use the program to express black joy as a resistance to: 1) the negative and incomplete narrative that is often told about black teens, and 2) the issues and conversations of race, police, and violence that are often experienced and ever-present. It also illustrates how those same teens, and myself as a facilitator, struggle with finding solutions to such issues in our TO work.

Desert Pool {If Every Desert Was Once A Sea}, Karen Miranda Abel

The Goose

Desert Pool {If every desert was once a sea} is a site-specific art project by Canadian artist Karen Miranda Abel completed in 2016 while artist-in-residence at Joya: arte + ecología, an arts-led research centre situated in an alpine desert within a national park in southern Spain. The elemental installation represents an envisioning of the ancient sea that occupied the Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park millions of years before the current desert ecology, a time when its highest mountain peaks may have been islands.

Wilderness On The Page, John Steffler

The Goose

This essay explores the role that literature can play in a rethinking of Western culture's relationship with the natural environment.

Review Of A Companion To The Works Of Kim Scott By Belinda Wheeler (Ed.), Jose-Carlos Redondo-Olmedilla

The Goose

A review on the book A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott edited by Belinda Wheeler.

Caption This: Police In Pussyhats, White Ladies, And Carceral Psychology Under Trump, Alison R. Reed

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Literary Exposures For An Ecological Age, Christy Call

The Goose

This paper argues that exposures through literature to human fragility and vulnerability, which are default modes of life within the relational collective on-page, rehearse critical engagements for life off-page during a time of climate change.

Responding To A Racist Climate: An Editorial, Paul Huebener, Amanda M. Di Battista

The Goose

Editorial introduction to The Goose Volume 16, Issue 1 (2017).

No Time To Defend The Pre-Post-Truth World, Richard Pickard

The Goose

As much as the "post-truth" needs to be challenged and countered, the humanities can play a crucial role in keeping alive the understanding that the pre-post-truth world ought not to be conserved, but transformed positively. After all, this was a world marked by accelerating anthropogenic climate change, by ongoing and transforming colonialism, by racism as a structural pillar, by misogyny and sexism. The environmental humanities must retain their historic radical mission, and they will founder if they surrender such a potential.

Defending Truths, Restoring Worlds, Bart H. Welling

The Goose

The "post" in "post-truth" is premature, and also assigns too much importance to Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump in the US. Worst of all, it can foster the impression that people like Brexit voters and Trump supporters are irredeemably exiled in "alternative fact" bubbles beyond the reach of science, rational thought, and common decency. We have to find ways to work productively with these kinds of citizens, instead of merely condemning them, if we want to trigger both a worldwide alternative energy revolution and the revolution in politics and economics that a truly just and sustainable energy transition …

What Rises Above The White Noise: The Possibility Of Hearing Truth In A Post-Truth World, Harriet Fraser, Rob Fraser

The Goose

This installation in a valley in the UK’s Lake District National Park taps into the idea of communication, the problem of apparent fact and post-truth, and which voices are being heard when it comes to standing up for the environment. In consideration of post-truth and the confusion between fact and fiction, particularly with regard to issues about environment, this art installation explores the possibility of clarity in voices that are heard above the white noise of facts, partial truths and information overload. It is a site-specific installation, created around a single tree and a rapidly flowing river in the Lake …

(Another) Battle In The Clouds, Mél Hogan

The Goose

At age ten, in 1918, Rachel Carson entered a writing contest and won. In "Battle in the Clouds", Carson wrote about the sky as a battlefield, where a soldier’s life is momentarily spared because of an act of bravery undeniable even by his enemies. They watch in awe and admiration rather than shoot. For my reimagining of the present as womb rather than grave, I reflect on the current use of the cloud in “cloud computing” to discuss the role of the internet and its material infrastructures in shaping earthly possibilities. I imagine the pace and place of awe rather …

Reading Speculative Futures In A Post-Truth World, Rachel Webb Jekanowski

The Goose

Faced with the threat of a “post-truth” world and a widening chasm of exchange between climate change deniers and environmentalists, I argue that future-orientated literary and media speculative fictions—which I term “speculative futures”—offer a means of building lines of communication across social and political divisions. This thought piece on “The Environmental Humanities in a Post-Truth World” mediates upon the potentiality of speculative futures as theory, social bridge-building, and pedagogical tool. Speculative fictions (especially those that address environmental justice, and anti-colonial and feminist politics) use storytelling and future imaginaries to challenge political falsehoods and imagine more ecological, de-colonized futures.

The Child To Come: Life After The Human Catastrophe By Rebekah Sheldon, Nathan Tebokkel

The Goose

Review of Rebekah Sheldon's The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe.