Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

The Teaching Of English In Lebanese Classrooms: A Critical Look At The Dominant Curricula And Practices, Nadia Bhuiyan

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

Despite proclaimed attempts at post-colonial curricula, I argue that the teaching of English in Lebanon is a pronounced example of the deep-seated perpetuation of colonial privilege vis-à-vis curricular choices. To counter this cycle of privilege, I call for the application of culturally relevant pedagogy in English classrooms as a step in the direction of liberatory curricular reform in Lebanon. Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) attempts to use students’ cultural competence in an empowering manner to help them achieve academic success. This article examines the use of the imposed curriculum in one English for Academic Purposes classroom in Lebanon, followed by the …

The Stories We Tell, Daniella Cornejo, Daniel Penuela, Stacey Leon, Audrey Ashami Hammond, Guillermo Gonzalez, Laura Mejia, Jordyn Patterson, Luisa Valle, Mirian Melendez, Nicole Hernandez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

These voices you will hear in this edition of First Gen Voices were crafted and cultivated in a summer trip to the Dominican Republic, where our writers had the opportunity to workshop and reflect on their experiences being first-generation. The purpose? To share their work, mind, and feelings about the struggles and incredible experiences they have made. It is their strength, resilience, and love. Enjoy.

Amjambo Africa! (November 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Palaver Strings.........................Page 2

Elections ..................................Page 3

Asylum Seeker Update..........Page 3

Mainers Prepare for Winter Page 13

Namory Keita .......................Page 19

The Hobbit, Media Audiences, And The Question Of Genre, Lars Schmeink

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien is one of Britain’s, if not one of the world’s, most beloved children’s books, whereas his The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) is today considered the keystone text of the modern fantasy genre. Similarly Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has become the defining fantasy film, setting new standards for fantasy to become a mainstream cinematic genre. Based on data collected by the largest audience study to date, the World Hobbit Project, this article argues that the success of Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is thus linked to its …

Modern Intolerance And The Medieval Crusades [Excerpted From Whose Middle Ages?], Nicholas L. Paul

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the non-specialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where humans have dug for meaning into the medieval past and brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author teases out the stakes of a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy …

Amjambo Africa! (October 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This issue...

Lewiston ..................................Page 2

Mana Abdi

Lewiston High School

Lewiston Adult Education

African Gala.............................Page 9

Candidates Talk Issues ...Page 10/11

Escuchando Y Enseñando: Un Proyecto De Investigación-Acción Participativa Sobre El Tema De Radio Con Los Estudiantes Del Centro Calpulli, Delaney Zuver

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto de investigación-acción participativa examina mis experiencias produciendo radio con los estudiantes de Centro Calpulli en Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca. Durante un período de cinco semanas, participé en diez sesiones donde mis suposiciones sobre mi papel como una participante en la organización fue desafiado. A través de reflexiones y un análisis de mis notas de campo, pude entender que al utilizar pedagogías liberadoras y una alfabetización mediática como la define Hoeschsmann y Poyntz (2012), podría equilibrar muchas de las suposiciones de la organización y los principios de investigación-acción. Basado en mi experiencia y análisis, ofrezco sugerencias a la organización …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Women Representation In Lyric Of Minang Song “Laki Den Hobi Baburu”, Tantri Puspita Yazid, Asep Suryana, Dadang Sugiana, Neni Yulianita

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research focuses on women representation in lyric of Minang song titled “laki den hobi baburu” popularized by Elly Kasim. The assumption of this research is that the song’s lyric reconstructing Minang women based on patriarchy ideology, where women are marginalized because of having husband whose willing to hunt boars. Moreover, to analyze the phenomenon above this research used Sara Mills critical discourse analysis method which covers macro, micro and representation in the text. However, researcher only focus on micro level analysis. This is a qualitative research which data were acquired by focus group discussion and library research. This song …

Vinyl As Event: Record Store Day And The Value-Vibrant Matter Nexus, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Why would anyone purchase expensive, natural resource-intensive, and seemingly obsolete material carriers of music when streaming providers provide unlimited access to over 40 million songs for a small monthly fee? As I will show, we can no longer assume that contemporary interest is driven solely by a collector’s market or because of the audible qualities of the vinyl listening experience, and must attend to the many ways people engage with record objects today – and by extension, the vinyl record as an ontological multiple. Through an analysis of Record Store Day 2015 and affiliated phenomena including YouTube unboxing videos, other …

Amjambo Africa! (September 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue... Maine’s Way of Life................Page 9

ILAP Statement ....................Page 16

The Prison-Televisual Complex, Allison Page, Laurie Ouellette

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In 2016, the A&E cable network partnered with the Clark County Jail in Jeffersonville, Indiana, to incarcerate seven volunteers as undercover prisoners for two months. This article takes the reality television franchise 60 Days In as a case study for analyzing the convergence of prison and television, and the rise of what we call the prison-televisual complex in the United States, which denotes the imbrication of the prison system with the television industry, not simply television as an ideological apparatus. 60 Days In represents an entanglement between punishment and the culture industries, whereby carceral logics flow into the business and …

Infinity Wars: Post 9/11 Superhero Films And American Empire, Peter J. Bruno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last two decades, superhero films have accounted for some of the most popular and financially lucrative films of all time. This thesis analyzes some of the aesthetic and ideological dimensions of various superhero films following their post 9/11 boom. Beginning with America’s response to the events of 9/11 and a subsequent retreat into a Manichean world of good versus evil, I introduce the term “empirical reality” in order to account for the ways daily American life is shielded from the worst effects of U.S. foreign policy. On screen this manifests by perpetuating the myth of the “clean war” …

Measuring Media Literacy Inquiry In Higher Education: Innovation In Assessment, Evelien Schilder, Theresa Redmond

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The ability to critically access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages is crucial in the process of becoming an informed and engaged citizen throughout life. Asking critical questions is not only a valuable dimension of media literacy, but also an indispensable aspect of participating in a democracy. Yet, measuring the effectiveness of media literacy is still a major challenge for the field. It is unclear to what extent people of all ages may engage in critical questioning habits with regards to media. To address this gap, we studied the changes in critical questioning habits for college-aged students enrolled in media …

The Media, Education, And The State: Arts-Based Research And A Marxist Analysis Of The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Meng Zhao

Education (PhD) Dissertations

By 2019, the Syrian civil war has lasted for nearly eight years and it has created the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII (Achlume, 2015). Using the siege of Aleppo in 2016 as a case study, the author applied a Marxist-humanist theoretical framework and incorporated arts-based research methodology to examine how US news media supports capitalist social relations. The research question for this study was: how do the US media depictions of the siege of Aleppo, Syria in 2016 reflect capitalist social relations? There were three sub-questions that followed: (1) Which elements of the siege of Aleppo in 2016 get the …

We Used To Be Brothers: Partition 1947, Ukasha Farooq

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

No abstract provided.

Momentum Of The Future, Daniel Affsprung

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

No abstract provided.

Amjambo Africa! (August 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Welcome Feast........................Page 8

My Life as a Refugee ............Page 11 by Veronica Kaluta

Wedding of Irene Yao & Romeo Adji....................Page 13

Black Lives Matter: Understanding Social Media And The Changing Landscape Of Social Trust, Diana Carolina Cascante

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to understand how social media is changing the landscape of social capital. Current research indicates a paradox between the growing use of mediated sources that are building social capital and low levels of social trust found in social media. People are skeptical of whether social media is trustworthy because there is no mechanism for fact-checking or verifying the information posted online. Since traces of social capital postulate social trust, it is needed to promote communal change. To understand this paradox, the Black Lives Matter movement is examined as an online platform that brings people together who have …

Archive And Repertoire Of The Esala Perahera Performance In Sri Lanka, Hashintha Jayasinghe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the archive and the repertoire of the Esala Perahera in Sri Lanka and charts the ideological and cultural implications of the performance. The archival analysis begins with the interrogation of the historical chronicles and the recorded history of the performance in the Sinhala and English texts. Thereafter, travel literature and the dissemination of cultural knowledge on the Perahera are discussed. The study of the repertoire and the photographic archive explores key performances in the Esala Perahera in 2016 and 2017. Postcolonial theory, theories on cultural anthropology, and performance theory are used to analyze the archive and the …

Program, Policy, And Culture Factors Minority Millennials Perceive As Important Within Their Workplace For Retention, Tanesha C. Watts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Millennials make up the largest segment of the current workforce. However, research about minority Millennials and their needs are relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to find out what minority Millennials deemed important within an organization’s culture and the policies and programs that would persuade them to remain with the company. Purposeful sampling was used to identify participants for this study. Participants met the criterion of a Millennial by age, identified as a minority, currently worked at an organization with 50 or more employees in an office location and had worked for their current employer for one year …

Amjambo Africa! (July 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Racial Inequality.....................Page 7

Welcome Table ......................Page 9

Art in Exodus ..........................Page 9

Alliance Française.................Page 13

Media Discourses That Normalize Colonial Relations: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of (Im)Migrants And Refugees, Meng Zhao, Jorge Rodriguez, Lilia D. Monzó

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The im(migration) and refugee crisis that are being exacerbated under the Trump administration, is a manifestation of empire-building and the long history of colonization of the Global South. A Marxist-humanist perspective recognizes these as consistent aspects of a clearly racist global capitalism that functions in the interest of multibillion dollar U.S.–based corporations and increasingly transnational corporations. Trade agreements, international economic policy, political intervention, invasion or the threat of these, often secure corporate interests in specific countries and regions. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the discourses around Mexican, Central American, and Syrian im(migrants) and refugees as examples of …

The Fear And Biopolitical Control Of The ‘Terrorist Other’, Percy Percy Sherwood

Western Research Forum

“I think Islam hates us,” Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in a CNN interview in March 2016, conflating the religion with ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Trump’s statement exemplifies the prevailing fabricated enemy and resulting Islamophobia in the context of the ‘global war on terror.’ Since 9/11, powerful actors are using abstractions, ideologies, and narratives—that are usually defined along racial lines—to conjure up a fear so permeable that it serves to legitimize massive levels of violence in the name of self-righteousness. How do the racist abstractions, ideologies, and narratives that are associated with Islam and Muslims produce fear and insecurity …

Amjambo Africa! (June 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Furniture Friends....................Page 2

ProsperityME..........................Page 2

Re-Constructing “China” In A Transnational Context, Zheng Zhu

Publications and Research

This study critically examines two Chinese newspapers’ representation of China as a “nation” and “culture.” Prior studies have deeply and broadly explored various ways through which China, Chinese culture, and nationalism were constructed in popular media forums. What has been missing is a continued exploration of these constructions offered by the Chinese media sources that are published outside the dominant Chinese cultural, national, and political contexts. Using World Journal and Sing Tao Daily, two major Chinese immigrant newspapers, as the texts for analysis, this study produces important findings that demonstrate how China is constructed as a contested, multi-layered, powerful, …

The Affective Politics Of Twitter, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Given the increasing encroachment of Twitter into offline experience, it has become necessary to look beyond the formation of identity in online spaces to the ways in which identities surface through the formation of affective communities organized through the use of technocultural assemblages, or the platforms, algorithms, and digital networks through which affect circulates in an online space. This essay focuses on the microblogging website Twitter as one such technocultural assemblage whose hashtag functionality allows for the circulation of affect among bodies which “surface” within the affective communities organized on Twitter through their alignment with and orientation by hashtags which …

Rethinking Algorithmic Bias Through Phenomenology And Pragmatism, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

In 2017, Amazon discontinued an attempt at developing a hiring algorithm which would enable the company to streamline its hiring processes due to apparent gender discrimination. Specifically, the algorithm, trained on over a decade’s worth of resumes submitted to Amazon, learned to penalize applications that contained references to women, that indicated graduation from all women’s colleges, or otherwise indicated that an applicant was not male. Amazon’s algorithm took up the history of Amazon’s applicant pool and integrated it into its present “problematic situation,” for the purposes of future action. Consequently, Amazon declared the project a failure: even after attempting to …

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of public policy. Posthumanism is an historical and cultural situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on Rosi Braidotti’s critical posthumanism and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the use of human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis leads to identifying a set of risks posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, specifically …

Difference Between Algorithmic Processing And The Process Of Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), Domenico Schneider

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The following article compares the temporality of the life-world with the digital processing. The temporality of the life-world is determined to be stretched and spontaneous. The temporality of the digital is given by discrete step-by-step points of time. Most ethical issues can be traced back to a mismatch of these two ways of processing. This creates a foundation for the ethics of the digital processing. Methodologically, phenomenological considerations are merged with media-philosophical considerations in the article.