Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Poverty, Literacy, And Social Transformation: An Interdisciplinary Exploration Of The Digital Divide, Amy J. Bach, Todd Wolfson, Jessica K. Crowell

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Harnessing scholarship focused on literacy and poverty, in this article we aim to complicate the common understanding of the digital divide. First, we argue that the dominant literature on the digital divide misses broader connections between technological exclusion and broader forms of economic and social exclusion. Accordingly, and following recent qualitative research on the digital divide, we believe future scholarship must examine the complicated relationships between poverty, inequality, and the digital divide and we look to poverty scholarship to understand the complicated and shifting nature of poverty. Finally, we make the case that scholars and practitioners focused on digital literacy …

Amjambo Africa! (May 2018), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

Welcome to Amjambo Africa! Welcome to Amjambo Africa! We are Maine’s free newspaper for and about New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Amjambo Africa! is here to help New Mainers thrive and to help Maine welcome and benefit from our new neighbors.

Amjambo Africa! will serve as a conduit of information for newcomers as they navigate life in Maine.

Amjambo Africa! will include background articles about Africa so those from Maine can understand why newcomers have arrived here.

Amjambo Africa! will profile successful New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa in order to give hope to those newly arrived as well as make …

Amjambo Africa! (April 2018), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

Welcome to Amjambo Africa! Welcome to Amjambo Africa! We are Maine’s free newspaper for and about New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Amjambo Africa! is here to help New Mainers thrive and to help Maine welcome and benefit from our new neighbors.

Amjambo Africa! will serve as a conduit of information for newcomers as they navigate life in Maine.

Amjambo Africa! will include background articles about Africa so those from Maine can understand why newcomers have arrived here.

Amjambo Africa! will profile successful New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa in order to give hope to those newly arrived as well as make …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Higher Education Leaders As Portrayed In The Chronicle Of Higher Education, Colette Anderson Chelf

Dissertations

Leadership represents an abstraction of human thought. While functionalist theories propose leader-centric models, contemporary leadership theories embrace a postmodern paradigm acknowledging ontological and epistemological assumptions of qualitative study. This ideology suggests a multi-dimensional model of leadership that reflects the complexity and fluidity of leadership in practice. Emergent theories explore the social construction of leadership, rather than an individual leader’s traits or behaviors. Our collective understanding of leadership is manifest in the (re)creation of leadership as exemplified in social discourse such as newspaper reporting.

The purpose of the study is to reveal socially accepted archetypes assigned to higher education leaders, as …

Egg Awareness, Hailee J. French

Agricultural Education and Communication

In 2008, Proposition 2 passed, forcing all egg producers in California to provide more room inside of cages to their laying hens. The Humane Society of the United States [HSUS] initiated this battle and won but, less than a decade later decided that still wasn’t enough room for the birds. HSUS is now pushing to have a new measure on the ballot in November 2018 forcing all egg producers in California to produce their eggs cage free.

This project will survey the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo campus to gauge the campus’s understanding of egg production in California. …

On Elemental Phenomenology: Sallis And Dzogchen Buddhism, Schwartz, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

John Sallis’ volumes on the Force of the Imagination (2000) and Logic of the Imagination (2012) constitute, in the field of contemporary Continental thought, a novel philosophical view of the elementals. Tibetan Buddhism has a more than a thousand-year old tradition of teaching about and practicing with the elements. This study is a preliminary exploration of the cross-currents of these two elemental teachings.

Uncovering The Lost Knowledge Of The Imagination In Films, Seda, Daniel A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Films have forever changed the way in which humans perceive reality and have provided significant opportunities to spread knowledge in ways that are both entertaining and deceptive. Uncovering the lost knowledge of the imagination shifts an individual’s perceptions of a shared experience and exposes film’s persuasive power to penetrate the psyche. This paper explores the constitutions of reality and how humans are able to tap into other realms of consciousness through mediums of creative expression. Topics such as the origins of life, the hidden knowledge of secret societies, and the burgeoning full disclosure movement for truth are discussed as a …

The Relationship Between Memorable Messages And Identity Construction, Raphaela P. Barros Campbell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A qualitative analysis is reported here, in which 22 international students were interviewed about their overall experiences studying abroad, as well as memorable messages received and the context in which those were communicated. Scholars like Larson and Gill (2017) and Alvesson (2010) have focused on the role communication plays in constructing identity. With that in mind, Knapp et al.’s (1981) concept of memorable messages informs how specific messages influence individuals’ sense of who they are. This study expands knowledge on the relationship between memorable messages and international students’ identity construction, focusing on the impact of messages exchanged before and during …

Residential Solar In Washington State, Sam Pfeifer

All Master's Theses

Electricity generated through residential solar provides a low carbon source of electricity. However, diffusion of residential solar remains low across the United States. Growing this diffusion takes an understanding of localized uptake trends, which can focus policy and business efforts to help increase residential solar market penetration. This is the first research to investigate residential solar uptake in Washington State and to examine environmental education as a potential driver of residential solar uptake. Through a snapshot analysis which considers environmental, economic, education, and cultural variables the present research fills this gap. Triangulated results include mapping of variables, ordinary-least squares multiple …

Relational Storytelling And Critical Reflections On Difference, Laura Russell

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This essay explores unique practices for teaching relational ethics through storytelling. Drawing from my experiences teaching an advanced undergraduate Narrative Ethics seminar, I explain how my students responded to a storytelling unit through which they examined their values and storytelling ethics. I interweave observations from my teaching with insights gathered from my students’ in-class discussions and written reflections to demonstrate the pedagogical aims, outcomes, and challenges encountered when engaging this material. I focus particularly on offering suggestions for encouraging students to (a) embrace limits to their understandings of others and (b) recognize how listening for, and expressing, difference plays a …

The Use Of Zingari/Nomadi/Rom In Italian Crime Discourse, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study examines the use of the metonymies zingari/nomadi/rom [Gypsies/Nomads/Roma] in Italian media discourse, in order to critically reflect on their relation to the perception of Roma. The author analyses the frequency of these terms in general discourse and crime discourse, as well as the way they are used in context. The findings reveal that nomadi and rom are used to directly and indirectly index Roma, and have a sig­nificant impact on their ethnicization and criminalization. In addition, the episodic framing of crime events, combined with the use of these metony­mies, erases the Italian government’s responsibility for the conditions of …

When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value And What We Do Not, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, I argue that the debate on free speech as pushed by the conservative right is a strategic apparatus to undermine the various diversity initiatives on college and university campuses. While supporters of the right wing extremists around the globe have pushed for various modes of exclusions (social, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and sexual), here in the United States, such exclusions are most evident in the collapse of academic freedom and the rise of civility codes as students and educators use the platform of free speech to promote various forms of injustices and exclusions. Our neoliberal college and …

Life Being An International Student In The United States: Acculturation, Culture Shock, And Identity Transformation, Lai Yan Vivyan Lam

Master's Theses

The population of international students at community colleges in the United States has increased significantly over the past decade. International students play a big role in building the cultural diversity on campus by bringing over different cultures and sharing their global perspective to the local community. However, they often face challenges adapting into American culture due to cultural differences in education system, language, lifestyle, etc. By looking into the acculturation process of international students to analyze the culture shock and cultural identity changes they experienced, this paper intends to seek ways to help this group of students to ease their …

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.

Center For Social Equity + Inclusion Action Plan, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Rosanne Somerson, Rene Watkins Payne

Center for Social Equity & Inclusion Action Plan

Art and design have far-reaching capacities for generating shared language and connecting people and communities. The creative forms we study at RISD are powerful means for conveying ideas and shaping experiences across habituated boundaries. Today we see those forms resonate more than ever before in the multilingual, culturally heterogeneous, digitally interconnected spaces around the globe. In fact, the democratization of communications media has made it possible for long marginalized voices to join and substantively transform our public discourses. The resulting body of critical knowledge has focused attention on interlocking systems of privilege and disenfranchisement entrenched throughout our social institutions, including …

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.

Music, Politics, And Sociality: Ethnic Tensions And The Performance Of Gikuyu Nationalism, Peter Njagi Mwangi

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines how some selected Gikuyu popular music propagates ethnic tensions in Kenya by promoting Gikuyu nationalism at the expense of Kenyan nationalism. This music derives its themes from the historical period of the Mau Mau armed struggle against British colonists and connects this struggle with everyday experiences of the Gikuyu people. Memory and the performance of everyday life in this music solidifies the Gikuyu community as tied to a common destiny and distances other Kenyan communities from this destiny. The music consolidates Gikuyu ethnic nationalism and authenticates the position of the community as superior and a dominant force …

Live. Tell. Resist., Angel Vazquez, Kyle Liang, Anthony Zelaya-Umanzor, Rosie Mejia, Patricia Gutierrez, Kayla Hampton, Mariacarolina Gomez, Melissa Martinez-Sanchez, Harman Brah, Victoria Arevalo, Tyra Cecilio, Dion Dang, Camila De Pierola, Noemi Fernandez Luna, Isabelle Marin, Mackenzie Mead, Jason Munoz, Daniel Penuela, Andrei Pineda, Patrick Pozon, Larissa Ramirez, Jasmine Segovia, Julien Stone Zachary, Aira Wada, Jiaxing Yu, Ariana Siordia, Jazmin Quezada

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

This edition of First-Gen Voices features the stories and work of 24 first-generation college students at multiple higher education institutions. The aim is to disseminate a story about us, for us, and consequently, the dominant cultures that have yet to learn from our power.

Dignidad, Poder, Resistencia // Dignity, Power, Resistance, Michael Munoz, Alanis Gonzalez, Tallie Spencer, Isabelle Marin, Lesly Juarez, Christopher Reynoso, Antonia Garcia, Abigail Goad, Athena Martinez, Ruth Gomez, Angel Vazquez, Jazmin Quezada, Jasmine Segovia, Jordyn Wedell, Yulisa Gonzalez, Laura Mena Hernandez, Keiri Fernandez

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

First To Go Abroad" is a partnership between the Loyola Marymount University First To Go Program, LMU Study Abroad, and the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), which seeks to increase study abroad opportunities for first-generation college students. In May 2017, fifteen first-gen students and two first-gen faculty mentors traveled together to Santiago, Dominican Republic, where they spent ten days exploring the country and learning about the local cultures, customs, and histories of the people who call the DR home.

Travel is a privilege not all students have the same access to; for some students, this trip was the first …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

Connecting Beyond The Circle: A Restorative Approach In Co-Creating A Safe Space For Social Justice Education At Utec, Nikki F. Pelonia

Capstone Collection

“Social justice is both a process and a goal. The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a community that is [co-created] to meet the members’ needs. Social justice includes a vision of a community that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure” (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007, p. 1). In the process, one is used to going straight to issues of social justice before connecting by building trusts and relationships. This Course-Linked Capstone in Training focuses on SIT Graduate Institute coursework from Training Design in Experiential Learning …

Higher Education: The Impact On Bosnian Women Who Came As Refugees To The United States, Belma Sadikovic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact college education has on Bosnian refugee women who resettled to the United States. The research findings help us better understand the effect higher education has on female students who came to the United States as refugees, their self-sufficiency and their overall integration into their new society. Using Kunz’s refugee theory and Bourdieu’s theory on social and cultural capital as a theoretical framework, the study explores socio-cultural factors that enable and constrain the ability of Bosnian women to navigate the facets of higher education, and how those factors affect their self-sufficiency and overall integration. The participants …

Media, Borders, And Citizenship: Internationalization And Social Justice In An Undergraduate Communication Program At A Public University In New England, Kristi Mientka

Capstone Collection

Higher education in the U.S. is becoming increasingly internationalized, a process which is necessitated by the global economy and the increase in communication and mobility across borders. The process of internationalization has many effects on institutions, programs, faculty, and students. It also has many purposes, among them to improve students’ future employability and to foster understanding of social issues. The communication discipline, which encompasses a variety of studies ranging from media production to interpersonal communication, has seen the effects of internationalization. Those effects are evident in evolving curriculum and pedagogy that reflect the shifting dynamics of the media landscape and …