Sociology of Culture Commons^™

The Meanings Of The Hospital De San Lázaro In Seventeenth-Century Manila, Francis Galasi

Journal of Global Catholicism

The Hospital de San Lázaro was a specialized health facility in the early modern Philippines, dedicated to the care of lepers and sufferers of other contagious diseases. While it was established for this specific purpose, its role in colonial society varied. This versatility reflected the distinct priorities and commitments of the groups pulled into its orbit, as each charged San Lázaro with a unique meaning. This article explores how and why these groups—the indigenous Filipinos, the Spanish residents and the Discalced Franciscans—understood San Lázaro in their own way. It highlights the ability of fixed institutions, such as a hospital, to …

Casar Auc Community Lecture: ‘Gender-Based Violence,Women And The Law In Egypt And The Us’, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

This engaging - AUC community only - special topics lecture discussed the social challenges and legal obstacles women face when discussing gender based violence crimes in Egypt shedding a comparative light on the US given the recent election results.

This event hosted Counselor Mohamed Samir Ahmed, Spokesperson of the Administrative Prosecution Authority (APA) in Egypt, Independent Lecturer in Political Science & Gender Based Violence Crimes.

The event was moderated by CASAR Assistant to Director & Adjunct Faculty Yasmeen El-Ghazaly.

This lecture was a collaboration between The Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR AUC EGYPT ) and the …

Literature Review: Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Fraternity And Sorority Life, Payten Madlem-Easterday

Bakerman Student Research Awards

No abstract provided.

Partisan Prejudice: The Role Of Beliefs About The Unchanging Nature Of Ideology And Partisans, Crystal L. Hoyt, Jeni L. Burnette, Meghan Moore

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Although there is a tendency to think all forms of essentialism—the belief that characteristics are inherent and unchangeable—are similar, some theories suggest different foundations and outcomes. We investigated if belief systems about the stability of political ideology (trait essentialism) and the fundamental nature of partisans (social essentialism) predict prejudice in opposite ways and if they do so via differential relations with blame. Across six studies (N = 2,231), we found that the more people believe the trait of political ideology is fixed (trait essentialism), the more they think that Republicans and Democrats are inherently different (social essentialism). Crucially, despite …

Transformación De La Sociedad Saharaui: Evolución Histórica Y Reorganización Social, Mustapha Ouzir

Journal of Maya Heritage

Este artículo analiza la evolución histórica y los cambios sociales en la región sahariana, desde Oued Nun hasta el río Senegal, destacando el impacto de la llegada de las tribus Banu Hassan sobre la población autóctona amazigh Sanhaja. Se exploran los cambios en la estructura social, caracterizados por una nueva jerarquía étnica y tribal. Además, se examina la influencia de la colonización española en la transformación de la sociedad saharaui, que pasó de un estilo de vida nómada a uno más sedentario. El estudio destaca el proceso de sedentarización y los cambios socioculturales resultantes, como la alteración de roles familiares …

Teaching The Grateful Dead, Happenings, & Spontaneous Pedagogy, Ryan Slesinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

To teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly studentcentered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that …

Tendencias Fonéticas Y Aspectos Gramaticales Del Español Hablado En El Sáhara, Mustapha Ouzir

Journal of Maya Heritage

Este estudio analiza las tendencias fonéticas y los aspectos morfosintácticos del español hablado en el Sáhara, una región marcada por su historia colonial como territorio español. Mediante una metodología cualitativa, que incluye observación libre, conversaciones grupales y pruebas fonológicas, se investigan las características lingüísticas de los hablantes saharauis, cuya lengua materna es el hassanía. Los hallazgos revelan una interferencia fonética significativa, como la neutralización vocálica, la reducción de diptongos y la influencia del español canario. También se identifican desviaciones morfosintácticas respecto al español estándar, incluyendo problemas de concordancia gramatical, tiempos verbales y uso de preposiciones. Estos fenómenos reflejan el impacto …

Halfies, Half-Written Letters, And One-Eyed Gods: Connecting The Dots Of Communicative Cultures, Gregory Stephens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay distills the theory of communicative cultures as a tool for cultural analysis. Nadine Gordimer’s line about the difficulties of returning to “half-written letters” is used to frame anthropology’s critique of “bounded culture” or “container cultures,” predominat in Cultural Studies. Anthropologists Lila Abu-Lughod and Kirin Narayan have described “halfies” as in-between peoples who can help us understand fluid, processual cultures as normative. Building on this stance, and the work of rhetorical genre scholars, Stephens defines communicative cultures as “a set of shared commitments expressed through cultural means.” This approach to cultural analysis, in which literature is viewed as an …

Pop Culture And Politics: Engaging Students In American Government Through Art, Music, And Film, Laura Merrifield Wilson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Strategically and thoughtfully employing popular culture in teaching political science can enable students to better understand, analyze, and relate to the material. In a discipline that can be viewed by students as too boring, too distant, and too polarizing, the use of relevant music, TV/film clips, toys, memes, and other popular culture artifacts can engage otherwise unengaged students in a meaningful way. This paper argues that using popular culture in teaching political science can demonstrate relevance, serve as a generational translator, expose the bias of experience, and enable an expression of self. In demonstrating relevance, popular culture makes material fresh …

Unmasking Male Voices In Woman Hollering Creek: Contributions To Pedagogy And Masculinity Studies, Ramón Javier Guerra, Joan Latchaw

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In teaching Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek to undergraduates, we have developed a sociocultural and historical framework, beginning with the theoretical work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands and the concept of transfrontera feminism. With incidents of seduction and sexual abuse of women, spousal abuse, and patriarchal family structures, the collection of stories strongly indicates the oppressive representation of machismo. Scholars and teachers have drawn important critiques of Cisneros’s work based on destructive sociocultural forces on women. However, in rereading the text with an intended focus on the representations of male characters, we have surmised that Cisneros structured the stories in the …

Finding The Sacred In The Profane: The Mardi Gras In Basile, Louisiana, Luc Guglielmi

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In Basile, a small community in Southwest Louisiana, there would not be any Mardi Gras without Ash Wednesday and vice-versa. Most of the people in Basile speak of Ash Wednesday when defining the Mardi Gras as there is a reciprocal spiritual relationship between Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday. The people from Basile, therefore, in giving equal spiritual value to these two feasts, assign a liturgical value to Mardi Gras because they need, and will admit this freely, to have a good Mardi Gras in order to enter into the sacred season of Lent.

Mardi Gras performs a function that is …

The Batman Comes To Class: Popular Culture As A Tool For Addressing Reflexive Pain, Kyle A. Hammonds, Karen Anderson-Lain

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In this essay, a case study approach is used to examine ways in which comics and graphic narratives can be used to provide a context within which undergraduate students may theorize about culture. The authors employed Batman: Year One as an organizing narrative for students to theorize about culture and communication. Specifically, students were challenged to (1) understand applications of communication theory in the context of graphic narrative, (2) use graphic narrative as a space for theorizing about communication and culture outside of comics, (3) utilize narrative theory to extrapolate meaning from complex, multi-modal forms of communication. While this …

Zombie Literature: Analyzing The Fear Of The Unknown Through Popular Culture, T. Hnter Strickland

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper will focus on how the rise in popularity of zombie literature in the 21st century is reflective of a western cultural need to address the fear of the unknown through popular culture. Through the flesh-eating zombie, we enter a parallel world where everything familiar in our communities becomes evil. The genre reflects the fear in Western society of the neighbor who has turned against you, survival in the midst of government collapse, and the monster within. Zombie fantasy literature allows society a venue to deconstruct what is known while dealing with these fears and the unbridled hate of …

“No Te Voy A Dejar Nunca”: Culture And Second Language Acquisition For Survival In Fear The Walking Dead, Sharon M. Nuruddin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Popular culture reinforces and shapes the beliefs and values of the individual, the community, and the masses. It can also transmit hidden messages about aspects of human behavior that are reiterated in scholarly research. In the field of education, particularly in world language teacher education, film and television can be used as an effective tool for examining how we acquire a second language. Using a symbolic convergence theory perspective (SCT) (Bormann, 1972), I employ Sellnow’s (2014) three-step process for the rhetorical analyses of mediated popular culture texts to reveal “covert messages” (p. 9) within the popular American Movie Channel (AMC) …

Studying Silence In Popular Culture, Kathy Merlock Jackson, Terry Lindvall

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explains the impetus for and execution of a team-taught, interdisciplinary class in silence using popular culture materials and practices, such as silent film, music, meditation, and mime. The course identifies individuals as possessing characteristics of introversion and extraversion and explores the role of silence in the modern world, incorporating the following: (1) Foundations for the Study of Silence, (2) The History of Silence, (3) The Role of Silence in Spirituality, Creativity and Reflection, (4) Silence in Communication Study, (5) Silent Film and Silence in Film, (6) The Role of Silence in a Highly Technological, Mediated World, and (7) …

Girls, Guns, And Zombies: Five Dimensions Of Teaching And Learning In The Walking Dead, Anthony Neely

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rooted in sociocultural theory, this article utilizes a conceptual framework derived from Alexander, Schallert, and Reynolds’ four topographical dimensions of learning: who of learning, what of learning, where of learning, and when of learning. Situated learning (Lave and Wenger) is presented as a fifth dimension to address how learning occurs in communities of practice absent of formal schooling. Content analysis (Elo and Kyngass) is used to analyze a teaching and learning event from an episode of The Walking Dead based on the five topographical dimensions of learning listed above. Findings provide insights for pedagogical application for …

Community Crime And Safety: An Investigation Of Gender Differences In The Daily Stress Process, Jennifer W. Robinette, Jennifer R. Piazza, Robert S. Stawski

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Few studies have investigated the associations between community crime rates and affective well-being, and how that relationship may differ according to gender. Using data from the National Study of Daily Experiences and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the current study examined gender differences between daily affective experiences, crime rates, and perceptions of neighborhood safety. Although feeling unsafe in one's neighborhood was related to worse affective well-being (i.e., higher negative affect/lower positive affect) and larger affective responses to daily stressors, crime rates were not. Women's negative affect was more strongly tied to daily stressors, whereas men's was more strongly tied to …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Spiritual Practices Of Simplicity Among Emerging Adults, Falon Opsahl Barton

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

This article explores how emerging adults (18 to 29‐year‐olds) integrate pro‐environmental behaviors and spiritual practices of simplicity. First, this article synthesizes the research on emerging adulthood, including what it is, how they experience and express their spirituality, and their emotional and practical behaviors in response to the climate crisis. Then, this article explores how a small sample of Western Protestant emerging adults practice pro‐environmental simplicity in their daily lives. As a result of integrating spiritual practices that focus on simplicity and pro‐environmental behaviors into their spiritual expressions, emerging adults experience profound spiritual formation and a meaningful way of participating in …

Spirituality Of Emerging Adulthood, Falon Opsahl Barton

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

This article synthesizes the research on emerging adulthood. After defining the term, this work explores the causes of this phenomenon, the demographic that constitutes it, and how those in this phase of life experience and express their spirituality. Among the significant issues for this demographic are their emotional and practical behaviors in response to the climate crisis.

Local Crime And Substance Use Disorders: A Comparison Of Midlife Adults In The 1990s And 2000s, Jennifer W. Robinette, Jason D. Boardman, Kathleen Mullan Harris

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

This study investigated how sociopolitical changes in the United States between the 1990s and 2000s may explain the increase in substance use disorders and reduced longevity in more recent cohorts of US midlife adults. The 2008 recession which drastically increased unemployment rates across the country may have had negative implications for downstream contextual and individual processes, including both local crime rates and substance use disorders. The Midlife in the United States Survey cohort (1995; n = 6148; 20–75 years) and the MIDUS Refresher cohort (2011; n = 3543; 23–76 years) reported on substance use disorders. These data were linked to …