Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Book Reviews, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

From The Acting Editor In Chief, C. Anthony Pfaff

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Autumn 2024 issue of Parameters. The Autumn issue consists of a special piece from the US Army War College Commandant and Provost on their strategic vision for the college, three In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Cooperative Partnerships, Professional Development, and Historical Studies), two regular forums (A Major’s Perspective and the Civil-Military Relations Corner), and a review essay focused on strategy in India.

Parameters Autumn 2024, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Autumn 2024 issue of Parameters. The Autumn issue consists of a special piece from the US Army War College Commandant and Provost on their strategic vision for the college, three In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Cooperative Partnerships, Professional Development, and Historical Studies), two regular forums (A Major’s Perspective and the Civil-Military Relations Corner), and a review essay focused on strategy in India.

Exploring Strategy In India, Vinay Kaura

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This review essay discusses Rajesh Basrur's Subcontinental Drift: Domestic Politics and India’s Foreign Policy and Feroz Hassan Khan's Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia and explores Indian strategy, especially concerning domestic issues and the relationship between Pakistan and India. The review concludes by noting that the two books agree on the oversized role of the Pakistani military in India’s national politics, where most security and foreign policy decisions are directed toward Pakistan.

Enhancing User Experience In Small Academic Libraries: Leveraging Matomo Analytics As A Ux Design Tool., Michael D. Wells

The Christian Librarian

As changes have occurred with Google Analytics over the past two years, web design professionals have sought alternative platforms to gain valuable insight on how users are interacting with online content. Academic libraries are no different in their desire to assess user interaction and behavior within their online platforms. In 2019, the Benedictine Library at Thomas More University transitioned to using Matomo Analytics out of a desire to find a low-cost and privacy-centric alternative to Google Analytics. While serving as the Library Director at Thomas More University from 2018 to 2021 and then as the Library Director at Wilmington College …

Launchpad And Homebase: Columbus Ohio’S Arts Ecosystem, Rachel Skaggs, Amanda Tobin Ripley

International Journal of Regional Issues in the Arts

This article draws critical attention to strengths and needs within the arts ecosystem of Columbus, Ohio. Relying on interviews and focus groups with artists and arts leaders, we establish three themes as the most prevalent and cross-cutting among artists and arts leaders: needs for community building, paid work, and space. Based on these stated needs, we identify two aspects of the arts ecosystem in Columbus: launchpad and homebase, neither of which fully support artistic careers. We argue that with investment will also come the opportunity to develop a stronger ecosystem that allows artists to live, work, and thrive in Columbus.

The Structure Of The Anti-Religious Unit Of The Soviet Secret Service (1953 – 1956), Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to the issue of reforming the Soviet Security Services and their network of agents during the period of de-Stalinization (1953-1956). The directions of this reform were studied, and how these reforms affected changes in their activities in the religious sphere was traced. Based on a study of the KGB reporting documentation, as well as the personal files of KGB employees, the structure of the anti-religious division of the KGB and its peripheral offices was revealed for the first time, the main directions of its activities were indicated, the pseudonyms of secret agents working in these areas …

Lanthorn, Vol. 59, No. 02, August 26, 2024, Grand Valley State University

Volume 59, August 5, 2024 – current

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Virtual Cellphilming With Gbtq Pups: Towards Participant-Driven Research As Activism, Kinda Wassef, Olivia Bonardi, Olivier Ferlatte, Megan Aston, Phillip Joy

The Qualitative Report

In the present paper, we draw upon our research, entitled Puppy Philms, to guide researchers who are interested in queering cellphilming methodologies. In this context, “queering” refers to the process of challenging and disrupting heteronormative roles and perspectives within research practices. We argue that taking a queer poststructural approach to virtual cellphilming helped us shift this project away from typical academic relations of power, towards participant-driven research as activism. In emphasizing flexibility, reflexivity, a desire for partnership and community building, we found queer communication to be a mechanism through which we could shift power and drive levels of engagement. In …

Fostering Awe To Enhance Public Well-Being: Proposed Interventions For A Nature And Science Museum Setting, Zach Calo

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Several scholars consider awe to be a universally experienced emotion that is associated with a variety of well-being outcomes. In the last two decades, research has revealed the many complicated, and often beneficial, effects of this self-transcendent emotion. In this paper, a review of the current theoretical and empirical understanding of awe is first discussed. This review is meant to provide context for the next section and primary aim of this paper, which is to propose a pilot study for implementing and evaluating awe-inducing interventions in a museum setting. The primary research question of this proposed pilot study is to …

Considerations For Interviewing And Intervening With Suicidal Gender Expansive Individuals, Abigail Herrold

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

It has been well documented that transgender individuals are at a higher risk for death by suicide compared to their cisgender peers. However, limited consideration has been given to studying suicidality in individuals who identify outside of the gender binary (non-binary, gender queer, gender fluid, etc.). Additionally, while there is considerable evidence for risk factors for suicide and protective factors against suicide, there is a lack of guidance on how to implement this information. The aim of this paper is to expand upon the literature of research that is inclusive of all gender identities and propose guidelines working with gender …

Principal Agency 50 Years After The Lau Decision: Building And Sustaining Bilingual Education Programs For Asian Languages, Kevin M. Wong, Zhongfeng Tian

Education Division Scholarship

This study examined how three champion principals of Asian language dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs—Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin—in California have navigated the oscillating language-in-education policies after the Lau decision. We explored principals' various roles through a lens of agency in a social justice leadership framework, specifically considering the opportunities and challenges for agentive leadership from three different phases: foregrounding and engaging, planning and implementing, and evaluating and sustaining. Findings demonstrate that the success of DLBE programs goes beyond the overarching language policies that supposedly enable bilingual education; rather it hinges on the bottom-up commitment, collaboration and resilience of principals, …

Determinanty Sukcesu Zarządzania Projektami Informatycznymi W Opiniach Ekspertów, Witold Chmielarz, Anna Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz

Studia i Materiały Wydział Zarządzania Uniwersytet Warszawski

Purpose: The primary purpose of the article is to identify factors and activities influencing the proper management of IT projects. Method: The study was based on the opinions of forty-five experts who took part in the BPM Symposium organized in April 2023 at the University of Warsaw. Expert opinions were collected using a survey questionnaire based on literature analysis and our own professional experience in project management.

Results: The result of the conducted research is the determination of the ranking of conditions and effects of the use of computerization projects in the functioning of the organization, the assessment …

Promoting Emergent Literacy In Preschool Through Extended Discourse: Covert Translanguaging In A Mandarin Immersion Environment, Robin E. Harvey, Kevin M. Wong

Education Division Scholarship

Rich oral language practices, including the opportunity and ability to participate in cognitively and linguistically challenging extended discourse, are foundational to early literacy development. To meet children’s needs in their first exposure to the languages of schooling, educators may engage students in extended discourse multilingually. The current study focuses on student-centered translanguaging conversations to examine strategies that preschool teachers employ to support young children’s emerging bilingual and biliteracy development in a Mandarin immersion preschool serving primarily nonheritage learners of Mandarin in the United States. Findings indicate that, despite the school’s Mandarin-only policy, teachers engaged in covert translanguaging practices to extend …

Heroes Of The Memphis Civil Rights Movement: Maxine A. Smith And Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., Elizabeth Gritter

Heroism Science

Two intertwined leaders of the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in Memphis, Tennessee, were Maxine Atkins Smith and Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., both of whom were African American. Both were born in Memphis in 1929, and they shared commonalities in their personal histories and rose to become key leaders of the Memphis movement. Along with displaying courage and persistence, they were true pioneers in the Black freedom struggle in Memphis and Shelby County who employed organizational skills and community involvement as key to their social activism. This article examines their early activism from the mid-1950s until …

Acknowledging Dispossession: A Cda/Pda Perspective On Discourse Dealing With Unceded Land, J. R. Martin, Priscilla Angela T. Cruz

English Faculty Publications

This paper illustrates what can be revealed by a linguistic analysis of the discourse strategies deployed in a bilingual text acknowledging the dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Mindanao (Philippines). The analysis draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) descriptions of English, which model language as a resource for making meaning. It explores the choices involved from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA), exposing language in the service of power, and positive discourse analysis (PDA), appreciating language as an instrument of social change. In doing so we exemplify the role of SFL-informed CDA/PDA in processes of reconciliation, including personal and public …

From Fan Blogs To Fruits Basket: Documenting The Resources Of Anime And Manga Studies Libguides, Billy Tringali, Vibu Logendran

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Anime and manga have seen exponential growth in market value, and popularity, over the last decade. This boom of popularity for anime has been matched in recent years by an increased interest from fans in anime and manga studies. This project seeks to document the contents of anime studies research guides, with the goal of seeing what specific resources, popular media, and fan media like blogs, are listed within these guides and recommended to fans seeking to explore this budding area of scholarship.

Archiving The Ephemeral In Digital Public Space: Using Speculative Design To Consider Collaborative Fan Play In The Metaverse, Naomi Jacobs

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Looking at fan activity through the lens of play, this paper considers the archiving opportunities and challenges posed by new technology for playful ephemeral fan co-creation in multiplatform digital contexts. These include technical concerns such as platform fragility and how to capture inherent liveness and temporality, but also ethical concerns such as sustainability, consent and content moderation.

To examine this, the paper takes fan-created alternate reality games (ARGs) as a particular example of such archiving challenges. It first describes a real example of such a game, ‘Blow the Man Down’ before introducing speculative design as a method to consider a …

Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices Against State Violence, Andrea Michaels

Feminist Pedagogy

The following book review of Shreerekha Pillai’s Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices against State Violence (2023) is an expansive and timely collection of essays on the carceral state in its implications for feminist educators. This review focuses on the connections and connectivity of two essays in the collection that attempt to address a minor examination of the person as political.

Book Review: The Trouble With White Women, Kristen Desjarlais-Deklerk

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Lessons From A First Year Seminar: Teaching “Mean Girls” To Become “Nasty Women”, Elif S. Armbruster Phd

Feminist Pedagogy

This essay explores what happened in a First Year Seminar on "Nasty Women in American Literature" when a group of students, instead of embracing the strength and independence that the phrase "nasty woman" came to embody, turned into a group of "mean girls"--led by a "queen bee"--and dominated the course through alliance-building, gossip, and distraction. The Suffolk University English professor teaching the course explains the challenging environment that ensured and what she learned from the experience, enabling her to make important changes in her teaching of the course the following semester.

(Un)Learning Social Change Storytelling, K. L. Broad

Feminist Pedagogy

In this essay, I discuss a teaching activity I created which embraces the dynamic of learning/unlearning to foster a complex understanding of social change storytelling.

Feminist Iterations Of “The Implosion”: New Techniques For Teaching About Science, Technology, And Society Through The “Implosion Project”, Maya Cruz

Feminist Pedagogy

This article outlines a new and explicitly feminist iteration of Professor Joseph Dumit’s (2014) “Implosion Project.” The “Implosion Project” is a classic pedagogical technique used widely in the field of Science and Technology Studies as an innovative way to teach students to critically engage with the complex relationships of science, technology, and society, and provides an important opportunity to center an explicitly feminist pedagogical approach when teaching students about the systems of power that shape, and are shaped by, the complex relationships between science, technology, and society. Since the “Implosion Project” does not center an explicitly feminist pedagogical approach, this …

Archetypal Energies And Global Mental Health, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

As a keynote speaker at the Global Mental Health Conference 2024, held at Sophia University, Costa Mesa, CA, in-person and virtually, August 16-18, 2024, my topic was "Archetypal Energies As A Framework for Self-Empowerment and Well Being". The theme of this 2024 global conference was: Enlightened Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and Embodied Wisdom. To supplement my keynote address, I wrote this blog article titled "Archetypal Energies and Global Mental Health".

The Use Of Space And Place In The Civil Rights Discourse Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pamelia Adams

Communication Theses

This thesis, The Use of Space and Place in the Civil Rights Discourse of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., analyzes the academic literature on the social change agent. The study provides a deeper understanding of the relevance of place/location, where Dr. King delivered his civil rights message nationally and internationally. Three historically significant sites and the events impacting the civil rights movement, in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Birmingham, Alabama, are examined. The three sites included in Chapter 2: The Jail Site, Chapter 3: The Bombing Site, and Chapter 4: The March Sites as examples. The main findings of …

Writing For The Journal: A Guide For Community-Based Organizations, Randy Wykoff, Rachel E. Dixon

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Journal of Appalachian Health welcomes submissions from a variety of stakeholders interested in and contributing to improvement of health across the Appalachian Region. This editorial provides basic guidelines for those working in community settings who may with to make JAH (or any other journal) their publication home.

"If The Gyil Has Died, Dagara Itself Has Died": On The Relationship Of Dagara Music, Food, And Costume, Gordon Cortney

Honors College Undergraduate Theses

The Dagara people, located primarily in the Upper West region of Ghana, take pride in their careful preservation of traditional customs, amidst years of brutal colonization and ethnocide. Previous ethnomusicological research has recognized the gyil, a Ghanaian xylophone, as the focal point of Dagara society, noting how it interacts with and is inherent in all aspects of their culture. Recent developments to the gyil’s design, practice, and performance have created concern for a lost or dying culture among the Dagara. If the gyil is experiencing change, then so too is the rest of Dagara culture. In June and July 2022, …

Buddhism, Daoism, And Jeet Kune Do: A Contemporary Analysis Of Nondual Traditions In A New Age Martial Art, James H. Sutton

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Traditional martial arts are known for their focus on spiritual cultivation through a combination of self-defense training and contemplative practices like meditation. Traditional martial art systems tend to utilize nondual traditions commonly associated with Buddhism and Daoism; however, modern martial art practices, particularly those of MMA, no longer place a strong emphasis on such traditions. In turn, this has led to the development of high-performance sport athletes who emphasize self-defense efficiency in combat (usually combat sports) over all other attributes while also mixing “arts” or “styles” as necessary for the individual’s own self growth. I dub these as “new age” …

Maine School Of Wonder: Developing A School For Earth Skills And Sustainability In Maine, Leigha Hart

Capstone Collection

This research project explores the feasibility of establishing an earth skills and spirituality school in Maine, examining pertinent literature on adult environmental education, contemporary notions of work and leisure, earth-centered spirituality, and sustainable development. The study draws insights from interviews conducted with four distinct organizations across Maine engaged in similar initiatives. These include two farms hosting community events and workshops, alongside two retreat centers dedicated to fostering personal growth and skills development. These interviews provide diverse perspectives on the operational dynamics, required resources, and necessary skills for launching a new school aimed at creating inclusive, engaging, and sustainable learning environments …

A Non-Experimental Quantitative Correlational Study Of Emotional Intelligence As An Effective Tool For Pastoral Leadership, Louis Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Pastoral leadership must understand their obligation to provide and promote healthy relationships in their personal, professional, and church ministries by utilizing the effective tool of emotional intelligence (EI) to become more effective (Goleman et al., 2013; Hendron et al., 2014; Chavous et al., 2023). The concept and usage of EI have experienced continued growth within the secular and academic organizational fields. However, there is little research on EI among the Christian pastoral leadership, the church, its associated ministries, and its educational institutions (Hendron et al., 2014). As noted by scholars, this gap in the literature and the credibility crisis of …