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Classical Sanskrit for Everyone A Guide for Absolute Beginners
No full textSurprisingly, Classical Sanskrit for Everyone is indeed for everyone. Playing tour guide to the \u27curious,\u27 the \u27Yoga aficionado,\u27 and the \u27scholar\u27 on an efficient itinerary through Sanskrit grammar and its philosophical cultures, Keating\u27s book is refreshingly accessible and useful. Replete with an excellent analysis of important features of Sanskrit with analogies to English usage and learned \u27pandit points,\u27 it also provides supplemental discussions of Sanskrit poetry and philosophy and up-to-date online resources. Pop culture references and a playfully funny tone, at turns, disarm the uninitiated reader and give the scholar a fresh perspective on how to teach this language to a new generation of eager learners. --Deven M. Patel, University of Pennsylvania Source: Publisherhttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/phi_books/1009/thumbnail.jp
Multilevel Intersectionality and the Deployment of Disability in Schools
Full text linkTeacher perceptions of and decisions about students’ academic ability and behavior are key to the micro-level production and maintenance of inequality at the intersection of gender, race, and disability in schools, yet we know little about how these micro-level processes relate to meso-level features. Using an experimental survey design of 369 factorial vignettes, I tested for racial and gender differences in 276 teachers’ ratings of referral to begin disability evaluations—what I call the deployment of disability—across 115 Wisconsin schools with varying racial compositions. Findings show that teachers in schools with low proportions of White students were less likely to deploy disability for White girls than all other students; these disparities closed or reversed as teachers’ schools increased in proportion White. Results also suggest that White boys with academic difficulties were perceived as more likely disabled than their male peers of color—only in schools with more Black students. These results provide mixed evidence that “racial distinctiveness” triggers teachers’ racialized and gendered deployment of disability. School composition effects provide empirical evidence of the social construction of disability, its intersection with race and gender, and that this construction emerges as an aspect of context as well as through individual teachers’ behaviors
Frobenius and Commutative Pseudomonoids in the Bicategory of Spans
Full text linkIn previous work by the first two authors, Frobenius and commutative algebra objects in the category of spans of sets were characterized in terms of simplicial sets satisfying certain properties. In this paper, we find a similar characterization for the analogous coherent structures in the bicategory of spans of sets. We show that commutative and Frobenius pseudomonoids in Span correspond, respectively, to paracyclic sets and Γ-sets satisfying the 2-Segal conditions. These results connect closely with work of the third author on A∞ algebras in ∞-categories of spans, as well as the growing body of work on higher Segal objects. Because our motivation comes from symplectic geometry and topological field theory, we emphasize the direct and computational nature of the classifications and their proofs
Theorizing Gender and Social Movements Beyond the Binary
No full textThis innovative Handbook examines how gender shapes social activism and is shaped by activism. With a unique interdisciplinary focus, it explores the effects of the gender binary on experiences of activism, considering how different movements negotiate and, at times, challenge these traditional conceptions. It then moves beyond the binary to explore how gender is challenged by contemporary movements.
Expert authors discuss the impact and limitations of the gender binary, using examples such as the MeToo movement to demonstrate how viewing men and women as separate, monolithic categories results in countless differences being overlooked. Chapters present a range of global and intersectional case studies such as the gender hierarchies in Swedish activism, Black women’s involvement in abolition movements, and feminist campaigns in Saudi Arabia. The Handbook also moves beyond the binary, adopting a transfeminist approach in relation to the experiences of trans, intersex, and non-binary people, and crucially advocating for the conceptualization of a more expansive gender system and the ways in which gender aids activism and impedes it.This thought-provoking Handbook is a vital resource for students and scholars of gender politics, social movements, discrimination, and social inequality. It is also an enlightening read for academics interested in employing intersectional and transfeminist perspectives in their research.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/soc_books/1026/thumbnail.jp
Revolutionary Worldmaking: James Monroe Whitfield’s Poems in Martin Delany’s \u3ci\u3eBlake; or, The Huts of America\u3c/i\u3e
Full text linkMartin Delany’s Blake, serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African in 1861–62, includes five unattributed poems from James Monroe Whitfield’s volume America and Other Poems, which appear in the novel as compositions of the Cuban revolutionary poet Placido. Largely overlooked in scholarship on Blake, Whitfield/Placido’s poems are crucial to the impending revolt of the oppressed because they foster a collective emancipatory consciousness and model, through poetic form, the meticulous organization on which the revolution relies for success. Resonating with other poems and songs quoted in the novel, they speak to broader questions of poetry’s role in building communities of resistance. In turn, Blake’s emplotment of revolutionary organizing actualizes Whitfield’s poems’ revolutionary idiom, distinguished by orientation toward a liberated future, thematic focus on imminent violence against the oppressor, the affect of outrage that sutures individuals into a volatile collective, and the rhetorical tropes of collectively voiced apostrophe, exclamation, and rhetorical question. While Blake reframes Whitfield’s poems as inspiration for the fictionalized Cuban liberation movement, the printed page of the Weekly Anglo-African with its coverage of the Civil War recasts the poems as calls to arms in the ongoing Black struggle for liberation
Adapting Private Green Space for Climate Resilience
No full textAdapting privately-owned green space from monoculture turf lawns to more biodiverse alternatives offers a way for communities to build resilience to risks associated with climate change. City governments such as Northampton are seeking recommendations for affecting these transitions within their municipalities. This paper offers recommendations developed over a semester of research focused on adapting private green space to increase pollinator habitats, stormwater retention and reduce pollution. In order to develop these recommendations, we conducted a three-part research process. First, we mapped sample tiles of different land use tiles in Northampton to determine the significance of privately owned green spaces to gauge the potential impacts of management adaptation. Second, we conducted research into several scales of comparable initiatives in an effort to assess efficacy and determine what elements of these plans might be translatable to the Northampton context. Third, we interviewed six industry professionals to gain a better understanding of the landscape of green space management in Northampton. Through these three areas, we developed a tiered set of recommendations for transitioning green space management strategies to encourage climate resiliency. Finally, we developed two recommendations for the City: first, that they launch an education and lobbying campaign to effect change at the community level in green space management practices, and second, that they conduct further research into the potential for establishing formal policy to incentivize sustainable green space management practices
Selecting an Internal Carbon Price for Academic Institutions
Full text linkMany businesses have adopted internal carbon prices (ICPs) to help drive smarter business decisions, innovation, and emissions reductions. The objective of this white paper is to provide a framework that institutions, particularly those in higher education, can use as they think about selecting a price in the context of their own goals for an ICP.
Second Nature’s recent 2025 Carbon Markets and Offsets guidance recommends that: “colleges and universities develop a climate action strategy that includes some type of internal carbon pricing, either as a mechanism to inform climate-positive decision-making or as a mechanism for generating revenue estimates for decarbonization and, if applicable, offset purchases.” and notes that “This approach is in line with a true dedication to responsible decarbonization because it places offsetting, and even the achievement of carbon neutrality, into a more holistic decision-making framework than simple market forces allow.” (Second Nature, 2025a
Episode 16: SmithVent Five Years Later
Full text linkIn July 2020, the SmithVent team of Smith engineering alums, faculty, staff, and friends won the CoVent-19 Challenge, an international competition to design an open-source ventilator to address the global ventilator shortage. This special episode features 13 members of the SmithVent team (Adrienne Horne, Alex Widstrand, Astrid Landeau, Chelsea Hinds-Charles, Dan Lin, Devin Carroll, Eleanor Ory, Eric Jensen, Luca DeGroot, Nick Howe, Nora Paul-Schultz, Sangye Kazi, and Susannah Howe), along with guest facilitator Emily Blatter Boyer, as they share their memories and takeaways five years later.
Details of the SmithVent team\u27s winning ventilator design itself are available at tinyurl.com/smithvent. After the competition, the SmithVent team also wrote a paper describing their journey and proposing a framework for collaborative distributed design and fabrication informed by their experience; the paper is available at bit.ly/SmithVentFrameworkPape
Leveraging Collective Impact to Characterize and Identify Solutions to Cultural Challenges Within Scientific Societies
Full text linkA consortium of scientific societies recently identified challenges to inclusivity within the biology communities they represent. Specifically, societies encounter difficulties collecting member demographic data effectively, integrating scientists at transitional career stages, and diversifying their leadership. In response, the Leveraging, Enhancing, and Developing Biology (LED-BIO) research coordination network (NSF 2134725) organized two meetings at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA to gather stakeholders and employ top-down and bottom-up organizational approaches to address these challenges. These meetings included Town Hall and Think Tank events to facilitate open dialogue and gather feedback on policies and programs from national organizations in attendance. These discussions provided valuable insights into the barriers societies face and the available resources and interventions societies use to promote inclusivity. This article uses the LED-BIO research coordination network as a case study to discuss the Town Hall-Think Tank-Consensus Building (TTC) methodology for advancing inclusive excellence in scientific communities