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Flight Paths: Re-examining Swans in Vergil's Aeneid
No full textThis is the paper from a presentation given at The Classical Association of the Middle West and South on 03/20/2025
.“Behold twelve joyful swans in a flock” (aspice bis senos laetantis agmine cycnos) says Venus to her disheartened son (Aen. 1.393). The interpretation of Venus’s omen for Aeneas is based on the behavior of swans and eagles: just as a flock of swans, after an eagle attempted to overthrow them, playfully land, so too will the Trojans find a safe harbor (Aen. 1.393-400). Scholars have emendated the text to replace terras with stellas (Hardie 1987 and Green 2009), in which case the swans flying high toward the stars signifies Aeneas completing his destiny and being deified for establishing the location and peoples that will found Rome. Thus, a strong swan-Trojan association is formed from the onset of the Aeneid.
However, the swan-Trojan symbolism clashes with a passage in Book 12. Juturna incites the Latins into battle by contriving a new omen: an eagle attacks a flock of swans, snatches the lead swan, but is driven off by the flock and is forced to release the lead swan (Aen. 12.247-256). The Latins identify themselves as the swans and Aeneas as the eagle. Juturna’s use of swan-Latin symbolism directly challenges Venus’ omen to Aeneas. Scholars explain the discrepancy by claiming that Juturna’s omen is a false prophecy since Juturna herself is not a god (Hardie 1987, 150, Green 2009, 157). Venus’ authority is understood in Book 1 as she reassures Aeneas, and the audience, of her ability to read the auspices and interprets the omen for him (Aen. 1.392, 1.399-400). Thus, Vergil validates the swan-Trojan symbol explicitly.
I contend that the swan simile in Book 7—in which the troops of the Latin leader Messapus are compared to singing swans returning to the clouds after feeding—better contextualizes and validates Juturna’s omen than Venus’ (Aen 7.698-705). I first examine how the simile’s location in Book 7 presupposes Juturna’s omen. The simile falls in the middle of the catalogue of Latin leaders, which introduces a swan-Latin association. The connection between swans and Messapus’ men can then be extrapolated to the Latin forces at large. And in Book 12, it is in fact the Rutulians who first salute Juturna’s omen—and thus self-identify as the swans—not any of Messapus’ troops.
I then compare the physical landscapes embedded in the two augury scenes and the simile, arguing that the clouds, pasture, and river in the Book 7 simile recontextualize Venus’ omen to Aeneas in Book 1 and Juturna’s omen in Book 12. For example, the swans dominate the sky in the simile: “the snowy swans between flowing clouds” (nivei liquida inter nubile cycni) and “an airy cloud of raucous swans” (aeriam…volucrum raucarum…nubem) (Aen. 7.699, 704-705). The emphasis on the swans being in the air calls back to Venus’ omen where the swans flying undisturbed signifies victory and a completion of destiny for Aeneas. Therefore, the swans in Book 7, since they are flying without an eagle present, could signify victory for the Latins. The significance of swans occupying the sky then complicates Juturna’s omen in Book 12 because even though the swans in Book 12 successfully drive away the eagle by forming themselves into a cloud (facta nube), the eagle “escapes deeply into the clouds” (penitusque in nubile fugit) and occupies the same, potentially triumphant cloud-space (Aen. 12.254, 12.256).
Reading the swan-eagle omens in Books 1 and 12 through the lens of the swan simile in Book 7 complicates them further because the Latin-Trojan symbols get conflated with one another. The conflation of symbols—and therefore identities—of the Latins and Trojans makes Juturna’s omen doubly true as both the Latins and Trojans can be interpreted as victors.
Works Cited
Green, Steven J. 2009. “Malevolent Gods and Promethean Birds: Contesting Augury in Augustus’s Rome.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014) 139, no. 1: 147–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40212099.
Hardie, P. R. 1987. “Aeneas and the Omen of the Swans (Verg. Aen. 1. 393-400).” Classical Philology 82, no. 2: 145–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/270106
Reducing Physical Tension in the Beginning String Orchestra
No full textThese are the slides from a presentation given at Kansas Music Educators' Association In-Service Workshop on 02/28/2025.Reducing physical tension in the beginning string orchestra is essential to creating a healthy young musician. This session will focus on the two aspects of a musician's tension: the mental and physical
An Optimal Level of Incongruency: User-Generated Content’s Effect on Engagement and Purchase Intention
No full textThese are the slides from a presentation given at Artificial Intelligence in Management 2025 on 03/22/2025.This study examines the impact of incongruency in user-generated branded photos (UGBPs) on social media engagement and purchase intention. Incongruency, defined as the dissimilarity between UGBPs and a brand’s values, presents conflicting effects in marketing literature—while congruency enhances processing fluency and trust, incongruency evokes novelty and surprise. Leveraging advanced AI methodologies, we quantify incongruency without relying on subjective surveys by comparing textual descriptions of brand values and UGBPs using contextual embeddings. Our analysis, based on 5,717 Instagram posts, reveals that incongruency positively affects social media engagement but negatively impacts purchase intention. Further, we find that brand equity moderates these effects, with higher-equity brands experiencing diminished engagement benefits from incongruency. User posting styles also influence outcomes, mitigating the negative impact of incongruency on purchase intention. These findings suggest that incongruency offers a strategic advantage for lower-equity beverage brands by driving engagement, though at the potential cost of reduced purchase intention. This research highlights the utility of AI-driven metrics for analyzing latent constructs and provides actionable insights for brands incorporating UGBPs in their marketing strategies
Detecting Spatially Localized Anomalies In Vegetation Health Using A Short-term NDVI Baseline Dataset For Potential Point-source Pollutant Monitoring
No full textThese are the slides from a presentation given at American Association of Geographers on 03/24/2025.Monitoring vegetation health is crucial for assessing the impacts of environmental changes and anthropogenic activities. This research developed methods to detect spatially localized vegetation health anomalies using a short-term (2016-2023) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) baseline dataset from Sentinel-2 imagery. The study focused on a 4x4 mile block of land in central Kansas, USA, slated for future CO2 underground injection, but the methods can be adapted for other sites and remote sensing-based monitoring activities. To prepare a reliable baseline dataset, pixel-level cloud cover impacts were mitigated using both the QA60 band and the Sentinel-2 cloud probability dataset. For anomaly detection, we focused on peak growing season NDVI, which generally is when vegetation development is the most sensitive to environmental conditions. We devised assessment methods appropriate for short-term time series centered around the Jeffries-Matusita (JM) Distance statistic, which characterizes distributional distinction between two samples. To detect anomalies, NDVI values are compared between locations at zone and pixel block levels. In addition, we integrated PRISM temperature and precipitation data to contextualize the NDVI results, in case weather-related factors may help explain the outcomes. A Google Earth Engine (GEE) application was developed for performing real-time analysis and visualization. By establishing a reliable NDVI baseline and devising innovative vegetation health anomaly detection methodologies, this research supports broader environmental sustainability efforts and provides valuable insights for future ecological assessments and interventions
Oral History from the Life of Mariia Dobrotvorskaia, née Maliavich, as recorded by her son
No full textThis oral history presents reminiscences from the life of Mariia Dobrotvorskaia, from her childhood and youth, when she lived Russia and Ukraine, and from her adult life after emigrating to the United States. The oral history consists of three files, the audio recording, the Russian transcription, and the English translation
International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, Volume 7 Free Trade Agreements, Labor, and Environment (6th Revised Edition)
No full textThis book is Volume Seven of an Eight-Volume set. All of the Volumes are available in KU ScholarWorks. Links to all eight volumes are available in the Abstracts file in this record.
About the Author:
Born in Toronto of Indian and Celtic heritage, Rakesh (Raj) Kumar Bhala is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen prominent in the fields of International Trade Law, Islamic Law (Sharī‘a), and Law and Literature. Raj is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, School of Law (KU Law). He is published widely world-wide – authoring over 100 scholarly articles and 13 books, including the International Trade Law Textbook, which has been used at over 100 law schools around the globe. Ingram’s Business Magazine designated him as one of “50 Kansans You Should Know.”
Raj has testified before the U.K. Parliament, House of Commons, International Trade Committee, on trade and human rights. Media frequently call upon Raj. Across 65 consecutive months (from January 2017-October 2022), “On Point” was his column on International Law and Economics, which Bloomberg Quint / BQ Prime (Mumbai) published and distributed to approximately 6.2 million readers globally.
Raj is a Harvard Law School (HLS) graduate (Cum Laude). As a Marshall Scholar, Raj earned two Master’s degrees, from the London School of Economics (LSE) in Economics, and from Oxford (Trinity College) in Management (Industrial Relations). His undergraduate degree is from Duke (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar and double-majored in Economics and Sociology. After HLS, Raj practiced at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he twice won the President’s Award for Excellence thanks to his service as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), along with a Letter of Commendation from the U.S. Department of State. He is a member of the State Department’s Speaker Program.
Raj has served in officer positions at the International Bar Association (IBA) and Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA), on the Executive Board of Directors of the Carriage Club of Kansas City (including as Treasurer), and been on the Alumni Association Board of the University School of Milwaukee (USM), his high school alma mater. He is grateful to his USM teachers for a liberal arts education that made all good things possible. Raj loves fitness training, has finished 115 marathons, including the “Big Five” of the “World’s Majors” (Boston twice, New York twice, Chicago twice, Berlin, and London). He enjoys studying Shakespeare and (especially since becoming Catholic at Easter Vigil 2001) Theology – and watching baseball.If the question is, “what areas of International Trade Law are blazing?,” then Volume Seven encompasses the answer: free trade agreements (FTAs), labor, and environment. With no end in sight to decades of paralysis at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the “action” on market access and social justice issues is at the regional level.
So, Part One covers the theory and practice of FTAs and customs unions (CUs). FTAs and customs unions are more than economic agreements; they also are instruments to advance political and national security interests of the Parties to them. Philosophies differ as to how ambitious they should be, from American-style exhaustiveness to Indian-style boundedness. Perspectives differ on what countries should be invited into an FTA – Taiwan? And, they differ on whether to remain in a deal – as the Brexit divorce debacle memorably shows.
Part Two pays respect to the multilateral disciplines on FTAs and CUs. WTO Members are supposed to adhere to certain parameters when they negotiate, draft, and execute such deals. That they do not always do so is problematic, and helps explain the frenzied activity in this space.
No FTA or CU can function without Rules of Origin (ROOs). They are the subject of Part Three. In contrast to ROOs discussed in Volume Three (Customs Law), which are non-preferential, ROOs in the context of an FTA or CU (or a poor-country preference scheme) are preferential. How, and why, that is so, and what is at stake, are explored in Part Three. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), both version 1.0 and 2.0 (the latter known as the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA), furnishes an excellent case study of how ROOs function. NAFTA 1.0 and 2.0 also illustrate how ROOs can advance favored sectoral interests (e.g., autos and auto parts) and labor rights (e.g., wages and dispute settlement), and how they can be looser (encouraging third-country inputs) or tighter (i.e., protectionist).
Part Four demonstrates that free trade, in a pure sense, never is purely free. “Free” Trade Agreements are really “Managed Trade Agreements.” Using Staging Categories (SCs), Duty-Free, Quota Free (DFQF) treatment rarely is accorded to 100 percent of merchandise traded among FTA Parties immediately upon Entry into Force (EIF). Likewise, Parties hold back from liberalization commitments certain sensitive sectors, and reserve the right to snapback protections using safeguards. Analogous limitations – sometimes even more protective ones – exist for provisions on services and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows.
Parts Five and Six cover labor issues. The linkage between trade and labor rights always mattered, as the 1948 Havana (International Trade Organization, or ITO) Charter prove. Today this link is at the forefront of trade politics and social justice debates. Part Five examines several critical legal and policy questions: What are “internationally recognized workers’ rights”? What role does the ILO play in defining and advancing them? To what extent does an FTA, through (for example) labor arbitration proceedings, enforce those
rights? This Part also lays out new rules – such as the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA) – to cleanse merchandise supply chains of forced labor. Because of these questions and rules (plus those concerning the environment in Part Seven and national security in Volume Three), it is not too much of an overstatement to say that International Trade Law is very much about supply chain management.
In Part Six, the Chapters examine how workers in a domestic setting can be helped from the dislocating effects of trade liberalization. That is the subject of “Trade Adjustment Assistance” (TAA). Traditionally, ever since President Kennedy’s Administration, TAA has been vital to secure passage in the U.S. Congress of FTA legislation that – because of the impacts of free trade on certain sectors lacking a comparative advantage – would be injured by the FTA.
Part Seven covers another vital linkage in world trade, that between trade and the environment. Neither GATT-WTO nor FTA provisions can, by themselves, solve the problem of climate change. But, they can play a role in adaptation and mitigation. This Part begins with in-depth coverage of GATT-WTO exceptions to promote conservation of exhaustible natural resources and support sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, showing how the restrictive Two Step Test developed through cases dating to the 1990s has limited the practical effect of those exceptions.
This Part continues with a detailed discussion of how trade affects climate change, and what countries can do to adapt to, and/or mitigate, climate change. Thus, for example, this Part examines WTO Members – led by the European Union (EU) – that have proposed, and indeed implemented, their own trade-restrictions to deal with climate change, such as a Carbon Border Adjustment Tax Mechanism (CBAM).
Overall, Volume Seven has an underlying implicit theme of “WTO be damned.” On market access, labor, and environmental matters, some WTO Members have ceased waiting for action at the multilateral level. They are pursuing their interests in these areas – otherwise, they are left behind by not only certain other Members, but also their own domestic constituencies. Like the other seven Volumes of International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, this Volume is available Open Access, and thus freely, quickly downloadable
International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, Volume 1 Interdisciplinary Foundations (6th Revised Edition)
No full textThis book is Volume One of an Eight-Volume set. All of the Volumes are available in KU ScholarWorks. Links to all eight volumes are available in the Abstracts file in this record.
About the Author:
Born in Toronto of Indian and Celtic heritage, Rakesh (Raj) Kumar Bhala is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen prominent in the fields of International Trade Law, Islamic Law (Sharī‘a), and Law and Literature. Raj is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, School of Law (KU Law). He is published widely world-wide – authoring over 100 scholarly articles and 13 books, including the International Trade Law Textbook, which has been used at over 100 law schools around the globe. Ingram’s Business Magazine designated him as one of “50 Kansans You Should Know.”
Raj has testified before the U.K. Parliament, House of Commons, International Trade Committee, on trade and human rights. Media frequently call upon Raj. Across 65 consecutive months (from January 2017-October 2022), “On Point” was his column on International Law and Economics, which Bloomberg Quint / BQ Prime (Mumbai) published and distributed to approximately 6.2 million readers globally.
Raj is a Harvard Law School (HLS) graduate (Cum Laude). As a Marshall Scholar, Raj earned two Master’s degrees, from the London School of Economics (LSE) in Economics, and from Oxford (Trinity College) in Management (Industrial Relations). His undergraduate degree is from Duke (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar and double-majored in Economics and Sociology. After HLS, Raj practiced at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he twice won the President’s Award for Excellence thanks to his service as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), along with a Letter of Commendation from the U.S. Department of State. He is a member of the State Department’s Speaker Program.
Raj has served in officer positions at the International Bar Association (IBA) and Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA), on the Executive Board of Directors of the Carriage Club of Kansas City (including as Treasurer), and been on the Alumni Association Board of the University School of Milwaukee (USM), his high school alma mater. He is grateful to his USM teachers for a liberal arts education that made all good things possible. Raj loves fitness training, has finished 115 marathons, including the “Big Five” of the “World’s Majors” (Boston twice, New York twice, Chicago twice, Berlin, and London). He enjoys studying Shakespeare and (especially since becoming Catholic at Easter Vigil 2001) Theology – and watching baseball.Volume One, Interdisciplinary Foundations, carefully explains the rich, diverse intellectual heritage of international trade. Part One sets the tone for this and the remaining Volumes, laying out 10 themes – including the importance of having fun through the study of the field.
Part Two shows how and why cross-border importation and exportation, and foreign direct and portfolio investments, are more than merely economic phenomena. Morality is very much at stake. Dating to Ancient Greece and Rome, and through the great thinkers of the early and medieval Christian Church, trade transactions, and the behavior of traders, were the subject of philosophical and religious debate. Only in 18th and 19th centuries did the writings of classical economists – Adam Smith and David Ricardo – pivot attention to economic analyses of mercantilism and free trade.
Parts Three and Four thus cover the economics of trade. Here, too, diversity is evident: both capitalist and communist trade theory is discussed in detail. Some of these economic topics link to the politics of trade, including trade deficits, the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem, and industrial policy.
In Part Five, the sweep of trade history is chronicled. American trade history – not just tariff policy before, during, and after the Civil War, but also the reality of the Constitutional protection for slave trade – is examined. So, too, is the history of the modern multilateral trading system, which arises from the Great Depression and Atlantic Charter, and takes root with the GATT in 1947, and ultimately the WTO in 1995. All of the multilateral trade negotiation (MTN) rounds, including the failed Doha Round, are analyzed.
Finally, Part Six reviews another interdisciplinary foundation of trade, namely, international relations (IR) theory. Here, Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism are explained. These theories are a reminder of the promise, and limitation, of trade as means to build peace among peoples.
Overall, Volume One welcomes readers, regardless of their prior background, by giving them the interdisciplinary tools they need to be well-educated and well-rounded in International Trade Law. Like the other seven Volumes of International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, this Volume is available Open Access, and thus freely, quickly downloadable
Textual Analysis of Three Texts Using Voyant
No full textThis textual analysis explores how slavery, colonialism, decoloniality, and anti-colonial resistance are represented in the texts The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African by Olaudah Equiano, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe with the usage of the digital tool Voyant. Throughout this analysis, we find that the identity of the texts’ speaker, whether one of the colonizer or the colonized, significantly impacts how these topics are considered and represented. With the support of Voyant, it is clear that these findings not only exist at the levels of the narration and storyline but are also embedded within the very structure and the language used in each of these texts
RAPID MACROCELL TESTS OF 2205 REINFORCING BARS
No full textThe corrosion resistance of 2205 stainless steel reinforcing bars produced by Raajratna Metal Industries Ltd. was tested in accordance with Annexes A1 and A2 of ASTM 955. The 2205 stainless steel reinforcing bars evaluated in this report met the requirements of ASTM A955.Raajratna Metal Industries Ltd
How do university stakeholders develop a university budget?
No full textThese are the slides from a presentation given at the Association of Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM) held in Atlanta, GA on 10/23/2025.The focus of my study is to study how people make budget balancing decisions under different fiscal conditions. Unlike other theories that describe how people should balance a budget or how organizations balance a budget. I ask how do people develop a university budget? Building on other studies that have looked at how people respond to deficits and surpluses in budget simulations. It seeks to examine the additional questions of how people respond to short-term and long-term fiscal stress? It will also examine how do people fund and use budgetary reserves (i.e. rainy-day funds