MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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Concepts of Freedom: A Comparison of Societal Responses to Loss of Freedom Contrasting Canada and Ukraine
No full textThis presentation will explore concepts of freedom by analyzing societal responses to loss of freedoms in a cross-comparison via the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Canadian trucker convoy protest. The primary focus of this presentation is to provide an analysis on how the Russian-Ukrainian war has shed light on western privilege. The presentation\u27s goal is to bring forth perspective to Canadians in a time where wearing a mask and prioritizing public safety is attempting to overshadow Ukraine’s lack of safety and fear while in a state of war.
Department: Sociology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael Gulayet
Mothering in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textSince the COVID-19 pandemic hit North America in 2020 life has yet to return to “normal.” New realities include remote learning, physical distancing, lockdown measures, and mandatory masking. The pandemic has increased social isolation, stress and anxiety, employment loss, and financial instability. Even more, the domestic workload that mothers are usually responsible for in addition to their paid work, what Arlie Hochschild (2012) refers to as \u27the second shift,\u27 has been compounded and expanded to create a \u27third\u27 and \u27fourth\u27 shift with the addition of homeschooling and the increased carework and \u27worrywork\u27 that burdens mothers during a crisis (O\u27Reilly & Green, 2021, p. 21). Mothers are the unrecognized \u27front-line workers\u27 of the pandemic – caring for sick family members, trying to balance working from home with childcare and homeschooling that has pushed mothers to their breaking points. This has left many mothers overworked, overstressed, overwhelmed, which takes a substantial toll on their well- being. The purpose of this study is to examine the pressures, changes, and challenges that mothers face surrounding paid work, care, and family during the pandemic – and the strategies they use to navigate this difficult situation. This study involves 11 qualitative interviews with Canadian mothers. The aim of this study is to discover how women define and understand their experiences of pandemic parenting and how their experiences and choices were shaped by their constraining circumstances and contexts. It explores the norms surrounding ‘who cares?’ and how disparities in carework underpin many of the gender inequalities women experience that blur the boundaries between their private and public lives.
Department: Sociology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joanne Minake
Exploration of Colour and Line in Album Design
No full textDesigning for an album cover requires an in-depth understanding of the audience, genre, and content. Designers are constantly looking for innovative ways to represent sound, feeling, and rhythm. This project seeks to explore how best to represent the work of the group Up and Over Trio by creating a system that incorporates colour, type, and line. This project was planned through analysis of music, musician interview, sketches, and peer critique. The information was used to then create the final system. Up and Over is Up and Over Trio’s debut album. In jazz, the piano, bass, and drums make up the rhythm section and often accompany a solo artist or a group of brassy instruments. Up and Over Trio come together to create an album full of layered rhythms. The concept for this album cover draws inspiration from the band’s name (and album name): Up and Over. The graphic arrangement of the album name becomes the name itself.
The word “UP” is prominent on the page, and the stem of the “P” draws the eye “up and over” to “And Over”. This graphic arrangement is accompanied by four stripes of red, each slightly lighter than the last. These stripes give the feeling of layers, which is reflected in the music. In combination with the beige background, this particular gradient of black to red gives off a sense of warmth and soft lighting, which mimics the atmosphere of a jazz club.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
The Application of 1920s Bauhaus Aesthetic to Contemporary Album Design
No full textThe aesthetic choices for this design reinforce the central idea of 3 into 1. Three individuals on three different instruments come together to become the Up and Over Trio. The three colours leading into the Trio\u27s title demonstrate this relationship and signify the importance of each musician\u27s sound. Conversely, take one colour away, and the design loses its balance. Red, blue, and yellow is used because, as primary colours, they create all other colours. Considering the Trio\u27s history of playing back up, these essential colours show they are the focus of this album. Using simple shapes in the typeface and visual design elements keeps the overall feel of the cover clean and modern. The textured background adds visual interest and grounds the overall design, making it approachable and warm. Additionally, the brown paper texture is reminiscent of a wrapped gift waiting to be opened and enjoyed. The 3D placement of the text and colours adds visual rhythm, not unlike jazz music, in a contemporary style that is playfully unexpected. The typeface used throughout deliverables is Joost, a typeface intended to emulate the 1920s design aesthetic. It\u27s pulling from the age of jazz while still appealing to modern audiences. The black type, in particular, stands out against the textured background and boldly draws the eye. The final design honours the Trio, their paths that led to the creation of this album, and the evolving world of jazz.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Defy Nail Polish - A Refreshing Take on Souvankham Thammavongsa’s "How to Pronounce Knife" Collection
No full textHow to Pronounce Knife is a collection of love stories. The characters love themselves, their families, and their friends so much that they fight for them, often leading to acts of defiance. The characters know who they are, love all the parts of themselves, and defend their identity to their last breath. Defy is a brand that sets no boundaries in its target audience; its products are made for all ages and all genders. Eye-catching, no-nonsense packaging keeps it all-inclusive and mirrors the book’s blunt and frank use of language. There is no senseless decoration or flowery embellishments. It’s just nail polish. Defy’s mission is to encourage people not just to be themselves but to shout it to the world with pride and confidence. Their bright-coloured nail polish is created to be as bold as its wearer, making them feel empowered. Like the main characters in How to Pronounce Knife, Defy encourages people to be unafraid of themselves and refuse to bend to fit expectations. The strong, bold shapes of the letters mirror the ferocious, unshakeable will of the characters. Each colour in the collection represents one of the fourteen stories and the defiant character within it. Nail care is a form of self-care practiced by people who care about themselves — who love who they are and want to show it. Souvankham Thammavongsa’s characters love themselves honestly and without measure. This nail polish embodies that love.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Queen of Hearts: Breaking the Grid
No full textThe story is designed in a way to show the containment of the characters. The characters are contained and have to follow the rules to avoid being beheaded by the Queen. The justification of the text aids in keeping the story and its content within a uniform line. This short story is filled with varying dialogue- the word silent interrupting the justified text creates an effect that accentuates the sudden change of the story, from constant talking to sudden silence. The repetition of the Queen helps express her demanding nature by using bold capitalized text to echo her voice. The placements of the repetitive text being outside of the body text show that the Queen overrules the rest of the characters that are contained in her kingdom. Expressing the Queen\u27s demanding and bossy nature through bold capitalized text overpowers the rest of the character\u27s dialogue. Using a variety of tints helps the body text be legible and creates depth within the words, helping accentuate the text\u27s tone. The simplicity of the text aids in showing how the characters are equal, except for the Queen. The illustration of the paint bucket and the paintbrush refers to the gardeners at the story\u27s beginning when they try to fix their mistakes.
The paint runs through words that represent the collective feelings of the characters when the Queen is near, anxiety or fear. The paint runs through the text adding visual interest and further accentuating the theme of the story.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Applying Concrete Poetry Techniques to Ray Bradbury\u27s "Night Meeting"
No full textThis project uses the beginning of the story Night Meeting by Ray Bradbury to explore experimental type. The start of Night Meeting begins with Tomás driving through colonized planet Mars. He chats at a gas station, daydreams about time, and meets a Martian while he stops to rest. When Tomás and the Martian meet, they cannot touch each other and eventually realize that they have met due to a time anomaly. There are many repeating concepts within this first part of the story: feeling different, feeling alone, and time. This work uses rhythm and colour to explore these repeating motifs. The use of breaks in the text, italics, and different typefaces uses rhythm to highlight when a character feels different or lonely. Colour is used to separate the parts of the story that are explicitly about time. Like time acts differently in the story, the word “time” itself acts differently within the text. This work uses concrete poetry techniques to highlight the eloquent and poetically written prose.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Reading Ideology: The Evolution of Children\u27s Literature as a Didactic Tool
No full textChildren\u27s literature has undergone many transitions since its origination in the late eighteenth century. From the Romantic period all the way through to the Post-Modern period we can observe parallel shifts in children\u27s literature from Europe and North America. The one facet of children\u27s literature that remains the same over this 250 year period is the function of this literature as a didactic tool. Children\u27s literature is in a unique position to impart cultural and societal values on young readers in early to middle childhood, while they are still developing their understanding of the outside world and their place in it. As such, the lessons relayed in children\u27s books become the foundation on which young readers develop their ideological beliefs. In this paper I will examine various works of children\u27s literature from the late eighteenth century through to the end of the twentieth century—including A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744), Alice\u27s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Little Women (1868), and Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u27s Stone (1997)— in order to demonstrate the ways in which children\u27s literature has evolved as an ideological tool. These texts demonstrate a shift from explicit moral instruction in the late eighteenth century to a more concealed form of ideological indoctrination by the end of the twentieth century.
Department: English
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Paul Lumsde
Analysing and documenting mathematics content of Canadian early learning frameworks
No full textChildren’s early numeracy knowledge and skills is one of the most important predictor of children’s future school achievement and success in life. Children’s early experiences in learning environments are also crucial in shaping their educational paths. Early childhood educators across Canada explore and learn from early learning and childcare frameworks to enrich their pedagogical planning. Our goal was to explore these curriculum framework’s suggestions for educators. This research is preliminary and provides documentation of mathematical ideas and suggestions in Early Learning and Childcare frameworks across Canada. Our analysis across 10 curriculum frameworks suggested that Prince Edward Island framework is one of the most detailed and specific with mathematical explorations and play opportunities, that is also closely aligned with current early numeracy research. Our conclusions point to the importance of offering children specific mathematical experiences in the early years through guided play.
Department: Human Services & Early Learning
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ozlem Cankay
The Potential of Central, Non-Predictive Arrow Cues to Engage Reflexive Shifts in Spatial Attention
No full textTraditionally, both peripheral and central arrow cueing tasks have been used to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying reflexive and voluntary spatial attention, respectively. However, a handful of studies over the past two decades have demonstrated that central arrow cues may also cause reflexive shifts in attention. This is believed to be the product of arrows being akin to overlearned behaviourally relevant stimuli. The purpose of the current study was to further explore the degree to which central arrow cues can result in reflexive shifts of attention by directly comparing the cueing effects produced with non-predictive central arrow cues with that of non-predictive peripheral cues in a group of healthy adults (n=40). Data were collected online during live sessions using Testable software (testable.org). Our results indicated that, at early SOAs (i.e., 50 and 100 ms), there was a significantly larger cueing effect for non-predictive peripheral compared central arrow cues. In addition, inhibition of return (IOR) effects became apparent at later SOAs, but only for non-predictive peripheral cues. Finally, the small cueing effects observed for non-predictive arrow cues were only reliable at later SOAs (i.e., ≥300ms). Together, these results suggest that central arrow cues do not drive the same reflexive shifts in attention as peripheral cues, and that the two types of cues likely engage different mechanisms. Future studies will examine whether the difficulty of the attention task (e.g., detection vs. discrimination) influences the magnitude of the cueing effects observed between the two types of non-predictive cues.
Department: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Christopher Strieme