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Nobody Inside: Toni Morrison\u27s Recitatif : An Analysis on Whole/Incomplete Bodies, The Maggie Thing and Sick and Dancing Mothers
No full textThis project examines Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif.” The aim of this thesis is to analyze the ways in which the characters of Twyla and Roberta remain fixated on the question of Maggie, a disabled character, and their mothers. Drawing on the work of disability studies specialist Lennard J. Davis, this thesis explores how the binary “normal/abnormal” functions in the story and shapes Twyla’s and Roberta’s understandings of their pasts and identities. The White/Black binary also shapes Twyla’s and Roberta’s experiences—and understanding of Maggie. At a time when the category of “White” stood as a default universal or norm, Maggie’s possible Blackness increases her perceived vulnerability and raises the stakes of the question posed in the narrative, “What the hell happened to Maggie”
Unveiling Deception: Discourse Analysis of Sora and the Impact of AI on Misinformation
Get PDFIn today’s era of information abundance, combating the proliferation of misinformation is paramount. The growing concern within the release of artificial intelligence–AI models–have exemplified concerns through Open AI’s new text-to-video learning language model: Sora, heightening the ever-present issue of how artificial intelligence will be a detriment to society. This project is a culmination of a comprehensive analysis regarding the ongoing discourse of the effects of this language learning text-to-video model and its impending effects of deception. Implementing James Paul Gee’s meticulous discourse analysis tools, I was able to meticulously examine online discussions spanning diverse social media platforms to unearth underlying concerns and themes. Specifically, by scrutinizing the ramifications of Sora-related misinformation, crucial issues, such as the erosion of public trust, copyright integrity, and authenticity challenges come to the fore. Illuminating these prevailing themes and areas of contention within the discourse, this study provides major insights for designing targeted interventions and educational initiatives aimed at fostering media literacy and critical thinking skills among society. This research contributes invaluable insights to a deeper comprehension of the intricate interaction between social media discourse and the magnification of misinformation in the domain of AI, providing valuable insights for mitigating its potential adverse effects and promoting more informed public discourse
Sensorial Memories: A Cinema Speculum in Aftersun(2022) and Petite Maman(2021)
Get PDFIn her 1975 article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey used psychoanalysis as a political weapon to critique the issue of the male gaze in traditional Hollywood narrative cinema. Mulvey\u27s work is pioneering for feminist film studies but was criticized and reexamined among film and feminist scholars. Building on the precedent of Mulvey and the feminist research of Luce Irigaray, contemporary scholar Lucy Bolton has proposed the camera as an Irigarayan speculum, explaining how certain contemporary films delve into female characters\u27 inner worlds, creating them with subjectivity and diversity. Drawing on contemporary feminist film theories and phenomenology theories, I argue that women in contemporary films have undergone a transformation from objects to subjects. Through an in-depth analysis of two films released after 2020, Petit Maman (2021) and Aftersun (2022), I will demonstrate how female filmmakers incorporate the Irigarayan speculum into films, exploring female characters\u27 inner worlds and shaping their subjectivity. Both films integrate female characters\u27 memories by breaking linear time, tracing back to their personal history, and validating the diversified shaping process of female characters in body, psyche, and personality while providing audiences with unique viewing experiences. As milestones in contemporary cinema post-2020, these two films affirm the process of women moving toward subjectivity on screen
Independent Visions of Marginal America: Reimagining a Nation Through Outsiders, Searching, and Non-Arrival
Get PDFThis thesis explores critical responses to American-ness, American identity, and most significantly American myth, in independent films about America in cultural terms, and their attempts to deconstruct the myths of nation and culture. The independent films about America analyzed in this thesis range from the 1960s to the 1990s, made by filmmakers across movements and cultures, but they all contain in some measure three key concepts: the “outsider,” the “search,” and a narrative “non-arrival.” Easy Rider (1969) will be explored as the prototype for this paradigm, contrasted with films that reinterpret the road-movie structure away from existential angst and toward richer ambiguities: Alambrista! (1977), Gummo, Stroszek, Chan is Missing, and The Watermelon Woman (1996). Transnationality reflects in the content and production of many “outsider” films; therefore my study replaces the category American films with films in and about America. These films about America are threaded together by the outsider as a position relative to social acceptance and unified identity (the “inside”), and the search as a yearning, a desire for peace, happiness, meaning, etc. molded by transience and instability. The search never yields the result or object the characters intend to find, and within this non-arrival the denial of resolution informs us about the unsurety of life for the outsider, and the elusiveness of the nation as a mythic construct. The unsettling of myth is interpreted as a kind of hauntology, as the ‘haunting’ or persistence of violence and myth is analyzed
1st Place Contest Entry: Modification of Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents with Language Disorder
Get PDFThis is Lauren Fillet\u27s submission for the 2024 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains their essay on using library resources, their bibliography, and a summary of their research project on how evidence-based interventions and therapeutic techniques can be modified or supplemented in order to ensure that the benefits of these approaches are maximally accessible to those who struggle with communication.
Lauren is a student in the Masters of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Leah Beekman
Negative Social Perceptions and their Impacts on the Maya People
Get PDFHowever, the existing literature on the Maya Train does not encompass geographically the entirety of the Yucatan Peninsula. Furthermore, the majority of literature on colorism that is available in English is focused on the impact of colorism on mental health and poverty levels, mostly for Afro-Latinos (preferably referred to as afrodescendientes), while not addressing Indigenous groups. This project examines the social perceptions that non-Indigenous Mexicans hold towards Indigenous people, specifically the Maya people from the case of the Maya Train. I argue that the social perceptions of the people in the Yucatan . By conducting interviews and surveys with both citizens who identify themselves as Maya and those who do not, as well as analyzing existing data and media sources, I demonstrate that there is a negative social perception of the Maya people. The damage being done to the environment by the Maya Train project is worse than what the government promised it would be and this is impacting the Maya people as the jungle is an integral part of their culture. This project contributes to the literature on colorism by connecting colorism to microaggressive speech using Critical Race Theory and Green theory
“Caught in the Continuum”: How Special Educators Facilitate Access for Students With Extensive Support Needs
Get PDFDespite the preponderance of scholarly literature advocating the benefits of including students with disabilities in general education, students with ESN continue to be educated in restrictive settings. Limited research exists on how to facilitate access to inclusive opportunities in these segregated self-contained settings, yet this is primarily where these students are educated. Additionally, educators of these students are often “caught in the continuum;” teaching in a system that is set to exclude their students while attempting to facilitate access. This qualitative research study used collective case study methodology and methods to analyze this gap in the literature. This dissertation aimed to determine how educators in segregated self-contained settings facilitate access to general education curriculum and peers for students with ESN at the student, school, and district levels. Subsequently, it aimed to identify the educational practices special educators use to facilitate this access and what challenges and barriers they encounter. Through semistructured interviews and related documentation, findings highlight the perspectives of special education teachers, including the supports, educational practices, and barriers they experience when providing access for their students with ESN. These findings lead to recommendations for future research and practice as we continue to endeavor for access for all
Mechanistic Study of Antimicrobial Cyclic Peptide [R4W4] Antibacterial Effectiveness against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
No full textAntimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are being explored as a potential solution to combat antibiotic resistance, as they have shown promise in reducing susceptibility to antibiotics. This study explores if [R4W4] peptide is bacteriostatic or bactericidal using modified two-fold serial dilution and evaluates synergism of gentamicin and [R4W4] against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by checkered board assay. The MRSA resistant to [R4W4] and possibility with other antibiotics was evaluated with serial passage. Moreover, we investigated the mechanism of action of [R4W4] against MRSA by applying biophysical assays to evaluate zeta potential, cytoplasmic membrane depolarization, and Lipoteichoic acid (LTA) binding affinity. [R4W4] exhibits bactericidal activity against bacterial isolates (MBC/MIC £ 4), with a synergistic effect with gentamicin against E. coli (FICI=0.3), but not against MRSA (FICI=0.75). [R4W4] at 16 µg/ml concentration stabilizes the zeta potential of MRSA -33 ± 0.88 mV to -8.37 mV. Also, [R4W4] at 2 x MIC and 16 x MIC revealing a membrane perturbation process associated with concentration-dependent effects. Lastly, in the presence of BODIPY-Cadaverine fluorescence dyes, [R4W4] reveals binding affinity to LTA comparable with melittin, the positive control. In addition, a change in the antibacterial activity of [R4W4] against MRSA in the absence and presence of LTA did not change the MIC 8µg/ml. Therefore, the [R4W4] mechanism of action is bactericidal with the potential to interact with bacterial cell membranes, causing concentration-dependent cytoplasm membrane perturbation
Lessons Not Learned
Get PDFIn July 1936, Spain descended into chaos and civil war. Fascists in the military, Catholic Church, and aristocracy rebelled against a government elected to reform centuries old power structures. The United States reacted in surprise and joined France and Britain, staunchly refusing to be involved. For six months, the Department of State impeded attempts to material assist the Spanish government, until Congress passed an updated neutrality law prohibiting trade with Spain or the rebels. Congress again renewed and updated the law a year later. Yet in spring of 1939, at the end of the war, Franklin D. Roosevelt told his ambassador to Spain he regretted not assisting the Spanish government.
The president, however, unfairly critiqued himself. The United States never debated involvement. “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS), the State Department’s official edited record of diplomatic reporting, has no record of diplomatic reporting warning of imminent war, despite ample indications. Bowers provided timely reports during the first six months of the war on assisting Americans in Spain and the diplomatic community’s activities. He did not report his observations of German and Italian military activity, atrocities committed by the fascists, or the consequences of prohibiting supplies from reaching Spanish government forces.
It is impossible to know how broader reporting might have changed decisions in Washington. This thesis does not argue American intervention could or would have changed the outcome of the war. This thesis argues that Bowers had a responsibility for fuller diplomatic vi reporting to inform better policy decisions in Washington and that lessons American learned post World War II resulting in intervention, globalist international policies, and diplomats opining on policy and recommending changes rather than just reporting, could have been learned from the Spanish Civil War
Ontological Complexity of Interpolity Orders: The Encounter Between Chosŏn and Tibet in Qing
Get PDFThis article examines the ontological complexity of interpolity orders with a focus on peripheral polities in the Qing order. Existing multiculturalist studies of the Qing order emphasized diverse cultural representations of a single imperial reality, lacking an understanding of multiple realities experienced by peripheral participants. Our analysis reveals the ontological complexity—rather than cultural diversity—of the Qing order, in which multiple ontological agents experienced different lived worlds, from the encounter between Chosŏn Korean envoys and the Tibetan Panchen Lama at Emperor Qianlong’s birthday ceremony. By analyzing the Chosŏn envoy member Pak Chiwŏn’s travelog and Tibetan records, we argue that the Chosŏn envoys with Confucian ontology experienced the Panchen Lama as a subhuman, while the Lama experienced the envoys as ignorant lay beings. Observing this ontological dissonance, Pak Chiwŏn criticized the Qing court’s appropriation of peripheral ontologies and proposed experiencing other ontologies to foreground the presence of the pluriverse in the interpolity order. Beyond the Qing, an ontological approach will help reveal heterogeneous lived worlds of interpolity orders and reconceptualize interpolity order under the condition of ontological complexity