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Civil War Fashion: Outerwear
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/museumvideo/18/thumbnail.jpgOn women\u27s outerwear of the 1860s.</p
NATO after Sixty Years: A Stable Crisis
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/new_foreign_relations/15/thumbnail.jpgExperts analyze NATO’s successes
NATO after Sixty Years addresses the challenges of adaptation confronting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the early twenty-first century. Comprised of essays from a range of experts, each chapter examines an aspect of NATO’s difficult adjustment to the post–Cold War security challenges within and without its treaty-based responsibilities and competencies.
In the book’s introductory chapter, James Sperling establishes the framework and analytical themes to be developed and explored. The first set of essays discusses the changing operational and strategic purposes of the alliance. Sean Kay examines the problem of sustaining the deterrent capability and collective defense function of the alliance, particularly the debate over ballistic missile defense. Mark Webber considers the expanded role of NATO peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and its implications for NATO as a military alliance, while Stanley Kober discusses the negative impact of Afghanistan on alliance solidarity and credibility.
The second section examines the expanded geographical reach and responsibility of the alliance. Melvin Goodman traces the engagement of the alliance with the Russian Federation, and Yannis A. Stivachtis explores NATO’s role in the southern and eastern Mediterranean. Stephen J. Blank covers allied interests in the Black Sea region and the potential liabilities and benefits of an active NATO engagement in that region. Nathan Lucas delivers a skeptical analysis of NATO’s ability and need to claim the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean as strategic areas of operational responsibility.
The final chapters position NATO in the institutional context that will shape its evolution as a security actor in the new geostrategic environment. Lawrence Kaplan establishes the potential role of NATO as an agent for the United Nations. Dennis Sandole focuses on the complementary relationship between the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and NATO. Stanley Sloan investigates NATO’s fraught institutional relationship with the European Union, particularly the emergence of the latter as an increasingly effective security actor. Finally, Jamie Shea reflects on the difficulty of crafting a new strategic concept that would ensure NATO’s continuing viability and credibility as the primary security institution for the nations of the North Atlantic area.
This volume offers the basis for guarded optimism that NATO will persist and continue to perform its twin functions of collective defense and deterrence into the foreseeable future, despite the periodic crises that temporarily cast its future into doubt. An in-depth exploration of research and emerging ideas, NATO after Sixty Years is essential reading for those interested in NATO’s past and present as well as looking to its future.</p
Writing Center Review Volume 17 Spring 2012
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wcr/vol17/iss1/1/thumbnail.jp
Visual Exploration of the Semantic Markers of Faith
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/asir/vol2/iss1/1/thumbnail.jpgFaith is a term which defies precise definition, yet as a concept it has rich and deep semantic meaning. Faith is a universal spiritual concept associated with all of the World’s religions. Through historical study, we can trace the history of faith within and across those religions. Is it possible to see faith from an information perspective or can faith be understood only as tacit knowledge and belief? The research question which this work addresses is: Is it possible to create a single visual representation of faith that is meaningful to and understandable by members of many religious faiths? This paper explores the representation of faith across religions through the visual presentation and mapping of semantic markers. Semantic markers are defined as meaningful concepts that trigger an association with a core idea. Semantic markers of faith are derived from sacred religious texts using natural language processing (part of speech tagging) and grammatical concept extraction. Sacred texts are identified for each religions including: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism. The markers and their relationships are visually mapped based on the frequency of occurrence. Semantic markers are represented as word clouds. Word clouds are created for each religion individually, and as a single combined cloud for all religions. The individual word clouds illustrate the role of faith in the religion based on the richness or sparseness of the semantics. Through comparisons, the individual clouds also highlight variations in the role of faith across religions. The composite word clouds for all six religions illustrate the common elements of faith.</p
Music as Information and Dialogue: An Ethnographic Study of a Christian Congregation Serving a Largely Gay and Lesbian (GLBT) Membership
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/asir/vol2/iss1/6/thumbnail.jpgMusic is important in most Christian churches. It is used for many purposes such as supporting belief systems, encouraging proper behaviors, and offering care and comfort. In this discussion, I present an ethnographic, naturalistic study of a largely GLBT (gay lesbian, bisexual, transgender) congregation and how music is used to support the theology and social needs of the church. The discussion will offer a historical as well as a contemporary overview of the use of music as used in the Metropolitan Community Church Austin (a member of the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches ((UFMMC)) and how it has evolved since the church’s founding as an independent congregation in 1976. I conclude by offering an explanation for this evolution based on social, political, personal, and administrative situations as they have changed over the 36 years since the founding of the church.</p
An Examination of NCAA Division I Football Bowl Championship Subdivision Department Revenues and Expenditures and Their Effect on Athletic Success in a Mid-Major Athletic Conference
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/9979/8869-thumbnail.jpgAthletic department expenditures within National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletics are in many cases growing faster than the general university budget. Universities are spending millions on athletics, specifically in the sports of men‘s basketball and football, to achieve athletic success and to generate marketing exposure for the university. Typical spending comes in upgrading facilities and luxuries oftentimes justified to enhance winning, revenue generation, overall university exposure, enrollment, and fundraising. For this study, athletic and university success is defined as significant gains in these five aforementioned areas. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect increased expenditures have had on ―mid-major‖ athletic programs (specifically those who are not affiliated with the College Football Bowl Championship Series) such as the Mid-American Conference (MAC) to see if those increases influence a positive or negative outcome on athletic and/or university success. The researchers found, in the case of the Mid-American Conference, that increased expenditures do not significantly increase athletic and or university success and often results in reductions in other sports programs and increases in institutional subsidies to cover increasing expenses. In addition, the researchers present potential areas of savings which might enable intercollegiate athletic programs to keep athletic programs rather than eliminating or reducing them to meet Title IX gender equity requirements or financial contingencies.</p
A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/abolitionism/2/thumbnail.jpgA Self-Evident Lie explores and underscores the fear and complex meaning of “slavery” to northerners before the Civil War. Many northerners asked: If slavery was the beneficent and paternalistic institution that southerners claimed, could it not be applied with equal morality to whites as well as blacks? Republicans repeatedly expressed concern that proslavery arguments were not inherently racial. Irrespective of race, anyone could fall victim to the argument that they were “inferior,” that they would be better off enslaved, that their enslavement served the interests of society, or that their subjugation was justified by history and religion. In trenchant and graceful prose, Jeremy Tewell argues that some Republicans, most notably Abraham Lincoln, held that the only effective safeguard of individual liberty was universal liberty, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. As long as Americans believed that “all men” were endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, everyone’s liberty would be self-evident, regardless of circumstance. Conversely, the justifications meant to exclude a segment of society from the rights of man worked to destroy the self-evidence of those very rights. Therefore, by failing to repudiate slavery—thus rejecting the universality of human liberty—northerners made themselves vulnerable to proslavery rationales, especially when they happened to occupy a position of political, social, or economic weakness. Black skin had been stigmatized as a badge of servitude, but there was nothing to guarantee that white skin would always serve as an unimpeachable badge of freedom. This was a major theme in Lincoln’s campaign against Stephen A. Douglas and was a key argument against the use of popular sovereignty as the method for determining slavery’s status in the territories. According to Tewell, Lincoln’s greatest challenge was to convince northern audiences that simple indifference to slavery was itself inimical to the liberty of whites. A Self-Evident Lie will intrigue anyone interested in issues related to Lincoln, slavery and antislavery, the Civil War, and American intellectual history.</p
Practice What You Preach: Exploring the Role of the Catholic Church in the Development of the Library and Information Science profession
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/acir/2012/Papers/2/thumbnail.jpgLibraries during the classical period in Greece and Rome flourished. These first literate Western societies, promoted literacy and laid the foundation for the development of libraries and the profession of Library and Information Science. However, literacy declined during the middleages and as a result books and libraries all but vanished. One institution survived that was devoted to the preservation of the written word: the Catholic Church. The role of priests and monasteries in the development of cataloging, preservation and the organization of manuscript production pioneered what are common practices in the library profession today. This study traces the evolution of the Catholic Church in the historic development of libraries. A historical approach is used that includes documentary research. Two overarching research questions will be explored: In what ways did the Catholic Church impact the historical development of the Library and Information Science profession? What is the impact of that role today? Findings will provide insight into the relationship of the Catholic Church and its role not only in the development of library and information science, but also its important role in the preservation of religious texts and other information objects.</p
Increasing the Visibility of Slavic Medieval Manuscripts
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/acir/2012/Papers/9/thumbnail.jpgDiscovery. It means different things to different people. It rarely happens quickly. More often, it involves peeling away layers of meaning to discover a hidden essence. Even with a revelation, discovery resembles sculpting; refining the revelation to reveal its essence. Slavic medieval manuscripts, appearing at first glance to be poor orphans, have revealed themselves to be giants of human dignity. They represent the survival through unimaginable sufferings of marginalized people during truly evil times. Access to these Slavic manuscripts, however, presents unique problems to the scholar. Western institutions tend to marginalize Slavic manuscripts. I believe this marginalization comes from the poor condition of many manuscripts and because of misconceptions about their intellectual value. Only recently has inter-disciplinary interest expanded manuscript research beyond previous boundaries through the technologies of information science and the viewpoints of literary criticism, historiography, and hypertext theory. I describe here my discovery of the cultural heritage of Slavic manuscripts and my application of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks to them. I also describe efforts to preserve and provide access to these artifacts through conventional conservation techniques and through electronic publishing.</p
Importance of Being Earnest (2012)
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/theatregallery/8/thumbnail.jpgDirected by: Jim Canacci
Set Design: Tony E. Kovacic
Costume Design: Eileen Janis Larson
Actors: Susan MonteCalvo, Hannah Gillespie, Dylan Aaron White, Terri Wilkes</p