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A New Paradigm of Transnational Higher Education in China: from local divergence towards global convergence of harmonious governance?
No full textWomen in Academic Leadership in the East and the West: Navigating Challenges to Attain Key Leadership Positions in Male-Dominated Societies
No full textLocating Timbre in Copyright Law’s Modern Musical Work
No full textCopyright law requires courts deciding music infringement cases to locate two copyrights within a single song: one in the “musical work” and another in the “sound recording.” But songs do not naturally divide into such pieces. Instead, judges untrained in music must parse from a unified song the musical elements belonging to each copyright and to whom those copyrights belong. They have historically approached the task as a simple matter of identifying elements notated on a score as belonging to the musical work and placing “everything else” on the sound recording, but such a formalistic approach does not suit the modern popular music at the center of most infringement lawsuits. In fact, given that very few twenty-first-century musical works are copyrighted with a written deposit copy, any previously bright line between work and recording has faded. As cases where a written score defines the scope of a musical work’s protection age out of copyright suits, judges are left with the nuanced, artistic task of determining the elements that constitute a musical work without the help of any corresponding visual representation.
For several decades, musical creative practices have evolved in response to new music technologies and the incorporation of collaboration into every step of the music-making process. Compositional practices now put previously impossible sounds at the creative center of composers’ songs. In this Article, I argue that to align the legal concept of the musical work with the modern popular music it governs, courts must consider and accommodate modern music-compositional practices. Recognizing the centrality of timbre—the way music sounds—to musical works is an important first step for the law to meet modern music where it currently stands
The Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and Its Importance to Organism Survival and Development
No full textBrain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) has been the subject of numerous studies regarding the functioning of the brain in relation to topics such as neural plasticity and neural survival. However, BDNF has also been implicated in the induction of changes not only in neural tissue but multiple other tissue types across the human body. The aim of this literature review is to provide a comprehensive, yet brief, overview of BDNF’s influence on the functioning of the nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, and immune systems
Decolonizing Links Between International Scholarships and Peace Insights from a Critical Realist Study in Palestine
No full textIn this article, I summarize my doctoral research of the potential contribution of international graduate scholarships to peace in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). The research challenges predominant explanations of scholarships\u27 contribution to peace on account of advancing human and global capitals and facilitating Western-style liberal-democratic socialization. Within a critical realist paradigm, interview and documentary data from 32 Palestinian scholarship alumni were analyzed in a three-stage process. First, the descriptive findings show that the participants perceive significant gains from scholarships in their academic, career, and multidimensional identity development. Second, the inferential findings demonstrate that these gains represent increased effective ability of the participants to overcome the detrimental effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on affective, citizenship, and epistemic aspects of their lives. Finally, the dispositional findings clarify how this increase in the participants’ effective ability may have arisen. These ontological-level findings demonstrate that scholarships’ potential contribution to peace in the OPT may result from positive interaction between effective freedoms extended by scholarships and pro-peace forces embraced by Palestinian students. I draw on these findings in arguing that the story of education abroad impact (on peace) may not be so complete or truthful to reality if told in terms foreign to the home-country context
Understanding and experiencing American identity during a single-semester study abroad program in London
No full textThe United States government is actively promoting and seeking to increase the number of Americans who study abroad. While institutions promise students intercultural development, Dolby (2007) asserts that “critical reflection on national identity is both obtainable and an important step toward global citizenship” (p. 141). An understanding of how students understand and experience their national (American) identity is therefore imperative for Study Abroad providers to develop effective programming. This qualitative study, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, attempts to gain such an understanding. Drawing on Mezirow’s theory of Transformative Learning, it finds that those who experience Mezirow’s “disorienting dilemma” are not necessarily those who benefit from such destabilization
Teacher Educators’ Languaging for More Just English Language Education in Ecuador
No full textThis article describes how English language teacher educators in Ecuador envision their languaging practices contributing to more just English language education in a Global South context. The study took a capabilities approach informed by Latin American decolonial theory. Findings are based on a qualitative thematic analysis of focus group interviews conducted with 37 instructors teaching English language teacher education content courses at 18 universities. The findings illustrate two distinct theories of change: through best practices and through contextualization. Teacher educators linked English-only practices with developing teacher English proficiency, holding teachers accountable to standards, and preparing them to ultimately enact global ‘best practices’ like maximizing classroom English to expand educational access. Alternatively, multilingual practices were linked to developing teacher identity and cognition, empowering teachers to differentiate instruction, and preparing them to ultimately enact contextualized pedagogies that—according to this alternate theory of change—would better serve marginalized learners
Aprender Inglés en la U-diversidad: The Case of Colombian University Students with Multiple Marginalized Identities Disrupting Colonial Language Policies and Curricula
No full textRequired to learn English, Black, Indigenous, Migrant and Rural Colombian university students often find themselves oppressed by a colonial curriculum that overlooks their intersecting marginalized identities. Drawing from decoloniality and intersectionality, this paper discusses how coloniality and students’ plethora of identities converge in the English classroom and engage in a dance of oppression and resistance. Mediated by participatory dialogues, results of this (case) study indicate that engaging these minoritized students in a collective initiative to decolonize the English classroom enabled them to a) value the social, cultural, and linguistic identities of their territories b) reflect on the implication of colonial language policies in the displacement of ancestral languages, and c) gain resources that aid their permanence in higher education. These findings hold the potential to inform language teachers, universities, and policymakers about the possibilities a decolonial approach to ELT affords in the critical transformation of the English curriculum