The Faculty Notebook, September 2016

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

Social Software, Groups, and Governance

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. Such a framework may be organized along three dimensions by which groups arise and sustain themselves: regulating places, things, and stories

Critical Media Literacy and Cultural Autonomy in a Mediated World

We live in mediated worlds. Every waking hour of our lives finds us close, physically and mentally, to some sort of media content: Television, radio, movies, magazines, billboards, blogs, YouTube videos, websites, and social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest. Media scholars have been researching the ubiquitous role that media play in our lives for decades, but the current media environment is unlike any seen in history, as developments in digital technologies have produced a veritable onslaught of words, images, and sounds that can be accessed anywhere, at any time; all from a device that most of us carry around in our pockets. While no one would imagine that a flood rushing through one’s home would not have any impact on one’s life, it is just as misguided to think that this flood of media does not affect us significantly

Intercultural Perspective on Impact of Video Games on Players: Insights from a Systematic Review of Recent Literature

[EN] The video-game industry has become a significant force in the business and entertainment world. Video games have become so widespread and pervasive that they are now considered a part of the mass media, a common method of storytelling and representation. Despite the massive popularity of video games, their increasing variety, and the diversification of the player base, until very recently little attention was devoted to understanding how playing video games affects the way people think and collaborate across cultures. This paper examines the recent literature regarding the impact of video games on players from an intercultural perspective. Sixty-two studies are identified whose aim is to analyze behavioral-change, content understanding, knowledge acquisition, and perceptional impacts. Their findings suggest that video games have the potential to help to acquire cultural knowledge and develop intercultural literacy, socio-cultural literacy, cultural awareness, self-awareness, and the cultural understanding of different geopolitical spaces, to reinforce or weaken stereotypes, and to some extent also facilitate the development of intercultural skills. The paper provides valuable insights to the scholars, teachers, and practitioners of cultural studies, education, social studies, as well as to the researchers, pointing out areas for future research.We are grateful for the thoughtful comments provided by the reviewers of this paper.Shliakhovchuk, O.; Muñoz García, A. (2020). Intercultural Perspective on Impact of Video Games on Players: Insights from a Systematic Review of Recent Literature. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice. 20(1):40-58. https://doi.org/10.12738/jestp.2020.1.004S405820

These Heads are Packed with Stories: The Out-of-School Writing Experiences of Elementary Age Boys

This focused ethnography (Knoblauch, 2005; Jeffrey & Troman, 2004) investigated the out-of-school writing experiences of elementary age boys. The theoretical framework combined sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991, 1998) and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) to shed light on the social, cultural, and motivational aspects of boys as they wrote. Few researchers have talked with boys about their experiences; this study examined what they wrote, the tools they used, the purposes for their writing, and how they defined writing. Participants were elementary age boys. Multiple data sources and multi-layered cycles of analyses allowed for detailed examination of the boys’ experiences. The data included individual interviews with boys, their parents, along with writing artifacts provided by the boys, and my own reflective research journal. The findings are presented as an ethnodrama. Findings indicated that boys’ heads were “packed” with stories that have to get out in some form. They felt their writing was not valued in school or at times not allowed to be shared because of the content. The boys wrote for public and private audiences: for themselves, their friends, families, and larger possible audiences. They wrote alone and together with other boys and parents to entertain, inform others, and to make changes in the in the world. They did this through stories with humor, violence, facts, and their developing opinions. When the boys wrote together, they developed social networks that supported their out-of-school writing and the competence they had for their writing. Finally, they defined writing as using their imagination and creativity. This study shed light on elementary age boys’ experiences in order to show that boys are indeed writers

Molding Messages: Analyzing the Reworking of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in \u3ci\u3eGrimm’s Fairy Tale Classics\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eDollhouse\u3c/i\u3e

The story of “Sleeping Beauty” (ATU 410) is one of the most consistently captivating fairy tales. It tells of a cursed princess dreaming in a tower, waiting patiently for her prince to rescue her. Those who recreate the tale for contemporary audiences spin the story anew, reconstructing again and again what it means both to sleep and to awaken. This chapter analyzes two modern television versions of the tale, one for children and one for adults, comparing their incorporation of feminist messages and parallel ideas about shaping narratives and shaping lives. The children’s cartoon Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (also called Grimm Masterpiece Theatre) and the adult program Dollhouse each remold the story to advance very specific rereadings of the tale

Social Media\u27s Impact on Compassion

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether individuals are losing their sense of compassion through the use of using social media. I will be examining the social media sites Facebook and YouTube, and I will provide examples as to how people are losing their compassion through use of these sites in order to victimize and bully others. I will be discussing cyberbullying within this essay and how it is an example of how individuals are losing their compassion online. My primary source will be the case of Amanda Todd, who was a severely bullied fifteen year-old girl who posted a video on YouTube in 2012. In this video, Todd explained her story to the world as to why she was being cyberbullied and hoped to gain compassion from social media users. Instead of individuals expressing compassion toward Todd, they only increased her torment by posting horrible comments on her video, goading the young teenager to kill herself. A month after posting the video, Todd committed suicide. Based off the tragic case of Amanda Todd, I will explain my argument through a psychological and ethical approach, that individuals are losing their compassion online. I will further be exploring the idea of “compassion fatigue” and how it may have played a role in social media users reacting the way they did towards Todd’s YouTube video. Lastly, I will also be discussing the ways in which individuals can maintain their humanity online in this ever-changing, and fast-paced technological age

Critical Sensitivity in Digital Place-Craft to Unsettle Settler Sentiments of Place

This paper summarizes the methods and outcomes of my dissertation inquiry, which examined the potential that critical perspectives on digital placemaking practices may hold for art teaching with digital materials. Within this study, placemaking is the (often, but not always, intentional) shaping of the material qualities of a place. The study described in this paper examined how critical sensitivity to the material qualities of digital places (i.e. the actions and sensations places invite and inhibit) and critical sensitivity to the colonial ideologies digital places often materially enact and habituate, may inform the crafting of arts curricula as places, and inform youth artists’ crafting of digital places. Drawing on theories of digital materialism, curricula as digital places of learning, and critical and anticolonial framings of digital placemaking, the study summarized in this article suggests that habituating critical sensitivity to the material qualities of digital places is a viable approach to addressing ideologically-laden material qualities of the digital. The study also suggests that approaching curriculum development with critical sensitivity as an act of placemaking is a viable and valuable approach to navigating tension between structure and open-endedness in curricular design, and to attending to the ideologically-laden material qualities of curricular places

Introduction: Playful Transgressions

Research Council of NorwaypublishedVersio