6,694 research outputs found

    The Diasporic Sublime in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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    The doctoral research aims to redefine the theory of the sublime within the transcultural identities through the works of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The involvement and elevation of Indian American women in migration has not been emphasised enough in the discussion of indentured labour, globalization and effects of cultural appropriation. Considering the German traditions of aesthetics, specifically Immanuel Kant’s theorization of the sublime in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beauty and the Sublime (1790/2011), the dissertation focuses to challenge the specific Kantian notion of female inability to be the sovereign and elevated (sublime) subject. ‘Diasporic sublime’ hence highlights the journey of Indian immigrant women in the United States of America and facing the conflicts to reach the sublime state of body and mind. The dissertation structures the conceptualisation of the postcolonial fear, power and agency through the changes of body, food and home to evince the manifestation of the sublime. Following the contemporary works of Christina Battersby, Bonnie Mann and Barbara Claire Freeman, the dissertation renegotiates the term sublime as a process to confront the submissive identity, dehumanised socio-economical state of immigrant women

    Living Labor

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    For much of the twentieth century, the iconic figure of the U.S. working class was a white, male industrial worker. But in the contemporary age of capitalist globalization new stories about work and workers are emerging to refashion this image. Living Labor examines these narratives and, in the process, offers an innovative reading of American fiction and film through the lens of precarious work. It argues that since the 1980s, novelists and filmmakers—including Russell Banks, Helena Víramontes, Karen Tei Yamashita, Francisco Goldman, David Riker, Ramin Bahrani, Clint Eastwood, Courtney Hunt, and Ryan Coogler—have chronicled the demise of the industrial proletariat, and the tentative and unfinished emergence of a new, much more diverse and perilously positioned working class. In bringing together stories of work that are also stories of race, ethnicity, gender, and colonialism, Living Labor challenges the often-assumed division between class and identity politics. Through the concept of living labor and its discussion of solidarity, the book reframes traditional notions of class, helping us understand both the challenges working people face and the possibilities for collective consciousness and action in the global present

    Coworking through the Pandemic: Flexibly Yours

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    Coworking can be defined as a paid for service (usually) providing shared workspace and amenities to users. When the pandemic hit, owing to the business model’s in-person foundations of physical proximity and shared amenities, the coworking industry was expected to be seriously impacted. Yet fast forward, and as the pandemic has played out, coworking businesses are uniquely positioned in this uncertain and changing workscape. This dissertation presents one of the first academic explorations into how independent coworking businesses fared in the initial year of the pandemic. Specifically, the research explores the following questions: 1. How did independent coworking businesses manage and adapt to the pandemic? 2. What is virtual coworking and what are the experiences of workers in these virtual coworking spaces? 3. How does coworking flexibility affect social support and connection? Using a critically interpretive poststructural approach, this ethnography included virtual fieldwork and interviews. Sixty hours of virtual participant observation and 30 loosely structured interviews were conducted with coworking stakeholders (i.e., owner-operators, managers, and users) over videoconferencing platforms. Secondary data included written fieldnotes and coworking documents. Results capture the strategies used by coworking business owner-operators and managers to sustain their businesses and the attendant relationships with coworking users, irrespective of whether or not a physical location could be provided under pandemic lockdowns. Given the expansion of coworking businesses into virtual service offerings, a key contribution of my research is the finding that co-location in a physical coworking space is not necessary to cultivate vibes and a sense of community. By removing the physical infrastructure of coworking, the virtual coworking product in which I participated points to both a reinforcement of and an emphasis on the centrality of social connection, support, and community. By de-centering the priority of a physical co-location, I conceptualize coworking businesses as commodified support infrastructures—affective atmospheres produced through the entanglement of human bodies, other living things, objects, and technologies in a space. In viewing coworking businesses as fluid affective atmospheres of support, my research adds to the emerging coworking scholarship that attends to the atmospheric qualities of coworking, the role of affective labour, and the possibilities of encounters and interactions as bodies, objects, and technologies interconnect. My results reinforce the deep ambivalence of coworking, capturing tensions between productivity and sociality, and a blurring of boundaries between professional and private, and work and leisure. The analysis also suggests that the inherent flexibility, informality, turnover, and autonomy in coworking practices can make creating stable social connections and support difficult. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis brought to light how coworking lies primarily outside the scope of current employment legislation, which includes occupational health and safety, employment standards, and workers’ compensation. In the absence of well-defined policy directions, coworking business owner-operators and managers made individualized decisions, thereby ultimately downloading further risk and responsibility onto their coworking users

    Religion, Education, and the ‘East’. Addressing Orientalism and Interculturality in Religious Education Through Japanese and East Asian Religions

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    This work addresses the theme of Japanese religions in order to rethink theories and practices pertaining to the field of Religious Education. Through an interdisciplinary framework that combines the study of religions, didactics and intercultural education, this book puts the case study of Religious Education in England in front of two ‘challenges’ in order to reveal hidden spots, tackle unquestioned assumptions and highlight problematic areas. These ‘challenges’, while focusing primarily on Japanese religions, are addressed within the wider contexts of other East Asian traditions and of the modern historical exchanges with the Euro-American societies. As result, a model for teaching Japanese and other East Asian religions is discussed and proposed in order to fruitfully engage issues such as orientalism, occidentalism, interculturality and critical thinking

    2023-2024 Boise State University Undergraduate Catalog

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    This catalog is primarily for and directed at students. However, it serves many audiences, such as high school counselors, academic advisors, and the public. In this catalog you will find an overview of Boise State University and information on admission, registration, grades, tuition and fees, financial aid, housing, student services, and other important policies and procedures. However, most of this catalog is devoted to describing the various programs and courses offered at Boise State

    The conceptualisation, practice and value of Design Thinking in Entrepreneurship Education – an Educator’s Perspective

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    The thesis illustrates how entrepreneurship educators understand Design Thinking (conceptual understanding), how and on what level they apply it in their entrepreneurship teaching (educational practice) and why and for what perceived value they choose to do so (perceived value). By adopting a more critical and differentiated perspective on this integration than previously reported in the existing literature, this research study provides novel insights to the question of the conceptualization, practice and value of Design Thinking for Entrepreneurship Education – from an educator’s perspective. It follows an interpretive and qualitative approach, drawing upon semi-structured interviews from 29 entrepreneurship educators from Higher Education in the UK andNorthern Europe. Thus, the thesis demonstrates that entrepreneurship educators integrate Design Thinking in many ways and for different reasons.As a result, this thesis synthesises existing perspectives on Design Thinking (toolset, process, mindset) and defines a framework for the four forms (selective, idea-centric, procedural, holistic) of Design Thinking integration in the context of Entrepreneurship Education. The findings suggest that perceived values of Design Thinking could be explicit and implicit and that entrepreneurship educators integrate Design Thinking to provide value for their students’ learning but also to develop their own teaching practice. Overall, this study contributes to unfolding the Design Thinking concept and advocating a common ground among educators’ sense-making of a Design Thinking integration in Entrepreneurship Education. In conclusion, this study reaffirmed the wide application of Design Thinking within Entrepreneurship Education but presented the new centrality of the educator’s perspective at the core of the discussion on its utility and thus, moving towards convergence of a common understanding. The findings of this research would be of interest for entrepreneurshipeducators and entrepreneurship education researchers who seek a more profound and reflective integration of Design Thinking within Entrepreneurship Education

    Overcome the fragmentation in online propaganda literature: the role of cultural and cognitive sociology

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    Evidence concerning the proliferation of propaganda on social media has renewed scientific interest in persuasive communication practices, resulting in a thriving yet quite disconnected scholarship. This fragmentation poses a significant challenge, as the absence of a structured and comprehensive organization of this extensive literature hampers the interpretation of findings, thus jeopardizing the understanding of online propaganda functioning. To address this fragmentation, I propose a systematization approach that involves utilizing Druckman's Generalizing Persuasion Framework as a unified interpretative tool to organize this scholarly work. By means of this approach, it is possible to systematically identify the various strands within the field, detect their respective shortcomings, and formulate new strategies to bridge these research strands and advance our knowledge of how online propaganda operates. I conclude by arguing that these strategies should involve the sociocultural perspectives offered by cognitive and cultural sociology, as these provide important insights and research tools to disentangle and evaluate the role played by supra-individual factors in the production, distribution, consumption, and evaluation of online propaganda
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