Granny gets smarter but junior hardly notices

To ensure that university computing students are sensitized to the needs of diverse user groups, a course project was designed to allow students to get a realistic understanding of the needs and abilities of the older mobile phone user. Over a three year period different student cohorts interviewed these users to assess their experience with mobile phones. It was found that students were generally dismissive of the cognitive abilities of the older mobile phone user. However the yearly snapshot revealed that the older user’s abilities improved year on year. Being prepared to understand all user groups is an essential skill that should be acquired by future interface designers.IBS

The New Hampshire, Vol. 74, No. 16 (Oct. 28, 1983)

The student publication of the University of New Hampshire

September 26, 2005

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

In a town called Harmony

A novella of crime and suspense set in the townships surrounding the mining town of Welkom Two friends, both ex-miners, start a welding business only to see it fail because of interference by corrupt officials To make ends meet, they are drawn into the world of illegal gold-mining, working with criminals who employ ‘zama-zamas’: desperate foreign nationals who are prepared to live and work in the abandoned mine tunnels underground The friends make money, but the dark practices of illegal mining put a strain on their relationship, their values, and their family ties

The perils and empowerments of mountain literacies: reading loss and shifting identities in Appalachian memoirs and novels

This dissertation analyzes the literary portrayal of literacy events in memoirs and novels written by Appalachian women during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing from contemporary literacy scholarship, my project engages several definitions of the term literacy, including theories defining it as a technical skill, a social act, cultural knowledge, or a potent form of ideological power. In a region historically (and often inaccurately) stigmatized as illiterate, literacy is a loaded term, a concept doubly associated with cultural pride and with cultural loss. By applying literacy theories to Appalachian literature, I analyze the identity conflicts literacy attainment causes for several female Appalachian authors and characters. Ethnographic research concludes that some Appalachians think of reading, as well as other literate practices, as woman’s work. This feminized domestication of literacy functions as an important theme in the works this project considers since female characters and authors inevitably face more literacy-initiated dilemmas. I pay special attention to scenes in which literacy acquisition (whether technical, social, or cultural) causes characters to become aware that their way of speaking, acting, and thinking is at odds with that of mainstream society and the gender expectations of their home discourse communities. In doing so, I discuss the resulting negotiations authors and characters encounter regarding their discourse community affiliation, arguing that such literary exploration adds to, and even revises, contemporary literacy theories. Chapter one discusses Appalachian illiteracy stereotypes, moving into a discussion about literacy definitions and how they operate for the authors in this project. Chapter two argues that in The Dollmaker, Harriette Simpson Arnow issues a warning to readers to maintain flexibility when negotiating discourse community divides caused by literacy attainment. Chapter three explores how in Creeker: A Woman’s Journey and Songs of Life and Grace Linda Scott DeRosier negotiates the same dilemmas Arnow’s characters face, both in her life and through memoir writing. Chapter four interrogates how reading initially discourages writing in Denise Giardina’s The Unquiet Earth, signaling the sometimes negative influence of technical literacy. Chapter five explores the literacy-initiated path from silence to voicing in Lee Smith’s Oral History and Fair and Tender Ladies

The Big House: Marriage and Masculinity in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha

In William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha masculinity is often at issue and is usually defined by men's activities in the outdoor world. But this study reveals that young white men often contemplate their masculinity in relation to marriage and domesticity. I argue that young white men, stripped of mastery over slaves and the outdoor world of the plantation in the changing and precarious social community of the reconstructed South, refocus their attention on the household--and marriage--as a place and a space that may reestablish their mastery and thus their manhood I focus on those whom I define as the young or developing white narrator and protagonist of each novel: Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Bayard Sartoris in The Unvanquished (1938), Isaac McCaslin in Go Down, Moses (1942), and Chick Mallison in Intruder in the Dust (1949). Their development can be interpreted through the literary genre of the Bildungsroman. By studying these novels as Bildungsromane, I demonstrate that traditional theories of this male-gendered genre are complicated by the narrators' inward struggle to identify with the domestic space. This causes them to turn inward, searching for understandings of their masculinity in their narratives of marriage. I define this as the narrators' search for an understanding of "domestic masculinity": masculinity established through a man's relationship to marriage and the home. This examination exposes the breakdown of the social binaries of marriage and slavery relied upon by male narrators to define themselves in relation to the Southern social order, ultimately showing how the two institutions mirror one another. This dissertation documents a progression, a re-imagining, an evolution in Faulkner's depiction of marriage. Quentin's narration in Absalom, Absalom! establishes, through his documentation of the Sutpen family saga, an understanding of how marriage creates community, how marriage as an institution is used to define one's identity whether it be white or black or slave and planter, and how marriage and slavery work together to create the household that sustains (and threatens) masculinity. Bayard's narration in The Unvanquished, in contrast, demonstrates the effects of the collapse of the household on his identity because he relies upon the ideologies of the household to buttress his identity in the war-ravished South. Ike's narration in Go Down, Moses documents the implications of the collapse of the household and the masculine identity created by it. Rather than relying upon the household to bolster identity as we see in Absalom, Absalom! and The Unvanquished, Ike McCaslin rejects the ideologies of the household, fearing its ability to enslave him, leaving the household to Lucas Beauchamp who uses it to establish his masculinity as white men did in the previous novels. Finally, in Intruder in the Dust, Chick McCaslin offers a younger generation's perception of what happens to marriage as a result of white men's abandonment of the household and black men's reliance upon it for masculinity. Juxtaposing his parents' marriage with a re-evaluation of Lucas Beauchamp's marriage, Chick ultimately rejects both understandings of marriage because he recognizes that neither marriage is a unification of individuals but is instead a contested site for dominance between the individuals. While Chick may have the clearest understanding of marriage, he too chooses to stand outside of the institution. Like his predecessors, Chick fears his ability to re-invent the institution and rid it of the onus of property, bondage, and mastery that have bastardized it into a feared institution