323 research outputs found

    The Texture of Everyday Life: Carceral Realism and Abolitionist Speculation

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    Exploring the ways in which prisons shape the subjectivity of free-world thinkers, and the ways that subjectivity is expressed in literary texts, this dissertation develops the concept of carceral realism: a cognitive and literary mode that represents prisons and police as the only possible response to social disorder. As this dissertation illustrates, this form of consciousness is experienced as racial paranoia, and it is expressed literary texts, which reflect and help to reify it. Through this process of cultural reification, carceral realism increasingly insists on itself as the only possible mode of thinking. As I argue, however, carceral realism actually stands in a dialectical relationship to abolitionist speculation, or, the active imagining of a world without prisons and police and/or the conditions necessary to actualize such a world. In much the same way that carceral realism embeds itself in realist literary forms, abolitionist speculation plays a constitutive role in the utopian literary tradition. In order to elaborate these concepts, this dissertation begins with a meta-consideration of how cultural productions by incarcerated people are typically framed. Building upon the work of scholars and incarcerated authors’ own interventions in questions of consciousness, authorship, textual production, and study, this chapter contrasts that typical frame with a method of abolitionist reading. Chapter two applies this methodology to Edward Bunker’s 1977 novel The Animal Factory and Claudia Rankine’s 2010 poem Citizen in order to develop the concept of carceral realism and demonstrate how it has developed from the 1970s to the present. In order to lay out the historical foundations of the modern prison, chapter three looks back to the late 18th century and situates the emergence of the penitentiary within debates regarding race, citizenship, and state power. Returning to the 1970s, chapter four investigates the role universities have played in the formation of carceral realism and the complex relationship Chicanos and Asian Americans have to prisons and police by analogizing the institutionalization of prison literary study to the formation of ethnic studies. Chapter five draws this project to a conclusion by developing the concept of abolitionist speculation, or the active imagining of a world without prisons or the police and/or the conditions necessary to realize such a world, which I identify as both a constitutive generic feature of utopian literature and something that exceeds literature altogether. In doing so, this dissertation establishes an ongoing historical relationship between social reproduction of prisons and literary forms that cuts across time, geography, race, gender, and genre

    An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making

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    This monograph concerns the long-standing communication problem of how individuals can identify and resist the influence of unethical public speakers. Scholarship on the issue of what Socrates & Plato called the “Evil Lover” – i.e., the ill-intended rhetor – began with the Greek philosophers, but has carried into [post]Modern anxieties. For instance, the study of Nazi propaganda machines, and the rhetoric of Hitler himself, rejuvenated interest in the study of speech and communication in the U.S. and Europe. Whereas unscrupulous sophists used lectures and legal forums, and Hitler used a microphone, contemporary Evil Lovers primarily draw on new, internet-related tools to share their malicious influence. These new tools of influence are both more far-reaching and more subtle than the traditional practices of listening to a designated speaker appearing at an overtly political event. Rhetorician Ashley Hinck has recently noted the ways that popular culture – communication about texts which are commonly accessible and shared – are now significant sites through which citizens learn moral and political values. Accordingly, the talk of internet influencers who interpret popular texts for other fans has the potential to constitute strong persuasive power regarding ethics and civic responsibility. The present work identifies and responds to a particular case example of popular culture text that has been recently, and frequently, leveraged in moral and civic discourses: Todd Phillips’ Joker. Specifically, this study takes a hermeneutic approach to understanding responses, especially those explicitly invoking political ideology, to Joker as a method of examining civic meaning-making. A special emphasis is placed on the online film criticisms of Joker from white nationalist movie fans, who clearly exemplify ways that media responses can be leveraged by unethical speakers (i.e., Evil Lovers) and subtly diffused. The study conveys that these racist movie fans can embed values related to “trolling,” incelism, and xenophobia into otherwise seemingly innocuous talk about film. While the sharing of such speech does not immediately mean its positive reception, this kind of communication yet constitutes a new and understudied attack on democratic values such as justice and equity. The case of white nationalist movie fan film criticism therefore reflects a particular brand of communicative strategy for contemporary Evil Lovers in communicating unethical messages under the covert guise of mundane movie talk

    Everyday Streets

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    Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities. The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive

    Unmerited Inheritance: An Exposition of the Twelve Divine Elements, Fulfillment, and Typology of Yahweh’s Tithe to Levi

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    This dissertation seeks to advance the academy’s conversation about the Mosaic tithe ordinance by providing the first published reconciliation of what many scholars consider irreconcilable statutes. It does so by providing the first published exposition of the twelve divine elements of Yahweh’s sacred tithe against the land sabbatical and Jubilee statutes. Unless scholars can agree upon its divine elements, there is little hope for unity and progress towards edifying the saints with the typology of Yahweh’s inheritance tithe to Levi (Num 18:26)

    Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order!

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    This authorized biography was made possible through the gracious help of my mother-in-law, Rhoda Kadalie, who provided generous access to her files, letters, photographs, and extensive library of documents. She made time to sit with me for several hours of interviews from September through October 2021, to answer questions as they arose, and to offer innumerable clarifications. Rhoda also reviewed the first draft of the biography in December 2021, making corrections and additions, and contributing some of her own original vignettes, never before published

    The invention of isolation: a study of experimentalism in the works of David Markson and Don DeLillo

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    Portrayals of human isolation in fiction have traditionally been examined using conventional literary forms. Some authors, however, have approached it using innovative literary techniques. The aim of this thesisis to analyse how two of those authors, David Markson and Don DeLillo, have done so and to extrapolate from a selection of their works how literary experimentation can be utilised for the examination of isolation. The critical methodology used for this study is three-pronged. Firstly, the textual analyses are directed by close readings predicated on the theory that literary form and content are indivisible. Secondly, existing experimental literature research will be utilised for the purpose of wider discussion and context. Thirdly, psychological studies will be incorporated to provide context and insights into the causes and impacts of isolation. The core of this thesis will focus on seven formally experimental novels. The first chapter will focus on a selection of David Markson’s works: Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988), and the novels that comprise his ‘Notecard Quartet’: Reader’s Block (1996), This Is Not a Novel (2001), Vanishing Point and The Last Novel (2007). The second chapter will focus on two works by Don DeLillo: The Body Artist (2001) and Point Omega (2010). This study reveals that versatility displayed in formal experimentation leads to unexpectedly realistic and insightful portrayals of isolation. A concluding chapter shows just a few examples of the continuing relevance of experimental portrayals of isolation, outlining the links between the works of Markson, DeLillo and three contemporary authors: Alicia Kopf, David Shields and Rebecca Watson

    Inhabited Machines

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    Around 1800, one of the most influential architectural concepts of the last 250 years emerged—that of built spaces as technical devices. Climate, morality, and comfort are the three main themes of this study, and each is vividly examined through synchronous comparison and with the help of examples. The book is aimed at readers interested in architecture, technology or the cultural history of building and living

    Using Class-Level Static Properties to Predict Object Lifetimes

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    Today, most modern programming languages such as C # or Java use an automatic memory management system also known as a Garbage Collector (GC). Over the course of program execution, new objects are allocated in memory, and some older objects become unreachable (die). In order for the program to keep running, it becomes necessary to free the memory of dead objects; this task is performed periodically by the GC. Research has shown that most objects die young and as a result, generational collectors have become very popular over the years. Yet, these algorithms are not good at handling long-lived objects. Typically, long-lived objects would first be allocated in the nursery space and be promoted (copied) to an older generation after surviving a garbage collection, hence wasting precious time. By allocating long-lived and immortal objects directly into infrequently or never collected regions, pretenuring can reduce garbage collection costs significantly. Current state of the art methodology to predict object lifetime involves off-line profiling combined with a simple, heuristic classification. Profiling is slow (can take days), requires gathering gigabytes of data that need to be analysed (can take hours), and needs to be repeated for every previously unseen program. This thesis explores the space of lifetime predictions and shows how object lifetimes can be predicted accurately and quickly using simple program characteristics gathered within minutes. Following an innovative methodology introduced in this thesis, object lifetime predictions are fed into a specifically modified Java virtual machine. Performance tests show gains in GC times of as much as 77% for the “SPEC jvm98” benchmarks, against a generational copying collector

    Free-Market Socialists

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    The Hungarian artist-designer LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, and his fellow Viennese Victor Gruen—an architect and urban planner—made careers in different fields. Yet they shared common socialist politics, Jewish backgrounds, and experience as refugees from the Nazis. This book tells the story of their intellectual migration from Central Europe to the United States, beginning with the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, and moving through the heady years of newly independent social-democratic republics before the descent into fascism. It follows their experience of exile and adaptation in a new country, and culminates with a surprising outcome of socialist thinking: the opening of the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned suburban shopping center in the United States. Although the American culture they encountered ostensibly celebrated entrepreneurial individualism and capitalistic “free enterprise,” Moholy-Nagy, Lazarsfeld, and Gruen arrived at a time of the progressive economic reforms of the New Deal and an extraordinary open-mindedness about social democracy. This period of unprecedented economic experimentation nurtured a business climate that, for the most part, did not stifle the Ă©migrĂ©s’ socialist idealism but rather channeled it as the source of creative solutions to the practical problems of industrial design, urban planning, and consumer behavior. Based on a vast array of original sources, Malherek interweaves the biographies of these three remarkable personalities and those of their wives, colleagues, and friends with whom they collaborated on innovative projects that would shape the material environment and consumer culture of their adopted home. The result is a narrative of immigration and adaptation that challenges the crude binary of capitalism and socialism with a story of creative economic hybridization

    A Model for Ongoing Leadership Development in Evangelical Generation Z Ministry Leaders

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    The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore the leadership preparedness and biblical worldview of Generation Z (Gen Z) Christian ministry leaders to inform the formation of a theoretical model for ongoing leadership development. Participants (N=7) were paid senior ministry leaders of Assembly of God churches in the Midwest region who were involved in the hiring process and ongoing development of paid Gen Z ministry leaders. Additional participants included ministry leaders who fell within the defined years of the Generation Z cohort (1995-2010) and who had been employed by the church for a minimum of six months (N=10). Data were collected through observations and both structured and unstructured interviews. Data analysis was conducted by using the Strauss and Corbin (2015) data analysis protocol. The model generated from this study utilized the Hrivnak, Jr. et al. (2009) theoretical framework for leadership development as a starting point for targeting key development needs specific to Gen Z ministry leaders. The model reflects the important components of ongoing leadership development that were expressed by participants as needing additional growth. These areas included spiritual formation, leadership skills, interpersonal skills, and organizational skills. Research showed that Gen Z leaders primarily manifested unpreparedness for leadership through spiritual stagnation, struggles in navigating the human aspects of the job, and failure to capture the big picture of the church as an interconnected and living organism. This new model for ongoing Gen Z leadership development suggests important implications and applications for stakeholders committed to investing in their ongoing development
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