Framing Economic Populist Rhetoric: The Economically Aggrieved Find a Voice

The use of economic populist rhetoric seems to be a growing trend in America. Current literature situates a positive relationship between economic insecurity and support of populism, however the strength between the two is debated. Furthermore, much is focused on individual or country level economic insecurities as it relates to populist support, but little is focused on economic insecurities at levels in between the individual and countries. Even less is written on how often populists employ economic populist messaging, as it relates to the economic insecurities in which they are speaking. In order to determine if a relationship between the two exists, this paper will look at U.S. state-level economic data and compare it to speeches made by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election campaign. I expect to find a positive relationship between U.S. state-level economic insecurity and the amount of populist’s speech dedicated to economic populist messages. This is an important topic to study as it relates to the structure of elections and the desire for populists to tailor their messages in order to gain voter support and political power

Sisyphean Frustrations: The Impetus for Improving Harm Reduction Strategies in Minneapolis, MN

Background: The last decade has seen an alarming rise in deaths attributed to opioid use. Considering the ever-increasing mortality rate contributable to opiate use disorder, it is important to identify and utilize more efficacious public health interventions. Purpose: The focus of this paper is identifying the current harm reduction strategies being implemented in Minneapolis MN, the history of harm reduction in the US, and opportunities to improve existing systems to better engage current conditions. Methods: The primary research method for this community assessment was volunteer work with Southside Harm Reduction in Minneapolis, MN. Through community clean-ups the researcher was able to interact with residents in high-intensity drug use areas, safely dispose of harm reduction supplies, and gain a front-line perspective of the intersection of opiate use disorder, houselessness, and injection drug use. Conclusion: The implementation of harm reduction strategies in the Twin Cities area greatly surpass those in other regions in the country. Access to Naloxone, fentanyl test strips, clean injection equipment, and community resources have been adequately provided by community groups like Southside Harm Reduction Services. It is important to provide more education to primary care and emergency medicine providers to achieve better outcomes when treating these populations. Specifically, improving clinic and hospital buprenorphine protocols and stock and working with community groups to improve the number of patients lost to follow up. Further research on delivery mechanisms or satellite physician dispensing may prove beneficial in improving patient follow up and medication for opioid use disorder compliance

The idea of community: Glenn Gould's Solitude Trilogy

Paper given at the conference: Writing Communities: People as Place (2014)

The philosophy of creative writing

Philosophy concerns asking fundamental questions about practices: their meaning, how they function, what they presuppose and what makes them distinctive. Within CW, we often ask about the effectiveness of the workshop, classroom activities or we inquire about out subject's past and present distinctiveness. But the question of a philosophy or philosophies of CW has gone largely unasked. This paper considers a number of questions about how CW articulates itself in terms of its view of teaching, autonomy and the scope of CW research. The paper argues that if CW is to be an autonomous discipline, then various problems need to be addressed. It concludes by identifying two current schools, or philosophies, of CW: Integrationism and monarchism. Whereas the latter seeks to rationalise CW as an autonomous discipline, the former seeks to see it as part of a broader education in the humanities. Ultimately, the paper seeks to create a framework for a new area of investigation in CW scholarship. A draft of this paper was presented at The Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference at Imperial College London in June 2014

The Book of the Self

Fiction publication in New Writin

Agency, structure and realism in language and linguistics

This thesis considers the scientific status of linguistics and the historical and contemporary attempts to view linguistics as closely aligned to, or one of, the natural sciences. Such attempts share certain common features that make up what is identified here as the ‘Formalist Attitude’. The question ‘what is a language?’ is central to the discussion of the scientific status of linguistics, so a central task of the thesis is to show how answers to this question display the features of the Formalist Attitude. In particular it is shown that attempts to constrict the theoretical purview of linguistics around a view of language that sustains claims to natural scientific status fail to account for the social ontology of language and the role of speakers within the creation and reproduction of language. A consequence of this failure is an inability to explain important language phenomena such as language change, arbitrariness and knowledge of language, which the alternative conception of language defended here successfully accounts for. ‘Language’ is best seen as a power of speakers to communicate with one another, a view which emphasises the motivated, social, reproductive and transformative aspects of actual speech. The negative and positive arguments jointly defended, support the view that linguistics, considered with respect to its object of knowledge, methodology and ability to offer explanations and predictions, is not akin to natural science but should be considered a social science. Besides historical contextualisation of the problem, the thesis looks at current trends, such as cognitive and integrationist linguistics, that are broadly consistent with its criticisms and conclusions. The purpose of the thesis then is twofold; to identify, explain and criticise a problematic and influential tradition within linguistics and then to provide some Lockean underlabouring for contemporary linguistics that will be valuable to linguists and philosophers

A Phylogenetic Analysis of Species Relationships in Hemlocks, the Genus \u3cem\u3eTsuga\u3c/em\u3e (Pinaceae).

The genus Tsuga is comprised of eight extant species found in North America and East Asia and four species represented by fossils from Europe and Japan. This study presents the first phylogenetic analysis based on structural, biochemical, and molecular sequence data. Characters obtained from published and unpublished literature were combined with new morphological characters from seeds, seedlings, and leaf cuticle material. Results from parsimony analyses of these characters differed from the published molecular based phylogeny. The non-molecular based phylogeny resolves two separate clades, a North American and an Asian, but did not group the western North American species, as in the molecular based analysis. Character states were traced on the trees to interpret character evolution. The combined analysis resulted in a phylogeny that differed from the previously published molecular tree by resolving a clade between T. caroliniana and T. diversifolia and placing T. dumosa outside of the Asian clade

Action as Essential Metaphysical Dependence

What makes an event count as an action? The standard answer to this question—causalism—claims that if an event is caused in the right way it counts as an action. Causal deviance objections, however, undermine the explanatory power of causalist accounts. Non-causal theories of action offer a promising alternative; however, they also raise a myriad of difficulties. Many non-causal arguments against causalism unintentionally lead to dialectical stalemates, which are methodologically undesirable and should be avoided whenever possible. I offer a theory between these two inadequate accounts that synthesizes the strengths of non-causalism with insights from agent-causal theories. I agree with traditional non-causalist that action explanations cannot be causally reduced; however, I also agree with causal theories that an extrinsic relation between the agent and the event makes the difference between mere events and actions. I call this account an “agency-first” theory of action since it neither reduces agency—as in causalism—nor does it ignore agency to focus on the intrinsic features of actions—as in non-causalism. Instead, I claim we must not lose sight of the agent when analyzing action and thus posit the non-causal, yet extrinsic, relation of essential metaphysical dependence to explain action in terms of agency without losing the distinctive character of either concept.To this end, I claim that essential metaphysical dependence explains what makes an event count as an action by explaining how actions are grounded in agency. I first set-up the dialectic between causalists and non-causalists and raise objections to both views. I then describe the essential metaphysical dependence relation in detail and defend this account from several objections. Finally, the relation of dependence is commonly thought to be transitive, which entails a final significant objection—if actions depend on agency, and agency depends on non-agential forces, then actions are not really explained by dependence on agency. I argue, however, that plausible accounts of agency’s metaphysical emergence blocks the transitivity objection. I conclude that my agency-first theory adequately addresses what makes an event count as an action, while at the same time keeping the agent in view

Sing to the Lord a new song : Memory, Music, Epistemology, and the Emergence of Gregorian Chant as Corporate Knowledge

Following the Christianization of the crumbling Roman Empire, a wide array of disparate Christian traditions arose. A confusion of liturgical rites and musical styles expressed the diversity of this nascent Christendom; however, it also exemplified a sometimes threatening disunity. Into this frame, the Carolingian Empire made a decisive choice. Charlemagne, with a desire to consolidate power, forged stronger bonds withRome by transporting the liturgy ofRome to the Frankish North. The outcome of this transmission was the birth of a composite form of music exhibiting the liturgical properties ofRome but also shaped by the musical sensibilities of the Franks—Gregorian chant. This Frankish project of liturgical adoption and the appearance of Gregorian chant raises two important questions: How did the Carolingians transmit and incorporate Roman chant, and why did they feel drawn to this tradition in the first place? This thesis utilizes musicological studies by scholars like Leo Treitler and Anna Maria Busse Burger, epistemological arguments by analytic philosopher Richard Fumerton, and memorial scholarship by Mary Carruthers and Maurice Halbwachs to provide an analysis of Gregorian chant’s emergence. My investigation into the medieval art of memoria reveals that chant was transmitted through the use of the principles of music theory as mnemonic devices. Modal theory itself becomes a mnemonic by creating an abstract musical location in which the singer and listener can meet. Further, the impulse that drove this project was the desire for a collective memory that would resolve underlying tensions of group identity within 8th- and 9th-century early Christendom. This desire finds its resolution in modal theory itself because the musical location of chant is also a public location where corporate identity is articulated. Finally, I interpret both musical and memorial functions of chant via epistemic scholarship, showing that they both exhibit a remarkable structural similarity to the principles of acquaintance epistemology, thus unifying the questions of “how” and “why” in chant into a single answer. The quest for self-knowledge becomes part of the particular object used to make it—a material testament to a way of knowing