In Support of Low-Income Working Families: State Policies and Local Program Innovations in the Era of Welfare Reform

Examines 30 state and local programs to support low-income working families. Provides policymakers and other interested parties an overview of model programs in the context of state budget constraints

On “Sourcery,” or Code as Fetish

This essay offers a sympathetic interrogation of the move within new media studies toward “software studies.” Arguing against theoretical conceptions of programming languages as the ultimate performative utterance, it contends that source code is never simply the source of any action; rather, source code is only source code after the fact: its effectiveness depends on a whole imagined network of machines and humans. This does not mean that source code does nothing, but rather that it serves as a kind of fetish, and that the notion of the user as super agent, buttressed by real-time computation, is the obverse, not the opposite of this “sourcery.

Working the Digital Humanities: Uncovering Shadows between the Dark and the Light

The following is an exchange between the two authors in response to a paper given by Chun at the “Dark Side of the Digital Humanities” panel at the 2013 Modern Languages Association (mla) Annual Convention. This panel, designed to provoke controversy and debate, succeeded in doing so. However, in order to create a more rigorous conversation focused on the many issues raised and elided and on the possibilities and limitations of digital humanities as they currently exist, we have produced this collaborative text. Common themes in Rhody’s and Chun’s responses are: the need to frame digital humanities within larger changes to university funding and structure, the importance of engaging with uncertainty and the ways in which digital humanities can elucidate “shadows” in the archive, and the need for and difficulty of creating alliances across diverse disciplines.  We hope that this text provokes more ruminations on the future of the university (rather than simply on the humanities) and leads to more wary, creative, and fruitful engagements with digital technologies that are increasingly shaping the ways and means by which we think.&nbsp

Factors Influencing Consumers\u27 Intention to Engage in International Online Outshopping: A Comparison of US and Indian Consumers\u27 Outshopping Intention at Chinese e-tailers

An unprecedented access to consumer goods online has further impacted this phenomenon giving rise to International Online Outshopping (IOO). In 2013, 34.1 million consumers in the US (Paypal, 2013) and a third of the 20 million online shoppers in India engaged in IOO (DHL, 2013). Clothing and apparel constituted the most purchased items with China being the most popular IOO destination. With this trend expected to grow exponentially, the need to understand consumers’ IOO intention is critical for US apparel retailers to retain domestic customers as well as target foreign consumers. This exploratory study examines the factors that affect US and Indian consumers’ intention to engage in IOO at Chinese e-tailers and examines the moderating effect of country on the influence of these factors on IOO intention