College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture_To understand the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants, look at the industry’s history

Article To understand the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants, look at the industry’s history by Michael Haedicke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Drake University, who planned to join the UMaine Sociology Department in Fall 2020. The article was published online in the The Conversation

"Populists are actually Democrats!" : A Content Analysis of Interviews and Speeches Given by Nigel Farage Against the Backdrop of Populism and Euroscepticism

Abstract With Europe and the EU facing a time of constant political changes and financial crisis in to the Eurozone, the rise of phenomena like Euroscepticism and Populism are more topical than ever. Through the use of populist rhetoric, Eurosceptic parties, such as the British UK Independence Party (UKIP), are gaining support across Europe and have proven their influence on the European political stage. Claiming to speak in the name of the ‘common’ people, UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage regards himself as their representative in a quest to defend democracy, the peoples’ and the British nation states’ interests against the ‘dangerous’ supranational institution and political elite. Farage and UKIP argue against the regulations coming from ‘unelected bureaucrats’ in Brussels and proclaim their main political agenda, favouring the UK’s eventual withdrawal from the EU. The use of wellchosen, cunning populist rhetoric along with the targeting of EU’s supranational institutions and Mr. Barroso and Mr. van Rompuy as ‘Bully-boys’ has proven successful for Farage and UKIP. An examination of speeches and interviews by Farage lays open his implemented populist rhetoric tools and sheds light on the main targets of his criticism, the EU’s institutions and the European political elite. The aim of this thesis is to meticulously single those out and interpret how and why he criticises them. By applying an encompassing quantitative as well as qualitative method of content analysis, twenty-nine of Farage’s speeches and interviews are scrutinised against the backdrop of populism, populist rhetoric and Euroscepticism. Through frequent simplifications of complex issues and a reoccurring lack of substantial arguments, however, his credibility occasionally happens to be negatively affected. Farage does not provide a fundamentally solid plan for the UK’s and UKIP’s future, in case of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU

Interrupting a legacy of hatred : Friches Théâtre Urbain's Lieu Commun

In a violent clash between rival gangs from Asnières and Gennevilliers in the banlieue north of Paris, a 15-year-old boy was killed at the metro station Les Courtilles, the last stop on Line 13. Inevitably, revenge attacks occurred. Security was heightened with hundreds of police patrolling the area, but residents and city officials alike understood that increased police presence alone would never be a long-term solution. Realising the need for radically different approaches to halt an escalation of violence, city officials, asked Sarah Harper, Artistic Director of Friches Théâtre Urbain, a street theatre company in Paris, to develop a community-based art-making project that would augment attempts by the youth workers and others to defuse the volatile situation. In Lieu Commun, the multi-faceted project lasting 20 months, Harper developed innovative approaches to collaborative art-making resulting in vibrant public art that repeatedly interrupted the legacy of hatred between Asnières and Gennevilliers. The slow process of collaborative art-making began with symbolic links between the residents of the two towns rather than face-to-face contact, an innovative approach that eased the way for more profound activist cooperation. The co-created public art took the form of elaborate, often mobile, performance installations that began to replace the narrative of conflict that had become customary for Asnières and Gennevilliers with an opposing narrative of cooperation, both depicted in the art product and practiced in the art-making. Community collaboration in the creation of this ephemeral public art played a significant role not only in changing the character of the confrontational and often dangerous public space of the metro station, but also in altering attitudes of both residents and city officials toward the potential for art to foster cooperation and active citizenship

College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture_How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers at the heart of the American food supply

Article How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers at the heart of the American food supply by Michael Haedicke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Drake University, who planned to join the UMaine Sociology Department in Fall 2020. The article was published online in the The Conversation

Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre

Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatr

Performing Farmscapes on urban streets

In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch introduces the idea of the “Not-Yet”, a ubiquitous utopian impulse that stimulates future-oriented thinking about “something … that has never been conscious before.” These imaginings of a better future, Bloch argues, are really only ways to understand the obscurities of the present. Street theatre companies, like Le Phun, Opéra Pagaï, Friches Théâtre Urbain and Fallen Fruit, seek to envisage a “not-yet” of future urban farmscapes in familiar present-day locations. Their performance-based projects highlight contemporary social issues around alternative agricultural practices and suggest imaginative provocations to world-wide concerns around food security by proposing ephemeral urban farms in unexpected city sites and restoring the efficacy of an agricultural “commons” where resources and tasks are shared. Each project thus metaphorically marks the urban landscape with creative possibilities for a more secure food future. Dr Susan Haedicke is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, UK. Her current research interests include a focus on local food growing initiatives and community gardens worldwide and how they ‘perform’ in the larger social setting

Doing the Dirty Work: Gendered Versions of Working Class Women in Sarah Daniels' The Gut Girls and Israel Horovitz's North Shore Fish

Doing the Dirty Work: Gendered Versions of Working Class Women in Sarah Daniels' The Gut Girls and Israel Horovitz's North Shore Fis

Co-performance of bodies and buildings : Compagnie Willi Dorner’s bodies in urban spaces and fitting and Asphalt Piloten’s around the block

Street performances disrupt everyday activities in public spaces and challenge the status quo with propositions of alternative possible worlds. While many street performances rely upon urban public spaces and architecture as a way to expose normative behavioral codes and social constructions of seemingly neutral spaces, Compagnie Willi Dorner and Asphalt Piloten focus attention on re-placing the human body in and on city buildings to interrogate the complex materiality of urban architecture and imagine symbiotic links between bodies and buildings that revise expectations about city life. Their ephemeral performance installations appear to merge bodies and buildings, enabling the artists to dispute notions of architectural solidity and durability, to suggest the possibility of human thing-ness, and thus to question ways of inhabiting the city. Key to political engagement is that these artists create events in which the public, consciously or unconsciously, can re-view the workings of the city, and initiate debate (in words or actions) about the city’s priorities, processes, and agendas. The possible worlds suggested by Compagnie Willi Dorner and Asphalt Piloten are not completed projects, but rather stimuli for inquiry into alternative urban futures because they invite audiences to enter a reciprocal relationship between bodies and buildings that acknowledges mutual growth, change, and dependence. These alternatives enable the spectator to experience previously unimagined possible worlds—some optimistic, some exceedingly pessimistic

From attachment to damage : defined genes of Candida albicans mediate adhesion, invasion and damage during interaction with oral epithelial cells

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