Reopening the Emmett Till Case: Lessons and Challenges for Critical Race Practice

As part of the symposium panel on Re- Trying Racial Injustices, I devote this Essay to an expansion of themes addressed in my earlier work on the reopening of civil rights era prosecutions. I draw upon this work, as well as upon the insights of my co-panelists Anthony Alfieri and Sherrilyn Ifill, to examine the reopening of the Emmett Till case and its critical race practice possibilities. In this Essay, I consider other aspects of these cleansing moments. Are they illusory? Do they provide a misleading sense of closure at the expense of the ongoing hard work of racial justice that leads up to -and must proceed from-those moments? What lessons or teaching moments might these cases create for critical race lawyers in their ongoing social justice work? In notable respects, the impetus to reopen long-dormant cases shares with critical legal theory a justified skepticism of the construct of finality and an idealistic vision of the possibilities for ultimate justice. Procedural and substantive bulwarks of finality may be necessary in a legalistic sense, but they do not signify closure or justice, particularly when structural inequality persists. Reopening, with its promise of restorative justice through racial healing and reconciliation, has the potential to provide the closure that mere finality lacks, but only if that restorative justice is authentic and far-reaching. This Essay proceeds to address the above concerns as follows. In Part I, I discuss the Emmett Till case in greater detail, with brief contextual reference to two historical eras that frame it chronologically and thematically: lynching in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and the civil rights movement of the mid-to late1950s. In Part II, I focus on the significance of the 2004 Till case reopening and lessons that it may offer for critical race practice. These lessons dovetail with recurrent questions in the literature of critical race theory and offer suggestions for fostering the integration of theory and practice (race praxis). Finally, I conclude that the Till case and other similar reopenings will yield transcendent meaning and closure only if a self-reflective approach propels them past the transitory cleansing moments toward a deeper commitment to restorative justice

Infra-Red Studies of Peptide Nitrosation

The synthesis, chemical properties and biological properties of both diazopeptides and N-nitrosopeptides are reviewed. The feasibility of assaying these compounds and studying their formation by Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR) is analysed. The development of experimental procedures to facilitate kinetic studies of the nitrosation of peptides by FTIR is described. Methods to overcome the principal problems of solvent absorption and the continuous decomposition of the nitrous acid reagent are outlined and tested for the nitrosation of 2-pyrrolidinone as a model substrate. The infra-red carbonyl bands of N-(N'-acetylglycyl)glycine are unambiguously assigned, via the synthesis and investigation of labelled compounds. Investigation of the nitrosation of N-(N'-acetylglycyl)glycine by nitrous acid in deuterium chloride is reported. This includes the measurement of reaction rates by FTIR and the identification of products by a combination of FTIR and mass spectroscopy. The kinetic results show that these reactions follow similar mechanisms to those found previously for amide nitrosation. The effect of peptide structure on reactivity towards N-nitrosation is also reported. It is shown that the most important factor influencing reactivity is the accessibility of the peptide N-atom to nitrosation. The development is described of an FTIR method to measure the formation of diazopeptides. Kinetic studies are reported for the formation of N-(2-diazoacetyl)glycine by the reaction of N-glycylglycine with 2-ethoxyethyl nitrite in aqueous buffers at pH 7.5-11 and 25°C, The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms of diazopeptide formation. The effect of structure on diazopeptide reactivity towards diazotisation is also briefly examined and reported

Crossing the ‘Uncanny Valley’: Adaptation to Cartoon Faces Can Influence Perception of Human Faces

In this study we assessed whether there is a single face space common to both human and cartoon faces by testing whether adaptation to cartoon faces can affect perception of human faces. Participants were shown Japanese animation cartoon videos containing faces with abnormally large eyes. The use of animated videos eliminated the possibility of position-dependent retinotopic adaptation (because the faces appear at many different locations) and more closely simulated naturalistic exposure. Adaptation to cartoon faces with large eyes significantly shifted preferences for human faces toward larger eyes, consistent with a common, non-retinotopic representation for both cartoon and human faces. This supports the possibility that there are representations that are specific to faces yet common to all kinds of faces

Unpacking the Trunk: Producing Whiteness in Private Memory-Making within One Southern Family

This thesis concerns constructions and reproductions of whiteness in familial memory-making in the South during Reconstruction, the late nineteenth century, and in the immediate decades following the Civil Rights Movement. The chapters discuss three generations of women in the Payne-Wooten-Russell family and their keepsaking and storytelling. Frances Payne’s (1832-1918) life as a wife of a Confederate veteran dictated the majority of her memory-making project, and she reconstructed the Southern white male as glorified and honorable. She took part in original reproductions of Lost Cause ideology. Through scrapbooking, Josephine Payne Wooten (1861-1937) looked beyond the Southern landscape to echo a national acceptance of Lost Cause narratives as well as a global interpretation of whiteness within the project of civilization. In the final chapter, Bryce Wooten Russell (1900-1996) returned to her grandmother’s project by re-telling stories to her children that contained Lost Cause ideology. These women show that private memorymaking in the home mirrors the project of memory in the public landscape

Towards a Conceptual Framework of an Educational Web Portal

Technology plays an important role in everyday life of K-6 students born in the digital age. In the past several decades, educational institutions have made substantial investments in technology infrastructure with the aim of enhancing student learning, increasing student achievement, and helping students acquire digital literacy skills early on in their education. However, to fully leverage web-based technologies for student learning and communication inside and outside of school, teachers must be prepared to effectively plan, develop, and integrate technology into the curriculum-based activities of their classrooms. Educational web portals with resources for teaching, learning and communicating, can help teachers create a “connected” classroom environment that extends student learning well beyond the school’s brick-and-mortar boundaries. This article delineates a framework of an educational web portal for an elementary school classroom. Three inter-related dimensions comprise the framework: 1) web portal structure, 2) web portal impacts, and 3) web portal development strategy. This framework is of value to educators and school administrators interested in integrating web portal technologies into the educational and social infrastructure of their schools

Living with young onset dementia: Reflections on recent developments, current discourse, and implications for policy and practice

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.Recent research on young onset dementia (formal diagnosis at age <65) evidences emerging work around pre-diagnosis, diagnosis and the need to improve post-diagnostic support for this group. An increased awareness of young onset dementia has led to the establishment of peer-support groups, support networks and the involvement of people affected by dementia in research. However, the need to join up services at the systems level persists. Third-sector organisations that offer post-diagnostic support at the communitylevel rely heavily on volunteers. Implications for policy and practice are that community-based commissioning of integrated services between health care, social care and the third sector would go a long way to providing the continuity and stability required in dementia support and care along the illness trajectory. This discussion document was written in collaboration with diagnostic services, the charity sector and conversations with people living with, and affected by, dementia.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Integrated Fluorescence

A detection method is integrated with a filtering method and an enhancement method to create a fluorescence sensor that can be miniaturized. The fluorescence sensor comprises a thin film geometry including a waveguide layer, a metal film layer and sensor layer. The thin film geometry of the fluorescence sensor allows the detection of fluorescent radiation over a narrow wavelength interval. This enables wavelength discrimination and eliminates the detection of unwanted light from unknown or spurious sources

How it Came to Be…Integrating Ignatian Philosophy and Pedagogical Paradigm into Marquette University’s Pre-Licensure Nursing Curriculum

This article describes the process that Marquette University’s College of Nursing used to revise its prelicensure nursing curriculum. More specifically, it explains how faculty discussions, with the Vice President of Mission & Ministry and a faculty member from the Department of Theology, which is centered on the philosophy of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and faculty participation in the Marquette Colleagues Program helped ameliorate the curricular change. The article also addresses how faculty selected the Ignatian Pedagogical Model as the framework for the revised curriculum; and the development of faculty and students for an enhanced understanding and application of Ignatian philosophy, spirituality and the IPP in the classroom and their daily life