Shapeshifting the Scottish Borders: A Geopoetic Dance of Place

In this paper, I unite dance theory and practice and geopoetics in order to reflect on edges, peripheries and borders in a geographic region, the Scottish Borders, where the dominant cultural narrative is and has historically been based on rivalry. I draw here on the writing of the Scottish poet-philosopher Kenneth White, the practices of specific dancers and choreographers and on relational accounts of place and more-than-human perspectives. Rather than ‘sense of place’, my interest is in sensing place and thinking through sites. Threaded throughout are descriptions of perception practices exploring woodland, stone and riverways, which take the reader into the more experiential realm of embodied knowing. These passages are an invitation to be present with more-than-human others, to be in contact with the vitality of materials and to allow for being shaped, rather than being the shaping force. The intention is to bring different bodies of knowledge into contact as a way of revealing other vocabularies within place, which suggest alternative cultural narratives and help create the conditions for place—making a more collaborative, ethical and less anthropocentric endeavour, open to the influence and organising principles of the more-than-human

The Culture Conundrum: Training Faculty and Staff for Effectively Working with International Students

Over the past five years, the number of international students studying at the University of Notre Dame has increased by 30 percent. The increase in the numbers of undergraduate international students, as well as Chinese international students, has been even more significant. This rapid growth in the number of international students has created challenges for University faculty, staff, and administrators, both inside and outside of the classroom. International students typically face different challenges adjusting to an American university from their American peers, stemming from differences between their home country cultures and American culture. When an international student is facing a challenge, faculty, staff, and administrators often struggle to support them because they interpret the students’ challenges based on their American cultural experiences and values. The author administered a questionnaire to ten international students at the University of Notre Dame regarding their experience adjusting to American culture and how faculty and staff can better support their needs. The results suggest that students’ adjustment depends largely upon where they are from, their cultural values, and their experiences in the United States. Nearly all of the students also expressed a desire for faculty and staff to learn more about their students’ home countries and cultures. This paper provides a plan for implementing a four-part training program for faculty and staff that will provide them with the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to become more interculturally competent and more effectively support the international student population at the University of Notre Dame

Ways to connect: somatic encounters inside the terrestrial zone

This research moves with Latour’s cosmology of becoming earthly, a reorientation of our relationship to earth described by Earth System sciences. I bring an experiential perspective shaped by the embodied knowledges, practices and languaging of dance making and somatic movement practices. From my dancers’ positioning, I step into, move with and get under the skin of questions raised by Latour. My positioning from the inside, relates to the perspective of ‘soma’ in somatic practice; from inside place, the Scottish Borders; and from inside the terrestrial zone. The research is practice-led, practically orientated and develops ways to connect as an ecological orientation. Curated as three somatic etudes, Stone Ways, Moss Ways and Woodland Ways, each encounter, investigated through an artistic collaboration, explores recomposing and unfiguring as embodied and choreographic processes. In relinquishing fixed patterns of moving, we can re-organise our bodying to allow different anatomical narratives to emerge. I draw on approaches and vocabulary from anthropology, geopoetics and place praxis empathetic to embodied practice and moving with more-than-human relationships. I specifically harness Tsing’s definition of encountering as a process for moving with others and Kohn’s emphasis on beyond the human perspectives. Thinking through-moving manifests as attuning practices and choreographic scores for real-time composition. Scoring offers a composing process, a form of enquiry and a tool for inviting participation, as we will all need to join in these earthly dances of transformation. The contributions to knowledge extend to movement practice, philosophy and placemaking. The research scopes out directions for the role and contribution of dance and somatic movement to contribute transformative practices at a time of ecological catastrophe. Under_standing practices, pied-agogies and anatomies of connection recompose human-centric positionings, make us susceptible to the sentience of others, and support embodied experiences towards becoming earthly. Descriptions of landing inside the terrestrial zone are arrived at that augment Latour’s perspective and a distinct embodied languaging contributes to an evolving glossolalia. Alternative descriptions of place as somatic cartographies and a reshaping of the local are provocations for placemaking brought together as a live score for cultural placemaking in the Scottish Borders

From spring to stream: water quality analysis in Trout Brook, Dakota County, MN

This research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Beliefs and Attitudes toward Vegetarian Lifestyle across Generations

The objective of the study was to examine whether reasons to adopt vegetarian lifestyle differ significantly among generations. Using a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), we identified that 4% of the participants were vegans, 25% lacto-ovo-vegetarians, 4% pesco-vegetarians and 67% non-vegetarian. Younger people significantly agreed more with the moral reason and with the environmental reason. People ages 41–60 significantly agreed more with the health reason. There are significant differences across generations as to why people choose to live a vegetarian lifestyle

Nueva Francia y Nueva Inglaterra en el contexto de los Tratados de Utrecht (1713). Lucha por el Imperio e Historia Transatlántica

After establishing the spatiotemporal coordinates of the work, along with an interpretive perspective of political history, the metropolitan powers of France and England in their American expansion, autochthonous-Amerindian powers and colonial powers of New France and New England between 1661 and 1713 have been analysed.Después de fijar las coordenadas espacio temporales del trabajo, así como la óptica interpretativa de la historia política, se analizan los poderes metropolitanos de Francia e Inglaterra en su expansión americana, los poderes autóctonos-amerindios y los poderes coloniales de Nueva Francia y Nueva Inglaterra entre 1661 y 1713

Breves considerações sobre o incidente de desconsideração da personalidade jurídica e a sua aplicação às execuções fiscais

Acesso restrito aos ministros e servidores do STJ