Confronting the Concept of Intersectionality: The Legacy of Audre Lorde and Contemporary Feminist Organizations

Audre Lorde was one of many women to criticize second wave feminism for overlooking issues of intersectionality. This paper examines the ways in which Lorde introduced intersectionality into feminist discourse and how feminist organizations embrace this concept today. Five organizations are examined (National Organization for Women, Grand Valley State University Women’s Center, Ms. Foundation, Third Wave Foundation, and Guerilla Girls) by interviewing representatives and/or evaluating websites to assess organizational mission, vision, values and practices. Analyses reveal that all five organizations have specific policy statements addressing intersectionality. This research can conclusively say that intersectionality is at least considered by all of the organizations. Determining whether or not the current intervention strategies are effective for women experiencing overlapping oppressions is beyond the scope of this study. The different rhetoric used by each organization to address the intersectional issue, however, suggests that intersectionality is “applied” or put into practice differently by different organizations

Exploring Faith Communities in Syracuse

The United States of America is now the most religiously diverse country in the world. Living side by side are not only Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, but Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and people from a multitude of other religious groups as well. However, while Americans inevitably encounter religious diversity every day, very few take the time to engage in it. There is a lot of ignorance surrounding the multitude of religious traditions present in America, and this ignorance can easily lead to fear, hatred, discrimination, and violence. The course “Exploring Faith Communities in Syracuse” tries to put a stop to this downward spiral by allowing students to learn about different religions as lived human experiences from those who practice them. The course, which was taught at Syracuse University in the fall of 2008 to ten undergraduate students, was centered on visits to different houses of worship every other week. At these houses of worship, the students were met by religious leaders or community members who spoke about the community, gave the students a tour of the building, and explained some of their beliefs, rituals, and practices. These visits were introduced the previous week with lectures and readings providing background information on the faith tradition, and were followed by written reflections and class discussions. During the semester, the students visited the Society of Friends (Quaker) Meetinghouse, the Conservative Jewish synagogue Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas, the Saint George Macedonian Orthodox Church, Hopps Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji, and the Islamic Society of Central New York. At the end of the semester, each student visited a worship service at a faith community of their choice, and presented their experience to the rest of the class. These visits included a variety of Catholic churches, the Syracuse University student Pagan association SPIRAL, Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities, the Syracuse University Buddhist chaplaincy, and a return visit to the Islamic Society of Central New York. These visits, and the critical reflections that followed, had a very great impact on the students. At the beginning of the semester, many students had only been able to reflect upon our visits in terms of what they did or did not like about each religion. However, by the end of the semester, these students were able to appreciate the value of certain beliefs or practices, even if those beliefs or practices were not ones the students would want to incorporate into their own lives. In addition to their increased appreciation of diversity, the students also became more comfortable speaking to others about religious differences and stepping into the religious worlds of others. This thesis tells the story of “Exploring Faith Communities in Syracuse” and the students that participated in it. In doing so, it emphasizes the need for interfaith work in America and the impact that intentional interfaith encounters can have. As is clearly shown by the students\u27 reflections, “Exploring Faith Communities in Syracuse” succeeded in increasing interfaith understanding, bringing us one step closer to a society where a multitude of diverse faith traditions can constructively coexist

The role of input in discovering presuppositions triggers: Figuring out what everybody already knew

This dissertation focuses on when and how children learn about the meanings of the propositional attitude verbs "know" and "think". "Know" and "think" both express belief. But they differ in their veridicality: "think" is non-veridical and can report a false belief; but "know" can only report true beliefs because it is a veridical verb. Furthermore, the verbs differ in their factivity: uses of "x knows p", but not uses of "x thinks p", typically presuppose the truth of "p", because "know" is factive and "think" is not. How do children figure out these subtle differences between the verbs, given that they are so similar in the grand scheme of word meaning? Assuming that this consists in figuring out which of an existing store of mental state concepts (such as belief) to map to each word, this dissertation highlights the role of children's linguistic experiences, or input, with the verbs in homing in on an adult-like understanding of them. To address the when question, this dissertation uses behavioral experiments to test children's understanding of factivity and show that some children can figure out the contrast by their third birthday, while other children still have not figured it out by 4.5 years of age. This is earlier than was once thought, but means that there is a lot of individual variation in age of acquisition that must be explained. And it means that children do not just get better at the contrast as they get older, which leaves room for us to ask what role linguistic experiences play, if we can explore how these experiences are related to the variation in when children uncover the contrast. In order to address the how question, the dissertation lays out potential routes to uncovering the contrast via observing direct consequences of it or via syntactic and pragmatic bootstrapping approaches which exploit indirect consequences of the contrast. After laying out these potential routes, the dissertation uses corpus analyses to provide arguments for which routes are most likely, given children's actual experiences with the verbs. In particular, trying to track the direct consequences of the contrast will not get the learner very far. But alternative routes that rely on indirect consequences such as the syntactic distributions of the verbs or their discourse functions, provide clear signal about the underlying contrast. Finally, the dissertation discusses the consequences of this picture for the semantic representation of "know" and "think", as well as the linguistic, conceptual, and socio-pragmatic competence that children must bring to the table in order to uncover the contrast

Towards a characterization of information automation systems on the flight deck

This thesis summarizes research to investigate the characteristics that define information automation systems used on aircraft flight decks and the significant impacts that these characteristics have on pilot performance. Major accomplishments of the work include the development of a set of characteristics that describe information automation systems on the flight deck and an experiment designed to study a subset of these characteristics. Information automation systems on the flight deck are responsible for the collection, processing, analysis, and presentation of data to the flightcrew. These systems pose human factors issues and challenges that must be considered by designers of these systems. Based on a previously developed formal definition of information automation for aircraft flight deck systems, an analysis process was developed and conducted to reach a refined set of information automation characteristics. In this work, characteristics are defined as a set of properties or attributes that describe an information automation system\u27s operation or behavior, which can be used to identify and assess potential human factors issues. Hypotheses were formed for a subset of the characteristics: Automation Visibility, Information Quality, and Display Complexity. An experimental investigation was developed to measure performance impacts related to these characteristics, which showed mixed results of expected and surprising findings, with many interactions. A set of recommendations were then developed based on the experimental observations. Ensuring that the right information is presented to pilots at the right time and in the appropriate manner is the job of flight deck system designers. This work provides a foundation for developing recommendations and guidelines specific to information automation on the flight deck with the goal of improving the design and evaluation of information automation systems before they are implemented

Talking about Causing Events

Questions about the nature of the relationship between language and extralinguistic cognition are old, but only recently has a new view emerged that allows for the systematic investigation of claims about linguistic structure, based on how it is understood or utilized outside of the language system. Our paper represents a case study for this interaction in the domain of event semantics. We adopt a transparency thesis about the relationship between linguistic structure and extralinguistic cognition, investigating whether different lexico-syntactic structures can differentially recruit the visual causal percept. A prominent analysis of causative verbs like move suggests reference to two distinct events and a causal relationship between them, whereas non-causative verbs like push do not so refer. In our study, we present English speakers with simple scenes that either do or do not support the perception of a causal link, and manipulate (between subjects) a one-sentence instruction for the evaluation of the scene. Preliminary results suggest that competent speakers of English are more likely to judge causative constructions than non-causative constructions as true of a scene where causal features are present in the scene. Implications for a new approach to the investigation of linguistic meanings and future directions are discussed

Flight Deck Information Automation: A Human-in-the-Loop In-Trail Procedure Simulation Study

Information automation systems are generally intended to support pilot tasks and improve flightcrew awareness and decision making, but not to directly control the aircraft or its systems. As a result these systems do not include cases where automation decisions and actions directly affect the aircraft performance, flight path or systems. Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) operational concepts and technologies will dramatically affect both the types and amount of information available on flight decks. Much of that information will be produced by flight deck information automation systems that collect, process, and present that information to the flightcrew. It is therefore important to understand the human factors characteristics of information automation systems and identify human factors issues specifically related to information automation. This paper presents an investigation of two information automation characteristics (functional complexity and automation visibility) using prototype oceanic In-Trail Procedures (ITP) display systems. The outcome will be used to develop and iterate recommendations for design and evaluation of information automation systems that will mitigate the identified human factors issues

Discovering the factivity of "know"

How do children discover which linguistic expressions are associated with presuppositions? Do they take a direct strategy of tracking whether linguistic expressions are associated with particular speaker presuppositions? This strategy may fail children who are trying to learn about the presuppositions of so-called 'soft' presupposition triggers, which can be readily used even when the relevant would-be presupposed content is not part of the common ground. We present a corpus study with the soft trigger "know" and the related, but non-presuppositional "think". We find that a direct learning strategy would indeed run into problems for such a soft trigger given the nature and availability of evidence in children's linguistic input

Inequity in access to transplantation in the UK

Background and objectives Despite the presence of a universal health care system, it is unclear if there is intercenter variation in access to kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom. This study aims to assess whether equity exists in access to kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom after adjustment for patient-specific factors and center practice patterns. Design, setting, participants, & measurements In this prospective, observational cohort study including all 71 United Kingdom kidney centers, incident RRT patients recruited between November 2011 and March 2013 as part of the Access to Transplantation and Transplant Outcome Measures study were analyzed to assess preemptive listing (n=2676) and listing within 2 years of starting dialysis (n=1970) by center. Results Seven hundred and six participants (26%) were listed preemptively, whereas 585 (30%) were listed within 2 years of commencing dialysis. The interquartile range across centers was 6%–33% for preemptive listing and 25%–40% for listing after starting dialysis. Patient factors, including increasing age, most comorbidities, body mass index >35 kg/m2, and lower socioeconomic status, were associated with a lower likelihood of being listed and accounted for 89% and 97% of measured intercenter variation for preemptive listing and listing within 2 years of starting dialysis, respectively. Asian (odds ratio, 0.49; 95% confidence interval, 0.33 to 0.72) and Black (odds ratio, 0.43; 95% confidence interval, 0.26 to 0.71) participants were both associated with reduced access to preemptive listing; however Asian participants were associated with a higher likelihood of being listed after starting dialysis (odds ratio, 1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.12 to 1.79). As for center factors, being registered at a transplanting center (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 2.36 to 4.07) and a universal approach to discussing transplantation (odds ratio, 1.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.08 to 1.78) were associated with higher preemptive listing, whereas using a written protocol was associated negatively with listing within 2 years of starting dialysis (odds ratio, 0.7; 95% confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.9). Conclusions Patient case mix accounts for most of the intercenter variation seen in access to transplantation in the United Kingdom, with practice patterns also contributing some variation. Socioeconomic inequity exists despite having a universal health care system