Book review: Media freedom by Damian Tambini

In Media Freedom, Damian Tambini reflects on the history of media in the US, the UK and Europe in order to develop a new theory of media freedom. Offering a cogent and contemporary response to evolving issues surrounding media freedom, this well-researched book is a captivating read for media policymakers, researchers, students and practitioners, writes Alana Smith. Media Freedom. Damian Tambini. Polity. 2021

Cutting the Gordian Knot: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives

Queering Time and Space: Mediated Desire in The Golden Bowl and Mrs. Dalloway

In Tendencies, Eve Sedgwick characterizes what she terms the “queer moment” as “inextinguishable” (xii). For Sedgwick, “queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive—recurrent, eddying, troublant” (xii). Sedgwick traces the etymology of the word “queer,” saying, “the word ‘queer’ itself means across—it comes from the Indo-European root –twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart” and concluding of “queer,” “keenly, it is relational, and strange” (xii). Sedgwick’s theorizing forms the mainstay of my Honors thesis. My research has taken me abroad to England and has allowed me to begin tracing Girard\u27s theory of mimetic desire back to Freud\u27s Oedipal triangle and ahead to Sedgwick\u27s work in Between Men to offer a reading of three erotic triangles, two in The Golden Bowl and one in Mrs. Dalloway. I am arguing a point about the queer and vaguely incestuous elements of the Maggie-Charlotte-Amerigo, the Maggie-Charlotte-Adam, and the Clarissa-Doris-Elizabeth triangles through an appeal to their shared use of spatiotemporal metaphors and repetitions. The emphasis on repetition and cyclicality reflects Sedgwick’s theorizing on queer time and eddying and presents a way to suggest a heightened queerness embedded in the structure of the narratives. I will conclude by proposing that the authors bother to encode queer and incestuous possibilities, what Hugh Stevens calls subliminal fantasies, (Moon 433) especially in spatiotemporal echoes because incest and queerness are what Sedgwick terms the unspeakable (Sedgwick 94). Consequently, this codification is a way of giving voice to the unspeakable. That the argument I am making in reference to Mrs. Dalloway is much more accepted in the academic literature than is my argument in reference to The Golden Bowl is a reflection of the socio-historical and literary progress made in the years following James’s publication of The Golden Bowl

Sinister to Sweet: MSU in the 90s

A poster describing the decade of the 1990s at Morehead State University. The poster was created by Alana Berryman and Skylar Smith and titled Sinister to Sweet: MSU in the 90s.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/msu_100_years_posters/1008/thumbnail.jp

Change and Resistance: 1980s

A poster describing the turbulent decade of the 1980s at Morehead State University. The poster was created by Alana Berryman and Skylar Smith and titled Change and Resistance.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/msu_100_years_posters/1007/thumbnail.jp

Seeking Sustainable Solutions to Period Poverty Amongst Homeless Women in Camden County, NJ

Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP) – National Ambassadors is an effort for underserved high school, undergraduate, and medical students to collaborate on a research-based community service project to equip future health professionals with tools to heal their communities. The average woman spends up to 3500 days of their life menstruating. Menstrual health is therefore not just a fundamental human right, but a robust indicator of community well-being. Despite the biological inevitably of menstruation, barriers to practicing adequate menstrual hygiene, or “Period Poverty,” are far common and often ignored in public forums. Period products face a luxury goods sales tax in 35 states and cannot be purchased via social services programs such as Food Stamps or Medicaid. Most recent estimates suggest 66% of women from low-income households are unable to afford period products on a monthly basis. This lack of access is amplified in the homeless population. While initiatives to eradicate period poverty exist, they are lacking. Some states have legislation which mandates period products be accessible without fee in public spaces such as schools, but this often goes unenforced. Social service agencies distribute donated menstrual hygiene kits when available, but this is not a sustainable solution. Further, Period Poverty is rarely discussed in conversations regarding equality, healthcare, and human rights. Addressing Period Poverty requires understanding the specific barriers to why women within a particular community cannot practice adequate menstrual hygiene to inform sustainable solutions. We propose a service-based intervention targeting period poverty amongst homeless women in Camden County, NJ

Prevalence of Hesperevax sparsiflora var. brevifolia (short-leaved evax) at Ocean Ranch, Humboldt County, California: exploring the effects of disturbance

The prevalence of special-status plants within a landscape can be an indicator of the ecological health of that site, and therefore inform restoration efforts and post-restoration monitoring. Hesperevax sparsiflora var. brevifolia (short-leaved evax) is a special status species found within the Ocean Ranch unit of Humboldt, California. A primary threat to native plant communities are invasive plant species. Coastal dune ecosystems are largely dominated by invasive species, including Ammophila arenaria (European beachgrass). To work towards the eradication of A. arenaria, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife utilized treatment combinations of herbicide and prescribed fire at Ocean Ranch in the fall of 2022. We worked with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to study the density and abundance of H. sparsiflora var. brevifolia, proximity to A. arenaria, soil compaction, and distance to the road within specified areas. We estimated a total of 14,354,293 H. sparsiflora var. brevifolia individuals in the polygons we measured. We found that the further from A. arenaria, the greater the likelihood of H. sparsiflora var. brevifolia individuals. However, our findings showed that the number of individuals and distance to the road was not a significant relationship, and the relationship between the number of individuals in burned versus unburned quadrats was not significant. This project can serve to monitor the establishment of special-status species to observe the success of recent restorative treatments and to guide future restoration

Examining individual, interpersonal, and environmental influences on children’s physical activity levels

The purpose of this study was to explore individual-level socio-demographic factors and interpersonal-level factors related to social support, as well as the potential role of neighborhood and school environments that may influence the physical activity (PA) levels of children (ages 9–11). Child and parent questionnaires included individual and interpersonal factors, and PA behaviour. Home postal codes were used to determine the neighbourhood the child resides within, as well as their geographic accessibility to recreation opportunities. The models were assessed using a series of cross-classified random-intercept multi-level regression models as children’s PA may be affected by both the school they attend and the neighbourhood in which they live. In the unadjusted model, PA varied significantly across school environments (γ = 0.023; CI: 0.003–0.043), but not across neighbourhoods (γ = 0.007; CI: -0.008 to 0.021). Boys were found to be more active compared to girls (b = 0.183; CI: 0.092–0.275), while the level of PA was lower for children whose fathers achieved post-secondary education (b = - 0.197; CI: -0.376 to 0.018) than for those whose parents completed only high school. The addition of the individual-level correlates did not have a substantial effect on level 2 variances and the level 2 variance associated with school environment remained statistically significant. At the interpersonal level, children’s perception of parental support (b = 0.117; CI: 0.091–0.143) and peer support (b = 0.111; CI: 0.079–0.142) were positively related to PA. The level 2 variance for the school environment became statistically non-significant when the interpersonal factors were added to the model. At the environmental level, geographic accessibility did not have a significant association with PA and they did not significantly affect level 1 or 2 variance. As many children do not accrue sufficient levels of PA, identifying modifiable determinants is necessary to develop effective strategies to increase PA