Sickness in Storytelling: The Effects of Chronic Illness on Memoir and the Author

The thesis will be in two parts, research and creative. The first part will be a research-based paper exploring how the creation and content of memoir is influenced by authors with chronic illness, and the difficulties and unique perspective these authors bring to the craft of memoir will be investigated. The second part will be a short memoir that tells a personal story of living with an autoimmune disease, systemic lupus erythematosus. This first-person narrative will fluctuate between memories of personal experience, information on lupus, and self-reflection. Together, these parts will explore different aspects of chronic illness in memoir

Selected Poems

Selected poems by Sarah Jackson

“Flight” and “Time of Light”: The Impact of Poetry Sequences on Author and Audience

Undergraduate Creative and Artisti

Minimizing Shirking Through Labor Policies

The cost of employee shirking is an expense most retail sales companies face. As defined by Alan B. Krueger, shirking is any employee action that reduces output. Krueger cites common examples of shirking Including theft, poor service, absenteeism, and high turnover. This study looks for statistical relationships between labor policies and the cost of shirking. We will also look at the cost effectiveness of using specific policies to decrease employee shirking

"Development of wireless fire products”

The project was to develop a radio controlled door holder system as the first in a range of radio based products for Stephenson Gobin Eng Co. Ltd. Stephenson Gobin manufacture and market a wide range of electromechanical products, including retaining devices for fire doors and smoke vents. Typical installations are in hospitals, nursing homes, shopping centers, hotels or any building open to the public. The author discusses why a radio controlled door holder system is commercially and technically viable. Various wired and Wirefree door holder systems are evaluated on merits of safety and ease of installation. Stephenson Gobin developed a bi-stable latching door holding device which consumed no current in a state that was capable of holding a fire door open. This was due to a rotating magnetic slug assembly which only drew current to latch from one state to other. The device needed to be controlled wirelessly and possible methods of communication were assessed. Communicating using the license free radio frequency spectrum was selected due to the falling costs of radio components and the huge growth in the radio communication sector. The author developed and tested the hardware and software necessary to communicate with and actuate such a device

Hijacking #myNYPD: Social media dissent and networked counterpublics

In this research, we investigate the citizen hijacking of the Twitter hashtag #myNYPD in response to a public relations campaign by the New York City Police Department in April of 2014. Using counterpublic sphere theory, we examine how Twitter was used as a platform to organize, generate, and promote counterpublic narratives about racial profiling, police misconduct and police violence. Through a combination of large-scale network analysis and qualitative discourse analysis, we detail emergent counterpublic structure and leadership, specific discursive strategies deployed by crowdsourced elites within communities of resistance, and the reception of online counterpublic activism in mainstream media. We conclude with implications for understanding the evolving nature of counterpublics in the second decade of the 21st-century, with particular consideration to the roles of new and old media in (re)shaping public debates around marginalization, profiling, and policing

The Use of Electronic Participation Tools in Urban Planning Projects in Toronto, Ontario

The public’s involvement in urban planning projects has been a contested and evolving topic. In this paper, I address how planners have changed their approach to participation in planning and how they are incorporating electronic participation tools into that process. I have adapted the assessment framework by Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis (2007) for the use of electronic participation tools in public policy consultations to urban planning projects. I evaluated eighteen active urban planning projects in Toronto, Ontario, comparing how these projects are using electronic participation tools to engage the community. I found that electronic participation tools are, for the most part, being used to inform members of the community rather than for drawing feedback and that these tools are not being used to create opportunities for the community to make substantial changes to the projects. Members of the community who are using the electronic participation tools are self-selected participants and therefore tend to be more likely to engage in planning processes generally. The main take away from my research is that urban planning projects in Toronto are integrating electronic participation tools into their participation strategy, but the electronic participation tools are not being used strategically to remedy current barriers and gaps to participation