EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGICAL TERRITORIALITY THROUGH THE DOMESTIC GOTHIC IN BELOVED AND MAMA DAY

The novels, Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor, contain narratives of families with a history of slavery that explore how their female protagonists claim their identities within the new boundaries of freedom. Using a framework of the Domestic Gothic, this paper explores how formerly enslaved female characters claim new psychological territory in bounded domestic spaces by using the chores they were forced to perform during their times of slavery as a means to independence. Domestic duties such as cooking and gardening along with magical and religious ceremonies and acts of violence are passed down through the generations. They become a pathway to autonomy and reclaimed family memories. Yet, paradoxically, the Gothic message plays out in the domestic sphere of the female protagonists in both books, as their personal and communal slave histories come back to haunt the present day through the completion of every day chores and duties that remind them of the terrors of the past. The purpose of this paper is to explore how these women claim their own identities in a time when African American women were considered commodities

Students\u27 Perceptions of Learning Course Objectives: On Campus Versus Virtual Sections of One Course

The college course used in this project is required for students majoring in the Elementary Education and Early Childhood Unified Programs. Sections of the course are offered virtually as well as on the campus. This paper examines students\u27 scores on an assignment called the Course Objective Reflection to determine if course format made a difference in the candidates\u27 perceived learning of the six course objectives. Preliminary results indicate that virtual students achieved higher aggregate scores on the assignment than students completing the class on campus

Exploring the Linkages Between Quality System, Service Quality, and Excellence: Service Providers

This study explores the linkages between quality system, employee service-quality culture, and performance excellence in the banking industry operating in a turbulent business environment. Properly conducted quality culture and strategic consensus assessment has the potential of informing a service organization of its current position and possible areas for improvement. The opinions, values, and practices of employees regarding quality are the fundamentals that define quality culture in many service organizations. Management must apply this knowledge to plan for the successful implementation of service-quality related activities. In an exploratory study the authors tested the linkages between quality system, service quality, and performance as perceived by the employees of a large banking institution in Hong Kong. Results of a detailed case study and empirical analysis show that employees perceive strong linkages between quality system, service quality, and performance measures

A Lifelong Connection

To build new bridges between Titan alumni and students, Elly Jones ’91 takes inspiration from her own college experience

Teacher Candidates\u27 Awareness and Acceptance of Diversity

Introduction: Like many colleges of education and the departments within them, concerns exist on the best way to provide teacher candidates with clinical (also referred to as “field” in the literature) based experiences that meet accreditation outcomes. In the Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improved Learning (NCATE, 2010), members of the panel stressed the importance of using a “clinically based model” for teacher preparation

Special Edition: Principal Investigator Recognition

This is a special edition from the Office of Sponsored Programs honoring the accomplishments of the SWOSU Principal Investigators

September 2020

The September 2020 Source Newsletter from the SWOSU Office of Sponsored Programs. Special message from the Director: As President Beutler always says, the Fall is a great time to be on a college campus! And there’s no where I’d rather be than right here at SWOSU. This fall the definition of a college campus definitely has a new meaning and with that brings new opportunities

A Diverse Clinical-Based Practice in Teacher Education

The purpose of the study was to determine if offering a virtual clinical-based practice would affect teacher candidates’ level of confidence in teaching diverse students. During 2012-2014, data were collected using a pre- and post-Likert scale questionnaire. A paired two sample t-test was utilized to determine if there was a significant difference in mean scores from the pre- to the postquestionnaire. Increases were found in all questionnaire items with five of the items showing a significant increase at the α=.01 level. The results suggest that a virtual clinical-based practice may provide an authentic experience for teacher candidates, may lead teacher candidates to be become more aware and take a positive approach to students’ differences, and that the teacher candidates’ comfort level with unfamiliar situations posed by students from diverse backgrounds may increase. A future implication is that colleges of education may want to consider adding a virtual clinical-based practice to existing diversity education classes. However, more research needs to be conducted to determine if virtual clinical-based practices are equal to or better than on-site clinical-based practices in an attempt to increase teacher candidates’ levels of confidence in teaching diverse students

Diffusion Tensor Imaging of Dolphin Brains Reveals Direct Auditory Pathway to Temporal Lobe

The brains of odontocetes (toothed whales) look grossly different from their terrestrial relatives. Because of their adaptation to the aquatic environment and their reliance on echolocation, the odontocetes’ auditory system is both unique and crucial to their survival. Yet, scant data exist about the functional organization of the cetacean auditory system. A predominant hypothesis is that the primary auditory cortex lies in the suprasylvian gyrus along the vertex of the hemispheres, with this position induced by expansion of ‘associative0 regions in lateral and caudal directions. However, the precise location of the auditory cortex and its connections are still unknown. Here, we used a novel diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) sequence in archival post-mortem brains of a common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) and a pantropical dolphin (Stenella attenuata) to map their sensory and motor systems. Using thalamic parcellation based on traditionally defined regions for the primary visual (V1) and auditory cortex (A1), we found distinct regions of the thalamus connected to V1 and A1. But in addition to suprasylvian-A1, we report here, for the first time, the auditory cortex also exists in the temporal lobe, in a region near cetacean-A2 and possibly analogous to the primary auditory cortex in related terrestrial mammals (Artiodactyla). Using probabilistic tract tracing, we found a direct pathway from the inferior colliculus to the medial geniculate nucleus to the temporal lobe near the sylvian fissure. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of postmortem DTI in archival specimens to answer basic questions in comparative neurobiology in a way that has not previously been possible and shows a link between the cetacean auditory system and those of terrestrial mammals. Given that fresh cetacean specimens are relatively rare, the ability to measure connectivity in archival specimens opens up a plethora of possibilities for investigating neuroanatomy in cetaceans and other species