The N-Word: Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned

In the fall of 2008, I dared to teach a fifteen-week course that focused on a single word, a word arguably like no other, a word adorned with these emotionally colorful descriptors: “the most explosive of racial epithets,” “our cruelest word,” “the most toxic in the English language,” “the most troubling word in our language,” “almost magical in its negative power,” “six simple letters that convey centuries of pain, evil and contempt,” “an almost universally known word of contempt,” “occupies a place in the soul where logic and reason never go,” and “the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.” I have since taught the course three more times. Because of the overwhelming success of my multimedia and multi-genre undergraduate course, “The N-word: Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned,” both for my students and for me, and because of the peculiar and alleged post-racial American historical moment in which we now are living with the first African American U.S. President, this reflective pedagogical piece, “The N-Word: Lessons taught and Lessons Learned,” is particularly relevant and timely. Indeed, although the use and history of the “nigger” with its various interracial, intraracial, and intracultural associations have garnered public attention in American classrooms, in the American media, and in American popular culture, deeper implications surrounding this word, the word “nigger” has not had the kind of sustained classroom exploration my semester -long course afforded. Putting this single word under a critical microscope underscored for me and my students the fact that ideas about language and identity, about language and public performance, and about language and American race relations inextricably connect youths and elders, blacks and whites, males and females, children and adults, the international and the domestic, past and present, public and private, and the personal and the political. Specifically, this pedagogical reflection offers a social and political context for the course, an intellectual rationale for the course, specific and detailed course content, students’ responses to the course, students\u27 and teacher\u27s overarching lessons gleaned from the course, and bibliographic suggestions for classroom practitioners and critically curious others navigating the ocean of materials on the word that journalist Farai Chideya has called “the all-American trump card, the nuclear bomb of racial epithets.”

Understanding Source Incompatibilism

Source incompatibilism is an increasingly popular version of incompatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility. However, many self-described source incompatibilists formulate the thesis differently, resulting in conceptual confusion that can obscure the relationship between source incompatibilism and other views in the neighborhood. In this paper I canvas various formulations of the thesis in the literature and argue in favor of one as the least likely to lead to conceptual confusion. It turns out that accepting my formulation has some surprising taxonomical consequence

The impact of an innovative human resource function on firm performance: the moderating role of financing strategy

The current study examined the impact of the human resource function and financing strategy on the financial performance of 104 UK manufacturing firms. Hypotheses are drawn from a resource-based perspective on human resource management and a financial theory perspective on capital structure. Results show that an innovative HR function is significantly related to economic performance. However, the relationship between an innovative HR function and economic performance was moderated by the firm¿s financing strategy. Firms obtained higher returns from an innovative HR function when pursuing a low leveraging (debt) financing strategy, a finding consistent with modern finance theory notions that firmspecific strategic assets provide greatest value when financed primarily through equity as opposed to debt

INTEGRATING AND ASSESSING EXISTING AGRIBUSINESS COURSEWORK INTO A NEW UNDERGRADUATE INTERNATIONAL AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT CONCENTRATION

The purpose of this paper is to use Cal Poly's example of the design and assessment of a new agribusiness concentration as a means to develop a process by which subsequent change can be managed within the context of coordinating change with the ongoing curriculum and employment needs of a department's students.Teaching, Agribusiness, International, Assessment, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, A100, A220, Q130, Q170,

Current Star Formation in Post-Starburst Galaxies?

Radio continuum observations are a probe of star formation in galaxies, and are unaffected by dust extinction. Observations of the distant rich cluster Cl 0939+4713 have detected radio galaxies classified as post-starburst (``k+a'') on the basis of their optical spectra, and presumably this situation arises from heavily dust-obscured star formation (Smail et al. 1999). We present the results of a radio continuum survey of post-starburst galaxies identified from the Las Campanas Redshift Survey by Zabludoff et al. (1996). This sample was selected using very stringent criteria, and therefore provides an estimate on the incidence of potential star formation in galaxies whose optical spectra exhibit the strongest post-starburst features. We detected two of fifteen such galaxies at radio luminosities consistent with moderate levels of star formation. This result underscores the potential importance of dust extinction when investigating star formation in galaxies.Comment: Replaced with corrected version of Table

Cores in Dwarf Galaxies from Dark Matter with a Yukawa Potential

We show that cold dark matter particles interacting through a Yukawa potential could naturally explain the recently observed cores in dwarf galaxies without affecting the dynamics of objects with a much larger velocity dispersion, such as clusters of galaxies. The velocity dependence of the associated cross-section as well as the possible exothermic nature of the interaction alleviates earlier concerns about strongly interacting dark matter. Dark matter evaporation in low-mass objects might explain the observed deficit of satellite galaxies in the Milky Way halo and have important implications for the first galaxies and reionization.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure