Andrew R. Highsmith 2015: Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan and the Fate of the American Metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136717/1/ijur12405.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136717/2/ijur12405_am.pd

Limited war, limited enthusiasm: Sexuality, disillusionment, survival, and the changing landscape of war culture in Korean War-era comic books and soldier iconography

This thesis investigates how Korean War-era comic books and soldier-produced iconography between 1950 and 1953 reflected the conflict and helped construct ideal soldier masculinities. Differentiating between romantic, soldier-produced, and realist imagery, this thesis argues that comic books—traditionally treated as low-brow children’s literature—articulated diverse and sophisticated discussions about the nature of warfare and its impact on manhood. Soldiers and artists reflected a war that came on the heels of World War II, and the disillusionment expressed in these sources reflected a broader cultural conflict between representing World War II sentimentalism and the new, limited war in Korea. This struggle resulted in contradictory presentations of soldiers and masculinity in comic books. In particular, realist narratives explored in chapter three invoked an alternative discussion of war that decoupled manhood from warfare. The anti-war rhetoric used by Entertaining Comics’ realist narratives constitutes a new phenomenon during the Korean War, and laid the foundation for subsequent anti-war critiques during the 1960s. Comic books, newspapers, film, and other media anchor this thesis, and allow the following pages to contextualize comic book imagery in broader 1950s war culture

Straddling the Threshold of Two Worlds: The Culture of American Soldiers in the Vietnam War, 1965-1973

The Vietnam War is often portrayed in postwar popular culture as a conflict fought primarily by reluctant draftees who, donning peace symbols, listening to Rock, and smoking marijuana, held values incompatible with achieving military success there. These generalizations point to the entanglement of societal and soldier culture during the Vietnam War. This dissertation argues that rapid communications and travel collapsed the timeframe for people, news, cultural trends, and popular culture to reach the war zone and penetrate the rank-and-file mass culture, thereby making possible the entanglement between American society and American soldiers in Vietnam. The “soldier culture” that evolved in Vietnam was shaped not only by soldiers’ immersion in mass culture, but also by the twin priorities of surviving a one-year tour of duty and returning to civilian life. The troubling behaviors that military commanders noticed in Vietnam’s final years—“fraggings,” combat refusals, and drug abuse—were logical conclusions of a rank-and-file whose intent on surviving merited an entirely different set of norms, values, and behaviors from those who were alternatively focused on securing success. This dissertation is organized into two parts that emphasize an ethnographic approach to understanding soldiers’ culture. The first half of this dissertation traces how and why soldiers fashioned their own cultures during the war. The second half describes how soldier culture was not singularly determinative of what soldiers thought or how they acted. Two chapters focus on black soldiers, explaining that as they consumed mass culture and read letters from home, their worldview was influenced by their constant negotiation and renegotiation of their liminal position between societal and soldier culture. Vietnam-era soldier culture continues to have enduring power in American popular culture and was also emulated by future generations who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan during the twenty-first century. As veterans communicate elements of soldier culture to civilians in the postwar period, they become the connective tissue that allows the so-called reality of warfare to shape how societies subsequently create or modify discourses about war.Doctor of Philosoph

Toxic structures: Speculation and lead exposure in Detroit\u27s single-family rental market

Foreclosure sales permitted investors to purchase large volumes of low-cost residential properties after the last financial crisis, reshaping patterns of property ownership in low-income housing markets across the US. This study links post-foreclosure property acquisitions by investor-landlords to subsequent lead poisoning cases among children under age six living in Detroit, Michigan. We find that the odds of exhibiting elevated blood lead levels (≥ 5 μg/dL) are higher for children living in investor-owned homes purchased through tax foreclosure sale. These findings highlight the potential for property speculation in post-foreclosure housing markets to exacerbate severe and racialized burdens of excess lead toxicity in low-income communities

Snapshot of KIPP Leadership Practices through 2010 -- 2011

As part of the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) Foundation commissioned Mathematica to document leadership practices at KIPP schools. This issue brief summarizes notable findings from the study, which focused on identifying leadership practices across diverse areas: leadership structure and transitions, and the selection, development, and evaluation of leaders. Among other notable findings, KIPP combines a tiered sequence of leadership roles at the local level with national staff development programs to generate a pipeline of school leaders. The study also found that KIPP's Leadership Competency Model defines the skills school leaders need and guides development and evaluation

Food Security Network Modeling

Food security creates a complex issue for American interests. Within a constantly expanding operational environment, food security remains a vital lifeline both domestically and abroad.  Current methods of mapping an area’s food system rely on ad-hoc assessments that produce skewed results and minimal metric analysis. Previous assessments methodologies failed to incorporate components of a food system that influences the overall stability of an area. The research conducted utilized the Systems Decision Process (SDP) to create a value hierarchy and model that provide an assessment for an areas food system. The findings from the research showcase that a food system relies on several variables such as infrastructure, dietary needs, and the national stability of a region. A more enhanced assessment model was developed that placed an overarching value to a food network that allows ground commanders to gain a holistic overview of the condition of an areas food system

Making Market Rule(s)

This is the introductory essay for a special issue on the geographies of market construction and market regulation. It argues that in an age of markets, geographers ought to pay more attention to the seemingly mundane, but nevertheless socially constructed, rules that are necessary for any market to operate

Partnerships to Address School Safety through a Student Support Lens

School safety is a primary concern of school leaders, employees, parents, and a variety of community stakeholders. Attempts to mitigate and prevent school safety concerns often focus on strategies around school climate assessment, emergency communication, school safety plan development, and school resource officer employment (U.S. DHS et al., 2018). Involvement of key stakeholders, such as school social workers, school counselors, and school-based mental health professionals is emphasized in creating and assessing school safety in a wholistic manner. This article provides an overview of a Trainings to Increase School Safety grant program that was implemented with public school stakeholders through partnerships between a university and five public school districts in the Southeastern North Carolina region

Deep Learning for Automated Experimentation in Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Machine learning (ML) has become critical for post-acquisition data analysis in (scanning) transmission electron microscopy, (S)TEM, imaging and spectroscopy. An emerging trend is the transition to real-time analysis and closed-loop microscope operation. The effective use of ML in electron microscopy now requires the development of strategies for microscopy-centered experiment workflow design and optimization. Here, we discuss the associated challenges with the transition to active ML, including sequential data analysis and out-of-distribution drift effects, the requirements for the edge operation, local and cloud data storage, and theory in the loop operations. Specifically, we discuss the relative contributions of human scientists and ML agents in the ideation, orchestration, and execution of experimental workflows and the need to develop universal hyper languages that can apply across multiple platforms. These considerations will collectively inform the operationalization of ML in next-generation experimentation.Comment: Review Articl