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Families in the United States are rapidly changing, and the normative familial model of two married, monogamous, heterosexual parents with children no longer reflects the majority of U.S. families. Nonetheless, state incentive-based policies and discriminatory family laws continue to enforce heteronormative monogamy. Recent changes to the U.S. legal landscape have produced limited formal recognition and protections for same-sex couples and LGBTQ parents, and even these narrow rights are withheld from other diverse familial configurations including families with polyamorous parents. This article uses the concept of sexual citizenship to frame the analysis of U.S. family courts' normative construction of family, identifying striking parallels between family courts' historical and contemporary prejudicial treatment of LGBTQ parents and the institution's similar delegitimization and denigration of polyamorous parents today. This paper reviews polyamorous parents' efforts towards achieving legal and societal legitimatization, finding significant parallels with legal strategies LGBTQ parents utilized to seek legal recognition and protection prior to federal recognition of same-sex marriage. This paper highlights the inadequacies of such a formal sexual citizenship approach, finding that a limited strategy of accumulating specific sexual rights fails to address non-monogamy's more radical cultural presence as well as the (non-legal) informal aspects of belonging needed to improve the livability of polyamorous parents' and their children's lives. This paper concludes with recommendations for improving the treatment of non-traditional families including LGBTQ, polyamorous, and other blended families, both within and outside the legal institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: This study examines how social information is utilized in processes of bilingual speech perception. Specifically, we investigate whether racialized expectations of native language background trigger language-specific processing strategies in early or simultaneous Spanish–English bilinguals. Methodology: We coupled a visually-primed phoneme categorization task with a social evaluation questionnaire to test whether Spanish–English bilingual adults living in the United States (n = 30) drew on racialized ideologies about what speakers of certain languages look like during speech perception. We predicted that, if participants drew on these ideologies during the phoneme categorization task, they would cue an expectation of what language was being spoken and, consequently, a shift in the identification boundary. Data and analysis: Mixed logistic regression was used to investigate the effects of photograph (the visual prime) and voice on how participants categorized the continua while paired, two-tailed t -tests were used to compare how participants socially evaluated the two speakers. Findings: Raciolinguistic evaluations appeared to influence bilingual speech perception, significantly affecting how the continua were categorized, but they did not work the same way for every voice. Originality: Prior work has posited that interactional context influences bilingual language control (e.g., Grosjean, 2001); the ideological nature of this context has, however, been understudied. This paper offers insight into how ideologies related to race may shape language perception and use in bilinguals. Implications: The findings provide evidence for the role of social information in bilingual speech perception, suggest that multiple cues (acoustic and social) integrate to determine the interactional context, and indicate that the influence of raciolinguistic ideologies is neither straightforward nor homogeneous but rather contingent on complex aspects of the perceived speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to decenter the academy as the gatekeeper of knowledge, while presenting a critique of 'public sociology' and 'public-facing' scholarship. I argue that public sociology's aim to make research more 'accessible to a wider audience' presupposes that the university has something to offer to this audience in the first place. This not-so-tacit arrogance only further privileges the university as the primary site of knowledge production, while rendering invisible the many knowledge producers outside the academy. As public sociology continues to curry favor with mainstream media, politics, and policy institutes, it reveals a steadfast faith in the state and capital, while obscuring radical alternatives. In turn, public sociology functions as a counterinsurgency tool via professionalization. Conversely, a counter-public sociology refuses to comply with oppressive state protocols. Instead, it seeks to dismantle them. A counter-public sociology aims not to affirm the university, but to insist that this current academic enterprise remains untenable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, as in most of the Global North, disability has historically been regarded as a deficit, requiring clinical intervention, professional oversight, and special schooling. This ideology, referred to as ableism, is linked with settler colonialism and the matrix of oppression that upholds racial capitalism. The aims of this paper are twofold: First, we examine the correlation among normative whiteness, racialized exploitation, and the depiction of disabled Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as disposable others. Second, we employ a joint biopolitical and settler colonial analysis to re-examine US special education drawing on our experiences as disabled, critical disability studies scholars—two of whom are negatively racialized and two of whom are queer. Finally, we draw upon the principles of Disability Justice and Access-Centered Pedagogy to formulate recommendations for an alternative to segregated education for all students, centering the experiences of those disproportionately impacted by systemic oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's (HOLC) so-called 'redlining' maps have gone from a niche corner of urban historical scholarship to the centre of mainstream narratives about racism in the United States. In this paper, I map this journey and trace the contours of the ongoing debates that have emerged, identifying two competing camps I call 'HOLC Culpablism' and 'HOLC Scepticism'. Finding these perspectives to have run up against their self-imposed limitations, I outline a research agenda that breaks from the debate's narrow confines by envisioning HOLC's mapping materials anew. My proposed approach recasts the maps and their accompanying field notes as windows into the governing racial–spatial ideology of 20th-century US real estate capital. In doing so, it invites researchers to reimagine the map grades as dynamic categories reflecting a particular spatiotemporal conception of value that is highly contingent on an area's estimated racial trajectory. This reformulation, I argue, not only opens new possibilities for studying the HOLC mapping programme but suggests that the power of these maps has almost certainly been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Hearing Voices Approach, a community-based peer-led support group model, is generating interest as a novel way to engage with psychosis. Hearing Voices (HV) groups are run by peers, 'experts-by-experience', and emphasize group ownership and community-building rather than adherence to a therapist-led, predetermined structure. Diverse beliefs about experiences are respected and viewed as potentially meaningful. Groups work within each individual's explanatory framework to reframe understandings. Aims: This paper describes the effects of participation in Veteran Voices and Visions (VVV) groups, an adaptation of the HV approach, co-led by clinicians and Veteran peer support specialists, adapted for Veterans who have experienced psychosis and receive care at the VA, a large public health system in the United States. Method: This mixed methods pilot study has a convergent parallel design, integrating quantitative and qualitative data from participants in pre-intervention and post-intervention assessments. Results: Over 16 weeks, quantitative analysis showed a statistically significant reduction in distress, due to auditory hallucinations, as measured by the Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS). The Beliefs about Voices Questionnaire- Revised (BAVQ-R) results showed a reduction in malevolence and omnipotence and an increase in benevolence related to auditory hallucinations, but no change in resistance. Engagement showed a trend-level reduction. Qualitative data from midpoint (Week 8) and endpoint (Week 16) interviews revealed several perceived benefits from groups: 1) normalization and camaraderie, 2) increased hope and confidence, 3) self-understanding and reframing of experiences, and 4) building relationships outside of groups. Overall, VVV groups reduced distress due to voices, negative beliefs about voices, and perceived power of voices. Conclusions: Study findings contribute to a growing body of literature indicating HV groups support those who have experienced psychosis by reducing social isolation and fostering community, which may facilitate social integration. Overall, our findings highlight the potential benefits of adapting HV groups to health systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine the e-libraries, digital libraries, electronic libraries, and online libraries employing bibliometric study techniques from 1971 to 2020. It focuses to consolidate the published documents on the library indexed in Web of Science. It has been observed that we found 4266 published documents employing bibliometric analysis. The study findings show that digital libraries are the top topic, proceeding paper is the top type of document, and most are published in the English language. Similarly, the year 2006 to 2010 has the highest number of published documents, top author Fox EA, Dept. Comp Sci top organisation, United States top country, and digital libraries as a top keyword has been found. Further, the name of Liu et al. has been at the top of the author's list. Moreover, the results are presented in tables and figures to show the trend of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of autonomous vehicles on the spatial size of cities remains ambiguous, as the future is highly uncertain. This paper uses counterfactual analysis techniques to examine the effects of autonomous vehicles on urban expansion for metropolitan areas in the United States if autonomous vehicles had been introduced before. We argue that distance cost and congestion cost, which are the two components of transportation cost with different effects on urban expansion, should be addressed in autonomous vehicle research. By coupling historical data with hypothetical scenarios of introducing autonomous vehicles to cities, we find that urban expansion, rather than urban densification, would have been the dominant effect if autonomous vehicles had been introduced into cities. The finding indicates that if autonomous vehicles are widely adopted in the future, they are likely to have similar, or even larger, effects on future urban expansion than in the counterfactual past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent punishment and society scholarship has addressed the limits of policy reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. This work has focused in particular on the political dimensions of penal legal reform and policy-making, and the compromises and shortcomings in those processes. Nearly absent in this scholarship, however, has been empirical and theoretical engagement with the role of front-line prosecutors as facilitators and/or resistors to downsizing efforts. Using the case of the U.S. federal criminal legal system's modest efforts to decrease the system's racially disparate and punitive outcomes, this paper elucidates the fragile nature of such reforms by delineating the critical role that front-line prosecutors play in maintaining punitive approaches. Focusing specifically on federal prosecutorial policy and practices in the Trump era, I draw on a subset of data from an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological project set in distinct federal court jurisdictions in the U.S. to examine how front-line prosecutors were able to quickly reverse course on reform through the use of their uniquely powerful charging and plea-bargaining tools. My findings illustrate how federal prosecutors pursued more low-level defendants, and utilized statutory "hammers," including mandatory minimums and mandatory enhancements to ensure harsh punishments in a swift return to a war-on-crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between an individual's financial behavior and financial satisfaction is well known. Less evidence is available about how these two constructs interplay within couples. This considered, the current paper aims to (a) examine whether individuals' financial satisfaction is influenced by their own financial behavior (actor effect) and their partner's financial behavior (partner effect); (b) examine whether these two effects vary between husbands and wives; and (c) verify how couples' bank account status (i.e., only joint bank accounts, only separate bank accounts, both joint and separate bank accounts) moderate these effects. The current study draws 1,475 heterosexual early married couples from Couple Relationships and Transition Experiences study and modeled dyadic data through an Actor Partner Interdependence Model. Results indicate that actor's financial behavior is associated only with one's own financial satisfaction (actor effect) and not one's partner's financial satisfaction (partner effect). This holds for both wives and husbands. Furthermore, individuals who hold only joint bank account(s) are more likely to have financial behaviors similar to their partner than individuals who hold only separate bank accounts or both joint and separate accounts. Couples who hold only separate accounts are more likely to engage in less positive financial behavior than their counterparts. Implications for relationship therapists and financial professionals are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent populist 'explosion' in the US, UK and Europe has pushed radical right populist movements to the centre of western politics. Given criminology's long experience of penal populism in the 1980s and subsequent decades, these developments raise important questions as to the role of sociology of punishment, and the wider discipline of criminology, in responding to far-right populism. This article aims to takes stock of the existing literature on this phenomenon with a view to proposing a tentative criminological research agenda that may contribute to our understanding of the recent rise of authoritarian politics in Europe, the UK and US. While highlighting the continued salience of the emotions in contemporary 'security populism', the article cautions against what has been described as a 'pathologising' approach to research in this area. Building on this, the paper advances an argument for a criminological research agenda based on a post-dualistic understanding of political affects that seeks to move the analytic focus beyond negativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes use of interdependence theory to analyse the historical development of the economic relations between the GCC countries and the United States. The focus will be on oil and arms trade between the GCC countries and the United States. The results show that while the military and security dependence of the GCC countries on the United States remains relatively intact, the dependence of the United States on the natural resources of the GCC region has decreased. In light of this, the paper suggests that the historical interdependence between the GCC countries and the United States has recently evolved into a unilateral dependence and that the GCC countries' natural resources are directed towards Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeds and other plant materials in seed and gene bank collections are rarely considered adequately conserved today unless genetically identical duplicate samples have been created and safely stored elsewhere. This paper explores the history of seed banking to understand how, why and with what consequences copying collections came to occupy this central place. It highlights a shift in the guiding metaphor for long-term preservation of seed collections, from banking to backup. To understand the causes and consequences of this shift in metaphor, the paper traces the intertwined histories of the central long-term seed storage facility of the United States (opened in 1958) and the international seed conservation system into which that facility was integrated in the 1970s. This account reveals how changing conceptions of security, linked to changing economic, political and technological circumstances, transformed both the guiding metaphors and the practices of seed conservation in these institutions. Early instantiations of long-term cold storage facilities vested security in robust infrastructures and the capacities of professional staff; between the 1960s and 1990s, this configuration gave way to one in which security was situated in copies rather than capacities. This observation ultimately raises questions about the security promised and achieved through present-day infrastructures for crop genetic resources conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs a poststructuralist theoretical framework to explore parents' attitudes towards children's right to play in Shanghai, China. It adopted mixed methods of online questionnaires (N = 880) and semi-structured interviews (N = 11). The findings suggest that participants struggle with embracing and practising children's right to play as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), reflecting culturally-sensitive and -contextualised concerns around their children's future success. Those concerns are connected with the hegemony of Confucianism in shaping educational values in Chinese education. In the context of globalisation, this paper points to the empowerment of parents in practising children's rights to play in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: People diagnosed with mental illness develop a variety of explanatory models of their conditions in the face of uncertainty. Explanatory models matter because they are associated with internalized stigma and illness behaviors such as treatment preferences. Aims: This paper explores how working professionals in the United States draw on biological and/or environmental factors to explain the cause(s) of their diagnoses of bipolar or depression. Method: Findings are derived from an analysis of transcripts of in-depth interviews with 52 individuals from across the United States who were invited to participate in a study of working professionals diagnosed with mental illness. About 25 self-identified as having bipolar disorder and 27 as having major depression. Transcript data were analyzed following the principles of flexible coding with the goal of establishing a typology of explanatory models of self-identified bipolar versus depression. Results: Six types of explanatory models emerged from the analysis. One was exclusively biological, a second was exclusively environmental, and the remaining four combined biological and environmental factors in different ways. Quotations from the interviews are provided to illustrate each type, and comparisons between types are made based on primary diagnosis (bipolar vs. depression), and self-reports of trauma and stressful experiences. Conclusion: Implications for the future research on explanatory models and how they may impact people who are diagnosed with a mental illness across multiple dimensions of their lives are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The concept of stigma has been widely used to understand patterns of discrimination and negative ideas surrounding people with mental health problems, yet we know little of the specific nuances of how this might operate beyond the 'Global North'. Aim: This paper aims to explore the notion of stigma in an Indian context by considering the lived experience of patients, carers and community members. Methods: A sample of 204 participants, representing mental health patients, informal carers and community members was recruited from urban and rural areas in Kerala, India. Participants took part in interviews where they were encouraged to talk about their experiences of mental ill health, attitudes towards these problems, barriers encountered and sources of support. Results: Experiences akin to the experience of stigma in Europe and the United States were elicited but there were important local dimensions specific to the Indian context. The difficulties faced by people with diagnoses of mental disorders in finding marriage partners was seen as an important problem, leading to marriage proposals being refused in some cases, and secrecy on the part of those with mental health problems. Rather than the 'self-stigma' identified in the US, participants were more likely to see this as a collective problem in that it could reflect badly on the family group as a whole rather than just the sufferer. Conclusions: In the Indian context, the idioms of stigma emphasised impairments in marriage eligibility and the implications for the family group rather than just the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albert Beckham, who was the first Black school psychologist in the U.S., frequently used intelligence tests with Black children. This usage required clinical decision making to explain the results obtained from psychoeducational assessments. In their discussion of this aspect of Beckham's work, introduce the concept of Culturally Relevant Clinical Judgement. This paper discusses issues related to the continued use of cognitive assessment instruments as it relates to clinical judgment in special education eligibility decision-making in comparison to alternatives such as Response-to-Intervention (RtI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Raspail's controversial 1973 novel The camp of the saints predicts mass migration to Europe that will destroy European civilization. Decades later, the book has accurately predicted the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in Europe annually, prompting a continent-wide crisis. From Lesbos and Lampedusa to the Canary Islands and Calais, no one seems to know how to stem the flow of humanity. Borders are being resurrected, despite Schengen and European Union (EU) agreements, in an effort to control the movement of populations. European governments disagree on how to proceed and some are suggesting that the EU could be torn apart by differing approaches to the problem. But does this have to be the response to the migration crisis? This paper compares the predictions of The camp of the saints to events in Europe today and critiques the book's conclusions with regard to what is an ancient phenomenon: movements of migrants from surplus to deficit labor settings. The paper will also evaluate the response to migrants in the United States under its populist president, Donald Trump, and will review related issues in other parts of the world: Turkey, Russia, and Canada. Contrary to Raspail's predictions, world leaders will need to accept what has already become a de facto reality: large scale admission of migrants and refugees to the EU and North America, as full citizens, will be the only realistic way to preserve prosperity in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although COVID-19 vaccines are free and readily available in the United States, many healthcare workers remain unvaccinated, potentially exposing their patients to a life-threatening pathogen. This paper reviews the ethical and legal factors surrounding patient requests to limit their care teams exclusively to vaccinated providers. Key factors that shape policy in this area include patient autonomy, the rights of healthcare workers, and the duties of healthcare institutions. Hospitals must also balance the rights of interested parties in the context of logistical constraints, equity, and public health considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how three jurisdictions, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, have sought to reconcile freedom of religion with equality rights, particularly in the commercial context, and particularly in relation to sexual orientation. The recent decisions of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court form the backdrop for that discussion. It is argued that the former made piecemeal, and misleading, use of American case law, and a fuller consideration of that jurisdiction's position was warranted, and would have led to a different view of the recent American decision. It argues that the United Kingdom Supreme Court was in error in viewing a message on a cake ordered from a baker as an example of the baker's expression, leading it to an incorrect conclusion at odds with statutory mandates in the commercial sphere around refusals of service. Both high court decisions risk undermining progress on the equality front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At times of crisis, existing institutional arrangements of societies are thrown into question. Crises that occur in multiple societies simultaneously present rare opportunities for comparative empirical analysis. Social theory can reveal the framing conditions of the responses to crises and the sources of variations between them. This paper compares the immediate responses of the Australian, UK and US governments to the global COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regard to financing lockdowns, and points out significant differences between the three approaches. Drawing on Polanyi's method of institutional analysis, we compare the responses of these same national groups to an earlier crisis, the Japanese prisoner of war camps during the Second World War, to show similar patterns of integration recurring eight decades apart. This analysis shows that aspects of moral economies that are not usually apparent can become pronounced during crises, and points to the importance of enduring social imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, school shootings are a common social problem and frequently occur on both K-12 and college campuses. High profile school shootings have resulted in a growing number of state governments legalizing "concealed carry" on college campuses, increasing the presence of guns in classrooms. This research study employs qualitative autoethnography to present the author's experiences teaching on a campus where concealed carry was implemented in 2014. Through autoethnographic narratives, the author describes her lived experiences. This paper analyses these narratives using intersectional feminist theory and situates the narratives within the broader socio-cultural context of gun culture in the Pacific Northwestern USA. The author spent four years immersed in the culture of concealed carry, and has written multiple narratives detailing these experiences. Two narratives are presented in this work. Important findings in this work include examinations of: how the presence of guns in college classrooms shapes power dynamics; the use of fear-based curricula in active-shooter survival trainings; the cultural construction of the "good guy with a gun"; and the implications of the author's positionalities within gun culture. This research study encourages the reader to engage with and learn from the lived experiences of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that in the wake of 9/11, the United States committed various extraterritorial human rights violations, that is, human rights violations against foreigners outside of its territory. What is less known is that the United States has gradually introduced safeguards that are, at least on paper, meant to prevent its counter-terrorism policies from causing harm to foreigners abroad or, at least, to mitigate such harm. Based on three case studies on the development of safeguards related to torture, targeted killing, and mass surveillance, we show that two mechanisms, coercion and strategic learning, deployed either on their own or in combination, can account for the development of such safeguards. By contrast, we found no evidence of a third mechanism, moral persuasion, having any direct effect. In other words, US policymakers opt to introduce such safeguards either when they face pressure from other states, courts, or civil society that makes immediate action necessary or when they anticipate that not introducing them will, at a later date, result in prohibitively high costs. We did not find evidence of US policymakers establishing safeguards because they deemed them morally appropriate. From this we conclude that, although the emerging norm that states have extraterritorial (and not just domestic) human rights obligations may not have been internalized by key US policymakers, it nevertheless has a regulative effect on them insofar as the fact that relevant others believe in the norm restricts their leeway and influences their cost–benefit calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to illustrate recruitment efforts, strategies, and challenges in the process of training bilingual school psychologists to serve diverse schools. First, we address the acute and chronic shortage of bilingual school psychologists in the United States, particularly in urban schools where student populations are increasingly diverse. Then we provide a review of strategies and efforts to recruit and retain bilingual graduate-level learners in one school psychology program in an urban university. Quantitative data regarding recruitment and retention efforts are discussed. We identify challenges and future directions to increase diversity in the field of school psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of Fenneman's two volumes on physiography: The Physiography of Western United States and the Physiography of Eastern United States, was the culmination of over 20 years of work toward formalization of the physiographic regions in the United States. This paper details the relevant works that predate these volumes, the two volumes themselves, as well as briefly describing Fenneman's career and the continued use of the works 80 plus years post-publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postfeminist young women are encouraged to "embrace" their sexuality by sexualizing their bodies as a means of empowerment. In stark contrast, dominant understandings of violence identify these same bodily displays as risk factors, condemning women who enact them as "asking for" victimization. While these competing demands on the female body have been widely documented in popular media, empirical work has not investigated if, and the extent to which, women reproduce these tension-filled constructions of the body in their own lives. Using in-depth interviews with 15 participants of varied race, class and gender identity in the US, this paper explores the ways in which these conflicting discursive constructions of the body are enacted by participants in their everyday lives. While participants took up varied sensibilities of the body and empowerment (including several that emphasized sexiness and sexuality), participants uniformly discussed perceptions of risk that inscribed the female body as vulnerable. This produced tensions in reasoning for some participants (but not all), in ways that were intersectionally inflected by race and gender presentation. More broadly, data suggests that postfeminist (and other) visions of the body that appear to otherwise produce lived experiences of empowerment are deemed invalid in contexts of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how professional engineers recognize and make sense of product defects in their everyday work. Such activities form a crucial, if often overlooked, part of professional engineering practice. By detecting, recognizing and repairing defects, engineers contribute to the creation of value and the optimization of production processes. Focusing on early-career engineers in an advanced steel mill in the United States, we demonstrate how learning specific ways of seeing and attending to defects take shape around the increasing automation of certain aspects of engineering work. Practices of sensing defects are embodied, necessitating disciplined eyes, ears, and hands, but they are also distributed across human and non-human actors. We argue that such an approach to technical work provides texture to the stark opposition between human and machine work that has emerged in debates around automation. Our approach to sensing defects suggests that such an opposition, with its focus on job loss or retention, misses the more nuanced ways in which humans and machines are conjoined in perceptual tasks. The effects of automation should be understood through such shifting configurations and the ways that they variously incorporate the perceptual practices of humans and machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher-education student body in the United States is increasingly diverse. Diversity and transnationalism are present in the classroom through the increased numbers of students and instructors who are international and/or non-White-identifying. However, syllabi in media, communication, and cultural studies remain centered around an orthodox body of literature that has come to be conceived of as the canon, consisting of scholars who are mostly white, male, and U.S.-American or European. This essay brings communication, culture, and media studies theories into conversation with critical pedagogy to suggest changes in the organization of syllabi and class activities. Namely, I use participatory culture, critical and decolonial pedagogical theories, and Black and transnational feminist pedagogy, to suggest a critical embrace of different as an approach for designing syllabi that center the students rather than the Western-rooted tradition. This paper is part of the critical body of knowledge that pushes for a decolonizing and transnationalizing intervention in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we watch COVID devastate our country, many wonder how we got here. I argue that in this paper that the crisis has been agrevated, if not a direct result of presidential missteps, and belligerence. Further, most impacted have been racialized groups. These factors, described here as elements of the perfect storm, are not by accident, but a series of miscalculations and errors, blatant disregard for reality and science, and deliberate attempts to mislead, minimize, and dismiss the severity, reality, and dangers associated with this pandemic. Early responses by President Donald Trump to COVID-19 can be characterized as inept, unfocused, and lacking leadership. Even as the first cases of COVID-19 were being identified in Wuhan, China, President Trump was working to promote his anti-science stance by dismantling the science policy infrastructure installed to advise him. Following Trump's lead, many GOP local and state leaders trivialized the significance of COVID-19 early as it ravaged the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]