RSS 1.0Open Access Monographs
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Premises and ProblemsWorld literature, many have stressed, is a systematic category. Both literary scholars and social scientists have argued that the prestige of the major literary languages is key to establishing the shape of the overall system. In order to critically interrogate world literature and cinema, Premises and Problems approaches this system from the perspective of languages and film traditions that do not hold a hegemonic position. This perspective raises new questions about the nature of literary hegemony and the structure of world literature: How is hegemony established? What are the costs of losing it? What does hegemony mask? How is it masked? The contributors focus predominantly on literatures outside the small circle of prestigious modern European languages and on films and film criticism produced outside the best-known centers. The inclusion of this unfamiliar material calls attention to some areas of obscurity that make key features of the system indistinct, or that make it difficult to trace relationships between texts that hold different levels of prestige, such as those of the Global North and the Global South. The book argues that the study of world literature and cinema will profit from a sustained and informed engagement with the body of work produced by historical social scientists committed to the perspective of the world-system.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: Lessons Learned and Opportunities for Change: Higher Education, Crises, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in PerspectiveThis chapter examines the lessons learned from past crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on leading through adaptive challenges. The authors analyze collaborations among higher education institutions, government, and community organizations in response to the pandemic and its consequences. The chapter also explores the evolving role of higher education in addressing crises and the potential for positive change, even in the wake of tragic events. The authors use the University at Albany as a case study, highlighting their response to the pandemic and support of the wider community and government response and recovery efforts. Examples include pivoting to remote education and administrative telework, 3D printing and distributing face shields, and participation in the NYS Minority Health Disparities project, COVID-19 testing and vaccination facilities, and the NYS Vaccine Equity Task Force. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of leading in times of crisis and the potential for creating new interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multi-sectoral research teams and partnerships with local government and communities.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: Towards a Framework for Addressing Immigrants’ Social Determinants of HealthThis study seeks to adapt and validate the National Institute of Minority Health Disparities Research Framework to immigrant communities who are culturally and linguistically diverse, defined in this study as foreign-born individuals who are Limited English Proficient. The Immigrant Social Determinants (ISD) Framework depicts the multidimensional, multilevel, intersectional, and complex factors that shape health outcomes across the lifespan. The framework for addressing health disparities posits that health outcomes are shaped by the interplay between determinants related to the (a) behavioral; (b) biological; (c) political and socio-cultural; (d) physical built environment, and (e) healthcare system forces. These determinants operate at four levels of influence: individual, interpersonal, community, and societal. Adaptation and validation of the Framework will deepen understanding of the interplay of these forces in the lives of members of immigrant communities, illuminate levers of change, inform the development and implementation of effective interventions, and track progress and success in alleviating disparities. In this study, we adapt the framework based on a systematic review of literature, and then we validate the framework using the perspectives of health and social service providers who serve immigrant individuals and their communities. Data are gathered using (a) a survey of healthcare professionals; and (b) focus groups of healthcare, social service providers, and community leaders. Following the validation of the framework, we provide recommendations for policy and practice. Validating the framework through the prism of healthcare professionals’ perspectives leverages a moment in time during a global pandemic that exposed vulnerabilities at all levels of influence and domains and that allows us to capture the determinants of health affecting culturally and linguistically diverse immigrant communities. Policy and practice recommendations will specify interventions at the moderators and mediators’ levels that can bring about positive health outcomes for immigrant individuals.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: Impacts of COVID-19 in New York’s Capital Region: A View from the Local Community on the Socioemotional Experience of the PandemicA great deal of national attention has understandably focused on the devastating impact of COVID-19 in the greater New York area, especially among its Communities of Color. This study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdowns on the Black/African American community in the City of Albany. The present report focuses on the socioemotional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, grouping data from a Qualtrics survey (N = 238) and interview accounts (N = 25) into three areas: (1) the impact on work and consequently on food and housing security; (2) anxieties directly connected with the virus itself; and (3) self-reports of respondents’ mental health and the socioemotional impact on their children. The concluding recommendations are grounded in interview responses, survey results, and the assessment of the data by the Albany Minority Health Task Force in the context of their knowledge of the local community.
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Material Acts in Everyday Hindu WorldsIn Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes the agency of materiality—the ability of materials to have an effect on both humans and deities—beyond human intentions. Using materials from three regions where Flueckiger conducted extensive fieldwork, she begins with Indian understandings of the agency of ornaments that have the desired effects of protecting women and making them more auspicious. Subsequent chapters bring in examples of materiality that are agentive beyond human intentions, from a south Indian goddess tradition where female guising transforms the aggressive masculinity of men who wear saris, braids, and breasts to the presence of cement images of Ravana in Chhattisgarh, which perform alternative theologies and ideologies to those of dominant textual traditions of the Ramayana epic. Deeply ethnographic and accessibly written, Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds expands our understanding of material agency as well as the parameters of religion more broadly.
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Working through Surveillance and Technical CommunicationWhat is surveillance, and why should we care? Why are those who use technology susceptible to being both agents and targets of contemporary surveillance practices? Working Through Surveillance and Technical Communication addresses these questions, discussing what it means to engage in surveillance, examining why this participation may be problematic, and offering entry points into assessing one’s ethical and socially just involvement with surveillance. Further, the book suggests ways to resist both individually and collectively, and it offers pedagogical entry points for those looking to talk about surveillance with others. Led by the central questions, “How are technical communicators also surveillance workers?” and “Why does this matter for technical communication and surveillance scholarship?” the text uses the example of Edward Snowden to illustrate how technical communicators and surveillance workers exist on an often-overlapping range. Sarah Young highlights the potentially discriminatory nature of surveillance and argues that recognizing and evaluating surveillance in is increasingly important in a data-driven world.
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Technical Communication for Environmental ActionClimate change is one of the most significant challenges facing the global community in the twenty-first century. With its position at the border of people, technology, science, and communication, technical communication has a significant role to play in helping to solve these complex environmental problems. This collection of essays engages scholars and practitioners in a conversation about how the field has contributed to pragmatic and democratic action to address climate change. Compared to most prior work—which offers theoretical perspectives of environmental communication—this collection explores the actual practice of international technical communicators who participate in government projects, corporate processes, nonprofit programs, and international agency work, demonstrating how technical communication theories such as participatory design, social justice, and ethics can help shape pragmatic environmental action.
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Envisioning SociologyEnvisioning Sociology is a landmark work, the first major study of the founding of sociology in Britain and the enormous contributions made by the intellectual circle led by Victor Branford and Patrick Geddes. Authors John Scott and Ray Bromley chronicle the biographical connections and personal partnerships of the circle's key participants, their international connections, their organization-building work, and the business activities that underpinned their efforts. Branford and Geddes fashioned an ambitious and wide-ranging interdisciplinary vision, drawing on geography, anthropology, economics, and urban planning, in addition to sociology. This vision was an integral part of a project of social reconstruction, a "third way" eschewing both liberalism and communism in favor of cooperation, redistribution, and federalism. Envisioning Sociology uncovers a previously hidden history of the social sciences, giving readers a fascinating glimpse into early twentieth-century social science and political economy, while demonstrating the contemporary relevance of the ideas of these underrated figures. Although Branford and Geddes failed to establish the grand sociology they envisioned, their ideas helped develop the theory and practice of community development, participatory democracy, bioregionalism, historic preservation, and neighborhood upgrading.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: The Differential Impacts of COVID-19: Five Lessons from New York’s Hospital CommunityNew York State healthcare providers learned much from the covid pandemic about identifying and addressing health disparities. Although many already were engaged in equity efforts there are five ways hospitals and states might consider further reducing disparities in the future. They include: 1) reduce financial disparities across hospitals, 2) use hospitals as "anchor institutions" to leverage the power of community to reduce disparities, 3) embed social determinants of health into health planning at hospitals, 4) maximizing technology as a tool for equity, and 5) consider how healthcare "consumerism" may widen or decrease health for patients.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: COVID-19 and the Causal Relationship Between the Social Determinants of Health and Health DisparitiesThe COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on public policy has the potential to provide new causal evidence on the relationship between the social determinants of health (SDOH) and health disparities in the US. Pre-pandemic data is suggestive that SDOH were the primary reason why Black and Hispanic New Yorkers were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 but rigorous causal inference statistical methods and high quality data are needed to fully understand the relationship. In this chapter I discuss the complex relationship between SDOH and health disparities and the role COVID-19 can play in understanding that causal relationship. I discuss several statistical and econometric methods and how they can be employed in COVID-19 related causal inference including panel data methods, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity designs. I also discuss the importance of leveraging new and existing sources of high quality data.
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Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-buildingBringing together perspectives from a variety of disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to the emerging discussion on Indigenous nationhood. The contributors argue for the centrality of nationhood and nation building in molding and, concurrently, blending the political, social, economic, and cultural strategies toward Native American self-definitions and self-determination. Included among the common themes is the significance of space—conceived both as traditional territory and colonial reservation—in the current construction of Native national identity. Whether related to historical memory and the narrativization of peoplehood, the temporality of indigenous claims to sovereignty, or the demarcation of successful financial assets as cultural and social emblems of indigenous space, territory constitutes an inalienable and necessary element connecting Native American peoplehood and nationhood. The creation and maintenance of Native American national identity have also overcome structural territorial impediments and may benefit from the inclusivity of citizenship rather than the exclusivity of ethnicity. In all cases, the political effectiveness of nationhood in promoting and sustaining sovereignty presupposes Native full participation in and control over economic development, the formation of historical narrative and memory, the definition of legality, and governance.
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Addressing Differential Impacts of Covid-19 in NYS: Narrowing the gap: Using telemental health during COVID-19 to address disparities for resettled refugeesAbstract: While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been varied and wide-reaching, certain groups have experienced an exacerbation of existing health and mental health disparities, particularly refugees, immigrants, and migrants. Additionally, refugees have specific and often urgent mental health needs related to their experiences in countries of origin and during the process of resettlement. Telemental health, which has been used for service provision in some refugee camps prior to the emergence of COVID-19, presents unique benefits and challenges for refugee-serving providers and clients. This chapter will explore existing empirical work while centering the experiential knowledge of a refugee-serving practitioner, with a focus on innovative policy and practice recommendations for culturally responsive service provision.
