Another MAPOR Winner This Year

Congratulations to Myiah Hively for her placement in the top two of the MAPOR Fellows Student paper competition this year. I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone that OSU has had at least one student -- but often two -- win a paper award at MAPOR conference for the past five consecutive years. To refresh your memory, here they are:

2007

Hively, M. H. (2007, November). Testing the Gamson hypothesis: The interaction between efficacy and cynicism in predicting participation and protest. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

2006

Myers, T., & Goodall, C. (2006, November). Fear appeals in political communication: An examination of public opinion about social security and global warming. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

2005

Hoffman, L. H. & Reineke, J. B. (2005, November). Coorientation in a public opinion context: Predicting accurate perceptions of community opinion. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

Reineke, J. B. (2005, November). Doing unto others as one does unto one's self: Exploring the association between support for public censorship and self-censorship.  Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

2004

Hoffman, L. H. (2004, November). Mobilizing information as a link to political participation: A content analysis of online and print newspapers. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

Huge, M. (2004, November). Measurable hesitation as a precursor to self-censorship: Replication and extension of the minority slowness effect. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

2003

Hoffman, L. H. & Huge, M. E. (2003, November). Media frames of protest groups: The effects of exposure on perceived legitimacy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

Fun with rivalries

There are many rivalries between universities, some based on sports, some on academics, and then some a little of both. The COPS group was pleased to be able to host a number of faculty and grad students from the University of Wisconsin last weekend. Everyone was treated to fun on High Street before and after the OSU-UW football game, and we particularly enjoyed OSU asserting its dominance on the field. As you can see in the photograph, Dhavan Shah of Wisconsin went away convinced that OSU is where it is all happening! In fact, he taught his class this week wearing this hat. More photos to come.

Hughes: Politics of the Sword

Politics of the Sword

Dueling, Honor, and Masculinity in Modern Italy

Steven C. Hughes

Following its creation as a country in 1861, Italy experienced a wave of dueling that led commentators to bemoan a national “duellomania” evidenced by the sad spectacle of a duel a day. Pamphlets with titles like “Down with the Duel” and “The Shame of the Duel” all communicated the passion of those who could not believe that a people supposedly just returned to the path of progress and civilization had wholeheartedly embraced such a “barbaric” custom. Yet these critics were consistently countered by sober-minded men of rank and influence who felt that the duel was necessary for the very health of the new nation.

Steven C. Hughes argues that this extraordinary increase in chivalric combat occurred because the duel played an important role in the formation, consolidation, and functioning of united Italy. The code of honor that lay at the heart of the dueling ethic offered a common model and bond of masculine identity for those patriotic elites who, having created a country of great variety and contrast for often contradictory motives, had to then deal with the consequences. Thus dueling became an iconic weapon of struggle during the Risorgimento, and, as Italy performed poorly on the stage of great power politics, it continued to offer images of martial valor and manly discipline. It also enhanced the social and political power of the new national elites, whose monopoly over chivalric honor helped reinforce the disenfranchisement of the masses. Eventually, the duel fed into the hypermasculinity and cult of violence that marked the early fascist movement, but in the end it would prove too individualistic in its definition of honor to stand up to the emerging totalitarian state. Although Mussolini would himself fight five duels at the start of his career, the duel would disappear along with the liberal regime that had embraced it.

http://www.ohiostatepress.org

Akoma: Folklore in New World Black Fiction

Folklore in New World Black Fiction

Writing and the Oral Traditional Aesthetics

Chiji Akọma

For a while, tracing African roots in the artistic creations of blacks in the New World tended to generate much attention as if to suggest that the New World does not have profound impact on their creative spirit. In addition, few studies have tried to construct an interpretive model through which an array of works by New World writers could be meaningfully explored on the basis of their African diasporic identity.

In Folklore in New World Black Fiction, Chiji Akọma offers an interpretive model for the reading of the African New World novel focusing on folklore, not as an ingredient, but as the basis for the narratives. The works examined do not contain folklore materials; they are folklore, constituted by the intersections of African oral narrative aesthetics, New World sensibility, and the written tradition. Specifically Akọma looks at four African Caribbean and African American novelists, Roy A.K. Heath, Wilson Harris, Toni Morrison, and Jean Toomer.

The book seeks to expand the understanding of the forms of folklore as it pertains to black texts. For one, it broadens the dimensions of folklore by looking beyond the oral world of the “simple folk” to the kinds of narrative sophistication associated with writing; it also asserts the importance of performance art in folklore analysis. The study demonstrates the durability of the black aesthetic over artistic forms.

http://www.ohiostatepress.org

Svenvold: Empire Burlesque

Empire Burlesque

Mark Svenvold

Empire Burlesque begins with a romp through the Journals of Lewis and Clark and ends with cameo appearances by Ambrose Bierce, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound (in drag), Andy Warhol, and even King Kong. Mark Svenvold was inspired to this approach, which he describes as that of a “clown lost in the Library of Babel,” by the letters of Jules Laforgue, who believed clowns had achieved true wisdom. With this collection the author shares Ezra Poundian–inflected poems that are funny, that are as serious as they come, and that realign the personal with the historical.

http://www.ohiostatepress.org