https://montclair.zoom.us/j/6060639182

Integration of new information takes biological energy as brain wave states reflectively increase and decrease within different phases of the learning process. This workshop will discuss the interplay of regulated states of the nervous system and its influence on one’s ability to effectively retain and integrate information into existing structures of the mind. Perceiving and presenting information is also subject to changes when the nervous system of the individual becomes dysregulated (anxious states, apathy, depressive, or aggressive). As educators and communicators within a science field, we must facilitate and practice active regulation of our nervous system and attempt to induce these psychological factors that affect emotion and motivation in learning (safety, perceived stress, general embodiment, and subjectivity).

Engaging in a mindfulness practice has a specific effect on the nervous system of practitioners and novices alike namely in brain wave potential states. Thus, a demonstration in mindfulness practice will also allow the audience to compare these regulated states with the natural waking states in terms of attentiveness, alertness, and aversiveness as analogous to the activation level of the sympathetic nervous system. Surveying and polling of the audience will garner conclusions on whether altering this psychological momentum in the learner is beneficial to interaction and learning. Furthermore, do mindful states increase the ability and capacity of individuals to learn or convey ideas? At what point do these differing nervous system states become helpful to the integration of knowledge and what role do they serve in a classroom setting?

John Cotton Dana is one of the most influential American figures in the democratization of education. He was among the first to envision culture and its accessibility as a means to fight social inequality and injustice. Born a New Englander, during his life he explored and pioneered many fields of knowledge. After various living experiences in the West, Dana finally settled down in New Jersey where he found his true calling and became the director of the Newark Public Library for almost thirty years and founded the Newark Museum.

This talk will illustrate the interdisciplinary project that I am conducting with my colleague Dr. Diego Baldi, a researcher at the Institute of Heritage Science at the Italian National Research Council, on the multifaceted figure of John Cotton Dana and his long lasting and multidimensional career.

Please contact Timothy Gorman f you would like to join the workshop session.

Friday, March 17,2023 10:00-11:00 am. Session held via zoom.

https://montclair.zoom.us/j/6188722538

The rapid pace of technological change challenges assumptions concerning the economic “long-run”. Consequentially, it disrupts the optimal psychological balance of emotion, reason, intuition and faith in our decision making. This is described in terms of the microeconomic conception of “runs”, decision frames defined by the scope of what is variable in the production process and endogenously determined. The four types are: immediate, short, long and very long. These relate to time horizons that have parallels in terms of mindsets and the production of experiences. We show how a decrease in time between tech advances causes a sublimation from the short-run to the very long run, thereby making long-run analysis obsolete. Further, based on a “certainty principle”, these changes are associated with increased uncertainty about the future, which are associated with increasing myopia. This can trigger a substitution out of reason into either emotion-based and/or intuition-based choice, as well as a greater demand on faith to maintain behavior. The implication is an exaggerated bifurcation in society between people driven by emotions to mediate the moment, and those reliant on vision and faith in technological progress to make their plans seem reasonable.

This project aims to trace a genealogy of queer performance and performativity in Pakistan 1947-present. Such an archival project utilizes a “queer optics”[1] to engage with the problematic of nation, gender, class and secularization as these heuristic analytic categories reveal and engage the contradictions at the heart of a postcolonial modernity, in which many types of border crossings and resistances are important to acknowledge and analyze. Recognizing with Partha Chatterjee (and others), that “democratic theory” in western nations seems confounded by having to “re-examine some of its most fundamental assumptions regarding the universality of rights and citizenship in the modern state” because of demands for social and political recognition by “minority groups” — which in Chatterjee’s view has led to a crisis in liberal democratic theory’s understanding of itself— I apply these questions to the postcolonial, and in principle, democratic, modern Pakistani nation-state. Here, the emergence of a minority rights discourse from its queer communities, represented primarily at this point in time by Khusras ( referred to since 2011 at their insistence by the less derogatory term Khwaja Saras), serves as an umbrella platform for discussion of other sexual minorities such as gays and lesbians as well, as these groups negotiate the paradox of political recognition and rights as citizens of Pakistan, whilst inhabiting the critical liminality of antinormative performativities.

[1] This neologism has been coined by Gayatri Gopinath in her recent book, Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2018).

Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/7905968690?pwd=ZE02TGJhbTNPWkEyTE1mdGdqbXdWUT09

In this presentation, I will examine the changing uses and meanings of water and related practices in different social settings in and around Delhi, India’s capital city. The reconfigured roles of a neoliberal state, citizen-consumers, and non-governmental organizations, and their complex and dynamic relationship have fostered a fragmented, even contradictory, water governance structure. Using case-studies, I will explore the key aspects of human-water relationships forged in the context of the political-economy of a developmental state and their implications for equity and access to water.

Date: February 23, 2022
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm

,��, MSU

Zoom Link: 

Abstract: Emotions impact judgment. However, we have limited understanding of how underlying emotional regulatory processes can be leveraged to improve effectiveness of corporate social responsibility messages. Informed by the emotion regulatory framework, this study shows that for psychologically proximal stimuli scope of attention impacts affective response such that more positive emotions are experienced when scope of attention is global (vs. local). However, this relationship does not hold for psychologically distant stimuli. In the case of psychologically distant stimuli, vividness of the message impacts perceived emotions. Additionally, the nature of evidence (statistics vs. anecdotal/identifiable victim stories) does not impact perceived emotions when controlled for vividness. Lastly, perceived emotions influence credibility of the message.

Arts-based research is an umbrella term for the use of the arts and aesthetic engagement in research design and dissemination. Its history stems from social science researchers in the 1980s, who viewed it as a natural extension of qualitative research methods. Since that time, critical theorists, social activists, social science researchers, and creative arts therapists and educators have increasingly found new ways to describe the role of art in, and as, research. This workshop will explore the potentials of aesthetic knowledge and creative worldviews within research, and arts-based research’s ability to offer evidence that is unique from objectivist and interpretivist research design. Examples of artist process and performance in arts-based research from the presenter’s work will be shared. Audience members will explore how arts-based research can help support and enhance their work across a variety of disciplines and research designs.

Please contact Tim Gorman���ǰ� Kate Temoney if you would like to join the workshop session.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021 3:30pm-4:30pm. Session held via zoom.

Vietnam has experienced massive waves of internal migration since the beginning of economic reforms in the 1990s. Much research on this migration, however, has focused on the country’s majority population of ethnic Vietnamese (or Kinh), while less attention has been paid to the other ethnic groups that make up a sizable minority of the country’s population. This paper focuses on ethnic minority migration from two regions: the mountainous northwest, home to minority groups such as the Hmong and Tay, and the Mekong River Delta in the south, which is home to a large Khmer population. Drawing on data from Vietnamese Population and Housing Census, we first look at geographic patterns of migration, identifying the major sending and receiving areas for ethnic minority migrants from both regions. Then, we look in more depth at the push and pull factors that contribute to migration at the individual level, focusing in particular on how education, gender, and occupational segregation shape migration patterns among ethnic minorities.

What we find is that, despite prevailing stereotypes within Vietnam that cast minority communities as isolated, traditional, and passive in the face of change, members of these groups — and especially younger people — are engaged in migration on a large and growing scale, most notably to Vietnam’s cities and industrial zones. This migration, however, does not simply reflect aspirations for economic improvement or educational opportunities, but reflects the acute pressures faced by ethnic minority communities in rural Vietnam, where traditional agrarian livelihoods are being undermined by both economic integration and environmental change.

Please contact Tim Gorman���ǰ� Kate Temoney if you would like to join the workshop session.

Wendesday, October 27, 2021 3:30pm-4:30pm. Session held via zoom.

Please contact Arnaud Kurze or Kate Temoney if you would like to join the workshop session.

Wednesday, May 26,2021 1:30-2:15 pm. Session held via zoom.

In this workshop, Dr. Tony Spanakos scrutinizes the notion of populism, presenting a heuristic approach to understanding the concept from a social science perspective. According to him, populism assumes that there is a misalignment of kratos (structure of governance) and demos (the legitimate decision-making body) in terms of justice. This is deliberate, systematic, and resolvable, at least partially, through electoral politics. As such, populism offers a mental map to understand the world and is an ideology. Hence, as an ideology, populism gives parameters to the vision of its followers, but it does not determine policies in advance. It is populist politics, rather than populism, which is of greater interest to most social scientists, and this takes various forms, all of which are rhetorically anti-status quo and contest the institutional order when the populist actor or movement is not in order. As a consequence, he argues, with their goals and actions populist actors demonstrate a range of positions vis-a-vis institutionality. While they often appear to be anti-status quo, they have different intentions for the present and future institutional order. Last, he posits that the question of ‘dismantling of democracy’ is often understood in terms of the current institutional order of democracy. Yet the challenges populist actors offer to that order are distinct based on their vision of institutionality and their ability to follow through on their goals. Similarly, populism as ‘restoring’ or ‘making good’ the promise of democracy may be similarly evaluated.

Please contact Arnaud Kurze or Kate Temoney if you would like to join the workshop session.

Wednesday, April 21,2021 1:30-2:15 pm. Session held via zoom.