Writing@SVSU 2021-2022

SAGINAW VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY

Saginaw

©Writing@SVSU

7400 Bay Road

University Center, MI 48710

CREDITS

Writing@SVSU is funded by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts & Behavioral Sciences.

Editorial Staff Kimberly Lacey Associate Professor of English and Writing Program Administrator

Christopher Giroux Professor of English

Layout and Design Tim Inman Director of Marketing Support Office of University Communications

Printing SVSU Graphics Center

Welcome to the 2021

2022 issue of Writing@SVSU!

2022academicyearmarkedareturntosomedegreesofnormalcybothinsideandoutside of the classroom. For example, with the support of Dean Marc Peretz, we are able, once more, to return to a print version of this journal. Additionally, although we remained masked, a majority of students and faculty were able to return to traditional face-to-face classes.

The2021

The move to face-to-face masked instruction, though, reminded us that we really hadn’t returned tothepast.Althoughwewere physicallyinthesame spaceas our students,thingsweren’t the same. Students were still regularly quarantining and following new protocols. The smell of hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes was our constant companion. We encouraged students to spread out, we remained hesitant to move them into small groups and we rethought even how we distributed materials. And masks? We muddled through. We kept seeing students through fogged- up lenses and quickly realized that while our masks worked and created a barrier between ourselves and the virus, we could no longer read facial expressions to see where students had questions about the day’s topic, where they felt disconnected, or, at the most basic level, when they (or we) were smiling or frowning in puzzlement. We were together, but disconnected.

This disconnect between expectation and reality mirrors what many of our students (and ourselves) encounter when writing. Faced with a new genre, a new topic, a different audience, we may feel like we are starting over again. Even when audience and purpose are familiar to us, writing can remain a challenge. However, we persevere and return to what we know about writing. We brainstorm, we draft and revise, and then we redraft and revise, and proof and edit and sometimes we start all over again. But we start, we try, and in doing so we move forward. In this way, the essays on the following pages remind of us not only the power of the written word, but the power of the writing process. Through writing, we learn and grow and we remind ourselves that writing always matters when it allows us connect to new ideas and to others.

We hope that the pieces on the following pages whether focusing on the achievements of some our outstanding seniors and faculty; on topics as diverse as running shoes and vulnerable populations; on issues of Black linguistic identity and Black literary traditions; on theories of creative writing as well as poems and stories about lands near and far also provide you with an opportunity to connect to ideas new and old, and to just a few of the many talented writers linked to our campus and the SVSU community.

And, on a side note, we congratulate our colleague, Tim Inman, on his retirement and thank him for his many years of work on Writing@SVSU.

Dr. Kim Lacey

Dr. Chris Giroux Associate Professor of English Professor of English Writing Program Administrator

from African American Literature in Transition, 1865–1880: Black Reconstructions,” by Eric Gardner .....................................................................86

“An Excerpt from ‘Empathy in Isolation: Lived Experiences of Teachers of Refugee Children,” by Adam Scott LeRoy .......................................................................90

“An Excerpt from ‘Perceptions of the Public Library Social Worker: Challenges and Opportunities,’” by Mark A. Giesler ...................................................................93

“An Excerpt from “Gesturing with Smart Wearables: An Alternate Way to User Authentication,” by Khandaker Abir Rahman, Avishek Mukherjee, and Kristina Mullen .............................................................................................96 Spotlight on… Visiting Authors

“An Excerpt from The Mason House,” by T. Marie Bertineau .....................................100

“Love Poem,” by Justin Brouckeart ...............................................................................102 “An Excerpt from Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Black Identity, and Pedagogy,” by April Baker-Bell

Spotlight on… The University Writing Awards

The Ruth and Ted Braun Awards are presented in the categories of General Education, Graduate Programs, and in each of the five colleges to promote excellent writing across the curriculum. This year two prizes were available in the College of Health and Human Services: one for students in Health Sciences, Kinesiology, or Occupational Therapy courses, and one for students in Nursing or Social Work courses. Two prizes were similarly available in the College of Arts and Behavioral Sciences: one for students in Art, History, Modern Foreign Languages, Music, Philosophy, Rhetoric and Professional Writing, or Theatre courses, and one for students in Communication, Criminal Justice, Geography, Political Science, Psychology, or Sociology classes. Volunteers from all five colleges judged this year’s entries. The group was organized by Kim Lacey, associate professor of English

The Braun Awards were established by Ruth and Ted Braun. Longtime supporters of SVSU, they created these awards with the belief that no student can be successful in his or her academic career without writing competence and that no SVSU graduate should enter the workplace without such proficiency.

The Brauns’ support of SVSU extends far beyond these writing awards Both have served on the SVSU Board of Control and the SVSU Foundation Board of Directors. The Board of Control’s chairperson from 1995–1997, Ruth Braun has been active in community service: she has served on the State Board of Education and the Saginaw School District Board of Education, as the president of the Junior League of Saginaw, and as the chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Saginaw General Hospital. Hugo (“Ted”) Braun was a partner in the Saginaw law firm Braun Kendrick Finkbeiner PLC. A recipient of an honorary Doctor of Laws from SVSU, he was a longtime supporter of the school; among his other volunteer work for the university, he served on the Foundation Board’s Finance & Investment Committee. Like his wife, he was much involved in other community organizations; he was president of the Harvey Randall Wickes Foundation, and United Way of Saginaw County honored him with its Outstanding Volunteer Award.

The writings of past Braun Award winners are available online at www.svsu.edu/ writingprogram/writingawards/braunawards/.

The Diane Boehm Writing Awards for e-Portfolios were first awarded in 2015. Established by Diane Boehm, founder and former director of the SVSU Writing Center and the SVSU University Writing Program, the awards recognize the creative and effective integration of writing and multimedia by SVSU students via the medium of e-Portfolios. Entries are judged according to a portfolio’s ability to do the following: present a student’s capabilities in an engaging, professional, and comprehensive manner; include artifacts and documents that demonstrate deep learning appropriate to the student’s class or chosen major; include perceptive self-reflection; demonstrate creative use of multimedia; and be easy to navigate and aesthetically effective based on the capabilities of the software or program. Coordinated by the University Writing Committee, the Boehm Awards are given for portfolios made for the classroom or for a workplace application.

The Tyner Prizes are awarded to students in English courses to recognize writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The Tyner Prizes are named after Raymond Tyner, a former member of the English Department. Professor Tyner came to SVSU in 1968 and was long affiliated with The

Green River Review. Faculty in the English Department nominate student work for these prizes. Tamara Migan, lecturer of English, chaired the selection committee in 2022, and prizes were awarded in the categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction Matthew Chappel won for his creative nonfiction Rewilding (A Process of Healing) and for his poetry collection In the Heart of the Thumb. Megan Draper won for fiction for her piece called “A Hundred Dozen.”

The Seitz Creative Writing Scholarship was created by Jim and Melissa Seitz to acknowledge excellence in the writing of poetry and/or fiction. The scholarship, worth $1,000, is awarded annually. A graduate of SVSU, Melissa Seitz is a retired member of the English Department much respected by her students and colleagues. During her time at SVSU, Melissa served as both student editor and faculty advisor of Cardinal Sins. The 2021–2022 Seitz Scholarship was coordinated by Tim Kenyon, a lecturer in the English Department. This year, Megan Draper won for a collection of fiction.

The First-Year Writing Awards recognize outstanding writing in the beginning composition courses taught at SVSU. The First-Year Writing Program at SVSU strives to ensure incoming freshmen have a solid introduction to writing at a collegiate level. This program includes two comprehensive writingcourses: WritingSkills (English080) and Composition I (English 111). The First-Year Writing Committee was chaired in 2021–2022 by Sherrin Frances, professor of English, and the following students were recognized with awards:

• English 080: Emily Lavoie for the essay “Happiness”

• English 111, Research: Robert P. Powers for “Vaccine Mandates: Constructional or Unconstitutional”

• English 111, Analysis: Miranda Smithfor “The Past, Present, and Future of Political Cartoons”

• English 111, Narrative: Stephanie Strong for “Conceptions about Writing”

• English 111, Multimodal: Madolyn Glocksine for “An Analysis of ‘The Empire’”

• English 111, Wolff-Harmon Award: Krzysztof Hejno for “Cooking Recipes Analysis”

The Ming ChuanMultilingual Writing Awards wereawarded for the first time in 2018 and were established by Dr. Robert S. P. Yien. A longtime supporter of SVSU, Dr. Yien joined SVSU in 1970 and was a recipient of the Franc A. Landee Teaching Excellence Award, he served as the vice president for Academic Affairs, and he has been instrumental in the success of Ming Chuan Universityat SVSU. Theseawards recognizewriting excellence byinternational studentsat SVSU. One award is for students in the English Language Program; the other award is for students who have moved into courses that are required as part of their degree. These awards are coordinated by the University Writing Committee.

An Analysis of “Bashert”

Madison Swiger

Braun Award for Excellence in Writing in General Education

Nominated

by Bethany Eicher, Instructor of English

Madison Swiger, of northern Michigan, is a first year at Saginaw Valley State University studying psychology and youth services. An active member in Program Board and Female Empowerment and Multicultural Education (F.E.M.E), and a health simulation actor for the Nursing Program, Madison continuously strives to connect with the diverse campus life and events surrounding social change. After graduating, Madison hopes to pursue a master’s in counseling.

This piece was written for Studies in World Literature (English 205) as the midterm. By analyzing this particular poem, Madison was able to use both an empathetic and logical approach in regard to bringing light to a significant event.

Writing from anecdotal experience, poet Irene Klepfisz shares the heartbreaking reality many braved during and after the Holocaust in her poem, “Bashert,” a Yiddish word meaning “inevitable” (Forché 391). Combining her own experiences and a dedication to her audience, “Bashert” appeals to one’s emotions. By using powerful imagery, repetition, and an authentic tone, Klepfisz personally connects with her audience, conveying her inevitable struggle with uniting the two continents of her life and voicing the harsh experiences for those who cannot speak and those who should be made aware.

The first two sections of “Bashert” are dedicated to specific audience members: those who died and those who survived. By reading these passages along with the background information in the poem, one can infer that the individuals to whom each section is dedicated are those who enduredtheHolocaust.Thesimplerepetitionofthe dedicationand “because”alludes totheconcept that the cause of death differed between individuals: “These words are dedicated to those who died […] because they felt they did not belong and wanted to die […] because a card was lost and a number was skipped […] because death is the final rest” (Klepfisz 391–92). Some experienced dehumanizing treatment and rejection whereas others merely accepted their inevitable death and whatever followed (392). The repetition is used with great emphasis, reminding the reader of the harshness of the Holocaust.

Thisis similar to the dedication to those who survived: “These words are dedicated to those who survived because they were lucky/ [ ] because they expected the worst and were always prepared/ [ ] because life is a gift and they were free to accept it” (Klepfisz 392–93). Again, the repetition emphasizes the individuality of the Holocaust. It is also evident that Klepfisz’s tone is honest and raw, acknowledging a variety of perspectives. The different reasons for “because” in both passages are delivered without animosity or opinion, simply creating a genuine dedication for all who suffered. Both passages also end with a reiteration of the dedication as if to say, “let us not forget these reasons and the individuals behind them ” This act of honor transitions wonderfully into Klepfisz’s life as she shares her timeline from Warsaw to turning thirty in America.

The next section, labeled “Poland, 1944: My Mother Is Walking Down a Road,” mainly focuses on Klepfisz’s mother, a terrified woman who wants what is best for her daughter. Klepfisz describes being left with an old peasant woman who was kind enough to play the role of her grandmother (393). Both Klepfisz and her mother are gravely ill, with a family friend calculating

that Klepfisz “will not liveout the week ” Withtheir worries and thoughts elsewhere, both Klepfisz and her mother are unfazed by their conditions.

Throughout this section, there are several instances of repetition both involving the mother and Klepfisz: “My mother is walking down a road. Somewhere in Poland [ ] Another woman joins her” (Klepfisz 393–94). “I am over three years old, corn silk blond and blue eyed like any Polish child [ ] I have no consciousness of our danger, our separateness from the others” (394). The repetition of both individuals with a reference to the other shows a contrast in emotion and overall knowledge. The mother is fearful and in search of a permit in the midst of WWII (393). She is simply looking for tangible acceptance as a Jew as are other women whose husbands are either dead or off fighting whereas Klepfisz is an innocent toddler, unaware of the fear her mother holds, solely trusting the old peasant woman to care for her during her mother’s absence. Accompanying these recurrences is strong imagery of the road which the mother is traveling on and the physical state of the collective of women.

KlepfiszcontinuesbytalkingaboutattendingcollegeinChicago.Sherecallsherdedication to studying, often walking home at midnight absentmindedly. Imagery of an empty campus adds to her wistful tone: “The university seems an island ungrounded [ ] On some, all evidence of previous life removed except for occasional fringes of rubble that reveal vague outlines that hint at things that were” (Klepfisz 396). One can make the connection between the empty campus and Klepfisz’s life in Warsaw. After the Holocaust, there were only sparse markings of evidence of what once was.

Klepfisz also usually thought back about individuals who survived the Holocaust but fell victim to the overall trauma and pain: “I am totally preoccupied with another time, another place. Night after night, protected by the darkness, I think only of Elza who is dead” (396). Klepfisz recalls Elza’s rather fortunate life after reaching America. Yet, it wasn’t enough as Elza found no escape from her past. This particular tragedy shifts Klepfisz’s tone, creating a sense of questioning and frustration: “Everything that happened to us afterwards, to all of us, does none of it matter […] These questions haunt me. Yet I persist with a will I myself do not understand” (397–98). This claim emphasizes the blindness many voluntarily resorted to after the Holocaust. This reality invalidated survivors, isolating their experiences as survivors and explaining the increased frustration and why so many took their lives.

The last two sections of “Bashert” show Klepfisz struggling with uniting her two lives: her life in Warsaw and her life in America. She recalls turning thirty, marking a significant milestone as her father passed at that age. It is apparent that Klepfisz has an epiphany approaching her birthday. She gathers a desire to become a connection between the two lives: “I am almost equidistant from the twocontinents. I look back towards one,thenforwardtowardsthe other. There is a need in me to become transparent like water, to become the salt water which is their only connection” (400). The motive to become transparent reflects Klepfisz’s authentic tone as she affirms the reality of her life: the good and bad.

It is also evident that Klepfisz strove to share the stories of survivors and her own accounts, saying “Yes. It’s true. All true. I am scrupulously accurate […] Like these, my despised ancestors / I have become a keeper of accounts/ […] I am a keeper of accounts” (401–03). One can assume that Klepfisz is scolding her ancestors, those who claim to know of the hardships but do not, yet she has arealization of herown, changingher statement from “I have become akeeper of accounts” to “I am a keeper of accounts” (403). The repetition shows Klepfisz’s growth as an individual, ultimately helping her bridge the gap between countries as was inevitable all along.

The poem as a whole reflects greatly onto its title. “Bashert” alludes to the different paths Holocaust survivors faced, leading to many inevitable outcomes. Some, like Klepfisz, inevitably shared the stories of their past while others inevitably passed on, as it was too much to carry. The numerous examples of “inevitable” show the individuality of the Holocaust, connecting to the vast usage of repetition and honesty all throughout the poem. “Bashert” closes by creating a full-circle

moment, repeating the title, composing a coincidental occurrence as if it were inevitable the poem would conclude that way.

Irene Klepfisz’s poem “Bashert” shares her beautiful journey as a Holocaust survivor, creating a new life in America while also honoring her experiences and lost companions from Warsaw, Poland. The consistent use of repetition, symbolic imagery, and an honest tone helps the reader better understand the background information and overall message of the poem. The construction of the poem also shows Klepfisz’s overall life, processing her past and present and therebyunitingthem.EachsectionaddsemphasistokeypointsinKlepfisz’slife,creatingajourney for the reader. Although Klepfisz’s story cannot speak for all impacted by the Holocaust, its dedication to those lost, dedication to those surviving, and dedication to authenticity keep the heartbreaking massacre of the past alive in modern literature, ultimately uniting the two continents, fulfilling Klepfisz’s mission.

Works Cited

Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Klepfisz, Irene. “Bashert.” Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché, W.W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 391

403.

Analysis of Eamon Duffy’s

Fires of Faith

Garrett Lewis

Braun Award for Excellence in Writing in the Arts and Behavioral Sciences, Category 1

Nominated by Paul Teed, Professor of History

Garrett Lewis is a fourth-year student from Marquette, Michigan, studying history with minors in public history and English. He is currently the president of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society at SVSU, while also serving as a tutor attheWriting Center. Garrett is alsothe campus eventsdirectorin SVSU’s Student Association. This piece represents one of the key interests that will guide him as he seeks to attain a Ph.D. in history.

For this paper, which was written for his Age of Restoration 1515–1575 (HIST 364) class, he and his peers were instructed to analyze the ways in which Dr. Eamon Duffy challenged the traditional narratives concerning the reign of England’s Queen Mary Tudor. Having been raised Roman Catholic, Garrett notes this piece allowed for some valuable introspection on the history of Catholicism throughout the world.

Eamon Duffy,in hisanalysis of the English Reformation, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, systematically breaks down the accepted characterization of the Marian regime as backward, detached, and ineffective in its attempted restoration of Catholicism in England. This text serves to offer the opposite characterization, claiming that the Marian regime under the leadership of individuals like Cardinal Reginald Pole was promoting an early counter-reformation version of Catholicism that was effective and literate in the social perception of the cause. In essence, Duffy argues that the accepted history of the reign of Mary Tudor is largely a devotional history from a purely Protestant perspective (2). Although he does touch on the immorality of the campaign of Protestant execution via burning, Duffy applies equal weight to reminding the reader to be wary of applying post-Enlightenment morality to a late medieval issue. He argues that the accepted history misleads individuals to believe that the Marian restoration of Catholicism was entirely rejected by the English populace when most evidence refutes this absolute belief (7–8). On the fronts of the effective use of print, propaganda, preaching, and persuasion, Duffy constructs his effective opposition to the historically held notion regarding Mary Tudor’s England.

The argument that Queen Mary attempted to reinstate a backward and antiquated form of Roman Catholicism is heavily contested by the author. Early in the text, Duffy concludes that Marian English Catholicism not only embodied the counter-reformation, but it was a ground for experimentation of the likes that the rest of Europe had not seen. He cites the fact that Cardinal Pole and his confidants made sure that every successful act, and on the other hand Protestant propagandists made sure that every unsuccessful act, was brought to the forefront of European attention. Furthermore, Duffy argues that the notion that the English regime ignored counterreformationidealsispreposterous,assertingthatCardinal PolehadbeenheavilyactiveintheItalian formation of a concise plan of counter-reformation (Duffy 8–10). He further states, “It was the vision of the Church matured in that Italian arena that he brought to bear on the reform and renewal of Catholicism in Marian England” (9). Another factor of counter-reformation Europe was a rejuvenation of the Catholic episcopate, namely the increase of a learned clergy of bishops. This

tenet of the rest of Europe’s response to Protestantism was enacted within four years in Cardinal Pole’s England, whereas this process took close to two generations in Spain and was not largely tackled for at least a century in France. Furthermore, to expand upon the education of bishops, Cardinal Pole and his Legatine Synod established institutions of higher learning for parish priests as well, an action that was enacted far quicker than the rest of counter-reformation Europe (25) Needless to say, Duffy cites the presence of counter-reformation idealism in the Marian restoration of Catholicism, even if Cardinal Pole was the biggest champion of these causes.

Much like Henry VIII had Thomas Cromwell to whisper ideas into his ear leading to the English schism from Rome, Queen Mary Tudor had Cardinal Pole on her right side. Duffy applies much of his perceived success of the English restoration of Catholicism to the presence of Cardinal Pole. Without the Cardinal, emphasis on preaching, propaganda, print, and persuasion would not have existed, or at least would not have been as effective. As stated above, Cardinal Pole ushered in counter-reformation ideology that had not been present in England before his arrival. He focused heavily on using persuasion in multiple forms to attack Protestants and their beliefs. This focus on persuasion originated before Queen Mary had ascended the throne with his blistering response to the executions of Thomas More and John Fisher, Pro Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione. Duffy reminds us this document, commonly known as De Unitate, was an open letter directed towards Henry VIII, analyzing his reasoning for schism and starkly defending the primacy of the papacy and the superiority of Roman Catholicism (34–35). From here, Cardinal Pole began to understand the importance of print in the field of persuasion Cardinal Pole was an early champion for the importance of preaching. In contrast to his Protestant predecessor, Thomas Cranmer, and even his successor, Matthew Parker, Cardinal Pole took his personal obligation as a preacher very seriously. There is even further evidence, says Duffy, in the forms of recorded sermons that Cardinal Pole advocated for preaching in the vernacular (51, 54). Leading by example, Cardinal Pole ensured that all clergy around the nation were actively preaching to their congregations. Duffy characterizes Cardinal Pole’s role in one sentence: “From the moment of his arrival in England, indeed even before his arrival, Pole, though by no means the only activator, was the single most influential figure in the Marian restoration: put briefly, he was in charge” (33).

Following Cardinal Pole’s leadership on persuasion, the Marian regime emphasized the importance of print in restoring the Catholic faith to England. Duffy refutes the commonly held notion that the Marian regime ignored the importance of print in their mission by pointing out the misleading characterizations of publications under Mary’s reign. First, Duffy points out that Mary was incredibly aware of the danger in allowing Protestant publications to permeate her realm. She combatted this danger by forcing Protestant publishers and printers out of business and then by handing their presses or businesses over to trustworthy Catholics to spread Catholic literature throughout the realm (58). Furthermore, Duffy points out how many of the accepted numerical counts of publications during the reign are largely misleading. He claims that the accepted bibliography of religious polemic in Marian England between the years 1553 and 1558 by Edward Bakersvilleis an inconsistent work, disregarding Catholicliturgical texts and devotional works, but counting their Protestant counterparts. It is noted that the most widely produced texts during the reign of Mary Tudor were the necessary Latin books for Catholic worship. Duffy also points out that a mere count of books is even further misleading as Bakersville regarded each title as a single book no matter how many editions were printed or how wide the readership was. The other factor to consider in terms of print, according to Duffy, is that Protestants had no other medium by which to argue their beliefs (59–60). Due to their persecution by the regime, sneaking texts into the country was their only way of reaching their devoted congregations; Catholics did not need to rely as heavily on this medium. Duffy also cites that the Catholic literature of the era was largely uniform compared to their reactionary Protestant counterparts. He points out that many of the Catholic texts followed central themes, one of the major themes being the destructive nature of Protestantism and its inconsistency in terms of English society (71). Ultimately, Duffy characterizes Marian Catholic literature as a systematic project, claiming, “it worked as a form of

carpet bombing, driving its message home in many forms, but achieving a remarkable consistency across genre and occasion” (75). This goes to show that the Marian Catholic regime understood the importance of the effective use of print in combatting religious dissidence. Although it was amoral sticking point, Duffyarguesthat the Marianutilization of religious persecution was not the ineffective campaign that it has been claimed to be in widely accepted accounts of theera. Rather,Duffy argues that if one removes the moral barrier that exists inmodern times to religious persecution, it is hard to deny that the Marian Regime effectively used the burnings as a place to preach or propagandize (79, 81). Furthermore, Duffy spends a remarkable amount of time recounting the regime’s careful analysis of its own struggle with the morality of persecuting dissident subjects. He points out that, although Cardinal Pole was unafraid to carry the sword of God, he heavily emphasized that it was much more beneficial to persuade Protestants to denounce their faith than to burn them at the stake (94). Beyond this, Duffy rejects this purely devotional historic account that these occasions were a Catholic government burning individuals of a predominantly Protestant populace. Duffy cites that by the end of the campaign, the remaining victims of the regime’s burnings were only the most devoted Protestants, thus rendering the government’s goal essentially achieved (83). Both Cardinal Pole and the Queen understood the importance of using public executions as a means for propaganda, which resulted in the placement of a pulpit at every burning (95). This not only served the regime as a way to publicly justify their burning of heretics, but it was also a way for Catholic preachers to preach to a large portion of the public.

Duffy further argues that the accepted notion that the burnings were a deterrent for the mass populace to return to Catholicism is false. He cites that simple large crowds or the presence of Protestants in the crowds do not correlate with discontent or outward aversion to the burnings. He states that public executions were, quite honestly, a spectator sport for the English population during this era. Furthermore, on the topic of the crowds being so-called “Protestant crowds,” he claims,“crowdswithprotestantsinthemarenotnecessarilyprotestant crowds”(83).Thisisadirect blow to the widely accepted account from the Protestant polemic John Foxe, whom he claims overemphasizes the so-called “Protestant” public aversions to the burnings. Duffy points out that the presence of somewhat angered Protestant crowds may have easily been due to the fact that the regime understood that to reach the most hearts, the burnings had to take place in regions where Protestants had gained a foothold, like County Colchester. In the same vein of using the burnings as a tool for propaganda, the Marian regime understood the burnings were theatre to these common English folks, therefore providing them with the opportunity to not only entertain but justify and show their commitment to providing mercy to everyone who sought it. Thus, while every Englishman of the Marian era may not have been totally in favor of burning neighbors for heresy, it was not as if they were blind to the fact that these executions were the last resort. Even then, thosewhowereopposedtotheburningsandchosetovoicetheirconcernspubliclyat theexecutions learnedrather quicklythat thisput themselves indirect danger astheregimesystematicallyarrested those who publicly spoke against the burnings as they were sympathizing with heretics (84) Ultimately, what Foxe and later scholars cite as Protestant aversion to burnings on a wide scale in the public can just as easily be described as simple humanity from people watching their neighbors be executed. At the end of the day, Protestantism was still the minority, even in the most fervent communities.

Many can point out that the Marian restoration may not have been effective because there was not much opposition to the Elizabethan restoration of the Anglican faith; however, this is the same rabbit hole into which Duffy dives. The Catholic resistance to Elizabethan restoration exists in the same vein that Protestant resistance to the Marian regime did. The common scholarship that has been provided for the era is heavily skewed Protestant; therefore, it will not give light to the fact that under Queen Elizabeth, over two hundred Catholics were executed (Duffy 82) As Duffy states, “Marian Catholicism inspired the generation of ardent activists who would provide Elizabethan Catholicism with its core convictions, its best writers, its most characteristic

institutions and its martyrs” (207). Furthermore, effectiveness can be further measured by the faith of the surviving Marian bishops. All fourteen of these men refused to take the Oath of Supremacy following Elizabeth’s reinstation of the Church of England (195). If there was no effect on the Marian restoration, Catholicism would have died with the Queen, but it did not. If the public entirely rejected the restoration, there would have been no reason to execute Catholics, because they ultimately would not exist on a scale that would require execution.

That Duffy opposes the devotional history that exists against the effectiveness of the Marian restoration can be proven by the fact that English Catholicism did not die with the Queen of the Cardinal. Although equally suppressed by the subsequent Elizabethan regime, English Catholicism survived into the modern day, and as Duffy posits, it offered Europe a blueprint to revamp their existing religion. Duffy argues that the accepted history of Queen Mary’s reign is truly an anti-Marian account that refuses any semblance of success that the regime achieved. He refutes this account systematically by proving that persuasion, propaganda, print, and preaching played a central role in the success of the restoration of Catholicism in England.

Works Cited

Duffy, Eamon. Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. Yale UP, 2009.

Personal Therapy and the Therapist

Brianna H. Vanderstelt

Braun Award for Writing Excellence

in the College of Arts and Behavioral Sciences, Category 2

Nominated by Travis Pashak, Associate Professor of Psychology

Brianna H. Vanderstelt, of Middleville, Michigan, graduated summa cum laude in May 2022, receiving a bachelor of arts degree with majors in psychology and criminal justice. While at SVSU, she was heavily involved with the Psychology Department, participating in faculty-led undergraduate research with Dr. Travis Pashak. She ultimately took the lead on one project and co-authored three others; these projects have been presented at the Psychology Department’s poster sessions, SVSU’s Undergraduate Research Program’s student showcase, the 2021 Association of Psychological Science (APS) virtual convention, and the 2022 APS convention in Chicago, Illinois. Brianna was also committed to her e-board positions with Psi-Chi and PRIME, two of SVSU’s registered student organization that are psychology related.

Outside of psychology, Brianna also found meaning in her work at SVSU’s Diane Boehm Writing Center. There, she dedicated two years to assisting undergraduate, graduate, and international students. She also committed a portion of her time to serving community members, offering consultations and creative writing workshops to residents in nearby Saginaw and Bay City. Additionally, Brianna was one of 12 students in SVSU’s 23rd class of Roberts Fellows, a leadership enrichment program. Other notable work in which Brianna participated during her time at SVSU includes volunteering as an orientation leader for international students and participating in programming for these students.

“Personal Therapy and the Therapist” was intended to be call a call for the psychology field to consider the reasons for requiring personal therapy before licensure as a therapist. This argument stems from the fact that 40 hours of therapy arerequired beforeobtaining alicense inthe United Kingdom,but there is no such requirement in the United States. (It is disturbing, Brianna notes, that research hints that some therapists are uncertain of the benefits of therapy, even though this is the very service they are offering.) This essay was written as a final project for Clinical Interviewing (PSYC 373) taught by Dr. Pashak in Fall 2021. What set this essay apart from others Brianna has written is that she was able to pursue her research without the limitations of strict assignment guidelines. As such, she says, she was able to find meaning and value in the topic herself.

Abstract

An old, but relevant and lingering debate concerns the use and effectiveness of personal therapy. Although some, especially psychodynamic-oriented therapists, adamantly argue that personal therapy should be, and is, a crucial part of a therapist’s development, others question its

effectiveness, whether it truly affects client outcomes, and its impact on the therapeutic alliance. It should be noted that clients are required to be genuinely vulnerable and raw they are in a unique position that is emotionally strenuous and brings up feelings that may not be experienced by a therapist in a session. By undergoing personal therapy, a therapist gets a sense of what it means to be a client and may discover a newfound appreciation for the role of the client in the therapeutic relationship. On the other hand, if there is no empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of required therapy for therapists in training, then perhaps it is a fruitless and expensive endeavor and the supposed benefits have simply to do with extraneous factors. Further exploring this debate is worthwhile and meaningful and can raise questions about therapists’ own thoughts on the services they are providing to clients. This discussion will aim to summarize research concerning personal therapy in relation to therapists.

Introduction

Psychotherapy can be described as a healing relationship that depends on effective and reflexivecommunicationtomaximizethementalwellness ofaclient(Pashak,2020).It isamedium through which individuals can find assistance in managing mental illnesses, emotional difficulties, and major life stressors. Budding students going into this field tend to focus heavily on the experience as atherapist and theirperformanceinthetherapist “seat.” Although thereis nodenying the significance of being an efficacious and functional therapist, a striking case is to be made about the pivotal role of the client. In fact, to become a licensed therapist in the United Kingdom, prospective therapists are required to undergo at least 40 hours of their own therapy, as set by the British Association for Counseling (Macran et al., 1999). However, there is no such requirement in the United States, which has led to some strenuous debate over the practice’s potential necessity as a training tool. To further explore this issue, this paper will delve into research concerning the debate about personal therapy for therapists.

Background

Macran et al. (1999) discussed how practitioners, especially psychodynamic-oriented therapists, view personal therapy to be a necessary training requirement. Personal therapy is described simply as a form of psychotherapy for therapists themselves. The types of issues through which they work during personal therapy are up to the discretion of the individuals attending therapy. These issues may involve working through difficulties they have experienced with their own clients or may involve personal life issues. Macran et al. claimed that personal therapy can improve therapists’ emotional and mental stability, as well as improve therapists’ self-awareness Therapy for therapists, in other words, enables practitioners to better grasp and understand their emotions, values, and beliefs, so these aspects of the self do not interfere with the helping relationship Additionally, Macran et al. suggested that therapists undergoing therapy as clients makes them more empathetic and aware. They realize what it’s like to be the client.

The problem with much of the literature on personal therapy concerns the idea of replication. Researchers Bike et al. (2009) attempted to fill this gap by revisiting a national survey conducted in 1987 as described by Norcross et al. (1988) This survey was originally sent out to American psychologists, counselors, and social workers, inquiring about their personal therapy process and outcomes. In 2007, Bike et al. then sent out a survey addressing the same ideas, with minor tweaks from the original study. Overall, it was found that there was a 10% to 15% increase in the prevalence of personal therapy usage, meaning up to 75% of respondents utilized personal therapy in 2007 in comparison to 60% to 65% of respondents in 1987 Moreover, the researchers found that psychotherapists in 1987 were likely to participate in only two to three treatment episodes, as opposed to several treatment episodes throughout their career and lifetime (treatment episodes being defined as periods of engagement with therapy that have clear beginning and end

times) The reasons for seeking therapy seem to have remained mostly stable between the 1987 group and the 2007 group, centering on marital/couple concerns, depression, and anxiety. Bike et al.’s study also found that males were more likely to seek personal therapy for training and career development, while women were more likely to seek personal therapy for family conflicts. Most importantly, individuals from both groups who had undergone personal therapy responded positively to their experience, citing a larger appreciation for the interpersonal connection they share with their clients and for the vulnerability associated with being a client. What this study shows is that personal therapy seems to be having a significant and stable effect on therapists over time despite the differences between generations. Understanding this topic more fully, however, requires looking at more research conducted by others

Literature Review

Research done by Peebles (1980) emphasizes the feelings of interpersonal connection and the vulnerability that comes with being in the client seat Peebles hypothesized that the number of hours spent in personal therapy would positively correlate with a therapist’s ability to be empathetic, warm, and genuine. A total of 17 therapists were examined; they submitted recorded tapes of their sessions and responded to questionnaires about their personal therapy experiences The recorded tapes from the study were analyzed by mental health professionals using the Truax and Carkhuff scales. These scales are intended to investigate empathy, warmth, and genuineness, and it was found that the number of hours in personal therapy was significantly correlated with empathy and genuineness in the positive direction. There was also a positive relationship between warmth and time spent in personal therapy, though it was not statistically significant. This study is important because it is oneof thefew exploring this topic that has some empirical,quantitative data attachedtoit,asmanyotherstudiesrelyjustonqualitativeandnarrativedata. Peeblesdemonstrated that substantial personal therapy can be a positive force in therapists’ ability to build healthy therapeutic alliances with clients.

Another national survey, conducted by Guy et al. (1998), aimed to explore the efficacy of personal therapy before and after entering professional practice. A two-page psychotherapist information survey was sent out, ultimately yielding a final sample of 318. The survey found that before receiving a degree, 63.3% of respondents had received some form of personal therapy. After receiving a degree, this percentage slightly dropped to 57.4%. Most importantly, 73 respondents (22.9%) received no form of personal therapy at all during their career. (This fact is intriguing considering previous research asserting that personal therapy is useful for raising one’s selfawareness and for resolving or, at the very least, exploring personal conflicts and feelings.) Moreover, the survey also found an underuse of non-individual therapy types (such as family, couples, or group therapy). This brings into question whether the responding therapists had some sort of hesitancy about or refusal to see the potential benefits of the very services they provide to others. All in all, this study gave rise to some tough questions about therapists’ own thoughts and beliefs about therapy and whether therapists can benefit from personal therapy before, while, and after receiving their degree and license.

As for Macran et al ’s work (1999) mentioned earlier, researchers conducted a study in which seven practicing therapists underwent two or three 1-hour semi-structured interviews that inquired about their personal therapy experience and how they related to their own clinical work Some consistent themes emerged across all participants’ responses during the individual interviews. There were 12 salient themes, with 3 overarching domains. The first domain centered on the therapists’ orientation to humanity, power, and boundaries. This domain was defined by such major themes as the therapists understanding how it feels to be the client, the importance of knowing oneself, and the therapists recognizing what was or was not effective to them when they were clients. Another major domain involved the therapists’ respect for clients. Some major defining themes of this domain included giving clients space to process and reflect, as well as the

therapists’ ability to refrain from filling a silence. The last domain focused on therapists’ ability to effectively manage sessions Macran et al.’s research offers us a concise view and better grasp of the effects that personal therapy can have on therapeutic practice and its practicality for therapists and practitioners.

A study by Wiseman and Shefler (2001) also focused on qualitative data, examining indepth interviews with five psychodynamic-oriented therapists. These researchers used a method called consensual qualitative coding, which allowed them to identify six domains with which personal therapy seemed to assist. Wiseman and Shefler argued that personal therapy is not only essential to training prospective therapists, but also aids tremendously in helping therapists grow personally and in being authentic, present therapists for clients. The researchers identified several domains of interest from their statistical analysis, including the importance of personal therapy for therapistsandtheimpactoftherapyontheprofessionalself (Thesevariousfeelingstheinterviewed therapistshaveabout theirowncurrentandpasttherapycouldleadtothemimitatingtheirtherapists when working with clients or simply using what they learned while in the client seat in their personal lives ) Overall, these researchers concluded that personal therapy plays a unique and significant role in both a practitioner’s professional and personal development Their results supported that even seasoned therapists do benefit from personal therapy.

Conclusion

Although the above studies are informative, what this area of research truly lacks, as previously mentioned, is quantitative empirical research, and the call to correct this situation was, in fact, sounded several decades ago. Clark (1986) attempted to explore the usefulness and impact of personal therapythrougha reviewofempirical research. Clarkput the issue intocontext,arguing that since the rise of Freud, no training requirement has been more crucial to a psychotherapist than personal analysis. By reviewing empirical literature, Clark hoped to discover whether undergoing personal psychotherapy would have an empirically significant effect on those who did not receive personal therapy. Clark’s findings were similar to those of the researchers summarized above, but he asserted a number of things that he deemed crucial to better understanding this topic. Clark hoped to see future research controlling for the experience of the therapists, arguing that a therapist’s experiences could be correlated to client outcomes. Moreover, Clark stated that many of the studies that he reviewed assumed that personal therapy is beneficial to client outcomes, despite the lack of empirical-based research supporting this assumption. Clark thus called for more empirically aligned demonstrations of this relationship and a further examination of which conditionsofpersonaltherapyreallyaffect clientoutcomes.Asresearchers,weshouldheedClark’s call. Although it is largely argued that personal therapy is beneficial to therapists, adding it as a requirement before licensure adds financial and resource burdens that should be taken seriously. Hence, further research is necessary to make a well-informed decision.

References

Bike, D. H., Norcross, J. C., & Schatz, D. M. (2009). Processes and outcomes of psychotherapists’ personal therapy: Replication and extension 20 years later. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 46(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015139

Clark, M. M. (1986). Personal therapy: A review of empirical research. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 17(6), 541–543. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.17.6.541

Guy, J. D., Stark, M. J., & Poelstra, P. L. (1988). Personal therapy for psychotherapists before and after entering professional practice. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 19(4), 474–476. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.19.4.474

Macran, S., Stiles, W. B., & Smith, J. A. (1999). How does personal therapy affect therapists’ practice? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46(4), 419–431.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.4.419

Norcross, J. C., Strausser-Kirtland, D., & Missar, C. D. (1988). The processes and outcomes of psychotherapists’ personal treatment experiences. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 25(1), 36–43 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0085321

Pashak, T. J. (2020). Psychotherapy defined and described: A primer for novice clinical interviewers. Psychological Disorders and Research, 1–4.

https://doi.org/10.31487/j.pdr.2020.01.01

Peebles, M. J. (1980). Personal therapy and ability to display empathy, warmth and genuineness in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 17(3), 258–262.

https://doi.org/10.1037/h0085919

Wiseman, H., & Shefler, G. (2001). Experienced psychoanalytically oriented therapists’ narrative accounts of their personal therapy: Impacts on professional and personal development. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 38(2), 129–141.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.38.2.129

The 4% Difference: Investigating the Effect of the Nike Vaporfly 4% on Distance Running

Luke Rambo

Braun Award for Excellence in Writing in the Scott L. Carmona College of Business

Nominated by Kevin Meyer, Assistant Professor of Economics

Luke Rambo, of Marquette, Michigan, graduated in May 2022 with a bachelor of business administration in finance. Luke is working for Mercantile Bank in Lansing, Michigan, as a credit analyst. During his time at SVSU, Luke ran cross-country and was a member of the Honors Program. This essay, written for Dr. Meyer’s Sports Economics (ECON 325), analyzes the impact of a new type of running shoe on an athlete’s performance.

Background

On July 17, 2017, Nike debuted the Nike Vaporfly 4%, a marathon running shoe that claimed to revolutionize the sport of running: The Vaporfly will “make runners, on average, four percent more efficient than Nike’s previous fastest marathon shoe” (Nike Inc., 2017). If Nike’s statement is true, the world has not seen an advancement in running shoe technology like this since the invention of spikes in the 1850s, the style of running shoe still used today. Nike’s release of the Vaporfly 4% will cause, and in some respects already has caused, dramatic change to the running community whether at the recreational, collegiate, or professional level. Before the impact of the Vaporfly can be understood, however, the validity of Nike’s assertion that the shoes make runners on average 4% more efficient must be investigated. Through the accumulation of recent peerreviewedresearch,market trendsofdistancerunningshoesinthelastfouryears,andtheassessment of top current marathon and half marathon performances compared with historic records, the truth about Nike’s claim regarding Vaporfly 4% may be uncovered.

Literature Review

With the initial release of the Vaporfly by Nike in 2017, there was naturally skepticism about the marketing of the project. How exactly could a pair of running shoes make someone 4% moreefficient? Theadvertisingsoundedlikeaflashymarketingployrather thanastatement backed by science. This all changed in 2018 when The New York Times came out with an article on the shoe, changing public opinion forever. The New York Times conducted a study “using public race reports and shoe records from Strava, a fitness app […] and found that runners in Vaporflys ran 3 to 4% faster than similar runners wearing other shoes” (Quealy & Katz, 2018). The study used thousands of amateur runners’ Strava data over multiple races to reach this conclusion. From this initial study, the shoe grew in popularity and thus academics began to conduct their own investigations.

In late 2018, Grand Valley State University’s (GVSU’s) Kyle Barnes and Andrew Kilding published a study elevating the Vaporfly’s status to a level no single model of shoe has ever seen. Instead of focusing on recreational runners and measuring based on marathon time improvements like in the Times article, this study used GVSU distance athletes and recorded results based on

“rates of oxygen uptake, carbon dioxide production and biomechanical measures while running” (2018). The research found that the Nike Vaporfly improved running economy by 4.2% compared to an established marathon racing shoe and an improvement of 2.6% on average to track spikes. Because GVSU is debatably the best distance running program in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) in the NCAA Division II, these results seemed to confirm that the Vaporfly not only improves the efficiency of recreational runners, but can have a substantial effect on distance athletes at the elite collegiate level. Finally, research by Cornell in 2020 finished the final piece of the puzzle by studying the shoe's effect on professional marathon athletes. Unsurprisingly, the results were similar to the past studies. Of the 307 male distance runners sampled, their race was 1.5–2.9% faster on average, and females ran 0.8–2.4% faster of the 270 sampled (Guiness et al., 2020).

Methods

Because all three studies found significance in the increase of performance of distance running athletes at all levels (i.e., recreational, collegiate, and professional), I used my research to look at how these shoes have affected the highest level of competition in the sport. World Athletics is the governing body for all sporting events involving running (track and field, cross-country, road racing, etc.). World Athletics compiled a list of the 100 fastest times in each event as well as the 100 fastest athletes by results. Lists were based on recorded history of the sport. In the study, I looked at the lists and calculated, based on statistical models, whether the number of fastest times and athletes in the marathon and half marathon were overwhelmingly between the 2018–2022 period, when Nike Vaporflys and their newest models were almost unanimously adopted by the professional distance running community. I then used the sprint and field event lists as constants to observe what a normal 2018–2022 period would have looked like without advancements in technology. To test whether the concentration of recent top 100 fastest times in the marathon and half marathons is significant, I ran a hypothesis test for a two-sample proportion using my test sample and constant. I ran this test for both “all time” lists as well as “best by athletes” list to make sure no single athlete was completely skewing the results. For all time, the value of z is 10.789, and the p-value is less than .00001, meaning the result is significant at p < .01. The same goes for best by athlete category The value of z is 7.0326, and the p-value is less than .00001, making the results significant at p < .01. These findings show that in the last four years, distance athletes have raced top times significantly more than any other sport. These findings are not surprising as every distance event world record from the 5k to the marathon has been broken using the Nike Vaporfly or shoes modeled after it (Muniz-Pardos et al., 2021).

To further demonstrate how skewed recent distance running performances have been compared to previous time periods, I constructed a histogram and Lorenz Curve to better illustrate the phenomenon. Table 1 shows information pulled from World Athletics and is the basis for the running of the two-sample proportion test along with histogram.

Justlookingatthedata,onecall tell thephenomenonisclear:that “All Time”and“BestbyAthlete” performances are abnormally high for the marathon and half marathon. This is again demonstrated in the histogram as both the full and half marathon double that of the next best event (see Figure 1) A Lorenz Curve is used by economists to show how evenly distributed a resource is in a population. In this case, the Lorenz Curve will be used to exhibit how unevenly dispersed the top 100 times are throughout four-year periods (see Figure 2) The top line is a perfectly balanced line over time, meaning out of the 8 time periods constructed, 12.5 out of the 100 best times would have been run in each time period. The more uneven the distribution, the more curved the line will be. Therefore,thehalfandfullmarathon(bottom twolines) aremoreheavily exponential curves, while the 10k, 800, 400 (middle three lines) are far less curved. The distance events’ 100 best times are much less evenly divided amongst periods because the most recent four-year period accounted for around half of the top times.

Figure 1

Number of Top 100 Marks Done between 2018–2022

Competitive Balance of Events over Time

Even without the analysis of different running groups and their performance with the Vaporfly, there is another more obvious indicator that these shoes may do what Nike claims. Since their release in 2017, the technology used in the Vaporfly, most notably the carbon fiber plate and ZoomX foam, has made appearances in six other iterations of Nike shoes. From multiple new generations of the marathon racing shoe, to cross-country flats, to sprinter spikes, Nike has been implementing this design into any performance shoe they can get their hands on. The construction of shoes with this technology does not just stop with Nike; every major shoe company has come out with a marathon racing shoe with a similar design in the last few years. Saucony, New Balance, Adidas, Brooks, ASICS, Hoka, and Sketchers all came out with shoes that rivaled the Vaporfly soon after its release (Running Warehouse, 2021). The expansion of a product line does not necessarily mean the product works the company could just have a great marketing ploy but after five years people would most likely realize the shoes did not show actual results and stop buying them. In itself, this does not give Nike’s 4% claim legitimacy, but on top of the research already laid out, it provides another strong argument in support of Nike’s statement.

Why are runners of all different athletic abilities running faster with the Nike Vaporfly? Theperformancehastodowiththecompositionoftheshoeandhowthat affectsthebody’srunning mechanics. Three main advancements are what make the Vaporfly revolutionary: stack height, ZoomX foam, and a carbon fiber plate. Stack height was found to increase lower-limb length and is believedtoenhancerunning economyas well as“increased springspace within the shoefor more elastic energy to be stored and released during every foot-strike” (Muniz-Pardos et al., 2021, p. 374). Nike’s Invention of the ZoomX foam is another aspect of the shoe that increases responsiveness when impacting the ground. The foam is a polyamide block elastomer called Pebax foam and returnsmoreenergy per stridethan any othermaterial whileat the sametime being lighter and more resilient (Burns & Tam, 2019). Finally, and most importantly, there is the internal carbon fiber plate placed in the shoe. The release of the Nike Vaporfly was the first time the world saw carbonfiber indistanceshoes andisthemainreasonfor theincreasedefficiency. The singlecarbon fiber plate running through the entire sole of the shoe again increases rebound while also providing stiffness to reduce the work rate at the ankle (Burns & Tam, 2019).

What does the introduction of the Nike Vaporfly mean for the competitive nature of distance running and for the competitive balance of all sports? To recognize its impact, the precedent for technological improvements in track and sports in general must be understood. In 1968, both the 200m and 400m world records were broken within 2 weeks (Muniz-Pardos et al., 2021). Both athletes were wearing brush shoes that had 98 small pins, unlike the typical four to six spikes. The governing body of the time banned the new spikes and withdrew the records. In more recent history, similar circumstances occurred in swimming with the LZR Racer swimsuit. A fullbody polyurethane suit cost $200–$500 and would be stretched beyond use every few races (Roberts, 2017). Though costly, the LZR Racer provided extreme aerodynamic advantages. That is why during the Beijing Olympic games, 25 world swimming records were broken, far more than in any other previous event (Roberts, 2017). Soon after, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) banned all full-body polyurethane suits. On the other hand, in long-track speed skating, technological innovation was not banned but embraced. Clap states, with a blade that detachesfrom the back with a hinge in the front and a spring that pulls the blade back into place, were introduced to the long-track speed skating competitions in 1996 with immediate success. Within two years, two seconds were dropped from the men’s 1000m race, something that took 17 years in the past (Mason, 2014). Even with the massive jump in time progression, the clap skate was never banned and is still widely used today.

The examples previously provided raise an important question: what warrants the ban of new sports technology? First, it is important to understand why athletic government bodies ban technology; after all, technology in the world outside of sports is embraced for moving us forward and is only banned if it is harmful or progresses society backward. Sports are unique in their approach to technology because they seek to embody a competitive balance among athletes and sports seek to maintain a sense of gradual progression. Keeping a competitive balance among athletes is the more obvious of the two, as higher performance technology should not only be available to the wealthiest athletes (Qui, 2020). If an individual is talented enough and puts in more training than anyone else, they should theoretically be the best, and no amount of money or sponsorships should change that. A set of gradual progression is important most notably in timebased sports. Over time, humans get faster, whether that involves running, swimming, biking, skating, or anything in between. This occurs for numerous reasons including technology, better training, increased knowledge about the human body, specialization in sports, and a larger population of people, among other reasons. Due to these reasons, there is a gradual progression of records being broken. The problem arises when that progression is sped up too quickly due to “technological doping,”making past records losetheirsignificanceand diminishing theimportance of previous athletes.

With precedent from the past and the outlook of the future considered, World Athletics made a ruling on December 22, 2021, regarding the Vaporfly and the technology that comes with it. Regulation 10.6.1 stated athletic shoes used in competitions “must not contain more than one rigid structure” and regulation 10.6.5 required that soles have “a maximum thickness of 40mm in road events, 25mm in track events from 800m and above” (World Athletics, 2021). These rulings directly address the Vaporfly’s predecessor, the Alphafly, which included a sole thickness over 40mm with multiple carbon fiber plates. Alphaflys were the only shoes affected by the ruling, meaning the use of carbon fiber plates, Pebax foam, and tall stack heights up to 40mm are still allowed in the sport.

It may be hard to believe World Athletics made the right call when looking at past precedent. First, does the technology introduced in the Vaporfly embody competitive imbalance? This does not seem to be the case, as the Vaporfly originally retailed at $250, only $100 more than a normal training shoe, which is a requirement to run. (Now the shoe can go for around $150). A senseofgradualprogressionistheotherconcept considered,andfranklytheprogressionofdistance

running seemed to take a massive leap in the years that followed the release of the Vaporfly. In fact, in 2019 Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier in the marathon with a 1:59:40 record, when it was believed that through the historic progression of the sport, it would not be until 2075 when that barrier would be breached (Paunescu, 2019). World Athletics could be overlooking the idea of gradual progression, but others believe “competitive sports have reached the edge of human physical limit” (Wang, 2021, p. 4). As athletes maximize the ability of the human body, technological improvements will need to fill the gap to ensure a continued progression of the sport (Qui, 2020).

To better understand the statements made by Zhenyu Qui and Feng Wang, I looked at previous world records over time for four different events. A pattern of inverse growth is demonstrated in the data, meaning Wang is correct in his belief that competitive sports are reaching the edge of human limits, if this small sample of events is representative of the whole population (see Figure 3). In all the events the decrease in world record times starts in large amounts and gets smaller over time. On each graph, there is a solid gray line for the progression of the last 25 years, and it demonstrates how stagnant the events have been recently as all the lines are nearly flat. The only event in recent years with world record times that are outpacing the predicted times by the inverse exponential function is the Marathon, most likely due to its advancement in technology. This is not just a phenomenon in distance running; included is the 1500m freestyle swim, which shows the same trend as the running events. The graphs’ inverse relationships and stagnation in recent years validates Qui’s sentiment that technological improvements are needed to fill the gap if we are to continue progression in sports.

Figure 3

World Records over Time

Conclusion

In the pursuit to understand groundbreaking technology as it relates to the sport of distance running, I assessed multiple different outlets to understand the truth. Journal articles at all different competitive levels were presented to explain current research on the Nike Vaporfly. World Athletic Data was then obtained to validate how the Vaporfly time period of 2018–2022 has been abnormal in the number of world-class performances in distance running. Comparsions were done using a two-sample proportion hypothesis test, a histogram, and a Lorenz Curve. Considering how the Vaporfly has affected current market trends of marathon racing shoes was the final way to demonstrate how the shoe has changed distance running forever. The current ramifications of the Vaporfly are apparent due to the evidence provided here, but what this means to the future of distance running is still unclear. By looking at past cases of “technological doping,” the most recent rulings by World Athletics,and Qui and Wang’s statements about the sport, wemay find a glimmer of clarity about what the future may hold.

References

Burns, G T , & Tam, N (2019). Is it the shoes? A simple proposal for regulating footwear in road running. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 54(8), 439–440. https://doi.org/10.1136/ bjsports-2018-100480

Barnes, K. R., & Kilding, A. E. (2018, October 29). A randomized crossover study investigating the running economy of highly-trained male and female distance runners in marathon racing shoes versus track spikes. Sports Medicine, 49(2), 331–342. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s40279018-1012-3

Guinness, J , et al. (2020, October 2). An observational study of the effect of Nike Vaporfly shoes on marathon performance Cornell University, 1–14.

Mason, A (2014, February 15). How a century-old skate design completely changed modern speed skating. Deadspin https://deadspin.com/how-a-century-old-skate-designcompletelychanged -moder-1504286074

Muniz-Pardos, B , et al. (2021). Recent improvements in marathon run times are likely technological, not physiological Sports Medicine, 51(3), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s40279-020-01420-7

Nike Inc. (2017, July 17). “Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%.” Nike News https://news.nike.com/footwear/ nike-zoom-vaporfly-4-release-date

Paunescu, D. (2019, November 3). Nike’s high-tech Vaporfly sneakers help athletes run 4 percent faster. Should they be banned for providing an unfair advantage? Recode, Vox.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/3/20944257/marathon-nike-shoes-running-sneakers vaporfly-reset-podcast

Qiu, Z. (2020). The influence of the design and manufacture of sports equipment on sports. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 1549(3). https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1549/3/032039

Quealy, K., and Katz, J. (2018, July 18). Nike says its $250 running shoes will make you run much faster. What if that’s actually true? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-vaporfly-shoe-strava.html

Roberts, J. (2017, February 19). Winning skin. Distillations, Science History Institute.

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/winning-skin

RunningWarehouse.(2021,December 30). Thebest carbon-platedrunningshoesof2022. The Best Running Shoes with Carbon Fiber Plates 2022 Gear Guide.

https://www.runningwarehouse.com/learningcenter/gear_guides/footwear/best-shoeswitha-carbon-plate.html

Wang, F. Application of new carbon fiber material in sports equipment. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 714(3), 2021 https://doi.org/10.1088/17551315/ 714/3/032064

World Athletics. (2021, December 22). Athletic Shoe Regulations. Book C - C2.1A. “World Athletics Home Page.” Worldathletics.org https://www.worldathletics.org/.

Vulnerability and Health Promotion in the Homeless Population

John DeOpsomer

Winner of the Braun Award for Writing Excellence in the College of Health and Human Services, Category I

Nominated by Robert Kelch, Assistant Professor of Nursing

John DeOpsomer is a senior at SVSU studying for his bachelor of science in nursing. When he graduates in Fall 2022, he plans to provide for those in his community in most critical need of care: those in an intensive care unit. OriginallyfromBayCity,Michigan,andagraduateofEssexville’sGarber High School, he has had the honor of serving as the representative of his cohort at the Student Develop meetings held by the nursing faculty each semester. He is also amemberoftheThompsonScholarsandisverygrateful forthegenerousefforts the Thompsons make to help college students afford their education.

Thispiecewas written in Fall 2021for Professional IntegrationIII (NURS 391), a class in the third semester of the nursing program. The course was collectively taught by Dr. Robert Kelch,assistant professor of nursing; Dr. Sherry Kaufman, assistant professor of nursing; and Dr. Tami Pobocik, professor of nursing. The primaryfocusoftheclass concernedcommunityhealthandhomecare.Students were given the concept of vulnerability and had to choose two related concepts, one being a specific population of people and the other of the student’s choice. According to John, one of the biggest challenges of writing this piece was ensuring the audience would understand the importance of health promotion for the homeless population even if his readers had no formal education in health. Another challenge, John asserts, was ensuring he accurately covered the topic, doing it justice in the page constraints he was given. Through this piece, John notes, he has furthered his understanding of the hardships the homeless population faces and how healthcare professionals should approach the topic of vulnerability to ensure these individuals are cared for appropriately.

Life is complex, and the situations in which humans find themselves can vary greatly. People may go from living stable lives to finding that everything changes around them, leaving them vulnerable to disaster and undesired health outcomes. Such vulnerability is an important and highly discussed concept in the field of nursing, and a person’s status within this classification can constantly shift. However, some individuals are in a constant state of vulnerability, unable to grab hold of a metaphorical lifeline to save themselves One such population is the homeless. Through health promotion, nurses can encourage these individuals to improve their situation and provide them with education and resources to do so. This paper examines the concepts of vulnerability and health promotion in the homeless population to further the audience’s understanding of this complex problem and how healthcare workers can respond to it

Defining Vulnerability and Health Promotion

As frontline healthcare workers, nurses have an obligation to partake in health promotion

for patients, especially those from vulnerable populations, for them to be effectively treated. StanhopeandLancaster (2020)definevulnerabilityas “susceptibilitytoactual orpotentialstressors that may lead to an adverse effect” (p. 701), and those considered vulnerable have a greater risk for poor health The homeless population fits this definition unequivocally. Whereas vulnerability describes the status of an individual, health promotion is a way in which the field of health attempts to promote positive outcomes for vulnerable individuals The World Health Organization (2021) defines health promotion as “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health” (para. 1). Through this process, vulnerable populations can be provided the education and resources necessary to better their situation and effectively care for themselves.

Vulnerability Model

The Vulnerability Model is a conceptual nursing model used to examine the factors that contributeto vulnerability in patients or populations. Accordingto Lange (2021),it is based onfour domains: biological domain, environmental domain, behavioral domain, and sociocultural domain. These domains represent important influences in a person’s life, and each domain has specific associated factors that affect a person’s state of vulnerability. Using this model as a guide, this paper will examine and describe the homeless population through each domain to portray their vulnerability status and need for health promotion.

Biological Domain

The factors contributing to vulnerability related to the biological domain are focused on inherent things people cannot change, including the presence of mental illness, sexual identity, age, race, and genetic predisposition to disease. The homeless population has no more reprieve from these factors than any other classification of people, but one specific biological factor that is very pervasive in the homeless population is mental illness. According to Gutwinski et al. (2021), the prevalence rate of homeless people living with mental disorders is 76.2%, with 12.4% being classifiedashavingschizophreniaspectrum disorders, 12.6%ashavingmajordepressiondisorders, 4.1% as having bipolar disorders, 36.7% as having alcohol use disorders, and 21.7% as having drug use disorders; additionally, 25.4% fall under the blanket category of personality disorders. These high rates, with some individuals falling into more than one category, indicate a need for mental health promotion for this population.

Mental health can be managed and treated when known, but when inadequate emphasis is placed on finding and treating those with disorders, this population is extremely vulnerable. Unmanaged mental health conditions can lead to adverse outcomes like violence and self-inflicted harm and, in a worst-case scenario, death. Nurses can utilize health promotion to help these individuals find the resources and information they need to be treated adequately Resources like mental health centers, psychiatric services, and counseling can improve the lives of these individuals.

Environmental Domain

The environment in which one lives, works, or spends time recreationally can have a large influence on vulnerability. Factors associated with the environmental domain that contribute to vulnerability include a lack of housing and domestic abuse. A lack of affordable housing, in particular, is a significant issue in the homeless population today. According to Martin (2015), poverty has been increasing and the availability of low-income housing units has been decreasing since the 1980s, making housing acquisition for the homeless population very difficult. Reasons contributing to this issue relate tothe negative characteristics that these individuals have in the eyes of employers and that prevent them from getting jobs, including a lack of job skills and previous

work experience, minimal education or formal job training, a history of mental illness, inadequate records of previous work history, and substance abuse Nurses must engage in health promotion to help prevent this crisis. By performing primary preventative interventions, such as working with policymakers to resolve the housing crisis, nurses can promote resilience rather than vulnerability in these individuals.

Behavioral Domain

Although many might think the biological and environmental domains are some of the most important factors in contributing to vulnerability, as they fit into the classic debate concerning nature versus nurture, behavioral practices have a significant influence as well. Individuals have free will, and, as such, activities in which they choose to participate are also important factors contributing to vulnerability. Factors in this domain that may lead to vulnerability include alcohol abuse, drug abuse, poor diet, inadequate physical activity, risky sexual practices, and inadequate rest. Substance abuse, in fact, is a very common factor that keeps the homeless population vulnerable to a poor health status. Gutwinski et al. (2021) found that of the homeless population with mental disorders, around 37% of them were plagued with disorders related to alcohol abuse and 22% with disorders related to drug abuse, with the alcohol abuse prevalence being almost ten times the 3.4% prevalence rate seen within the general population Substance abuse has extremely detrimental effects on the health of an individual, and these significant rates of substance abuse in the homeless population must be addressed. Health promotion for these individuals can include counseling, therapy, and rehabilitation programs that may greatly help these individuals get back on track and take more control over their health. Without this health promotion, they may stay stuck within the same cycle and worsen their health status. Street nurse programs have been developed that work to help substance abusers take greater control of their health not only through education, but by providing them the means to take their drugs safely and prevent the spread of such illnesses as hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

Sociocultural Domain

Along with behavioral practices, sociocultural status is also an important aspect of life that can affect the vulnerability of an individual or population. The factors of this domain include limited education, family structure, and social support. Many homeless people lack these fundamentals, either currently or in their early years. Family structure and social support, in particular, have significant influence on the vulnerability of the homeless. According to Heerde et al. (2021), family dysfunction in adolescents’ lives significantly influences whether adolescents will live in homelessness in their young adult years. These dysfunctional characteristics related to family include permissive parenting styles, such as lenient rules or a lack thereof, as well as little to no parental supervision; low-quality relationships between the parents and adolescent; and a nontraditional family structure. Because family relationships and social support during a youth’s formative years, the stage of life in which significant development occurs, are very crucial as to whether homelessness will occur in young adulthood, nurses must ensure health promotion is utilized for families with children. If theories of child development and good parenting techniques that relate to these precursors to homelessness in young adulthood are actively taught, risk factors associated with the sociocultural domain that contribute to the vulnerability of the homeless may be decreased for these youth.

Cultural Consideration

The homeless population is a very common cultural group that nurses care for in their

communities. Nurses must do everything in their power to understand this community of people and their specific wants and needs. By using their knowledge of vulnerability in this community, nurses can better relate to the people they serve, ensuring that the proper care and treatment are provided and that individuals’ needs are met. One specific consideration that nurses must know to provide culturally competent care involves the common medical conditions that plague this population, including mental health conditions, substance abuse disorders, and communicable and non-communicable diseases. According to Beijer and Andréasson (2009), the incidence of disease in the homeless is almost double that in the general population, and many of these conditions are treated through emergency care Common health problems include injury and poisoning, diseases of the liver and pancreas (including hepatitis C, diabetes, and nutrition-related anemias), skin disorders, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (particularly tuberculosis)

Along with these common ailments, nurses should consider those that specifically affect homeless veterans. According to Stanhope and Lancaster (2020), about 9% of homeless people are veterans affected bymany post-combat issues,including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries, which can lead these individuals to become closed off, remain unmarried, and socially isolate themselves from others. Knowing this, nurses should communicate with these individualsempatheticallyandwithoutbeingjudgmental.Nursesshouldalsoavoiddiscussionsthat may trigger PTSD and assess for signs or ideations of self-harm. Nurses should provide health promotion to help these individuals get the treatment they need to address these issues through the following: education aboutcommon diseases seen in the population, nutritional education, physical screenings and assessments for health conditions, depression screenings, and information about primary care and ways to avoid the high costs of emergency care (as will be discussed below).

Another cultural consideration nurses should keep in mind involves the hygiene and nutritional status of these individuals. According to Heerde and Patton (2020), the homeless population lacks adequate medical care, medications necessary for survival, and hygiene and sanitation resources. Because of a lack of housing and financial resources, these people do not have immediate access to running water utilized in many hygienic activities, including showering, bathing, dental care, and handwashing. They also cannot afford to buy nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables, or they lack access to them because impoverished areas are often food deserts. Health promotion for this cultural consideration should include education about basic nutritional needs and social services for food acquisition like food stamps. Nurses should also provide informationaboutwheretoaccesscleanwater forhygienicneeds andeducationabouthandwashing and its importance in preventing illness.

Along with nutritional and hygienic needs, nurses should consider that the living situations of the homeless can constantly shift. According to Lange (2021), these people may be classified as chronically, temporarily, or episodically homeless Because ofthis, there aremanyfactors to which they can be exposed and that make them vulnerable to health risks; these include violence, poor weather conditions, and infectious diseases Those chronically homeless often will be exposed to more factors, whereas those that are labeled temporarily or episodically homeless may spend more time in shelters and homes of relatives and friends, leading to less exposure to inclement weather, microorganisms, and violence. Health promotion should include education about how infectious diseases can be caught and how adverse weather can affect immune systems, information about abuse and violence hotlines, and information about publicly and privately funded shelters

Furthermore, a very significant cultural consideration when caring for the homeless population is that they have a lack of access to health care According to Giddens (2021), homeless individualshavethisproblem duetolackofinsurance,highhealthcarecosts, lackoftransportation, sociocultural differencesbetweenprovider andpatient,biasedclinical decision-making,andpatient mistrust andsubsequent healthcarerefusal. Becausethehomelesstypically lackjobs,theirfinancial means to access health care is limited. Insurance is usually provided to employees by their employers, which can decrease the cost of medical bills. However, without jobs, these people have no access to insurance, creating hesitancy to seek treatment and an inability to afford medications.

When the homeless do seek treatment, it is often through emergency health centers, which usually amounts to a very costly price. Because of medical avoidance related to financial concerns and transportation access, these vulnerable individuals are less likely to get care related to disease prevention including screenings, education about nutrition and exercise requirements, and vaccinations usedtoprevent commondiseases,especially onesspreadbyriskybehavioral practices such as illegal drug use and unprotected sex.

Nurses should use health promotion by educating the homeless about safe sex practices and drug administration, providing information about social services and resources to help with medications and medical bills, and promoting vaccinations that prevent the acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases. By knowing these cultural considerations when implementing health promotion for the homeless population, nurses can more effectively help members of this group take greater control of their health and reduce their vulnerability to adverse health outcomes

Conclusion

Health promotion is critical if nurses and physicians aim to decrease the vulnerability of the homeless population Through this promotion, these individuals may be better equipped to take control of their health and prevent worse outcomes related to their health status. Nurses should work day in and day out to adopt and implement preventative measures to reduce the risk of homelessness and decrease people’s vulnerability to it. Using the Vulnerability Model as a guide, nurses can accomplish great things. In these unprecedented times of the pandemic, mental health diagnosesand crises have been flaring(asthey have many times before during darktimes of human history), and nurses need to be knowledgeable and prepared to meet these challenges head-on to prevent future generations of vulnerable populations.

References

Beijer, U.,& Andréasson, S. (2009). Physical diseases amonghomelesspeople: Gender differences and comparisons with the general population. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 37(1), 93

100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494808099972

Giddens, J. F. (2021). Concepts for nursing practice (2nd ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.

Gutwinski, S., Schreiter, S., Deutscher, K., & Fazel, S. (2021). The prevalence of mental disorders among homeless people in high-income countries: An updated systematic review and metaregression analysis. PLOS Medicine, 18(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003750

Heerde,J.A., Bailey, J.A.,Toumbourou,J.W.,Rowland, B.,& Catalano,R. F.(2021). Adolescent antecedents of young adult homelessness: A cross-national path analysis. Prevention Science, 23, 85–95.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-021-01267-y

Heerde, J. A., & Patton, G. C. (2020). The vulnerability of young homeless people. The Lancet Public Health, 5(6), e302–e303. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2468-2667(20)30121-3

Lange, R. (2021, October 14). [Lecture notes on vulnerability phenomena of concern]. Department of Nursing, Saginaw Valley State University

Martin, E. J. (2015). Affordable housing, homelessness, and mental health: What health care policy needs to address. Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, 38(1), 67–89.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/24459676

Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020). Public health nursing (10th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences

https://pageburstls.elsevier.com/books/9780323582247

World Health Organization. (2021). Health promotion

https://www.who.int/westernpacific/about/how-we-work/programmes/health-promotion

Understanding Occupation in Community

Dylan North

Braun Award for Excellence in Writing in Graduate Programs

Nominated by Donald Earley, Professor of Occupational Therapy

Dylan North, of Flint, Michigan, is enrolled in SVSU’s M.S. in Occupational Therapy (MSOT) Program with an anticipated graduation date of December 2023. He has been involved with the Student Occupational Therapy Association since he entered the program in 2021. Dylan received his B.S. in exercise science in May 2017 through SVSU. He thanks former SVSU assistant professor of English Suzan Aiken for challenging him to become a better writer.

“Understanding Occupation in Community” was written for Community Integration (OT 610), instructed by Dr. Donald Earley in Spring 2021. This course explored the relationship between meaning and occupation as they exist within the community, emphasizing issues of participation and occupational performance. The Conceptual Framework of Therapeutic Occupation was integrated within the context of this course.

The description and concept of community and occupation have been thoroughly discussed through multidisciplinary literature on psychological and philosophical levels. The literature describes the past and current views of occupational therapy in relation to meaning, purpose, and the occupational nature of humans The research, as discussed below, delves into the topics of meaning and purpose in occupation, occupation regarding the concept of community, interwoven concepts of occupation in community, and the value of building occupational therapy’s knowledge base to better understand occupation in the context of community.

Meaning and Purpose in Occupation

Occupation can be described in many ways. In the past, the profession of occupational therapy has struggled to define the concept of occupation. It is with research and experience that these definitions of occupations were introduced. Betty R Hasselkus, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA, (2011) used a metaphor to describe occupation as the essential current that propels us along on life’s journey. The occupations in our lives and the meanings of those occupations are critical contributors to the pace and direction of life. This is true in the sense that occupation provides meaning to our lives. Occupation and meaning contribute to one another throughout our lifespan. Occupation can encompass everything from self-care, leisure activities, and contributions to the social and economic aspects of community, Hasselkus continues, and is focused on the aspect of doing. It is everything that individuals do to occupy themselves. Engaging, participating, and performing activities and tasks ultimately define what occupation is. Practitioners can engage with their clients to explore what their occupations consist of. Hasselkus also noted practitioners should embrace the idea of assisting our clients on their journey back to meaningfulness. Practitioners need to understand how meaning comes from occupation and vice versa. Practitioners have the ability to discover meaning in occupations and have the opportunity to create new meaning. After all, occupation is the core concept of our profession; we are custodians of meaning and meaning-givers Donald W. Earley, OTD, MA, OTRL, (2003) discussed how community and occupation are two concepts that are separate but interrelated. To be effective in this profession practitioners must understand that community is crucial to one’s occupational performance and vice versa. This

means that occupational therapy needs to be viewed as a process that addresses the individual as a whole. Occupational therapy is not always about achieving a greater sense of independence. Favorable outcomes should also include meaning-making; meaning-making and creating purpose result in a greater quality of life.

Earley (2003) provided an example of the importance of meaning-making. He mentioned “The Out & About Program” implemented at a senior living facility. Although no significant changes were noted in independence or function, improvements were noted in the community, and a profound sense of meaning was established. This example also focused on the importance of having face-to-face experiences and allowing clients to connect deeply on an emotional level. (This seems especially important today since these experiences are hard to come by due to the COVID19 pandemic.) Developing this sense of purpose and emotional connection is critical. Once this is fully achieved, clients will be more likely to sustain what they have experienced. They will become empowered and continue to build within their community on their terms.

Occupation with Regard to the Concept of Community

Community can be described as people within an area that share similar values and beliefs. Community is essentially a feeling of connectedness within a group or population. People within a community share a sense of caring for others and actively participate as community members. There must be participation from each member with a common purpose. John F. Freie (1998) stated that for a community to thrive, members must recognize their membership in it and develop an enlarged sense of self. Members of a community must be able to share meaningful experiences. Another important quality of a community is effectively managing conflict when it arises. Conflict within a community is inevitable but should be handled appropriately by respecting the dignity of each member when reaching decisions.

One quality that should not be expected of a community is sameness. Sameness is associated with counterfeit community Sameness does not allow members the freedom to express individuality. Freie (1998) stated that this could make community members feel like they need to conform to other opinions and beliefs besides their own. This can hinder an individual’s sense of self-expression and willingness to produce change. These are desired qualities in an ideal community and are taken away by feeling the need to “follow the norm” or come to the same agreement. Counterfeit community avoids addressing such social problems crime and racism. Avoiding these problems does not produce any psychological benefits for members. Communication within communities is also vitally important. Communication can be defined as formal or informal interactions that develop as an outgrowth of members’ interests within a community (Freie, 1998). Within these interactions, friendships are formed, and social skills are enhanced. For occupational therapists, it is thus important to have good communication skills. To develop trust and respect, we must create a special bond between the client and the occupational therapist. Freie (1998) discussed the idea of community, the sense of togetherness, and the qualities of a successful and unsuccessful community. Freie (1998) also stated that most people are capable of learning the rules of communication and are willing to follow them. It is important to note that the rules of communication can be taught and learned. Practitioners need to have a deep understanding of what community means and how it is related to the profession of occupational therapy. It is essential to be observant and have a sense of empathy when communicating with a client. Occupational therapists can learn through this experience and understand what it is like to be part of the community in which their clients are participants. Good communication is a fundamental principle of community building and the idea of togetherness

Interwoven Concepts of Occupation in Community

Ann A. Wilcock, Ph.D., (2001) explored the theme of utopias and emphasized the significance of how others have established opportunities for people to experience well-being

through occupation. Wilcock described her vision of utopia as a world in which the occupational nature of people is recognized in a just and equitable way. The idea of occupational utopia was derived from Wilcock’s study of the evolution of an occupational perspective of health and wellbeing. Wilcock stated that to achieve maximal health and well-being, people need to appreciate their occupational needs and change the world to that end Although utopia may be unrealistic, practitioners can draw from these ideas about utopia and implement them into their practice Wilcock described three types of utopian communities and how they addressed people’s occupation needs. The first community emphasized that a healthy mind and body can only be achieved when life harmonizes with nature. The Amish community adopted this idea. They believed that simplicity and manual work were how to meet their occupational needs. The second community believed in the idea that change is inevitable and will lead to a more productive society. Wilcock mentioned that she favored promoting a holistic vision of the future in which people's occupational needs are recognized and met. This idea emphasized a proactive stance to raise awareness about what possibilities could arise if people were considered occupational beings. Occupational therapists should adopt this vision of utopia in their professional obligations as a practitioner. Practitioners need to be aware of occupational natures, positive or negative, to promote the best outcome. This will enable their clients to find meaning and purpose through their everyday occupations.

Practitioners also need to view individuals as meaning-making through participation and occupation. This will allow practitioners to “conceptualize ideas of wholeness and self-realization, which transcend the narrower view of function and independence” (Meyer, 1922, p. 45). Individuals make meaning in their lives despite their dependence and lack of function. For example, individuals with a disability might be viewed as less than whole, but this perception is changing in the sense that these individuals are advocating for themselves. It is important to consider these individuals as a whole and active community members. Participation and expressing meaning through occupation are instrumental to the idea of wholeness. The profession of occupational therapy is moving past the notion that views consciousness as separate. Jeffrey L. Crabtree, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA, (1998) stated that many health professionals continue to seek truths regarding function and independence exclusive to one’s values, judgments, intentions, and meanings. A broader view of human purpose transcends function and independence. The ideal human state, Crabtree noted, is “taking action of performing, or actualizing potentialities for a purpose beyond the action taken” (p. 207). Furthermore, function and independence have their place in the overall scheme of occupational therapy, but they are not adequate to explain the ideal state. The ideal state is one in which individuals make meaning through actions.

Concepts that Contribute to Meaning and Occupation

Shared experiences can influence the meaning of space and place in a relational community. Yi-Fu Tuan (2001) focused on human dispositions, capacities, and needs, and how culture affects them. Tuan stated that space and place are terms that describe common experiences, as individuals often attach meaning to space and place. Place can be described as a sense, whether it is a geographic location or a feeling of secureness. Individuals, for example, often associate home with a feeling of stability. Space, however, can be described as freedom, whether it is openness or a threat to the concept of space. The meaning of place often merges with the idea of space, but both are so much more, for these terms can be associated with experiences. Practitioners must thus consider what gives these terms their meaning and their identity. Tuan additionally stated that places are where biological needs are satisfied. Experiences directly influence knowledge regarding the concepts of space and place. These experiences can be direct and intimate or indirect and conceptual. Tuan also noted that individuals have different tendencies, and the meaning of place and space can differ based on shared experiences. An individual’s interpretation of these concepts is thus influenced by the community.

On the other hand, Deborah Tall (1996) described the concept of space and the notion of

dwelling as a means to pause or delay. To dwell in place means to simply occupy the space. Tall stated that home used to be considered a place but is now viewed solely as property. It is described as something of monetary value rather than symbolic. Interestingly, Tall said that individuals usually do not stay in a house longer than five years. Changing locations is perceived as a way to change one’s life; staying in the same place is often viewed as unambitious, but a change in location ignores the meaning associated with home. It seems as though the familiarity of a home has lost its significance. Tall also said that frequent relocation could be disrupting It is not easy to become attached when the environment has no meaning or community.

Graham D. Rowles, Ph.D., (2000) offers other insights about space and place. He implied we develop a rhythm and a routine in our use of space and our relationships with the places in our lives. This rhythm and routine become part of our identity as we mature. Rowles also explored the habits and the events that disrupt our sense of normalcy. To understand an individual’s life and how that individual is affected by disability, we need to view the individual from a holistic perspective. Rowles, in fact, explored the idea of adaptation in relation to the setting of place, structured daily activity, and the environment. Examining regularity in the context of routines in time and space, Rowles referred to a specific example of Mary, her time and space rhythm, and how an unscheduled call disrupted her daily routine. Practitioners thus should move beyond the traditional role of providing skills training by exploring creative strategies that reinforce habits that can be sustained. Practitioners should also seek to understand the role of habits and routines when providing care. It is essential to develop recognition skills and the ability to observe these habits, rituals, and routines. This idea may lead to greater personal rewards and more substantial outcomes. Community also plays into the interactional model of disability. To fully understand an individual as a whole, practitioners must change their perception of disability. Joseph P. Shapiro (1994) stated that individuals with disabilities deserve respect and the opportunity to build bonds with their community as entirely accepted participants. Ann P. Grady, MA, OTR, FAOTA, (1995) described how disability has been seen as a medical problem with the expectation that individuals with disabilities should in all actuality be like those without said disability. This view is wrong. Individuals with a disability should be viewed as a whole with regard to their abilities; disability should not be a limiting factor. These perceptions are beginning to change because community is now involved. Practitioners have to consider the environment in which these individuals are present perhaps the environment is to blame for the failure to include these individuals. In other words, in the interactional model, disability is not a difference; contrary to the medical model, the interactional model views disability in a neutral light, and as Grady stated, “the remedy for disabledrelated problems is a change in the environmental interaction. Occupational therapists can be the remedy for change” (p. 303). These individuals merely need an advocate or someone who bridges the gap between the individual and the community. The notion of inclusion is evident: all individuals should be treated equally regardless of their abilities.

The Value of Building Occupational Therapists’ Knowledge Base

The profession of occupational therapy is based on client-centered care, and occupational therapists must possess other skills to provide the best quality of care. Occupational therapists must learn to use their client's perspectives as a guide in providing care. Occupational therapists can benefit from seeing how a client participates within their community. To understand the client, practitioners must understand what is valuable to them and where they draw meaning in their everyday occupations. Meaning-making is vitally important because it can lead to a sense of empowerment. Occupational therapists must thus engage with their clients to figure out what is meaningful to them. Occupational therapists must be able to figure out the roles and occupations with which the client is associated. To provide the client with the best possible outcome and to implement the best program to achieve a greater quality of life, it is imperative to make these connections To promote positive change, practitioners need to provide compassionate care. It is

important to demonstrate compassion and understanding, a willingness to explore new ideas, and the skills to empower the client to maximize the outcome.

Cheryl L. Walter (2012) stated that the concept of community involves elements that we are not used to talking about. To create a framework for community-building practice, we must examine the idea of community and the associated strategies. We must shift the perspective to one that expands our concept of community to include other healthcare team members and develop a model for community building rooted in this concept. The idea of community building and how we conceptualize it influences our actions. As practitioners, we use our knowledge of community to guide our decisions. Often, we view the community as a neighborhood in which we participate. However, with this idea, we miss the notion of community as a multidimensional system. We need to shift our perspective of community by changing our actions, consciousness, and context. This enables us to take more information into account when familiarizing ourselves in practice and when making decisions. Walter emphasized the need to view community as a dynamic whole continually progressing. By adopting this idea and learning to engage with one another respectfully, community will become more of an exchange. As Walter noted, community building practice encompasses all the dimensions of community

Conclusion

The value of building occupational therapy’s knowledge base related to understanding occupation in the context of community is evident throughout the literature. It is through occupation and community that humans create meaning. Occupational therapists can draw from literature and incorporate these concepts of meaning and purpose in practice. The goal of occupational therapy is not just to provide therapy but also to help clients find meaning and purpose in their community. Occupation is the fundamental concept of our profession, and we are the curators of its meaning

References

Crabtree, J. L. (1998). The end of occupational therapy. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 52(3), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.52.3.205

Earley, D. (2003). The neuro-occupation framework: Meaning-making for contemporary clinical practice. Advance for Occupational Therapy Practitioners 34–35.

Freie, J. F. (1998). Counterfeit community: The exploitation of our longings for connectedness. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Grady, A. P. (1995). Building inclusive community: A challenge for occupational therapy. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 49(4), 300–310. https://doi.org/10.5014

Hasselkus, B. R. (2011). Meaning in everyday occupation (2nd ed.). Thorofare, NJ: Slack.

Meyer, A. (1922). The philosophy of occupation therapy. Archives of Occupational Therapy 1, 1–10

Rowles, G. D. (2000). Habituation and being in place. Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, 20, 5267.

Shapiro, J. (1994). No pity: People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement. Three Rivers Press.

Tall, D. (1996). Dwelling: Making peace with space and place. In W. Vitek and W. Jackson (Eds.) Rooted in the land: Essays on community and place. Yale University Press.

Tuan, Y.-F. (2001). Introduction. In Yi-Fu Tuan (Ed.), Space and place: The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press.

Walter, C. L. (2012). Chapter 5. Community building practice. In M. Minkler (Ed.), Community organizing and community building for health and welfare (pp. 68–83). Rutgers University Press.

Wilcock, A. (2001). Occupational utopias: Back to the future. Journal of Occupational Science, 1 (1), 5–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2001.9686479.

A Hundred Dozen”

Megan Draper

Winner of the Tyner Prize for Fiction

Nominated by C. Vince Samarco, Professor of English

MeganDraperisanativeMichigandermajoringincreativewritingandSpanish. She began at SVSU in Fall 2020. She’s been previously published in two teen anthologies put out by Owl Hollow’s Press, and she has won such awards as first place in the SVSU Veterans’ Day essay contest and two Scholastic Gold Keys. Megan’s also an editor for Cardinal Sins. When she’s not reading, she enjoys watching superhero movies and traveling abroad. She’s an active part of the SVSU writing community and can be found at www.authormeganriann.com.

ThispiecewasoriginallywrittenforCreativeWriting:Fiction(ENGL306), and Megan enjoyed the creative freedom attached to the assignment. The story sprang from her fascination with the desert as a setting and her love of writing about sibling relationships. (She notes she draws inspiration from her own.) Receivingpeerfeedbackhasalwaysbeenoneofherfavoritepartsofherclasses, and this piece expanded to nearly double the length after class discussion. She loves how Dr. Samarco and her fellow SVSU writers push her to create the strongest work possible through thoughtful, critical conversation.

The body still looks like a girl.

Were it not for the rigid angle of her elbows and the mound of sand blown over her pelvis, thebodymight havebeenachildfrom thewestcountry.Her murkyblondehairandpaleskinmatch the others. She might have sat up, rubbed the golden grains from her eyelashes, and asked with a full-toothed smile, “Please, can I have a drink of water?”

But it’s not a child from the west country. Bodies do not sit or rub or ask.

“Why doesn’t she have shoes?” Card points to the bare and blistered toes.

If Sare were here, she would scold him for asking. Sare, though only a few years older than I am, acts as if she were from Mom’s generation. She works in silence because someone long dead decided it was rotten luck to speak when looking at a body. I don’t know if she believes that, or if she just believes enough in our mother.

I am not Sare. Proximity to a body shouldn’t deter conversation. A cook doesn’t stop stirring the pot in the presence of a corn husk. I answer Card, “Her family took her shoes.”

“Why?”

“They might have another child who needed them.”

“Why didn’t they take her?” he asks. He hovers over the closed eyes but doesn’t touch. This is only the third body he’s seen. They are still like blown sandglass to him delicate and unique.

I kneel and sweep part of the sandy blanket away. Rust-colored pants whip loosely around the ankles. The shirt is here, too. Most families can’t afford to leave so much. They must have adamant respect for their dead. Or they haven’t yet gotten used to leaving naked corpses behind. I say, “They have a long way to go. It doesn’t make sense to carry the extra weight.”

“She doesn’t look very heavy.” Card kneels, bravely brushing his fingers over the body’s shoulder.

“Good. Then I don’t want to hear you complain.” I swing my pack off my back, untying the drawstring. I start by stripping off the pants, folding and tucking them into the pack. The fabric is coarse and thin but not the worst desert garb I’ve seen. Some fools from the east country don’t even wear pants long enough to tuck into their boots.

Card and I strip the body to undergarments. Per the burial tradition of the west country, a single coin rests on the navel. The dull, dark metal contrasts with the pale skin. I pocket it.

“What do you think her name was?” Card asks. He stands still as I button up the bag on his back.

“It doesn’t really matter,” I say.

“Maybe her mom was a tailor. Her clothes all fit really good.”

“Really well.”

“I bet she liked tigerfruit lilies better than all flowers. And she liked to do hair, which is why hers is all braided.”

I pat my pocket to make sure the coin hasn’t escaped. “There’s no way to know any of that, Card.”

“Then maybe she had older siblings do her hair like Sare cuts ours. She was scared of the knife, though, like me, so she held super still. And when the haircut finished, she got to play with their pet lemur-fox.”

“

Lemur-foxes don’t live in the desert.”

“But they live in the west country! Uncle Dario saw one before,” he protests. “She had one.”

I shake my head.

Sand slips over my hard-soled boots, covering and uncovering the toes with every step. Our camp looks closer than it is, a soft blur waving in the heat. Our family must have finished unloading the wagons and unhitching the camel-rhinos.

I take a long drink of water from my sling and hand it to Card. The desert spreads across the horizon like precious butter sizzling in a pan. Sunlight colors everything gold. This must be the most beautiful place on earth.

Not that I’ve seen anywhere else to compare. I was born in the desert. Its ferocity pumps through my veins. My people have made this place our home for generations, migrating across the sands as traders and survivors. I don’t know how many nomadic tribes there are. Aunt Mora once said that as long as there are more desert wolves than people, the desert won’t mind. She also believes we shouldn’t talk around bodies.

When we go to the greatest oasis, there are usually four or five other family groups. Most of them have lived here as long as us, some even longer. I’m old enough now that the adults let me sit in while they share news and gossip. Most of the talk consists of which country has recently attacked, what refugees have said, and how bad the next sandstorms will be.

I’ve yet to enter the east and west countries. Sometimes, when we’re close to a border, I can see smoke clouds so large they make my eyes burn. Uncle Dario offered to take me with him last time he went into the city to trade.

“C’mon, boy. I can teach you how to talk to the merchants. There are riches in the cities that can’t be found here,” he’d said.

I’d refused. I imagine the east and west countries to be as ugly as our desert is beautiful. Refugees wouldn’t risk everything to escape otherwise. They cross from both ways, always believing that something better can be earned on the other side. They don’t consider stopping in our desert. I hate them some for it.

When we reach the camp, I’m glad to see we haven’t missed the evening meal. My family gathers in a lazy circle, sitting on bundles of supplies. The twins try tossing bits of salted meat into each other’s mouths. Sare hands me a full water sling as she tousles Card’s hair.

I know what the refugees call us.

Scavengers. Vulture-rats. Magpies. Thieves.

Lookingatmyaunts,uncles, andcousins, Itryto seethemthroughanoutsider’seyes. Aunt Harmony’s belt bears a baron’s seal from the west country, but her headscarf is from the east. My eldest cousin wears a silver necklace tarnished brown a souvenir taken from a skeleton on a dare. The weapon slung across my great-uncle’s back saw both sides of the war before he took it from a guardsman’s grave.

There’s no shame in taking what someone else has left behind. Besides, the refugees are the ones escaping blindly into our desert. They come to us for supplies and advice when desperate enough.They’retheoneswhoscurryacross thesandlikeworm-tailedrodentssearchingforanother crevice to hide in.

When Sare wraps her arm around my shoulders, pride swells in my gut.

“What did you find?” she asks.

“The girl was from the west,” Card answers. “She was going to be a warrior.”

The distance between Sare’s brows closes dangerously. “What?”

Card shrugs. “Or maybe she’d work with medicine like Aunt Harmony.”

“Ignore him,” I say. I show her everything.

“Are you awake?” Card hisses.

We lie cocooned in our bedrolls. Card and I have shared a tent since he was born. Sometimes, when the windthreatens sandstorms, all of us pile into the covered caravan. There isn’t enough room for us all to lay down inside, and I can never sleep. On those nights, I listen to my cousins’ snores and Card’s giggles while Uncle Fare whispers stories of great hunts across the dunes.

I keep my back to my brother. The wall of the tent billows, a shadow moving against shadows. I’m pretty sure he’s going to ask me to go outside with him while he pees. He hasn’t outgrown fearing the dark. “What is it, Card?”

“When I die, will you take all my things and the coin from my belly?”

I flinch. The image of Card, eyes open and tempting the birds, fingers curled stiffly at his sides, crashes over me. Tears gather at the corners of my eyes. I’m glad he can’t see my face. “It’s different when one of us dies,” I answer when I’m sure my voice won’t betray me.

He sighs, a frustrated child. “How is it different?”

“It just is.” Dad died before Card was born. He was a toddler when Mom and baby Milly got a fever from a west country family who’d shared our fire. I remember both times and GreatGrandma before that. I remember the strangled silence as we left the bodies behind. We scavenged as much as we could, but it was a different kind of taking. Shame flushed my cheeks. I understood why the refugees look at us like we’re the dirty ones.

Card interrupts my thoughts. “Probably ’cause we know each other, right? We don’t have to guess.”

I succeed in blinking away the tears. “Sure.”

“What do you think that girl was like?”

Tension spirals down my spine. My shoulders curl toward my ears. “Stop talking about her. She could have been any hundred dozen things. It doesn’t matter!”

In the wake of my outburst, the silence weighs like stones on my chest. I usually leave the yelling to Sare. Before my pride quiets enough to allow an apology, Card’s small voice brims with wonder in the darkness.

“A hundred dozen,” he whispers.

Several days later, when the sun hangs low in the sky, we catch up with the girl’s family. First, we find a small body that smells like sour urine. Desert wolves discovered the body before we did, so there isn’t much. I pretend my stomach doesn’t heave at the sight. Grandpa flips the bloody coin from the body’s navel in the air as we walk, letting the twins shout bets on how it will land.

A few miles later, the bodies of the parents lay half-buried. Their arms are around each other, their mouths full of sand.

“Dehydration,” Aunt Harmony says. She looks away from the bodies when she speaks.

“Shame. We could have traded,” says Uncle Dario.

“They might still have food.” My great-uncle points to the packs on their backs. That sets us all to work. I swarm around one of the packs with my aunts, turning away from the bodies holding each other. Card follows, eagerly peering over my shoulder.

Aunt Harmony pulls out the first treasure. A pair of white working gloves.

“Watersnake skin,” I observe.

She holds them out to me with a smile. I take the gloves and lay them in the sand. We find a baby blanket, a coin purse, another pair of gloves, a pickaxe, an empty canteen, and a change of women’s clothes. The clothes and gloves are evaluated and divided. The pickaxe is freshly sharpened and could make for a good trade when Uncle Dario ventures to the city. What did the refugees think they would do with a pickaxe in the desert?

Aunt Mora deems the pack itself too worn to take. She cuts off the woven cords and leaves the rest. The sun has disappeared behind the horizon, and someone has started a fire. A chill sweeps through me. My feet are glad we won’t be walking more, but I wish we’d moved further from the bodies.

“The desert wolves are probably still inthe area. They know there’s food here,” Aunt Mora says.

I put my hand on Card’s shoulder. He tugs on my shirt. “What do they use those white gloves for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve never seen gloves that color. They looked special.”

“They don’t need them anymore,” I answer.

“Do we need them?”

I thump his back, pushing him toward the fire. The night cools my cheeks. “Let’s go eat.”

My eyes open to the dark.

“I have to go pee,” Card whispers.

I roll over to face him. He’s only a black outline of curls and small shoulders. Exhaustion pulls at my eyelids. “Go by yourself,” I mutter.

“I don’t want to.”

“Take a torch.”

“Please.”

“No, Card.”

He groans like I’m the one being difficult. “I’ll pee in the tent. I’ll do it.”

I drag a hand over my face. “Fine. Fine, toss me my shoes.”

A second later, they thump beside me. I tug them on, grumbling about little brothers loud enough that Card can hear. A soft fumbling sound tells me he’s putting on his boots. He tugs at the ties holding the tent flap closed, and the hazy light of the stars and moon falls over our bedrolls.

Coals glow in the dented sand where our fire has burned out. I take one of the oil-soaked torches from the caravan and dip it into the coals. Fire catches. Card holds my hand as we walk away from the camp. Normally, I wouldn’t let him hold onto me, but no one is around to see.

When we’ve walked far enough, he lets go and takes several steps away. He turns around and drops his pants. I rub my eyes while he relieves himself. The flicker of the torch and the patter of his pee are the only sounds in the night.

I hear him pull up his pants. I expect him to take my hand again, but I don’t hear him come closer. “Are you finished?”

“I see something,” he whispers.

I whirl, the torchlight bending to the movement. My blood chills.

The desert wolves’ eyes reflect the moonlight like water. The nearest one is close enough that I can see a pale scar along his front leg. Their fur is the golden color of the dunes. I count four, but there must be more nearby. Desert wolves always travel in packs. I’ve seen them during the day when their coat reflects the sunlight like darting rays. In the dark, they are pale and unremarkable like they were shaped from the sand itself.

I push Card behind me. The scarred one bares its teeth. Card whimpers, burying his face in the small of my back.

I wave my torch and shout a wordless warning.

One of the wolves yips back as if to call my bluff.

Card is crying now. I can feel the shake of his frame. My arm waves the torch, but it feels detached from my body. I scream louder.

The lead wolf takes a step back. Its muzzle is thin. Its shoulder blades protrude over the top of its head.

“Go! Leave us alone!” I bark. My heart pounds in my ears as loud as a screeching vulturerat.

It growls. The other wolves echo the sound. I know a threat when I hear one. A shift in its shadow. A lowering of the head.

My lips part.

Just before its paws leave the ground, an arrow sprouts from its breast. A shrill whine simmers in the air. Voices shout behind me. I’m rooted in place as the other wolves’ ears flick and theyhunchbackward.Iswear one of them glancesmournfullyat their deadpackmember. Together they turn and sprint away.

I find myself gasping for air.

“Boys!” Uncle Fare grabs my shoulder. He pulls me against him with the hand not holding his bow. Card still hasn’t detached himself from my back.

“We’re not hurt,” I say breathlessly.

Uncle Fare affectionately pats my cheek. Normally, the gesture would be insulting, but I don’t care. I feel young and vulnerable.

Uncle Fare pulls the wolf’s body over his back, gripping the front legs. Card doesn’t let go of my shirt as we follow him back to camp. Uncle Fare drops the wolf beside the pit where my great-uncle is already rebuilding the fire.

Aunt Mora comes out of the caravan, a knife glinting in her hand. After making sure we’re uninjured, she kneels beside the wolf. I turn Card’s face away as she slices from the throat to the tail. A waft of bodily fluids reaches my nose. My eyes water.

“We can always use more pelts,” she says.

“Fresh meat will be a good change,” Uncle Fare agrees.

I guide Card back to our tent and leave them to finish taking what they can from the desert wolf.

Card slips into my bedroll with me. It’s been years since we’ve slept together like this. I don’t try to dissuade him. His bony elbow pokes my chest, and my arm wraps around him.

“You don’t have to be scared,” I say. As soon as the words have left my mouth, they sound stupid and hollow.

Card snuggles against me. Maybe he has enough faith in me to believe the words. He says, “I’m never going to pee alone.”

I laugh shortly. “That isn’t the lesson you should take from this.”

“Then what is?”

I wasn’t expecting the question, so I say the first thing that comes to mind, “Always carry a torch.”

“So your family can see you?”

“Sure. Exactly.”

We don’t talk, again, but it’s a long time before either of us falls asleep.

I awake to the smell of meat cooking over the fire. We pull on our shoes and duck out of the tent. I don’t see Sare up yet. She’s going to yell at me for what happened with the wolves. I can already hear her lecturing about how reckless I was. Dread sinks in my gut.

“Do you think the wolves found the family?” Card asks. He takes off one of his boots and balances on one foot while he dumps sand out of it.

“Everyone was safe in their tents.” I grab his arm to steady him. His hair curls around his ears. Sare needs to cut it soon.

“Not our family. The family we took everything from yesterday.” I cringe at his phrasing. Family. I refuse to label the bodies with a title so intimate and alive. Took. It isn’t taking if there isn’t an owner. “It doesn’t matter if they did. We’ll never see them again.”

“Because they’re dead?”

“Yes,” I say sharply. My shoulders rise toward my ears.

“They found the little girl before we did, so maybe they’ll come back for the mom and dad.”

I don’t answer, hoping it will put an end to his questioning. My mouth waters as I watch Aunt Harmony remove the cooked meat from the spit over the fire. He continues, “They’re like us, aren’t they?”

“The people were from the west country. They’re not like us.”

“Not the people,” he says exasperatedly. “I mean the wolves.”

My stomach flips at the memory of the bodies I’ve seen torn apart by desert wolves. Bloodied sand always makes bile rise in my throat. Before I can answer, the twins emerge from their tent, bouncing toward Card and talking over each other.

“Dad says you saw the wolves!”

“Did you ”

“What happened?”

“ fight them?

Card lets them drag him away, grinning. The twins are only a few years younger than him. He’s used to being a hero in their eyes.

Despite the sunlight breaking over the horizon, I shiver. Card’s question lingers like sand in my teeth. They’re like us, aren’t they?

I want to deny it. I don’t want anything to connect me with the beasts that tear apart carcasses, the monsters that will likely populate Card’s nightmares.

I think of Aunt Mora’s efficient slice through the wolf’s skin. She’ll have cut it in a way to preserve the largest sections of the pelt. The meat we don’t eat today will be dried over the fire. Whatever fat there was could be used in stews or as grease. She’ll have saved some sinew and tendons for stitching wounds. We’re stocked on most tools, but she might’ve cleaned a few bones to carve into whistles for the twins. The largest teeth can be added to the leather cord Uncle Dario wears proudly around his neck. Wealthier merchants in the cities will buy intact skulls sometimes as exotic trophies.

The process feels so whollyhumantome. Then, Iremember the bodyofthe girl the wolves found. They ate everything they could. No reverence for the dead. They did what they needed to do to survive.

Maybe the wolves would be proud of us for using their dead brother. Maybe they’d recognize that we’re also doing what needs to be done. It’s never been personal.

Two days later, I wake to Sare’s hand on my shoulder. Diffused sunlight fills the tent. She shakes me hard enough to jar my jaw. Her dark brows nearly touch. “Where’s Card?”

When we find him, Card looks like a body. The desert wolves were merciless. His clothing is torn so severely it will do only for bandages or oil-soaked rags for torches. There are too many pieces of him missing. So much protruding white and red. I bend over and vomit.

A burned-out torch lies a few feet from Card.

Sare falls to her knees, the soft puff of sand resounding in the great desert silence. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. No words for even this motionless boy. What rotten luck does she have left to fear?

I slide a hand into his hair, fiercely aware of how his scalp clings to warmth. Tears skid down my cheeks. I envision myself collecting the precious drops of water and dripping them down his torn throat. He awakes, and we go home.

“A hundred dozen,” I croak.

Sare glares at me through her contorted expression. She doesn’t understand.

“A hundred dozen,” I repeat. We say nothing more as we strip Card and leave him naked in the sand.

An Excerpt from Rewilding: A Process of Healing Matt

Chappel

Winner of the Tyner Prize for Creative Nonfiction

Nominated by

C. Vince Samarco, Professor of English

Originally from Marlette, Michigan, and now living in Freeland, Michigan, Matt Chappel graduated from SVSU in May 2021 with a double major in English literature and creative writing, and with a minor in sociology. He was a member of the 20th class of Roberts Fellows and previously won the Tyner Prize for Fiction.

Much of Matt’s work focuses on rural people and rural environments. His aim in writing is to create enjoyable but understandable pieces that are rich in imagery and use everyday language. In the near future, Matt plans to return to SVSU to pursue a master’s in social work.

The following pieces were originally produced in Creative Writing: Creative Non-Fiction (ENGL 303) in Winter 2021. The goal of this independent project was to create themes and threads that created an overarching narrative.

I Still Remember

Grandpa had arrived with his wooden trailer and drove up the curb to pull it through the backyard right under the apple tree. The apples were ripe, and some of them overripe. And today we were going to shake them all down so Grandpa could haul them away to the Forty and use them as deer bait. He boosted me in and then followed after me. The tree had not grown one central leader, but had branched out and grown two central leaders, and the strong old tree branched out like a Y. He took one side, and I took the other. When the apples were down, we climbed out, raked and shoveled the apples that hadn’t made it in the wagon, me on the rake and him on the shovel. And there we were, two central leaders from the same rootstock, Grandpa sometimes shivering in his old blue coat.

In The Heart of the Thumb

I grew up in a small town in the middle of the thumb of Michigan. The town’s nickname is “The Heart of the Thumb.” It is a typical Midwestern agrarian township, surrounded on all sides by sprawlingfields I remember thinkingwhen Iwas young,maybe six orseven, that here wildlife couldn’t and didn’t exist. To my mind, between the flat-scape of farmland and the tight housing of our neighborhood, there was just no place in this heart for wild things to live. But, on the fringes of the heart, just beyond the city limits, my grandfather Lawrence Grant Chappel owned and cultivated about 20 acres of the last remaining wildness that our town knew. Here, along the slope of a hill he planted trees Scots pine and silver maple,Norway maple and blue spruce. Just beyond

the hill he dug a pond and planted three willows and a catalpa. And in the far cornerof the property, wedged between the hardwoods and the corn fields, he planted a small apple orchard.

I didn’t get to spend time there often, but when I did, there was an almost imperceptible electricity of excitement in the air, because Grandpa let me help with projects that my dad thought were too dangerous for me.

My grandpa would sometimes take me into his workshop where he was making a coffee table, and he might have me join the project and ask me to hold a leg to the frame while he screwed in the bolts. Or he might have me clamp lumber in the vise, mark a spot for me, and hand me the crosscut saw. I remember atime I was in the woodshed with him in October. He stoked the potbelly stove, but I was still cold. He took off his blue coat and, setting it over my shoulders, helped me slip my armsin. But I wasn’t wearing the coat; the coat was wearing me. But Grandpa said, “You’ll grow into it.”

Dead Bodies, Living Souls

HediedwhenIwasnine Ihadnotcriedatallduringtheshowingorthefuneral.Iremember my parents holding each other at the showing, shuffling over to me in their black clothes, their cheeks tear-stained, and saying, “It’s okay to cry.” But I did not feel like crying, I felt curious, awkward… out of place. When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I sobbed inconsolably. I tried to look at myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t. I was hideous. Unsure of how to cope with what I innately knew was loss, I did the only thing that made sense to me, I went outside and climbed the apple tree. How strangely ironic it was then that within the hour Lawrence was put in the ground I fell out of that tree and broke my arm. My arm would heal, but something else in me was fractured.

The Corn on Your Side

There was another property my grandfather owned that he called “the Forty.” My dad liked to go visit the Forty every now and then, especially in the fall to look for deer. I couldn’t tell at the time, but he too was suffering from his dad’s death, and visiting the place where my grandpa had spent so many years was, for him, cathartic.

My dad would take me for drives out to the Forty during the late summer and early fall. And even then, at the age of ten, I could feel a growing distance between us. We used to play this game when we were driving out there. It would be all silent between us, with only the hum of the motor and the tires crunching gravel interrupting that silence. But maybe once on the hour drive, as we rode between fields, my dad would say to me, “Hey, how’s the corn on your side?” And then there would be a pause as I looked out the window at the waves of corn standing behind the veil of dust the van was kicking up.

“Good,” I would say quietly. And then I would lean forward to look out his driver side window. “How’s the corn on your side?” And then a long pause.

“Good,” he would say quietly, his eyes honed forward on the dusty road.

After high school I decided to take a gap year as a missionary. I had recently applied to a missionary training program in South Africa and been accepted. I just had to raise $10,000. At this crossroad of my life, my parents spoke with me little and seemed to want little to do with me. I left home and took on two jobs to raise the money. But the money raising was slow. I kept missing deadlinestogobecauseI wasn’traisingthemoneyintime. TheDecember after Imissedmysecond deadline, I got a phone call from my father. I was discouraged and I thought if I explained the

situation, my dad might sympathize with me, encourage me. But when I broached the subject he screamed, “Matt, stop it! Stop being an idiot. It’s a lost cause, and you’re a lost cause too. You’re never going to make it.”

I had to work an evening shift that night, so I told my dad I had to go. I got in the car and started driving to work and hadn’t even driven a hundred yards when I burst into tears. I had lived so long without the emotional support of my dad that inside I had put up a wall, guarded and hardened against emotion. It had been years since I’d cried, but there the wall fell, and I found myself weeping all the way to work. Sobs welled up out of my throat, and the salt stung my eyes. I could see myself in the rearview mirror, my face flushed and swollen with hopelessness. And in that weeping, a phrase welled up out of me too, impulsive and involuntary, that I repeated again and again, “I just want my dad, I just want my dad, I just want my dad.” It was a wound I’d never recognized, and it had been long coming

Father Stone

9-19-2015, Nature reservation in Pretoria, South Africa

I plucked a stone out, soaking and cold. Rivulets of water trickled back into the river. The stone’s splintering red veins branched and converged and interlocked like barndoor spiderwebs. I threw it back, but something in my own undercurrents spurred me to fish it out again. But I denied the instinct, pushed myself up off the boulder, and walked back up the banks to sit in the sun.

My father hadn’t taught me how to be dangerous; how to reach into the wet, deep, and low of my fledgling manhood and pull out the beautiful, ugly stone and cherish it for what it was.

Some years later I found a flat, smooth stone. Someone had painted on it a silhouette of a fatherteachingasonhowtofish. Thefather’sarmswrappedaroundtheboy,bothworkingtogether, one keeping the rod steady, the other reeling in. And that stone I did keep. It is now a reminder that I still need to be fathered, still need to reel in the vital life on the end of my line.

The Maple Tree

“A wound is tender, sensitive, painful to the touch a source of shame. When a wound heals, it becomes a scar, and you can touch the scar and there is no pain.”

A wise South African man

Another remedy for my woundedness was exploring woods and identifying trees. Maples weremyfavoritetoidentify. Ilovedthedifferenceintheirleafveins,intheshapeandfeel ofdowny or leathery leaves, in the color, texture and design of the bark. Silver maples tend to be thin and long, green on top with a pale downy underside. Sugar maple leaves are rather stout, pale green and have upward curving bottom lobes, like smiles. But it was the Norway maples that I was really attracted to. The leaves are large, leathery, and if you break their stem, they secrete a bitter milky substance.Inthisregard,IwasmostlikeNorways:ifyouwerearoundwhenmystemswerebroken, you would see the bitterness seep out. I had been bitter about many things, but particularly about how my childhood had been emotionally stunted.

One May afternoon I stumbled upon a large maple tree, among the thickest and tallest in the area. It was magnificent, I thought, but it was dying. No buds were blooming. I stood there a moment, mourning its loss. As I walked around the tree, my leg caught on something cold and sharp a piece of barbed wire had torn my pantleg and scratched my calf. I kicked it away,

frustrated that someone would be so careless to leave wire in the woods. But then I noticed something odd. The wire seemed to be coming right out of the tree. It was, and there were three strands of it. I went to the other side, and there were three strands of wire there too. In the near distance I saw a rotten fence post. The wire had probably torn into the flesh of the tender wood and the tree had grown around the fence, swallowed it up. The fence was taken down, but the wire would never be separated from the tree.

I will never be separated from my past. The tree kept its scar, but the wound had healed and the tree had outgrown it and lived a long and healthy life. It was then I suddenly knew, too, that I had to accept the wound for what it was, stop being bitter, and outgrow it.

Coming Back Home

I had cultivated that wild part of me, and gone through a process of healing, but the healing would never be complete until I made peace with Mom and Dad. I sat down with them many times over the course of a year and talked about how they had influenced my development, and how I had felt unloved. They talked to me about the poor way I treated them my perceived dislike of them, my stonewall communication style. It used to be that any time my father would talk to me, no matter what it was, my voice would take on a tone of exasperation. Sometimes I ignored them altogether. I recognized these and worked to break those habits. Also, for the longest time, I hadn’t been able to look my father in the eyes because I was ashamed of our relationship. I began deliberately making and holding eye contact. These little things eased some of the tension between us, and I slowly stopped feeling that shame.

Likeanyotherkindofhealing,itwasnotlinear. Thereweregooddaysandbad,regressions and progressions. What really helped me was the open spaces. Just after I moved away, my parents had sold their house and moved into my grandfather’s old place. The property that I loved so much was now at my disposal. I adopted the woodshed as my own where he had left behind many tools for me to begin with. I started by making axe handles and small Christmas decorations, and, with many hours of practice, I have progressed through a series of more complex projects.

Sometimes in the late afternoons I can hear my dad mowing the lawn. I lift my head and look out the window, see him hunched over the steering wheel, his wire-rimmed glasses halfway down his nose as he hones his eyes in on the blade-line. I hear the muffled hum of the mower as he turns the corner of the house. And I stand in the woodshed, hunched over the workbench fitting things together, setting the wood legs straight on a table, squaring away the frame. Grandpa is long gone, but I still wear his old blue coat when I go out to the woodshed, or stomp around the yard, or slip off to the far field to look over the apple trees.

An Excerpt from In The Heart of the Thumb

Matt Chappel

Winner of the Tyner Prize for Poetry

Nominated by C. Vince Samarco, Professor of English

Originally from Marlette, Michigan, and now living in Freeland, Michigan, Matt Chappel graduated from SVSU in May 2021 with a double major in English literature and creative writing, and with a minor in sociology. He was a member of the 20th class of Roberts Fellows and previously won the Tyner Prize for Fiction.

Much of Matt’s work focuses on rural people and rural environments. His aim in writing is to create enjoyable but understandable pieces that are rich in imagery and use everyday language. In the near future, Matt plans to return to SVSU to pursue a master’s in social work.

Matt originally produced the following pieces in Creative Writing: Poetry (ENGL 305) in Winter 2021. The class was taught by Dr. Arra Ross, professor of English, and the goal of this independent project was to create themes and threads into an overarching narrative.

The Wildling

Outlawed to the orchard in the throes of spring just as the blossom has burst the bud, now down a row where a wheelbarrow sliced the mud, I spend my mornings ducking under the string, pruning the rogue branches and loading the cart with flowers and twigs so blooming in my heart it hurts to cut them down. I know it’s good, in the time of getting ready for future fruit, to shear the surplus off and leave the base (wrinkled and dark against the tender wood) and give the orchard a consecrated space to come into its own and fully mature. But something in me doesn’t seem so sure. I know what the early years are essential for for the deep affirming of the grafted root, the plenty pruning it needs so it can grow, and the strength of a trellis to firmly brace the weight of heavy branches. I know, I know, but to cut them down! I stand here on the brink of fruit or fire I can see the branches piled (pink flowers among the lichen and the mold) waiting to be burned. And just to think I am the one who’ll burn them. But I was told

not to have a conscience about these things. And I know what’s expected of me in the name of cultivation to tame these strayed and wild. but I wish my purpose was, rather, to wild the tame.

Haying

We were getting out of the field today the flatbed wagon stacked with hay, without sides or straps we would ease on home. But as we hit the rise in the road with the tractor straining to take us on we lurched in a pothole and the load swayed side to side like a metronome, to one extreme, then back the other way and fell the country road filled up with hay. With almost half the wagon gone, a whole day’s work had been undone from something’s heart being pulled or swayed.

At odds with ends, beneath the trees in the crisscrossed leaves of sun and shade, we stood among the bales in broken heaps, unfolded like accordions fractured frayed. What could we do all that was done was done. We stooped down to restack the hay, picked up the broken pieces and moved on.

Backfilling

I was easing myself down out of the bed of the truck, having just filled a hole with sand and soil when I saw, laying at the edge of the road a tin can crushed, the back end flattened in such a way that the lid had popped out and folded in two to make a shimmering tailfin, like a silver scaled flying fish who during the night chanced to fly up onto the deck of this leeward leaning boat and got caught against the gunwale of the gutter pan. And I surprised myself in thinking this way, as if I were a child again, with ease making imagination, telling my stories with the characters I find at hand.

It sometimes happens this way, castaway and crushed, dreaming the secret dream of flying once again before coming back to the earth of grief and the choice to find scraps of joy in the day-to-day slog of shoveling dirt.

I fall asleep the way a drunk might fall asleep: Belly down with neck and head twisted to look out sideways, my eyes fluttering closed then lifting dreamily open as I try to will myself awake for one more drink of poem. The book that I’ve been nursing is tipping forward out of my hand and the pages slosh as it goes spilling over, washing into the carpet with the odor and guff of colloquialism, metaphor things I promised, I foggily remember, I would come back to in the morning.

Remedy

The Healing

The river is all but crosshatched to a blur, creased by the current and a restless wind that drives things downward. But I sense the stir of what will rise again still down within.

Casting far out and letting my line go slack the waters reflect, too close, a ragged sky I feel no bite, and let it drift on back. I cast up and back and forth to dry the fly, then cast and let it fall, again and again, wading to deeper pools where I hope to land one Brook there is some tension now and then and I reach in the water to wet my hand.

But I’ve pulled nothing out of these waters yet. And maybe it’s me, elusive to the game, letting them go before the hook is set. I spend my hours casting all the same.

His Folks

Megan Draper

Winner of the Seitz Creative Writing Scholarship

MeganDraperisanativeMichigandermajoringincreativewritingandSpanish. She began at SVSU in Fall 2020. She’s been previously published in two teen anthologies put out by Owl Hollow’s Press, and she has won such awards as first place in the SVSU Veterans’ Day essay contest and two Scholastic Gold Keys. Megan’s also an editor for Cardinal Sins. When she’s not reading, she enjoys watching superhero movies and traveling abroad. She’s an active part of the SVSU writing community and can be found at www.authormeganriann.com.

This piece was originally written in Fall 2021 for Dr. C. Vince Samarco’s Creative Writing: Fiction (ENGL 306). Megan enjoyed experimenting with flash fiction, a form new to her although she kept with one of her favorite themes: sibling relationships. She says that this piece, like all that she’s created in the SVSU program, benefited greatly from in-class critiques and discussion.

Maria rocked back on her heels, letting her weight press into the soft earth. Mud squelched aroundher toesasifshewere another root, another fallen leaf,finding homeinitsmoisture.Yellow cake,the kindher uncle usually bakedfor birthdays,satheavyandsweet inher belly. Thenighttime mosquitos vibrated around her ankles below the hem of her black dress. She killed one that perched to dine on her wrist, but none of the others seemed to notice.

Ahead of her, lacerated by the ridged horizon, the sun plunged. Red scraped across the sky as though the sun had sliced its fingers trying to claw back up. Beside her, the color reflected more like orange in her sister’s eyes.

Maria said in her best imitation of a man’s voice, “Savor this sunset, folks. It may be the last one we’re ever blessed to see.”

“Don’t say that,” her sister snapped. She whirled, her brown features twisted into a snarl. “Don’t you ever say that!”

Maria’s back slammed against the ground. The earth did not feel so soft then. Her sister stood over her, fingers fixed like talons. In the on-its-way-to-dead light, the wild strays of her hair might have been snakes so that it was not her sister at all.

Maria stared up at the monster. Wet soil seeped through her black dress and hair until it felt like stale, cold blood.

“Don’t you fucking say that.” The monster let out a sob like a roar and its foot lashed out. Pain struck and spilled across Maria’sface. Her hands flew to her nose. This time the blood was warm and real. She blinked, but the tears came anyway. She stared at the monster, whose precious worn-only-for-weddings-and-funerals necklace mirrored the sky like fire. Its chest heaved.

Maria knew the words were last said by someone now dead. She’d heard them declared over sweet tea on the porch. Felt them in his warm arms pulling her into a hug. Smelled them in his favorite flannel shirt.

Never had the nightly saying set off such violence. When he had said them, it was laughter and promise. Where did the fury come from? Maria tried to find some of it in herself but couldn’t.

The original speaker was gone, so it only made sense that someone else should say goodbye to the day.

The monster turned away. Maria looked to the sunset, relishing how her tears blurred the colors together. There was no beginning and no end, and the reds and oranges and yellows and purples took turns owning the prized acreage of the sky.

“I’m sorry.” Her sister had returned. Fat tears gathered at her chin.

Maria stayed on the ground. The mud was shaped to her body now. Movement felt like it would break something. One remembered voice repeated cheerily in her mind. Savor this sunset, folks. It may be the last one we’re ever blessed to see. Savor this sunset, folks. It may be the last one we’re ever blessed to see…

“Mom and Nan can’t hear you say that,” her sister said. She wasn’t looking at the sunset. “It’ll make them upset, okay? Understand?”

Maria sniffed. It smelled like blood and lodged in her throat. She nodded and told herself it wasn’t a lie if she didn’t open her mouth. All she understood was that if she spoke, the monster would come back. She needed her sister too desperately right now to risk that.

“Good,” her sister said.

Maria swallowed the copper taste and let it sit in her gut alongside the yellow cake. A mosquito crawled up her neck, but she didn’t slap it. She didn’t even feel when it harvested its meal. It would be long vanished into the night by the time the itch would start and grow and scar. The sun let go of its last desperate hold on the horizon. Maria stored it in her heart like one of the old photographs in Nan’s black book. She would not say it out loud, but she would savor and savor and savor.

Classroom Portfolio

Madelene Cifrulak

Nursing Major

Diane Boehm e-Portfolio Award

Madelene Cifrulak of Midland, Michigan, graduated in Winter 2022 with her bachelor of science in nursing. During her time at SVSU, she was involved in the Honors Program, the Roberts Fellowship Program, and the Student Nurses Association. After graduation, Madelene began a new position as a NeuroTrauma Intensive Care Unit nurse in a nurse residency program at the University of Colorado in Denver.

Madelene’s e-Portfolio project was created gradually through the first four semesters of the nursing program. At the end of each semester, she was assigned to add a new section to her e-Portfolio highlighting how she met the Standards of Nursing Practice set forth by the American Nurses Association (including how she would use her newfound knowledge going forth and artifacts to support those claims), her greatest accomplishments, and specific goals for the upcoming semester. She included, to name just a few items, nursing concept papers; group presentations; her Honors thesis, “A Comparison of Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine and Related Health Behaviors”; and information on a community gardening project with the Children’s Grief Center of the Great Lakes Bay Region that was completed as a part of her Roberts Fellowship. By the time it came around to applying for jobs, she had an organized representation of what she has accomplished over the past three years.

Madelene states that the biggest challenge of writing this piece was setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals for the next semester. A big part of nursing education is clinical hours within the hospital setting, and it is impossible to know what situations will come up or that one may be put in. This makes it difficult to get extra practice in certain skills. In assembling this e-Portfolio, Madelene learned how to create SMART goals that were adaptable to any given situation.

Madelene’s e-Portfolio can be accessed at https://canvas.svsu.edu/eportfolios/4564?view =preview

Work Application e-Portfolio

Spencer Morris

Occupational Therapy Major Diane Boehm e-Portfolio Award

Spencer Morris, of Flushing, Michigan, is enrolled in SVSU’s Master of Science in Occupational Therapy (OT) program. He transferred to SVSU in Fall 2017 after a year at Davenport University, and he received his bachelor of science in rehabilitation medicine from SVSU in May 2021. He has a variety of interests in the world of OT practice including mental health, pediatrics, and assistive technology. Before graduating in December 2022, he will engage in his Level Two fieldwork at MyMichigan Clare Outpatient (in Clare, Michigan)and then at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry (in Saline, Michigan). Spencer believes this portfolio would never have been constructed without the support and opportunities afforded to him through SVSU and its OT program, and he is truly thankful to be selected as a Boehm winner.

The intended audience for this work application e-Portfolio includes hiring committee members who are overseeing occupational therapy positions. Spencer hopes this portfolio is a display of his personality and values, his accomplishments and experiences, and the benefits he would bring to a company. This portfolio seeks to be a harmonious balance of its essential elements, which, for him, are the sections of “Education,” “Professional Skills,” “Professional Development,” “Professional Presentations & Publications,” “Service,” and “Expressions of Support ”

Spencer believes his e-Portfolio is thorough yet simple and straightforward. For example, although the course descriptions contain long passages of text, they articulate the learning process that helped him become an occupational therapist. Spencer also argues that each portfolio section is well supported by multiple experiences and/or pieces of information. For example, “Education” includes degrees earned, his G.P.A., and course descriptions, and “Professional Skills” highlights Student Occupational Therapy Association [SOTA] participation, OT workshops, and multiple healthcare training opportunities. Similarly, “Professional Presentations & Publications” highlights a paper that won him an SVSU Braun Award for Excellence in Writing at the graduate level and his presentation of a capstone research project at the 2022 SVSU SOTA conference. Moreover, Spencer adds, “Personal elements, including pictures, meaningful quotes, values, and professional goals, pair well with the foundation of OT because it is a client-centered profession that considers the individual.”

Convenience, Spencer maintains, is also central to this e-Portfolio. At the top of the portfolio and in the footer, Spencer provides his name and contact information. As a convenience to potential employers, when they click on his name in either place, this returns them to the home page. Additionally, clicking on his email address, in both the header and footer, sends readers into their email apps. For prospective employers, each section of the portfolio also has a button labeled “View Full Resume” that will provide a PDF version of that document. Hover icons are also utilized throughout the portfolio. In both his undergraduate and graduate career, he has participated in many trainings, educational workshops, and experiences. Each experience is validated with certificates that appear when one hovers over the related icon.

Spencer recognizes that the biggest challenge in constructing this professional portfolio was creating and keeping records of his experiences, but he appreciates that changes and updates to an e-Portfolio can easily be completed. He intends to continue to utilize and update the portfolio throughout his career as an occupational therapist.

Spencer’s portfolio can be found at https://sgmorris.wixsite.com/spencermorris.

Spotlight on... Students

No matter in which college they find themselves, SVSU students write regularly in their courses. As members of a university that, per its mission statement, “creates opportunities for individuals to achieve intellectual and personal development,” SVSU students write in different genres, learn different documentation styles,andfindthemselves weighingthe variousoptionsthey carry in their rhetorical toolkits. No matter their major, they must consider issues of medium, message, and audience

Because their majors do vary, students find different venues in and avenues through which to grow as writers. No publication can capture all their stories. In the following pages however, you’ll find stories about three students, representing three of SVSU’s five colleges, who have found success in their studies through writing

In this section, you’ll also find profiles of the editors of SVSU’s two student-run publications, Cardinal Sins and The Valley Vanguard. Cardinals Sins is SVSU’s fine arts and literary magazine. Produced by the school’s faculty, staff, and students, Cardinal Sins has been honored by the American Scholastic Press Association; it features work by members of the SVSU campus and by artists from around the nation. More information about Cardinal Sins, including back issues and submission deadlines, can be found at www.cardinalsinsjournal.com/ Founded in 1967, The Vanguard is SVSU’s official student-run news source and has been the recipient of numerous awards. Its online presence can be found at www.valleyvanguardonline.com/

Spotlight on…

The College of Arts and Behavioral Sciences

Jaden O’Berry

Theatre Major

Jaden O’Berry, who comes to SVSU from Flint, Michigan, has a passion for the stage, her theater courses, and her minors in literature and creative writing. And during her time at SVSU, her studies and successes as a writer have allowed her to assume multiple (pun warning!) roles director, lighting designer, dramaturg, published poet, Roberts Fellow, intern, and scholarship student to name just a few.

For O’Berry, SVSU has been a true place of opportunity. She credits attendance at a Michigan Educational Theatre Association (META) festival for high school students as leading to her decision to enroll here. While at the festival, O’Berry encountered Peggy Mead-Finizio, an SVSU assistant professor of theater, who told her about all the campus offered O’Berry thereafter applied for and won an SVSU theatre scholarship, and she began taking classes in Fall 2018. O’Berry, who is a twin and one of six children, has since worked on 19 shows while an undergraduate; there would’ve been more, had, she laments, the pandemic not struck. Despite COVID-related cancellations, the May 2022 graduate has found ways to stand out. She is the first SVSU student to direct a play (Fall 2021’s Lonely Planet) on SVSU’s main stage. She has been awarded internships at the Midland Center for the Arts and at the Great River Shakespeare Festival, as well asscholarships from LiveDesign International. She has also received a national awardfor lighting designfrom the KennedyCenter Associationfor an unrealized staging of She Kills Monsters by Qui Nyguyen

Beyond her work with staging plays in the Theatre Department, writing has also defined O’Berry’s time at SVSU. An avid reader and writer since childhood, O’Berry was often tasked in her classes with writing essays and reviews of performances done on campus, as well as synopses of plays she was studying. Her most notable writing accomplishment in the theater program stemmed from her work as a dramaturg: she created a 50-page packet of notes about Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls for the show’s cast and crew. She cites the opportunity to meet and work withJayTorrence,authoroftheplay Roustabout: The Great CircusTrainwreck, asanotherwritingand research-related highlight.

It hasn’t, however, just been about meeting writers or writing about others’ work. O’Berry wasalsofortunateenoughtohaveherownscript foraone-actplaybrought tolifeaspartofSVSU’s 2021 holiday show. O’Berry credits the emotional and writing support she received from MeadFinizio, whom she describes as a mentor, as crucial to this and her other successes. O’Berry says Mead-Finizio “consistently pushes me to keep going and to trust my instincts.”

Faculty in the English Department have also been instrumental to O’Berry’s development. O’Berry praises C. Vince Samarco and Chris Giroux, both professors of English, as nurturing her writing. Both instructors, she maintains, allowed “my creativity to run free, but provided me with ways to go further by pointing out valued and established writing traditions.” During her time as an undergraduate, she thus earned her first publication credits as a poet in Cardinal Sins and Still Life, both of which are SVSU publications.

The connection between her theatre and English classes, O’Berry notes, is that writing is just another way to create and explore other worlds. It is also a means of creating connections with others. Perhaps this focus on connecting explains why she hopes to get more original work published and performed in the future. Perhaps it explains, also, her upcoming studies at Illinois State University, where she plans on pursuing an M.F.A. in lighting with a focus on projection design and directing. That degree, O’Berry dreams, will ultimately land her in Chicago, where she will work to become a resident lighting designer and also establish a non-profit in the South Side That non-profit will, she hopes, provide art therapy to underrepresented youth. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, she understands the challenges facing minority populations, and she knows how writing scripts, activities, grants will help her to help others.

O’Berry has come a long way from her seven-year-old acting debut when she played Fruit Juicedrinker, a spoof on the name of Luke Skywalker, but undoubtedly, the force of writing will always be with her.

Spotlight on…

The Scott L. Carmona College of Business

Luke Rambo

Finance Major

Some people run away from the possibility of writing; Luke Rambo, however, runs towardsthe challenge. As a member of SVSU’s Cross-Country team, Rambo understands the dedication it takes to accomplish long-range goals

A finance major from Marquette, Michigan, Rambo graduated in May 2022. His essay, “The 4% Difference: Investigating the Effect of the Nike Vaporfly 4% on Distance Running?” not only combined his passion for writing and finance, but also won him the 2022 Braun Award for Writing Excellence for The Scott L. Carmona College of Business.

But Rambo didn’t stop there he is a long-distance runner, after all. A member of SVSU’s Honors Program, Rambo submitted for his Honors Thesis a piece called “Are GDP and Market Capitalization Correlated?” a thirty-nine-page research essay written under the guidance of his faculty adviser, Associate Professor of Economics Kevin Meyer Rambo is grateful to Dr. Meyer, noting how influential he has been as a mentor and a writing coach.

Rambo conducted original research using panel regression analysis and arrived at a conclusion quite different than one he was anticipating, which is not dissimilar to his development as a writer.

When he was in high school, Rambo claims he was never really a good writer. With the help of some good high school teachers, eventually his skills improved, and he came to enjoy writing. For Rambo, his experiences “highlight that I just was never that great at writing, but it just takes a lot of just repeated doing it and doing it again. And then in college I kept writing more papers.” That continued practice led Rambo to notable success, as a writer and as a runner.

Hisinspirationforbeinginterestedinbusiness,however,hitsalittleclosertohome. Rambo recalls watching his mom, who was an accountant for the middle school he attended. Although she didn’t graduate as an accountant, Rambo notes, “She was just always really good with budgeting and finance. And it kind of seemed like a superpower to me. Anything she does is kind of an inspiration.”

Combininginspiration from his mother and his personal interest in finance, Rambo was off to the races. In his lower-level Honors classes, Rambo honed his endurance for writing longer papers. Remembering some of the essays he wrote during his sophomore and junior courses, he says, “I think both of them were around twenty pages. With those, I would start an outline and it was good work, but eventually when I got down to writing, I’d end up being short.” He realized that finding a topic he was interested in was key because he was not satisfied just adding pages to meet the length requirement.

Knowing the Honors Thesis would be his largest project to date, he had to come up with a different tactic. To prepare for it, Rambo thought about the bigger picture. Knowing he’d have to present his research as a requirement of the Honors Program, Rambo worked on the PowerPoint slides (all thirty-eight of them) and his research simultaneously. By thinking of his audiences, both his readers and those listening to his presentation, he was able to visualize the finish line more easily.

After conducting his research, Rambo discovered “GDP moved market capitalization as a percentage of GDP less in developing countries. What that means is pretty much the stock markets of developed countries are less able to allocate funds that they received from investors to their economy.”

Since graduation, Rambo hasn’t slowed down. He has accepted a position as a credit analysis for Mercantile Bank of Michigan in Lansing, where he plans to relocate, eager to run towards his next challenge.

Spotlight on… The College of Education

Caleb Roussel

English Education Major

Caleb Roussel’s childhood dreams involved being a forensic scientist with the hope of one day working in a lab. Writing, however, was always something that grabbedhisattention asearlyasgradeschool AFrankenmuth,Michigan, native and a graduate of Frankenmuth High School, Roussel speaks fondly of a fifthgrade research project on the legalization of marijuana. The affirmation he received from his teacher, Roussel says, was formative to his academic growth and his interest in writing in particular. In fact, writing became something he pursued outsidetheclassroom. Roussel recounts beingage ten andmeeting with afriend on Google Hangouts;there,theycreateda completelycollaborative storyinvolvingtwospies.Thesecoauthors only wrote when online together, telling the tale as a series of text messages.

That affirmation, sense of community, and creativity that Roussel associates with writing have been integral to his time at SVSU. For example, Roussel, who started in the Great Lakes Bay Early College in 2016 and who is on track to graduate in December 2022, cites projects completed in The Art of Teaching Writing (ENGL 380), as fitting this bill. The class, as taught by M. Pat Cavanagh, a professor of English, required him to combine research and creative writing. For Roussel, whose minor is in communication and theater for education, the project meant finding informationaboutthedramaticartsthathethenexaminedthroughavarietyofgenresfromspeeches to letters. Roussel additionally credits Deborah Smith, a professor of teacher education, for helping him understand the importance of reflection as a means to foster community and to better the writing he’ll be asking students to complete in the classroom someday.

Whether they were more traditional academic papers, term plans done in such formative classesasTeachingMethods: CurriculumandInstructioninMiddleandSecondarySchools(TEMS 380), or reflections on those lesson plans, Roussel’s assignments have taught him the importance of revision, something he plans on sharing with his future students. As he admits, he has been known to revise assignments after they have been turned in and after he has received instructor feedback evenwhensuchrevision and follow-up weren’t required Not onlydoeshe findrevising a pleasurable activity, but he also knows it helps him grow as a writer.

Roussel also appreciates the diversity that his English and English education classes have afforded him through others’ writings This, too, is something he hopes to share with his future students when he is teaching on the secondary level. One such text, he argues, that will enable him to do that is Cherie Dimaline’s 2017 The Marrow Thieves This dystopian novel, which Roussel describes asgroundbreaking, focuses on Indigenous peoples in Canadaandreferencestheatrocities that have been inflicted on this group; it also features gay characters and offers commentary on environmental issues Because he sees the novel as fitting into his goal of creating more inclusive classrooms, Roussel has already used the book in a teaching unit he created on Native American literature.

During his time at SVSU, Roussel has been a member of the Hip Hop team and an active member of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity. Roussel’s extracurriculars can be seen as reminders of what writing can do be outlets for creativity, self-expression, metacognition, growth, and service. These characteristics are, likewise, reminders of Roussel’s future as a writer and teacher of writing In addition to teaching in the local schools when he graduates, Roussel

hopes to pen a collection of poems, largely inspired by his own life, on the topic of acceptance. Writing, for Roussel, looks to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Spotlight on…

The College of Health and Human Services

Spencer Morris Occupational Therapy Major

For Spencer Morris, staying flexible has always been part of his career trajectory. Having earned his bachelor’s degree in rehabilitative medicine in May 2021, Morris followed a winding path towards this achievement. Originally from Flushing, Michigan, but now living in Midland, Morris began his education studying computer information systems at Davenport University. At Davenport, Morris also wrestled, which he credits with his eventual interest in occupational therapy (OT)

When he transferred to SVSU as a freshman, Morris was still technically majoring in computer information systems when he realized his love of sports and the human body were the perfect fit for physical therapy. However, he didn’t leave computer information systems behind completely, nor did he stay in physical therapy for long before he shifted into OT. Because he had two friends who graduated with OT degrees, Morris became intrigued by the applicability of the program and made the jump.

The most important revelation about his change of study came while he was shadowing a physical therapist. Morris recalls, “he had this one specific client who had been in a car accident and was initially paralyzed from the neck down. By then they’d been working together for over twenty years and a lot of their focus, even though it’s physical therapy, was on occupations, like finding different ways for him to adapt, for him to brush his teeth.” Morris then realized he was “more interested in the ways he could help people participate in their occupations.” He switched to OT and hasn’t looked back.

AsanOTmajor,Morrisrealizeshowcriticalhiscommunicationskillsaretohisprofession, whether informally with other students or on the larger scale with other OT professionals. Morris helped organize the 2022 Student Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA) conference, and to coordinate such a large event, he was constantly writing emails and focusing on articulating his ideas. From this experience, Morris learned the benefit of writing during networking experiences to ensure events go smoothly.

On the job, Morris also recognizes the importance of clear writing. He recalls a specific example from class when he wrote a letter of medical necessity. In that letter, typically addressed to an insurance provider, Morris discussed the client’s conditions, the need for specific adaptive equipment, and why that equipment should be covered by the client’s insurance. These types of assignments provided Morris with practical experience readying him for his future career.

In another project, Morris sought Institutional Research Board (IRB) approval for his graduate capstone project. For this undertaking, Morris was focused on all the smaller details that add up to a polished and professional document. He notes, “Concise writing is hard, especially research writing where almost every sentence needs to be validated by research.”

Morris is a two-time University Writing Awardee, winning the 2021 Braun Award for Excellence in Writing in the Graduate Program for his essay, “How Community and Occupation Correlate, Correspond, and Create.” He is also the recipient of the 2022 Diane Boehm e-Portfolio Award. In his e-Portfolio, Morrisincluded “not just the learning but different experiences, different

fieldwork opportunities, volunteer opportunities. And then, of course, a lot of that is very formal professional writing. It’s the same as a résumé; one spelling error, one grammar mistake can really stand out and be a red flag.”

The experience of developing the e-Portfolio brought Morris full circle back to his computer information systems days. Because of that experience, Morris realized the importance of “being clear enough, concise enough, and explaining myself well enough,” skills making him attractive to potential employers. The e-Portfolio “was definitely a fun challenge because it was just website design and actually kind of goes back to that computer information to create it.”

Morris graduates in December 2022 with his master’s in OT, sure to continue using his skills in creative ways to support his clients.

Spotlight on… The College of Science, Engineering & Technology

Crystal Schultz

Mechanical Engineering Major

STEM fields have always been part of Crystal Schultz’s life. Her brother is in engineering and her sister in accounting and finance; her math and physics courses in high school were perennial favorites; and during her senior year in high school, her robotics team placed second in the world. In fact, a robotics competition first brought her to SVSU, and her interest in the sciences would profoundly shape some of her most memorable writing experiences at SVSU

Originally from Sterling Heights, Michigan, Schultz began taking classes at SVSU in Fall 2018. An SVSU President’s Scholarship recipient, Schultz cites some of her earliest classes as being influential. Although she describes herself as a “decent” writer when she started at SVSU, Schultz knew that writing wasn’t her passion. Classes taken through the Honors Program and taught by Dr. Fred Sundermann, an associate professor of geography, and Michael Heron,anassociate professor of social work,particularly challengedher withtheneedfor precision and brevity

These courses also helped her realize that if writing wasn’t a passion, choosing writing topics for which she had a passion would help her excel Perhaps that explains why a paper she coauthoredfor Honors II(HON 292) onthetopic of gender and income inequalityled to herreceiving a Braun Award for Writing Excellence in 2020 That paper’s focus on gender combined with her studies in the College of Science, Engineering & Technology (SE&T) and requirements for the Honors Program led to yet more writing. In Fall 2021, Schultz successfully defended her Honors thesis, “An SVSU Guide to Bridging the STEM Gender Gap ”

In her thesis, Schultz examined the number of female majors in SE&T’s various programs. WorkingwithSVSU’sOfficeofInstitutionalResearch,shelookedatdatacovering,approximately, a ten-year period, analyzing where most female SE&T students majored, the relationship between the number of female professors and female students, and the impact of registered student organizations on recruitment and retention. Some might simplify her work as an exercise in crunching numbers, but Schultz disagrees. This mechanical engineering major and mathematics minor knows her success as a communicator largely depended on a writerly awareness of audience. She names Rajani Muraleedharan Sreekumarid, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the advisor of SVSU’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, as someone who really helped her think through the best ways to present all her data, keeping the needs of her readers front and center. Schultz also thanks Peggy Jones, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, for reading her classwork so closely, helping Schultz to be as accurate as possible on the page.

Conciseness, audience, and accuracy, Schultz notes, are always on her mind when she is composing. Sometimes these skills were refined in the many lab reports and tech writing assignments she wrote in her major. Sometimes they could be found in the emails and social media work she composed for student organizations like Forever Red (for which she has served as vice presidentofitsscholarshipraisingarm)orforHonorsCorps(forwhichshehasservedaspresident). Sometimes it was the many PowerPoint presentations she assembled as part of her internship at

Magna International, in Troy, Michigan.

Another thread running through these activities was the need to make a good impression through writing. As Schultz advises her STEM peers, “Don’t dismiss writing. It’s not about just ‘getting by’ as a decent writer; good writing will make you stand out” and can lead to success

Schultz recognizes that any type of writing is a learning experience; learning also can lead to more learning and writing to more writing. In fact, after graduating in May 2022, Schultz returned to Magna When she interned there, she worked with design engineers, completed failure analyses, and did benchmarking for electric vehicles. As the company’s newest product engineer, she’s now moving on to new projects, but writing whether for bosses, other engineers, or customers continues to be part of her career and will continue to be a way for her to learn and, ideally, to promote change

Spotlight on… The Valley Vanguard

Shelby Mott Editor-in-Chief

If you had asked Shelby Mott what her major was a few semesters after enrolling at SVSU, she would have responded with professional and technical writing. Now, she answers with music education, but quickly adds her goal is not to teach in a K–12 setting. Instead, she wants to get her master’s degree and start a non-profit organization that reforms how jazz education occurs in the schools. For Mott, it’s all about change and composing in its broadest sense of the word whether that work involves her beloved soprano saxophone, her future non-profit work, or her duties as editor of The Valley Vanguard.

Originally from Fremont, Michigan, Mott began at SVSU in Fall 2018. That year, she also joined the Vanguard as a reporter, filing story upon story. She then moved into leadership roles. First, she served as sports editor (she laughs about her time in that role), found more of a niche as the arts and entertainment editor and the opinion editor in 2019, and then assumed the role of editorin-chief in 2021.

Repetition and revision, to use jazz references, have been central to her work as editor-inchief and her time at SVSU She notes that her many articles helped her acclimate to the school and interviewing others really pushed her outside of her comfort zone Moving beyond her comfort zone was a lesson also repeated in an Introduction to Creative Writing class (ENG 261) taught by C. Vince Samarco, a professor of English. There, the sharing and workshopping of her writing was a regular occurrence that helped her develop as a writer.

Revision and improvisation or, in music terms, the revisiting of a line or melody—were also something she experienced in and out of the classroom. Mott cites Fenobia Dallas, a professor of rhetoric and professional writing, as another writing influence, one who was instrumental in helping Mott decide to change to her music education major. Revision and change are also central to Mott’s work as editor-in-chief, and not just in the traditional sense of editing for correctness or adherence to the Associated Press Handbook Mott says she never expected to grow so much from her experience as editor-in-chief. Skills gained included getting to the point with her writing and learning about project organization and management; she also became informed about hiring, payroll, and even advertising processes and procedures.

Many of Mott’s editorial duties this past year have also been about revisiting the past following best practices she deems central to the Vanguard’s success. These practices were, by and large, upset by the pandemic. A major goal (and one at which Mott has succeeded) was to get a physical newspaper published and placed on the newsstands every week.

Another COVID-created challenge involved the rebuilding of relationships. Staff members had become used to meeting online, often conducting their interviews virtually as well. Consequently, Mott strove this year to create a culture of community and togetherness, returning to in-person meetings and acknowledging the contributions of all staff members writers, advisor, editors, and photographers. She also stressed to her reporters that they should be brave and do their interviews live and in-person. (“Be pushy,” she says with another laugh.) Other goals were to expand the paper beyond its four-page spread, something that was commonly done in the past, and to keep engaging in investigative reporting, a genre that she praises former editor Kaitlyn Farley as really excelling at. The Vanguard, Mott believes, is at its best when it is not just reporting facts but having a social impact.

That, however, doesn’t mean the factual reporting of campus happenings isn’t important, especially in a year where having “physical, real-world” events take place on campus was both a novelty and necessity. Originally appearing in the Vanguard on April 10, 2022, “Street Fest Returns to Campus after a Six-year Break” was written by Trinity Sullivan and reminds readers of the importance of campus life outside of the classroom. ***

“Street Fest Returns to Campus after a Six-year Break”

by Trinity Sullivan

SVSU hosted its Streetfest April 8–9, giving the community a chance to have fun and enjoy the warming spring weather.

The event, which was hosted in collaboration between Student Life, Program Board, and Valley Nights, spanned two days in parking lots D and E, next to the Ryder Center.

Streetfest, which opened exclusively to students Friday and the general public Saturday, offered fair-goers the chance to win prizes, take part in various rides and games, and enjoy multiple food trucks.

Olivia Getzinger, a biochemistry senior and the executive senior event planner for Program Board, gave some input on what led up to the event.

“This event has been in planning since October 2021,” she said. “There haven’t been too many large hurdles along the way, just small ones that were easily overcome with the help from my team in Student Life, Program Board, and Valley Nights.”

Specific attractions included a petting zoo, archery tag, and a Ferris wheel. The event was further incentivized by the first 1,000 students who attended receiving $10 in food truck vouchers.

Paige Dejohn, a computer science junior, weighed in on her experience at Streetfest.

“I was really excited for the rides,” Dejohn stated. “It’s been along time since I’d been able to go on one.”

Dejohn commented on how long she’s been looking forward to the fair.

“I heard about it a couple weeks ago, and I thought ‘that sounds fun,’” she explained. “I’ve been having a bit of a hard time lately and I just felt like ‘you gotta get up, you gotta get out and do something’ and this is such a big event to do that. I’m really glad I got to be there and got to experience some of it.”

Getzinger also shared her optimism for the event.

“This Streetfest is bigger and better than any year previously,” she said “I was most looking forward to enjoying all of the attractions with my fellow Cardinals.”

Dejohn shared her hopes for other students in attendance.

“I hope everyone had fun and if you had a bad day, a bad week, anything, you got to have a good time here,” she said. “Even though it was a bit of a cloudy, dreary day I was happy looking around and seeing everyone else be happy.”

Reprinted by permission of The Valley Vanguard.

Spotlight on… Cardinal Sins

Madeline Bruessow Editor-in-Chief

If Madeline Bruessow had listened to the naysayers, she would never have pursued her passion. Originally from Kawkawlin, Michigan, Bruessow has been a lifelong lover of reading, writing, and all things bookish. However, her path to becoming an English major and eventually editor-in-chief of Cardinal Sins, SVSU’s literary and arts journal, did not happen right away.

Although Bruessow graduated in May 2022 with a bachelor of arts in English literature with a minor in rhetoric and professional writing, she hadn’t always considered writing to be a viable career path. Bruessow never considered majoring in English, mostly because “because of how constantly it had been drilled into my head that I would never find a good job if I did so.” After changing her major several times during her first two years at SVSU, she realized she could turn her passion into a career. Bruessow remembers thinking that “life is too short to pursue a degree in something that I am not 100% passionate about.” From that moment on, she jumped at opportunities to develop as a writer.

Writing influenced her academic career in a number of ways, but Bruessow ties her success as a writer to her experiences in creative writing courses. She notes, “One of my first classes in the English program at SVSU was a creative writing course, which I spontaneously decided to take because of my love of writing poetry. Without this passion, I probably never would have been led down the path of an English degree.” Even though she enjoyed her creative writing coursework, it was still a bit of time before she sought editorial experiences.

Before becoming Cardinal Sins’ editor-in-chief, Bruessow never even considered editorial work as a career path. During that leadership experience, however, she “developed a love for this field and hope to find a career in the world of book publishing one day.” Bruessow started as a coeditor-in-chief in 2019 with Matthew Blum and eventually took the reins as the sole editor-in-chief in the fall of 2020. During her time as editor, Bruessow led a group of students through the challenges of the pandemic to produce several award-winning issues. The work on the 2020–2021 double-issue is a point of pride for Bruessow because it won “first place in the American Scholastic Press Association contest for student-led magazines and newspapers. Not only was this issue in particular something entirely new we were doing compared to years past by combining the Fall and Winter publications into one issue, but it is also the first issue published while I was editor-in-chief. So that means a lot to me.”

Her work as an editor wasn’t the only way she was involved in the university’s writing scene. Bruessow also worked as a peer writing tutor at SVSU’s Writing Center, which she named as one of the most rewarding experiences at SVSU. The most challenging aspect of tutoring, for Bruessow, “is the spontaneity of it. You never know exactly what your peers will have questions about, what type of project they are working on, and oftentimes not even the content of the topic they are writing about. However, this challenge is what makes it such a rewarding job, and it was always the greatest feeling to connect with students over their writing.” She kept writing, too. As an Opinion and Arts and Entertainment writer and editor for SVSU’s student newspaper, The Valley Vanguard, Bruessow was highly in-tune with the campus community.

Whether providing feedback as a peer tutor or as an editor, it all seems to be a natural fit with Bruessow’s lifelong love of language.

The following poem comes from the 2020–21 issue of Cardinal Sins

The Dragonfly Effect

by Peter Waldor

Your legs athwart me and on that bone that protrudes from your ankle for no evolutionary advantage, a dragonfly has landed. They are the most skitterish of creatures but this one is comfortable resting on that spot and though humans may be the second most skitterish of creatures you let it rest. Most people find them frightening but you think it’s mysteriously beautiful. So here you are with your legs athwart me, both you and the dragon have fallen asleep. Perhaps you are both awake in your dreams and are true equals that can ask each other critical questions in dire circumstances.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Spotlight on... Faculty

In the following pages, we profile the work of SVSU faculty members known for their work inside and outside the classroom. Innovative teachers and scholars, they are also successful writers who strive to help their students find their own success as writers.

Writing Science

Art Martin Professor of

Biology

Winner of the 2022 Franc A. Landee Award for Excellence in Teaching

Dr. Art Martin received his Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and completed a postdoctoral fellow at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. His undergraduate research lab is interested in questions concerning social behavior, evolution, and freshwater ecology. Most of Dr. Martin’s labs’ current projects focus on the influence of resources on social structure and competition of crayfish, a keystone species in freshwater ecosystems. The lab has also been working on projects that address water quality in the Saginaw Bay region with the Environmental Science Institute at SVSU.Alongwiththebehavioral work,Dr.Martinhasworkedoncollaborative projects that focus on nutrient levels in the Saginaw Bay and its watershed.

Scientists work to acquire funding for their projects and to disseminate their findings to the public and scientific community. Developing as a proficient and skilled writer is something that all scientists continually work on throughout their entire careers. Scientists are flooded with an array ofwritingexperiences,includingconstructingadissertation/thesis,publishingmanuscripts,writing abstracts, and writing grants to obtain project funding. No matter the various career phase they are in (as graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or professor), writing these types of documents are key components to their success. I feel that writing is a lifelong developmental process that can never achieve perfection, but we are always working diligently to improve and become stronger writers. I began my scientific writing process as a graduate student writing proposals and small grants to acquire funding for projects. As I progressed in my career, I began to write larger grants and manuscripts for publication. As a professor, I use my experiences and skill set to help our biology majors understand the importance of writing and some of the essential skills that will aid them as they grow as a writer.

Scientific writing often incorporates a unique framework that is structured around an idea and scientific methodology. Learning to tell a clear and relevant story within this framework is one of the challenges each scientist faces As a graduate student, I first learned how to design questions and research projects, and I then began to practice turning those projects into written format, such as manuscripts and grants. Some of the important manuscript characteristics that I continually practice and work on include flow of the manuscript, support of ideas with references, explanation of facts, incorporation of big picture concepts into the writing, and development of concise paragraphs and sections. These types of characteristics are important when writing to connect the details with big ideas and questions that persist in that discipline of study. The marrying of detailspecific science and big picture ideas is one of the more difficult skills to master as a writer and one of the hardest things to teach to new up-and-coming scientists.

Writing development historically has not always been a major focus in student training. To address this issue the Department of Biology has implemented a curriculum wide-change that incorporates more training on scientific methodology, processes, and writing skills. The core of our classesfor newbiologymajorsnowincludesassignmentsandactivitiesfocusedonhelpingstudents to develop these skills. This new approach to training students is threaded through our year-long Introduction to Ecology, Evolution, Diversity (BIOL 181) and Introduction to Cell and Molecular

Biology (BIOL 182) series to allow for structured skill activities. Also, Dr. David Karpovich and I teach Freshwater Science (BIOL 482), where we require the students to write comprehensive research papers from a series of projects that are carried out during the duration of the course. The design and expectation of the research papers is discussed throughout the duration of the course to help the students figure out the focus of their paper. Also, to address writing skills and techniques, wescheduleindividualmeetingstogoover anddiscussdraftsthat eachstudent writes.Duringthese meetings, we provide oral and written feedback on the scientific merit of the paper as well as how they communicatethe findings ofthe paper.We discuss the writingissues weidentify such as flow, transitions, the big picture, reference support, and explanations, as well as grammar and use of scientific terminology. This feedback enables student to continue to write their individual papers and seek solutions to the concerns that were addressed during the meeting. We provide reasoning and insight about the concerns and layout of each paper. Our goal is to help the students reflect on our concerns and questions, so that they find their own path forward in improving their papers. Writing is a skill that people strive to develop and improve throughout their entire careers. I try to impress upon my students that keys to improving as a writer include listening to and hearing critiquesandreflectingon eachpartof theirwriting.Aswriterswemustreflect ontheoverallpaper, document, or book. However, it is also important in scientific writing to revise many drafts that are each tweaked as you reflect on the flow, sentence structure, supporting evidence, and big picture of your work. Each paper is a journey that requires time, patience, and reflection.

It’s about More than a Class: The Case for a Fluid Definition of Creative Writing

C. Vince Samarco Professor of English Winner of the 2022 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

Dr. C. Vince Samarco joined the SVSU faculty in 2001. He earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan, his M A from Wayne State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi. In addition to receiving the 2022 SVSU Innovative Writing in Teaching (IWIT) Award, he has also received the school’s House Family Award for Teacher Impact. One of the editors of and contributors to Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Class, Identity, and the Working Class Experience in Academe (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), he has also published numerous short stories in various magazines and journals. Dr. Samarco has also served as editor of the SVSU publication Cardinalis and taught at the Saginaw Correctional Facility.

When students nominated him for the IWIT Award, they praised him for his workinIntroductiontoCreativeWriting(ENGL261).Dr.Samarco’sclassroom was described by one student as being designed to “inspire creative discussion we don't just learn from him, but from the people around us, as well. He also pushes us to give rationale for both our critiques of others’ writing and our own reasoning for writing what we do. The classes I've had with Dr. Samarco have all expanded my knowledge of their given areas in such a substantial way.” In the essay below, Dr. Samarco, who specializes in fiction writing, talks about his approach to that class, which involves challenging students to go beyond what they’ve learned (explicitly and implicitly) in the past something that applies to all students of writing no matter their major.

Teachingcreativewritingina universitysettingpresents challenges not necessarilypresent with other forms of writing. Where rhetorical strategies taught in high school can translate to a university classroom, creative writing students often arrive at university having not received any formal creative writing instruction. Instead, what students usually bring with them to their first class is received knowledge believing all poems have to rhyme, that all stories must have a single conflict that becomes more complicated as the story progresses until the story reaches a tidy resolution, that creative writing cannot be assessed, that whatever a student writes is worthy of praise, etc. In the Introduction to Creative Writing course, then, it is necessary to both teach skills that students likely haven’t encountered while at the same time challenging students’ definition of what creative writing is. By the end of the semester, the strategy of teaching skills while subverting expectations about the fieldhopefully leads students toa broader,more fluid understanding of what creative writing can be.

The goal of expanding students’ definition of creative writing begins on the first day of the Intro class, a class that covers both fiction and poetry writing. In that first class, when we begin

with the poetry portion of the semester, I make it clear that students will be performing their roles as students in ways that might be initially uncomfortable for them. After we go over the syllabus and introduce ourselves, students work on an exercise they will share to the class. The exercise could be to write a poem that doesn’t make literal sense, or to write the worst poem they could possibly write. The exercise serves as an icebreaker, where students can laugh at the nursery school rhyme or nonsensical draft they’ve produced and in the process become more comfortable with each other. At the same time, the exercise serves as a kind of catharsis. Because the exercise pokes fun at or confronts definitions of poetry students often hold, students begin to rid themselves of the notion that poetry is a singular thing. Do poems have to rhyme? Do poems have to make sense? What contributes to a person’s appreciation of a poem? These questions can lead to reevaluating childhood definitions of the genre.

After that first day, students begin the process of learning skills. The first skill we talk about is the concept of “showing vs. telling.” Showing vs. telling is a foundational skill that writers can choose to employ in a variety of contexts. It asks writers to create moments or images that suggest meaning without stating directly how the moments or images should be interpreted. “She was angry” is a direct tell. “She balled her fists and stuffed them in her pockets” is an image that shows anger without an intrusive voice stating how readers are to understand what the character is feeling. Images that show rather than tell enable readers to immerse themselves in a moment without being interrupted by a voice tapping them on the shoulder. Writers can use both methods, but while “telling” seems to come naturally to most people, “showing” tends to be something that needs practice. Students write a 500-word narrative about a character in a kitchen washing dishes. Someone very near this character has recently died. In 500 words, students must describe the character washing dishes without telling readers explicitly that someone in the character’s life has died. The goal is to depict grief without telling the reason for the grief. It’s a challenging assignment, one that provides initial practice with an important skill. Because many students haven’t encountered this device, the exercise also pushes students’ definition of creative writing beyondtheir prior understanding. Students continuetolearn that creative writing involves elements they hadn’t considered.

The next subject students learn about in the Intro course is the role sensory images can play in a reader’s immersive experience. The more a reader can feel that what’s been represented on the page mimics “real life,” the more readers are apt to accept the experience. Students almost always understand this logic intuitively. The challenge is that students often haven’t consciously used their sensory perceptions in a focused or sustained way for some time. Their sensory perceptions thereforehavebecomerusty. Some oftheearlyexercises inthe Introclassaskstudentstoreconnect with their sensory perceptions. For an assignment on “sound,” for instance, students describe in 500 words the sound made by a household appliance. The assignment encourages students to use similes to connect the appliance sound with something readers can relate to. The assignment also encourages students to recreate sounds using creative spelling. The goal of the assignment is for students to begin to retrain their sensory perceptions so that those perceptions are more attuned to the world around them. When students are aware of the important role sensory images can play in their writing, they see more fully that creative writing is an artificial construct that can be manipulated to appear like it’s accurately representing “real life.” This, too, is often something students haven’t considered.

It is also crucial in the Intro class to insist that student writers choose language carefully. This seems obvious, but most students have never entertained the idea that everyone employs in their daily interactions a palette of tired words and phrases meant to assist quick communication. Tired words and phrases often lead to tired, less-inventive descriptions on the page, which can interrupt or destroy the immersive experience. Students usually haven’t yet accepted that care with words usually comes in the revision process where writers critically examine each word, phrase, and image for meaning, sound, weight. To emphasize the importance of language selection, students write a 500-word story using nothing but one-syllable words. There are usually groans

whenthisassignmentisannounced.Studentsthinktheirexerciseswill soundlikesomethingwritten by an elementary school student, and they don’t like restrictions to their writing freedom. Through this challenge though, students often find that because their palette of words is limited, they have to pay attention to words more carefully. They also find that being forced away from their oft-used words and phrases enables their drafts to evolve in unexpected ways. Along with exercises in showing vs. telling, sensory images, and language selection, students also write and share their own stories and poems with their classmates where they learn how to both give and receive constructive feedback. The ability to critically examine and talk about other people’s writing emphasizes the important notion that writing can be reshaped to more fully reach authorial intent. In fact, the feedback process often introduces students to the understanding that writing can have intent, that works don’t have to spring from their brains spontaneously and fullyformed.Throughoutthesemester,studentsalsoreadanddiscussworksbyprofessional writers so they can see how peoplewith years of writing experience have handled challenges Intro students might be facing. In addition, these readings enable students to witness how differences in identity often lead to aesthetic choices. With the exercises, readings, and feedback on their work, students’ understanding of the many forms and directions writing can take evolves. After the Intro course, students can take intermediate and advanced classes to continue learning skills and broadening definitions. What many students find by the time they graduate is that the process of evaluating and reframing their understanding of writing has liberated them to think more autonomously, about writing and about everything. That ability has far-reaching consequences beyond the world of writing.

An Excerpt from “Life of the Party: The Polarizing Effect of Foreign Direct Investment”

Zachary H. Cohle Assistant Professor of Economics

Dr. Zachary H. Cohle joined Saginaw Valley State University in Fall 2021. Professor Cohle attended the University of Pittsburgh for his bachelor’s degree in economics, mathematics, and philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from the University in Florida in 2017. Previously, Professor Cohle worked at Quinnipiac University and Texas A&M International University. His academic work has been published in top economics journals including Southern Economics Journal and World Economy, and he has been quoted by Yahoo News, by the AP news service, and on NPR. His published work focuses on globalization, innovation, and elections.

“Life of the Party: The Polarizing Effect of Foreign Direct Investment,” from which the following excerpt is taken, was published in the European Journal of Political Economy in August 2021. It was co-authored by Alberto Ortega. The full article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102100.

Abstract

As countries are becoming increasingly connected with one each other, it is essential to study the influence multinational firms have on political outcomes in the countries where they locate. This paper examines the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on party vote shares in 149 countries between 1990 and 2017. We construct a database by cataloging political parties into specific political positions. We use a measure of linguistic distance between countries to construct a novel instrumental variable (IV) using the average exchange rate of the surrounding region. With this IV, we capture the relative attractiveness of FDI in host countries. Our results indicate that increased FDI causes an increase in vote shares for right-wing parties. We also find suggestive evidence of increased left-wing support in developing countries and legislative elections. We show that more moderate parties, specifically center-right parties, generally lose vote shares as FDI increases.

JEL Classification: F00, F50, D72

Keywords: FDI, Political Outcomes, Globalization

1. Introduction

Over the past 30 years foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown substantially due to deregulation, decreased communication costs, financial investment incentives, and international agreements. Total FDI inflow in the world increased bynearly 300% in that time frame with a large portion of this increase going to emerging economics. In 2018, low- and middle-income countries

saw over half of all inward FDI while in 1990 only 8.7% of FDI went to these countries. 1 Much of the research on FDI focuses on the determinants of these inflows (Jadhav and Katti, 2012; Desbordes, 2010; Busse and Groizard, 2008; Bénassy-Quéré et al., 2007; Loree and Guisinger, 1995; Chakrabarti, 2001). There is much less research on the effects of FDI. This paper examines the effects of FDI on party vote shares in 149 countries between 1990 and 2017. We construct a database that catalogs political parties into specific political positions. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive election dataset dealing with elections across the world. Using this dataset, we are able to analyze the political impact of increased globalization in both the developed and developing world.

We differ from previous studies that explore the role of globalization through imports and exports by examining the role of FDI directly. FDI is distinct from other forms of globalization. While FDI has been shown to be influenced by political factors, including corruption (Egger and Winner, 2005), government budgets (Wisniewski and Pathan, 2014), economic freedom (Bengoa and Sanchez-Robles, 2003), and degree of democracy (Jakobsen and De Soysa, 2006; Adam and Filippaios, 2007), no previous study has shown the role FDI has on national political parties. As foreign firms invest in a host country, they also begin lobbying the government of the host country for more favorable policy. FDI brings positive benefits to the voting population in the form of employment, higher wages, and product variety. The negative effects of FDI include increased competition for existing domestic firms. These real effects to the lives of the host country’s population cause changes in their political preferences.

Using evidence from Blanc-Brude et al. (2014), who show that FDI location depends on proximity to other alternative FDI locations, we argue that a host country competes with its surrounding region for FDI. We build a novel instrumental variable (IV) that measures the attractiveness of the surrounding region as a possible FDI location. To build this IV, we use two variables. First, we use the average exchange rate of each country in the surrounding region to major countries from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Second, we additionally use the linguistic distance to these OECD countries to construct our IV. Our results indicate that a one-percent increase in FDI leads to a roughly 3% increase in right-wing votes and a roughly 2% decrease in center-right votes. The right-wing results seems to be most pronounced for legislative elections (as opposed to presidential). Increasing FDI in the developing world results in increases in both left-wing and right-wing votes while center-right parties lose vote share. These results suggest that FDI may have led to increasing polarization during the time period of our study. Our findings are robust to alternate specifications as well as different IVs. Our method of using regional activity to create an IV for FDI introduces a novel, tractable, and effective way to analyze broader effects of FDI and globalization across the world despite limited data in developing countries.

As the world becomes more globalized, our results imply that trade policy, social policy, and intellectual protection rights (IPR) policy will be affected. Specifically, we expect less social policy, more anti-immigration policy, stronger IPR-protection, and more trade policy to be enacted as right-wing parties gain more votes than any of their counterparts. The results of this paper indicate a pressing need to better adjust for endogeneity when studying multinational activity abroad. Likewise, policy makers must understand the possible political ramifications of increasing FDI. The increased polarization from FDI could cause a political party to lose a majority or even destabilize the country. Increasing FDI might then result in increasing risk that deters future multinational investment.

1 This increase was found using World Development Indicator (WDI) data and adjusts for inflation.

3. Methodology

There are two mechanisms by which FDI can affect political outcomes: FDI spillover, lobbying. Due to a lack of data and complications in measuring the lobbying effects(De Figueiredo and Richter, 2014), we focus on the outcome of lobbying rather than the effort put into lobbying.2 FDI spillover effects are less opaque; however, we are more concerned with the way in which the economic effects are perceived by the public. Margalit (2019) argues that the role of economic outcomes in propelling right-wing parties is overstated in the literature. The author highlights the importance of people’s subjective assessments of economic change.3 Without survey evidence, the shifts in attitudes are difficult to measure. We are thus unconcerned with the actual mechanism that causes the political shifts.4 Instead, we focus on the effect FDI has on the vote shares of parties at each section of the political left-right spectrum.

To test this connection between FDI and vote shares, we regress FDI on votes for parties at each section of the left-right political spectrum in a number of countries. We employ an IV regression research design to control for an influence of the political process on FDI. We construct an IV that proxies the attractiveness of the surrounding region of a country as an alternative FDI location. To construct this variable, we use exchange rates and the linguistic distance between countries in a region and OECD countries.

3.1 Hypothesis

The effects of FDI on political factors are not obvious ex ante. We must examine the likely effect of the increased lobbying that is brought in by multinational firms. Multinational firm lobbying should benefit parties who are in favor of trade. Le and Yalcin (2018) show that a lobbyist will make contributions towards only one political party with policy that aligns closest to the ideal policy of the lobbyist. We can expect multinational firms to lobby parties in their host country that have polices that are more favourable to foreign firms. Right-leaning parties have been associated with more openness to trade (Milner and Judkins, 2004). Furthermore, Adam and Filippaios (2007) findevidencethatmultinationalfirmsprefertoinvestincountrieswherecivillibertiesarerelatively low to avoid high labor costs. Given that left-wing parties tend to be in favor of increasing civil liberties, such as strengthening the power of labor unions, we expect lobbying funds from foreign multinational firms to flow to the right side of the political spectrum. In addition to any pecuniary effects, increased FDI activity may indirectly affect the political environment by affecting perceived economic conditions of the voting population. This can benefit right-wing parties in two ways. First, there are the winners from FDI. Citizens who directly benefit from the increased job opportunities, higher wages, and increased product variety

2 Previous literature has also taken this strategy to examine foreign firms and their political influence in a host country. For example, Cole et al. (2006) regress FDI on environmental regulation using an IV approach.

3 Other authors have found that attitudes prevail over real-world effects in voting outcomes. For example, despite heavy polarization in the attitudes of Turkish citizens towards refugees from Syria, Altındağ and Kaushal (2020) show that political outcomes were not significantly affected by the immigration of refugees. Owen (2019) finds that the announcement of a new FDI project is enough to cause political shifts.

4 A major flaw in this method is that we are unable to disentangle the effects of lobbying and FDI spillover. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine which aspect of FDI spillover causes the most change in political attitudes. In this paper, we first establish the relationship between FDI and political outcomes. More detailed data on the labor market surrounding each election is needed to determine more specific FDI effects. We leave research focused on unraveling the political effects for future studies.

will be more likely to vote for pro-trade right-wing parties to keep these benefits continuing in the future. FDI has been shown to increase wages paid by domestic firms in the same industry while decreasing the exit probability of those domestic firms (Lu et al., 2017).

Second, the losers from FDI may also vote for right-leaning parties. Workers who lose employment due to domestic firms’ initial struggle with the increased competition in both the labor and product market can shift to right-wing parties who appeal to any anti-immigration attitudesthat have been amplified due to the negative FDI spillover. Parties on the right of the political spectrum tend to be more reactive to public opinion and global economic conditions than parties towards the left end of the political spectrum (Adams et al., 2009). By shifting their platform to better address public opinion regarding increased globalization, right-leaning parties can also capture some of the population who are negatively affected by FDI. Attitudes on free trade have been shown to be unaffected by increased imports in an area; however, anti-immigration views increased (Cerrato et al., 2018). In the face of increased imports from China,conservative politiciansin the United States have benefited by appealing to voters with increased anti-immigration attitudes. Autor et al. (2020) show increased import competition in the US increased viewership for the conservative-leaning news network Fox News.

Hypothesis 1: More FDI activity flowing into the host country increases the vote share of rightwing political parties in that host country.

While left-wing parties tend to take stances against trade and globalization, they are often ideologically centered around providing protection for workers and expanding within nation social policies. As such, left-wing parties have the opportunity to capture vote share in the form of voters who have become economically insecure from the increased FDI. Gomez and Ramiro (2019) find strong evidence that radical left parties gain vote shares in European countries as unemployment increases. With incoming FDI, some workers will become more economically insecure. For example, Barrios et al. (2005) show that a continuous increase in FDI first deters domestic firm entry due to the increased competition. Likewise, firms can lose market share as a result of increased competition (Lu et al., 2017). Negative FDI spillover can also come in the form of increased corruption and less domestic investment (Pinto and Zhu, 2016). Left-wing parties may also gain vote shares if the increased FDI brings citizens into the industrial workforce. Albanese and de Blasio (2021) show that industrialization causes left-wing parties to gain vote share as more of the voting population find the need for pro-worker representation. While the negative effects of FDI may push people to more anti-trade parties, those effects dissipate over time. For example, Barrios et al. (2005) show that increasing FDI causes domestic firms to eventually enter the market at a higher rate. The increased FDI produces positive externalities, specifically due to their demand for domestic intermediate goods, which strengthens the domestic industry overall. Furthermore, right-wing parties have the chance to capture a larger set of voters. That is, these parties attract winners and losers from FDI. Right-wing parties also have access to lobbying funds from foreign firms. We expect to see left-wing parties capture more votes as FDI increases; however, right-wing parties should be able to capture more votes than leftwing parties.

Hypothesis2: More FDI flowingintothe host countryincreasesthe voteshare of left-wingpolitical parties in that host country at a lower rate than right-wing political parties.

While we are primarily interested in these two core hypotheses, we also test a number of additional hypotheses with our rich data set. First, since both extremes of the political spectrum see an influx of voters, the parties located around the center should see a decrease in votes. The voting population is drawn away from center parties as citizens either reap the benefits of trade or react against it. As political parties become more polarized, public opinions begin to become more

polarized and entrenched (Druckman et al., 2013). This effect encourages partisan thinking and party-based decision-making. As such, we expect the parties in the center will have difficulty swaying voters back into their party.

Second, we expect Hypotheses 1 and 2 to hold for developing countries. Given that developing countries have the opportunity for rapid growth, the benefits of FDI can have a comparatively greater effect on citizens in developing countries. In context of Hypothesis 1, rightwingpartiesindevelopingcountriesshouldbeabletogainmorevoters thantheircounterpartsfrom developed countries due to the larger change in the economic situation of the voters. In contrast, right-wing parties in developed countries may be better situated in taking advantage of antiimmigration sentiments as a result of increased FDI that may not be as present in developing countries. While the large increase in economically advantaged voters will likely result in an increased vote share for right-wing parties in developing countries overall, the magnitude of the effect on right-wing parties in developing countries versus developed countries remains unclear. In context of Hypothesis 2, left-wing parties in developing countries are able to capture economically disadvantaged voters at anincreasedratethantheir developed countries’ counterparts. Fewersocial safety nets may exist in order to alleviate negative effects of FDI. Developed countries tend to have stronger economic institutions and policies that prevent economic fluctuations. We expect Hypothesis 2 to be more pronounced in developing countries.

Finally, we test if voters respond differently to FDI when voting in presidential elections thanlegislativeelections.Votersoftenvotefordifferentpartiesontheirballot.Forexample,Marien et al. (2015) find that one quarter of voters in local Belgian elections in 2012 voted for a candidate of a different party than their federal preference. Voters may vote against their preferred party in the lower chamber due to familiarity with the candidate or specific candidate characteristics (Marsh, 2007). A voter’s familiarity with a candidate remains constant as FDI increase. This discrepancy in voting could affect the magnitude of FDI’s effect; however, we still expect Hypotheses 1 and 2 to hold in both presidential and legislative elections.…

6. Conclusion

This paper examines the effect of FDI on support for political parties in 149 countries. Our results suggest that FDI increases right-wing vote shares and decreases support for center-right parties. We find that a one-percent increase in FDI results in about a 2.4% decrease in the number of center-right votes and about a 3.3% increase in right-wing votes. We also find some evidence of left-wing support in developing countries. Taken together, our results suggest that countries become more politically polarized as FDI increases in the country. This polarization effect is pronounced in legislative elections and especially evident in developing countries. Although in a different context, our results compare to those from Autor et al. (2020) and Dippel et al. (2015) who find that import competition increases polarization support for right-wing parties. Although we cannot pinpoint a mechanism (e.g., employment), our results suggest that opening up to multinational activity and investment also increases right-wing support and leads to polarization. Our study has many implications on the policy outcomes of FDI. The political polarization from increased FDI can cause destabilization to both developing and developed countries. Partisan conflict has been shown to decrease FDI inflows (Azzimonti, 2019). Immediate increased FDI may hinder development due to decreased future FDI. Policy that attracts FDI might also change the political composition of a government. While increased FDI that tips governments to the left can cause increased public expenditures, increased FDI that secures power for right-wing parties can cause deregulation that may incentivize more FDI despite the increased riskiness associated with the political instability. Political parties can benefit greatly from bringing FDI into their country; however, the changing economic conditions may result in a transfer of power. In showing a link between FDI and political parties, we also draw attention to a growing need to treat trade policy and IPR-protection reform as endogenous to foreign multinational activity.

Our paper also introduces a novel IV into this literature on the effects of FDI. We use economic variables from the surrounding region weighted by the linguistic distance to OECD countries to capture the exogenous variation of FDI. This IV improves upon what has been used in the literature by allowing for time variation and thus the inclusion of country and year fixed effects. Future research should consider using this IV to study the effect of FDI on health outcomes, criminal activity, and other outcomes in the political realm. For example, as recent research has been done on the effect of institutional quality on FDI (Akhtaruzzaman et al., 2017; Dzhumashev and Hailemariam, 2021), future research can use our IV method to further explore this connection.

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Reprinted by permission of the authors and publisher. This article was published in European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72, Zachary Cohle and Alberto Ortega, “Life of the Party: The Polarizing Effect of Foreign Direct Investment,” p. 102100, Copyright Elsevier (2022).

An Excerpt from African American Literature in Transition, 1865

–1880: Black

Reconstructions

Eric Gardner Professor of English

Eric Gardner came to SVSU in 1996 after completing a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently the chair of SVSU’s Department of English. He is the author of two prize-winning monographs, Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (University Press of Mississippi, 2009) and Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015). He has also edited or co-edited five books including, most recently, the volume on Reconstruction in Cambridge University Press’s African American Literature in Transition series (2021) and, with Bryan Sinche, a scholarly edition of a pseudonymously published 1894 book by two African Americans from Michigan, William Anderson and Walter Stowers, titled Appointed: An American Novel (West Virginia University Press, 2019).

Professor Gardner has twice been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received, among other awards, SVSU’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Award; SVSU’s Roosevelt Ruffin Diversity Award; a Regional Hero Community Service Award from the Saginaw County N A A C P Freedom Fund Committee; SVSU’s Earl L. Warrick Award for Research Excellence; and a Ruth and Ted Braun Research Fellowship. He was one of the original convenors of the Just Teach One: Early African American Print web project, which was founded in collaboration with the American Antiquarian Society, and he served for five years on the editorial staff of the journal of the Research Society for American Periodicals, American Periodicals. He has written and spoken widely on nineteenth-century American culture, and he currently serves on the advisory boards of a number of scholarly organizations and journals. He teaches a range of courses at SVSU, with an emphasis on American literature and the praxis of literary history.

The following excerpt is drawn from Dr. Gardner’s introduction to African AmericanLiteratureinTransition,1865–1880: BlackReconstructions,thesixth volume in the African American Literature in Transition series.

African American Literature in Transition, 1865–1880: Black Reconstructions explores the rich field of African American print culture in the transitional years after the Civil War. It locates and studies materials that many literary critics and historians simply haven’t figured into their larger narratives of American literature and culture. But as massively important as this recovery of the “who, what, where, and when” of Black literature during the period is, this volume

also emphasizes a set of methodological innovations focusing especially on the “how and why” of African American print in the fluid moments of (and surrounding) Reconstruction. Paying homage to W. E. B. Du Bois’s landmark work Black Reconstruction in America (1935), it asks both what is possible and what is needed at the current critical moment. Like Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019), it submits that “few AmericanhistoricalperiodsaremorerelevantsubjectsforAmericanstoreflect uponatthismoment in the history of our democracy than Reconstruction” (5). It thus makes a set of interventions that understand that such large-scale recovery inherently challenges methods dominant in American literary study because those methods have sometimes flowed from and/or been complicit in the widespread ignorance, dismissal, and/or misreading of Black print engagement. It recognizes that we must, to paraphrase African American Literature in Transition series editor Joycelyn Moody, explore the dynamics of change, the engines of literary development, and the cultural kinetics of African American literary history. We thus pray that this volume makes scholars pause and reconsider what we’ve collaboratively and individually said and not said about Reconstruction, about post-Civil War literature, and about African American spaces and traces in an often-hostile America.

At the core of such work is the recognition that many of the period’s texts are not only aesthetically striking but also central to understanding key trends and transitions in African American (and broad American) literature and culture. In African American texts from Reconstruction, we see crucial thinking about race and nation in the wake of the massive war; we see, too, critical battles to articulate how that war might be remembered. Some of these texts think deeply about the carnage of the war but also, sometimes simultaneously, about the centuries of carnage caused by the system of slavery. Some speak of the immediate effects of legal freedom on the millions of enslaved men, women, and children throughout the South, and some speak, too, of the lasting trauma brought on by slavery. Some elucidate the impact of formerly enslaved people voting for the first time and of the first Black elected officials. Some carefully consider key legislative, judicial, and executive acts including and beyond the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments that tried to “reconstruct” the nation, even as some recognize that at least some parts of the nation would need to be de-constructed or freshly constructed if African Americans were to have any chance of public engagement or even survival. Some see great hope for self-determination, citizenship, prosperity, education, and other rights both large and small and some recognize how deeply that hope was threatened from the period’s very beginning. Some address how that hope fell apart as white northerners tired of “southern” struggles and failed to fight racism at home, and many pair nuanced analysis of the “changing same” in the South (and beyond) with careful weighing of the complexities of local, state, regional, and national identities and actions. Many speak of deep and abiding faith, and some struggle with how faith structures might or might not work in a faithless nation.

In short, African American print between 1865 and 1880 tells us a great deal about the nation’s art, culture, memory, and struggles in a crucial period of real, potential, and frustrated transitions. These recognitions have led to this volume’s dual emphasis on recovering Black print from the years just after the Civil War and on finding, adapting, and/or creating concomitant methods that grow from the texts (and contexts) and that emphasize the title focus of the series, African American Literature in Transition

This volume thus offers the most nuanced treatment of African American interactions with print during the period. To help map these vital years, the volume’s contributions are grouped in three clusters each containing a very brief introduction followed by four chapters, each centering on a nexus of methodological and thematic questions, and each engaging in crucial recovery work. These clusters embody an innovative approach to chronology flowing from the broader series emphasis on “transitions.” Some of the chapters, for example, open with close consideration of a single moment drawn from the period, but these moments, whether considered briefly or in depth, serve as springboards to broader work that positions chapter subjects within key transitions

in African American literature and life. Very much in the sense Derrick Spires describes in his chapter, the volume as a whole is a set of exciting, challenging sketches that recognize just how incomplete both the study of Black Reconstruction literature and the praxis of national Reconstruction are.

The opening section, “Citizenships, Textualities, and Domesticities,” includes chapters by Spires, Stephanie Farrar, Rynetta Davis, and me and rewrites the emphasis on national political citizenship in histories of the period by tracing the transitions in Black textual considerations of various citizenships (political, religious, literary), with some emphasis on just what the “domestic” might look like during the period. The chapters in this section often locate their work through the dynamic practices and politics of important but understudied literary genres, ranging from the sketch to the narrative poem to the religious apologia.

The second section, “Persons and Bodies,” offers chapters by Kathy Glass, Nazera Sadiq Wright, Keith Green, and Brigitte Fielder and asks how transitions in thinking about Black personhood and/or physicality sometimes linked, sometimes not, and both often tied to various incarnations of citizenship shaped and were shaped by Black authors’ reading and writing of bodily states from disability to childhood and bodily governance from reform and temperance to “respectability politics.”

The volume’s final section, “Memories, Materialities, and Locations,” contains chapters by Cody Marrs, Janet Neary, Sherita Johnson, and Katherine Adams and seizes on the demands and desires of material production including the production of memory and place that were so central to debates over race, citizenship, and personhood in Reconstruction. It specifically thinks through modes of making Black labors visible through print by considering concrete, tropological, and metaphysical “making,” be it making physical print remembrances or fashioning domestic products or producing raw cotton, “cotton culture,” or visions of the American West and the American South. In this, the section highlights Black engagement with the national traffic in memory, specificallyrubrics ofmemory tiedtothewar,nationhood, race,mobility,geography,and national destiny.

One key goal in the volume is to allow the broad thematic schema in and between the various chapters to dance with and deeplyinform various chronologies and methodologies. In other words, through “fixing” individual moments and subjects, the chapters explore the before and after of each, the scene and the staging, the surrounding processes, the dynamics shaping the how and why of these moments and subjects. These approaches build from our collective sense that the volume’s challenge is, in part, in one peer reviewer’s words, to “unsettle a subject that has not been settled.” The chapters thus offer textual, paratextual, and contextual work crucial to the kind of “ready reference” volume the period so needs and deserves but simultaneously think through various catalysts and chains of reactions central to the period as well as key unanswered questions. We thus study Black Reconstruction print as a “during” as well as an “after” and a “before” as a set of textual events that both engaged with and were transitions.

Creating this volume, we have been constantly reminded of what we must still do. We have, for example, deemphasized Frederick Douglass who continued to do immensely important work during Reconstruction mainly because he has been studied and is being studied so deeply and so well by other scholars in other places (from David Blight to Robert Levine to Kathleen Diffley); that said, even more consideration of Douglass is warranted. While several chapters consider Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and William Wells Brown, Harper’s lectures and Brown’s writing about the Civil War are especially rich areas for further exploration. Scholars are only beginning to contend with the power of the Black press a set of venues that make regular appearance in the chapters here but that demand much fuller study. And, of course, scholars continue to rediscover new texts and new ways of thinking about the authors, texts, and subjects here. There is so much to do; it is our greatest hope that this volume moves our collective work forward.

In short, this volume calls for reappraisals both of the period and beyond the period. We want to explore how and why the volume’s recovery work should change our broader methods as literaryhistoriansandculturalcritics.WewanttoreconsiderhowwemightstudyAfricanAmerican literary works of the period and beyond as carefully crafted material objects circulating in a hostile print culture objects that interfaced in all sorts of complex ways with diverse African American lived experiences during the period. We hope to allow the volume’s readers to deeply consider how individual texts, authors, and actions are set in complex webs of events, circumstances, print, and personages all situated (and/or becoming situated) within larger subjects, arguments, trends, traditions, and transitions

From Eric Gardner’s “Introduction” to African American Literature in Transition, 1865–1880: Black Reconstructions. Cambridge University Press, 2021. (Volume 6 of the African American Literature in Transition series. Volume Editor, Eric Gardner. Series General Editor, Joycelyn Moody.) Reprinted by permission of the author and Cambridge University Press.

An Excerpt from “Empathy in Isolation: Lived Experiences of Teachers of Refugee Children”

Adam Scott LeRoy Assistant Professor of Teacher Education

Adam Scott LeRoy joined SVSU in 2021. He earned his Ph.D. from Oakland University and his M.A.T. from University of Phoenix. His primary research interests focus on the use of early intervention for young children identified as having disabilities and epistemology in cultural-historical theory, especially structural understandings of human development. He has published articles in Human Arenas; the Integrative Journal of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences; and Mind, Body and Education. Dr. LeRoy also has a book chapter on characteristics ofinnerspeech.PriortojoiningSVSU, he workedas aspecial education teacher, teacher consultant, and special education coordinator. He lives with his amazing wife and two children in southeast Michigan.

Co-authored by Shawna Lyn Boomgaard, “Empathy in Isolation” appeared in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science in 2021. The full article can be read at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-019-09508-0.

Findings

Three collective themes emerged from responses: value in empathic, reciprocal relationships; increased system capacity through programming/resources; and meaningful impact from professional development. For clarity, we identify the themes individually and provide context to form the basis for deeper discussion as it pertains to our research questions. Coresearchers are identified by the order in which they responded to the survey (i.e., co-researcher #1 was the first to complete the survey).

Theme One: Value in Empathic, Reciprocal Relationships

Across responses, co-researchers indicated a deep sense of empathy and concern for the impact of trauma. These themes emerged across reflections on concerns and rewards. For example, in response to our first question, co-researcher #12 commented: “They come with trauma and need to learn the basics to get themselves use [sic] to the United States. Its [sic] more than just language. They have been through severe trauma.”

In a succinct, but equally empathic response, co-researcher #3 simply responded, “I want them to feel safe.” The co-researcher went on to state “Reward-their love... most of them LOVE being here and are so happy.” Here, the realization of safety became a personal reward. Other personal rewards emerged from advocacy (co-researcher #9: “Reward-advocating for them and their family”) and cross-cultural experiences (co-researcher #7: “[...] the most rewarding part is the assets they bring with them for us to learn and grow.”).

It is important to note that responses of empathy occur in response to potential traumatic events suffered by the child and interpreted within co-researcher perception of abilities not possessed by the child (i.e., language acquisition or “proper” behavior). This delineation is useful not only as it highlights divergent motivations for empathic response but also because it provides a distinction in how responses framed perception. Challenges were often described in the concrete (i.e., specific resources) and rewards in events that aid intentionality (i.e., love). Co-researcher #2 best exemplified this contrast: “It is rewarding when you feel like you have created a bond with them and become a safe person for them.”

Theme Two: Increased System Capacity through Programming/Resources

Issues with programming and resources created concrete challenges. These challenges emerged as underlying frustration with available programming. For instance, when we asked coresearcherstoprovideexamplesof useful resources,theirresponsestendedto reflect dissatisfaction and frustration from a perspective of child-advocacy. Co-researcher #2 captured this:

Having time to meet with the counselor or social worker helps my students with their emotions a lot, but our school shares one social worker with 3 other schools and they do not get this service on a regular basis. I think it would help.

This sense of student advocacy and frustration extended to collegial relationships. As explained by co-researcher #9:

In particular, some general ed. teachers can be very callous about these students. One of my colleagues actually told the counselor that he “did not have time” to work with one of my students who was in his math class. This child had survived war, interrupted schooling, and was in refugee camps for about 2 years before coming here. He is a great kid and deserves more.

Academic and emotional concerns were distinct in recommendations. For example, interrupted schooling was a particular frustration when considering academic outcomes. Coresearchers recommended for increased one-on-one time to develop Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills or grouping Level 1 children. Recommendations for assistive technology, such as translation devices, arose from empathic concern for acclimation and shared experience. In both contexts, recommendations were intended to improve present services or to create new models these were not descriptions of an existing continuum. In contrast to theme one, the concrete and intentional are symbiotic. In theme one, co-researchers experienced the intentional as independentoftheconcrete.Forinstance,afeelingof“love”couldoccurintheabsenceoflanguage acquisition. This is not the case in theme two. Intentionality is largely dependent on resource availability namely, the ability for programs to remedy child experience.

Theme Three: Meaningful Impact from Professional Development

Both positive and negative professional development experiences were used to make meaning and typically occurred in tandem. For example, co-researcher #3 wrote: “I was not very familiar with the process before the professional development was offered. Working with the families’ casemanagers atthe beginningoftheyear was very difficult and not efficient or effective. They hadsuchheavycaseloads that contacting them viaphone and email was very time-consuming andineffective.” So,although theco-researchermetafamily’scasemanager(coded as meaningfulpositive), the case-manager was limited by caseload size and ineffective (coded as meaningful-

negative). Overall, five co-researchers were able to identify the provision of specific training for resettled children and seven co-researchers were not.

The inclusion of cultural aspects was important to meaning construction. Co-researcher #7 reported “Mostly [language acquisition] training but not enough on Cultural Competency.” Thus, the co-researcher received skill-specific training but expressed a desire for cultural training. In contrast, co-researcher #4 specifically noted the inclusion of cultural information to construct a positive meaning for professional development: “The most helpful information we received about our Syrian refugees came from the district’s ESL coordinator who organized a professional development day on the cultural background and educational needs of refugee students.”

In this third theme, the co-researcher is most independent professional development (if received) is primarily about building individual teacher capacity with child-benefit a second, assumed outcome. However, positive or negative construction of meaning is dependent on the potential to use information to establish empathic, reciprocal relationships. This focus on culture underscores theme one. The perception that emerged in theme one is dictated by how well external factors address internal need. Therefore, intentionality is achieved through a feeling of internal competence that is hampered by external factors.

For example, co-researchers were comfortable with immediate roles. That is, perceptions of need were frequently external to the co-researcher well-designed professional development or better communication between school, community organizations, and home. Such factors are connected to theme two. Perceptions suggested a need for greater system capacity and in theme three external connections further decrease capacity. The co-researcher perception incorporates factors that are external, over which limited influence can be exercised. For example, co-researcher #9 (as quoted in the prior section) sought to advocate for her student, but experienced dismissive comments from a colleague. Based on the co-researcher’s knowledge of the student’s background, the co-researcher experienced frustration. These responses hasten a process of isolation.

Reprinted by permission of the authors and publisher. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55: 430–443.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-019-09508-0.

An Excerpt from “Perceptions of the Public Library Social Worker: Challenges and Opportunities”

Mark A. Giesler Professor of Social Work

Mark A. Giesler, L.M.S.W., received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, his M.S.W. from the University of Nebraska–Omaha, and his M.A. from the University of Northern Iowa. His research agenda includes qualitative studies of marginalized groups, including LGBT individuals and homeless populations, and, most recently, studies of the intersection of public libraries and social work. He was awarded the 2022 Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Research Award at Saginaw Valley State University. He currently is an associate editor for the Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research. In addition to his work in academia, he works part-time as a therapist for Butterfly Counseling in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

The following excerpt includes the abstract from Dr. Giesler’s article and a portion of the “Discussion” section. The full text of the article can be found in the October 2021 issue of The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, and Policy.

Abstract

Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, this article explores the work of library social workers. Drawing upon individual interview and focus group data from three public library sites around the country, the study assesses the self-perceptions of the social workers, as well as the views of their colleagues about their work. Findings indicate that the call to enact a culture shift in the library to better serve vulnerable populations is tempered by challenges related to effectiveness of staff trainings, clarity of protocol and procedure, supervision gaps, and use of space. Recommendations for library administrators, staff, and library social workers themselves to meet these challenges are included.

Keywords: library social work, administration, vulnerable patrons

Nearly all the study’s participants viewed the library as called and poised to be part of a social services safety net due to the enhanced psychosocial needs of patrons. Yet, they viewed the execution of that mission differently. The social workers regarded the primary focus of their job as shifting the library’s culture to embrace this mission. Their colleagues, excepting the library administrators, saw their work as more separate, as complementing their tasks as information providers. This difference in perspective invoked feelings of isolation from the former and some frustration from the latter.

Findingsfromthepresentstudyareconsistent withhowtheroleofthelibrarysocialworker

has been described in the literature. Their job description as written encompasses micro, mezzo, and macro dimensions (Provence 2020; Zettervall & Nienow 2019). They characterized the multilevel focus of their work as intentional interaction with patrons, staff, and the community. They acknowledged the unique values and skills of their profession as informing and contributing to that work, as many researchers who have written conceptually about the role (Kelley et al. 2017; Luo et al. 2012; Soska & Navarro 2020) have done.

Yet, the day to day of their work painted a different picture. Interviews with the library social workers indicated an emphasis on the mezzo far more than the micro. Their primary focus appeared to be reshaping the culture of the library. All three noted decreasing staff biases toward vulnerable populations as an integral part of their role. Brokering community agencies to assume a visible presence in the library in the interest of making social service agencies welcoming was just as important as providing service referrals to patrons. In this respect, the study concurs with Provence’s (2020) finding that library social workers focused on one-on-one coaching, modeling, and staff trainings about mental health and patron interaction to destigmatize the presence of what were perceived as challenging patrons.

There is evidence from the study that library staff appreciated this focus on service and the library social worker’s contribution to it. They confirmed the democratic mission of the library, as handed down from Andrew Carnegie, as important to their work. Focus group interviewees in Site #2, for example, did not perceive the presence of the library social worker as attracting more challenging and difficult patrons to their libraries. Importantly, they viewed the presence of that staff member as a positive influence in addressing patron concerns that were already there, but perhaps hidden from view. Site #2’s Public Safety Officer Roberto’s praise of Marcy’s efforts to change the culture of his staff is indicative of this perception.

At the same time, the present study provides nuance to the literature’s assertion that the library social worker’s role is at times undefined and misunderstood by library staff (Zettervall & Nienow 2019). Resistance to being trained to “do social work” and lack of clear protocol regarding challenging patrons, as noted by some staff in this study, indicated that staff librarians viewed their work as separate and distinct from the work of the social worker. Staff were comforted in the knowledge of having a social worker on staff. Yet, their presence forced them to contend with procedural and practice issues in a manner not previously considered.

This “operating in silos” mentality contributed to a phenomenon not directly addressed in the literature: a feeling overwhelmed and potential burnout perpetuated by isolation. Library social workers noted the resource-intensive needs of patrons, the tremendous numbers of individuals to be served, and the challenge in knowing how best to assist them. While it was clear that both administrators in this case had a vested interest in their library social workers and worked tirelessly in their roles to maintain their positions, they were relatively hands-off in their supervision. Social workers called to carry out that vision of these administrators were left to their own devices to do so, often without peer or supervisory support.

The self-directed nature of the library social workers presented barriers for theirmacro role of enacting systemic change. Administrators in the study spoke of hopes to make the library social worker position sustainable. Richard pointed out the “positive things that can come out of collaborative relationships with non-profits” through grant-funding efforts. Yet, at the same time, he noted it was incumbent upon the social worker to “convince these agencies there is value in doing this kind of work.” In effect, the library social workers were expected to simultaneously initiate a program, run it, and prove its viability, a reality that exacerbated their feeling of isolation. Finally, the study added to the literature a topic rarely discussed regarding public library social workers: The perception of the use of space. Reflections about the use of library space, often perceived as a commodity, were not new to the participants. However, the presence of the library social worker enhanced these concerns, as staff members and patrons alike had to [contend] with proximity, privacy, and safety issues in a manner not previously considered.

Unlike San Jose Public Library’s [Social Workers in the Library (SWITL) program] (Luo et al. 2012), which carved out a specified space in the library for social workers to meet their patrons, the workers in the three sites in this study preferred not having an office or desk labeled as “social work services,” citing the need for patron privacy and anonymity as key to their work. This choice literally brought challenging patrons into the purview of librarian staff. They heralded the notion of a more democratic use of space, where all patrons could co-exist, embracing what Provence (2020) labeled as a “humanizing approach.” While some staff embraced this role, others were threatened by it. No longer could the presence of challenging patrons be ignored or simply dealt with by security.

At the same time, not having a designated “social work services” space presented challenges. Library social workers had difficulty marketing their services to the individuals who needed them. This fluidityof space might also have contributed to the frustration related to the lack of clear protocol involving these patrons noted in the study. Without a designated space to “send” difficult patrons, library staff were challenged to consider how they had to do so themselves, with or without the aid of social work staff.

References

Kelley, Alanna, Kara Riggleman, Ingrid Clara, and Adria Navarro. 2017. “Determining the Need for Social Work Practice in a Public Library.” Journal of Community Practice 25 (1): 112–25.

Luo, Lili, Deborah Estreicher, Peter A. Lee, Cyndy Thomas, and Glenn Thomas. 2012. “Social Workers in the Library: An Innovative Approach to Address Library Patrons’ Social Service Needs.” Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries 1 (1): 73–82.

Provence, Mary A. 2020. “Encouraging the Humanization of Patrons Experiencing Homelessness: A Case Study of the Role of the US Public Library Social Worker.” Library Quarterly 90 (4): 431–46.

Soska, Tracy M., and Adria Navarro. 2020. “Social Workers and Public Libraries: A Commentary on an Emerging Public Collaboration.” Advances in Social Work 20 (2): 409–23.

Zettervall, Sara K., and Mary C. Nienow. 2019. Whole Person Librarianship: A Social Work Approach to Patron Services. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Reprinted by permission of the author. “Perceptions of the Public Library Social Worker: Challenges and Opportunities” was published in the October 2021 issue of The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 91(4), 402–419.

An Excerpt from “Gesturing with Smart Wearables: An Alternate Way to User Authentication”

Khandaker Abir Rahman

Associate Professor of Computer Science & Information Systems

Avishek Mukherjee

Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Information Systems

Kristina Mullen

SVSU Computer Science Major and Cybersecurity Minor (Class of 2022)

Khandaker Abir Rahman received his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science and his M.S. in mathematics from Louisiana Tech University, and his B.S. and M.S. incomputer scienceandengineeringfrom theUniversityofDhaka,Bangladesh. His research interests include behavioral biometrics, cybersecurity, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He has co-authored and/or presented 25 research articles in refereed journals and/or at international conferences, and produced five book chapters. Dr. Rahman has also been working as a reviewer for several distinguished journals. He is SVSU’s representative to the Michigan Space Grant Consortium. In 2021, he was awarded senior member status by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Avishek Mukherjee received his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from Florida State University. His research interests include wireless networks and systems with an emphasis on physical layer algorithms. He has been awarded several internal research grants at SVSU as well as a research seed grant from the Michigan Space Grant Consortium in 2020. In addition to his research, Dr. Mukherjee also serves as the faculty advisor for SVSU’s chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery.

Kristina Vargo née Mullen received her B.S. from SVSU in 2022. She was awarded the Michigan Space Grant Consortium’s undergraduate research fellowship for the 2021–2022 school year for proposed research work in the field of cybersecurity.

“Gesturing with Smart Wearables: An Alternate Way to User Authentication” first appeared in 2022 in ITNG 2022 19th International Conference on Information Technology-New Generations, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 1421, edited by Shahram Latifi. The full article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97652-1_17.

Abstract

A method of alternate user authentication that relies on sensory data from a smartwatch has been explored in this paper. This attempt to beef up the authentication security was made by taking the user-defined hand gesture into account while wearing a smartwatch. Eventually, the preset hand gesture would work in a similar way to the password-based authentication scheme. In our experiment, we recorded the 3D coordinate values measured by the accelerometer and gyroscope over a set of gestures. We experimented with 50 gesture samples comprising of five different gesture patterns and ten repeated samples for each pattern. We developed an Android WearOS smartwatch app for sensor data collection, implemented our method of sensor data processing, and performed a series of experiments to demonstrate the potential of this method to achieve high accuracy

3 Data Processing and Experimental Setups

3.1 Pre-Processing of Data

As mentioned in the previous section, the movement data was collected over several days to add some randomness to the movement. A by-product of this collection process was that there was a timing offset for most of the signals collected. To compensate for this, a stationary period of six seconds was recorded at the start and end of the recorded movement. When comparing two signals, the stationary period above was used to synchronize the signals before computing the squared error between them. The alignment was done using a threshold heuristic based on standard deviation from the first three seconds of recorded sensor data on both sensors. The starting position of the movement was identified by setting the threshold at least ten times the threshold found in the first three seconds (i.e., stationary period). A similar strategy was implemented to identify the end of the recorded movement by looking at the last three seconds of sensor data. Finally, the process was repeated across all three axes data reported by each sensor, and the final starting and ending timestamps were determined by looking at the mean values reported by every axis. In addition, the signal amplitude was normalized based on the largest amplitude measured across all axes. An example of the alignment result can be seen in Fig. 1, where the amplitude of the signal measured on all three axes on the accelerometer is shown. The vertical barriers indicate the subset of the signal data that is clipped and considered during the pre-processing stage. It can be seen that the alignment method described above works very well to identify the start and end times of the movement.

Fig. 1 The outcome of the alignment method to identify the start and end of the movement

3.2 Error Computation

To compare the reference and the authentication/test samples, the difference between the two sensor signals was computed. First, the length of signals was considered, and the longer of the two signalswastruncatedtomatchthelength oftheshorter signal. Thenthepair-wise squared error between each corresponding amplitude was computed for all axes, and finally, the total difference reported by the accelerometer sensor for comparison was computed. Likewise, an identical process can be used to represent the total difference based on the gyroscope data.

As an example, Fig 2 and Fig 3 show the computational error when using the accelerometer data across two sets of signal pairs. Fig 2 shows the aligned signals on each of the three axes when comparing a pair of signals that belong to the same pattern. Naturally, after correct alignment, the signal data follow very closely to one another, with a very low error value. On the other hand, Fig 3 shows the aligned signals when looking at signal data from different patterns.

Reprinted by permission of the authors and Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature, 19th International Conference on Information Technology-New Generations ITNG, 2022.

Fig.2Thevisualsimilarityinrecordedaccelerometersignalsfortwosamplesfromthesamepattern

Fig. 3 Visual dissimilarity in recorded accelerometer signals for samples from two different patterns

Spotlight on… Visiting Writers

As part of its mission to enhance the life of the community in which it resides, SVSU is committed to bringing guest speakers to campus. Sponsored by individual departments and colleges, Student Life, the President’s Office, student organizations and student support services, among other campus groups, these visitors create a richer learning environment at SVSU and speak to a host of interests and issues we face locally and globally.

Some of our visiting (or, during COVID, “visiting”) writers come as part of Voices in the Valley, a longstanding tradition at SVSU that profiles the work of creative writers. Dr. Arra Ross of the English Department currently directs the program and works to bring established and emerging voices to campus. Past guests of Voices in the Valley include poets Jamaal May, Tracy K. Smith, and Carolyn Forché; short story writer and novelist Peter Ho Davies; and memoirist Anne-Marie Oomen.

Each year SVSU gives out the Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature. The Gross Award carries a prize of $1,000 and honors publications, whether historical writing, fiction, or drama, linked to Michigan or the larger region. Mr. Gross was a published author, a historian who focused on the Saginaw area, and a reporter for The Saginaw News, as well as a former employee of SVSU.

A few of our visiting authors from the 2021–2022 school year have been gracious enough to let us reprint some of their work in Writing@SVSU on the following pages.

An Excerpt from The Mason House

T. Marie Bertineau

Winner of SVSU’s Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature

Born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, T. Marie Bertineau still lives in the Great Lakes area with her family. A member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on the L’Anse Reservation, migizi odoodeman, Bertineau has had work published in the journal U.P. Reader and by the Native Justice Coalition and Waub Ajijaak Press. Of Ojibwe-Anishinaabe, French Canadian, and Cornish background, Bertineau regularly writes for the literary community found at carrotranch.com. The Mason House (Lanternfish Press, 2020) is her first full-length work. In addition to winning SVSU’S 2021–2022 Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature, the memoir was named a 2021 Michigan Notable Book.

“You’re gonna love it here,” Janie said.

It was June now, and I was standing at the end of the hall in the Hubbell house talking to her on the phone. I had returned to Hubbell with Anne and Bo when everyone left Texas in March. Janie, along with the rest of my family, had settled in Oklahoma.

Anne had surprised me in March with the offer to return to Michigan. “Trese, what do you think about coming up north with us for the rest of the school year?” she asked. “Up north” was what we called home. “It might be easier for you to finish the school year in Lake Linden. At least you’ll know people.”

I welcomed the chance to go up north. I certainly did not want to start an unfamiliar school with only three months left in the year. “Do you think Mom and Dad’ll let me?” I asked, doubtful.

“Yeah.” she said, winking. “I already asked.”

I was grateful to Anne for bringing me back to Michigan with her, but it turned out to be a difficult adjustment. There was a vacant air to the area now, and a vacancy in me, too, like those once-lively motels outside Houghton.

One day, hopingtofill the void, Iwalkedalongthegravel shoulder thefewmilestoMason. I was dressed in straight-leg jeans with a three-inch strip of floral fabric economically though tastefully added to the hem to increase their length. They had once belonged to Lisa. The brown suede chukka boots on my feet were a size and a half too big for me, but they were all I had. Anne had passed them down to me; I tripped a lot. I even fell down the stairs at school twice, once spraining my ankle. More of life’s shoe conundrum.

I shuffled along the roadside in my too-big-but-cool boots, kicking grayscale stones left and right, pondering which ancestors might have mined them. I did that sometimes when I thought too much or when I was lonely. Every few feet I passed springs of snowmelt. They dribbled over blunt outcroppings of Jacobsville Sandstone, enhancing the ruddle in the rock. In early spring these rivulets gushed like geysers. I used to count them each Friday on the way to Gram’s. Most of them would dry up soon; the snow was nearly gone.

I had just passed the skeleton of Quincy’s Mill No. 1 its vast banks of windows riddled with broken glass, its brick and block remains scarred and crumbling when beyond the bend the first slanted roof of Mason came into view. I stopped. Beside me, Torch Lake reflected the leaden sky,slunglowlikeacold,emptyhammock.Theblackenedshellofaminingdredgelistedatwater’s edge, its hull swallowed up in muck, its gantry rusted to burnt cinnamon. Across the narrow channel, the spring-brown, wooded lakeshore of Upper Point Mills loomed silent and uninhabited.

Betweenthat andthemill,Istoodsandwichedindesolation.Acar whooshedpast onthe highway probably Houghton bound. A chill pricked. Why was I doing this? Ahead lay nothing familiar. Even Mason felt foreign now. What once was a welcoming sight the sight I longed for, the sight I called home had now become strange. Gram’s house no longer belonged to me. I no longer belonged to Mason. Iturned and headed back to Hubbell. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore. Over the past year, this feeling of not belonging had crept in and taken hold. I’d always reliedonGram tosootheme,butshenolongervisitedmydreams.Maybethatwasthedisconnect she’d given up on me. I had changed a lot since she died. I’d even started smoking. I kept a pack of Marlboro Reds hidden outside beneath an old kitchen sink that was stacked against the rambler. Sometimes I bought Salems, too, like Mom did when she drank. I smoked with Hubbell kids in the woods or in the old shack up the hill, the one pieced together with discarded wood panels in a mix of finishes. It had a flat, water-stained roof that bowed under snow and a floor of pine needles and decaying leaves. It smelled of Marlboros, marijuana, and moss. It was built by the older kids, but sometimes we took possession, when theylet us. We’d sit withinits cold, damp walls and rag about our lives none of us could brag and listen to someone’s bootlegged cassette of Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog. I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be these days and didn’t necessarily like who I’d become. I couldn’t blame Gram if she didn’t like me much either.

THE MASON HOUSE byT. Marie Bertineau, copyright © 2020 by T. Marie Bertineau. Used with permission by Lanternfish Press LLP. All rights reserved. Photo credit: Natalie Carolyn Photography.

Love Poem

Justin Brouckaert Visiting Author

Justin Brouckaert received his bachelor of arts in English from SVSU in 2013, and he earned his master of fine arts in fiction from the University of South Carolina, where he was a James Dickey Fellow and the editor of Yemassee. During his time at SVSU, Justin was a Writing Center tutor, a Roberts Fellow, andeditor-in-chief of The Valley Vanguard. Aformerrecipient ofSVSU’sSeitz Creative Writing Scholarship, Justin visited SVSU in Winter 2022 to talk with the newest class of Roberts Fellows and members of Forever Red.

Justin now lives in Ferndale, Michigan, where he works as a literary agent for the New York-based agency Aevitas Creative Management, representing journalists, thought leaders, and literary novelists. He is the author of the short story collection Love Stories (Long Day Press, 2021) and a monthly newsletter called SUBLURBIA.

Of course the mountain climber has considered death. Well, he asks in his affectless way, have you? And the answer is no, not really, not in the “so-many-feet-inthe-air-without-ropes” sort of way. Not in the “by-the-time-your-lover-wakesyou’ll-either-have-fallen-to-your-death-or-not” sort of way. The mountain climber jokes, It will probably be the worst four seconds of my life. Imagine that giving yourself so wholly to a rock that has spent centuries repelling everything soft that bothers. Yes, you can wear grooves into rock but you can wear grooves into anything. There are people in this world who will buy a certain type of couch for you. They will hang your favorite picture, they will get up on their tippy-toes. A favorite color, a spontaneous song, a reliable Sunday mood. These burdens will echo one second, two seconds, three seconds, four long after the soft explosion. The mountain climber is the ideal partner because what could he possibly expect? The mountain climber says, If I had any obligation to maximize my lifespan. It takes a special type of person to envy fingertip strength. To press your thumb into a crimp the size of a quarter, arch your toes against slight gradations in the texture of the rock and trust the pose. There are places, the mountain climber says, where your hands can’t hold you. Up there, where it’s only God, silence, a map memorized by feel. Up there, where the greatest asset is your capacity for unrequited intimacy, to accept as a tender embrace the scrape of chalky knuckles wedged into a crack somehow both thin and cavernous, the full weight of a body on the hinge that is your wrist. What the mountain climber likes best, one suspects, what he works toward for all those thousands of hours, what he lusts for and ultimately achieves, is to feel almost entirely disconnected from the rock, suspended in air, alone. And then, to reach up.

An Excerpt from Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

April Baker-Bell

Visiting Author, Dow Visiting Scholars and Artists Program

Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and an associate professor of language, literacy, and English education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, Baker-Bell interrogates in her research the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies. Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Michigan State University’s Community Engagement Scholarship Award, and the 2020 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.

Baker-Bell’s award-winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, was co-published by Routledge and NCTE BooksinMay2020 Thefollowingexcerptfrom Linguistic Justice istakenfrom Chapter 2, “What’s Anti-Blackness Got to Do Wit it?”

“If You Don’t Know Now Ya Know”: A Brief Breakdown of Black Language

Despite decades of research on Black Language, its survival since enslavement, and its linguistic imprint on the nation and the globe (Smitherman, 2006), Black people and Black language scholars keep having to remind y’all that it is a legit language. James Baldwin (1979) said it best in the New York Times, “If Black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is?” From a purely linguistic standpoint, like “every naturally used language, [Black Language] is systematic with regular rules at the lexical, phonological, and grammatical level” (Stanford University, 2002, p. 1). I take a close look at the history of Black Language and its features in chapters 4 and 5, but I offer an abbreviated breakdown here in order to contextualize Anti-Black Linguistic Racism. As stated in chapter 1, Smitherman (2006) describes Black Language:

a style of speaking English words with Black Flava with Africanized semantic, grammatical, pronunciation, and rhetorical patterns. [Black Language] comes out of the experience of U.S. slave descendants. This shared experience has resulted in common language practices in the Black community. The roots of African American speech lie in the counter language, the resistance discourse,that wascreatedas a communicationsystem unintelligible to the speakers of the dominant master class. (Smitherman, 2006, p. 3)

Black Language is the rhetoric of resistance embedded in the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which led to the birth of what some call the 21st century civil rights movement. It is the phonology and grammatical structure former president Barack Obama used when declining to accept change from a Black cashier by saying, “Nah, we straight.” Black Language is the controversial words of wisdom that Michelle Obama shared at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, “When they go low, we go high.” It is the blackness reflected in the style of speech that “woke” CNN political commentator and NPR political analyst Angela Rye unabashedly and unapologetically uses on national news to clap back and break down racial oppression for the people in the back. Black Language is the linguistic inventiveness and signification in the infamous three-word response “Reclaiming My Time” that Congresswoman Maxine Waters used to drag U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, after he dodged her questions and spoke over her during a committee hearing in 2017. It is the rhetorical strategies that Tiana Smalls, aBlack woman, used to prevent Border Patrol officers from illegally searching a Greyhound bus and demanding that passengers show their documentation. Black Language is also the native language and rich linguistic resources that so many Black children bring into the classrooms every day.

But let us not forget Black Language is also the language that continuously gets appropriated, exploited, and colonized. Since I began my research on Black Language in 2008, I have collected numerous examples of Black linguistic appropriation and the ways Black Language and literacies have been capitalized on. Some recent examples include the 2017 Mountain Dew commercial that used rappers Fat Joe, Remy Ma, and French Montana’s song I’m All the Way Up1 to promote their product and Party City’s 2018 commercial using rapper DMX’s song Party Up (Up InHere)2 topromotetheirunicornpartytheme.MARSIncorporatedalsousedtheBlacklexical slang item “cray cray” to personalize their Snickers wrappers in 2015, and MTV culturally appropriated Black Language in an article written in 2016 by encouraging its mostly white viewers to stop using Black slang words that were popular in 2015 and start using new Black slang words in 2016.3 Trader Joe’s capitalized on Black Language when the neighborhood grocer used “Oh, Snap” to advertise their asparagus. Many fashion designers have also capitalized on Black Language to create market messages to invite consumers to buy their products. I cannot tell you how many times I have walked into retail stores that sold tee shirts, mugs, hats, and pillows that have capitalized on and appropriated Black Language. Jay Z said it best: “the mainstream done crossed over to us” (Alim & Smitherman, 2012, p. 361). Yet, as shown in chapter 3, in classrooms, Black Language is devalued and viewed as a symbol of linguistic and intellectual inferiority. So essentially what this says is: It is acceptable for Black Language to be used and capitalized on by non-native Black Language-speakers for marketing and play, but it is unacceptable for Black kids to used it as a linguistic resource in school. This is unfortunate but unsurprising because Black Language is one of those features of Black culture that white America loves to hate, yet loves to take.4 This is why we need to be talkin’ about Anti-Black Linguistic Racism.

The Impact of Anti-Black Linguistic Racism on Black Students

It goes without saying that Anti-Black Linguistic Racism is dangerous and harmful to Black students and their language education, but the harm goes beyond education. Richardson (2004) argues that when “Black students [are] taught to hate Black speech, [it] indirectly [teaches] them to hate themselves” (p. 161). This is the dehumanization that Linguistic Justice is concerned with and the problem that Anti-Black Linguistic Racism helps to name in an effort to show how Black children are marginalized, disdained, and disregarded in schools and educational spaces in and through their language. While my research at Leadership Academy taught me that Black

students find creative ways to resist anti-blackness and Anti-Black Linguistic Racism, it also revealed how the students internalized anti-Black messages about their language and the consequences this had on their sense of self and identity. An anti-Black Language education not only contributes to Black students despising their mother tongue, but it also causes them to see themselves through a white gaze “a way of looking and seeing the world that negates [their] value” (hooks, 1992, p. 3). Charity Hudley and Mallison (2014) content that “speakers who face microaggressions, prejudice, and discrimination also react with internalization, a process whereby members of a stigmatized group accept negative messages about their self-worth” (p. 65).

Notes

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDM_6KZbrVg

2 https://www.ispot.tv/ad/jjJl/party-city-unicorn-party-song-by-dmx

3 http://www.mtv.com/news.2720889/teen-slang-2016/

4 Alim & Smitherman (2012) discuss this love-hate relationship on p. 25.

References

Alim, H.S., & Smitherman, G. (2012). Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Baldwin, J. (1979, July 29). If Black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is? New York Times. Retrieved September 26, 2008, from www.nytimes.com

Charity Hudley, M., & Mallinson, C. (2014). We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Richardson, E. (2004). Coming from the heart: African American students, literacy stories, and rhetorical education. In E. Richardson & R. Jackson (Eds.), African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 155-169). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Smitherman, G. (2006). Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans.New York, NY: Routledge.

Stanford University (2002). Linguistics 73: How Linguists Approach the Study of Language and Dialect. Stanford, CA: John Rickford.

Reprinted by permission of the author.