10:20 AM – 11:35 AM | Merten Hall, Rooms 1200, 1202 and 1203
Cultural Kaleidoscope: Fostering Unity and Inclusion in our Diverse Society
10:20am – 11:35am | Merten Hall, Room 1200
Discussant: Gregory Robinson, Ph.D.
The Sound of the African American Hero: Examining the films scores that created the musical topic of the “Black Action Hero.”
Calvin Evans Jr. (College of Visual and Performing Arts)
This paper uses topic theory to highlight the composers and film scores that assisted in creating the musical topic of the solo African American action hero. Analysis of scores and transcriptions of selected films from the late 1960’s and 1970’s reveals the tropes and themes that created this unrecognized musical topic: repetitive funk bass line, soulful melody line, improvisational passages, and pop section instrumentation. African American composers like Quincy Jones, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Roy Ayers shifted away from the traditional musical topic of the Hero, which at the time was solely connected to white male figures. The film scores of The Three Musketeers (1948) and The Great Escape (1963) and later the scores of Superman (1978), Batman (1989), and more have shared similar musical themes connected to the traditional “action hero” musical topic. The main leitmotif performed by a brass ensemble, the common use of the perfect 4th interval, and the accompanying militaristic march have become clear aural indicators that the “hero” has arrived. However, these pioneering composers focused their compositions on the genre and ideas that had a personal connection to the African American race and their history. Their work would create the well-known musical themes of Virgil Tibbs, Shaft, Superfly and Coffy. The themes associated with the cinematic Black heroes of the 1970’s would later inspire future composers to take a similar approach when scoring films with a lead African American protagonist such as Lethal Weapon (1987) and Passenger 57 (1992).
Beyond the Workplace: Unveiling External Social Factors on Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors
Hongyue Wang (Costello College of Business), Kevin Rockmann
The question of why employees engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors has been widely studied in organizational research, with many scholars attributing these deviant behaviors to internal social factors, such as mistreatment by colleagues’ mistreatment (Robinson, Wang, & Kiewitz, 2014), abusive supervision (Sulea et al., 2013), unfair organizational climate (Priesemuth, Arnaud, & Schminke, 2013). However, scant attention has been given to external social factors. Therefore, we aim to explore how employees’ counterproductive behaviors are shaped by the broader social systems and cultures in which they are embedded. Specifically, we examine the impact of exposure to “Quiet Quitting” related information on employees’ job attitudes and work behaviors. We propose three mechanisms through which exposure to such information may escalate employees’ counterproductive behaviors: emotional resonance, increased moral disengagement, and decreased organizational identification. To empirically validate our model, we plan to gather survey data from full-time workers and design a vignette study to establish causal relationships. Currently, we have finished the survey design and have submitted the IRB application (reference IRBNet # 2157312-1). Theoretically, our research will contribute to counterproductive behaviors literature by introducing a new perspective that integrates external social influences. Practically, our research can shed light on how managers and organizations can better motivate their employees.
Understanding the Impact of Art Subsidies on Equity in Local Policy – A Case Study of DC’s Subsidy Policy for the Arts
Soojung Paek (College of Visual and Performing Arts)
This research seeks to explore the impact of art subsidies on equity within the context of local policy, with a specific focus on Washington, D.C. Arts subsidies – tenured, unrestricted allocations from government to nonprofit or hybrid public-nonprofit arts organizations – are distinctive as a funding instrument used in many state and local arts policies. Given that subsidy programs entail a narrowing of access to government support, their use has important implications for equity. These effects play out in a context where philanthropy historically has favored white social elites in the U.S. art and culture sector. This research will begin by exploring the evolving use of subsidy in U.S. arts policy, encompassing shifts in public funding streams following the Culture Wars in the 1990s and the increasing importance of state and local art governance. This analysis will be conducted through the examination of public data and documents. Furthermore, by reviewing articles and conducting interviews, the study will explore how these dynamics played out in a recent controversy over the use of subsidy in local Washington, D.C. arts policy amid COVID 19 pandemic.
Elevating Equality: The Transformative Power of Social Justice in Building a Better Society
10:20am – 11:35am | Merten Hall, Room 1202
Discussant: Stephanie Bluth, Ph.D.
Empowering Justice-Impacted Students: A Path to Equity in Higher Education
Alexia Ferguson (College of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Higher education is a place for social mobility. The Second Chance Pell grant allows hundreds of thousands of additional students to access federal financial aid. Ultimately, allowing more justice-impacted impacted students (JIS) a pathway into higher education. Many university departments, faculty, and staff are not prepared to provide adequate resources, appropriate discourse, and support to JIS. My project questions whether George Mason University’s current resources are accessible to JIS and what outside resources are needed to better support JIS. My project will compile the background history of JIS, the education-to-prison pipeline, Prison Education Programs (PEP), and internal and external campus resources of George Mason University, and suggest opportunities for campus growth to better support students. Providing JIS support to navigate the complex systems of higher education while offering creative solutions to systemic challenges. I will utilize informal interviews throughout my time working with Contemporary Student Services, analyze campus resources, and research external resources via social media, online webpages, and social networks. This project will end up being a toolkit that will provide George Mason University with a foundation for understanding the limitations of its resources and the work that needs to be done to support JIS. Making them a model for other universities and putting them ahead of the curve to prepare for JIS. Audience members will leave with an understanding of how universities can be a space for shifting criminal justice discourse and increasing social mobility for justice-impacted students.
Abolitionist Responses to Sexual Violence: Critiquing Carceral Feminisms and Exploring Grassroot Initiatives Engaging Transformative Justice Frameworks
Noah Foster (College of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Sexual violence is a global issue that impacts millions of women each year (WHO, 2021). Within the U.S., the only remedies readily available to most survivors are rooted in the criminal-legal system (Critical Resistance & INCITE!, 2019). Not only does the criminalization of perpetrators of sexual violence fail to protect survivors (RAINN, 2023), but it also brings many of them into contact with a system that is inherently racist, sexist, classist, and homophobic (Critical Resistance & INCITE!, 2019). For decades, abolitionist feminists have worked to imagine different social relationships and accountability processes for survivors and perpetrators of sexual violence (Law, 2011; Moore, 2016; Ciolkowski, 2023). The organizations that these activists have established engage in Transformative Justice practices to create responses that are both survivor-centered and non-pathologizing of perpetrators (Howe, 2018; Taylor, 2018). Members of two organizations, Philly Stands Up and BYP100, demonstrate how transformative community-based accountability processes can be in a survivor’s healing journey and a perpetrator’s educational journey. Abolitionist approaches to ending sexual violence are remedies that survivors deserve to have access to after they have been harmed. As abolitionist feminists and scholars dedicated to the liberation of all peoples, we cannot engage in the criminal-legal system that seeks to uphold the oppressive systems we are fighting. Instead, we must invest in non-carceral approaches to dealing with sexual violence, and the two organizations shared in this essay give hope that new futurities are possible.
Undemocratic migrant destination countries and leverages
Umida Hashimova (College of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Political regimes of migrant-destination countries define leverages and the extent and severity over origin countries. Democratic regimes rarely resort to such leverages to avoid backlash and accusations of hypocrisy toward liberal democratic and market economy values. Overall, migrant destination countries tend to gain leverage over origin countries to advance their interests and dictate favorable terms. If origin countries are not compliant, destination countries can threaten to impose various restrictions on migrants from that country, such as using direct force, restricting remittance channels, and adopting restrictive norms that limit migrants’ mobility and employment options. Non-liberal democracies are not restrained from using their power toward destination countries and can pressure origin countries to comply with unfavorable terms. For example, Russia is the primary destination country for migrants from several Central Asian countries. Russia’s migration policy has been restrictive toward the countries that are not the members of the Eurasian Economic Union, the organization Russia set up to pull its former colonies closer to its influence orbit.
Tech Odyssey: Navigating the Promises and Pitfalls in Our Digital Frontier
10:20am – 11:35am | Merten Hall, Room 1203
Discussant: Ziwei Zhu,Ph.D.
An overview of social media as part of internet biosurveillance and cautions warranted: Reliability, efficiency, privacy
Becca Earnhardt (Schar School of Policy and Government)
Internet usage has boomed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and people have increasingly relied on social media for news and public health updates. In response to delays in official reporting, researchers have sought different forms of data to supplement forecasts and analyze acceptance of public health interventions, such as stay-at-home orders or masking mandates. Social media data can inform biosurveillance systems (BSV), which seek to generate a uniform understanding of the current and future spread of a disease to generate actionable insights. In the past, social media data have informed response to the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic and the 2015-2016 Zika epidemic. Current studies on COVID-19 indicate that social media may be useful for future BSV systems. This research presentation will describe the advent of internet BSV and how social media data factor into a BSV system. Then, I will discuss two case studies of social media in BSV prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I will discuss the implications of COVID-19 and social media in BSV, including recommended steps for ensuring reliability, efficiency and individual privacy in reporting social media data.
Summarizing Social Media & News Streams for Crisis-related Events by Integrated Content-Graph Analysis
Hossein Salemi (College of Engineering and Computing), Yasas Senarath, Tarin Sultana Sharika, Anuridhi Gupta, Hemant Purohit
Extracting informative content from different sources of data like social media and News websites and summarizing it is critical for the disaster responders during crisis events. In this work, we describe our proposed system for extracting and ranking facts from online data sources including social media and News content for summarizing crisis-related events. The summary should reflect the information needed by the response teams, so our system focuses on extracting facts relevant to the responders’ queries and indicative terms which represent these queries. Our method concentrates on expanding queries and utilizing an information retrieval-based method for extracting relevant facts. Moreover, we propose a graph-based analysis with considering the similarity of facts to each other, facts to queries, and facts to indicative terms to score the importance of extracted facts. We evaluate and compare the performance of our proposed system with utilizing two extractive methods for extracting facts from the multi-stream data of the TREC 2023 CrisisFACTS track and scoring them for summarizing the crisis event. The extracted summary for each event is evaluated based on comprehensiveness and redundancy ratio factors in comparison to two gold-standard summaries: One generated by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) assessors and the other extracted from Wikipedia page of the crisis event.
How Technology Shapes Maritime Goegraphy
Mike Sweeney (Schar School of Policy and Government)
My research question is, “How does technology shape maritime geography?” I proceed from the notion that geography is not immutable; rather technological innovations interact with the earth’s fixed features to create something new: a functional geography. This phenomenon has not been adequately explored, particularly in the maritime realm. Doyens of maritime strategy, like Mahan and Corbett, lived and wrote in an era before aircraft and submarines became critical elements of naval power. Yet both of those platforms constituted technological innovations that fundamentally changed the way maritime geography needed to be understood. My work investigates that interaction and examines how major naval powers did (or did not) take advantage of changing geographic conceptions as naval technology evolved. My presentation provides an overview of the technology-geography interplay and explores my approach to the subject using grounded theory. My methodology focuses on examining four historical case studies from two conflicts – the Second World War and the Cold War – where airpower and undersea warfare played a critical role. I complement the case studies with semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts to better understand the impact of air and undersea forces on maritime geography in the current era. Ideally, my research will yield theoretical insights pertinent to the maritime strategy literature, as well as findings applicable to policy debates regarding the contemporary maritime competition in the Pacific. I am not presenting completed findings at this stage, but rather seek to share my research with the Mason community and receive feedback on my approach.