Faculty Research & Creative Scholarship 2019: I-J

Journal Title: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies

Abstract: This article examines an uncirculated French-language poetic collection written by half-Chinese, half-African Reunionese poet Daniel Honoré. Entitled Ma Chine-nation (1995), the collection recounts among many episodes the return of the Afrasian poet to his father's homeland of China and his self-identification to persecuted maroons in La Réunion during colonial times. Offering a window into the poet's relationship toward China, Africa, and La Réunion, Ma Chine-nation is written in French and Reunionese Creole with certain poems loosely presented in the form of a Chinese ideogram. Honoré’s collection offers a diversity of plurilingual poems in which the poet bridges Africa and La Réunion with China via the figure of an escaping slave or “maroon” in the context of French colonialism. Historically, both Chinese coolies and African slaves, working concurrently under the French Empire in La Réunion, engaged in marronage during the nineteenth century. Honoré animalizes the maroon figure and racializes it as African and Asian, poetically overlapping the Afrasian body onto that of an animal. When seen through Deleuze and Guattari's concept of “becoming-animal,” the métissages of human/animal and African/Chinese resist colonial signification and conflate both groups’ experiences. This article proposes an analysis on Sino-African métissage and animality, making space for an understudied Asian contribution to Francophone Indian Ocean Studies.
Author: Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland, Assistant Professor of French, Modern Language Studies

Journal Title: Barthes Studies: An open-access journal for research in English on the work of Roland Barthes

Opening Paragraph: Arthur Golden’s literary geisha appearing in his acclaimed Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) is no stranger to the countless literary and cinematic constructions of an exoticized, sexualized Japan. As evidenced by the works of Pierre Loti and Marcel Proust, as well as more contemporary japoniste novels by Amélie Nothomb, Japan has been the object of much of the same kinds of reductive orientalizations for over a century. Although Roland Barthes’s Japan-themed work L’empire des signes (Empire of Signs) has been qualified as a ‘critical fiction’ and ‘hyper-Orientalist text’ by Dalia Kandiyoti and Joanne Sharp, respectively, Barthes’s text manifests an overlooked quality that intricately weaves queer re-imaginings of Japan with his personal, privatized relationship with homosexuality.3 The exploration of sexuality in Empire of Signs has been at the center of scholarly debates in Barthes Studies for decades. Diana Knight’s and D.A. Miller’s works centering on aspects of sexual tourism in Empire serve as perhaps two of the most compelling engagements of Barthes’s homoerotic flâneries in Japan. Knight offers the bold affirmation that Empire remains ‘a parody of an Orientalist sexual tourism […] some parodic Gay Guide to Tokyo’ – an unconventional sex guide that D.A. Miller had used to prepare for his own trip to Japan.4 Reading the queerness of and in a text has been a foundational literary hermeneutic in the field of Queer Studies.5 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s notion of ‘paranoid reading’ by which critics like A Miller ‘plac[e] […] faith in expos[ing]’ hidden meanings from within a text has allowed for critical re-presentations of Barthes’s major works.6 Paranoid readings have furthermore given rise to ‘reparative’ re-readings, such as those done cogently by Carol Mavor and Nicholas de Villiers.7 These reparative readings have shed an important light on the affects and liminalities associated with themes of masculinity and closetedness characterizing many of Barthes’s texts.
Author: Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland, Assistant Professor of French, Modern Language Studies

Journal Title: Health and Social Care in the Community

Abstract: The results of a study examining differences between U.S. adolescent and adult abortion fund service recipients are presented in this paper. Using existing case data from 2010 to 2015 from the National Network of Abortion Funds (N = 3,288), a secondary data analysis was conducted to determine whether or not the experiences of adolescent (n = 481) and adult abortion patients (n = 2,807) who received financial assistance to help pay for an abortion differed. Fisher's exact tests examined differences in dichotomous variables, and regression examined differences in procedural costs, patient resources and expected travel distances to obtain an abortion. Results show that a greater proportion of adolescents in this data set identified as African American, and that adolescents were more likely to report seeking an abortion due to lack of contraception, and rape, while adult patients were more likely to be seeking an abortion due to contraceptive failure and partner violence. Results are discussed using a trauma‐informed framework.
Author: D. Lynn Jackson, Associate Professor, Director of Field Education, Department of Social Work, Assistant Dean for Strategic Initiatives, Harris College, Social Work

Journal Title: Culture, Health & Sexuality

Abstract: This paper details results of a study examining administrative case data from 2010–2015 from abortion funds serving the USA and the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. Driven by the available data, the researchers compared organisational characteristics, patient characteristics, procedural costs, patient resources and the ratio between patient resources and procedural costs. Independent t-tests were conducted to assess whether differences in characteristics, costs or resources were significant. The number of patients serviced by abortion funds across the two datasets increased yearly from 2010–2015. While patients in the USA had more resources, on average, to contribute to their abortion procedure, Irish, Northern Irish and Manx patients had the resources to pay for a greater percentage of their costs, on average, which was mainly attributable to the differences in gestational age of those helped by the different abortion funds. Patients across all nations were similar in terms of their marital status, average age and number of existing children. Patients across these countries face expensive procedures and a lack of resources that are bridged in part by abortion fund assistance.
Author: D. Lynn Jackson, Associate Professor, Director of Field Education, Department of Social Work, Assistant Dean for Strategic Initiatives, Harris College, Social Work

Journal Title: Educational Studies

Abstract: Just as accountability policies have led to increased levels of teacher data use, teachers have begun to increase the extent to which students track and analyse data about their own learning. Although some might argue that such "student-involved data use” (SIDU) might empower or motivate students to take charge of their own learning (e.g. planning or goal setting), others might see it as unduly pressuring youngsters. Because research about this practise is nascent, it is unknown how or why teachers might engage in this practise. Leveraging a sense-making lens, we employed qualitative methods to explore these issues with teachers in 11 elementary school classrooms in Texas. Findings describe teachers’ strategies for engaging students with data, as well as their beliefs that SIDU was beneficial to student reflection, learning, motivation and teachers’ instructional practises. We conclude by positing considerations for future research and leadership.
Author: Jo Beth Jimerson, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership

Description: Co-published with University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), this textbook prepares aspiring educational leaders for the important and challenging task of supporting instruction in their schools. Instructional Leadership in the Content Areas equips leaders—who might not have content backgrounds that align with those of the teachers they supervise—with research-based practices and knowledge specific to a range of subject areas. Presenting over 20 problems-based cases at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and across seven areas of content, this book deepens knowledge of exemplary instruction, improves feedback dialogues, and helps leaders work effectively alongside teachers and instructional specialists. Rich with activities, resources, and discussion questions, this casebook provides a broad overview of instructional leadership and the tools for school leaders to improve and support classroom practices across all content areas in intentional ways that support career-long professional growth.
Editor: Jo Beth Jimerson, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership