Business, Education, and Enjoyment: Stakeholder Interpretations of the Gettysburg Museum and Visitors Center

An anthropological study of the Gettysburg Museum and Visitors Center undertaken to understand the ways in which the visitor experience is conditioned by their own personal background, as well as filtered through the carefully constructed historical narrative created by museum historians, National Park Service rangers, and administrators. The Gettysburg Museum and Visitors Center is a site in which multiple stakeholders contend to ensure that their interpretations of the museum’s purpose is being upheld. This paper will examine the ways in which these various stakeholders – primarily NPS rangers, Civil War historians, and history buffs – interpret the catalyst(s) for constructing the new Gettysburg Visitors Center and Museum, and in turn how their understandings can be understood through the theoretical conception of the museum as a place of business, education, and enjoyment. Having outlined and analyzed their individual interpretations, I will then examine the visitor experience – through surveys given to visitors at the museum – as being conditioned by the explicit educational goals of the museum’s creators, as well as by the museum’s trifold status

Opening up terrorism talk: The sequential and categorical production of discursive power within the call openings of a talk radio broadcast

The current research undertakes a combined CA/MCA approach to analyse the unfolding moral business of ‘talk radio’ discourse, and situates this analysis within a critical discourse studies framework. In a case study analysis of a talk radio broadcast on the topic of terrorism, the sequencing and membership categorization work that is accomplished during the call openings of its contributors is examined. Local manifestations of discursive power allied to the ‘host’ role are identified, along with the data-driven distinction of ‘lay’ and ‘elite’ callers. The empowering versus disempowering consequences of sequential turn allocation and identity categorization are explored, leading to some reflections on security versus human rights advocacy within terrorism talk. The contribution of this research to two research enterprises is then outlined. Firstly, we highlight the benefit that a combined CA/MCA approach, which foregrounds powerplay, offers to analysis of talk-in-interaction. Following which, we underline how placing such a micro-level spotlight on the seemingly mundane details of talk in context can offer valuable insights for critical terrorism studies

Encouraging Corporate Innovation for Our Homeland During the Best of Times for the Worst of Times: Extending Safety Act Protections to Natural Disasters’

This article first analyzes the innovative tort reform of the SAFETY Act and then argues for expansion of SAFETY Act type risk protection to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. The SAFETY Act was drafted to stimulate the development and deployment of technologies that combat terrorism by providing liability protection. Applying the same type of legislation to natural disasters will provide a commensurate benefit of encouraging preparedness and development of technologies that could mitigate harms resulting from natural disasters. The Department of Homeland Security voiced a desire to increase the use of the SAFETY Act by private industry. This article argues that one way to increase the utility of the SAFETY Act and provide more value for the American public is for Congress to extend SAFETY Act protections, by amendment or new legislation, to cover risk related to national catastrophes

Interactive form creation: exploring the creation and manipulation of free form through the use of interactive multiple input interface

Most current CAD systems support only the two most common input devices: a mouse and a keyboard that impose a limit to the degree of interaction that a user can have with the system. However, it is not uncommon for users to work together on the same computer during a collaborative task. Beside that, people tend to use both hands to manipulate 3D objects; one hand is used to orient the object while the other hand is used to perform some operation on the object. The same things could be applied to computer modelling in the conceptual phase of the design process. A designer can rotate and position an object with one hand, and manipulate the shape [deform it] with the other hand. Accordingly, the 3D object can be easily and intuitively changed through interactive manipulation of both hands.The research investigates the manipulation and creation of free form geometries through the use of interactive interfaces with multiple input devices. First the creation of the 3D model will be discussed; several different types of models will be illustrated. Furthermore, different tools that allow the user to control the 3D model interactively will be presented. Three experiments were conducted using different interactive interfaces; two bi-manual techniques were compared with the conventional one-handed approach. Finally it will be demonstrated that the use of new and multiple input devices can offer many opportunities for form creation. The problem is that few, if any, systems make it easy for the user or the programmer to use new input devices

Uniform asymptotic approximation of diffusion to a small target: Generalized reaction models

The diffusion of a reactant to a binding target plays a key role in many biological processes. The reaction radius at which the reactant and target may interact is often a small parameter relative to the diameter of the domain in which the reactant diffuses. We develop uniform in time asymptotic expansions in the reaction radius of the full solution to the corresponding diffusion equations for two separate reactant-target interaction mechanisms: the Doi or volume reactivity model and the Smoluchowski-Collins-Kimball partial-absorption surface reactivity model. In the former, the reactant and target react with a fixed probability per unit time when within a specified separation. In the latter, upon reaching a fixed separation, they probabilistically react or the reactant reflects away from the target. Expansions of the solution to each model are constructed by projecting out the contribution of the first eigenvalue and eigenfunction to the solution of the diffusion equation and then developing matched asymptotic expansions in Laplace-transform space. Our approach offers an equivalent, but alternative, method to the pseudopotential approach we previously employed [Isaacson and Newby, Phys. Rev. E 88, 012820 (2013)PLEEE81539-375510.1103/PhysRevE.88.012820] for the simpler Smoluchowski pure-absorption reaction mechanism. We find that the resulting asymptotic expansions of the diffusion equation solutions are identical with the exception of one parameter: the diffusion-limited reaction rates of the Doi and partial-absorption models. This demonstrates that for biological systems in which the reaction radius is a small parameter, properly calibrated Doi and partial-absorption models may be functionally equivalent

Human rights, participatory theatre and regional publics: Acting Alone and A Story to Tell

This paper explores how artists are continuing to develop new participatory theatre models that address social and political issues within a human rights arena. Using my productions, Acting Alone and A Story to Tell, as its primary case studies, the paper will examine how efficacy can be created with different community audiences by experimenting with forms of participatory, autobiographical and verbatim theatre. Acting Alone is a monologue performance about Palastinian refugee camps from the perspective of a mother and artist, and A Story to Tell is a verbatim first-hand account of refugees in Greece. Informed by current refugee theatre, theory and practice, this paper asks how artists might use performance to engage audiences in revolutionary thinking in relation to immigration, refugees and human rights issues. Boal’s premise that theatre is a weapon for revolution will be drawn on; however, when audiences may not be directly positioned as oppressed or oppressor, what other concerns are raised? If refugee stories are presented without political advocacy, they run the risk of reenforcing images of refugees as victims and the spectator as voyeur or by-stander. How might we appropriate Boal's work to contemporary western theatre practice to promote engagement with complex international issues and awareness of our shared responsibility towards human rights - in spite of cultural and geographical distance from the issues presented? What action can be taken? Graffiti on the streets of Athens last summer declared: ‘Our grandparents were refugees. Our parents were migrants. We have become racists’ (unknown 2016). How can theatre be a revolutionary voice to address these global and national questions?N/

Acting Alone - Can one person make a difference?

Acting Alone is artistic research using solo performance, autobiographical, verbatim and documentary theatricals. Exploring the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through interwoven stories, the piece asks questions of the audience: Can one person actually make a difference? In 2014 Amnesty International (Derbyshire) commissioned Ava Hunt to create a provocation in response to the renewed confliction and humanitarian crises in Gaza. In its exploration of the complex situation faced by those living in Palestine, Acting Alone challenged the theatrical conventions most often experienced by audiences. Using immersive and participatory invitations, the piece encouraged the audience to interact and to cross the dramaturgical divide creating an ending where no-one, including the performer, knows the resolution. This artistic research builds on Hunt’s enquiry and work with artists and educators working in the West Bank, where she worked with children at the Aida Refugee Camp with Dr. Abedelfattah Absourer whose belief and commitment in the use of the arts in the community is to inspire ‘the beautiful resistance’. The performance offered a creative response to this ongoing war, oppression and abuse of human rights opening up a discourse of what is our responsibility and what action is possible from an international community perspective – a performative of hope.University of Derb