Feminine Purity and Masculine Revenge-Seeking In \u3ci\u3eTaken\u3c/i\u3e (2008)

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women\u27s “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system of representing social reality that elicit popular adherence to common-sense myths of white masculinity, feminine purity, and Orientalism

Between Wind and Water: Experiences of Mothers of Adolescents with Autism During the Post-High School Transition

Research Question: How do mothers of adolescents with autism experience and prepare for their child\u27s post- high school transition

Chemistry of the Most Metal-poor Stars in the Bulge and the z > 10 Universe

Metal-poor stars in the Milky Way are local relics of the epoch of the first stars and the first galaxies. However, a low metallicity does not prove that a star formed in this ancient era, as metal-poor stars form over a range of redshift in different environments. Theoretical models of Milky Way formation have shown that at constant metallicity, the oldest stars are those closest to the center of the Galaxy on the most tightly-bound orbits. For that reason, the most metal-poor stars in the bulge of the Milky Way provide excellent tracers of the chemistry of the high-redshift universe. We report the dynamics and detailed chemical abundances of three stars in the bulge with [Fe/H] $\lesssim-2.7$, two of which are the most metal-poor stars in the bulge in the literature. We find that with the exception of scandium, all three stars follow the abundance trends identified previously for metal-poor halo stars. These three stars have the lowest [Sc II/Fe] abundances yet seen in $\alpha$-enhanced giant stars in the Galaxy. Moreover, all three stars are outliers in the otherwise tight [Sc II/Fe]-[Ti II/Fe] relation observed among metal-poor halo stars. Theoretical models predict that there is a 30% chance that at least one of these stars formed at $z\gtrsim15$, while there is a 70% chance that at least one formed at $10 \lesssim z \lesssim 15$. These observations imply that by $z\sim10$, the progenitor galaxies of the Milky Way had both reached [Fe/H] $\sim-3.0$ and established the abundance pattern observed in extremely metal-poor stars.Comment: Submitted to ApJ on 2014 December 23, accepted 2015 May 4th after minor revisions. ArXiv tarball includes referee report and respons

Opportunities and challenges of working with gifted and talented students in an urban context: A university-based intervention program

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article appeared in Gifted Child Today, 34(1), 2011. Copyright 2011 @ Sage Publications.No abstract available

Neocolonialism and the Global Prison in National Geographic\u27s \u3ci\u3eLocked Up Abroad\u3c/i\u3e

This essay examines the reformulation of colonial ideologies in National Geographic Channel\u27s Locked Up Abroad, a documentary program that chronicles the narratives of Westerner travelers incarcerated in foreign nations. An analysis of Locked Up Abroad evinces neocolonialism in contemporary media culture, including: the historic association between dark-skin and savagery, the backwardness of the non-Western world, and the Western imperative to civilize it. The program\u27s documentary techniques and framing devises sustain an Otherizing gaze toward non-Western societies, and its portrayals elide a critical analysis of colonialism in its present forms. I advocate for neocolonial criticism to trace how NatGeo remains haunted by its own history in support of America\u27s civilizing mission