Sheraton (Governor’s Square 9)
Jesse Harris
, The University of Texas at San Antonio
This book began as a collection of short stories for an Honors nonfiction writing seminar. What started as a menagerie of essays about my mother’s Deafness, struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction, and eventual battle with end-stage liver disease, slowly grew into a narrative about a hearing son’s search for identity and belonging between two worlds, Deaf and Hearing, each one comfortably foreign. At its core, this narrative is an attempt to collapse disordered binaries: mother and son, hearing and deaf, living and dying, united and estranged. The book’s title, Join-Unjoin, is an American Sign Language translation, or gloss, for the breaking of a relationship.
Allison Moats
, Kent State University
The proximal femur is a site of much growth and development during ontogeny. While the developmental program is primarily influenced by genetics, environmental factors such as diet and exercise level impact growth. As the trend toward obesity in developed countries continues, the frequency of the proximal femoral pathology Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis (SCFE) increases. Modern levels of activity experienced by athletes greatly surpass those of ancient populations and may be related to the recent increase in the incidence of Cam Deformity, another proximal femoral pathology. This study compared a modern population (Hamann-Todd) with an ancient population (Libben) and analyzed differences in proximal femoral morphology and incidences of these pathologies. The results support the hypothesis that these pathologies are modern occurrences possibly influenced by the altered diets and activity levels of today.
Samuel Shearer
, Eastern Kentucky University
As much of the world’s leadership was not sure what to think of the emerging Nazi movement in the 1920’s through the 1930’s, Truman Smith clearly saw the dark potential of a Nazi-led Germany. From 1920-1924, Smith served as assistant military attaché in Germany. While serving, Smith was the first American diplomat to interview Hitler. He reported on the manipulative sway Hitler had over the masses, as well as the danger the world could face if Hitler gained power. Smith returned to Germany later in his career and served as head military attaché from 1935-1939. During this stay, Smith orchestrated a wildly successful scheme to utilize the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s fame in order to gain intelligence on German air technology. Together, Smith and Lindbergh provided the United States with unprecedented intelligence on German military build-up. Smith’s reports, however, were almost entirely ignored by the Roosevelt administration.
Chelsea Lee
, University of Nevada-Reno
Issues regarding homosexuality and gay rights remains one of the most contested and controversial around the world. Alas, in countries with high occurrences of discrimination, a suppression of such individuals’ rights frequently occurs. This study has two purposes. Firstly, employing a content analysis and factor analysis of the U.S. Department of State’s 2012 Country Human Rights Reports, it develops an original cross-national indicator which measures the level of discrimination toward LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) persons in 52 areas of discrimination and in 178 countries around the world. Secondly, employing Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, it examines a number of variables believed to affect the level of discrimination toward LGBTQ persons such as age, gender, education, urbanization, GDP per capita, armed forces personnel, human rights, religious affiliation, religiosity, and societal attitudes toward LGBTQ persons.
