Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: In this paper we describe in detail, the various steps and activities taken that continue to ensure participants’ retention and cooperation in a 4-year longitudinal study of people with Multiple Sclerosis. The Sonya Slifka Longitudinal Multiple Sclerosis Study follows a nationally representative sampling of almost 2000 persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). This project collects a comprehensive set of personal and disease-related information in a series of bi-annual telephone interviews.
Our strategies to ensure cooperation and retention include: a periodic study newsletter mailed to all participants; a participant ‘preferences’ database describing participant preferences such as best times to call, accommodations required etc.; a study diary/calendar; extensive interviewer training regarding Multiple Sclerosis and techniques for interviewing persons with disabilities; frequent interviewer debriefings; and a toll-free project number. The resulting high completion rates as a percent of reachable sample are as follows: 93.9 at six months; 96.7 at annual; 97.7 at eighteen months; 97.6 at twenty-four months; and 97.3 at thirty months.
Our experiences with the various tools and strategies we use to ensure high cooperation in this study can serve to inform other researchers on ways to ensure high rates of cooperation in longitudinal studies of people with disabilities and help to mitigate the problems associated with survey non-response.

Publication Type: Roundtable
Abstract: This session chronicles work of a four-year institution with community colleges in the implementation of completion programs for students earning a new Associate of Arts in Teaching degree.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, we find that that journalistic accounts and most expert case studies do not do justice to the complexity of causal forces producing and reproducing vulnerability to disasters. Using raw disaster data compiled by the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), we develop three cross-national measures of climate risk, based on 4,040 climate-related natural disasters between 1980 and 2002. These are population-adjusted rates of the cumulative number of people killed, made homeless, or otherwise affected by climate-related disasters (wind storms, flooding, drought, and heat waves) during the period. The most powerful predictors of vulnerability to climate disasters are a country’s level of urbanization, the security of its property rights regime, its coastal exposure, national income, and levels of domestic inequality. We also find that behind these current “proximate” causes of a country’s ability to cope with climate disasters is the way it is “inserted” into the world economy. Countries with a colonial legacy of extraction of its resources – as measured by the narrowness of its export base – are structurally predisposed toward higher levels of social, economic, and institutional vulnerability. These structural disadvantages, we argue, limit their ability to protect themselves from poverty and environmental degradation, but also the growing frequency and strength of climate-related disasters. Disaster relief and prevention that treats only symptoms and not political and economic structure are doomed to longer-term failure.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Black and Puerto Rican children bang out rhythms on trash cans and empty Pepsi bottles in a Harlem housing project. A Jewish grocer in Manhattan recounts the story of a dying friend whose last words told police “it was white folks that killed me, not colored folks.” A man in Spanish Harlem leans over a jukebox playing a nostalgic lament, translating the words that float past: “I wouldn’t change Puerto Rico by 4,000 New Yorks.” These unique and surprisingly resistant sonic moments are culled from the “sound effects” recordings made by Tony Schwartz on Folkways Records between 1946 and 1958.

Long before the eclectic mixing of the IPOD, Schwartz was splicing diverse snippets of urban life recorded through his wrist microphone on the streets of Manhattan. Schwartz’s audio productions form a rich and indispensable cultural archive that has yet to be mined by American Studies scholars. Linking the insights of the field of Sound Studies with my work on aurality and African American literature, I perform a “close listening” of Schwartz’ key New York recordings, exploring how albums like “New York 19” (1954) and “Nueva York: A Tape Documentary of Puerto Rican New Yorkers” (1955) function to construct New York as a transnational city that is music to white ears.

During the transitional postwar era of urban conflict, increased segregation, and accelerating “white flight,” Schwartz made 19 LPs for Folkways that simultaneously affirm and challenge the notion that music and audio culture function as forces of social cohesion in the United States. On one hand, Schwartz couples swift juxtaposition with seamless editing to present a vibrant, multicultural urban environment where the sounds of a black cab driver singing spirituals can co-exist with a Jewish salesman hawking Parker pens. Through an auditory recreation of the postwar metropolis—complete with rumbling El Trains, honking horns, and jackhammers—Schwartz attempts to reclaim the noisy, ethnically diverse urban streets as the preeminent crucible of American identity in the face of increasing white migration to the quiet, sterile, and secluded suburbs.

However, although invisible, the mechanical ear of the microphone is far from objective. While Schwartz presents his work as typical of what might be experienced on any day in 1950s New York, he is carefully editing the city, re-mixing its sounds primarily for an audience of eavesdropping white ears. Schwartz persuasively uses the sonic medium to make the threatening cultural “noise” of “the Other” recognizable as meaningful sound to the default (white) American ear. I argue that Schwartz’ recordings provide an important insight into an undertheorized aspect of race in America: the presence of an aural equivalent to the “white gaze.” Schwartz’ desire to provide his audience with a cultural exchange that will “enable you to hear the people around you with a new awareness and enjoyment,” attempts to blur the binary of “Us vs. Them,” even as it exposes the ways in which race, urban space, and national identity are powerfully constructed and understood through the ear.

Publication Type: Presentation
Abstract: COURSE DESCRIPTION

Detailed study of terrorist personalities and terrorist groups, including types, tactics, and trends on a worldwide scale as well as domestically. This course also discusses the issues of prevention and Global Building.

COURSE PURPOSE

This is a workshop in Terrorist Psychology using a clinical, psychoanalytical, and social psychology framework for studying terrorist groups and individuals, terrorist origins, goals, dynamics, ideologies, counterterrorism, and homeland security. Work in this course involves examination of the structure and dynamics of terrorists in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

Terrorist strategies and tactics, the hot spots from which they evolve, the ways they operate, the use of the media, and theories of counterterrorism or negotiations are all covered. The history, present, and future of terrorism are indicated. Participants will review definitions and typologies of terrorism, analyze specific concepts in context, discuss thoughts about terrorism.

Everyone will actively look at various terrorist individuals and groups to demonstrate abilities and capabilities to research a terrorist problem, profile, or scenario in-depth, and argue for an effective counterterrorism policy or negotiations strategy.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

1. Understanding of terrorism against the world, its allied governments, and global interests

2. Develop knowledge of clinical, psychoanalytic, and social psychology as frameworks for analyzing terrorism and terrorists

3. Enhance knowledge and understanding of the historical, psychological, and sociological explanations of terrorism

4. Better acquaintance with the patterns and trends of terrorists, including methods, modes of attack, tactics, and strategies

5. Better acquaintance with the theories on negotiations, including scholarly controversies relating to the media

6. Learn the 4 types of terrorists: definition, assessment, categorizing, and counter-action