Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper presents a comprehensive, context-based theory which both places cross burning in its proper doctrinal framework and recognizes the history of cross burning as one of Ku Klux Klan inspired terrorism directed at African Americans. Critical commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Virginia v. Black prefaces an analysis of the full landscape of cross burning cases including another issue to which others have paid little attention— the ways in which state courts have negotiated First Amendment challenges to cross burning statutes. Thoroughly examining cross burning from each of these perspectives, the paper argues that cross burning should be treated as hate crime, which may be prosecuted, rather than as constitutionally protected hate speech.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Cultural sociology has recently developed new tools with which to understand and analyze meaning in terms of cultural discourse. Specifically, this paper further develops the Alexanderian form of discourse analysis through application on the micro-level. Utilizing extensive ethnographic data, the Burning Man counterculture is examined in terms of how its participants construct cultural meaning that motivates and guides their action. In empirical detail, these actors can be seen as creating a cultural discourse that constitutes their countercultural movement at a fundamental level while at the same time the discourse is continually negotiated, contested, and reconfigured. Exposed is the discourse of the Burning Man counterculture which is used by participants to challenge and confront mainstream American society. Examining the Burning Man counterculture from this perspective demonstrates the analytic utility of this approach through revealing in unique ways the dynamics of morality, political belief, and perceived hegemony within this contemporary countercultural movement.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Landscape managers in southern Africa use fire as a tool to maintain and conserve savanna. Many of these prescribed burn regimes are based on modeling using historic information and onsite experimentation. The long history of anthropogenic fire disturbance in southern Africa suggests that indigenous ecological knowledge could provide further insight into location-specific fire ecology and disturbance cycles. This study investigates the ethnoecology of fire and burn practices in two Ronga communities in southeastern Mozambique. Local knowledge of fire ecology and disturbance cycles, techniques for controlled burns, reasons for burning, and community fire policies were explored through oral histories, conversations with subsistence activity specialists, and targeted interviews about fire. Small, regular controlled burns, used to clear agricultural fields and improve animal forage, produce a patchy mosaic of grass and wooded habitat across the coastal savanna landscape. Oral histories indicate that fire was also used in the past for hunting. Prescribed burn regimes under development in South Africa for the southern end of this region parallel traditional burn practices used just over the border in Mozambique.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate the effect of teacher burnout on student state motivation and affective learning and to test the neutralizing effect of teacher nonverbal immediacy. Utilizing a 2 x 2 factorial experimental design, 172 college students were exposed randomly to one of four written scenarios manipulating levels of teacher burnout (high or low) and nonverbal immediacy (high or low). Results of MANOVA indicate that teacher burnout adversely impacts student state motivation and affective learning, and teacher nonverbal immediacy alleviates the negative effect of teacher burnout on students. Students report the highest motivation and affective learning with low burnout and high immediacy teachers, and the lowest motivation and affective learning with high burnout and low immediacy teachers.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Understanding how biodiversity responds to management techniques is a vital component of monitoring ecosystem restoration. We used multiple trap arrays and GIS techniques to examine herpetofaunal responses to prescribed burning in the previously unstudied northern longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystem currently undergoing restoration in the Talladega National Forest of central Alabama. A two-year sampling effort of 2,170 individuals and 45 species indicated significantly lower diversity in recently burned stands than those burned more than twenty years ago. We found no significant relationship between diversity measures and season of burn (dormant versus growing). Additionally, our data suggest a strong landscape component of herpetofaunal diversity, with distance to longleaf stand edge serving as an important covariate in our analyses. The herpetofaunal community sampled in this study does not correspond closely to that typically encountered in longleaf pine ecosystems of the lower Coastal Plain; this suggests that management regimes designed in southern longleaf communities may not be adequate surrogates to understand the dynamics in northern longleaf communities. Our results provide the first recorded inventory of herpetofauna in the northern longleaf ecosystem, as well as key community metrics to aid forest managers in monitoring the restoration of this and other longleaf ecosystems in the Southeast.