Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Vaccines have historically been viewed with a complicated and often fluctuating mixture of hope and optimism, and skepticism and ambivalence. Recent concerns center on possible long-term iatrogenic effects of vaccines, including chronic disorders such as autism. Our understanding of autism as a clinical entity has undergone several major paradigmatic shifts in its short history. No definitive cause has yet been found, however, and a new line of thought suggests a genetic vulnerability to an environmental exposure. There is currently both an increased skepticism on the part of the lay public about the utility of many vaccines, and also a fundamental change brewing in our understanding of autism. This coincidence has brought these two strands of public opinion and medical knowledge on a track toward one another, and holds power to transform both how we view autism and how we view vaccines as a public health intervention. Further research is needed to determine the viability of the vaccine and autism hypothesis; the outcome of these investigations could have a dramatic impact on our assessment of the costs and benefits of vaccines as a public health strategy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: George Ritzer has done much to theorize the (r)evolution of consumption settings through his work on McDonaldization (2004b), the means of consumption (2005), and most recently nothing and something (2004a). I will draw especially from his notions of “cathedrals of consumption” and “landscapes of consumption” to theorize a new consumption geography – a community of consumption. This paper will make the argument that consumption settings have evolved from cathedrals (places to visit on special occasions) to communities (places in which we make our homes) and thus that consumption settings are achieving a full vertical integration of our daily lives.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper analyzes the Robert E. Lee Memorial window in the Washington National Cathedral as a veiled text or image. The veiled text is a rhetorical strategy of an interpretive community, through the frame of the fourth persona, to gain legitimacy in the public sphere without challenging dominant conceptions of public memory. This paper argues that images serve the functions of the fourth persona with its ability to hold two ideological positions simultaneously and that veiled texts can be considered to be able to pass as dominant ideological texts.