Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Drawing on the author's ethnographic and textual analysis research over a five-year period in the United States, the paper observes that older generations of workers are getting used to the new models of technology-driven communication but may not feel "at home" in them. The author suggests steps for policy makers to stimulate and reward older workers, whose roles in the "new work" are both vital and threatened. Proceeding from data suggesting that work status often drives home computer and Internet competencies and usage in the lives of Americans over 50, the author acknowledges that the advancing age of Baby Boomers will cause some generational differences in competency and usage to disappear, but cultural differences among elders will persist. Effective public policy for curing the Digital Divide must include attention to older Americans on the margins, many of whom are single women, racial minorities, and residents of central-city or rural areas, the author claims. Recommendations include:
1. Tailor retirement systems for individual differences.
2. Make employment sectors elder friendly.
3. Make the educational system non-discriminatory.
4. Eliminate ageist practices inside the academy.
5. Strengthen policies to deter age discrimination by employers.
6. Encourage inclusive images of older workers.
7. Stop retrofitting facilities to "shoehorn" in disabled (often older) workers.
8. Encourage intergenerational learning communities.
9. Pursue age studies and intergenerational research.
The author concludes that citizens must assume a collective responsibility for re-creating social environments that will accommodate unprecedented complexities of intergenerational living in today's world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Transgendered athletes have competed at all levels in sport, though most remain hidden and silenced. In the spring of 2003 USA (ice) Hockey banned one transsexual Male-to-Female (MTF) athlete from participating in the Women’s National Hockey Tournament with her teammates. By deeming her ineligible, USA Hockey demonstrated the closed corridor of publicly controlled gender in women’s sport. This article offers an ethnographic semi-biographical voice to an athlete seeking space and gendered identity through her sports participation. In looking for ways to re-construct gender we engage with a post-structuralist and psychoanalytic framework through the works of Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Butler, and Grosz. In the reading of gender a feminist lens is employed to further view the subjectivity of women. In applying these theories to the experiences of a trans-body we confront ideas of body policing, identity marking and identity self-maintenance through the voice of one transgendered athlete.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Presenters address the role of outcomes assessment in the development and evaluation of online learning materials. The session will include: 1) a rubric for choosing commercially-produced online programs; 2) guidelines for instructor-generated online classes and activities; 3) group discussion and hands-on activity. Attendees will receive a CD-ROM with session materials.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: During the Second World War African Americans realized their presence was often unwelcome by whites in the expanding wartime workplace. After the war, militancy among former GIs for better employment sharply increased, as many vets believed that they were entitled to increased federal protection because they had answered America’s call to duty. For many within the working-class African American community, a better wage was synonymous with the "American dream" and some felt that picket lines all over the country were the front lines for democracy.

This paper examines the racial dynamics in Chicago were reshaped in the American workplace by the return of black veterans. For many of these veterans, the activities they participated in during the years following World War II demonstrated their refusal to return to the status of second-class citizen in African American community of Chicago’s Southside from the foxholes of Europe and the Pacific. The paper examines both organized and unorganized labor protest by World War II vets as well as the impact these protest actions held in shaping postwar employment opportunities.

This study of labor militancy and civil rights in Chicago adds to the history of workers’ activism in Chicago. By focusing on the lives and labors of African Americans, this project will add to and illuminate the important aspect of the wartime story of black Chicago that is still being overlooked by historians of African American labor.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Civil war is a widespread problem, yet it has received far less attention than international war, and scholars have yet to produce a viable theory of the causes of civil war. Recent quantitative analyses have generated more questions than answers, offering limited findings and casting doubt on the role of inequality and identity in the causes of civil war. This paper offers a new framework, one which captures the complex convergence of inequality and identity divisions with factors which escalate intergroup tensions on the road to civil conflict. First, social-structural factors including economic inequality and political power inequality can either overlap with or cut across identity divisions. Cases of overlapping social cleavages lay the foundation for conflict, generating intergroup tensions. Second, catalyst factors such as economic decline or regime change escalate such tensions, fanning the flames of groups’ collective fear. Finally, group leaders within this context can either capitalize on such tensions, mobilizing their groups toward civil conflict, or they can seek compromise. The complex conjunction of these causal factors has thus far eluded scholars. This paper elaborates on this theory, explains the failure of other models to capture this process, and provides evidence by examining several crucial cases.