Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The conventional wisdom in criminal law is that violence between strangers is more serious crime than violence between individuals who know one another. When asked about their crime concerns, most people respond that they fear becoming the victim of a violent crime at the hands of a stranger. Yet more violent crimes occur between people who are intimate partners, family members, friends, or acquaintances than between strangers. This paper identifies and examines arguments in favor of treating stranger violence more seriously, and it concludes that none of the arguments sufficiently justifies the unequal treatment of stranger and non-stranger violence. The paper also identifies several affirmative reasons why violence in close personal relationships might be considered more serious than stranger violence. Ultimately, the paper concludes that non-stranger violence should be treated just as seriously as stranger violence, and it briefly explores a few practical challenges associated with the prevention and punishment of violence between non-strangers.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Celebrity fandom increasingly finds a home online, yet there are few physical sites where fans can gather to pay tribute to their beloved celebrities who have died. Spontaneous memorials often occur following the death of a famous performer; the flowers and remembrances left at the door of Heath Ledger’s apartment building provide one recent example. Long after a celebrity dies, fans still desire to commemorate their passing. More than eighty years after his sudden and untimely death, Rudolph Valentino continues to gain new fans and admirers. In addition to participating in an annual memorial service, fans gather online to discuss how they will commemorate the anniversary of Valentino’s death. Through these events and discussions, fans are able to share not only their appreciation for Valentino, but also to celebrate their participation in media consumption outside of the contemporary mainstream. This paper uses online communities to show that the pleasure of fandom is not solely in the relationship between the fan and the star but in the relationships among fans fostered by websites and discussion groups.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Polygyny has declined throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, while the cultural belief that men desire sex with more than one woman has persisted. These developments have occurred alongside an emphasis on romance and companionate marriage. The existence of these concurrent convictions has implications for the formation and context of unions in post-polygynous societies. We use mixed methods to explore the prevalence, characteristics, and meanings of men’s multiple partnerships in urban Kenya, focusing on the widespread formation of Luo men’s partnerships with jadiya, or “lovers.” Instead of finding a transformation of traditional marital unions to incorporate love and romance, we find the formation of parallel unions for married men. Men continue to take a wife because of traditional benefits and obligations, while many initiate and sustain jadiya relationships for love. The prevalence and emotional significance of these relationships suggest that they have become an important social institution in contemporary Kenya.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Cultural resistance can take place in a vaginal library—a marginalized site of the abject that is in a constant state of disintegration. As much more than a metaphor, the vaginal library was an actual archive of subversive literature and other contraband materials created by women political prisoners during Argentina's last dictatorship (1976-1983). The vaginal library is the most extreme form of what Jacques Derrida considers to be the archive in general—a coffin, a prison cell, a place that “leaves no monuments and bequeaths no documents of its own.

In “In the Vaginal Library: A Lover’s Discourse,” I explore how culture is preserved, remembered, or lost during periods of political duress. I compare the US-based Center for Research Libraries Political Communications Web Archiving project with the clandestine archives of the Argentine dictatorship. The Political Communications Web Archiving project, a collaboration between NYU, U Texas, Stanford and Cornell Universities, is an attempt to capture and preserve the artifacts of contemporary political resistance around the world. But while the magazines, fliers, flow-charts, and pamphlets that characterized much Argentina’s cultural resistance under dictatorship were surely fragile—the paper remains disintegrate when buried in closets or in the ground, held in archives or carried vaginally—the communiqués of today’s marginal political movements (produced by individual activists, political parties, and radical organizations) are often born digitally. As such, they barely exist at all: made for the web, there is no necessary paper referent, and web sites can be shut down, links can go dead.

What is the relationship between archives and political resistance in the digital age? And how do we undertake the recovery of people and ideas that are forgotten, ignored, forced out, or anonymous? The vaginal library is a real and figurative archive built by Argentines to protect a history that was erased from the official record. The Center for Library Research’s Political Communications Web Archive Project is a real and figurative archive built by Americans to protect histories that are largely not their own. At the heart of most forms of political resistance are documents that have been destroyed, voices that have been silenced, and histories that have been lost. In this paper, I analyze two separate attempts to protect against the ravages of our times.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite growing interest in the study of interpersonal forgiveness, the communication of forgiveness remains largely unexplored. This study specifically investigated the ways individuals grant forgiveness. Consistent with Kelley (1998), three types of forgiveness granting behaviors emerged: direct, indirect, and conditional. Results revealed forgiveness behavior use differed for friends (n = 133) and dating partners (n = 135), such that friends employed more indirect behaviors whereas dating partners employed more direct and conditional behaviors. Results also revealed that while behavior use was related to offender blameworthiness, it was unrelated to offense severity. A secondary focus of this study was post-forgiveness rumination, or the negative resentment that lingers after individuals grant forgiveness. Over 20% of the sample experienced moderate to high post-forgiveness rumination and individuals were most likely to ruminate following particularly severe and blameworthy transgressions. Post-forgiveness rumination was unrelated to forgiveness behaviors. Post hoc analyses suggest men and women tend to communicate forgiveness differently.