Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The phenomenon underlying spiritual experience is “psychism,” defined as perceptions of psychic intrusions into the stream of consciousness that are interpreted by the actor as not originating within the self’s normal information channels. Ethnophenomenological accounts suggest that (1) people regularly experience intrusions but ignore those inconsistent with their beliefs; (2) externalization and perception of psychic objects as “real” is an identity-based decision; (3) once these are accepted as real, their derived meanings are resistant to disproof or reinterpretation, even if those interpretations requires shifting social networks. Psychism represents private construction and validation of meaning – a violation of symbolic interactionist principles.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Numerous drug possession statutes impute an intent to distribute if the accused possesses an amount of the substance at or above some statutorily defined amount. At trial, the defendant has the burden of rebutting this presumption, rather than the prosecution having the burden of proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt. If the defendant does not testify or does not mount some other defense to rebut the presumption of intent, the presumption goes unrebutted and the defendant will be found guilty of illegal possession in addition to the separate offense of intent to distribute.

Under Booker, Blakely, and Apprendi, any fact other than prior conviction that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. This paper examines whether criminal statutes that impute an element of an offense to the defendant that the defendant has to rebut, rather than the prosecution having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, violate the Sixth Amendment under Booker, Blakely, and Apprendi, and their progeny.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Ostensibly black men, because of prevailing (however erroneous) notions of men as inherently masculine along with the idea that masculinity (when understood within the black gendered hegemonic hierarchy) extends its possessors a certain degree of privilege, would be the strongest adherents to a stereotypical notion of black masculinity; however, upon closer scrutiny it becomes apparent that for various reasons , specific individuals who occupy liminal spaces within larger communities of marginalization such as black queer masculine females, have an even greater investment in stereotypical notions of black masculinity that can be termed a possessive investment in black masculinity (as it provides it possessors a degree of psychic and in-group relational currency).

This paper argues that queer identified masculine women of color such as those in Daniel Peddle’s 2005 documentary entitled The Aggressives, through their embodiment and / or exhibition of a possessive investment in black masculinity, articulate and perform their unique identities within the parameters of a larger circumscribed stereotypical racialized gender hegemony that simultaneously works to destabilize as it reinforces the very stereotypes so essential to these individuals identities. Through this possessive investment in hegemonic black masculinity notions of race and gender are queered which in turn provides a space through which more nuanced contours of race, gender, and sexuality can be illuminated and interrogated.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: How does an organization act? How do we go from human or material action—what we can directly observe—to organizational action? We suggest that in order to act, the organization must appropriate action, and that this is made possible through the attribution of action to the organization. This reverses the line of thinking of some authors, for whom organizations delegate actions to their human members. On the contrary, we propose that the organization is constituted by the actions it appropriates. Our proposal draws on authors such as Tarde, Whitehead and Simondon, who propose that being can be understood in terms of having: what the organization possesses is what makes it up. Using examples drawn from a documentary on military wives in Canada, we examine how appropriation and attribution are used to include or exclude these women from the army, and to grant or deny them rights or services.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: This essay explores the experience of viewing the classic possession film, The Exorcist, as a teenager. Specifically, I apply Georges Bataille's notion that consumption of horrorific images is an experience that both draws in and repels the viewer. This, for me, mirrored my relationship with being raised in the Catholic Church where visual markers and other symbols of terror and redemption were combined to form a religious identity.