Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) (Sidanius and Pratto 1999) has been assumed to contribute to the willingness of minority group members to accept their subordinate position in the society. Inversely, it has been purported to be associated with majority group members’ acceptance of their dominant position. Following this logic, I expect that political participation will be positively associated with SDO among majority group members and negatively associated with SDO among minority group members. Data from a representative survey of El Paso, TX residents shows that SDO is positively related to voting and other conventional forms of public participation, as well as unconventional public participation among whites in El Paso. On the other hand, SDO is negatively related to these forms of public participation among Latinos in El Paso. SD theory is both upheld and refined in this test – (1) the expected relationships between SDO and groups are demonstrated and (2) that SD theory does not apply to baseline rates of political participation by nationally subordinate groups in minority-majority localities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the African American writer Pauline Hopkins’ 1902 novel _Winona_, set primarily in the U.S. West a few years before the Civil War broke out. I contend that Hopkins not only uses the topic of slavery to critique the failure of the abolitionist ideal in the postbellum years, but she also appropriates contemporary discourses on the West and Indianness to anachronistically create agency for her antebellum African American characters, especially the heroine Winona. By doing so, I want to probe into two interrelated crossroads in the novel. First, I want to look at how dominant discourses on Indians signified to African Americans around the turn of the century and how the white-centered practice of “playing Indian” can be situated in a novel set to consolidate and empower African American identity. Second, I aim to map out the entanglements among gender, race, and empire by looking at how this African American novel ambivalently used both discourses on Indians and domesticity to critique and endorse U.S. westward imperialist expansion.

Specifically speaking, Hopkins delineates the West as a different geography of hope and possibilities and Indianness as a metaphor for unspoiled Nature and freedom, and she uplifts her African American characters by associating them with the West and/or Indianness. In her view, through this kind of “western” and/or “Indian” transformation, African American women such as Winona not only can attain ideal womanhood and properly discipline both men of color and white men, but they can also map out different kinds of possibilities for African Americans and the nation. However, since the West and Indians in Hopkins’ delineation are stereotypical symbols embedded in U.S. imperial history (sometimes utopianized as freedom and regeneration, sometimes denigrated as savageness and disorder), the westward baptism that she depicts is essentially an imperialist act, and her Africanized version of Manifest Domesticity proves to be ambivalently liberating and limiting at the same time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We examine the effect of inter-turn silence and sequential environment on listener ratings of willingness and agreement across three language groups: American English, Italian, and Japanese. All three groups returned lower scores for willingness/agreement as inter-turn silence lengths increased, with similar scores for the longest inter-turn silence (1200 ms). This lends initial cross-linguistic support to Jefferson's (1989) proposal concerning a "possible standard maximum" for silence (in English) and focuses attention on the confluence of grammar, culture, and turn-taking.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 2004, election turnout rates in the United States and Canada started to converge, in part due to an increase in interest which led to higher turnout in the United States, and in part due to a generational-induced decline in turnout in Canada. Based on the theory that higher rates of participation are commonly associated with lower socioeconomic bias in participation (Lijphart, APSR 1997), I will use National Election Studies data from both countries to examine whether the recent changes in turnout levels have resulted in lower turnout bias in the United States and higher turnout bias in Canada (using standard SES variables). Possible partisan consequences will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed