Centering People (Asynchronous Session)
The Public Health and Humanitarian Impacts of Boko Haram Conflicts in West Africa View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Isidore Udoh
Among the direct humanitarian impacts of the Boko Haram conflict in West Africa are the displacement of approximately 3.6 million people and the deaths of about 20,000. The violence is a global health threat due to its impacts on health systems in West Africa. Boko Haram, banned Western education for women and girls in the territory it captured. In 2014, it kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school in Chibok, Borno, and burned down the school. The goal of this project was to assess the public health and humanitarian challenges from the displacement of large populations in the region by Boko Haram. Qualitative methods were used to assess the public health and humanitarian challenges encountered by internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in temporary camps in northeastern Nigeria. We found that the movement of large populations and their resettlement in temporary shelters present severe public health and humanitarian challenges which include overcrowding, poverty, and environmental degradation from inadequate water supply and poor sanitation and waste management. The disruption of farming, fishing, trade, and other channels of food production and management have caused food insecurity and malnutrition, leading to stunting, underweight, and wasting (low weight-for-height) in children. The conflict also hinders efforts to administer vaccines in the region, resulting in the resurgence of polio and measles. The data collected were then used to develop a framework for humanitarian assets mapping to support efforts to address the key health and humanitarian challenges experienced by IDPs in this region.
Global Sensitivity to Race and Ethnic Participants in Online Delivery of Physical Activity/Fitness Sessions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Geffrey Colon
This paper is focused on creating a sense of awareness concerning sensitivity to race/ethnic backgrounds of participants as instructors deliver online online synchronous sessions in physical activity/fitness sessions. The study is grounded on a sport sociology perspective with a dynamical systems theoretical framework in order to explain the sensitivity and awareness needed by instructors to facilitate inclusive instruction to all participants. The aspect of sensitivity and awareness to race/ethnic background can be transferred into an in-person setting in post pandemic times within community centers, and in/outdoor physical activity/fitness settings.
Examining and Understanding the Emotional Bond of Sisterhood: The Dobbs Sisters from Upper Canada to India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Victoria Cosby
Conway Dobbs and Maria Sophia Dobbs, a nineteenth century upper-class Anglican Irish couple, had 8 children, five of them daughters. The eldest three daughters, Jane, Maria and Harriet were all married around the same time and scattered throughout the British Empire, whereas the younger two sisters, Kate and Madeline, remained at home in Dublin. These sisters, despite distance, difficulty and tragedy, remained in close contact. This is in part due to the efforts of their mother, Maria, who clearly was the centre of the letter exchange between the siblings and their parents. The focus of this paper is to examine the emotional bond between Jane, Maria, and Harriet, and how this was intertwined with their experiences of empire and the ways their lives in many ways mirrored each other. This type of collective biography is known as ‘prosopography’. These sisters lived separate and individual lives in the broader colonial world, and yet there were so many similarities between their experiences. The relationship between these sisters explores what empire meant to the women who lived in it, and whose actions created and enforced colonialism. This presentation will specifically use the method of critical feminist biography, which aims to bring the lives of female subjects to the centre of historical studies. The Dobbs sisters’ letters offer a unique opportunity for understanding the complexities of subjective human experience and essential personal relationships.
A Spiritual Perspective on Coronavirus and Climate Change: Are they Related and How to Prevent Them? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jayant Athavale, Sean Clarke
There has been much debate about the genesis of the coronavirus pandemic and how to ensure we do not have a repeat performance of such a global tragedy. In the recent past, news about COVID-19 has swept climate change off the front pages. Are COVID-19 and climate change linked? The WHO says that there is no evidence of a direct connection between climate change and the emergence or transmission of COVID-19. However, ancient Sanskrit scriptures categorically state that they are and that they are a result of heightened subtle negativity in the environment. Using the Universal Aura Scanner (UAS) and the advanced perceptoion of its team members, Maharshi University of Spirituality conducted an experiment to investigate whether the negativity in the environment around the world had gone up. Measuring the aura of close to 1000 soil and water samples from around the world indicated that high levels of negativity prevailed in the environment. Both developed and underdeveloped nations showed the same negative trend. Samples from the same area taken in different time periods showed a rise in the negativity by as much as 300-400% in 1 year. Soil samples in countries that were spiritually inclined had more positive subtle vibrations. Unless there is a reversal in the subtle negativity in the world, the world will continue to see a higher incidence of natural disasters and extreme weather. The best way to infuse positivity is for people to do spiritual practice as per universal principles.
New Imperial Rhetoric in Contemporary Policy and Popular Media View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chris Cartright, Jane Rago
The late-19th century was a particularly impactful period in Anglo-American popular culture. First, it popularized character-driven adventure stories and exotic lost worlds, made fashionable the media franchise or shared universe, and spawned (at first in paperbacks, then with the new technology of cinema) a transatlantic exchange that dominates the global media landscape to this day. Simultaneously, the United States and Britain, pulling ahead of European powers, entrenched their influence in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Economic and military expropriations were justified through discourses of empire: manifest destiny and the “new” imperialism. Our project examines the relationship between 19th-century media and policy discourses and their continued influence in the 21st century. We compare seminal adventure novels like Treasure Island (1881) and King Solomon’s Mines (1885) with action-adventure video games like Tomb Raider (1996-) and Uncharted (2007-). We compare the rhetoric of the 1894 Glen Grey Act, which prefigured South African apartheid, to the rhetoric around the Grand Inga Hydroelectric Project. We consider how Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Starving Child and Vulture (1993) is descended from Alice Seeley Harris’ pivotal photographs of King Leopold’s Congo. Today, century-old discourses of benevolence, heroism, and individualism serve to justify contemporary politics of expropriation. To challenge oppressive neoliberal paradigms, we must address their roots in New Imperialism.
