Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2011 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts, our ninth annual issue documenting the work conducted by students in collaboration with their faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2008 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, our sixth Book of Abstracts that features the scholarship conducted in the college by our students in collaboration with faculty mentors. In the above quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson goes on to say the following: “The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself.” Indeed, the high level of scholarship reflected in this book is a testament to the students’ development as scholars and the effective mentorship provided by the Winthrop faculty as they share in the practice of their disciplines.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts 2009 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents the seventh Book of Abstracts, highlighting the undergraduate scholarship conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. This collection of abstracts represents many hours of scholarly activity in which students further developed their research, critical thinking, and writing skills and engaged in learning well beyond the classroom. We congratulate the students and their faculty mentors for the quality of their work and their willingness to share it with the academic community through publications in refereed journals and presentations at regional, national, and international meetings. We also thank Evan Adams for editing the abstracts and Chris Richter, a visual communication design major, for designing the cover and producing the book.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2003 Book of Abstracts

On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students in the College of Arts and Sciences, I want to thank you for your interest in this collection of abstracts of undergraduate research for 2003. This collection is the first we have published, and we expect it to be number one in a long and increasingly impressive series. The importance of this collection is what it represents. These abstracts are the results of untold hours of hard work by students and faculty. Through that work, students have learned much about the research process, developed important critical and analytical thinking skills, improved writing abilities, and deepened relationships with faculty mentors. Many students have presented their research in classes, through seminars, and at professional meetings. In this work, faculty have been challenged to push students to do the best they can, to let them flounder as they struggle to solve the problems at hand, to hold them to deadlines, and to know how to encourage and when to scold. I know from personal experience that working together on meaningful research is a powerful way to build lasting relationships between students and faculty members.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2004 Book of Abstracts

In his work entitled The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon expresses the need for students and their teachers to push beyond current knowledge by testing accepted theories, developing new paradigms, and discovering new information. The abstracts in this booklet are clear examples of how students and faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences are advancing knowledge in a variety of disciplines. From the analysis of particular proteins to the examination of various literary themes, the students whose scholarly endeavors are represented in this booklet pursued research projects that have explored new ideas; and their teachers have helped them to achieve their goals by providing expert guidance in the field of study, by challenging students to excel, and by encouraging them as they developed their ideas. Students and faculty should be very proud of the work reflected in these abstracts. These individual efforts and collaborations reveal what is best about Winthrop University as a learning community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2006 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents our fourth issue of Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences: Book of Abstracts, which highlights the work conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. This collection of abstracts represents many hours of scholarly activity in which students further developed their research, critical thinking, and writing skills and engaged in learning well beyond the classroom.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2007 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents our fifth Book of Abstracts that highlights the undergraduate scholarship conducted in the college by students with their faculty mentors. As the quote by James Russell Lowell implies, the pursuit of knowledge involves more than acquiring facts; it requires posing relevant questions, critically examining information, and clearly communicating conclusions. The high level of scholarship reflected in this book is a testament to the students’ development as scholars and the effective mentorship provided by the Winthrop faculty.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2005 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, the third issue in our annual book of abstracts, containing the work conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community. In fact, these collected works illustrate the students’ ability to communicate at a professional level; in many cases, these students have presented and defended their scholarship to the greater academic community at regional, national, and international meetings. We congratulate all the students and faculty mentors who are represented in this collection for their dedication to learning. This book is also the first designed and edited by Winthrop University undergraduate students. For their good work, we thank Kristen Jeffords for editing the abstracts, Paul Jones for creating the cover art, and Stephanie Sheldon for the book design and layout.

Information Access Patterns of Faculty in Arts and Sciences Colleges in Chidambaram

The term “user study” focuses on information use patterns, information needs, and information-seeking behaviour. Information- seeking behaviour and information access patterns are areas of active interest among librarians and information scientists. This article reports on a study of the information requirements, usefulness of library resources and services, and problems encountered by faculty members of two arts and science colleges, Government Arts & Science College and Sri Raghavendra Arts & Science College, Chidambaram.

Producción e impacto de las instituciones españolas de investigación en Arts and Humanities Citation Index (2003-2012)

[EN]This essay reviews both the scholarly output and impact factor of Spanish research institutions in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) database, managed by the Thomson-Reuters Web of Science. Based on a bibliometric analysis of a range of variables it has been possible to identify those institutions with the best performance indicators, the journals publishing the most articles, the most productive areas of research, and other relevant data on publishing patterns in the Humanities. The study reveals that the most productive Spanish institutions in the Humanities are the same as those that lead the performance figures in other areas; it also highlights the outstanding production of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

„This is TZ power! Kenkey can’t do this!“ : Die performative Aushandlung nationaler Kultur ; das National Festival of Arts and Culture in Ghana /// Arbeitspapiere / Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien ; 92

Der vorliegende Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der performativen Aushandlung nationaler Kultur auf dem National Festival of Arts and Culture, das 2006 in Wa, Nordwestghana, stattfand. Die Autorin nahm an der Vorbereitung und Planung des Festivals in lokalen staatlichen Kulturinstitutionen teil, und beobachtete die Diskussionen um die Repräsentation einer (imaginierten) spezifischen Kultur des Nordens in scharfer Abgrenzung zu der des als dominant und diskriminierend empfundenen Südens. In diesem Zusammenhang werden Fragen der Authentizität und Authentifizierung, wie sie in der Planung und Rezeption diskutiert wurden, aufgegriffen und mit der Konzeption des Festivals als gleichzeitig einheitsstiftendes Vehikel für nationale Identität und als Austragungsort eines Wettbewerbs der Regionen um Anerkennung und Ressourcen in Verbindung gesetzt. Das Festival, so die Argumentation, ist eine cultural performance, die das Wesen einer „Kultur“ nicht nur abbildet, sondern auch die Möglichkeit des Wandels und der Subversion birgt. Performance meint hier also gleichzeitig die Aufführung und das Skript der Diskurse, die der Aufführung Bedeutung zuschreiben. Diesen doppelten Ansatz verfolgt der Artikel durch die Verknüpfung von Festivalbeobachtungen und Komiteesitzungsmitschriften im Rahmen der Vorbereitung.

Connecting Interactive Arts and Virtual Reality with Enaction

This paper reports on a Virtual Reality theater experiment named Il était Xn fois, conducted by artists and computer scientists working in cognitive science. It offered the opportunity for knowledge and ideas exchange between these groups, highlighting the benefits of collaboration of this kind. Section 1 explains the link between enaction in cognitive science and virtual reality, and specifically the need to develop an autonomous entity which enhances presence in an artificial world. Section 2 argues that enactive artificial intelligence is able to produce such autonomy. This was demonstrated by the theatrical experiment, "Il était Xn fois" (in English: Once upon Xn time), explained in section 3. Its first public performance was in 2009, by the company Dérézo. The last section offers the view that enaction can form a common ground between the artistic and computer science areas.

An exploratory study about the perception and justification of violence in Mixed Martial Arts and kickboxing athletes

THE INFLUENCE of combat sport practice on behaviour, attitude, personality and other factors was, and still remains, a research topic of great interest as well as conflicting points of view. Findings are as yet inconclusive since a direct or causal effect is difficult to establish and other factors external to the individual, such as the instructor’s coaching style, also need to be taken into consideration. Furthermore, the wide range of disciplines pertaining to the category combat sports differ from each other on a number of characteristics, such as the extent of physical contact or competition rules, and in fact, attempts have been made to distinguish between various sub-types (e.g. Trulson, 1986). A common distinction made is that between the traditional martial arts, which place emphasis on the art’s philosophy, its traditions and hierarchy (e.g. traditional karate, aikido) and the modern (or Western) combat sports (e.g. boxing, Mixed Martial Arts). An ongoing debate exists about the potential positive and/or negative influence of combat sport practice in comparison to other sport disciplines that do not include this element of fighting and direct aggression. On the one hand, combat sports have been presented by some researchers and sport practitioners as a means of promoting positive social and individual behavior, such as in Theeboom, De Knop and Wylleman’s (2008) evaluation of a martial arts Programme for socially disadvantaged youths in Belgium. Results revealed a positive effect of this project; however, it also highlighted the crucial role played by the instructors or leaders of such programmes. In another intervention using martial arts, Trulson (1986) reported a positive effect of a six month traditional martial art (Korean Tae Kwon Do) intervention with male juvenile delinquents including a reduction in aggressiveness and anxiety, thus confirming the positive influence of such an activity. Nevertheless, this effect was not observed in the other group participating in a modern Adaptation of this martial art led by the same instructor, where the philosophical aspect of this discipline was not emphasised. Moreover, an opposite effect was ascertained in this case where an increased tendency towards delinquency was reported. These results support the distinction between the various types of combat sports together with the way this sport is presented and taught by the instructor.