Dean's Seminar Series

There may be a limit on our capacity to suppress anthropocentric tendencies toward non-human others. Normally, we do not reach this limit in our dealings with animals, the environment, etc. Thus, continued striving to overcome anthropocentrism when confronted with these non-human others may be justified. Achievement of super artificial intelligence (super AI), however, may force us to face this limit, denying us the ability to free ourselves completely of anthropocentrism. Given concerns that super AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, this might be for our own good.

Link to presentation: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_klr66i8f

During spring 2020, a disastrous pandemic plagued our communities, affecting mainstream society and greatly impacted the lives of incarcerated individuals throughout the world—a population often forgotten by many. The CONVERGE National Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder presented the opportunity to research emergency management in several areas, one of which involved correctional facilities. A working group of nine individuals (eight disaster research experts and one criminologist/victimologist) received a National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research grant to explore emergency management protocols, including, but not limited to: personal protection equipment, visitation, news media information, medical care, COVID-19 cases, and prison subculture in various correctional institutions across the globe. Each researcher was assigned a country, using content analysis methods to gather data to examine similarities and differences. Preliminary data was presented at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Disaster Research and the School of Global Health. The working group agenda, data collection, results, and a discussion of future recommendations will be addressed in this research presentation.

Link to presentation: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_ff6twtuq

Concussions are complex.  They are caused from traumatic biomechanical forces, although ‘traumatic’ can be relative.  As many may have experienced, concussive symptoms can be felt if someone hits their head lightly on a cabinet, or gets kid in the head with a ball, or from a slip and fall or car accident.  The range of trauma is profound which supports the estimate that 300,000 to 3.8 million concussions occur annually.  Although, we know that 30-50% of concussions go unreported.  In this discussion, we will converse about the signs and symptoms of a concussion as well as common treatments and the long-term impact of concussions. Additionally, we will discuss potential impairments on cognitive function and the impact on college-aged individuals. This is a topic that impacts a wide range of individuals from those on the sidelines cheering on youth in sports, to college instructors, and those concerned about long-term mental health and wellness.

Saudi Arabia has an insufficient number of nurses to meet the demands of their healthcare system. This is due to the cultural practices of women predominately staying out of the job market, women who are dependent on men for transportation to jobs, and a nursing career viewed as undesirable for both men and women. Therefore, most healthcare agencies use a large number of expatriate nurses. The nursing workforce in Saudi Arabia are 62% female, 60% foreign from 40 different countries but mostly from India, the Philippines, Malaysia, the U.S., and Australia.

In the U.S., the nursing profession is predominately white and female. U.S. nursing is steeped in the tradition of Florence Nightingale, an English nurse who served in the Crimean War and subsequently professionalized nursing from an apprenticeship model to a discipline based in scientific data to determine practice standards. Nightingale’s view of nursing was that of a religious calling for white females. The demographics of the nursing profession in the U.S. are 90% female, 73.3% White/Caucasian, 10.2% Hispanic, 7.8% African American, 5.2% Asian, 1.7% Two or more races, 0.6% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.3% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 1.0% Other.

The two countries have similar challenges, though different sides of the issue. In the U.S., the struggle is a workforce that is much less diverse than the patients it serves. In Saudi Arabia, the struggle is a workforce that is much more diverse, and doesn’t match, the homogenous culture of the Saudi Arabia patients it serves. The profession’s response to both problems is education in cultural competence. These dynamics are similar to those in Social Work and Education who also use the framework of cultural competence.

This presentation will describe the importance of changing the profession of nursing toward a culture of diversity, equity and inclusivity as it relates to patient safety and health outcomes in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. I will present the basic ideas of cultural competence and present a critique of cultural competence as it is used globally by the profession. A reflection of the experience of teaching cultural competence via ten live webinars for 5,000 nurses in Saudi Arabia from January 2021-July 2021 will be presented.

Link to presentation: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_4ftl9c6d

What lessons can we learn from South Bend, Indiana's complex history of reproductive justice advocacy from the 1960s to the present?  In this new research project, I weave together interviews with South Bend reproductive justice activists from the 1960s to the present, considering how insights from the past might inform the coalition-building many of us seek in the present.  

The advocacy and protests around Whole Woman's Health of South Bend (WWHA-SB)  have made more evident the health disparities, intersectional histories, and conflicting understandings of abortion care. Nevertheless, activists continue to build sometimes unlikely coalitions through a variety of approaches.  In this presentation, I consider South Bend in the context of larger U.S. socio-political debates around reproductive health access, drawing out what I consider failures of opportunity and promising inroads as we build a more inclusive and feminist approach to health care. 

As a feminist scholar, I am interested in the different approaches to organizing taken by second wave feminists and more recent intersectionally informed activists.  As a local activist, who has been on the front lines of bringing WWHA-SB to our community, and who volunteers as a clinic defender, legal observer, and communications outreach person, I have gathered surprising insights that I look forward to sharing.

Link to presentation: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_fp1yajri

The Faculty Thriving Quotient (FTQ) is a newly developed, valid and reliable (α = .92) instrument that provides higher educational professionals with a deeper, richer understanding of faculty thriving. The 20 items in the FTQ assess faculty flourishing in five dimensions: meaningful engagement, institutional alignment, student impact, affirmed value, and relational support. In her presentation, Professor Martinez will explain the development and findings of the FTQ and explore practical ways to support faculty thriving–especially during challenging times.

In the collective consciousness, including the current publishing industry, the romantic notion of the translator mirrors that of the author: a tense lonely figure immersed in their work, moored at their desk among crowded (virtual) bookshelves. And yet, is the process of translation best performed as a lonely affair? Is it actually often undertaken as a strictly solo endeavor despite what the book cover states (when the book cover features the translator’s name)? Is a single-authored translation necessarily more of an intellectual achievement than a team-authored translation? In the past fifteen years, I have argued for a less self-indulgent and more collaborative approach to translation despite the demands of single-authored publications in academia – at least, in English departments – because mirroring the text or the writing process is simply not the goal of a translator’s work. Translators do not duplicate the original text. Instead, they reimagine the text across cultural, historical, stylistic, and linguistic pathways. The research-based and creatively-oriented process of translation therefore benefits from the conversations generated by a diverse village of experts rather than a single multicultural brain. In this presentation, I will mainly focus on my latest collaborative translation work: the translation into French of an Australian scholarly study of Narcisse Pelletier, a nineteen-century French castaway who spent seventeen years in Cape York (Australia) with the Uutaalnganu family who rescued and adopted him. In this work, I was fortunate to actively collaborate with the author, several experts, scholars and translators, a publisher, two editors, and a filmmaker. If translation aims to create international communities around the works they serve, then, perhaps, the translation industry – and academia – will benefit more from envisioning the translation process as one of the enhanced outcomes from vivid conversations among a team of animated experts and enthusiasts rather than the single product of a single translator/scholar.