Tag: A2 Lost Voices

An Introduction to Nominalizations in the Wapishana Language

Presenter: Jessie Erikson

Mentor: Jessie Erikson

PM Session Oral Presentation

Panel Name: A2 Lost Voices

Location: Maple Room

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Wapishana is an Arawakan language spoken by approximately 7,000 people in northern Brazil and southern Guayana. During July of 2010, Adrian, a speaker of Wapishana traveled to the University of Oregon to participate in an intensive linguistic field methods course during the biennial Institute for Field Linguistics and Language. During this month, Adrian provided speech data for research on nominalizations, nouns formed from other word classes (primarily verbs), in the Wapishana languages My research is the result of the description and analysis of eleven nominalizing suffixes which occurred at the ends of words in elicitation and longer spoken texts recorded during this time. While the primary purpose was to describe the form and characteristics of each nominalizer, I also demonstrate that nominalizations in Wapishana are able to function as relative clauses, a phenomenon that is a common pattern in languages around the world.

Revolutionary War Ads and the Public Sphere

Presenters: Jordan Pratt and Daniel Shaver

Mentor: Vera Keller

PM Session Oral Presentation

Panel Name: A2 Lost Voices

Location: Maple Room

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

In the Revolutionary War era, the public sphere was not only represented by the articles written in the newspapers but also in the advertisements surrounding them. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s writings about the print revolution and its effect on the way people inter- act with each other create a fascinating dialogue about the history of the book and the role advertisements play. Our study proves that the history of the book is not only relevant to the way in which we conceptualize famous authors and great works but also to the smaller microcosms of everyday individuals within the Revolutionary War society. To draw these connections, we read through the Revolutionary War era newspapers in the UO Special Collections room. Through careful analysis we discovered patterns within the popular advertisements. These advertisements support Eisenstein’s points surrounding public celebrity as well as Jürgen Habermas’ definition of a public sphere.

Corporate Liability and Human Rights: A Historical Perspective

Presenter: Megan Gaffney

Mentor: Joseph Fracchia

PM Session Oral Presentation

Panel Name: A2 Lost Voices

Location: Maple Room

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum is a current United States Supreme Court case in which a group of Nigerian environmental protesters are suing Royal Dutch Petroleum for aiding and abetting the Nigerian governments crackdown on environmental protesters from 1992-1995. The Nigerian plaintiffs are suing under the American Tort Statute, a controversial US law that allows non-citizens to press charges for violations of international norms committed on foreign soil. This paper will take a historical account of human rights development at the international level since World War II to better understand both the origins and definition of human rights. It will also look at the parallel development of US human rights law, specifically the Alien Torte Statute, to determine the relationship that US law has with international law. Finally it will take a critical look at the Kiobel case to determine the legal and moral issues that are intrinsically tied to corporate liability in human rights cases. The research will involve court cases from the United States and interna- tional treaties and conferences. Ultimately it hopes to prove that corporations have a legal liability to uphold human rights.

The Declining Effectiveness of Environmental Politics since the 1970s

Presenter: Maneesh Arora

Mentor: Matthew Dennis

PM Session Oral Presentation

Panel Name: A2 Lost Voices

Location: Maple Room

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Over the last several decades a large percentage of the American public has realized that our world faces unprecedented environ- mental problems, and is working to fix these problems. The growing public concern led to monumental pieces of environmental legislation being passed in the 1970s to fix environmental problems but, since then, nothing to that magnitude has been done at a political level. I have done an analysis of the effectiveness of environmental legislation and environmental regulations that have been passed since 1969, and the level of public concern around environmental issues in order to determine if there has been a decline in effectiveness of environmental politics and if so, what the reasons for it are. My research has shown that even in the face of growing public concern and strong activism, there has been a decline in effectiveness of environmental work at a political level. I also found that there are a variety of reasons for the decline including; the corporate backlash against environmentalism, deregulation of industry, and a shift from a “stick” approach to regulation to a “carrot” approach. By uncovering the reasons for the decreasing effectiveness in environmental politics, we can better understand how to improve the effectiveness of environmental politics in the future.