Tag: AM Session Panels

Foreign Accent Production and Perception: An Acoustic Analysis of L2 Japanese

Presenter: Lucy Gubbins, Linguistics

Panel: Foregin Accent & Foreign Policy: An Analytical Perspective

Mentor: Kaori Idemaru, East Asian Languages and Literatures

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century E

The acquisition of a second language (L2) is wrought with potential difficulties. Not only must a learner establish grammatical competency in order to effectively communicate, but he/she must also adopt the pronunciation of the target language. This often proves to be an insurmountable task: even after acquiring native-like grammatical fluency in a second language, it is extremely difficult to speak without traces of a foreign accent. When native speakers are confronted with non-native speech, a number of acoustic characteristics can lead to the perception of foreign accent, which is what the present study explores. The first experiment investigates the acoustic qualities of vowels (i.e., F1 and F2) and stop consonants produced by native English speakers who are 2nd- and 4th-year learners of Japanese. The second experiment examines native listener judgments of foreign accent and how they compare with the segmental differences found in the production data. Preliminary results from the production experiment show that non-native learners differ significantly from native speakers in their production of the high back vowel /u/, as well as in the duration of voice-onset time before stop consonants. These findings reveal that even after significant exposure to Japanese in the classroom, L2 learners struggle to achieve native-like production of these features, giving language instructors significant insight into specific problem areas native English speakers might encounter when learning Japanese pronunciation.

Guns for Oil: An Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Weapons Sales to Africa in Exchange for Oil

Presenter: Lauren Dickey, Asian Studies & Chinese

Panel: Foregin Accent & Foreign Policy: An Analytical Perspective

Mentor: Maram Epstein, East Asian Languages and Literatures

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century E

Beginning in 1949, China has gradually increased the scope of its weapons sales overseas to include 40 countries, 21 of which are located in Africa. With Chinese weapons sales in 2009 reaching 900 million U.S. dollars, the global community cannot help but pay attention to China’s overseas weapons sales model. At the same time, resource-rich African nations have become the center of China’s new geopolitical strategies and starting point for oil development and extraction programs. With decades of cooperative experience in the energy sector, Africa has become an important area through which China is able to further diversify its energy resources. In the process of China’s assistance to help Africa develop an oil market, many other forms of aid and investment were also necessary. The most important form of aid can be best seen through “goods for goods” bartering transactions, especially in the form of Chinese weapons for African oil. My paper examines the realities of weapons-for-oil transactions as well as other Chinese involvement in Africa’s natural resources and domestic economies, illustrating the implications for U.S.-China policy and the international community, in hopes that other researches will pay even closer attention to weapons-for-oil exchanges in the future of Sino-African relations.

Bridget Jones as the New New Woman: What She Reads and What She Wants; a Postfeminist Literary Criticism

Presenter: Alexandra Fus, English, Clark Honors College

Panel: Gender, Power & Change

Mentor: Jennifer Levin, Clark Honors College

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century D

“Chick lit” is not nearly so familiar a term as “chick flick,” but since the phenomenal success of Helen Fielding’s novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary, this popular women’s fiction genre has become the subject of serious debate among even high literary critics. As the ur-text for chick lit, Bridget Jones’s Diary’s protagonist offers a postmodern, postfeminist revision of the New Woman– a cultural and literary female archetype who has been continually re-modified since her emergence at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a symbol for what it means to be modern, liberated, and female, Bridget Jones has been condemned by critics as antifeminist, while writers and fans insist that she personifies empowering possibilities for feminism and popular women’s fiction. Using textual analysis, I argue instead that Bridget Jones’s role as the newest New Woman merits consideration free from either fans’ pride or critics’ prejudice, for its simultaneous rejection and engagement with all the New Women that came before, Bridget Jones’s Diary presents an individualistic reimagining of postmodernist postfeminism. Indeed, Bridget’s alternately anxious and empowering expression of a multiplicity of female identities suggests that women of the twenty-first century have become so modern and liberated that they can now choose not to be contained within any New Woman archetype.

Power and Control in the lives of Female Victims and Perpetrators of Domestic Violence: An Empirical Investigation

Presenter: Nicole Snyder, International Studies: Focus on Gender and Power

Panel: Gender, Power & Change

Mentor: Deborah Baumgold, Political Science

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century D

The discourse of domestic violence typically defines domestic violence in terms of physical assault. This project critically examines this assumption using the insights of Steven Lukes’ theory of power. He theorizes that power is wielded in three dimensions. The first dimension is overt conflict. The second dimension is having the power to control the conversation. The third dimension is power over another. Each dimension builds and reinforces the next, resulting in powerlessness. It brings to bear as evidence the oral stories of ten women concerning their personal domestic violence experience. It demonstrates that, as experienced by these women, there is more to domestic violence than domestic assault. Rather, the design and purpose of domestic violence is to reduce and eventually remove agency. Victims are survivors of a process that erodes their sense of self, stifles their liberty and obstructs access to rights.

Femininity and Athleticism: Title IX at the University of Oregon

Presenter: Lauren Goss, History

Panel: Gender, Power & Change

Mentor: Ellen Herman, History

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century D

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 addressed the discrimination of students at any educational institution that received federal funding. Intended to focus on unfair admission practices, Title IX is best known for improving the treatment of female intercollegiate athletes. However, the intricacies of reconciling the federal standards of equality presented substantial challenges, and each institution confronted the ideological intersection of femininity and athleticism in various ways. The University of Oregon administration remedied cases of overt discrimination, most notably in facility access, but acute examples persisted. Becky Sisley, the first and only women’s athletic director for the University of Oregon, served as the driving force for changing athletic policies for women athletes. In extensive interviews, former female athletes corroborate this struggle for recognition. Archival evidence shows the University of Oregon administration presented concerns about increased funding for women’s athletics during the 1970’s. However, the Women’s Intercollegiate Association survived on a meager budget and remained autonomous until the Athletic Department combined men’s and women’s athletics in 1977. The merger, and Sisley’s resignation shortly thereafter, hindered any further attempts for reaching true equality. Discrimination against female athletes persists at the University of Oregon and there is just cause to explore gender equality in all aspects of higher education.

Effects of Tamoxifen on Cell Labeling in the Mouse Brain: A Model for Studying Glioma Formation

Presenter: Anita Kasina, Biology

Panel: Genes, Cells & Jaws

Mentor: Rui Galvao, Institute of Molecular Biology

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century A

Malignant gliomas are an aggressive and incurable form of cancer with thousands of new cases annually, many of which result in death within one year. Previously, we identified Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells (OPCs) as the cell of origin for glioma. We are now examining wild-type (WT) and cancer-prone OPCs on a molecular level to understand the mechanisms by which OPCs form gliomas. Specifically, we are investigating whether brain injury, known to stimulate transient proliferation of WT OPCs, can cause uncontrolled proliferation of mutant OPCs, and ultimately cancer. We inactivated the tumor suppressor genes p53 and NF1 specifically in adult brain OPCs using an OPC-specific gene promoter, NG2, to drive the expression of an inducible form of the DNA recombinase Cre, which is activated by the drug Tamoxifen (TMX). We are currently optimizing TMX delivery to better control the number of mutated cells. We have found that delivering TMX over consecutive days greatly increases the number of mutant OPCs. Mice given 1, 3, 5, and 7 days of TMX had a significant increase in labeling from 1 to 3 and 3 to 5 days but not from 5 to 7 days, indicating 5 days as the ideal maximal dose. We are now quantifying TMX-induced mutagenesis in other brain areas to identify regional differences. Overall, this data provides a solid basis for future experiments using TMX to induce mutations in OPCs, giving us the level of control necessary to understand the differences between WT and mutant OPC proliferation that ultimately cause cancer.

Hdac4 is Required by Early Cranial Neural Crest Cells for the Development of the Zebrafish Palate

Presenter: Vishesh Khanna, Biology

Panel: Genes, Cells & Jaws

Mentor: April DeLaurier, Biology

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century A

Palate deformities are one of the most common congenital birth defects. It is estimated that one in 1000 babies is born with either a cleft lip or a cleft palate. In 2006, single nucleotide polymorphisms in the gene HDAC4 were found to be linked to cleft palate-like defects in humans. In zebrafish, Morpholino-mediated knockdown of hdac4 results in cartilage abnormalities at 6 days post-fertilization, specifically a clefting of the skeletal elements in the roof of the zebrafish mouth. By using fluorescent in situ hybridization, we show that hdac4 knockdown results in the loss of a specific subset of neural crest cells that normally migrate deep to the eye rudiment. Based upon our findings in this animal model, we can propose that human cleft palate resulting from the HDAC4 mutation might ultimately be due to defects in a homologous subset of neural crest cells.