Health disparities researchers have identified elevated rates of difficulties among gender and sexual minorities (GSM). In addition to a higher rate of general mental health issues, there is also a higher prevalence rate of substance misuse among GSM individuals when compared to the general population. Specific issues, such as stigma and oppression faced by GSMs, might have a direct linkage with the higher prevalence rate and might also impact treatment outcomes. To understand the specific factors that lead to substance misuse, as well as to understand the unique patterns of treatment-seeking and adherence among GSM clients, the development and dissemination of GSM-specific treatment programs are needed.

In 2007, Cochran, Peavy, and Robohm conducted a study of treatment programs who indicated that they provided specialized services for gay and lesbian clients; however, phone calls to these agencies revealed that over 70% of these agencies actually did not provide services that were different from the agencies' general services. Given the progress and development in the last decade regarding awareness of GSM rights, the proposed study aims to gain a renewed understanding of the current state of GSM-specific treatment using a similar methodology. Additionally, GSM clients’ initial contact experience with treatment agencies might influence their willingness for future treatment entry and adherence. Therefore, the experience of the initial contact is also examined in the current study.

This study provides a snapshot summary regarding specialized substance treatment programs available to GSM individuals in the United States in 2020. Our goal is to understand if there have been any improvements and updates of actual specialized programs available to gender and sexual minority clients from when the last, most similar study was conducted, approximately 17 years ago. This study also focuses on understanding the initial-contact experience when a potential GSM client initiates treatment seeking. By asking questions regarding the specificity and scope of services treatment agencies defined as a specialized program, the current study will hopefully contribute to the collective effort of operationalizing and standardizing the term “LGBTQ-specific treatment."

Anaconda is a town located in southwest Montana. Anaconda was established as a smelting operation to process copper ore. It is now home to one of the largest Superfund sites in the United States. Since the Superfund designation in 1983, agencies, nonprofit organizations, and stakeholders have worked to implement cleanup strategies. Community resilience has become a focus of this site. Community resilience has been studied through various lenses, but broadly refers to how a community responds and copes with a perturbation. This research considers environmental, cultural, and political perturbations. It focuses on the changes and transitions the community has gone through, and how different decisions lead to more or less resilience. Specifically, this research is interested in how the community perceives its own resilience. Previous community resilience research has often not given enough attention to complex social dynamics, which is the aim of this research. Preliminary findings from interviews with stakeholders will be discussed which highlight themes of trust, risk, and identity related to resilience. These findings have the potential to answer larger questions for other communities, especially those with legacies of mining or contamination.

According to one study, lemons are depicted in fifty-one percent of a sampling of Netherlandish paintings between 1500 and 1650, a time known as the Dutch Golden Age, as opposed to sixteen percent of Italian works made during the same period. Horticulturally, citrus plants flourish much easier in the warm Mediterranean climate, requiring special orangery hothouses to survive the cold Netherlandish winter, leading to the question as to why lemons were such a popular subject matter for Dutch painters. I have used a multivalent historical, socio-cultural, economic, and literary approach to attempt an interpretation of the lemon as object, subject, symbol and emblem, as a contemporary viewer may have seen them.

Using primary sources, research across disciplines, and Dutch Golden Age interpretation methods put forth by Svetlana Alpers in the groundbreaking Art of Describing (1983), I have peeled away multiple layers of meaning behind the predominance of the lemon’s appearance in seventeenth century Dutch paintings. As the title implies, these range widely: the traditional moralistic interpretation of vanitas paintings– objects of abundance and luxury that have short life spans, withering and rotting quickly; lemons and their pith evoking the bitter and sweet nature of life. Carpe Diem, but as newly-minted Calvinists, remember that austerity is esteemed over greed. Historically evident would appear the lemon’s ubiquity a proof positive of the Dutch Republic’s dominance in trade, showcasing the wealth of the young nation. Contemporary cookbooks and paintings of market scenes, still lives of meals, and other references attest to the ubiquity of lemons in everyday life, but it’s in medical and home remedy citations that the lemon becomes truly “juicy.” References to lemon and citrus as remedy for poison and cure for the ailment of hyper-arousal abound in both text and artwork. That a sumptuous, juicy, exotic fruit could be a cure for “lovesickness” is interesting in itself, but the matter it was utilized is quite provocative. It is this that finds the final layer– Dutch artists found the variety of textures, color, and light too provocative to resist. The luscious, peeled lemon became a skill test for the virtuosos, an investment of time, labor, and paint to showcase their mastery.

This research opened up wildly unexpected avenues, each one revealing more facets of an overlooked element of Dutch Golden Age painting. The resulting discourse is a diverse journey to uncover the reason for the lemon’s presence in so many artworks.

Stretching along more than 1,000 miles of dense forest, mountain passes, meandering rivers, and open prairie, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail (NPNHT) catalogs the events and impact of the Nez Perce War of 1877—a war that was transformational for the Nez Perce (Niimiipuu) people and white settlers across the inland northwest. The war’s history, which remains relevant today, is interpreted primarily through informative roadside signage. This signage, developed over decades, has accumulated in a confusing muddle of different narratives, values, and perspectives that is harmful to public learning and conceptions of heritage throughout the region. Heritage, which is the way that societies think about the past in the present, is an often-unrecognized factor in societal health and human rights, and its distortion is a serious concern. Fortunately, however, the lack of sign uniformity is helpful to the study of cultural heritage along the NPNHT; it forms a sort of heritage stratigraphy, or layering, that allows a keen look into past behavior and thought.

Conducted during an internship for the Trail and a cultural heritage seminar, this research is a comparative analysis of signs along the NPNHT. Studying historical accuracy, language use, and sign context, I organized signs based on content, date, and source. A few patterns emerged. Most significantly, older (20+ years) and locally developed signs tended to ignore or distort Niimiipuu perspectives, especially regarding leadership, and skewed inaccurately towards US success and suffering. In addition, signs overall neglected to use Niimiipuu naming and language, with some exceptions in more recent examples. The omission of traditional language, especially regarding names, is damaging not only to an idea of the past, but to cultures who use that language in the present, as it separates them from their heritage. I also looked at published interactions with signs and monuments along the trail; there was a large discrepancy between Niimiipuu and non-tribal awareness of and value placed on the war’s history, with Niimiipuu people engaging regularly and placing more significance on the event. While there is a clear modern connection to the war for Niimiipuu, non-tribal connections are comparatively minimal. This discrepancy might have harmful implications in for relations between the groups in the present.

With these research findings in mind, I developed an experimental sign for the Bitterroot Valley that incorporated multiple historical perspectives, Niimiipuu naming and translations, and interactive features. Situating the sign within a geographically significant location in the valley, I hoped to encourage local communities to form connections to the heritage and, as a result, undo confusing and harmful conceptions of history. Before new signs can begin to have a positive effect, however, the old and inaccurate signage must be removed. Ultimately, there is ample room for a new heritage that incorporates the Nez Perce War in both American and Niimiipuu society—searching for meaning in a shared past rather than a separate one.

Classroom Language Socialization:

Language acquisition, educator beliefs and intercultural communicative competence

Language and culture are intricately intertwined. In the past, language structure was thought to be the “purist” form of culture, but then the work of Dell Hymes (1972) on communicative competence and the relationship between language and culture brought a shift to the way language systems were understood. Rather than being studied separately from their communicative act, Hymes argued for the need to understand language through context. With the help of Canale and Swain (1980) these ideas about language brought a shift in educational literature and consequently the design of curriculum. As this pedagogical discussion evolved, new policies were developed with regards to how language learning and instruction were to take place (Saville-Troike 1989; Celce-Murcia 2007; Aguilar 2007). One of most recent concepts to come from these previous studies is that of “intercultural communicative competence” or the ability to speak another language with cultural awareness, or to successfully navigate communication using one’s knowledge of the language as well as one’s knowledge of the target culture. (Bartram 2010; Bailey 1996).

However, language learning in the US has a conflicting history. Considering studies by Macedo (2019) and Kramsch (2019), it’s initial support came from the notion that language learning was necessary for defense purposes. Learning language can be a gateway to understanding others as ourselves. According to the most recent census, 94% of Montanans speak English at home. This leads to the popular assumption that students do not need to learn language. Yet we know that learning a second language can improve memory, deductive reasoning skills, and perhaps most importantly empathy.

Additionally, there is little documentation on what happens in the classroom, let alone the language classroom. To highlight the context wherein theories of language socialization, teacher identity, and school socialization are avenues to understanding second language instruction and the social norms that govern pedagogical decision-making, this presentation will provide the preliminary findings from language educator interviews using narrative analysis. As educators tell their stories, an understanding about how language is taught and why it’s being taught offers insight into why a place like Montana needs such programs.

In 2016, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System reported that 437,465 children were in foster care. Removal of a child from their family typically happens for reasons that pose immediate safety risks, such as abuse, neglect, parental substance abuse, unsuitable living conditions, parental mental illness, family violence, or the absence of parents (Lohr & Jones, 2016). For these reasons, children who are or have been in foster care are at risk of experiencing a variety of negative health and behavior outcomes. One domain where foster children face specific challenges is the education system. Frequent placement changes often result in a change of schools and cause disrupted learning throughout the K-12 education (Morton, 2018). As foster children get older and emancipate from foster care, they are left to make the decision of continuing their education on their own, often without financial or moral support (Courtney, 2009; Morton, 2018). Without support, the transition from primary to secondary education becomes more of an obstacle. In research, former foster care students enrolled in college reported that uncontrolled mental health issues and poor emotion regulation skills were barriers to their success (Morton, 2018). Additionally, research has found that up to 75 percent of college students report adverse childhood experiences (Calmes et al., 2013). These students encounter risks in the academic world such as negative college adjustment and lower academic achievement and are two times as likely to drop out before completing a degree as those with no trauma history (Banyard & Cantor, 2004). The current study sought to explore the relationships between childhood trauma history, foster care history, college enrollment and adjustment, and resilient qualities that contribute to academic success through a mixed-methods approach. Participants completed 2 to 3 online surveys that collected information about childhood experiences (Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire), resilience qualities and behaviors (Academic Resilience Scale), and foster care experiences (Foster Care Experience Survey). The questions specifically posed to former foster children inquired about relationships, supports, and protective factors in relation to their foster care experiences and how these things have supported or inhibited their success. A primary goal of this study was to identify specific themes across participant responses to inform what aspects of the college transition were useful and what is needed for future students transitioning from foster care to college. Hearing from former foster children firsthand, as was done in this study, can give educators and policy makers a glimpse into the major struggles they are facing and highlight key areas for improvement. This presentation will help viewers acquire skills to implement strategies that maintain supportive learning environments for students with childhood trauma or foster care experience.

Transboundary protected areas consist of clearly defined protected areas which are connected across one or more international boundaries and involve cooperation between multiple countries. The number of transboundary protected areas has experienced a dramatic increase in recent decades, and there are currently over 200 transboundary conservation initiatives worldwide. However, relatively few transboundary protected areas have been established for marine environments. Transboundary conservation approaches are integral to managing marine areas due to migratory species and issues like marine pollution and over-exploitation often crossing political boundaries. The development of transboundary marine protected areas (TBMPAs) may strengthen management and conservation by facilitating increased international sharing of information, resources, and strategies.

Due to the small number of TBMPAs, there is limited literature research into how these protected areas can be effectively coordinated and managed, greatly inhibiting the opportunities for conservation and sustained use of these marine resources. My research project aims to contribute to these gaps in knowledge by exploring perceptions of how marine protected areas management are coordinated in the Sulu-Sulawesi seascape, between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. By broadening the understanding of perceived management efficacy and concern, future management strategies may better maximize transboundary marine protected area conservation, while also better addressing and adapting to socio-economic and governance needs.

My study includes two primary research phases. Phase 1 involves a policy analysis of national-level marine and conservation policies related to the Sulu-Sulawesi region. This analysis aims to explore the degree of similarities and differences between policies regarding marine and MPA management for Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The review will help better understand how consistent the policies between the countries are in their goals, restrictions, processes, and potential outcomes. Since inconsistent regulations of a common resource and varying legal frameworks can pose a challenge to transboundary governance, policy analysis findings may help increase understanding of barriers to successful coordination and management in the Sulu-Sulawesi seascape. This analysis may also reveal policy similarities that could provide windows of opportunity for increased collaboration and co-management. Phase 2 will utilize semi-structured interviews to explore perceptions of transboundary coordination in the Sulu-Sulawesi seascape. An initial sample list of leaders and stakeholders has been developed by myself and informed by contacts through a European Commission project that aims to facilitate the creation of TBMPA(s) in the area. Chain-referral sampling methods are also being utilized to find additional conservation stakeholders to interview at various scales (international, national, and regional).

Through my thesis research I aim to increase understanding of transboundary marine protected area management concerns and perceptions of international coordination, as transboundary protected areas in a marine setting are relatively emergent and under studied. In assessing how coordination may be strengthened in Sulu-Sulawesi, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of this region’s management needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Increasing understanding and assessment of stakeholder perceptions of management may also serve to aid other networks of transboundary protected areas beyond the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape.

The purpose of this study was to learn more about emotional labor through a gendered lens. This study provides a unique perspective on emotional labor because it takes place decades after Hochschild coined the term. She used the term to describe when workers manage their emotions in order to fit in with workplace expectations. This study examined the different ways women working as waitresses performed emotional labor. It also examined the emotional effects of this and the ways cultural standards of femininity contributed to it. I used a combination of inductive and deductive codes to analyze interviews from a convenience sample of 17 waitresses. The findings of this study are in line with previous studies on gender, emotional labor, and customer service work. Waitresses have a fluid persona for work which I call the “work-self.” Niceness was also used as a strategy often referred to as “killing them with kindness.” Emotions associated with this included anger, frustration, and internalization of negative interactions. Coping mechanisms include detaching from emotions, developing boundaries, and escapism. Cultural femininity standards affected customer’s expectations of the work self. Waitresses were seen as nurturing figures, sex objects, or servants. The findings suggest that emotional labor and performing femininity are intertwined in the gendered occupation of waitressing. The findings of this study are significant because it shows that expectations placed on women in the workplace have barely changed since Hochschild's study was published. The work that waitresses do and the psychological effects of it are an exaggerated microcosm of what women deal with in society.

This presentation will examine support of and opposition to the construction of several dams on the forks of the Flathead River in Western Montana between 1944 and 1968. Between the authorization of Hungry Horse Dam in 1944 and the passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968, the federal government proposed six dams in the Flathead valley. Among the proposed dams were Spruce Park Dam on the Middle Fork, Glacier View and Smoky Range Dam on the North Fork in Glacier National Park, Knowles and Paradise Dam on the Lower Flathead and Clark Fork, and a proposal to raise the height of Kerr Dam at the mouth of Flathead Lake. The debate over these projects serves as a window into the formation of political identities that would go on to shape national politics in the twentieth century. Labor unions saw the promise of good paying jobs, both in dam construction and in the industries that the hydropower would support. Sportsmen’s organizations saw a threat to their hunting, fishing, and boating grounds. Biologists like John and Frank Craighead the loss of vital winter habitat. Famers in Paradise, MT feared losing their homes under a new lake, while farmers in Charlo, MT saw the possibility of waterfront property. Senator Mansfield and Congressman Metcalf saw the opportunity to expand public ownership of the power grid and reduce energy rates for their constituents.

Writers such as award-winning conservation writer Tim Palmer have placed the opposition to Glacier View and Spruce Park Dams alongside the better-known Echo Park and Grand Canyon dam controversies as a fight which galvanized the modern environmental movement. Defeating these dam proposals ushered in the wilderness regime typified by the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. The scientists and citizen advocates who were central to the preservation of the forks of the Flathead were called upon to write drafts of those laws. Their legacies endure as heroes of the wilderness movement. Less explored however, are the motivations of those who promoted dam construction. In Palmer’s version of the story, it is the faceless behemoth of the Army Corp of Engineers alone pushing for river development. This presentation looks beyond that to the labor organizers and local boosters of the Flathead Valley who successfully garnered the support of Metcalf and Mansfield, despite growing support for permanently protecting wild rivers. Understanding their side of this story is crucial to grasping the role that federal dam construction played in postwar political realignments.

This presentation is grounded evidentially in the personal papers of labor leaders, members of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, Flathead Valley farmers, sportsmen, and conservationists along with the public debates that took place in the pages of the Daily Interlake and Hungry Horse News, in Army Corps hearings, and on the floor of Congress. From these sources I trace a story of the growing divide between labor unions, public power advocates, and environmental protection groups in the mid twentieth century.

Dating During COVID-19: Initiating and Negotiating Romantic Relationships

This study contributes to the understanding of how individuals initiate and negotiate romantic relationships through pandemic circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed daily human interactions. The social distancing guidelines put in place by the Center for Disease Control and the lockdown mandates initiated by local governments have impacted interpersonal communication on various levels, including face-to-face interactions and dating initiation. In this study, relational turbulence theory was used as a framework to understand the ways in which COVID-19 has negatively impacted dating relationships. This theory explains how partners negotiate and manage turbulent events has repercussions on developing intimacy, uncertainty in relationships, and how interdependence is established (Theiss, 2005). The theory predicts that as a relationship increases in intimacy, the amount of turbulence experienced in the relationship will increase as well.

We hypothesized that the increase of relational uncertainty would result in relational turbulence, and that the increase in perceived relational turbulence would relate to the disclosure of information about physical distancing practices, potential exposure to COVID-19, symptoms of illness, and general worries about COVID-19 between partners and to social networks members.

One hundred and forty seven participants completed an online Qualtrics survey which measured the levels of relational uncertainty, disclosure, and turbulence within dating relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. Items specifically focused on how the pandemic has impacted the experience of, and communication in, romantic relationships. The measurements used surrounding relational uncertainty and relational turbulence were from previous research studies within the field of communication. The measurements regarding self and partner disclosure and COVID-19 as an interference were created by the researchers. These measurements were created to understand how our participants felt and communicaticated about COVID-19 issues.

As our hypothesis and relationship turbulence theory predicted, levels of self-uncertainty in the beginning of the relationship did predict relational turbulence even in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we found that as a person’s confidence in their partner’s disclosure of COVID-19-related information increased, their self-uncertainty and, in turn, relational turbulence decreased.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic did not appear to be a source of interference in dating relationships through quantitative analysis, our qualitative data did give us insight into how COVID-19 was impacting people’s romantic relationships. The qualitative analysis of our open-ended question regarding how COVID-19 is impacting dating lives indicated that successful dating couples navigated the added turbulence of COVID-19 through interpersonal disclosure and communication surrounding the given turbulence.

In a broader scope, this study can add to the understanding of how people date during unprecedented circumstances. Our first analysis of the data shows that in the face of unexpected crises, such as COVID-19, dramatic changes in the way that intimate partners communicate is crucial to the success of relationships.

Keywords: COVID-19, relational turbulence theory, dating, uncertainty, disclosure

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the “Model Cities Act” into law. A part of Johnson’s Great Society, Model Cities was a national urban renewal program that sought to renew all aspects of society and included anything from the creation of parks and recreational facilities to increasing funding for senior citizens’ programs. My research examines the implementation of Model Cities in Butte, Montana. Whereas Model Cities was most visibly seen in metropolises like Detroit and Baltimore as a means to curtail riots and racial strife, the Butte program, in the words of the program’s director, James Murphy, wished to drag Butte into the twentieth century.

I note that Butte, given its background as a resource extraction mining town, was in need of Model Cities. Lacking infrastructure and plagued by environmental woes, the Butte program had much potential due to its focus not only on urban renewal but social uplift. However, the program was also a source of great controversy. In attempting to urbanize and modernize Butte, one of the program’s largest endeavors was the destruction of hundreds of old buildings. I argue that the Butte program engaged in physical and cultural destruction to reform Butte. As urbanization became a more pressing issue in Montana, the replacement of historic buildings with new ones was meant to help detach Butteians from the past and make Butte a thriving urban center. And with a host of new social programs that targeted health issues like alcoholism, the program attempted to sever a longstanding Butte culture that resisted social aid and state assistance. I conclude that the program was partially successful in that it brought modern infrastructure and social programs to Butte but was unable to destroy Butte’s nostalgia of the past.

My research is a thematic reconstruction of the Model Cities program in Butte from 1968-1975. This project examines the developments of three key goals of the program: economic development, physical environment, and social services. I tell the story of the Butte program through these three themes and explore how policies changed and developed from 1968-1974. Most essential in examining these themes are primary sources from the archival collections at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, Montana Historical Society, and the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. The most present sources are Senator Mike Mansfield’s papers, which contain Buttiean concerns about the program, letters to Butte officials such as Mayor Mario Micone, and the outline of the Model Cities program.

This research is the first substantive scholarship on the Butte program. Other scholars have overlooked the program but this paper places Model Cities as one of the key urban developments in Montana in the twentieth century and the most important urban renewal program in Butte’s history. Additionally, this paper contributes to the understanding of federal policymaking of the 1960s-1970s in showing the transition from LBJ’s Great Society to Richard Nixon’s New Federalist approach to urban renewal.

Disposition of WWII Vessels Near Okinawa in 1945

Twenty-seven ships sunk in battle off the coast of Okinawa in 1945 during WWII, of which the locations are unknown to the US Navy and the Japanese government. The purpose of this research was to use archival and historical sources to identify these ships in records and discern the approximate possible whereabouts of these vessels for the use of a US Navy reconnaissance project. This project’s ultimate goal is to repatriate these vessels to the US and study their artifacts and locations, a new venture for the Navy. With this information, the Navy Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) can better address how to handle these underwater sites and their artifacts to preserve them. Additionally, finding the locations of these ships that are the resting place of numerous U.S. sailors can bring a sense of closure to families who lost sailors during these attacks. To carry out this project I looked for mention of the vessel name and hull classification by any divers or diver shops in the Okinawa area, local newspapers, on social media, or on other platforms such as Reddit, YouTube etc. The next step was to find historical information from various archives including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Ancestry and Fold3 online archives to supplement the lack of current locational information. Key information in these archives included information on location of shipwrecks including coordinates, crew rosters and casualty reports, and reports on the damage sustained during attacks in digitized documents such as War Diaries, Action Reports, or Deck Logs. These data can both guide surveys in those areas to find vessels; and the reports on the ship’s crew and the damage it sustained can help the Navy identify ships that are found.

With this information, I created a reference report for the UN Navy to use for reconnaissance. Specifically, I created a map of the possible locations of these wrecks and cross-referenced them with a website called Global Fishing Watch which determined the amount of commercial fishing vessels that frequent areas related to possible wreck sites. This information was relevant because fishing nets can sometimes accidentally disturb or dislodge items from wreck sites, or there may be a higher concentration of fish in these areas, which would increase the amount of commercial fishing vessels that frequent there. Once these areas are identified, they require further investigation to determine if one of these twenty-seven ships are located there. Once these ships are located and identified underwater archaeologists can discern what materials and artifacts need to be removed for preservation and analysis and how to best protect underwater sites from factors such as commercial fishing, recreational diving, tourism, and pollution.

Tyler Sparing

University of Montana

Tyler1.sparing@umconnect.umt.edu

Emotional Appeals in Advertising Directed at Women: 1940-1950

The 1940s were a transformative era in the history of American advertising. At the beginning of the decade the industry adapted to the needs of the war effort, while pivoting after the war to epitomize the growing consumer culture. Increasingly throughout this period marketing campaigns used emotional persuasion techniques to sell their products. In effect, this was the beginning of the era of “keeping up with the Joneses,” and emotional appeals in advertising served to help the new consumer-minded citizens identify personally with the products they purchased. Being that women were heavily targeted as the primary consumers within the household, they become the focal point of this paper. The intent is to gain a greater understanding of how emotional persuasion techniques during the war years were different (or not) from the post-war years, and what sort of gendered expectations it was producing.

A variety of secondary sources will be used to help align the time frames of consumerism and women’s history. A couple primary examples: Lisabeth Cohen’s book A Consumers Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America will help situate women’s changing role in postwar consumer culture, while Juliann Sivulka’s Ad Women: How they Impact What We Need, Want, and Buy will help further situate women’s place more acutely within the advertising industry. These books and several others will help keep the themes of this paper consistent with the broader historiographical scholarship. The Saturday Evening Post will be one of the main primary sources for this project. Being a popular magazine that ran for much of the 21^st century, and having accessible archives, I will use it to track emotional appeals year by year to pick up on the changing trends. I will also identify the primary emotions being promoted and how that played on the expected roles women were supposed to have in 1940s United States. Other popular magazines like Life and Ladies Home Journal will be consulted as well.

What this paper hopes to achieve is to add more clarity to the broader impact of emotional persuasion techniques in advertising. The expectation is to see the ads become increasingly more emotional in nature, as by the early 1960s emotional techniques had supplanted product-based reason appeals as the primary method of consumer persuasion. As the 1940s were a time of great transformation, women become a primary interest not only because of the unique role they played in the world of consumerism, but also because of the shift in expectations for women after men got home from war. In other words this paper will track how emotional techniques played a part in women's perceived role going from Rosie the Riveter to the quintessential 1950s homemaker.

There have been numerous occasions when a great power has become involved in another country’s civil war. Whether induced by the invading great power or caused internally, the balance of power in civil wars can be shaped by the presence of a great power. However, the purpose of my question is to redirect the attention away from the great power leaving and focus on the domestic and regional impacts of such events. To answer this question, I examine two case studies of when the United States withdrew itself from a civil war, namely Iraq in 2011 and Vietnam in 1973. The purpose of doing so is to reflect on the residual effects of the following years after the U.S. left. In order to shed any light on the effects of a great power leaving civil war is for the civil war country itself and the surrounding area, one has to look at historical examples. The purpose is to determine which state(s) used military force in these two countries after the U.S. withdrew its troops, and why did they do so. This last question is critical to understanding which states are likeliest to involve itself militarily after a great power leaves a civil war in the future.

Furthermore, these historical examinations will be done through the lens of two theories in international relations (IR). A part of this exercise is to apply and hopefully strengthen IR theories to build upon the field itself. I examine this question using a structural realist and an economic interdependence approach. These theories are important because they emphasize different, yet mutually important aspects in IR, namely power and trade. Structural realism focuses on state power and capabilities in analyzing international relations, while economic interdependence theory stresses trade and economic gain as consequential to any international relations event/analysis.

In applying structural realism, I use the Correlates of War National Capabilities database to ascertain which countries around Iraq and Vietnam are the strongest, i.e. most capable countries. I then use the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) to see if any states around these two countries used military force in Iraqi or Vietnamese territory after the U.S. withdrew its forces. For economic interdependence theory, I use the same conflict data, but rather than looking at national capabilities, I use Barbieri trade data that is apart of the Correlates of War dataset to compare trade levels between the surrounding countries and the target countries themselves. The hypothesis is that the more interdependent any two countries are economically (and in this case, measured by the amount of interstate trade flows), the less likely they are to use military force due to the fear of losing future trade revenue.

The contribution that my research gives to the field is twofold. First, I hope this research aids in strengthening theory in IR. Second, I hope to shed light on the power dynamics and economic conditions that might make military force likely after a great power leaves a civil war. Additionally, this can be useful to U.S. foreign policymakers in deciding what are the potential consequences for the states and local communities are “left behind.”

The accelerated pace of anthropogenic climate change in recent decades has been accompanied by pressing questions, including many concerning responsibility and liability for the worst impacts of climate change on human populations. Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations, which dwarf those from the developing world, have been causally linked to slow-onset trends such as sea level rise and increased incidences of acute climate-related disasters, both of which disproportionately affect poor and low-lying developing nations. This grim reality is central to the concept of Loss and Damage, a developing “third pillar” of international climate policy aimed at addressing the residual impacts of climate change that occur once mitigation and adaptation strategies fall short. Loss and Damage was established as a dedicated policy mechanism at the 19^th conference of parties (COP-19) in Poland, under the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM). Following COP-19, the inclusion of Loss and Damage under Article 8 of the 2015 Paris Agreement formally distinguished it as a “third pillar” of climate policy separate from mitigation and adaptation. To better understand the potential of the global Loss and Damage agenda to inform national climate change strategies, I will conduct a case study of the Santiago Metropolitan Region in central Chile. The region has experienced an uninterrupted sequence of dry years since 2010, often termed the “Megadrought,” which now constitutes Chile’s longest drought event on record. Climate studies have attributed 50% of the Megadrought’s severity to climate change, and project the continuation of regional warming and drying trends into the future. Chile is also poised to introduce its first framework climate law, building on a recent history of policy action that constitutes a progressive national response to climate change. To conduct this case study, I will examine both governmental responses to prolonged drought and several existing and forthcoming Chilean climate policies. I will employ a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals from Chilean government ministries and NGOs concerned with the effects of climate change, combining the resulting insights with a textual analysis of relevant climate change policies. This process may allow me to comment substantively on the relevance of the international Loss and Damage agenda for the nation of Chile as it strives to confront the effects of climate change within its own borders. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the history of Loss and Damage, an introduction to the Metropolitan Region and the Megadrought, and preliminary insights into the potential synergies of Chilean climate policies with the global Loss and Damage agenda. A brief overview of my projected fieldwork methods will also be included.

International Theory Tests on Global Refugee Policies

Throughout the world there are millions of people displaced from their homes, awaiting a host country to let them in so they may start a new life. Unfortunately, states have let politics stand in the way of helping these refugees. Displaced persons are stuck in desolate areas, with little hope or idea of what will happen to them. Those that are seeking asylum have fled for their life, with little to no time to prepare for their displacement. There are many important international relations theories; however, classical and structural realism are two of the more popular theories. In this paper, I test the theories of classical and structural realism to examine why states adopt certain refugee policies. The theory of classical realism states that people are more likely to do something if it benefits them, especially their power, instead of prioritizing its morality. For classical realism, I will test to see if states are more prone to accept refugees or asylum seekers if it enhances or at least maintains their power in some way. This test was done by analyzing the correlation of states birth rates and their acceptance of asylum seekers. Structural realism argues that weaker states often follow a great power’s lead when adopting policies. For this test, I will be examining if states followed the United States’ lead in dramatically decreasing the number of accepted refugees and asylum seekers in and after 2016. I conclude that there is more support for classical realism due to my finding of a correlation between lower birth rates and a higher acceptance of asylum seekers. My test for structural realism proved that the United States does not have strong influence upon other states. However, I did find that there was a significant change in the opposite direction, that states changed their policies to accept higher numbers in an effort to make up for the United States’ lack of assistance regarding the refugee crisis. This research is crucial for understanding the reasoning and causation of states refugee policies. It is pertinent to understand differing states policies regarding refugees, and their plans to find solutions for the millions of people displaced from their homes. In the next ten years it is predicted that we will see unprecedented migrations due to global warming, we must work to understand state’s policies and how they can be adjusted to prepare for larger displaced populations. By understanding states reasoning for their policies, we may begin to understand their motivations, therefore obtaining the ability to know how to persuade them to be more supportive towards displaced people.

Montana truck stops act as a meeting place for long-haul truckers, vacationers, local commuters, and the workers simply trying to earn a living. Today, the employees at such truck stops operate at the intersection of customer service, the trucking industry, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Although each of these has been studied individually, the research I conducted during the summer and fall of 2020 offers a unique view of how customer service employees fared during political unrest, global health concerns, and financial struggle. Additionally, this study highlights the power dynamics that exist in the service industry by examining how such dynamics manifest in the interactions surrounding face masks, sexual harassment, and unhappy customers.

I conducted this study using ethnography and interviews. During the summer of 2020, I worked full-time at a truck stop near Missoula and documented the interactions I observed. I then interviewed four truck stop employees from across Montana to develop a broader understanding of what it is like to work at a truck stop. The data I collected with these methods suggests that truck stop employees are concerned with how customers approach mask mandates, either because the employees are concerned for their health or because they do not want to enforce mandates on customers who resist. My findings also suggest that interacting with customers can be the source of both connection and frustration, depending on the customers’ moods and behaviors.

The qualitative nature of this study allows me to tell the stories of those who are often overlooked in academia and beyond. Although truck stops occupy little space in most people’s day-to-day experiences, they are dynamic, interesting, sometimes contradictory spaces where people of all political stances, religious ideologies, genders, sexual orientations, and worldviews come together. The resulting interactions can be predictably challenging, or surprisingly warm and pleasant. My research offers a glimpse not only into the microcosm of truck stops, but also provides valuable insight about society as a whole.

Extraction seeps unbidden into every corner of our lives. It does not end with the literal removal of fossil fuels from the earth, though there’s plenty to excavate there. Rather, extraction is a productive framework for understanding the nexus of patriarchy, property, and settler-colonialism. Extraction is a way to run a government, to oversee a factory, to structure a schedule, to distill a narrative. Cultural whiteness—not the physical experience of living in lighter skin or with a narrower nose but the systemic conditioning of certain people for power—is a potent extractive mentality. This project examines extraction through scholarship pertaining to petromodernity, interviews with younger professionals, and anecdotes from the author’s own grappling with her white family’s stories of a mixed-race ancestor. This combination of theory and praxis, or the mix of memoir, conversation, and literature, allows rigor and intimacy to nestle, an imbrication typically prohibited by the constraints of a more traditional paper.

And that formal choice to weave the personal with the intellectual embodies the possible solution posited here: that intimacy, (or, the more theoretical term, eros) could counteract extraction. The cultivation of intimacy, of caring deeply and consistently over time, cannot re-intrench misogyny or funnel the erotic into sedated, state-controlled institutions and pastimes. It must transcend such corrals. If we want a way out, we will have to love ourselves, one another, and especially the non-human world more fiercely than ever. The eros that lasts, or the love that endures, is a state, not a trait: it is antithetical to the liquidity of the very oil for which we drill.

Title: Training and Utility of Mindfulness among Practicing School Psychologists

Purpose: School psychologists work with students, teachers, and parents to address issues such as learning, social development, and emotion regulation. Unfortunately, there has been a shortage of school psychologists within the field for the past two decades, and this is projected to continue until at least 2025 (Castillo, et al., 2014). Research has shown up to 90% of school psychologists report experiencing high levels of burnout (Schilling et al., 2018). However, research indicates that mindfulness is counter to experiences of burnout among classroom teachers (Jennings & Greenburg, 2009) and rural mental health providers (Samios, 2018). Due to the high rate of burnout and implications for mindfulness to address this experience among school psychologists, further research is needed to explore how mindfulness is used among these professionals.

Method: A survey focused on burnout, use of mindfulness-based practices, and training in mindfulness among school psychologists is being distributed through state associations for school psychology. The survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete, with participants being given the option to enter a raffle to win a gift certificate for contributing to this research. The survey is distributed in partnership with state organizations and any school psychologist currently working within schools is eligible to participate in the study. Individuals taking the survey will be asked to report their level of training and use of mindfulness-based therapies within their career and personal life. They will also be asked to reflect upon their level of burnout. This project uses quantitative and qualitative measures to provide convergent information about the research questions.

Originality: No current research has investigated the use of mindfulness to address the high level of burnout among school psychologists. Previous research has on mindfulness and burnout has centered on professionals in different specialties and must be shown effective for this population before recommendation for widespread use.

Significance: If results confirm that those who use mindfulness also experience lower levels of burnout, the implications could help address the high rates of burnout among professionals in this field. It is possible that school psychologists show a different trend for their use and training in mindfulness-based interventions. The current study is designed to address this query and push the field of mindfulness-based interventions forward to include a wider range of application. By exploring the amount of training and use of mindfulness-based interventions, the present study hopes to provide a foundation for future research to examine effective interventions for school psychologists experiencing burnout and the implementation factors that aid in school-based mindfulness interventions.

At the culmination of the Second World War, the United States Marines were preparing for a brutal and expensive assault on the Japanese homeland. With the abrupt conclusion of hostilities in September 1945, Marines would be ordered instead to North China in order to accept the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces and to repatriate Japanese and Korean nationals back to their respective countries.^[1] The Marines would find an amorphous peacekeeping mission in North China, protecting infrastructure and key terrain during the reemergent Chinese Civil War.^[2] In Montana, its respected Congressman—Mike Mansfield—and concerned citizens, Marines, and parents viewed the deployment to North China with open skepticism. Codenamed Operation Beleaguer, the U.S. occupation of North China is seemingly a footnote wedged in between World War II and the Korean War. Despite Operation Beleaguer’s relative obscurity, the similar tactical dilemmas—coupled with the strategic complexity of the Cold War—mirrored the American quandaries in Korea and Vietnam. This research project will address how the United States came to avoid a military quagmire—and examine the critical decisions and influences on East Asian U.S. policy in the post-war era from military, congressional, and constituent perspectives.

How did the United States avoid a more serious entanglement into the Chinese Civil War? How did military leaders deescalate tensions in the face of frequent firefights? What role did congressional leaders—like Montana’s Mike Mansfield—play in constraining the occupation? How did citizen resistance influence American leadership? In order to address these key historical questions and to contextualize post-World War II U.S. policy in East Asia, several primary sources will be leveraged. The Mansfield papers on Japan and China at the University of Montana contain several letters from war weary citizens—including the uniformed military—that advocated for rapid redeployment back to the United States while warning of a potential disaster in China. The Mansfield papers and Montana newspapers will serve as a local lens into popular opinion about the U.S. occupation of North China and early Cold War U.S. Far East defense policy. The National Archives’ State Department records on Japan and the Chinese Civil War will serve to illuminate U.S. grand strategy in the Far East, arguments for and against direct intervention, and General George Marshall’s diplomatic attempt to broker a peace deal in China. The operational military perspective will largely be gained via the unit command chronologies available from the U.S. Marine Corps archives at Quantico, Virginia. Finally, the policy-shaping and oversight of the U.S. Congress will be accessed through the digitized Congressional Record. While the United States would argue throughout the Cold War about who “lost China,” American forces were perilously close to direct intervention in the Chinese Civil War. How and why this pitfall was avoided is the anchor of this research.

[1] Parkyn, Michael. "Operation BELEAGUER: The Marine III Amphibious Corps in North China, 1945-49." Marine Corps Gazette 85, no. 7 (07, 2001): 32-37.

[2] Henry I. Shaw, The United States Marines in North China 1945-1949. (Quantico: U.S. Marine Corps Historical Branch, 1960). 1, 25-26.

Early in 2020, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) filed for bankruptcy to establish a trust for victims of sexual assault while in the organization. To announce the trust and offer a sincere apology for the trauma BSA’s National Chair Jim Turley wrote and published an open letter to the victims. This letter provides useful examples of crisis communication and provides a basis for a fantasy theme analysis. In this paper, we examine the letter's rhetorical situation, with emphasis on the constraints of encouraging sexual assault victims to come forward and reputation management in the message. Further, we examine this letter as it fits into the growing fantasy type of apology letters to victims of sexual assault in organizations that were negligible. We are also able to examine the letter’s alignment to lessons in crisis communication. The goal of this paper is to provide an in-depth rhetorical analysis of the message crafted by Turley to better understand risk and crisis communication when external factors threaten a sudden organizational crisis.

Keywords: Boy Scouts, Apology, Sexual Assault, Risk & Crisis, Threat, Victim, Fantasy Theme, Narrative Theory

Over 83,000 farms operate in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, accounting for approximately thirty percent of the land area and contributing over forty percent of the nitrate, phosphorous, and sediment that enter the bay through rivers and streams. In 2014, The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement became the first agreement signed by representatives from the entire watershed setting ten goals and thirty-one outcomes to be achieved by 2025. Many of these goals will require farmers in the watershed to adopt conservation-friendly practices such as planting trees in riparian areas or cover crops. Despite this need, there is limited knowledge available on how to promote uptake of these behaviors. To address this need, our research team conducted an online survey of 598 farmers in the watershed and analyzed results using logistic regression to identify the most important factors determining farmers’ past adoption of conservation-related practices. Results indicate conservation identity and resource assistance are significant for planting trees in riparian buffer zones. For cover crops, benefits of planting, farming for the lifestyle, and efforts of other farms are significant factors. This presentation will discuss sampling methods, important insights revealed by descriptive statistics, logistic regression results, and how these results will be used within our larger project and by conservation practitioners in the watershed.

Protecting Life and Lung: Protected areas impact on respiratory disease in the Brazilian Amazon.

By Derek Sheehan, M.A. Candidate Economics

I am assessing the impacts of changes in upwind protected area coverage on local respiratory health within the Brazilian Amazon. One key mechanism is the legal prohibition of human ignited fires within protected areas, may reduce particulate matter pollution, which impacts downwind respiratory health. The connection between fires and respiratory diseases in the Amazon is well established (Smith et al. 2014; Rangel and Vogl 2019; Rocha and Sant’anna 2020). What is not well understood is the potential that government policies aimed at preventing ecosystem loss may also promote health and wellbeing, combining the UN sustainable development goals 3 and 15. Protected areas currently dominate government conservation efforts across the globe but empirical evidence of the health impacts of protected areas remains a small body of literature. I will utilize Brazilian government data for monthly municipal respiratory disease hospitalizations (DATASUS) and yearly upwind protected area coverage (ICMBIO). I will focus on protected areas within some distance from the municipal seat and divide this region into 45° wind directions. I will utilize a fixed effects model with socioeconomic and environmental controls to isolate the impacts of changes in upwind PA coverage on changes in respiratory disease hospitalizations. This research will highlight potential cross boundary effects of protected areas on health as well as the potential for government policy synergies between environmental conservation and public health. To my knowledge this will be the first paper to examine upwind protected areas impacts.

References

Rangel, Marcos A., and Tom S. Vogl. 2019. “Agricultural Fires and Health at Birth.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 101 (4): 616–30. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00806.

Rocha, Rudi, and André Sant’anna. 2020. “Winds of Fire and Smoke: Air Pollution and Health in the Brazilian Amazon.” www.ieps.org.br.

Smith, Lauren T., Luiz E.O.C. Aragão, Clive E. Sabel, and Tomoki Nakaya. 2014. “Drought Impacts on Children’s Respiratory Health in the Brazilian Amazon.” Scientific Reports 4: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03726.

My research examines artifacts recovered from Cranky Sam Public House (CSPH), a brewery located in downtown Missoula where, in the summer of 2019, construction uncovered a significant amount of archaeological evidence related to Missoula's historic red-light district and Chinese community. This red-light district began operating in the late nineteenth century and continued to grow significantly until its closure in 1916. While many perceptions of early sex workers in American West towns focus on the vice activity associated with their employment, I hope to shift toward a narrative that provides alternative perspectives of these diverse women's lives. My thesis questions how women working in Missoula's historic red-light district demonstrated their agency through the intimate spaces they created in publicly accessible houses of prostitution. I theorize that women working in this district created a sense of intimacy and domesticity, visible through their consumption practices and highly influenced by gendered social constructions that worked actively in their daily lives and routines.

My method utilizes a feminist theoretical examination of the artifacts recovered from the CSPH site concurrently with archival research. The artifacts collected include various bottles and bottle parts (alcohol, medicinals, cosmetic containers, non-alcoholic beverages, serving glassware), ceramics (serving dishes), and animal remains. I will employ a study of primary resources through archival research of census records, city directories, genealogical research, newspaper articles, historic photographs, and property maps. Evaluating material culture in conjunction with archival sources provides an interdisciplinary approach highlighting the multiple lines of evidence necessary to sew together an accurate, historical narrative for any marginalized group. Further, examining capitalism, globalization, industrialization concurrent with feminist theoretical studies provides a valuable method of evaluating the larger topic of the role of sex workers in the development of the American West.

I believe this research will significantly contribute to an increased understanding, acceptance, and respect for the historically marginalized communities of early settlement in Missoula. My thesis topic has great relevance to archaeology, feminist studies, and history that will lead to a greater understanding of the cultural beliefs and historical implications that comprise our contemporary perspectives of sex work. The archaeological record provides insights that critically question representations of gender in the historical record. These interpretations are necessary to preserve the diverse history of early Montana by preserving past residents' stories.

Parents and peers play important roles in shaping attitudes toward a variety of matters during adolescence. However, little research has investigated parental and peer influence on developing attitudes toward bullying. To address this gap in literature, the current study recruited college students from a mid-sized public university in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States to complete a survey about their past bullying attitudes and perceptions of their parents’ and peers’ influence on their attitudes. Resulted indicated that while participants reported both their parents and peers as influential on their past attitudes, they perceived their parents as more influential and the two sources of influence were found to interact with each other. This interaction revealed that when parental influence is low, stronger peer influence is associated with weaker anti-bullying attitudes.

Why did states ratify the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement? In this paper, I answer that question by testing two international relations theories: structural realism and institutional neoliberalism. I have chosen to use these two theories because they are diametrically opposed in their explanations of international relations. Structural realism says that due to the lack of a one-world government, conflicts will always be present in the world system. Conversely, institutional neoliberalism states that through inter-governmental institutions, such as the United Nations, the world system is working toward obtaining perpetual peace and prosperity. To test structural realism, I examine if weaker states band wagoned onto the Paris Accords because the great powers, China and the United States, supported the Accords. To do this, I look at the time frame it took states to ratify the Accords as well as the state’s power capabilities and see if there is a strong correlation. I also test if climate-vulnerable states ratified earlier than other states to address the collective action climate security problem. I do this by analyzing ratification dates and cross-compare to state ranking of climate insecurity. To test institutional neoliberalism, I examined states’ past participation in three previous UN environment treaties to see if states with a long record of involvement were the most likely to ratify. For all three tests conducted, I compiled and analyzed an original data set. I found the most support for my test on state bandwagoning onto the Paris Accords due to the influence of the great powers. Bandwagoning with the great powers had a stronger correlation than the climate-vulnerable countries being the quickest to ratify the Accords. The institutional neoliberalism test holds potential, but the structure of it was too limited to give a clear successful result compared to the structural realist test. The climate crisis is increasing in magnitude by the day and soon there will be no way to reverse any amount of the damage done by carbon emissions. The Paris Climate Agreement is the most comprehensive environmental treaty geared towards mitigating the effects of the climate crisis. Understanding state motives behind their cooperation is imperative if we want to understand the ways states will follow through with implementing policies and divine this and other important international issues.

The Religious Reaction to Progressive Education in the 1950s: An Intellectual History

Considered the foremost theorist of progressive education, John Dewey challenged traditional pedagogies of rote memorization and advocated child-centered learning methods via sensual observation. By the 1930s, progressive education was the leading pedagogy in education departments at American Universities. A notable opponent of Dewey’s ideas was Robert Hutchins, president of Chicago University from 1929 to 1945. Hutchins advocated re-emphasizing the canon, an approach he called “liberal education.” With the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, many Americans also became concerned that U.S. education lagged behind the Soviet Union’s. Fiery rebukes of progressive education, in addition to Hutchins’s, sparked a number of incendiary titles such as Albert Lynd’s Quackery in the Public Schools (1950) and Arthur Bestor’s Educational Wastelands (1953). Hutchins, Lynd, and Bestor also argued progressive education favored the instruction of average students at the expense of the “gifted.” Anxieties reached fever-pitch in 1957 when the U.S.S.R. launched the first satellite into space: Sputnik I. The failure to beat the Soviets to space seemed to prove progressive education’s critics right, and many Americans blamed progressive education.

James Conant described the conflict in education as one between professors of education and their colleagues from other university departments whom Conant labeled “academic” professors. In The Education of American Teachers (1963), Conant admitted “automatically vot[ing] with those who looked with contempt on the school of education” as a chemistry professor at Harvard. However, after becoming president of Harvard in 1933, Conant encouraged the two hostile groups to “if possible, learn to cooperate in their endeavors.”¹

The flagship Protestant magazine Christian Century, featuring numerous articles by Hutchins as well as his detractors, printed a balanced selection of articles from both sides of the education debate relative to other publications. In contrast, writers for Commentary, a Jewish publication, and Catholic World tended toward stauncher positions, the two most prolific of whom were Spencer Brown and John Sheerin, respectively. Even as concerns about the inadequacies of American education and progressive education’s influence upon it climaxed after the launch of Sputnik, Brown contended that the United States suffered “not an educational but a political failure.”² Sheerin, contrarily, called Sputnik the “death blow to progressive education.”³

This project illuminates the responses of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to progressive education in the United States during the 1950s. To discern how the three major American religious groups presented this debate to their congregants through some of their most popular magazines: Christian Century, Catholic World, and Commentary. In addition to other religious magazines, this study will also utilize secular periodicals, journals, books, and newspapers, to place this intellectual conflict in a broader national conversation. Furthermore, this work frames these debates around Will Herberg’s observation in Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955): paradoxically, post-war America experienced “pervasive secularism amid mounting religiosity.”⁴ This essay attempts filling in Herberg’s finding with related developments in education in the context of the Cold War, and endeavors a historiographical contribution with a topic that has received little scholarly attention.

[1] James Conant, The Education of American Teachers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 2.

[2] Spencer Brown, “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary (June 1958): 461.

[3] John Sheerin, “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World (May 1958): 84.

[4] Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 2.

Bibliography

Brown, Spencer. “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary. June 1958.

Conant, James. The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

Sheerin, John. “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World. May 1958.

“The Statue Must Be Removed!”: The Memorialization of Daniel Webster and the Great Northern Compromisers, 1853-Present

Michael Larmann

University of Montana, History Department, Doctoral Student

860-235-7881 | michael.larmann@umontana.edu

The removal of statues has become a controversial topic in American society over the course of the past decade.Although statues of Confederate figures in the South have attracted the most attention in recent years, in the mid-nineteenth century, statues of Northern “compromisers”—those who sanctioned slavery rather than joining the abolitionist cause—also created controversy. Northern politicians such as Daniel Webster and President Millard Fillmore are two such figures who are historically notorious for supporting the Compromise of 1850, which postponed sectional hostilities, but also perpetuated chattel slavery and promoted slave catching in the United States for another decade. This research project analyzes the statues and memorialization of such Northern compromisers from the mid-nineteenth century up until today. It furthermore contributes to emerging scholarship on statues, nineteenth-century American history, and the creation of memory.

Daniel Webster will serve as the focus of this project, since the erection of his statue in Boston, Massachusetts in 1859 started one of the first controversies in the United States about memorializing compromise. Through the use of memorial committee records, abolitionist newspapers, petitions, correspondence, broadsheets, and speeches, this project will analyze the controversy of memorializing Daniel Webster, the Massachusetts senator who infamously supported the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. This project also analyzes how academics and the American public has since remembered Webster, Fillmore, and similar northern compromisers up until the present by looking at the erection of later statues and analyzing bibliographies. Popular culture sources that featured Daniel Webster’s image including theatre productions, movies, and non-academic books will help determine how the American public has remembered Webster since the nineteenth century, if they do at all. The final portion of this project discusses where historic actors such as Webster fit into today’s debates on memorializing controversial figures.

The goal of this project is to understand how the American public has memorialized northern compromisers over time and where they sit with us today. Additionally, this research emphasizes the politics and power dimensions involved in building statues in the nineteenth century. The Webster statue in particular was the work of the private and wealthy Boston Brahmin elite class. A discussion about statues is also a story about the groups that erected them and the environments in which they are built. Therefore, this project also explains the processes and importance through which people engraved statues and memorials into the physical landscape and material environment of the American metropolis in the nineteenth century.

This research on the Daniel Webster statue and the image of the Northern compromiser reveals that criticisms and debates about removing and building statues temporally go back to the mid-nineteenth century. This past decade in our nation’s history was not the first time that citizens have debated memorializing controversial individuals. Members of the American public were debating the meanings of memorialization and statues longer ago than previously believed.

Collaborative Reasoning (CR) discussion, as a form of a dialogic learning, has been proven to enhance children’s reasoning skills (Clark et al., 2003; Nguyen-Jahiel, et al., 2007; Sun et al. 2015). In CR, students are presented with a story that contains controversial issues and are asked to present evidence to support their stance towards the issue. In addressing the main question in CR, children challenge their peers’ arguments and encounter cognitive conflicts, which facilitate the development of their thinking to a higher level (Kim et al., 2007). This is significant as it can lead to discussants partially accepting the counterargument (Leitao, 2000). This partial acceptance is known as integrative arguments. When proposing integrative arguments, students not only provide reasons for one side, but also accommodate and acknowledge the reasons on the other side. Learning to weigh both argument and counterargument is an effective strategy to produce stronger reasoning because it trains the students’ ability to withstand objection (Nussbaum & Edwards, 2011). While prior studies concluded that asking critical questions yielded integrative arguments, there is no prior study examining the correlation between students’ dialogic moves and the presence of integrative arguments in the discussion.

As these integrative arguments could signal the development of reasoning skills during the discussion, the sole presence of these elements may not lead to the expected outcome. Another element addressed in recent research has shown that the presence of immediacy within a group or among its members seems to be a key element to productive learning process (Barron, 2003; Lin et al., 2018; Woods & Baker 2004). Immediacy typically refers to any move that an individual makes that has the intention building rapport during collaborative learning (Lin et al., 2018; Woods & Baker, 2004). In the context of collaborative discussion, verbal immediacy refers to “the extent to which selected communicative behaviors enhance physical or psychological closeness in interpersonal communication” (Woods & Baker, 2004, p. 4). Studies have shown that effective teacher immediacy contributes to more successful student discussions (Mazer & Stowe, 2016; Howe et al., 2019; Woods & Baker, 2004). Less is known about how student immediacy functions in collaborative discussions, and how such immediacy evolves over time.

This study examined the relationship between cognitive verbal immediacy and integrative arguments in order to further understand the relationship between group dynamics and dialogic learning. This study used the concept of argument stratagems from Nussbaum & Edwards (2011) and Cognitive Verbal Immediacy by Lin et al. (2018) to examine twenty-four CR discussion transcripts from six different groups of students. These discussions were based in issues of morality and scientific query. Additionally, a quantitative analysis was conducted using Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient. The result indicated a medium positive correlation between the two variables. The researchers will examine these discussions further to understand the correlation between the use of the verbal immediacies and the integrative arguments in the discussion. It is expected that the result of this study could lead to a better understanding of how the dialogic moves in a discussion may lead to a more interactive discussion, wherein students learn to listen to their peers’ arguments and practice to address the issue from numerous perspectives.

Keywords: collaborative reasoning, dialogic moves, integrative arguments, verbal immediacy

Forest management on public lands is inherently complex due to multiple resource objectives coupled with diverse, and at times competing, stakeholder interests. One approach to address these complexities is to incorporate forest-based collaborative groups into forest planning and management. In general, collaboration focuses on inclusive participation, civil dialogue and shared commitments, all within a fair and transparent process. In application, collaboration has become a valued approach for incorporating a diversity of interests, knowledge systems, experiences, and resources, into well-informed and effective management plans.

Collaborative approaches to natural resource management have increased significantly across the Intermountain West, with Idaho seeing a 53% increase in collaborative restoration efforts between 2013 and 2017, as reported by Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership. In part, this trend can be attributed to recent increases in wildfire severity and prevalence, as well as the damaging impacts of insects and diseases. These factors have degraded national forests and disrupted natural ecosystem processes, while also threatening local livelihoods and property. In response, forest-based collaborative groups have partnered with land management agencies to address these issues while also trying to achieve multiple forest objectives.

To gain an understanding of the factors currently influencing forest-based collaborative groups in Montana and Idaho, a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis was conducted by the National Forest Foundation (NFF). As a neutral organization that facilitates, engages, and supports collaborative groups and processes, the NFF has close working relationships with many collaboratives and was well-positioned to conduct such an analysis.

The SWOT analysis method offers a comprehensive examination of both the internal and external factors influencing collaborative groups. To identify and evaluate these factors, we conducted peer-to-peer interviews with a total of 23 groups: 14 from Montana and 9 from Idaho. While analyzing each interview, all SWOT-related information was pulled out and categorized accordingly. A thematic analysis was then conducted for each SWOT category, resulting in a list of broad, overarching themes, as identified within the Results section of the report.

The results of this SWOT analysis offer a collective picture of the challenges and opportunities currently faced by forest-based collaboratives in Montana and Idaho. By attributing measures of significance to each of the factors identified, collaborative groups can prioritize their growth and development to focus on areas of greatest need and/or of greatest potential opportunity. Additionally, the NFF is looking to facilitate conversations with collaborative practitioners to identify resources and services that are currently available to support collaborative work, while also outlining those that need to be expanded or made more accessible. An additional component of these conversations is to jointly develop recommendations to support collaborative groups in their ability to address their identified needs. In doing so, the overall goal is to strengthen the capacity of forest-based collaborative groups and to enhance their ability to achieve desired outcomes.

The process of learning argumentation skills empowers students to think critically and communicate their ideas in a democratic society. When students can understand how to construct and interpret effective arguments, they can better engage meaningfully with others and with content. Effective argumentation entails both cognitive and social domains, as individuals need to consider both the quality of their reasoning and the nature of their interaction with their audience. While some conceptions of argumentation focus on developing strong arguments, effective argumentation also involves a productive interaction with one’s audience. Prior researchers developed argument schema theory (AST) which posits that engaging in dialogic interactions (group oral argumentation) strengthens individual argumentation. Specifically, Collaborative Reasoning (CR), a model for structuring dialogic interactions, has been studied as an effective instructional implementation of AST. Prior studies have repeatedly found that engaging in a series of CR discussions promotes cognitive and social learning in groups of students. Relative to more standard methods of teaching argumentation (e.g., direct instruction), prior researchers have found that CR produces significant positive differences. However, prior studies have not explored the subtleties of how students are considering effective argumentation after experiencing CR and how those considerations might be shaping their learning.

This study will look at student interview responses to three sets of questions asked of all students that had completed a course of Collaborative Reasoning (CR) discussions. These questions were designed to elicit evidence of transfer of skills as a result of CR as well as gather student impressions of the CR experience. Students in three local fourth-grade classrooms (n=76) responded to the same interview prompts after participating in six to eight CR discussion groups. The researchers coded and analyzed aspects of student responses to all three prompts. In particular, researchers were interested in noting which social and/or cognitive elements of argumentation students were most likely to focus on in their responses. Prior researchers using these prompts have tended to focus only on evidence of cognitive development in argumentation. However, given that argumentation, generally, and CR, specifically, always entails an audience, this study seeks to ascertain how students take into account audience in their thinking, bridging both cognitive and social aspects of argumentation. The analysis will utilize NVivo software, spreadsheets, and handwritten notes to discover patterns in student writing.

This study will expand on prior research by examining the effects of CR discussions on individuals’ social and cognitive understanding of argumentation. Of particular interest is whether any patterns emerge in how students attend to both the social and cognitive realm of argumentation and the possible ramifications of those patterns. This study is significant in that it will deepen the understanding of the relative importance of considering social and interpersonal dynamics in collaborative learning environments including, but not limited to, the teaching of argumentation.

Museums face what has been named the “curation crisis” in a variety of manners. The crisis itself ranges from lack of personnel, funding, depleted storage space, etcetera. The question then presents itself, how do we, as museum professionals, remediate the effects of the curation crisis and prevent it from growing and occurring in new institutions. One such manner must include an increased level of consultation between museum personnel and outside sources. Here, I analyze the uses of consultation in the museum setting, ranging types of museums, and the benefits that may or may not occur in remediation efforts using this method of intervention. Museums must engage in active communication and collaboration with communities, not just of the artifact’s provenance, but also of the local communities which surround the museum. Museums are multidimensional institutions that are meant to play social roles in today’s age. Part of playing this social role includes the need to incorporate the viewpoints of those the collection/ museum is representing. This representation takes many forms, but the end result is that collaboration and consultation has the potential to be mutually beneficial. Museums may use outside collaborators to determine proper storage, catalog description, even as labor, those collaborating with the museum may be able to receive input on revitalization efforts, reconnect with important objects from their past, and make their voices heard. With the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of telecommunication in the museum sector has become normalized. This results in an increased capacity for consultation, and as such, collaboration with outside groups must become part of museum standard practice.

Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, and Coronavirus are the many names of the threat humanity faces today. In this paper I ask “Why are some countries being more adversely affected by this pandemic than others?” To answer this question I test Marxist and constructivist theories about whether states with more economic freedom (capitalism) or more democratic ideology of freedom have more cases and fatalities. My first theory is that economic freedom (measured by the Heritage Foundation) increases Covid-19 cases given the emphasis placed on the economy rather than human life. My second theory is that more democratic states (measured by Freedom House) have more Covid-19 because they are socially constructed to emphasize personal freedom. The data I collected and analyzed supports both theories with regard to the number of Covid-19 cases. They explain fatalities less well, probably because capitalist states and democracies have more developed health capabilities.