Month: August 2012

Grant $ international student research

NSF Student Grants for International Research Experiences-Deadline August 21, 2012

The National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks applications for its International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program.  The IRES program supports active research participation by students enrolled as undergraduates or graduate students in any area of research funded by the NSF.   The deadline is August 21, 2012.

NSF accepts IRES proposals from U.S.-based academic research institutions, professional societies, or consortia. However, foreign researchers provide the primary research mentorship, but the U.S.-based Principal Investigator (PI) recruits and prepares the U.S. student participants.

IRES proposals must have a unifying research theme that enables a “cohort” experience for participating students. The IRES cohort concept requires that within each IRES project, each participating student must have an individual research project for which he/she is responsible, but these individual projects must also be coordinated to address a unifying research theme. NSF support for these projects runs for three years that will involve support for three separate student cohorts during that time.

NSF anticipates making approximately 12 IRES awards FY 2013, pending quality of proposals and availability of the $2.25 million the agency expects to spend on the program.

The agency recommends that prospective applicants examine an OISE workshop report entitled “Looking Beyond the Borders: A Project Director’s Handbook of Best Practices for International Research Experiences for Undergraduates.”

Fulbright update-Leeds-Hurwitz

A publication resulting from my Fulbright in Portugal this spring has just appeared: Arquitectura pedagógica para a mudança no ensino superior [Pedagogical architecture changes for higher education]. For anyone who reads Portuguese, it’s available as a PDF (there is also a hard copy version). For those who only read English, the longer book version came out in the fall, under the title Learning matters: The transformation of US higher education, published by Editions des Archives Contemporaines in Paris. Both the book and the monograph are co-authored with Peter Sloat Hoff.

Arquitectura pedagógica cover

My thanks to Susan Gonçalves for accepting the manuscript and then seeing it through to publication with a series through the Centro de Inovação e Estudo da Pedagogia no Ensino Superior, which she directs and the host for my stay in Coimbra. Thanks also to all those who worked on various stages of the translation: Steven Pessoa, John Baldwin, Sofia Silva, Dina Soeiro and Susana herself.

CFP Reclaiming Stigma

Call for Manuscripts:  Special Issue of Communication Studies
“Reclaiming Stigma: Alternative Explorations of the Construct”

Guest Editors:  Mike Allen (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)  & Jessica J. Eckstein (Western Connecticut State University)
Submission Deadline:  June 1, 2013

Communication research on identity issues tends to nominally reference seminal works from previous decades and then proceed to study specific, affected groups. Particularly in cases of research on stigmatized identities, scholars tend to cite Goffman (1963). With few exceptions, the nuances of this construct – a subject of potentially great interest to communication scholars – are rarely explored.

Despite the advent of increasingly immediate forms of interpersonal and public communication, the use of labels, interpersonal behaviors, and complicated rhetorical constructions related to stigma have become more taken-for-granted by scholars using methods of social framing and influence. In descending order of typical approaches by Communication scholars, published research has examined (a) if and then who is stigmatized, (b) how it affects that particular group of people, and (c) what can or should be done about it, with the latter technique inclining toward simplistic prescription of a “stop doing it” admonishment. Missing from this discussion is examination of the construction of stigma.

Rather than simplistically labeling a group as “stigmatized” and/or jumping to the assumption that this label is always negative, a more complex examination would search for the underlying mechanisms at play. This special issue of Communication Studies seeks to address this dearth in the field by seeking diverse scholarship to scrutinize the issue and provoke scholarly controversy by exploring the nature of stigma. For example:
*When can stigma be good? In what ways might it be productive to reinforce stigma of particular groups? Perhaps some identities (e.g., Homophobes? Misogynists? Abusers? KKK? Liberals? Conservatives?
Celebrities?) should be stigmatized. What would be the implications of those practices?
*When is stigma bad? What are the communicative implications when using stigma? Do stigmas reflect a shorthand attribution of group membership?
*Can an individual be stigmatized without reference to group membership?
*How has stigma operated, in past or present-day cultures, desirably?
*If we should stigmatize, how would we decide who/what to stigmatize?
*Who, or what, would determine which stigmas to enforce – interpersonally and/or culturally?
*Is stigma really an arbitrary decision made to effect serious, negative consequences (e.g., social exclusion/discrimination, punishment)?
*If stigma is a created and fixable difference, what are actual, feasible means (i.e., applied stigma management tactics – personal and political) to address interpersonal stigma for those affected – interpersonally and societally?

All scholars of Communication embracing diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives are invited. Original works referencing current, societal exemplars are encouraged. Both full-length manuscripts exploring these phenomena (through application of personal research or analyses) and shorter critical thought-pieces are welcome. Whatever the approach, this issue will go beyond simple designation of stigmatized identities to explore the stigma in all its intricacies – standard and contentious.

All manuscripts will be subjected to a process of blind peer-review.
Questions about the appropriateness of a potential submission or for additional information should be directed to Dr. Jessica Eckstein.

Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2013. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association or the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions should conform to the Instructions for Authors followed by Communication Studies and be sent electronically to the journal via the ScholarOne Manuscripts website. NOTE: All finalized submissions should specify “For Stigma Special Issue” in the online forms (e.g., cover letter, Special Issue checkbox, etc.). If you have any special requests or need additional information on this journal’s submission process, please contact the journal’s editor, Robert Littlefield.