The staff of the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Journal would like to express our appreciation for all those who recognize and contribute to our endeavors. Without their support, we would be unable to produce the 2018-19 edition of the journal. We would like to thank Morton Schapiro, President of Northwestern University, along with Provost Jonathan Holloway and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Ronald R. Braeutigam for their generous patronage. We are especially appreciative of our faculty adviser, Allen Taflove of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, for his unwavering dedication to nurj as a whole. His direction and guidance allow us to create the best version of the journal possible. Cover by Maia Brown.
Masthead vol. 14 | 2018-2019
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Andrew Cao FACULTY ADVISER
Allen Taflove MANAGING EDITOR
Leslie Bonilla INTERIM MANAGING EDITOR
Emily Suen ART DIRECTOR
Stephanie Shin ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR
Amanda Barraza-Murphy EDITORS
Pranav Baskar, Haley Chang, Daisy Conant, Hongrui He, Shreyas Iyer, Niva Razin, Lydia Rivers, David Zane, Joy Zheng DESIGNERS
Maia Brown, Andrew Cortner, Sakke Overlund, Sarah Tani COMMUNICATION COORDINATOR
Lucy Yuan
OUTREACH ASSISTANTS
Shreya Sriram, May Nguyen ILLUSTRATOR
Jiayin Lu PHOTOGRAPHER
Sarah Tani
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
Letters
27
Andrew Cao and Allen Taflove
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ECONOMICS
Analyzing the Women's Suffrage Movement and the 19th Amendment of 1920 on Health Outcomes Lillian Siegel
Stories of the Self: Agnès Varda’s Performative Subjectivity in Les Plages d’Agnès and Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse Erin Dunbar
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ECONOMICS
The Cognitive and Economic Implications of Nonmedical Adderall & Prescription Stimulant Use on College Campuses Emily Vogt
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Vicky Kalogera Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
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FEATURE
Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels: Repetition and Mu Shiying's Metropolis Max Rowe
FEATURE
23
John Alba Cutler Associate Professor of English and Associate Chair of the Department of English COMMUNICATION SCIENCES AND DISORDERS
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The Association among Media Exposure,Disruptive Behaviors, and Language Ability in Young Children Katie Martini
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JOURNALISM
The Sports Department of Corrections: How false reports by ESPN criminalized the University of Arizona Basketball Program
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MUSICOLOGY
Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and the Post-War Concerto Grace Pechianu
Nikki Baim
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FEATURE
Jennifer Tackett
Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Psychology
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FEATURE
The Sigma Xi Undergraduate Research Awards and Harold B. Gotaas Undergraduate Research Winners Jamilah Silver, Elizabeth Odunsi and Alexander Johnson
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FEATURE
Angela Roberts
NU-Q
Media Trust and Importance of News Platforms in Qatar Syeda Shageaa Naqvi
Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders
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About the Contributors
LETTERS
From the Editor Committing yourself to undergraduate research is like being shocked by static electricity while turning a door knob to a new restaurant—for a second, it will put you in a state of light stupor, but it will wake you up and possibly lead you to a realm of new discoveries. If you, like me, are an undergraduate researcher, I invite you to submit your research to us. As the incumbent editorin-chief of the NURJ, I am determined to make our journal the unmistakable voice of Northwestern undergraduate researchers. In the paper issue that you are holding, we’ve included seven of the best senior theses selected by departments from Bienen, Medill, Weinberg and NU-Q, and various exclusive interviews with distinguished professors at Northwestern. In addition, we are launching the NURJ Online, a digital journal that includes research submitted by Northwestern undergraduates across all years. Please visit thenurj.com for more details. Finally, I want to share with you several exciting news about our team. This year, we’ve recruited 37 new members to the NURJ to strengthen our production capabilities, to attain higher publishing standards and to increase our influence both domestically and internationally. We joined the Society of Undergraduate Humanities Publications as a founding member, and we are undertaking several collaborations with NU-Q in the upcoming quarters. In closing, I would like to thank you for your continued support of the NURJ. Happy reading,
Andrew Y. Cao Editor-in-Chief 005
From the Adviser The Northwestern Undergraduate Research Journal (nurj) is an annual student-produced print and web-based publication funded by the Office of the President. We are very grateful for President Schapiro’s continuing generous support. New in Volume 14 (the 2018-19 issue), we are publishing: • The best Senior Theses selected by five academic departments, including one from NU-Qatar; • Four feature interviews of faculty members who have been advisers of undergraduate students engaged in significant research: John Alba Cutler, Vicky Kalogera, Jennifer Tackett and Angela Roberts. As in past years, the nurj is freely available to students at newsstands at major campus locations. In addition, copies of nurj are distributed to Northwestern University deans, department chairs, and program chairs, as well as to academic, advising, and research offices across campus. The current issue and all past issues are available online at thenurj.com. Now, enjoy learning about the marvelous research investigations of Northwestern’s top students!
Best regards,
Allen Taflove, Professor, nurj Faculty Adviser Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science McCormick School of Engineering Northwestern University 006
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+ Figure 1.“Les plages d’Agnès.” Directed by Agnès Varda, Les Films du Losange, 2008.
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Stories of the Self: Agnès Varda’s Performative Subjectivity in Les Plages d’Agnès and Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse
Erin Dunbar Domietta Torlasco Faculty Adviser
AGNÈS VARDA IS A MULTIFACETED FILMMAKER WHOSE CINEMATIC CREATIONS HAVE CONSISTENTLY AND CREATIVELY CHALLENGED GENRE NORMS, BOUNDARIES BETWEEN MEDIUMS AND SIMPLISTIC CATEGORIZATION. Her career
spans more than six decades, and her interest in various artistic and literary mediums has bled over into her filmic output. Over the course of her cinematic career, she has gradually transitioned away from full-length narrative, fiction films (though even her earliest films, like "Cléo de 5 à 7" and "La Pointe Courte," play with montage in ways that were disruptive to the traditional productions of the French film establishment) towards a more reflective, documentarian, quasi-anthropological and autobiographical style — a style that belongs to that field of cinematic production known as the essay film. »
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ccording to Timothy Corrigan, who traces the origins of the film essay back to Montaigne, “…the essayistic indicates a kind of encounter between the self and the public domain, an encounter that measures the limits and possibilities of each as a conceptual activity” (6). As Corrigan’s citation hints, the essay film disrupts the very categories of “self” and “other” at a basic linguistic, but also imagistic, level. Hints of this conceptualization — a conceptualization based on an understanding of subjectivity as ultimately porous and multitudinous — appeared in some of Varda’s first short films ("L’Opéra-Mouffe in 1958" and "Documenteur in 1981", for example), but with ""Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse"" (2000) Varda inaugurated a new era of ethnographic filmic practice, one that started to redefine the relationships between herself as both director and film subject, and the people, places and objects she encounters in her excursions. It is this variety of faces and places that informs, indeed helps form, her own subjectivity. Varda’s now-famous concept of cinécriture¹, literally “writing with her camera,” arose in the midst of a historical movement in France characterized by theoreticians such as Astruc (le caméra-stylo, or “camera-pen”)2 and Bazin, who were increasingly concerned with the linguistic possibilities of cinema. As Bazin famously wrote at the end of the monumental “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” “On the other hand, of course, cinema is also a language." What exactly Bazin meant, or actual articulations of the caméra-stylo imagined by Astruc, are perhaps difficult to define and fall beyond the domain of this paper, but it is important to note that Varda sees images as meaningful, in a structural sense, in much the same way as language. As a result, in her essay films, Varda’s own “image” approaches the incredible fluidity of the linguistic signifier “I” in her films. She is thus resisting an entire philosophical tradition that “sees” the image, a photograph or a mirror reflection, as inherently unified, fixed, and which collapses the “image” into the self. Identity, according to this tradition, is some sort of essential property of the ¹ In an interview included on the Criterion Collection DVD release of La Pointe Courte, Varda said the following about “cinécriture”: “I’m more interested in trying to find something that forces me to find a new filmic language [cinécriture] that continuously sets up new relationships between the person who envisions and creates the film and the person who sees it. I’m always thinking of the viewer.” ² Astruc, Alexandre. “Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde : La camera-stylo.” L’Écran français, 30 mars 1948.
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“As a result, in her essay films, Varda's own 'image' approaches the incredible fluidity of the linguistic signifier 'I' in her films.” person captured by the camera/mirror. I argue that for Varda, her ability to “see” multiple images as temporarily her own (by presenting them as such through montage) thus creates a language of images that allows her “I” to be many at once. Incredibly, Varda’s “I” can be visually defined by an image of the “other." A somewhat simple demonstration of this uncharacteristic visual multiplicity is found in a problem of translation: in English, the title of "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" is misleadingly translated as The Gleaners and I. In French, “la Glaneuse” is assumed to refer to Varda; it is, however, merely a feminine, third person equivalent of “gleaner.” Thus, if the title were translated literally, it would be “The Gleaners and the woman/female gleaner.” What Varda’s title accomplishes in French, which is lacking in the English translation, is a twofold process of identification and separation that is inherent to Varda’s conception of subjectivity. Her title both identifies her as a “gleaner,” one of the many in the group of gleaners indicated by the first part of the title, and separates her on the basis both of gender and some other unknown quality. Varda is thus one of the gleaners she purports to film/interview (a theme consciously picked up by Varda in the film –
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she calls herself a gleaner of images) but also distinguishes herself because of her particular history as a woman filmmaker (the history of a gleaner of images). This is perhaps a somewhat protracted analysis of that which is lost in translation; but in the context of Varda’s consistent work against and along typical barriers established between the “I” and the “you,” her pointed separation and inclusion take on a philosophical meaning. Though "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" and "Les Plages d’Agnès" are two films with purportedly different aims – one, a documentary seemingly motivated by concerns about the environment and social inequalities, the other a filmic interpretation of an autobiography – both films play with the relationship between Varda’s “I” and the “you” that is represented (alternately) by the inner-film interviewees, the actual filmic audience, objects that Varda encounters, places where Varda has been and currently is, and, occasionally, the camera itself. However, Varda’s “I” continues to exemplify the relational dynamic that is necessary for the creation of subjectivity; as she enters into a dialogue with her own past, her past selves become “you’s” in relation to her present “I.” As Kaja Silverman explains, “subjectivity is not an essence but a set of relationships. Moreover, it can only be induced by discourse, by the activation of a signifying system which pre-exists the individual, and which determines his or her cultural identity” (52). The pre-existing signifying system, of course, is the linguistic system: the linguistic system that enables a subject to identify as an “I” in relation to all other “you’s.” But the incredible part of this verbal signifying system is that everyone is an "I"; it is a word we all use, correctly, to refer to ourselves, but it is not incorrect when other people who are “not us” use “I” when speaking of themselves. What Varda does is expand the opportunity for such a construction of subjectivity to directly include images (which Silverman would later refer to as visual signifiers). Varda’s filmic images are enunciations of “I,” images that strive to mimic the perfect reversibility and relational dynamic of linguistic signifiers. The opening scene of "Les Plages d’Agnès" prompts the viewer to recognize that the “documentary” (auto-documentary might be a more precise term, or even autofiction) they are about to watch is much more than a static, autobiographical portrait of the filmmaker. From the very first seconds of the film, Varda disrupts the very idea that a cohesive, indivisible subject exists (in other words, the Cartesian subject of thought and
also challenges the idea that this process of revealing an “interiority” is filmable. The black screen lingers as the sound of lapping water becomes audible; image lags behind sound, a disrupting and disorienting sentiment right at the start of the film. Already, Varda is playing with her audience. The first shot of the film captures Varda, horizontal to the camera, walking backwards along the beach – both a clever representation of what is to follow (diving back into her memory; walking into the past) and a sort of image-pun characteristic of the playfulness of Varda’s cinematic style. The very first line of the film is “je joue le rôle d’une petite vieille… [I’m playing the role of a little old woman].” Varda alerts us that the “subject” that is being presented to the camera is itself a role; immediately, questions of documentary authenticity, narrative veracity and the inherent contradictions around the concept of “identity” (as something stable and indivisible) are asked in a creative, open manner. As Catherine Russell points out in her work on ethnographic film practices, “Performative documentary is not simply a recourse to fiction, but an embrace of the fundamentally allegorical structure of cinema. It renders cinematic transparency as a receding memory of a more primitive form of representation ... Memory and fantasy are conjoined in the fabrication of this transparency” (44). "Les Plages" is certainly a “performative documentary,” but what Varda performs is her own subjectivity. Varda has purposefully chosen how she is going to present herself to her audience; the assemblage of a few adjectives (“pleasantly plump,” “talkative”) are at once indicative of the “self” she wishes to portray and hopelessly incapable of defining her personality in any sort of totality. Thus, Varda walks the line between authenticity and fictionalization, both pointedly showing that her “interiority” doesn’t exist prior to or independently of a dialogue with the external world. While analyzing the film, Claire Boyle touches on this phenomenon of fictionalization of the self, specifically in the documentary/auto-portrait form: “The specificities of its medium mean that the cinema does not capture a ‘real’ likeness of a person, but rather generates a proliferation of separate portraits, each one less than ‘real,’ each one inevitably, in a sense, a 3 Boyle, Claire. “Self-Fictions and Film: Varda’s Transformative Technology of the Self in Les plages d’Agnès.” 2011. Paper presented at Technologies of the Self: New Departures in Self-Inscription, Ireland. In this paper, Boyle focuses extensively on Foucault’s philosophy of “technology of the self,” or “systems that create the self” and also argues about the applicability of the term autofiction in a filmic realm and what alternatives exist in describing presentations of the self in film.
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fiction” (64).3 Yet, these “fictions” that Varda authors about her own subjectivity nonetheless play a role in the fashioning of her subject. This idea of a “proliferation of separate portraits” is exactly what I want to pull out and problematize here, as it is resonant not only in "Les Plages" but also in the very form of "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" (a series of “interview” portraits punctuated by interludes of Varda at home). Indeed, Varda utilizes filmic portraiture to demonstrate how an “I” can be presented for and through the camera, authentically or not, while recognizing the multiple sources of influence in forming subjectivity. Conveniently, Varda herself provides the filmic-image equivalent of these “separate portraits” early on in Les plages, in an innovative and deeply suggestive scene about fragmentation of both present perception and recollection. Varda, subject of a moving, conceivably hand-held camera, directs crewmembers to place mirrors at strategic points along the beach. The subject of the mirrors, in essence what they reflect, is the beach; as Varda remarks, “This time, to talk about myself, I thought, ‘if we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.’ If we opened me up, we’d find beaches” (:50). So begins the astonishing process of making explicit the relationship between external objects and her interior “I,” and, more importantly, of making it filmable in all its complexity and fragmentation. But of course, Varda is more than beaches; again, we have a single perspective represented quite literally onscreen. Varda indicates that she was searching for a way to communicate her subjectivity; rather than seeing this beach scene as a metaphor for her subjectivity, it is more truthful to see it as one of its aspects or dimensions. Here, Varda emphasizes the porousness that characterizes the process of subject formation; not only people but also places, or landscapes, become optional images through which she is able to enact her subject-hood. As Boyle further remarks, “To read Les plages d’Agnès as a film that practices a technology of the self, then, is to read the film as one which goes beyond a ludic deconstruction of autobiographical forms in order to harness their performativity and exploit the free rein provided by selffiction for a constructive purpose” (67). The question remains, however, which self Varda will choose to visually construct. As this first scene continues, more and more mirrors are brought onto the beach. In a series of beautiful and mystifying shots, we see Varda, reflected in the mirrors, directing their placement; she has become integrated (as subject) with the scene that both the mirrors and the camera are
“So begins the astonishing process of making explicit the relationship between external objects and her interior 'I,' and, more importantly, of making it filmable in all its complexity and fragmentation." capturing. Another layer of intention is added by Varda’s off-hand remarks to the camera; as a gust of wind wraps her scarf around her face, she says, “...you’ll film me like this. That’s how I want the portrait” (1:42).4 Evidently, Varda chose to keep this exchange in the film; again, the viewer is prompted to recognize in this “portrait” all the trappings of a performative subject. As the complexity of the visuals increases, so begins the complex interweaving of Varda’s self-narrative. In voice-over, she begins to elaborate on her childhood home and early recollections of her parents. Sound, image and narrative begin to converge in innovative ways; as Varda discusses a particular memory, while the on-screen visual doesn’t alter, the audience begins to hear, for instance, the music she had just described listening to as a child seconds before (Schubert’s "Unfinished Symphony"). Finally, the scene reaches a sort of climax; in the midst of some rigging set up for the film equipment, Varda appears, framed, ⁴ See Figure 1 ⁵ See Figure 1
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+ Figure 2. “Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse.” Directed by Agnès Varda, Ciné-Tamaris, 2000.
holding her own camera and shooting the camera that is filming her.5 It is important to remark that this footage is not edited in; Varda, then, retains her perspective on the scene even while exhibiting herself to the camera. This opening vacillation between revealing and hiding, presenting her subject as inherently tied to and affected by these coastal landscapes, thus reaches its apex with this game of multiple lenses. What is ultimately emphasized, however, is the fact that Varda’s subjectivity, even a performative one, is only explicable in relation with that which is exterior; her “I” comes into contact with the camera, the beach, and the mirrors and is shaped and transformed by these encounters in such a way that indicates that her “I” wouldn’t even be presentable without these relationships. The fashioning of her “I” for the camera is possible only with the acknowledgement of the mirrors and the camera lens. The concept of choosing what to present to spectators is, evidently, at the core of montage and cinematic practice, most basically with the decision of how to frame a shot and how to string shots together. What is unusual in Varda’s filmmaking is her choice to foreground the process of how she chooses what to include in her filmic narrative (for example, the hilarious and highly affected scene of “the dance of the lens cap” in "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" which is accompanied by a jaunty jazz tune). In discussing "Les Glaneurs," Natalie Rachlin writes that, "Varda met en avant le medium qu’elle utilise, la caméra numérique, et rappelle ainsi aux spectateurs que tout film – y compris un film documentaire – est un ⁶ “Varda places at the forefront the medium she uses, the digital camera, and prompts the audience that every film – even a documentary film – is an assemblage of images captured by more-or-less sophisticated devices and is not a transparent mirror of ‘reality’”
assemblage d’images prises par des appareils plus ou moins sophistiqués et non un miroir transparent de la ‘réalité’” (95).6 Though Rachlin is correct in pointing out that Varda consistently plays with the process of recording her filmic images, in the case of Les Glaneurs, and, more extensively, Les plages, Varda does not so much point out the choice of what to include in a film to demonstrate that a film is not reality, but instead to showcase the fact that the very idea of a “reality,” particularly of the subject, is elusive and ultimately impossible to determine. This conscious manipulation of images is exactly what S.D. Chrostowska is referring to in her assertion that “Most importantly, however, the film ["Les Glaneurs"] offers an icon for digitally emancipated film and the consciousness of the image as manipulated” (119). Of course, importantly in the context of this paper, the image that is manipulated by Varda is her own self-image, which she consistently (and pointedly) performs for the camera, and which also becomes multiple. Starting at 4:56 in "Les Glaneurs, Varda" begins to play with the small digital camera she uses throughout the film; what follows is a surreal series of images, highly manipulated due to shifting settings on the camera, accompanied by a musing voiceover by Varda herself who ruminates on the “stroboscopic, digital, fantastic” effects of these new cameras. She also points out their capacity for enabling narcissism. At 5:01, Varda is seen obscuring her own face with a small, hand-held mirror while the camera is (presumably) in her other hand. As the mirror is turned around, rather than ⁷ See Figure 2 for image series
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE + Figure 3. “Les Plages d’Agnès.” Directed by Agnès Varda, Les Films du Losange, 2008.
reflecting an image of Varda’s face, the camera captures, by a clever play of angles, a strange, half-completed drawing.7 Why this literal effacement just as she is discussing the potential narcissistic use of filming herself? As the camera lingers on the painting reflected in the mirror, Varda comments that these images are, paradoxically in the context of the image on-screen, “ … even hyper-realistic.” The distortions she forces on the camera — blurriness, pixilation, slow motion — are similar in many ways to the opening scene on the beach in "Les Plages d’Agnès." Both scenes attempt to put into image the notion of a fragmented self. Both are also conscious attempts on Varda’s part to demonstrate the impossibility of a selfportrait that is clear and coherent; her “I” doesn’t exist as something to be opened up as though it were originally and inherently self-enclosed. Rather, it is something that has always been somehow open, something that arises out of a series of relationships. Additionally, this “I” can in fact be many images. Whether it’s a mirror reflecting a labyrinthine series of landscapes or a digital camera that obscures its subject to the point of non-recognition, Varda utilizes the structure and substance of her films to
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toy with and problematize the idea of visual subjectivity. Agnès Varda’s filmmaking is complex, difficult and layered. It is rare to come across a comprehensive, English-language analysis of her work that doesn’t simply focus on her position as a feminist filmmaker, or as a documentarian or as a member of the Nouvelle Vague. Varda’s cinema is inherently disruptive and destabilizing; she constantly plays with identity, memory and the impossibility of cohesive selfhood. Varda’s true innovations are in her constant repositioning of her “I” in relation to other “you’s”. Varda’s filmography, even when supposedly “focusing” on her autobiography ("Les Plages d’Agnès") or on interviews with others ("Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse"), constantly repositions her own subject in relation to what she organically encounters on-screen. Varda’s radical openness to experiences, other people, and her own aging point to a studied realization on her part that her subjectivity is necessarily created in relation to other people and things and is in fact an ongoing, fluid process of subject-formation. Varda’s subjectivity is given meaning because of what she films, who she
nurj – vol. 14 interviews and what she chooses as objects to represent herself. Her ethnographic interest – both towards other people and towards her own body – allows her to frame her films as examinations into the interplay that forms identities in a constantly shifting social conversation. Somehow, Varda takes filmmaking – unchanging, recordable, framed, intentional – and infuses contingency, organic interest, and constant personal transformation. Even the categorization of her films is in constant flux. Her films defy genre markers and easy classification because Varda allows the camera to focus on what happens in the moment. The filmic language that Varda uses emphasizes the constant exchange that happens between what is interior and what is exterior; putting these exchanges onscreen is yet another transformation, one that implicates the audience who acknowledges their role both as witnesses and as subjects of transformation because of what they are watching. The “self” that Varda presents is inherently multiple; in her essayistic filmography, this is only appropriate. The contexts in which Varda finds herself are endless, and her artful presentation of this multiplicity point to her prescient awareness of the fact that her “self” is a self that is completely determined by circumstances and by the objects, people and landscapes that surround her at a certain time. Contingency is a key part of forming subjectivity; thus, Varda incorporates, or rather leaves room for, contingency in her filmmaking. Relational
dynamics are another key aspect of formation of “self;” thus, Varda’s films emphasize the importance of organic interactions in forming her subjectivity. These interactions occur between Varda and other people, but also between Varda and object and landscapes she encounters, as well as between her present self and past selves. “Subjectivity” is therefore the least static creation in Varda’s films; in fact, it is something that undergoes a constant, consistent transformation. To be more precise, this “subjectivity” is itself this process of transformation; Varda ultimately argues against an internal, enclosed, consistent self. Her “self” is the subjectivity that is formed in relationships, in this process of fluid exchange. Stasis is avoided at all costs; Varda does not attempt to arrest her aging, nor does she refuse to allow her scenes or narrative plans to be disrupted by organic occurrences. In fact, even her own death, the physical evidence of which Varda captures on camera, will remain on film as images for others to glean. Her subjectivity, since it is formed always in conversation, thus has its own little “deaths” when objects or landscapes or others disappear from her life. Subjectivity and contingency thus align in artful, meditative ways. Varda’s “I” is a constantly shifting, constantly transforming marker of the self; she never forgets onscreen the importance of others, of the "you," in forming her subjectivity. Varda’s interiority is, of necessity, exterior; here lies her brilliance, and her innovation, as a filmmaker and artist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Astruc, Alexandre. “Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde: La camera-stylo” L’Écran français, 30 mars 1948. Bazin, André. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Vol. 1. Translated by Hugh Gray, University of California Press, 1967, 9-16. Boyle, Claire. “Self-Fictions and Film: Varda’s Transformative Technology of the Self in Les plages d’Agnès.” 2011. Paper presented at Technologies of the Self: New Departures in Self-Inscription, Ireland.
Chrostowska, S.D. “Vis-à-vis the glaneuse.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, vol. 12, no. 2, 2007, pp. 119-133. Cléo de 5 à 7. Directed by Agnès Varda. Compagnie Commerciale Française Cinématographique, 1962. Corrigan, Timothy. The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker. Oxford University Press, 2011. Documenteur. Directed by Agnès Varda. Ciné-Tamaris, 1981. Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse. Directed by Agnès Varda, CinéTamaris, 2000.
L’opéra mouffe. Directed by Agnès Varda. Ciné-Tamaris, 1958. Les Plages d’Agnès. Directed by Agnès Varda, Les Films du Losange, 2008. Rachlin, Nathalie. “L’Exclusion au cinéma: le cas d’Agnès Varda.” Women in French Studies, Special Issue, 2006, pp. 88111. Russell, Catherine. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Duke University Press, 1999. Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. Oxford University Press, 1983.
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Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels: Repetition and Mu Shiying's Metropolis Max Rowe Cory Bynes Faculty Adviser
IMAGINE STROLLING ACROSS SHANGHAI DURING THE CITY'S BUSTLING JAZZ AGE, PAST FRENCH, BRITISH AND AMERICAN CONCESSIONS, THEIR ARCHITECTURE "TRANSPLANTED FROM EUROPE."
A nighttime turn down a cabaret street leads one past flashing neon signs marching infinitely into the distance; underneath them, cabaret-goers in both Chinese and Western dress scurry frenetically, eager to display their facility with the newest dance craze. Propulsive jazz music blares from inside, the drummer’s driving ride cymbal creating syncopation with the Shanghai Express train rumbling in the distance. It was in this milieu that Mu Shiying (穆时英) lived and wrote, and it was this metropolitan world that served as the most important subject for his fiction. »
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u’s fiction is perhaps best known for its formally experimental qualities and for its focus on the denizens of the metropolis, or even the metropolis itself. The settings and images of Mu’s stories are literary refractions of the nightlife scene he himself enjoyed when in Shanghai. Mu saw form and formal experimentation as of primary import to his work, having enduringly remarked, “as to what I write, I do not care nor have I ever cared; what I care about is the question of ‘how I write.’”1 Though Mu claims to privilege form over content, in his fiction we see both an artifact and a trace of the experience of Shanghai: the cacophonous and disjunctive experience of the metropolis called for new forms of literary expression. In particular, Mu’s variegated use of repetition remains an underexplored yet central component of his literature. In this essay, I pursue the ways in which Mu’s repetitive technique, like an axel, connects and propels his entire project of formal experimentation. I explore two major veins of Mu’s repetition technique: subverting and complicating linear time and the time of narrative, and discoursing on the individual’s relationship with mass culture in the modern metropolis along many of the same threads as Benjamin’s model of the Baudelairian flâneur. Through these repetitive formal experimentations, Mu argues that though Shanghai was the quintessence of Chinese urban modernity, the experience of it was of a cyclical and complex time rather than linear, that it was a disjunctive and nearly inscrutable text, and that the mass culture of Shanghai foreclosed the possibility of individual space that Charles Baudelaire managed to carve out of the Parisian metropolis. In her 2001 book "The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937," Shu-mei Shih launched one of the first English-language discussions on Shanghai-based literary modernism of the early 20th century and the New Sensationalist movement in particular. Shih’s book came in the wake of a rediscovery of Chinese modernism as a valid subject of literary-critical study in the 1980s. Until this point, “modernism was a dismissed, if not forbidden, topic” in mainland China.2 The orthodox story of Chinese literary history was essentially one of the development of realist techniques. Scholars sought to “[link] the development of modern Chinese literature to the political advance of the communist revolution, judging literature according to its degree of participation in and 1 Shih, 313. 2 Ibid., 40. 3 Ibid.
documentation of the changing revolutionary reality,” rendering socialist realism the ne plus ultra of literary form.3 Under this critical regime, it is perhaps no surprise that Mu and his modernist peers spent decades languishing in (relative) obscurity. Though Mu’s depictions of nights out in Shanghai limn a city both sybaritic and debauched, and the politics Mu transmits through his stories seem decidedly (if not stridently) anti-capitalist, it is easy to see how historians anxious to instrumentalize literature in the service of Socialism could read Mu’s writing as decadent, petty bourgeois, and having few redeeming qualities. Leftist authors such as Lu Xun (鲁迅), Mao Dun (矛盾), Ba Jin (巴金) and Cao Yu (曹禺), among many others, never presented such a serious ideological threat to Communist orthodoxy and were prime candidates for literary-historical apotheosis. It was in this process of relegating heterodox movements to the dustbin of literary history, this process of transforming the polyinto the uni-vocal, that Mu Shiying’s work was removed from standard narratives of modern Chinese literary history. Just as the generically and stylistically hybrid works of the late Qing were excluded from the literary-historical telling of the advent of Chinese modernity, so too do the experimental literature of the 1920s and 1930s constitute what David Wang describes as a “repressed modernity,” being disqualified from incorporation into the standard narrative by virtue of their status as decadent and counterrevolutionary.4 RENDING AND RESTITCHING NARRATIVE TIME The prospect of Chinese modernity was inextricably linked to the adoption of “modern time.”5 For many of China’s leading intellectuals of the period, as well as for many contemporary scholars of the period’s Chinese discourse on the concepts of modernity and modernization, “modern time” was the quintessence of modernity itself. Adopting, even achieving, this temporal model was therefore paramount for those seeking to revitalize the Chinese nation on the heels of the Century of Humiliation. This “modern time” was the “Darwinian time of linear development, the Hegelian time of World History, and modern Western calendrical time that allowed the emergence of a global consciousness.”6 Modernizing the nation’s
4 David Der-wei. Wang, Fin-de-siecle Splendor Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1848-1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 20. ⁵ The centrality of “modern time” to the modernization process, and the problems of its adoption, was by no means a parochially Chinese phenomenon. For more, see Stefan Tanaka’s New Times in Modern Japan, Chapter 4 of Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Barbarian Virtues, Chapters 3 and 5 of Michael Adas’s Dominance by Design, and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.
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temporal system meant recasting the elapsing of time into a linear-successive, teleological schema, itself an artifact of a burgeoning global marketplace and its incipient requirement of a trans-national temporal “sync” to lubricate capital flows. Not only was this “modern time” premised on a logic of linear-succession, but it was also suffused with a belief in causality linking together the successive moments of time. The thought of Darwin and Hegel, in which one finds full-throated endorsement of teleological history in its crystalline form, left their traces on the modern temporal schema, bestowing a purposive logic to the elapsing of time. Human society was going somewhere, and every passing moment lead inexorably towards that telos. “Modernity in China… was closely associated with a new linear consciousness of time and history which was itself derived from Chinese reception of a Social Darwinian concept of evolution.”7 “Modern time,” then, marches ineluctably and teleologically forward, each moment with its place in an infinite line of succession and causality. The appropriate processes for the adoption of this temporal model were configured paradoxically in the Chinese imaginary, which both “perceived [modern time] as the property of the West and Westernized Japan… [and] nonetheless universally available to those behind in the trajectory who wanted to catch up.”8 In this moment at the dawn of the 20th century, a polarity between China and “the West” calcified in the Chinese imaginary and became a persistent schema framing China’s self-conception vis-à-vis this “West.” Shih instructively delineates the two sides of the China/West polarity in the Chinese framing, including old/new, ancient/modern, spiritual/ material and fatalistic/creative-progressivist.9 The desire of the “West’s” level of temporal advancement was a central tenet of May Fourth intellectuals and others participating in the construction of the dominant (literary-) historical narrative, and they were willing to go nearly any ideological lengths to achieve it. Many of them operated according to the “dictum that China should undergo ‘complete Westernization,’”10 and believed that for Western countries, modernization was a process of “elaboration” on the self, while the Chinese case called for wholesale upheaval and rebirth into a new being.11 In Mu’s short fiction, he uses forceful and consistent repetition of words, phrases, sentences and even paragraphs. This repetitive technique is often unsettling and can even 6 Shih, 49. 7 Leo Ou-fan. Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001), 43. 8 Shih, 49. 9 Ibid., 53. 10 Ibid., 53.
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be destabilizing. Mu’s repetition generates a narrative and a textual time that is often rhythmic, cyclical, multiple and nonlinear. The repetition creates resonances in the text which cut across narrative and textual time, constructing a text which itself elicits a nonlinear temporal experience for the reader. Mu deploys this repetitive technique against the linear time of narrative in order to surface the paradoxical lived experience of the metropolis which his short stories trace. Mu’s fiction almost exclusively depicts the Shanghainese modern metropolis, and sees him limn the temporal experience of the city not as one of rational, linear-successive time, but rather as complex, capacious and nonlinear. Mu thus draws out a paradox in the experience of the modern metropolis, finding that though it was constructed on the mythological edifice of linear-successive time, rationality and order, the lived experience of this metropolis produced a temporal model that was anything but. It is this linear-successive textual time that Mu’s repetition problematizes in his short fiction. The repetition creates a text in which different textual moments resonate with one another across the text as temporal object. This builds a temporally nonlinear internal resonance, yoking and superimposing moments with narrative and textual temporal distance between them. In “Shanghai Foxtrot,” Mu repeats the following paragraph almost verbatim twice in the story’s opening pages: 上了白漆的街树的腿，电杆木的腿，一切静物 的腿……Revue似地，把擦满了粉的大腿交叉地 伸出来的姑娘们……白漆的腿的行列。沿着那条 静悄的大路，从住宅的窗里，都会的眼珠子似 地，透过了窗纱，偷溜了出来淡红的，紫的，绿 的，处处的灯光12 Onto white painted street tree legs, electricity pole legs, all inanimate legs……like a revue, girls’ legs covered in powder criss-crossing outward… A series of white painted legs. Following the quiet street, from inside the windows of houses, like the eyes of the metropolis, penetrating the window shades, slipping out pink, purple, green, everywhere lights13 The first instance of this repeated passage comes as a component of a sequence of scenesetting literary images. An unnamed man is shot during a robbery, traffic flows quickly 11 Ibid., 52. 12 Yan Jia Yan and Li Jin, Mu shi ying quan ji (Bei jing: Bei jing shi yue wen yi chu ban she, 2008), 332. 13 The translations in this essay are original, but relied heavily on those provided in Andrew Field’s book for guidance. The translations here aim to preserve a bit more of the original Chinese syntax.
nurj – vol. 14 by, neon signs coruscate and the Shanghai Express rumbles past in the distance. The quoted passage is a part of this whole, emblematizing the street in Mu’s distillation of the Shanghai cityscape. The passage is repeated almost word for word a few pages later. Xiaode and Rongzhu, a stepmother and stepson pair turned lovers, leave Youde, the suspicious but ineffectual patriarch, alone in his house as they go out for dinner.14 Here, the passage describes the street that the incestuous lovers drive along, and the images passing by the window of their 1932 Studebaker. The repetition of this entire paragraph in two different narrative and textual settings destabilizes the linearsuccessive temporality of the textual temporal object. In fact, there are two levels on which Mu’s repetition drives temporal disruption in these passages: within each individual iteration of the passage and between the two iterations. Within each iteration of the passage, Mu forcefully and continuously repeats individual words. In particular, the word “legs” is deeply woven through the first two sentences of the passage; the reader is hardly able to go a few words before re-encountering these legs. This intra-sentence repetition has a powerful, manifestations. Like the echo, it is a (slightly temporally disruptive effect on the reader. The unsettling) remainder from the ‘past’ which insistent repetition of “legs” in these sentences hangs in the ‘present.’ The memory of the first creates a kind of echo-chamber effect within iteration of the word hangs in the reading of the passage. The “legs” initially appear in the all subsequent iterations in the passage. The opening phrase “onto white painted street tree literary echoing generated by the repetitive legs,” and from this first utterance, reappear technique, then, constructs a temporality in again and again in the images/phrases that which past and present are yoked together follow. For the reader, it almost feels as though and even fused. The yoking and fusing of the initial instance of “legs” is bouncing off these divergent times in the text calls into of some impossible walls in literary space question the possibility of uncovering a and being reproduced in the remainder of natural sequence of these times. The effect is the passage as reverberation. When the something like a snake eating its tail. reader’s eyes move across the subsequent The echoing effect of the repetition within phrases “electricity pole legs,” “all inanimate the passage imbues the single word “腿” with legs” and “girls’ legs covered in powder resonances with other moments in textual criss-crossing outward,” they all register as time. A natural corollary of this effect is a echoes of this initial phrase. The echo is an kind of haunting of the textual present by artifact of the textual past that manifests in the textual past — the past is woven deeply the textual present. This echo effect therefore into the threads of the textual present, stretches across textual temporality, allowing recalcitrantly resisting any readerly attempts temporally distant textual moments to fuse at disentangling the two. The first iteration together in the text. of “腿,” “上了白漆的街树的腿”, haunts and is This echoing effect constructs a complicated thoroughly present in all following iterations and multiplied temporality of the textual of the character. It is a “’reminder’” of the past object for the reader. The repetition generates which not only cannot be “eliminated,” but is a dual-temporal function for each iteration engaged in a continuous process of reassertion of “legs”: the word serves both as a part as Mu repeatedly re-deploys it.15 When the of the textual ‘present moment’ and as an reader moves to a subsequent phrase, there is artifact of the textual past, one that is highly a realization that they are on familiar ground evocative of but not identical to its previous — this present phrase is a variation on the last.
“This echo effect therefore stretches across textual temporality, allowing temporally distant textual moments to fuse together in the text.”
14 The only difference being the phrase “处处的灯光” (everywhere lights) is converted to “处女的灯光” (virginal lights) at the end of the second passage.
15 Schaefer, 11.
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The textual past starts to feel omnipresent enmeshed in it. “French writers and artists in the passage, hanging behind each new began to adopt a critical attitude toward the phrase. Mu’s continuous intra-passage city’s increasingly philistine bourgeois crowd. repetition becomes the engine which drives By comparison … [Shanghai’s] material this haunting of the past, yoking and fusing splendor seems to have so dazzled its writers textual past and present. that they had not yet developed the detached Beyond the resonance between temporally and reflective mentality characteristic of the disparate moments generated by the repetitive Parisian flâneur.”17 technique, a conflation between the moments Shih has also considered the aptness is also generated. When the reader’s eyes of applying the flâneur to the work of this pass over a passage identical to one they have group of Shanghainese writers. Her argument read before (due to it textually preceding the follows closely in Lee’s footsteps and ends ‘present’ passage or to the reader’s repeated up with a similar conclusion, foreclosing the reading), their internal temporality is sent possibility of the New Sensationalist flâneur. to the disparate textual moments which In Shih’s account, an authentic Benjaminian contained the repeated passage. When the flâneur generates a “‘protective shield,’” the reader is in the midst of the passage, there “blasé attitude,” as a “means of deflecting new is no possibility of disambiguation between stimuli from the new urban experience,” while the textual moments containing the other Mu’s narrators are “unable to develop a shield iterations of the repeated passage and the to ward off the onslaught of stimuli.”18 Shih ‘present’ textual moment. There is nothing for ultimately concludes that “Mu’s male subject the reader to point to to evince “this is now and is clearly by no means a flâneur.”19 not then,” and these disparate textual moments I agree with both Lee and Shih that the become conflated completely.16 Consequently, flâneur figure cannot, without adaptation, map the reader’s internal temporality is disrupted neatly onto Mu’s short stories — it would be in being sent to multiple disparate textual misguided to argue that either Mu or his male moments simultaneously. This effect again subjects are simply Shanghainese isotopes undermines the possibility of a linear textual of the Benjaminian/Baudelairian model, or present, but does so in a distinct way from that Baudelaire was a literary lodestar for the construction of the capacious moment, Mu. However, there are striking resonances the moment full of other moments, discussed between the ways in which Mu’s short stories above. In the capacious moment, many and Benjamin’s model of the flâneur engage different moments are simultaneously present, with the metropolis and respond to the like a myriad of images superimposed upon problems of modernity. In seeking to avoid one another. In the conflation of moments, pursuing a facile application of a European the reader’s internal temporality is dispersed, model to Mu’s fiction, Shih and Lee have left sent to multiple disparate textual moments an opportunity for fruitful exploration of Mu’s at once, like so many rays extending from a fiction untapped. In its places of resonance central point. This temporal disruption is also with the flâneur model, Mu’s fiction makes generated by Mu’s repetition. and fulfills many of the same promises about Mu’s repetition is the engine which drives modernity for the reader as does the flâneur this temporal multiplicity and disruption. It literature of Benjamin’s study. In its places is not only the narrative temporality which of divergence, the gap between Mu and has its linearity disrupted, but also the Benjamin is a highly instructive window into reader’s experience of ‘real-time’ is disrupted Mu’s arguments about the individual and the by formal features of the text undermining metropolis in Shanghai. the linear-successive temporality connate “Night” may be Mu’s most criminally in the text as temporal object. The reader is underappreciated short story. Existing on not an observer of a temporally confusing the liminal boundary between hyperbolic and scene, but a participant in a temporally parodic, the story centers on an intenselyconfusing experience. troped exchange between two metropolitan types: the sailor and Mu’s modern girl. The THE FLÂNEUR, MASS-CULTURE AND MODERN (NIGHT)LIFE sailor in “Night” is a remarkably illuminating access point to Mu’s conception of the Lee insists that the true Baudelairian Shanghai metropolis. This sailor is, of all the flâneur is at a remove from the frenetic male characters in Mu’s short stories, the one modern metropolis. Shanghainese writers who seems to most adroitly navigate the city and their subjects, on the other hand, are and the only one who appears to be in any sense
16 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 45. 17 Lee, 37.
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18 Shih, 329. 19 Shih, 330.
nurj – vol. 14 at ease in the metropolis. “The street becomes … advance. Indeed, “behind her transparent look [his] dwelling”; he not only is “as much at home was hidden a vast ocean of secrets… Yet he loved among the façades of… [the street] as a citizen that kind of look… things that were beyond his in his four walls,” but more so, as he does not comprehension.”24 The appeal of Yindi and her have four walls to call his own. Despite all of being “beyond [the sailor’s] comprehension” the competition among men for female sexual is that it allows Yindi to remain a cipher in attention that weaves its way through every one the sailor’s mind. He can imagine that she is of Mu’s short stories, the sailor is the only male whoever he wants her to be. Interestingly, this character who seems to elicit sexual attraction is also how Yindi chooses to conceive of the from a female counterpart. Rather than being sailor, not allowing him to exceed the role of figured as a financial benefactor, as is Liu Youde troped cipher in her mind anymore than he in “Shanghai Foxtrot” or Shengwu in “Black allows her to exceed this in his. The appeal of Peony,” or an emotional one like the male the shallow trope as romantic partner is that narrator of “Craven A,” the sailor is regarded one can project whatever hopes and desires by his female opposite number as an object of they have about the other without running up sexual desire. This sexual charisma seems to be against inconvenient realities. That both Yindi generated by the sailor’s facility in navigating and the sailor feel that they have “seen [the Shanghai’s metropolitan indeterminacy. other] somewhere before” is illustrative of In fact, it should come as no surprise that the how each is a typed character, one iteration of spatially dislocated sailor, whose travels have something like a mass-produced object.25 spanned from Cuba to Madrid to Kobe, feels The interactions between these two at home in Shanghai, a city constituted by “a characters hew extremely closely to a montage of circulating and juxtaposed places routinized script produced by mass-culture. and images, a vortex on the periphery of a world In the final moments, when Yindi answers a system.”20 In the geographically indeterminate barrage of questions from the sailor each with world-city of Shanghai, the only person who a laconic “I don’t know,” she leaves no doubt manages to navigate is one intimately familiar about how their relationship stands at the end with life unmoored. It is no coincidence that of the night. They have remained strangers, Benjamin finds in ships resting in a marina an anonymous passers-by. allegory for the hero of modernity.21 Benjamin produced a brilliant model of The sailor, much like the types populating “Five Baudelaire’s poetic renderings of love in the in a Nightclub,” is little more than meets the eye. metropolis. In particular, the idea is that He repeatedly exclaims of himself “哀愁也 apotheosis of metropolitan romance “is not so 没有，欢喜也没有 — 情绪的真空” [No sorrow, no much love at first sight as love at last sight.”26 In joy — an emotional vacuum], as well as of his “化 Baudelaire’s poem, he sees a beautiful woman 石似的心境” [heart turned to stone] and seems to passing on the street and imagines love with have gleaned little from his world travel beyond a her. According to Benjamin’s model, this is not a list of women he’s slept with, through which he negative outcome but in fact the most romantic refers to his globetrotting in virulently sexist and possible outcome in metropolitan love. The insipid synecdoche.22 He is perpetually in search of impossibility of love in the encounter is the “我流浪梦里的恋人” [the lover of my wandering acme of its romance: “The never marks the high dreams], who naturally can appear only fugitively point of the encounter.”27 These two troped in his waking hours, taking avatars in women with characters of Mu’s, the sailor and the modern whom he exchanges passing glances in his travels. girl, also seem keenly aware of this impossibility The modern girl in “Night,” named “茵帝” of love in the city. That they hew so closely to (Yindi) or “god of the mattress,” is also more the routinized script of metropolitan courtship of a type than fleshed-out character. She is illustrates they are well aware of the fact that introduced drinking coffee — an emblem of the “love is recognized as being stigmatized in the big modern littered throughout Mu’s short stories city.”28 Though these two characters traverse the — and the sailor could tell “从喝咖啡的模样… 她 barrier that Baudelaire and his passer-by could not, 是对于生，没有眷恋，也没有厌弃的人。 可是， namely speaking with one another, their vacuous 她的视线是疲倦的。" [from her way of drinking conversation, repeated dialogue and circumspect coffee… that she was a person who neither disclosure of personal details shows that both of yearned for life nor detested it. But her look was the characters wish to remain troped-up ciphers weary].23 She thereby fits squarely into Mu’s into which their opposite number can project type of modern girl, playing the role of modern their fantasies. In an exchange that emblematizes girl as enigma. Her recalcitrant resistance to modern metropolitan romance, Yindi (at this point being deciphered is transmuted into sexual her name still undisclosed) refuses to answer any teasing or a coyly feigned rebuff of a sexual of the sailor’s questions about her. 20 Shih, 329. 21 Shih, 330. 22 Mu, 324. 23 MSY QJ 325 24 China’s Lost Modernist Field, 97.
25 Ibid., 98. 26 Benjamin, 45. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 46. 29 Mu, 326.
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“Rather than writing in an authorial avatar to stand as the individualist hero of modernity, Mu takes the crowd as his subject and leaves no place for the hero.” "你住哪儿？" "你问它干吗！" "可以告诉我你的名字吗？" "问它干吗！我的名字太多了。" "为什么全不肯告诉我？" "过了今晚上我们还有会面的日子吗？知道 有我这么个人就得啦，何必一定要知道我是 谁呢！" 'Where do you live?' ‘Why are you asking that!’ ‘Can you tell me your name?’ ‘Why ask that! I have too many names.’ ‘Why won’t you tell me anything?’ ‘After tonight will we meet again some other day? Remember there’s someone like me and it’ll be fine, there’s no need to know who I really am!’29
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Though Mu’s fiction clearly does identify and engage with many of the same problems of modernity as does the literature of the flâneur, it should be equally as clear that the response of Mu’s literature to these problems diverges from the response of the Benjaminian/ Baudelairian flâneur almost uniformly. Rather than writing in an authorial avatar to stand as the individualist hero of modernity, Mu takes the crowd as his subject and leaves no place for the hero. In his formulation of the relationship between individual and metropolis, Mu carves away space from the individual at nearly every opportunity. His characters do not “demand elbow room,” but rather are essentially anonymous members of the crowd. In different manifestations of the repetitive technique, Mu continuously shows citizens of the metropolis failing to individuate the mass-culture of the city, being flattened and standardized by this culture’s crushing power.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. London: Verso, 1999. Bergson, Henri Louis, and Irwin Edman. Creative Evolution. Estados Unidos: Modern Library, 1944. Bergson, Henri, and Frank Lubecki Pogson. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001. Certeau, Michel De. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000. Doane, Mary Ann. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Dominance by Design Technological Imperatives and Americas Civilizing Mission. Harvard Univ Pr, 2009. Field, Andrew David. Shanghais Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics,
1919-1954. Hong Kong: Chinese Univ. Press, 2010. Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. Jones, Andrew F. Developmental Fairy Tales Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2011. Lavin, Maud, and Matthew Teitelbaum. Montage and Modern Life, 1919-1942. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001. Man with a Movie Camera. Directed by Dziga Vertov. 1929. Mu, Shiying, Jiayan Yan, and Jin Li. Mu Shiying Quan Ji. Beijing: Beijing Shi Yue Wen Yi Chu Ban She, 2008. Mu, Shiying, and Andrew David. Field. Mu Shiying: Chinas Lost Modernist. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014. Passage à L'acte. Directed by
Martin Arnold. 1988. Pièce Touchée. Directed by Martin Arnold. 1993. Schaefer, William. Shadow Modernism Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925-1937. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Shih, Shumei. The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 19171937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2011. Tanaka, Stefan. New Times in Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Vertov, Dziga, and Annette Michelson. Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Berkeley U.a.: Univ. of California Pr., 1984. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-desiecle Splendor Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1848-1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, Yiyan. The Flaneur in Shanghai in Chinese Modernist Writing.
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JOHN ALBA CUTLER
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Q & A
By Amanda Barraza-Murphy Interview by Sarah Tani John Alba Cutler is finishing his eleventh year as a professor of English and Latino Studies at Northwestern. His interest in the field of Latinx literature stems from his Mexican heritage on his mother’s side and his discovery of Chicano literature during his college years. This initial encounter with the genre, which he described as “transformative,” led him to pursue a career in the teaching and study of its works.
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BY Jenna Lee
Q: Talk about your ongoing projects — what are you most excited about? A: One is a study of contemporary transnational border literature. The book is trying to understand how border literature has changed since Gloria Anzaldúa published “Borderlands/ La Frontera” in 1987, which has been a landmark in border studies ever since. I think the conditions for life and migration have changed significantly in the 30 years since that book was published. The way that literature and film and art represents the border has also changed significantly, but scholarship still lags behind. The other project is an ongoing research project on U.S. Spanish-language print culture in the early twentieth century. I’m reading the poetry, essays and short stories that were published in hundreds of Spanish-language newspapers and trying to build a case for the existence of an archive of Latinx modernism. And you asked what’s most exciting? It’s all exciting, I can’t choose. [Laughter] Q: How does your research advance the field of Latinx literature studies? How is this adding to the body of knowledge? A: [In regard to the LatinX modernisms project,] most of the field is concentrated in post
World War II literature and is associated with the Chicano movement and the Boricua [Puerto Rican] movement of the 60s and 70s and the things that come after. I’m really trying to transform what we think of as literature in that period and say that the way that Latinx communities experienced literary productions was primarily through newspapers. We have to readjust the way that we read to think about what it means to encounter ephemeral texts. Q: What have you found in your research that you think is really interesting? A: There was a Spanish-language newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri that was published from 1914 to 1919, and it is a fascinating newspaper. It … published a series of stories by somebody who went by the name of Cosme Damian. And for a long time, I was trying to look for who Cosme Damian was, and then I discovered that Cosme and Damian are a pair of Catholic saints, so it’s probably a pseudonym. Anyway, all of these stories, or crónicas, are about life in migrant worker camps in the nineteen-teens, like really early railroad camps and boarding houses. It’s a snapshot of migrant worker life that I think predates any other significant literary work about migrant workers that I know of, and they are beautiful and funny and weird, and I really love them.
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LITERATURE Q: What work do you do with undergraduates? A: I have had just three undergraduate research assistants. The [Latinx modernisms] project requires sifting through literally thousands of literary texts, and I’ve had these three students help me as I compile a large relational database with the idea of being able to create some data visualizations, like a map, some network visualizations. What I’ve tried to do with those undergraduate research assistants is use my research to help them pivot to their own interests and research projects. I’ve also supervised a half dozen Undergraduate Research Grant recipients. I want students to be excited about the research I do but I want even more for students to be discovering their own research projects and interests. Q: What do you think of the programs that Northwestern offers undergraduate researchers? A: They’re fantastic. I ... really like the distinction between the Undergraduate Research Assistant Program and Undergraduate Research Grant, which I think is pretty unique to Northwestern. It’s a great model for thinking about how to introduce students to research, and help them develop their own interests. 025
The application itself is a little clunky, it has a sort of one-size-fits-all format that is not great, but there are always things we can improve. Baseline, I think it’s really, really well done. Q: What role did your undergraduate research assistants play in research and where did they end up? A: I started off giving them a set of digitized newspapers, and their job was initially to read through the newspapers, identify literary texts and put information about those texts into the relational database. The idea was as they read more and more of the literary texts and became familiar with the genres and some of the different writers, that we would discuss their findings and make some decisions about the questions we wanted to ask about the corpus we were creating. The ultimate goal was for each of them to develop their own essay or project based on that. Only one of them did, and it’s up on my N.U. site, Mapping Latinx Modernism. Q: What do you look for in the student researchers you work with? A: I have three things I’m looking for. One of them is unfortunately not a universal qualification — I just need people who can read Spanish fluently.
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"I want students to be excited about the research I do, but I want even more for students to be discovering their own research projects and interests." The other two things I’m looking for are people who are responsible and people who are curious. Literary research requires a great deal of initiative. If you get someone who’s game to encounter some new literature, some weird poetry, maybe some boring stories, but still keep going and ask those questions, that’s ideal, that’s really what I love. Q: What advice can you offer to undergraduates who are interested in pursuing research in this field? A: All of the [Undergraduate Research Assistant Program] students I have had have been students who approached me.
When I was an undergraduate, I found it very intimidating to talk to my professors, and I never offered myself as a research assistant for anybody. In my department, among my colleagues, I think there are lots of people who would love to have a research assistant but they just need a little nudge. If undergraduates were comfortable or could work up the courage to approach a professor in office hours and say, ‘Hey, have you had the [Undergraduate Research Assistant] Program?’ that could be it. *This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 026
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Analyzing the Women's Suffrage Movement and the 19th Amendment of 1920 on Health Outcomes Lillian Siegel Sara Hernandez Faculty Adviser
USING DATA FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION FROM 1900-1940, I ANALYZE CHANGES IN RATES THAT REPRESENT HEALTH OUTCOMES FOR PEOPLE ACROSS THE U.S.
I focus on states with data both before and after women won the right to vote, which occured in 1920 for most states but a few years earlier in some select states. The data contain male death rates, female death rates, maternal mortality rates, infant mortality rates and birth rates that are broken down by state and by year. In this regression analysis, I find a significant effect of women gaining the right to vote on female death rates, infant mortality and maternal mortality, while there is no significant relationship with male death rates or birth rates. This suggests that a shock to women’s rights, such as gaining the right to vote and thus the ability to exercise political opinions and participate in democracy, can affect their health outcomes and that of their children. This finding is important in considering countries where women still lack the basic rights that men have, as implementing these types of social changes may have health impacts that go beyond the scope of the reform itself.  027
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I
n this paper, I look at changes in social institutions and the economic effect that this can have primarily on women’s lives. As an example of a societal shift, I use women’s suffrage in the early 1900s, as women fought to earn the right to vote and have their voices represented in American politics. I search to see if there are spillover effects from this movement, as other aspects of people’s lives might change due to women achieving this milestone in equality. The early 20th century was a time of lots of rapid social change in the United States. The Ford Motor Company was created, the first World Series was played, and income taxes were established. States and territories, such as Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and the Virgin Islands, were still being acquired, and groups such as the FBI and the NAACP were being founded and established. Only about 20 percent of women were actively working and participating in the labor force in 1900, as opposed to about 80 percent of men at the time. (Drury, 2018) However, this began to shift in 1914, as men left to fight in World War I, leaving jobs vacant for women. The need for weapons led to the development of munition factories which then employed many females, but often paid them less than men were paid for the same work. This activated strikes as women demanded equal pay, and began using their voices and newfound importance in the economy to advocate for equal rights. Another major social shift in this same time period that also represents women’s desires to voice their opinions and influence society is the movement around gaining the right to vote. This paper will primarily focus on state-by-state and then national suffrage, first describing how the movement came about and then analyzing various health metrics that may have changed as a result of it. While achieving suffrage was
a huge win for women and serves as a shock to their status in society, it did not automatically fix the structural factors that inhibit women from reaching their full potential. Gender inequality is still persistent around the world, and the gaps in education, health outcomes, wages, and rights have narrowed and expanded at different rates across different countries. Throughout this paper, I look to see if gaining rights in society and having societal perceptions shift more towards equality, affects women’s experiences in the household with their families and in their health outcomes later in life. Women may endure less domestic violence, and be empowered to seek out more educational opportunities and join the workforce as a result of gaining societal influence and being a part of a changing world. The ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution serves as an interesting example of a “win” for women, as this prohibited both states and the federal government from denying a U.S. citizen the right to vote on the basis of gender. Women may have gained more of a foothold because of the changing perceptions regarding equality and their capabilities, which could then impact their freedom and ability to engage in society. This paper will track various healthrelated variables over time in an attempt to determine if suffrage itself is responsible for any of the fluctuation or patterns that these trends present. BACKGROUND Women began to discuss the demand for suffrage in the US back in the 1840s. While some viewed this idea as too extreme, by 1850 it was becoming a central aspect of the women’s rights movement’s activities. Suffragists achieved success in many places at the state level, and were bolstered by a period of social action and political reform that began in 1890 known as
+ Figure 1.
This map shows the progress of the suffrage movement at the state level up until the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Progress had been primarily made in the West, with New York being the only East Coast state allowing full suffrage, and most others continuing to prevent women from voting even in school or local elections. (Milligan, 2017)
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the Progressive Era. As a result, women began newly earning the right to vote in some states starting in 1910 (Miller, 2008). However, some of these states imposed restrictions, such as only allowing women to vote in state or municipal elections. With women starting to vote in some of these early-adopting states, such as Washington, California and Oregon, Congressmen from those areas pivoted towards supporting women’s suffrage and taking stronger stances on issues that women would likely feel strongly about, such as child labor. In September of 1918, Woodrow Wilson called for the Senate to approve suffrage as a privilege earned by women due to their work and partnership throughout the First World War. Many political leaders then started to see the inevitability of women’s suffrage so they pushed their local legislators to support it in order to claim credit and attract future female voters. Progress stalled for a few months, but at last Tennessee became the 35th state to ratify the amendment, making it a US federal law and allowing women the right to vote in the 1920 Presidential Election.
dummy variable representing whether each individual state has granted women the right to vote yet and on year and state fixed effects. The fixed effects help absorb some of the variation in terms of other dramatic events that are happening in this time frame or differences that exist across states, as some states are more rural than others and would have had less access to hospitals or clinics, which could impact women’s abilities to have safe pregnancies and deliveries. In designing the regression analysis, I used a dummy variable, represented as 0 before a state was granted suffrage, and 1 in the year in which it was and after. I also included state fixed effects and year fixed effects, as explained above. These are denoted by ψs and ψy below: I used a simple model that sets the outcome
METHODOLOGY
variable as a function of a linear time trend with a level shift after the enactment of suffrage. Then, I used a trend-break model that allows for the slope to change after the shock. These equations are below, and we are looking for both the sign and the significance of the coefficients on the dummy variable, denoted by the lowercase deltas: While the first equation might yield a result
For this analysis, I ran a time-series regression which is a statistical method that estimates a response based on relevant predictors. To do this, I have used panel data that consist of multiple observations over time, grouped by state. Before beginning this study, I hypothesized where I might find the social change of suffrage to be reflected, and thus the dependent variables of interest include the female death rate, the male death rate, the maternal mortality rate, the infant mortality rate and the birth rate. I decided to control for other variables that might have also affected health outcomes at this time, such as prohibition, involvement in World War I, the Spanish flu and the percentage of the population in a state that identifies as non-white. The methodology used in this paper includes a different regression approach that compares mortality differences before and after suffrage while also testing for structural breaks in the time series to determine whether the timing of a statistically significant trend break lines up with the introduction of suffrage. However, because of the state-bystate variation in terms of when suffrage was enacted, we are not looking to see a change in outcome variables across all states before and after 1920. Instead, the analysis is based on the reality that the right to vote became available to some women before others, so we parse out what happened in the states we are using data from and when women in those states got the right to vote. For our final regressions, we decided to regress the outcome variable of interest on the
with more power, the second equation allows for the idea that the effect of suffrage might start off small but take off over time. This encapsulates the idea that take-up is not instantaneous, which is supported by our research that it took some women a couple of election cycles before they decided to hit the polls. It also suggests that we anticipate suffrage to not only cause a onetime drop in death rates, but also instead cause increasing mortality declines over time. The β2X in the second equation is meant to capture all of the various controls mentioned previously. In our analysis, we then grouped certain states based on perceived similar characteristics. We separated the states into two groups, labelled Northern and Southern, based on what side of the Civil War they fought on or whether they were classified as a “slave” or a “free” state. The purpose of this was to see if these groupings would produce fluctuations in the coefficient representing the effect of suffrage on the health outcomes. Even though suffrage was ultimately granted in 1920 at the federal level, adoption might have been imperfect. The South has historically been slightly more oppressive, so it may taken a few years before people checked in rural towns to see whether or not women were actually being allowed to vote. Thus, we thought it may be important to split the sample in order to look at implementation of the law.
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+ Figure 2.
This graph shows the difference between the male death rate and the female death rate in each of the 8 states for which the CDC has data before and after national suffrage was implemented. The spread is nonnegative for every year in every location, meaning that men are always dying at higher rates. This is often explained by a variety of factors, such as men being more likely to partake in risky behaviors, less likely to care about their health, more likely to avoid doctors, more likely to have a dangerous occupation and more likely to smoke, drink and use guns. Most states show a spike in the death rate in 1918 despite the fact that the Spanish Flu killed people of both genders, perhaps suggesting that men were more likely to succumb to it due to less hygienic practices.
+ Figure 3.
For maternal mortality we studied 22 states for which the CDC had data before and after suffrage was implemented. The above graph shows Connecticut as an example, with the vertical line demonstrating their pre-1920 suffrage enactment. While there may appear to be a drop-off after suffrage, it is mostly a return to pre-Spanish Flu levels. The below graph reveals the time trends across all 22 states studied, which appear to arc downwards from 1915 to 1940. Because data for this variable is unavailable before 1915 and some states began enacting suffrage around this time, it is difficult to get a sense for the true preand post-suffrage levels.
+ Figure 4.
This graph shows only Maryland’s infant mortality rate from the beginning of data availability in 1916, through suffrage in 1920, to the end of the dataset in 1940. I chose to isolate this state from the below graph of infant mortality state trends because Maryland had one of the highest rates in most years, and appears to have been even more reactive to the 1918 epidemic than other states. This trend slopes downwards with time, and we found a significant coefficient on our after suffrage dummy variable when studying the entire time period available, whether broken up into slave or free states or keeping all 20 from the dataset.
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+ Figure 5. For this outcome variable we could not find a significant effect of suffrage no matter how we studied it, whether we isolated different time periods or used different state groupings based on geographical and historical similarities. The only control that did have a significant relationship with this variable is a dummy we implemented to represent the time period of World War I, from 19151919. This suggests that other factors of the time may have had an effect on these family decisions, because we did not see a drop in birth rates due to women getting the right to vote represented here.
+ Figures 6 and 7. Note: * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01 Note: Column 1 contains the entire sample, while column 2 focuses on 1910-1930 and column 3 expands to 1910-1940. In these three ways of looking at the data, none were found to be significant at even the 90% level. The seven states that make up this data set include: California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Indiana, Maine and Maryland.
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+ Figure 8. Note: * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01 Note: The infant mortality rate does not include stillbirths. It solely includes live birth babies that died before one year of age. Note: Column 1 contains the sample of 20 states from the time period 1915-1925, while column 2 extends to 1930 and column 3 uses all the data available, through 1940. Column 4 uses all of the data as well, with a dummy variable coded to be 1 if a state is classified as a Northern state. For the purposes of this study, Northern states are those that were non-slave during the Civil War, while Southern states were slave states. In this sample, the five Southern/slave states included are DC, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. The 15 Northern/free states are Connecticut, California, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. The purpose of column 4 is to see if the significance of the coefficient can survive the interaction between Northern states and the After Suffrage dummy variable, as this test regressed the infant mortality rate on both of these factors. Columns 5 and 6 only use subsamples of the data, focusing on the entire temporal span (1915-1940) but either only in the Northern states or only in the Southern states. The purpose of this was to look for differences in take-up of the “shock” in order to see if a certain group of states might have been affected differently based on a shared characteristic.
+ Figures 9 and 10. Note: * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01 Note: The birth rate does not include stillbirths. It solely includes live births in a given region as a function of that region’s population. Note: Column 1 contains the sample of 20 states from the time period 1915-1925, while column 2 extends to 1930 and column 3 uses all the data available, through 1940. Column 4 uses data from the 15 North/free states, and column 5 uses data from the five South/slave states. None of the regressions or subgroupings produced statistically significant results for this outcome variable.
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DISCUSSION
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“The effect of being in a postsuffrage world appears to have a significant negative relationship with female death rates, suggesting that my hypothesis that women may be facing less aggression or violence from their partners in the home may not have been too far off. ”
The rapid change and progress in the U.S, throughout the early 20th century makes it difficult to determine from the regression results a statistically significant impact of women gaining the right to vote on the various health outcomes studied: male mortality rates, female mortality rates, infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates and birth rates. The spread between male and female death rates was initially used as a potential measure of domestic violence, as a narrowing of the spread could represent more female deaths and females tend to be the victims of domestic violence the majority of the time. Thus, I anticipated a widening of the spread, meaning that domestic violence would drop off and fewer women would die from this cause, and since incidences like these do not commonly end in male deaths, we would see male death rates hold fairly steady. However, most domestic violence in general does not end in death, and a multitude of other factors affect death rates over time besides violence in the home. Therefore, it was difficult to determine if women gained status in their relationships due to winning the right to vote and thus suffered less violence at the hands of their husbands. When I separated male and female death rates, I found no significant results regarding men’s death rates changing as a result of suffrage, but I did find significant results for women’s death rates at the 90 and 95 percent levels when considering the data through 1940. The effect of being in a postsuffrage world appears to have a significant negative relationship with female death rates, suggesting that my hypothesis that women may be facing less aggression or violence from their partners in the home may not have been too far off. A suffrage-related dip in solely the female death rate provides moderate evidence for the themselves by gaining status in society, they idea that wife-beating to the point of death may would demand to be taken to a hospital to have dropped off following this win for women’s have a safer delivery. However, upon further rights. If a decline was present among both research on maternal care at this time, this sex’s death rates, I would suggest that this may could precisely be the reason for the unexpected have been due to women advocating for health result we see. Research reveals that obstetrics policies that improve everyone’s outcomes, and was not a specialty that was well-regarded or male voters were just less concerned with these that many physicians were interested in during issues. However, because only female death the first thirty years of the 20th century. Most rates have a significant negative correlation, obstetric care was delivered by poorly educated, it is possible that suffrage aided women in not unqualified and untrained practitioners, dying from causes that typically only afflicted leading to a huge number of preventable deaths. women. Unnecessary interventions were commonplace This hypothesis is countered, however, and often introduced more danger and risk by Table 5, which shows significant positive factors. These include using forceps, inducing effects of suffrage on maternal mortality labor, and incising the abdomen or vaginal wall. for all time periods studied as well as in the Many of these procedures introduced harmful Northern geographic state grouping region. bacteria and toxins through wound infections, This is unexpected because one would predict leading many mothers to die of sepsis or from that with women better able to advocate for hemorrhaging when they should have had easy
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“Although the connection between women's suffrage in the early 1900s and various health indicators is moderate, this does not mean that legislation and policies that increase women's rights and improve women's standings in society are not effective. ” deliveries (“Achievements in Public Health,” meaning there must have been other factors 2001). Therefore, it is possible that women encouraging women to delay pregnancy or gaining the right to vote and thus potentially have smaller families in general. pushing their husbands to take them to get The magnitude of the coefficient on the after proper medical care actually adversely affected suffrage variable for infant mortality rates their health outcomes, and they may have been dramatically differs among the Northern and better off delivering at home with a midwife at Southern state groupings. While both have this time. the anticipated negative effect, the Southern In grouping only the Southern states, grouping has a larger negative coefficient, however, we find a significant negative meaning suffrage in Southern states led to a correlation between the post suffrage dummy further reduction in infant mortality rates than variable and maternal mortality. Perhaps in in Northern states. It may be the case that these states, home births were riskier than women in Northern states already had exposure receiving medical care even if that care was to more education about healthy practices and imperfect and sometimes damaging, thus ways to support their infants, while women leading to the relationship we had expected to in Southern states were empowered by the see across all states. suffrage movement to begin to seek out those The infant mortality outcome variable, on opportunities and thus have better ways to the other hand, showed the expected negative care for their babies. Future research would be coefficient on our after-suffrage variable. As necessary to further understand the observed demonstrated in Table 3, this relationship is differing impact in infant mortality, as this significant regardless of geographic grouping came up unexpectedly in the research process if considering the data through 1940. This and does not yet provide a complete, logical decrease stemming from suffrage may be due and supported answer. to the urban interventions that women were advocates for, such as having safe, clean water CONCLUSION and milk, as well as sanitary methods of waste disposal. Additionally, with women more In conclusion, it is still difficult to determine empowered by their modernizing society, they the effect of a women’s rights win such as statesought out more educational opportunities, level or national suffrage on health outcomes for where they would have learned health men, women and children, primarily because promotion tactics and better ways to take care of all of the other factors that are still moving of their family. The declining birth rate over when a change like this happens. The point of time means more spacing between infants and suffrage was not to improve people’s health, smaller family sizes, meaning parents would but I was able to find some nuanced spillover have more attention and resources to give to effects suggesting that women’s lives did change their fewer number of children, which may beyond solely being able to vote. Although the increase those children’s chances of survival. connection between women’s suffrage in the Birth rates, however, were not found to have early 1900s and various health indicators is any significant relationship with suffrage, moderate, this does not mean that legislation
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and policies that increase women’s rights and improve women’s standings in society are not effective. Further research is needed regarding other women’s rights “shocks” and these health outcomes, primarily maternal mortality, in order to get a better sense for of the greater picture. It may be entirely possible that with better infrastructure, qualified physicians and more advanced biomedical technology, the relationship found in this study between the shock and maternal mortality in the 1900s would be reversed today. With women more empowered to advocate for themselves in seeking out medical care and hospitals more
equipped to safely meet their needs, we likely would not see an advancement in women’s rights leading to an increase in maternal mortality. Improving support for women, and particularly minority women, as they continue to enter the workforce and contribute both in public and private spheres is vital. The right to vote appears to have subtly improved some health outcomes for women and infants in the US, suggesting that implementing policies that serve as a similar shock to women’s rights in other countries where women face systematic discrimination is an important piece in reaching health and development goals.
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The Cognitive and Economic Implications of Nonmedical Adderall and Prescription Stimulant Use on College Campuses Emily Vogt Eric G. Schulz Faculty Adviser
IN A CULTURE THAT INCREASINGLY PRIORITIZES PERFECTIONISM AND OVERACHIEVEMENT, IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE THAT BUSY STUDENTS ARE RESORTING TO MANAGING STRESS THROUGH A NEW MEANS: "STUDY DRUGS."1
Estimates from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, indicate that, every day, 415 college students use prescription stimulants non-medically for the first time due to the alleged cognitive-enhancing effects of these drugs. Yet, existing literature indicates there are minimal to no cognitive-enhancing effects of these drugs1,2 for nonmedical users, making the continued growth of these markets on college campuses seemingly illogical. While economists typically view preferences as fixed over time, it’s possible that nonmedical use of prescription stimulants evokes changes in parameters related to preferences that may explain continued participation in these nonmedical stimulant markets.3 » 037
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R
eports
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more than 35 percent from 2008 to 2012.4 While new ADHD patients may account for some of this increase, a recent study from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA) indicates that there approximately 5 million adults misusing prescription stimulants, which constitutes a significant and growing part of this increase.5-7 Misuse of prescription stimulants is typically driven by the alleged cognitive-enhancing effects of these drugs.5-6, 8-9 Amphetamine, the active ingredient in prescription stimulants, originated as a nasal decongestant prior to gaining popularity for its attentional effects on soldiers.10 Nonmedical use of amphetamine dates back to its original discovery, as college students involved in initial studies also found it useful in focusing, subsequently leading to widespread nonmedical usage of this drug.10, 11 However, it soon became apparent that amphetamine had short-term side effects of irritability and anxiety, with longerterm effects of psychological dependence, desensitization and even permanent brain damage or psychosis at higher doses.12 These side effects led the Drug Enforcement Authority to denote amphetamine as a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, thus requiring a prescription to obtain amphetamine. Today, there are a myriad of these prescription stimulants, including dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), dextroamphetamine/amphetaminemixedsalts (Adderall), methamphetamine (Desoxyn), methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta), dexmethylphenidate (Focalin) and lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse), mainly due to their ability to mitigate symptoms of ADHD.11 However, as a Schedule II substance, these prescription stimulants remain difficult for nonmedical users to access.11, 13 For this reason, college campuses serve as a breeding ground for this nonmedical usage of
¹ Jacobs A. The Adderall Advantage. The New York Times. July 31, 2005. ² Lipari RN, Jean-Francois B. A Day in the Life of College Students Aged 18 to 22: Substance Use Facts. CBHSQ Rep. 2016. 3 Stigler GJ, Becker GS. De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum. Am Econ Rev. 67:76-90. 4 Turning Attention to ADHD. 2014. 5 Compton WM, Han B, Blanco C, Johnson K, Jones CM. Prevalence and Correlates of Prescription Stimulant Use, Misuse, Use Disorders, and Motivations for Misuse Among Adults in the United States. Am J Psychiatry. 2018. 6 Desantis AD, Hane AC. "Adderall is Definitely Not a Drug": Justifications for the Illegal Use of ADHD Stimulants. Subst Use Misuse. 45:31-46. 7 McCabe SE, Teter CJ, Boyd CJ. The use, misuse and diversion of prescription stimulants among middle and high school students. Subst Use Misuse. 2004. 8 McCabe SE, Knight JR, Teter CJ, Wechsler H. Non-medical use of prescription stimulants among US college students: prevalence and correlates from a national survey. Addiction. 2005. 9 Smith ME, Farah MJ. Are prescription stimulants “smart pills”? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals. Psychol Bull. 2011. 10 Rasmussen N. On Speed: From Benzedrine to Adderall. New York: NYU Press; 2008. ¹¹ Moore EA. The Amphetamine Debate. McFarland & Company; 2011. ¹² Nicholi AM. The Nonmedical use of Amphetamines among the College Age Group: Recent Research Concerning Epidemiology and Toxicity. J Am Coll Heal. 1984.
prescription stimulants due to the number of medical users who can supply medication and of nonmedical users who demand medication given academic pressures. A recent report revealed that misuse of prescription stimulants is the second most common form of illegal drug usage on college campuses, with multiple studies indicating that the majority of medical users of prescription stimulants had engaged in some form of diversion of their medication to non-ADHD peers.15-17 Existing literature suggests nonmedical users of prescription stimulants tend to be white, male and/or involved in a Greek organization.4,7 Nonmedical users are also more likely to be active participants in other substance markets and are five times more likely to develop a substance use problem later on in life. Thus, understanding nonmedical prescription stimulant misuse has interesting economic and public health implications for a possible gateway effect of these prescription stimulants that drives subsequent participation in other illegal substance markets. While the vast majority of nonmedical users take prescription stimulants for their alleged cognitive-enhancing effects, studies show mixed results in terms of whether there are any cognitive benefits to nonmedical users, in terms of memory enhancement, creativity and attentional capacity.5, 19-23 This Board-approved, or IRB-approved, study of 31 Northwestern University students identified as nonmedical users of prescription stimulants uses some of these same cognitive tests to measure the efficacy of prescription stimulants as a short-term tool, in addition to understanding how these cognitive effects may be linked to changes in nonmedical users’ economic behavior. The results of this study aim to offer new insights regarding the potential relationship between the cognitive and economic effects of these drugs on nonmedical users, beyond what the existing literature covers. ¹³ Drug Scheduling. DEA. Accessed April 28, 2018. ¹⁴ Arria AM, DuPont RL. Nonmedical prescription stimulant use among college students: why we need to do something and what we need to do. J Addict Dis. 2010. ¹⁵ Johnston LD, O’Malley PM, Bachman JG, Schulenberg JE. Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use. Vol 2. Bethesda; 2006. ¹⁶ Wilens TE, Adler LA, Adams J, et al. Misuse and Diversion of Stimulants Prescribed for ADHD: A Systematic Review of the Literature. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008 ¹⁷ Garnier LM, Arria AM, Caldeira KM, Vincent KB, O’Grady KE, Wish ED. Sharing and selling of prescription medications in a college student sample. J Clin Psychiatry. 2010. ¹⁸ Tatera K. Generation Rx Eats Prescription Drugs Like Candy. Millenial Mag. January 2016. ¹⁹ Bossaer JB, Gray JA, Miller SE, Enck G, Gaddipati VC, Enck RE. The Use and Misuse of Prescription Stimulants as “Cognitive Enhancers” by Students at One Academic Health Sciences Center. Acad Med. 2013. 20 Lakhan SE, Kirchgessner A. Prescription stimulants in individuals with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: misuse, cognitive impact, and adverse effects. Brain Behav. 2012. 21 Farah MJ, Haimm C, Sankoorikal G, Chatterjee A, Chatterjee A. When we enhance cognition with Adderall, do we sacrifice creativity? A preliminary study. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009. 22 Ilieva I, Boland J, Farah MJ. Objective and subjective cognitive enhancing effects of mixed amphetamine salts in healthy people. Neuropharmacology. 2013. 23 de Wit H, Crean J, Richards JB. Effects of d-amphetamine and ethanol on a measure of behavioral inhibition in humans. Behav Neurosci. 2000.
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METHODS The study was a within-design experiment, from data collected via one online survey, which included demographic-related questions and two in-person interviews that included a series of cognitive and economic tasks. Due to the withinsubjects design nature of the study, the “off-drug” interview was conducted while the participant was not using prescription stimulants, while the “ondrug” interview was conducted 2 to 8 hours from the participant’s initial ingestion of the prescription stimulant. This range was set since it was impossible to perfectly control for time since ingestion, given that researchers were not administering the prescription stimulants and doing so would have been illegal. The specified range of 2 to 8 hours from ingestion was selected according to extensive pharmacokinetic data on prescription stimulants.24-26 Participants were informed of this interval associated with the “on-drug” interview upon qualifying for scheduling purposes. Participants were recruited through a convenience sampling method driven by outreach through listserv emails and flyers. Inclusion criteria consisted of never having been diagnosed with ADHD and expressed intent to use prescription stimulants later in the quarter. Those who qualified were contacted on a rolling basis and, upon confirmation, were assigned a participant number for confidentiality purposes. In adherence with IRB requirements, all participants verbally consented to be in the study. The survey gathered relevant demographic information for each participant, as well as qualitative measures of motivation for and history of substance use. The cognitive tasks included the digit span task, a basic assessment of working memory capacity and Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices or SPM, an assessment of nonverbal intelligence. The digit span task involves listening to and repeating strings of numbers of increasing length until the participant makes two consecutive mistakes. The Raven’s SPM task consists of a 60-question test that involves selecting the choice, or matrix, that completes the pattern presented. Both cognitive tasks were selected based on their consistent use across previous cognitive studies involving prescription stimulants and their external validity in measuring aspects of cognitive capacity.5, 8-9 The economic tasks used included two measurements of risk preferences: a convex time budget discounting task and a simple alcohol purchasing task. The Eckel-Grossman and Holt-Laury tasks elicit participant risk preferences through using participant responses 24 Adderall (CII).; 2007. ²5 Ritalin LA (Methylphenidate Hydrochloride) Extended-Release Capsules.; 2013. 26 Vyvanse TM (Lisdexamfetamine Dimesylate).; 2007.
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“60 percent of participants had used prescription stimulants nonmedically by age 18.” to different payoff scenarios to either map participants onto a spectrum of “highly riskaverse” to “highly risk-loving” or assign a specific risk coefficient range.27 The convex time budget task measures temporal and hyperbolic discounting rates through the relative proportion of immediate reward choices to delayed reward choices a participant selects across the 21 choice trials.28 The alcohol purchasing task derives a demand curve for alcohol for each participant based on stated preferences of how they would choose to allocate a hypothetical $15 towards buying drinks or saving the money, at different price-per-drink points given the budget constraint. A version of this task has been shown to have external validity in previous studies of cigarette smokers.12 After data collection, both paired and independent t-tests were used to evaluate any statistically significant changes in participants’ cognitive or economic behavior across the measured domains between the off-drug and ondrug conditions. All t-tests were carried out at a significance level of 5 percent in GraphPad Prism software. Additionally, a correlational analysis of the various measures of risk preferences was executed to determine the consistency of these different measures of risk behavior. Relative consistency in results across these different measures of risk behavior would allow researchers to not only conclude that these tasks are valid measurements of risk preferences, but also use this understanding of participant risk preferences to inform differing effects of prescription stimulants on nonmedical users. Estimated discounting factors from the convex time budget task, as well as more qualitative demographic variables were also analyzed for potential correlates. 27 Dave C, Eckel C, Johnson C, Rojas C. Eliciting Risk Preferences: When Simple is Better? J Risk Uncertain. 2010. ²⁸ Kirby KN, Marakovic NN. Delay-discounting probabilistic rewards: Rates decrease as amounts increase. Psychon Bull Rev. 1996
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“80 percent of participants also report using marijuana and/or nicotine on a consistent basis.” RESULTS The final sample consisted of 31 participants (18 females), all of whom were active, nonmedical users of prescription stimulants during winter quarter of 2018. The median annual household income of the sample was $250,000-259,000 with nearly a third of participants self-reporting an annual household income of more than $370,000. In terms of racial composition, 64.5 percent of participants self-identify as white, 9.68 percent, as whiteHispanic, 9.68 percent as Asian, 6.45 percent as biracial, 6.45 percent as African-American and 3.23 percent as white-Middle Eastern. This sample skewed heavily towards involvement in Greek life, with 68 percent of participants having been Greek-affiliated at some point and 61 percent currently Greek-affiliated. Survey responses indicate that nearly 60 percent of participants had used prescription stimulants nonmedically by age 18. 80 percent of participants also report using marijuana and/ or nicotine on a consistent basis. Results from a two-tailed paired t-test of participants’ cognitive performance on the SPM show that the percentage of correct responses during the off-drug condition (M=92.86, SD= 5.887) was not significantly different from the percentage of correct responses during the on-drug condition (M=91.86, SD=5.976), t(30)=1.867, p=0.0717. Percentage of correct responses on the SPM was evaluated to mirror similar analyses of the performance of nonmedical users of prescription stimulants on the SPM in the existing literature.31 The fact that this p-value falls above the 5 percent but below the 10 percent significance level threshold suggests that there may be some marginal effect of prescription stimulants either upward or downward, but that, on the whole, the alleged cognitive-enhancing effect of prescription stimulants for nonmedical users is not significant. Two-tailed paired t-tests of participant cognitive performance on both versions of the digit span task also indicate that there are no significant effects of prescription stimulants on nonmedical users’ cognitive capacity. Results from the forward version show that there is
no statistically significant difference in the completion ratio for participants during the off-drug condition (M=0.7788, SD=0.1233) compared to the on-drug condition (M= 0.7802, SD=0.1442), t(30)=0.06796, p=0.9463. Completion ratio was defined as the proportion of trials of the digit span task the participant completed without making consecutive errors relative to the total number of possible trials. Results from the backward version show no statistically significant difference between completion ratio during the off-drug condition (M=0.652, SD=0.1698) compared to the on-drug condition (M=0.6613, SD=0.1608), t(30)=0.2731, p=0.7866. These paired t-test results show that being on prescription stimulants did not significantly change cognitive performance related to working memory, as measured by the digit span task. In terms of results on the economic-related tasks, analysis of participant responses across both on-drug and off-drug conditions show no uniform effect of prescription stimulants in modulating nonmedical users’ risk preferences. However, both the off-drug HoltLaury and Eckel-Grossman assessments of risk preferences indicate that apparent revealed risk preferences were consistent across both tasks, with participants who were identified as more risk-averse by metrics from the HoltLaury task having a lower, safer mean gamble on the Eckel-Grossman task as shown in Table 1. The consistency in participant responses across both risk tasks affirms categorization from these risk tasks as generally indicative of actual participant risk preferences, rather than if we had seen lack of consistency across the two different measures. Based on this logic, researchers used the different risk categorizations assigned to participants from the Holt-Laury task to examine whether offdrug risk preferences are predictive of the effect that prescription stimulants had on certain types of nonmedical users compared to others. The stated demand curves for alcohol, derived for each individual based on their responses to the alcohol purchasing task, show no uniform change between on-drug and off-drug conditions. However, upon taking
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participants’ risk preferences into account, results show that participants who were less risk-averse exhibited an increased demand for alcohol while on prescription stimulants, while the more risk-averse exhibited no change or even a decrease in demand for alcohol while on prescription stimulants. Off-drug risk preferences for each participant were defined by the Holt-Laury task’s scale of mapping participant responses certain decisions onto a spectrum of highly risk-averse to highly riskloving. Organizing these individual demand curves by each participant’s off-drug HoltLaury risk preferences classification, aggregate demand curves were then generated for each risk group as shown in Figures 1-6 below. To test whether these graphical differences were statistically significant, it was necessary to improve disparities in sample size distribution between these risk groups. To do this, participant risk groups (as shown in Figures 1-6) were further consolidated into broader classifications of “more risk-averse” (i.e. all very risk-averse and risk-averse participants) with n=18 and “less riskaverse” (i.e. all slightly risk-averse, risk-neutral, risk-loving and highly risk-loving participants) with n=11. Figures 7-9 show aggregate stated demand curves for alcohol in on-drug compared to the off-drug condition for these broader risk classifications, as well as the sample as a whole. A two-tailed independent t-test of the mean difference between on-drug and off-drug demand for the “less risk-averse” group versus the mean difference for the “more risk-averse” group revealed that the more risk averse group’s mean difference in demand for alcohol (M=-0.338, SD=0.3056) was significantly lower than the less risk-averse group’s mean difference (M=0.375, SD=0.2725), t(46)=8.531, p < 0.0001. This result illustrates that, when on prescription stimulants, individuals who are less risk-averse increase their demand for alcohol to a greater degree than individuals who are more risk-averse. In contrast to results from the alcohol purchasing task, results from the convex time budget discounting task in on-drug and offdrug conditions did not show any risk-specific correlation. There is a slight skew towards increased discounting while on prescription stimulants as shown in Figure 10, but there were still a number of participants who exhibited no change in or decreased discounting in the ondrug condition. That said, analysis of potential covariates of positive- or negative-modulation of discounting parameters revealed a sexspecific covariance as shown in Figure 10, where females were more likely to exhibit increased impulsivity as a result of prescription stimulants and males were more likely to exhibit slightly decreased impulsivity as a result of prescription stimulants. There were no other significant covariates found related to other demographic
variables. It is worth noting that a number of participants exhibited response distributions that were inconsistent with the evaluation scheme for the discounting task. While some inconsistencies are expected, participants whose number of inconsistencies exceeded three times the average were deemed unreliable and excluded from correlative analysis. DISCUSSION In light of the recent and unprecedented increase in nonmedical usage of prescription stimulants, it is striking that virtually no studies have examined how prescription stimulants modulate changes across noncognitive domains of behavior in nonmedical users of these drugs. This study aimed to build upon the existing literature by simultaneously evaluating cognitive and economic-related effects of prescription stimulants in the study population. Our findings reveal that, while it is important to continue to explore the nuances of the lack of cognitive enhancement prescription stimulants have for nonmedical users, there are also interesting, stimulant-dependent changes related to demand for alcohol and impulsivity in certain nonmedical user populations. More specifically, the results of this study affirm existing findings that the alleged cognitive-enhancing effects of these so-called “study drugs” are essentially non-existent for nonmedical users, given that there is minimal or no change in cognitive behavior across working memory, creativity and problemsolving tasks while on prescription stimulants. While p-value of 0.0717 from the two-tailed paired t-test of participant performance on the RPM indicates that there may be some marginal difference in performance due to prescription
“There are also interesting, stimulant-dependent changes related to demand for alcohol and impulsivity in certain nonmedical user populations.”
nurj – vol. 14 stimulants, the sample means of M=92.86 for the off-drug condition and M=91.86 for the on-drug condition suggest that any statistically significant effect of a one-tailed, paired t-test would indicate that prescription stimulants may even weaken cognitive performance, at the margin. This finding could be explained by the fact that prescription stimulants create this sense of feeling so focused on or absorbed in an activity that there are fewer cognitive resources to execute more complex executive functions like creativity and complex problem-solving. Likely the most intriguing finding of this study is that prescription stimulants do seem to alter certain non-cognitive behaviors, such as demand for alcohol and degree of impulsivity. Our results show that participant risk preferences are predictive of prescription stimulant-dependent changes in demand for alcohol. Figure 1 shows that very risk-averse participants demanded slightly less alcohol in the on-drug versus offdrug condition, whereas Figure 2 shows riskaverse participants exhibited essentially the same demand for on-drug versus off-drug conditions. Conversely, Figures 3-5 indicate that slightly riskaverse, risk-neutral and risk-loving participants’ on-drug demand for alcohol is increased relative to off-drug demand. Based on these trends, we posit that prescription stimulants may act to amplify whatever risk state participants are primed to experience. That is, while risk-loving, risk-neutral and slightly risk-averse participants are all already predisposed to engaging in some level of risk across different scenarios, riskaverse and very risk-averse participants may be resistant or have an opposite reaction to the modulatory effects of prescription stimulants due to their priming to avoid risk. In both cases, this result serves as evidence that preferences are not fixed for certain nonmedical users of prescription stimulants. Figure 6 presents some conflicting evidence to this explanation because on-drug demand for alcohol was actually lower compared to off-drug demand for the highly riskloving participant; however, the fact that this risk group had only one participant makes this evidence unreliable and, potentially, misleading. Interestingly, the majority of these changes in demand for alcohol due to prescription stimulants occurred over the price interval of $0-5, indicating that prescription stimulants play a modulatory role with respect to demand for alcohol, but specifically in lower-risk scenarios. While it was only possible to observe this result in the alcohol purchasing task, it is an intriguing trend that can be observed across individual participant graphs for the less risk-averse groups (see: Appendix section A8), as well as in Figures 3-5. This suggested impact of prescription stimulants on lowrisk, but not high-risk, scenarios pairs nicely with other findings in this study that show no
“Prescription stimulants create this sense of feeling so focused on or absorbed in an activity that there are fewer cognitive resources to execute more complex executive functions.” dramatic, uniform changes in risk preferences due to prescription stimulant usage, but rather modulation at the margin. This modulation of behavior by prescription stimulants seems more apparent in participants who have less at stake, either because they are less riskaverse to begin with or because the situation in question (e.g. how many drinks one might consume when drinks are $1 each) has less potential harm associated with it. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to hypothesize about the neurobiological underpinnings of risk modulation, more focused studies of this relationship between nonmedical prescription stimulant use and low-risk settings should be executed to enhance our understanding of how prescription stimulants alter nonmedical users’ economic behavior. Aggregate demand curves for alcohol for the “less risk-averse” and “more riskaverse” classifications pictured in Figures 8 and 9 confirm the trend of both these groups exhibiting some sort of deviation from the aggregate demand curve for the sample in Figure 7. The independent t-test of the mean differences of the “less risk-averse” group compared to the “more risk-averse” group shows that, while on prescription stimulants, less risk-averse individuals exhibit a significantly higher demand for alcohol than more riskaverse individuals. This major analytical finding allows us to strengthen our conclusion that prescription stimulants do have some significant modulatory effect on participants’ demand for alcohol. While alcohol was the only demand parameter evaluated in this study, it is reasonable to infer that prescription stimulants may have a similar type of risk-dependent effect on demand for other substances. Moreover, given that 42 percent of participants reported additional drug experimentation after initially trying prescription stimulants suggests, similar to previous studies, that nonmedical use of
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prescription stimulants may have a gateway CONCLUSION effect for other substance-related behavior.16, 19 Beyond these risk-dependent changes in In summary, findings from this study affirm demand for alcohol, findings also reveal a results from existing studies of nonmedical potential sex-dependent effect of prescription users, as well as revealing new insights that stimulants on nonmedical users. Figure prescription stimulants may modulate certain 10 illustrates that females comprise the economic parameters of preferences in riskvast majority of participants who exhibited dependent and sex-dependent manners. That increased impulsivity, as measured by the is, participants identified as less risk-averse discounting task, while on prescription exhibited significantly higher demand for stimulants. In contrast, males seemed alcohol while on prescription stimulants than to either show a decreased or no change those categorized as more risk-averse, especially in their impulsivity, as measured by the over lower-risk price intervals. Additionally, discounting task, while on prescription nonmedical female users exhibited increased stimulants. One possible explanation for these impulsivity while on prescription stimulants differential changes in impulsivity is that the compared to nonmedical male users. pharmacokinetics of prescription stimulantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Despite its breadth of findings, this study action in the female body differ from those has several key limitations. Firstly, its relatively in the male body, resulting in behavioral small sample size of the study makes it difficult to differences. Historically, there have been fewer generalize these findings. However, researchers studies of ADHD in females and the studies that are hopeful that future studies will measure a have been performed suggest quite different similar repertoire of cognitive and economic implications for symptoms and treatment female, behavior across a larger sample of nonmedical compared to male, ADHD patients.32, 33 These users. Another key limitation is researchersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; trends of sex differences in treatment responses inability to control for factors surrounding to prescription stimulants amongst ADHD actual ingestion of the prescription stimulant. patients may generalize to nonmedical users While a study with these characteristics as well. Another possible explanation is that would not have been allowed under IRB there may be some other, confounding factor regulations, we expect that improved tied to impulsivity in females, but not measured methods of standardization in recruiting and directly by the study tasks. While there is ethical approaches to controlling for these no evidence of this finding of sex-specific variables would decrease noise in the data changes in impulsivity elsewhere in the current from these potentially confounding variables. literature on prescription stimulants, it may be Both this study and subsequent analysis because there are simply few non-cognitive- reveal that for a significant and growing related studies on nonmedical users. Due to proportion of nonmedical users of prescription the limited sample size in this study, it is also stimulants, these drugs do have the power to possible that this association between sex and modulate user behavior related to various measured impulsivity is a false positive finding. economic parameters, according to certain Further research of a larger sample should be characteristics of these nonmedical users. conducted to confirm whether this trend Researchers hope that future studies will holds and how female nonmedical users continue to explore these relevant trends in of prescription stimulants may experience nonmedical usage of prescription stimulants different consequences than their male given the broader economic and public health counterparts. implications for both users and society.
32 Gender Differences in ADHD. American Psychological Association. Accessed May 11, 2018. 33 Quinn PO, Madhoo M. A Review of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Women and girls: Uncovering this Hidden diagnosis. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2014.
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nurj – vol. 14 BIBLIOGRAPHY Jacobs A. The Adderall Advantage. Lipari RN, Jean-Francois B. A Day in the Life of College Students Aged 18 to 22: Substance Use Facts. CBHSQ Rep. 2016. https:// www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/ default/files/report_2361/ ShortReport-2361.html. Accessed April 10, 2018. Stigler GJ, Becker GS. De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum. Am Econ Rev. 67:76-90. doi:10.2307/1807222. Turning Attention to ADHD.; 2014. Compton WM, Han B, Blanco C, Johnson K, Jones CM. Prevalence and Correlates of Prescription Stimulant Use, Misuse, Use Disorders, and Motivations for Misuse Among Adults in the United States. Am J Psychiatry. 2018;175(8):741-755. Desantis AD, Hane AC. "Adderall is Definitely Not a Drug": Justifications for the Illegal Use of ADHD Stimulants. Subst Use Misuse. 43:31-46. doi: 10.3109/10826080902858334. McCabe SE, Teter CJ, Boyd CJ. The use, misuse and diversion of prescription stimulants among middle and high school students. Subst Use Misuse. 2004;39(7):1095-1116. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/15387205. Accessed December 13, 2017. McCabe SE, Knight JR, Teter CJ, Wechsler H. Non-medical use of prescription stimulants among US college students: prevalence and correlates from a national survey. Addiction. 2005;100(1):96-106. doi:10.1111/ j.1360-0443.2005.00944.x. Smith ME, Farah MJ. Are prescription stimulants “smart pills”? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals. Psychol Bull. 2011;137(5):717-741. doi:10.1037/a0023825. Rasmussen N. On Speed: From Benzedrine to Adderall. New York: NYU Press; 2008. Moore EA. The Amphetamine Debate. McFarland & Company; 2011. Nicholi AM. The Nonmedical use of Amphetamines among the College Age Group: Recent Research Concerning Epidemiology and Toxicity. J Am Coll Heal. 1984;33(1):39-43. doi:1 0.1080/07448481.1984.9939592. Drug Scheduling. DEA. https:// www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml. Accessed April 28, 2018. Arria AM, DuPont RL. Nonmedical prescription stimulant use
among college students: why we need to do something and what we need to do. J Addict Dis. 2010;29(4):417-426. doi:10.1080 /10550887.2010.509273. Johnston LD, O’Malley PM, Bachman JG, Schulenberg JE. Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use. Vol 2. Bethesda; 2006. http://www. monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/ monographs/vol2_2005.pdf. Accessed December 13, 2017. Wilens TE, Adler LA, Adams J, et al. Misuse and Diversion of Stimulants Prescribed for ADHD: A Systematic Review of the Literature. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008;47(1):21-31. doi:10.1097/ chi.0b013e31815a56f1. Garnier LM, Arria AM, Caldeira KM, Vincent KB, O’Grady KE, Wish ED. Sharing and selling of prescription medications in a college student sample. J Clin Psychiatry. 2010;71(3):262-269. doi:10.4088/JCP.09m05189ecr. Tatera K. Generation Rx Eats Prescription Drugs Like Candy. Millenial Mag. January 2016. millennialmagazine. com/2016/01/27/generationrx-eats-prescription-drugs-likecandy/. Bossaer JB, Gray JA, Miller SE, Enck G, Gaddipati VC, Enck RE. The Use and Misuse of Prescription Stimulants as “Cognitive Enhancers” by Students at One Academic Health Sciences Center. Acad Med. 2013;88(7):967-971. doi:10.1097/ ACM.0b013e318294fc7b. Lakhan SE, Kirchgessner A. Prescription stimulants in individuals with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: misuse, cognitive impact, and adverse effects. Brain Behav. 2012;2(5):661-677. doi:10.1002/brb3.78. Farah MJ, Haimm C, Sankoorikal G, Chatterjee A, Chatterjee A. When we enhance cognition with Adderall, do we sacrifice creativity? A preliminary study. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009;202(1-3):541-547. doi:10.1007/s00213-008-1369-3. Ilieva I, Boland J, Farah MJ. Objective and subjective cognitive enhancing effects of mixed amphetamine salts in healthy people. Neuropharmacology. 2013;64:496-505. doi:10.1016/j. neuropharm.2012.07.021. de Wit H, Crean J, Richards JB. Effects of d-amphetamine and ethanol on a measure of behavioral inhibition in
humans. Behav Neurosci. 2000;114(4):830-837. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/10959541. Accessed December 13, 2017. Adderall (CII).; 2007. https://www. accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_ docs/label/2007/011522s040lbl. pdf. Accessed May 7, 2018. Ritalin LA (Methylphenidate Hydrochloride) Extended-Release Capsules.; 2013. https://www. accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_ docs/label/2013/021284s020lbl. pdf. Accessed May 7, 2018. Vyvanse TM (Lisdexamfetamine Dimesylate).; 2007. https://www. accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_ docs/label/2007/021977lbl.pdf. Accessed May 7, 2018. Dave C, Eckel C, Johnson C, Rojas C. Eliciting Risk Preferences: When Simple is Better? J Risk Uncertain. 2010;41(3):219243. https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s11166-0109103-z. Kirby KN, Marakovic NN. Delaydiscounting probabilistic rewards: Rates decrease as amounts increase. Psychon Bull Rev. 1996;3(1):100-104. Stenstrom E, Saad G, Nepomuceno M V., Mendenhall Z. Testosterone and domain-specific risk: Digit ratios (2D:4D and rel2) as predictors of recreational, financial, and social risktaking behaviors. Pers Individ Dif. 2011;51(4):412-416. doi:10.1016/J.PAID.2010.07.003. Coates JM, Gurnell M, Rustichini A. Second-to-fourth digit ratio predicts success among highfrequency financial traders. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2009;106(2):623628. doi:10.1073/ pnas.0810907106. de Wit H, Enggasser JL, Richards JB. Acute Administration of d-Amphetamine Decreases Impulsivity in Healthy Volunteers. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2002;27(5):813-825. doi:10.1016/ S0893-133X(02)00343-3. Gender Differences in ADHD. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa. org/topics/adhd/gender.aspx. Accessed May 11, 2018. Quinn PO, Madhoo M. A Review of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Women and girls: Uncovering this Hidden diagnosis. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2014;16(3). doi:10.4088/PCC.13r01596.
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Hearing the Universe Through Ripples in Spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Time
The work and advice of Vicky Kalogera by Lydia Rivers
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In 1988, Vicky Kalogera was a first-year university student
taking an observational astronomy course in Greece, learning to take photographs with a telescope — the enormous kind that sits in a dome and makes for idyllic dreams of a life tracing the cosmos, thought up while staring up at the night sky. The two professors teaching the course were running a lab and brought students into the observatory to gaze into the telescope late at night to learn about the Universe beyond their textbooks. This experience is what made Kalogera decide to pursue astronomy, but this wasn’t necessarily what was expected of her, let alone what she expected for herself. Kalogera grew up in a small town in Greece, a region colored by the generation before that lived through World War II and the following civil war. Neither of her parents held degrees; their top priority was to earn a living. Kalogera recounted how they encouraged her to never limit her ambitions, and that they inspired her to work hard as she went off to study physics at the University of Thessaloniki. Still, in this pivotal transition from her hometown to an independent life in the academic world pursuing her dreams, Kalogera doubted herself and her qualifications to the very core. “Even though I was drawn to stories of academics and researchers, I always thought this was a world I didn’t belong to,” she said. “I always thought that there is something innate that you’re either born with or you’re not, and as I started playing around with the thought or idea of doing research, there was always 'this feeling of you’re not meant to do that, that’s not your thing, that’s not how you grew up.'” Four decades later, Kalogera is the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern, has won countless awards and is a leading astrophysicist on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, collaboration. The collaboration has set the foundation for the opening of a completely new way of studying the Universe: multi-messenger astronomy, which combines multiple sources of astronomical information, such as light and gravitational waves.
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If light is sight in astronomy, gravitational waves are hearing. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time, the fabled fabric of the universe, caused by massive objects moving with extreme accelerations. Einstein’s mathematical work showed that these objects create waves of distorted space radiating away from them, similar to waves moving away from a stone thrown into a pond. Now, we have proof of this phenomenon. The scientific breakthrough that was the first-ever detection of gravitational waves in September 2015 ushered in a new era of astrophysics. With it came a slew of press mentions, a few Nobel Prize awards in physics and questions of what was to come next. This month, nearly four years after that first observation, scientists are beginning to detect gravitational waves nearly once a week, just as predicted. “What it means for astrophysics is that we’re moving beyond one detection. It’s real astronomy in the sense that it’s remarkable to study the sun, but what does it mean to study one star? Not much,” said Kalogera. “What we learned about the universe is through studying tons of stars, and being able to connect and learn about their characteristics as a population.” These now-weekly detections of collisions are slowly building up a population of black holes to study. Moreover, Kalogera and her colleagues are planning on building a third generation of detectors that could hear black holes colliding all the way at the very edge of the universe. “Just like we can see light from the edge of the universe, to be able to hear black holes colliding all the way to the edge of the universe is really the dream,” she said. “That will open gravitational wave astronomy and make it a real field — to uncover the dark objects throughout the universe.” Though it is evident that Kalogera has achieved success, her initial ventures into the academic and research spheres were rocky. Beyond her path to college and the self-doubt that took decades to overcome, her first research experience as an undergraduate was one that would’ve left many questioning their future in the field. 047
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“It was in experimental condensed matter physics, and — I say this joke often — I hated it,” said Kalogera. “The professor was delightful and taught very well, I just hated the work. I thought it was repetitive and boring. I did not like it at all.” Now a mentor to undergraduate students in her research group, Kalogera emphasized that it’s okay for things to not go your way or for them to feel difficult. In research, she said, failure is crucial, and that oftentimes researchers realize what doesn’t work before they discover what does. “Mentoring is a lot about building psychological strength in our students,” Kalogera said. “The skill is to learn to cope with the fact that things are going to be tough and move forward.” Kalogera said she values working with undergrads, who she described as uniquely enthusiastic and appreciative of opportunities, even compared to graduate students. “In my 20 years at Northwestern, I still cannot say no to an undergraduate who walks in my office and says ‘Can I work in your group?’ Regardless of what their grades are, I always think that this opportunity may change their lives,” she said. “I know researchers who were not good students and became amazing researchers.” Reflecting on her experiences as an undergraduate and as a mentor, she had strong advice for undergraduates considering doing research. “Don’t hesitate! Don’t think, ‘I have to take all these courses before I dare knock on somebody’s door.’ Do not get discouraged if one faculty member tells you ‘I’m sorry, I don’t take freshman in my research lab,’” she said. “For every faculty member that will tell you this, there’s five who will say, ‘welcome to my lab.’” Working in a lab or out in the field, as well as side-projects and clubs, can help undergraduates gain valuable skills and lead them to the right path. “Find something that gives you passion in your belly, because that’s how you can succeed,” said Kalogera. “At the end, it all boils down to hard work, and you cannot work hard on something you don’t fall in love with.” 048
JOURNALISM
The Sports Department of Corrections: How false reports by ESPN criminalized the University of Arizona Basketball Program Nikki Baim Patti Wolter and Mei-Ling Hopgood Faculty Advisers
FEWER THAN 24 HOURS BEFORE A BASKETBALL MATCH BETWEEN ARIZONA AND OREGON TIPPED OFF IN EUGENE, OR, ON FEBRUARY 24, ESPN SHOCKED THE NATION WITH A REPORT THAT ARIZONA’S HEAD COACH, SEAN MILLER, DISCUSSED PAYING $100,000 TO STAR PLAYER DEANDRE AYTON.1
One day earlier, Yahoo Sports published documents from an ongoing FBI investigation that named players from top programs who received money while in college.2 The documents came from former NBA agent Andy Miller and his former associate Christian Dawkins of ASM Sports, who contacted at least 20 Division I basketball programs and over 25 athletes about payments. Yahoo Sports disclosed the names of six prominent current and former college basketball players and programs involved in the scandal — none of which were affiliated with the University of Arizona. » 1 Schlabach, Mark. “FBI Wiretaps Show Sean Miller Discussed $100K Payment to Lock Recruit.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 25 Feb. 2018. 2 Rapaport, Daniel. “Every Current Player Implicated in the FBI's College Basketball Probe.” Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo!, 24 Feb. 2018.
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he city of Tucson breathed in a sigh of relief that day — that is, until ESPN released its report hours later and sent the university and its fans into a frenzy. Almost immediately, Miller decided not to coach that night’s game and, over the next few days, high-profile recruits gradually decommitted from the program. Other journalists, who poked holes in the story for its inconsistent timeline, unreliable sourcing and adamant denial by players, coaches and lawyers led ESPN to issue corrections to the story, but it was all too late for a program going up in flames. The FBI investigation began a year prior to the release of the ESPN and Yahoo Sports stories.3 Fans knew Arizona players and coaches were under investigation, but did not know the extent of their involvement, nor their identities. Those questions still linger today. However, with every passing day, the investigation seemed to get closer and closer to the people running the heart and soul of Tucson sports. In January, the university fired assistant coach Book Richardson, who was arrested four months earlier on federal bribery charges for using money to pressure student-athletes into committing to Arizona.4 Richardson faces 60 years in prison and 1.5 million dollars in fines if convicted of all charges. Many believed his testimony would topple Arizona basketball if he revealed collusion between other coaches, Miller and Dawkins. Then, another assistant coach got wrapped up in the Yahoo Sports report. Lorenzo Romar, former head coach at the University of Washington, joined Miller’s staff at Arizona in 2017.5 His former players at Washington, Markelle Fultz and Dejounte Murray, received money from ASM Sports, according to the report.6 Romar has not been connected with the offenses, but that could change as more details surface. In the end, it was not the accusations of the assistants that took a hit at the top dogs of Arizona basketball– it was ESPN. Before any of this happened, ESPN made a statement when it laid off 150 employees in November of 2017.7 Among those who lost their jobs were college basketball writers Andy Katz and Dana O’Neil, who had a combined 26 years of experience at ESPN.8 To many, 3 Kirk, Jason, and Ricky O'Donnell. “18 Key Figures in the FBI's College Basketball Probe.” SBNation.com, SBNation.com, 27 Sept. 2017. 4 Schmidt, Caitlin. “UA Fires Assistant Basketball Coach Book Richardson after His Appeal Fails.” Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Daily Star, 24 Jan. 2018. 5 “Lorenzo Romar Coaching Record | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com.” College Football at Sports-Reference.com. 6 Stone, Larry. “We Don't Know What Lorenzo Romar Knew or If Markelle Fultz Took the Money - but We Do Know the NCAA Is the Problem.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 23 Feb. 2018. 7 Draper, Kevin. “ESPN Is Laying Off 150 More Employees.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Nov. 2017.
the network seemed to be moving away from quality, impact sports journalism. In reaction, O’Neil and other former ESPN writers started The Athletic, a website for fans who wanted to “fall in love with the sports page again.”9 Losing its talent, subscribers and money compelled ESPN to change the face of its content. Their reporters dedicated endless hours of coverage on air and online to LaVar Ball’s outlandish behavior, and two of them even travelled abroad to write about his sons (who lacked NBA potential) as they sought to make money in the EuroLeague.10 Then, conflict arose when ESPN broadcasters began to voice their political opinions in reaction to the Trump era. Suddenly tied up in social and political wars, the network sought to regain its title as the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”11 Breaking the names involved in the NCAA scandal could have been an important way for ESPN to write an investigative piece that upheld its credibility as a platform for watchdog journalists. However, Yahoo Sports scooped the stories. In a quick attempt to reclaim itself as the sport news leaders, ESPN columnist Mark Schlabach used one anonymous source to construct a story about Arizona’s payment to Ayton. ESPN’s lack of seasoned journalists in the newsroom explains how a misinformed story could pass through the editing process and onto the web. In a broadcast, ESPN said Miller discussed the $100,000 payment to Ayton with Dawkins in spring of 2017.12 This timeline led to a string of corrections that ultimately proved ESPN’s lack of confidence in its initial story. 247Sports responded with a story that said, “Ayton signed with Arizona on Nov. 10 of 2016. He arrived on campus on June 10 of 2017,” which meant it would be impossible for Ayton to be the subject of that call about payment.13 As a result, ESPN issued a correction to the story because its timeline did not align with Arizona’s recruitment of Ayton, and changed the date to spring 2016. Eventually, ESPN corrected its first correction, and said the phone call took place in 2016, removing "spring” from its reporting. 247Sports responded again with the fact that “Dawkins’ phone was wiretapped by the FBI between June 19 and Sept. 25 of 2017,” so ESPN readjusted its timeline once 8 Harris, Sara Jane. “ESPN Layoffs: Updated List of Biggest Names Laid Off.” Sporting News, Sporting News, 31 May 2017. 9 TheAthleticHQ. “The Athletic.” The Athletic. 10 Grathoff, Pete. “Steve Kerr Laments Coverage of LaVar Ball, the 'Kardashian of the NBA'.” Kansascity, The Kansas City Star, 8 Jan. 2018. 11 “The Worldwide Leader in Sports.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures. 12 Capital Cities/ ABC Inc. “Sean Miller Recorded on FBI Wiretap.” Sean Miller Recorded on FBI Wiretap [Bristol, Connecticut], ESPN, 24 Feb. 2018. 13 Kelapire, Ryan. “ESPN's Timeline of Sean Miller's Wiretapped Call Doesn't Add up, per 247Sports.” Arizona Desert Swarm, Arizona Desert Swarm, 27 Feb. 2018.
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more and decided to stand by its initial report of spring of 2017.14 It appeared that the changes in the timeline were initially adjusted to make it possible for Ayton to be the player discussed by Miller and Dawkins because his recruitment period occurred during spring of 2016. Sports Illustrated also led the way in dismantling ESPN’s story. By targeting timeline errors, its writers called some parts of the report “impossible” according to their own source who was also “familiar with the college hoops corruption investigation.”15 Their source said that Miller never paid or tried to pay any recruits connected to Dawkins. Eventually, ESPN abandoned certain details of the initial story. It ran a ticker along the bottom of a broadcast on February 28 later that said “(Sean) Miller was caught on tape ... discussing $100K payment to ensure a fivestar prospect signed with Arizona.” Ayton’s name was dropped entirely. This was the first error that undermined the credibility of Schlabach’s reporting. ESPN continued to spew falsehoods in its broadcasts. The same day the story was released, an announcer during the Arizona State-Oregon State basketball game said that Arizona had fired Miller.16 Despite Miller’s decision not to coach that night at Oregon, as well as the cancellation of his radio show that day, Arizona did not fire him. It can be inferred that Miller’s decision to not coach that night led the announcer to assume he was fired. Miller’s absence at Oregon that night was one of the consequences Arizona basketball immediately faced as result of Schlabach’s report. The Wildcats lost the game 98-93 under interim head coach Romar despite a valiant effort by Ayton, who was clearly elated by the accusations against him and the Ducks’ student section’s taunts 14 Kelapire, Ryan. “ESPN Issues Two Corrections to Sean Miller Wiretap Report.” Arizona Desert Swarm, Arizona Desert Swarm, 26 Feb. 2018. 15 McCann, Michael. “Sean Miller Strikes Back at ESPN: Is Lawsuit next?” SI.com, 1 Mar. 2018. 16 Schwartz, Nick. “ESPN Commentator Mistakenly Announces Sean Miller's Firing, Retracts Report.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 25 Feb. 2018. 17 “Arizona vs. Oregon - Game Summary - February 24, 2018.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 24 Feb. 2018.
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against him which included holding posters of paychecks.17 Although Arizona went on to win the Pac-12 (both the tournament and regular season), the squad’s seeding in the tournament reflected a sort of punishment for the scandal.18 The committee put Arizona in Boise, while experts had projected they would play in San Diego. Due to a four-hour flight difference and forty degree temperature drop between the two locations, fewer fans attended the first round. As a result, the Wildcats suffered a loss to Buffalo.19 Lack of tournament success is not unusual for Miller, who had never been to a Final Four, but this time, the first round loss may have been circumstantial. The consequence of having been tied to an FBI investigation and a bad performance in the tournament shaped the future of the program. In the days following this disastrous ESPN story, top prospects Shareef O’Neal and Brandon Williams decommitted from Arizona.20 Going into May, Arizona had five scholarship openings, and many fans feared their program might lose its head coach and all its quality recruits. In his response to the report, Miller stressed that he did not pay any athletes and would never do so. Both the university and other media outlets supported him. While universities commonly launch their own investigations in reaction to federal accusations, Arizona’s president and athletic director have allowed Miller to keep his job and coach the remainder of the season. Had they received any indication that he was guilty, they would not likely allow him to continue representing the university. However the story gets more complicated because Miller also threatened to press charges. In order for a public figure to sue for libel, they must prove “irreparable harm” and “actual malice.”22 18 “Men's Basketball Pac-12 Championships.” Pac-12. 19 Schnell, Lindsay. “2018 NCAA Tournament: Buffalo Blasts Arizona, Sends a Warning.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 16 Mar. 2018. 20 Star, Bruce Pascoe Arizona Daily. “Shareef O'Neal Decommits from Arizona Wildcats; Brandon Williams May Be Next.” Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Daily Star, 24 Feb. 2018. 21 Ryman, Anne. “Arizona's Sean Miller on FBI Wiretapping Allegations: 'I Will Be Vindicated'.” Azcentral, The Republic | Azcentral.com, 28 Feb. 2018. 22 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
PHILOSOPHY
JOURNALISM PHILOSOPHY JOURNALISM
“The consequence of having been tied to an FBI investigation and a bad performance in the tournament shaped the future of the program.”
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Considering Miller did not lose his job, the following month Ayton would become a topfive NBA draft pick, it would be difficult to prove that this report damaged these men’s public images. Contrary to normal libel cases, in which a public figure plaintiff carries the burden to prove actual malice, it might be easier to identify this fault than irreparable harm. If a subpoena could provide evidence of Schlabach’s audio or a transcription of the conversation, the court could determine that ESPN purposely misreported the information to make Miller look guilty through “reckless disregard.” Also, if Schlabach’s source had access to “3,000 hours” of wiretapped phone calls from Dawkins, how could he only have enough content to write a story about one university? Of all those hours, it’s hard to imagine Arizona was the only university worth writing about, unless the source desired to specifically defame Miller. In that case, there may have been something reckless about ESPN’s reliance on this source. As for “purposeful falsehood,” Schlabach could have been so tempted to nail big fishes already in question, Miller and Ayton, that he purposefully avoided the truth. After The New York Times fired reporter Jayson Blair for plagiarism and fabrication, he explained the instant gratification of bylines for journalists.23 Blair said seeing that his own stories became national sensations produced a high that he was constantly chasing. With the immediacy of the internet, it’s possible a reporter like Schlabach could have been so desperate to see his byline under a headline equal to the popular Yahoo Sports report that he recklessly disregarded or purposefully avoided the truth. Still, it’s hard to imagine how a story like this could break from ESPN. Although the talent of its staff has depleted, editors must have run the story by the network’s lawyers before publication. In its reaction piece, Sports Illustrated said only litigators and judges, which comprise a small circle of people involved in the case, had access to the court order sealed documents. To protect the anonymous source, Schlabach may have concealed important facts about the person, who some believe never even saw the documents. Schlabach then later claimed the source was frequently — and anonymously — used in other stories, and never misled him before. When the Washington Post covered Watergate in 1972, it had a rule that all anonymous information needed to be confirmed by at least one other source.24 That became a tenet of journalism: verify and factcheck your sources. At least two other 23 Productions, Gush. “A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, And Jayson Blair At The New York Times.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Apr. 2016.
“With the immediacy of the internet, it's possible a reporter like Schlabach could have been so desperate to see his byline under a headline equal to the popular Yahoo Sports report that he recklessly disregarded the truth.” outlets, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports, had sources who could verify their articles. ESPN should have sought one of them out, but didn’t because of digital culture. Online, stories of misinformed journalism go viral before a network can address the information. This is especially true for in sports journalism, in which recaps are ideally published within a half hour of a game ending and Twitter serves as a contested platform for who can break news. The highly competitive nature of sports journalism leads to rapid dissemination of false reports. Although ESPN did issue corrections, many questions still linger about this anonymous source. In order to regain the public’s trust after this mistake, ESPN needs to be fully transparent with its audience. The network should go back and research the extent of its inaccuracies, then share with its readers how the editorial process allowed those errors to occur. ESPN is dangerously feeding into the declining market appeal for quality journalism by failing to disclose this information. Sports 24 Bernstein, Carl, 1944-. All The President's Men. New York :Simon and Schuster, 1974. Print.
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“The Arizona report embodies the legal complexities media outlets face on a daily basis, and the consequences for the public individuals they cover..” fans have been lured by ESPN into a craving for sensational stories without substantial evidence. With so many sports outlets to choose from today, ESPN cannot carry itself under the title of worldwide leader in sports unless it upholds its responsibility to fans as a disseminator of truth. The Arizona report embodies the legal complexities media outlets face on a daily basis, and the consequences for the public individuals they cover. Though it is unknown whether Schlabach intentionally targeted. Arizona’s program, got a bad tip, or was just so eager to compete with Yahoo Sports on the investigation that he recklessly disregarded the truth, his reporting harmed not only the already-scrutinized network
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but the potential future of Arizona basketball. Media outlets must recognize their responsibility to the public and the repercussions on those whom they investigate. Doing harm to public figures is not a tenet of watchdog journalism— responsibly informing the public about institutions and society, especially when a the public would demand changes, is. ESPN is drifting away from quality journalism and feeding into its declining market. The network must be transparent about Schlabach’s reporting habits and commit to accurate journalism if they want to put faith back in the hands of fans, athletes and coaches.
nurj – vol. 14 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 “Arizona vs. Oregon - Game Summary - February 24, 2018.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 24 Feb. 2018, www.espn. com/mens-college-basketball/ game?gameId=400988382. 2 Bernstein, Carl, 1944-. All The President's Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Print. 3 Capital Cities/ ABC Inc. “Sean Miller Recorded on FBI Wiretap.” Sean Miller Recorded on FBI Wiretap [Bristol, Connecticut], ESPN, 24 Feb. 2018. 4 Draper, Kevin. “ESPN Is Laying Off 150 More Employees.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Nov. 2017, www. nytimes.com/2017/11/29/sports/ espn-layoffs.html. 5 Grathoff, Pete. “Steve Kerr Laments Coverage of LaVar Ball, the 'Kardashian of the NBA'.” Kansascity, The Kansas City Star, 8 Jan. 2018, www.kansascity.com/ sports/spt-columns-blogs/forpetes-sake/article193672224.html. 6 Harris, Sara Jane. “ESPN Layoffs: Updated List of Biggest Names Laid Off.” Sporting News, Sporting News, 31 May 2017, www.sportingnews.com/othersports/news/list-of-biggestnames-laid-off-at-espn-updatesed-werder-john-buccigross/ eyf1kwjj6gpt10erj8ke3n1tp. 7 Kelapire, Ryan. “ESPN Issues Two Corrections to Sean Miller Wiretap Report.” Arizona Desert Swarm, Arizona Desert Swarm, 26 Feb. 2018, www.azdesertswarm.com/ basketball/2018/2/26/17054826/ espn-issues-two-corrections-seanmiller-fbi-wiretap-report-fakefired-suspended-return-ayton. 8 Kelapire, Ryan. “ESPN's Timeline of Sean Miller's Wiretapped Call Doesn't Add up, per 247Sports.” Arizona Desert Swarm, Arizona Desert Swarm, 27 Feb. 2018, www.azdesertswarm.com/ basketball/2018/2/26/17056118/ sean-miller-fbi-wiretap-callayton-timeline-doesnt-addup-247sports-payment-firedsuspension-return. 9 Kirk, Jason, and Ricky O'Donnell. “18 Key Figures in the FBI's College Basketball Probe.”
SBNation.com, SBNation. com, 27 Sept. 2017, www. sbnation.cpm/collegebasketball/2017/9/27/16367814/ ncaa-basketball-fbiinvestigation-coaches-agentsadidas. 10 Lorenzo Romar Coaching Record | College Basketball at SportsReference.com.” College Football at Sports-Reference.com, www. sports-reference.com/cbb/ coaches/lorenzo-romar-1.html. 11 “Men's Basketball Pac-12 Championships.” Pac-12, pac-12. com/content/mens-basketballpac-12-championships. 12 McCann, Michael. “Sean Miller Strikes Back at ESPN: Is Lawsuit next?” SI.com, 1 Mar. 2018, www.si.com/collegebasketball/2018/03/01/arizona-seanmiller-deandre-ayton-espn-report. 13 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [1964] 14 Pascoe, Bruce. Arizona Daily Star. “Shareef O'Neal Decommits from Arizona Wildcats; Brandon Williams May Be Next.” Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Daily Star, 24 Feb. 2018, tucson.com/sports/ arizonawildcats/basketball/shareefo-neal-decommits-from-arizonawildcats-brandon-williams-may/ article_15d0e9c0-19a3-11e8-871ee38841a47d86.html. 15 Productions, Gush. “A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, And Jayson Blair At The New York Times.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Apr. 2016, www.nytimes.com/ video/movies/100000004363351/afragile-trust-plagiarism-power-andjayson-blair-at-the-new-yor.html. 16 Rapaport, Daniel. “Every Current Player Implicated in the FBI's College Basketball Probe.” Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo!, 24 Feb. 2018, https://sports.yahoo.com/ every-current-player-implicatedfbi-064750296.html. 17 Ryman, Anne. “Arizona's Sean Miller on FBI Wiretapping Allegations: 'I Will Be Vindicated'.” Azcentral, The Republic | Azcentral.com, 28 Feb. 2018, www.azcentral. com/story/news/local/arizonainvestigations/2018/02/24/ university-arizona-responds-
wiretapping-allegationsagainst-head-coach-sean-millerdeandre-dayton/370085002/. 18 Schlabach, Mark. “FBI Wiretaps Show Sean Miller Discussed $100K Payment to Lock Recruit.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 25 Feb. 2018, www.espn. com/mens-college-basketball/ story/_/id/22559284/seanmiller-arizona-christiandawkins-discussed-paymentensure-deandre-ayton-signingaccording-fbi-investigation. 19 Schmidt, Caitlin. “UA Fires Assistant Basketball Coach Book Richardson after His Appeal Fails.” Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Daily Star, 24 Jan. 2018, tucson. com/sports/arizonawildcats/ basketball/ua-fires-assistantbasketball-coach-bookrichardson-after-his-appeal/ article_d22368ae-005e-11e89c31-4bdff6aac439.html. 20 Schnell, Lindsay. “2018 NCAA Tournament: Buffalo Blasts Arizona, Sends a Warning.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 16 Mar. 2018, www.usatoday.com/ story/sports/ncaab/2018/03/16/ ncaa-tournament-buffaloblasts-arizona-sendswarning/430995002/. 21 Schwartz, Nick. “ESPN Commentator Mistakenly Announces Sean Miller's Firing, Retracts Report.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 25 Feb. 2018, ftw.usatoday. com/2018/02/espn-announcesarizona-sean-miller-fired. 22 Stone, Larry. “We Don't Know What Lorenzo Romar Knew or If Markelle Fultz Took the Money but We Do Know the NCAA Is the Problem.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 23 Feb. 2018, www.seattletimes.com/ sports/uw-husky-basketball/ how-much-uw-is-involved-inhoop-scandal-is-unresolvedbut-its-clear-the-ncaa-needs-tochange/. 23 TheAthleticHQ. “The Athletic.” The Athletic, theathletic.com/. 24 “The Worldwide Leader in Sports.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, www.espn.com/.
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Jennifer Tackett By Joy Zheng
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s I sit in Swift Hall, light pours in through the window of Professor Tackett’s office. I glimpse people walking outside, framed against the Lakefill. Tackett tells me, “I’ve always been really interested in people who stand out in different ways and are unusual and personality is a great way to understand that.” Professor Tackett began her path as an undergraduate at Texas A&M University. She became involved with two laboratories, one with a focus on personality, and another clinical lab with an emphasis on aggression in children. She stayed with these labs through her whole undergraduate career. Although the focus of the two labs were vastly different, by the time Professor Tackett graduated she knew that she wanted to combine the two areas of study. “Those really early undergrad experiences were super critical,” she says. She’s been researching children’s personalities and behavior ever since. Tackett now directs the Personality Across Development Lab (PADlab) on campus, which conducts personality- and behavior-related research centered around children and teens.
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“We look at clinical phenomena, including aggression and delinquency,” Tackett says. The lab also studies “normal” ranged development and personality, though it examines these common behaviors in the general population rather than in clinical samples. The majority of Tackett’s research deals with children and adolescents. Professor Tackett says she loves to work with children because they are more “authentic and raw” compared to adults, who she says often filter themselves and use defense mechanisms. Her laboratory is working on several projects, one of which is the Illinois Twin Project. It will be the first twin registry in Illinois. “Most of the work being done now is setting up the registry and recruitment of twins for the database, but the importance of this project cannot be understated,” Tackett says. “Twin studies can be really useful for scientists studying a range of research questions, not just for personality. Members of the project come from the School of Communication, Feinberg School of Medicine, and other departments such as neurology and anthropology, exemplifying the interdisciplinary approach of the project. The lab’s primary project, however, is researching adolescent leadership. Professor Tackett has been involved in this since she joined Northwestern. She calls it “the gamechanger.” The study aims to observe how leadership is formed in teenagers, an area that Tackett says has not been studied enough. The lab is interested in what leadership looks in teenagers and how teenagers choose leaders. Some common leadership characteristics are similar to those of kids who tend to get into trouble. “Can we understand that complex development?” Tackett asks. Technology has revolutionized the field she first joined two decades ago as an undergrad. Now, there are new methods to collect data and more sophisticated equipment. “When I was an undergraduate, everything was done on paper,” she says. “There was a lot more tedious, laborious work, especially as undergraduates. Now, however, there is less of a need to do the grunt work.” The quality of the undergraduate research experience might have improved just as much as the data accuracy. “Undergrads [now] get access to more advanced research responsibilities that previously graduate students would have done,” says Tackett. Undergraduates in the PADlab have an important role in ongoing projects. Its undergraduate research assistants (RAs) help run studies and collect and code the resulting data, logging about nine hours of work a week. Tackett says the lab has made undergraduate research a priority. The lab offers positions to students who want to try out the lab at a lower commitment level, and to those who want to pursue research long-term. Those who stay with the lab can become project coordinators and helping run projects. Students interested in the lab can apply through an application on the PADlab website. 056
Uncovering the Secrets of Speech with Angela Roberts By Niva Razin Interviewed by Sarah Tani
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Q&A:
Angela Roberts is a researcher and professor in the department of Human Communication Sciences within the School of Communication. She joined Northwestern in 2015. She is the principal investigator of the Language and Communication in Aging and Neurodegeneration Research Group and teaches courses in the Speech, Language and Learning masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree program. 057 057
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Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the Language and Communication in Aging and Neurodegeneration Research Group?
AR: Our lab focuses on changes in cognition in language as they unfold in the context of typical aging and atypical aging, [as with] neurodegenerative disorders and superaging. We are particularly interested in how the changes in the brain, or the lack [thereof], impact how people communicate and process language in everyday environments. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re getting at the mainstay of how language and cognition in motor abilities interact in the real world. To that end, a lot of the work that we do develops digital biomarkers of [neurodegenerative] diseases. Our aim is to help with the diagnostics of cognitive impairment in tasks that could be collected from real-world applications. We work with engineers to develop wearable technologies for measuring those behaviors in real-world environments and integrating those with [measurements of] gait and mobility behaviors. There are students in my lab who work on the engineering concepts, students in my lab who work purely on the biomarker work, and then students in my lab who are really translational scientists, converting everything that we have discovered into interventions for affected people and their families.
Q: How many undergraduates work with you? AR: Right now we have nine relatively full-time undergraduates working in the lab. There are at least four undergraduates who have primary research responsibility over projects in the lab where they run teams of other undergraduates. They actually have masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and sometimes Ph.D. students who sit on their teams. Our undergraduate pipeline and our ability to cultivate the best in our undergraduates, to whatever ambitions they have, is something we take a lot of pride in.
Q: Could you tell me more about what undergraduates do in your lab? AR: They do everything from helping to conceptualize projects to actually leading teams. They have the opportunity to develop foundational research skills that, if it suits them and if it suits their ambition, we shape into leadership potential for leading different research teams in the lab.
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Q: What have you been able to bring into the classroom from your research? AR: I think what my research brings, in a way that my undergraduates have definitely contributed, is an understanding of how we can use novel and creative tools to measure the outcomes of interventions and to understand the multifaceted ways in which language and cognition breakdown in the context of these disorders. How we can harness technologies to make us better clinicians â&#x20AC;Ś is a really importance piece. I think probably the second component ... is the knowledge of how these more structural language and cognitive issues manifest in declines in everyday social interaction and the psychological aspects of personhood and sense of identity and self in the context of these disorders. Ideas and projects inspired by my undergraduates â&#x20AC;Ś not only grow my research program, but also firmly shape the content that then I take into the classroom.
Q: How has your research shaped your time at NU? AR: One of the things that has developed since I arrived at NU is paradoxically both a broadening and a focusing of my research. There is a greater focus to my research in this area of digital biomarkers: how we detect them and how do we translate those markers into interventions. That has become more narrowed, in a good way. But, I think [my research] has expanded tremendously in terms of collaboration and partnerships. My research in applying engineering solutions to monitoring behaviors in real-world environments â&#x20AC;Ś has expanded incredibly since arriving here. My collaborations with the linguistics departments in terms of the work I was already doing, but understanding it from a theoretical lens of linguistics, not just disordered populations, has been a tremendous opportunity for me. The undergraduates in my lab come from pre-med backgrounds, neuroscience, psychology, engineering, so I feel really fortunate that my lab has this incredibly diverse group of people in terms of their background, but also in terms of their fields of study.
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Q: What advice would you give to undergraduates who want to get started in research? AR: My first piece of advice is take a chance and just reach out [to a lab]. Be really honest and transparent about your skills so we can map you [onto an appropriate project]. And, if a lab doesn’t feel like it’s fitting right for you, it’s probably also not fitting well for the lab. Don’t be afraid to make transitions or to decide that that lab just is not a good fit for you because it has to work both ways. The second thing is be willing to invest the time in a lab. When you are investing in a lab, that principal investigator is also investing in you. If you invest in a lab and you invest in that foundational learning, you can go tremendously far. [Research] is a marathon, not a sprint. My third piece of advice is be willing to show leadership. Be willing to believe and bring your own ideas to the table. Look for avenues that you can push the lab’s research program forward but also to where you can also take unique risks in developing your own project.
Q: Any final thoughts? AR: Undergraduates should not set limitations for themselves. Take advantage of every single learning opportunity; look for opportunities to contribute to the development of science in your lab: and do not allow yourself to perceive that there are ceilings in your abilities to do that. Sometimes an outside eye, a student who’s reading the literature in a different way, is exactly what a [principal investigator] needs to evolve the next stage of work. *This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and the Post-War Concerto Grace Pechianu Jesse Rosenberg Faculty Adviser
THE LEGEND OF FAUST HAS INSPIRED NUMEROUS LITERARY AND MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS. WITHIN THE LAST TWO DECADES, TWO LARGE-SCALE INSTRUMENTAL CONCERTOS HAVE BEEN CREATED WITH THOMAS MANN'S NOVEL “DOKTOR FAUSTUS” IN MIND: ONE FOR VIOLIN BY HANS WERNER HENZE, AND THE OTHER FOR CELLO BY GEOFFREY GORDON. The concerto may
seem like an unlikely setting for a Faust retelling, as it is traditionally conceived in terms of formal layout and technical display; unlike other orchestral genres such as the symphony and the overture, concertos have generally resisted overt programmatic implications. It is therefore striking that Hans Werner Henze and Geoffrey Gordon chose precisely this genre for their musical presentations of Mann’s novel. »
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homas Mann’s “Doktor Faustus” stands out as a more contemporary and musical retelling of the legend. The protagonist is transformed into fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn, who sells his soul to the devil for 24 years of inspired creativity. Mann’s narrator, Serenus Zeitblom, a friend of Leverkühn, recounts the life of the doomed composer. At the end of the novel, he reveals that Leverkühn’s biography is an allegory for the downfall of Germany under the Third Reich. Mann, though knowledgeable about music, lacked technical training, and called upon critic and philosopher T.W. Adorno for assistance with the musical references. The fictional compositions of Leverkühn, described in detail throughout the novel, seem to invite musicians to realize them. However, the musical implications of the novel go beyond those descriptions. Following on a suggestion by Mann himself, some commentators hold the novel to have a musical form, with such elements as leitmotifs and gradual increases in speed called “accelerandos.” A distinctive feature of Mann’s novel is the prominence of its narrator, Serenus Zeitblom. The reader witnesses the life of Adrian Leverkühn solely from Zeitblom’s perspective, apart from Leverkühn’s personal account of his discourse with the devil. In addition, Zeitblom chronicles the events of his own life alongside that of his friend, making the narrator another protagonist. Zeitblom also asserts his role with frequent asides, detouring from his account to evaluate its successive stages. He thus details his own creative process while composing Leverkühn’s biography, an extension of Thomas Mann himself. In a sense, the creator of each Faust rendition, literary or musical, assumes a task similar to that of Zeitblom: Mann, Gordon and Henze are themselves narrators who likewise appropriate the role of protagonist. In the novel, Leverkühn composes two lengthy works, a cantata called “The Lamentation of Doctor Faustus,” based on the 16th century “Faust Chapbook,” and a violin concerto for his
virtuoso friend, Rudi Schwerdtfeger. Zeitblom describes the cantata as a massive series of variations on a tone row, while the violin concerto is a technically demanding piece in three movements. Accordingly, the concertos of Henze and Gordon contain, among other references to the novel, features of both of these compositions. Henze’s concerto follows the three movement form of Leverkühn’s work, with each movement named after a character in the novel. The violin thus assumes multiple identities. Gordon’s cello concerto consists of seven continuous sections based on the same tetrachord, similar to Leverkühn’s cantata, with each section representing an episode or theme in the novel. One may therefore argue that both Henze and Gordon produced "diegetic" works, each assuming the role of Leverkühn by providing real-life manifestations of his fictional compositions. The composers also assume Leverkühn’s identity by embodying the composer’s mocking, contemptuous spirit in their works. Henze and Gordon achieve this feat by parodying traditional styles and form. Henze appropriates popular and easily recognizable song forms, dance genres and styles to indicate certain sentiments. For instance, in the first movement, “Esmeralda,” named after the prostitute that seduces Leverkühn, Henze introduces heavily contrapuntal writing in the solo violin part. Esmeralda’s dance theme contains both melody and harmony, implying multiple voices in Bachian fashion, with the chromatic melody in the lower voice (Figure 1). However, the lower line melody in Henze’s “Esmeralda” is metrically irregular, giving off a syncopated air of playfulness. Both Leverkühn and Henze combine, transfigure and ultimately subvert musical styles. Henze’s second movement, “Das Kind Echo,” or “The Child Echo,” portrays Adrian’s beloved and ill-fated nephew, Nepo, called “Echo.” A sweet, curious child, Echo speaks in archaic fashion, striking his elders as wise beyond his years. A muted solo violin, or “con sordino,” initiates this movement, creating a mysterious, distant atmosphere. Henze also plays on the ambiguity of the name
+ Figure 1. Liszt, Faust Symphony, “Faust,” mm. 1-3.
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+ Figure 2. Gordon, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, “Prologue,” mm 1-3.
“Echo” by employing a softer sound, projecting an innocent air with horn and woodwind instrumentation, timbres traditionally associated with pastoral innocence. The concluding movement, designated “Rudi S.,” after Leverkühn’s violinist friend, takes on an increasingly virtuosic character. The violin begins the “canto dolcissimo,” a singing melody. Henze here offers another manifestation of Adrian’s tonal concept by having the orchestra repeat the same chord in eighth notes, changing harmony below the violin line only once per measure. Later, Henze employs a whip to accompany the high G’s, imitating gunshots from the revolver of Rudi’s spurned lover, Ines Rhode. The violin drops out, reflective of Rudi’s fate. Gordon’s representation of mockery in the cello concerto is less obvious. Instead, Gordon imitates Leverkühn’s tonal language and musical structure. In Mann's novel, Leverkühn defies traditional form by writing works based upon a sequence of pitches and intervals. Likewise, each section of Gordon’s cello concerto is based on the same tetrachord established in the first bar. It appears in both harmonic and melodic contexts, mirroring the function of the tone row theme in Leverkühn’s cantata. Gordon indicates that the exposition of his piece represents the prologue of “Doktor Faustus,” during which the narrator begins the tale of his deceased friend, warning against the dangers of demonic pacts. A brass configuration of horns, trumpets and trombones commences the prologue with three successive chordal punctuations. It is crucial to note that these sonorities all belong to an <0347> tetrachord (Figure 2). Repeated C-sharps in the first cello ¹ Kathleen Y. Ensz, “French Attitudes toward Typical Speech Errors of American Speakers of French.” The Modern Language Journal 66.2 (1982): 133-39. Web. ² Jun Deng, Amy Holtby, Lori Howden-Weaver, Lesli Nessim, Bonnie Nicholas, Kathleen Nickle, Christine Pannekoek, Sabine Stephan, and Miao Sun. “English Pronunciation Research: The Neglected Orphan of Second Language Acquisition Studies?” PMC Working Paper Series (2009). Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta. Web.
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entrance give a sense of urgency, much like the character of Zeitblom in the prologue (Figure 3). Perhaps it would not be far-fetched to assign the cello the character of the narrator in this portion. In addition, all four notes belong to the <014> trichord, a subset of the <0347> tetrachord. All three brass sonorities are comprised of symmetrical configuration of pitches, as the first two and last two pitches of each group form minor thirds, separated by a minor second. These opening measures successfully set up the concerto’s harmonic language in the context of Leverkühn’s method. According to Gordon’s outline, the first untitled section following the prologue addresses the influence of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111, as set forth in Mann’s novel, as well as the character of Esmeralda throughout “Doktor Faustus.” The sonata relates not only to this section, but to the entire work. The <014> trichord belonging to the <0347> tetrachord is the same trichord comprising the main theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s sonata. Pitches C, E-flat and B-natural in Beethoven’s first movement make up the same intervals as the trichord (Figure 4). Thus Beethoven’s work permeates Gordon’s entire composition. However, instead of subjecting the theme to the extensive development as Beethoven does, Gordon, in the spirit of Leverkühn, repeats it as a kind of ostinato, rejecting classical form altogether. Esmeralda and her note-name cypher, which Leverkühn weaves into his pieces, serve a purpose similar to that of Gordon’s central tetrachord. This signifies his allegiance to devil who later reveals he sent Esmeralda to seduce the composer. In Chapter 17, Mann links Esmeralda’s seductiveness to the colorful
+ Figure 2. Gordon, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, “Prologue,” mm 1-3.
³ Cristina Aliaga-García, “The Role of Phonetic Training in L2 Speech Training.” University of Barcelona. Web. ⁴ Deborah L. Arteaga, “Articulatory Phonetics in the First-Year Spanish Classroom.” The Modern Language Journal 84.3 (2000): 339-54. Web. ⁵ Diane M. Dansereau, Savoir Dire: Cours De Phonétique Et De Prononciation. 2nd ed. N.p.: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Imprimée.
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+ Figure 4. Beethoven, Piano Sonata 32, op. 111, mm.17-24
butterfly, Hetaera esmeralda, displayed in Leverkühn’s father's insect collection (Figure 5). However, the pitch order is different from what we would expect. The B corresponds to Hetaera rather than Esmeralda. Thus, the pitch order becomes B-E-A-E-E-flat (Figure 6). Gordon and Henze avoid a direct representation of Esmeralda, associating her instead with recurring musical tropes: Henze with parodied styles and Gordon with the <0347> tetrachord, in order to relate the devil’s omnipresence in Mann’s narrative. The second untitled movement emphasizes the concepts of theology as demonology and positive barbarism throughout the course of the novel. Although Leverkühn studied composition earlier in his life, he did so only after abandoning his studies in theology. Frances Lee explains theology as demonology, in terms of the Reformation and World War II Germany, as Mann equates fascism with demonology. Adrian holds to a more individualistic, Nietzschean and secular philosophy stemming from his Protestant upbringing. His friend Serenus Zeitblom is a Roman Catholic humanist in Lee’s sense, as established in the first chapters of the novel. Lee defines humanism as the “secularization of medieval Catholicism,” inherently counter to the teachings of Catholicism, with an emphasis on the importance of Church and community in Christ. Lee argues that medieval theology entailed the “denial of individual existence,” adherence to the established liturgy and allegiance to the Pope in Rome. Thus, Lutheran theology adapts religion to social ideals, such as ethical progress, rights, liberties, nationhood and independence from the pope. As the devil illustrates to Adrian in Chapter 25, humanism
is not theology and removes Christianity from its religious context by a process of secularization. Mann’s devil designates the process “secularized demonology.” Adrian Leverkühn’s positive barbarism, or the “raising of barbarism to a positive value,” according to T. J. Reed, describes Leverkühn’s desire for uninhibited, subjective musical composition. Reed renders barbarism, or anti-civilization, as the ideal breeding ground for exclusive communities and the beginnings of fascism in response to perceived threats of anarchy. For Adrian, this barbarism is necessary for creating art free of cultural or historical limitations. Perhaps this illuminates the reason behind the composer’s small, esoteric audience and following. However, Leverkühn critiques modernist artistic movements, saying “more interesting phenomena [...] probably always have this double face of past and future, probably are always progressive and regressive in one.” Hence, the composer justifies his quotations of and allusions to Beethoven, Monteverdi, Mahler and so forth. Accordingly, Adrian Leverkühn’s musical compositions rebel against modernism and modernist notions of progress, given their repetition, stasis, regression and lack of development in preference for variation forms. Mann spoke highly of Igor Stravinsky, who adhered to a similar compositional practice, commenting, “sometimes we need a contradiction to development.” Gordon’s second untitled section stands out as uniquely rhythmic and frenzied in character, seemingly disorganized as Mann’s barbarism. It commences with a booming, menacing introduction from the tympani, gong and bass drum on a unison C. Perhaps
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+ Figure 6. The unexpected B-E-A-E-Eflat pitch order, which corresponds to the butterfly rather than Esmerelda. Thomas Mann, “Doktor Faustus,” 57, trans. John E. Woods (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1947). + Figure 5. The Hetaera esmeralda. Dorling Kindersley, Getty Images.
Gordon represents barbarism, partially within the trope of drums evoking primitivism. The frantic cello line begins over triplet sixteenths in the strings. Not surprisingly, the majority of the notes belong to <0347> configurations in mm. 120 through 124. In m. 118, the offbeat trumpet reiterations of the same pitches, A-flat, E-flat and G are reminiscent of the first cello entrance in the prologue, but instead of grace note pickups, the trumpets have two eighth note pickups. Between mm. 119 and 129, the solo cello and strings trade off sixteenth and thirty-second notes back and forth. Trichord runs appear in the following measures. In m. 144, the solo cello and orchestra move in contrary motion, greatly expanding the range as the cello sinks lower into bass clef. After a brief tetrachord trumpet “tremolo” flourish reminiscent of the prologue, the harp and cello feature “glissandi,” perhaps a nod to the wailing effects from the trombones in Leverkühn’s piece, “Apocalypsis cum figuris.” Ascending <0314> cello runs build up and evaporate into harmonics in the last measure. The section of Gordon’s concerto called “Dürer’s ‘Melancholia’-Magic Square,” was also inspired by the angelic, metaphysical character of Echo. Dürer’s “Melancholia” (1514) is an engraving depicting a despondent winged figure amidst a plethora of objects connoting mathematical calculation, including a compass, magic square, a scale and an hourglass, similar to the objects in Faust’s study (Figure 7). Dürer’s drawing suggests a troubled genius discontented with human limits and with what art historian Henry Majewski calls “the inability to express the profound.” Notably, Dürer’s “Melancholia”
¹ Kathleen Y. Ensz, “French Attitudes toward Typical Speech Errors of American Speakers of French.” The Modern Language Journal 66.2 (1982): 133-39. Web. ² Jun Deng, Amy Holtby, Lori Howden-Weaver, Lesli Nessim, Bonnie Nicholas, Kathleen Nickle, Christine Pannekoek, Sabine Stephan, and Miao Sun. “English
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contains a Magic Square with numbers that add up to thirty-four in any direction. Adrian Leverkühn reveres this mathematical marvel and keeps it above his piano in multiple dwellings. Gordon employs echo effects, sparse, ethereal sounding orchestration and harmonics to characterize the otherworldliness of Echo and Magic Square. The epilogue and final section of the concerto are clearly based on the end of the novel. Zeitblom announces his narrative’s end and the personal toll it took on him. In the despondent spirit of Leverkühn’s debilitating condition, Gordon’s epilogue features a cello line which sinks downward from E to C-sharp and C-natural, oscillating between the semitones until the last measure of the concerto. Although the notion of repeating a single trichord may seem redundant, Gordon manages it successfully by presenting the units in a variety of contexts. Placing the <014> trichord from Beethoven’s sonata at the beginning of the prologue associates it with the omnipresent narrator, Zeitblom. As the trichord within the central tetrachord permeates every movement, so does Zeitblom’s narration, as he comments upon Adrian’s story. The <0347> tetrachord thus functions as Gordon’s symbol for Zeitblom, unifying the concerto and novel. Despite his best efforts, Leverkühn never truly escapes Beethoven’s influence, and ironically imitates elements of his sonata. As Kretschmar explains in one of his lectures, presented in Chapter VIII of Mann's novel, Beethoven’s late work presented a clear departure from the structure of his previous sonatas. While the two-movement construction of this sonata may seem unusual, Beethoven thoroughly explored
³ Cristina Aliaga-García, “The Role of Phonetic Training in L2 Speech Training.” University of Barcelona. Web. ⁴ Deborah L. Arteaga, “Articulatory Phonetics in the First-Year Spanish Classroom.” The Modern Language Journal 84.3 (2000): 339-54. Web.
musical themes throughout the piece, rendering a third movement redundant and unnecessary. It is clear that Beethoven adapted the form of the sonata to the musical content of this piece, prioritizing content over traditional form in an increasingly progressive manner. Leverkühn and his compositional method thus follow Beethoven’s idea of form following function. In a similar manner, Leverkühn’s “Lamentation” cantata is described as lacking development, but not formless. Instead, Leverkühn insists upon molding the construction of the cantata to suit the narrative of “Faust Chapbook,” rather than imposing a pre-existing form upon the story as did Henze. Gordon applied the same philosophy of shaping his concerto around the episodes and concepts present in “Doktor Faustus,” faithfully representing Mann, Leverkühn and Beethoven. Furthermore, Leverkühn’s preference for variation forms, exhibited in his violin + Figure 8. “Magic Square” detail within concerto and the “Lamentation” cantata’s varied “Melencolia I,” Albrecht Dürer, 1514. repetitions of a tone row, are not as contrary Wikimedia Commons. to formal developments as one might think. While Beethoven subjects the main theme of the “Allegro con brio ed appassionato” to extensive defy traditional form and revoke Beethoven’s development and fugal sections, the second Symphony No. 9 by unintentionally propagating movement consists of a series of variations upon the musical values they imply. the Arietta theme. Likewise, the choral finale of Among earlier composers’ treatment of the Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is comprised of successive variations on the “Ode to Joy” theme. Faust legend, Liszt's “Faust Symphony” bears the Arguably, the elaboration and varied presentation most striking resemblance to Henze's concerto. In of melodic material through a set of variations Liszt's work, each movement portrays a character may be considered a type of development. from Goethe's “Faust,” respectively titled “Faust,” In that sense, Leverkühn ultimately fails to “Gretchen” and “Mephistopheles,” with the addendum of a choral epilogue, in a manner similar to Henze's depiction of Esmeralda, Echo and Rudi. Unlike Liszt, Henze omits a portrait of the title character and the devil. The latter omission may seem logical, since Adrian’s dialogue with the devil makes up only one chapter of a long novel, after which the devil disappears, although his influence remains. At a first glance, the absence of a “Faust” or “Adrian” movement in a concerto based on Mann’s “Doctor Faustus” cries out for explanation. We should recall how Henze assumes the role of Adrian Leverkühn by composing a violin concerto resembling the one described by Zeitblom. Furthermore, Adrian inserts himself, his mockery, his tonal system and concept of form into his compositions, rendering each a sort of self-portrait. Regarded in this light, devoting a movement to Leverkühn would be redundant, as the others already represent his disposition. Henze’s and Liszt’s works exhibit a similar strategy of conveying the theme of devilish mockery, as Mephistopheles and Adrian Leverkühn scoff at their interlocutors’ + Figure 7. “Melencolia I,” Albrecht surroundings. Both composers wrote memorable Dürer, 1514. Minneapolis Institute of themes an audience would easily recognize Arts via Wikimedia Commons. throughout a piece in different contexts. For Liszt, it is the theme, which includes all twelve
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+ Figure 9. Liszt, Faust Symphony, “Faust,” mm. 1-3.
chromatic pitches, given in the first measures of the first movement in the cellos and violas; this represents Faust’s despondency and frustration with human limitations (Figure 9). This chromatic theme returns in the third movement “Mephistopheles,” albeit in a mocking, mischievous manner, capturing the devil’s essence as “der Geist, der stets verneint,” or “the Spirit who negates (Figure 9). Liszt's audience would be quick to recognize the theme from the “Faust” movement, its perverted state and its altered purpose in reflecting Mephistopheles’ ridicule. Regarded in this manner, the genre of the solo concerto provides an ideal setting for telling the story of Adrian Leverkühn. A prominent soloist in a musical setting of Mann’s “Faust” provides ambiguity and fluidity
between the narrator and title character, as one principal voice relates to two narratives, Leverkühn’s and Zeitblom’s. Not intended as a literal retelling, Gordon’s work nevertheless follows the general outline of Mann’s narrative. Henze’s concerto by contrast is a series of character portraits, and thus cannot be classified as a narrative. However, it retains sonic associations with Mann’s narrative, as Henze notates the untimely deaths of Echo with pounding timpani and Rudi with gunshots imitated by the whip. Although Henze’s concerto contains more purely formal and less austere traits, it does not quite represent Leverkühn’s spirit of negation. Gordon presents a more convincing portrait of the composer by adopting his tonal system and free approach to form. The resulting effect is appropriately jarring, as were Leverkühn’s compositions when received. Perhaps the very difficulty of comprehending Gordon’s piece suggests a more realistic portrait of the esoteric composer and his limited but devoted following. In this way, Gordon does greater justice to the narrative than Henze’s more accessible style. Novel to each concerto is its simultaneous representation of Mann’s story and the realization of Leverkühn’s fictional works. The concertos become concrete manifestations of Adrian’s style and musical language, whether by Gordon’s inclusion of dodecaphony or Henze’s mockery via stylistic appropriation. Mann’s musical retelling of the Faust story bestows upon both composers the power to bring Dr. Faustus and his creations to life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adorno, Theodor W. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988. __________. Correspondence, 1943-1955. Cambridge: Malden, MA: Polity, 2006. __________. Philosophy of New Music. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Bach, Johann Sebastian. Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin solo, with facsimile of the autograph manuscript, Edited by Ivan Galamian. New York: International
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Music, 1980. Baron, Frank. Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend. München: Fink, 1978. Bauman, Thomas. North German Opera in the Age of Goethe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Beaumont, Antony. "Busoni's 'Doctor Faust': A Reconstruction and Its Problems." ThE Musical Times 127, no. 1718 (1986): 196-99. Bèrland, Jody Dee. “Historical Experience and the Fictional Imagination in the Era of Fascism: A Study of Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus.” PhD diss., Simon Fraser
University, Vancouver, Canada, 1978, National Library of Canada. Berlioz, Hector. La Damnation De Faust: Legende Dramatique En Quatre Parties: Op. 24. London; New York; Eulenberg, 1964. Bodley, Lorraine Byrne. Music in Goethe's Faust: Goethe's Faust in Music. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer Press, 2017. Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Translated by Michael Glenny. New York: Knopf, 1992. Dent, Edward J. "Busoni's "Doktor Faust"." Music & Letters 7, no. 3 (1926): 196-
BIBLIOGRAPHY 208. Gatti, Guido M. "The Stage-Works of Ferruccio Busoni." The Musical Quarterly 20, no. 3 (1934): 267-77. Di Giulio, Antonella. “Transcendence and Immortality in Busoni’s Doktor Faust.” Analitica Rivista Online di Studi Musicali, no. 7 (2014): 57-72. Doorly, Patrick. "Dürer's "Melencolia I": Plato's Abandoned Search for the Beautiful." The Art Bulletin 86, no. 2 (2004): 255-76. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, Part I and II. Translated by Martin Greenberg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. 1. Theil. München & Berlin: F. Bruckmann, 1877. Gordon, Geoffrey. Concerto for Cello and Orchestra After Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. United States: SpencerSongs Music, 2013. Henze, Hans Werner. Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography. Translated by Stewart Spencer. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. __________. Violinkonzert: Drei Porträts Aus Dem Roman "Dr. Faustus" von Thomas Mann. Mainz; New York: Schott, 2000. Jensen, Eric Frederick. "Liszt, Nerval, and "Faust"." 19thCentury Music 6, no. 2 (1982): 151-58. Khanina, Lilia. "The Faust Legend and Its Role in Alfred Schnittke's Work." Tempo 63, no. 248 (2009): 2-11. Larkey, Edward. "Cultural Policies toward Popular Music: The Orphanization of the "Wienerlied" in the 1950s." Modern Austrian Literature 30, no. 1 (1997): 69-87. Lee, Frances. Overturning 'Dr. Faustus': Rereading Thomas Mann's Novel in Light of 'Observations of a
Non-Political Man'. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Lenau, Nicolaus. Faust: Ein Gedicht. Cotta: Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1836. Levitz, Tamara. "Teaching New Classicality: Busoni's Master Class in Composition, 1921-1924." PhD diss., University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 1994. Liszt, Franz. A Faust Symphony: In Three Character Pictures. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2003. Longyear, Rey M., and Kate R. Covington. "Tonal and Harmonic Structures in Liszt's Faust Symphony." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 28, no. 1/4 (1986): 153-71. Majewski, Henry F. "Reading Melancholy: French Romantic Interpretations of Dürer's Engravings." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 25, no. 1/2 (1996): 13-29. Mann, Thomas. Doktor Faustus. Translated by John E. Woods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1947. __________. Doktor Faustus. Translated by H. T. LowePorter. London: Random House,1992. __________. The Story of a Novel. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961. Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. New York: Dial Press, 1932. Nerval, Gérard. Les Deux Faust De Goethe. Paris: H. Champion, 1932. Polin, Claire. "Interviews with Soviet Composers." Tempo, no. 151 (1984): 10-16. __________. "The Composer as Seer, but Not Prophet." Tempo, no. 190 (1994): 13-17. Ross, Alex. “An Adrian Leverkühn Companion,” The Rest is Noise (blog), March 6, 2016, http://www.
therestisnoise.com/2016/03/ an-adrian-leverk%C3%BChncompanion.html. __________. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. 1st ed., New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Seidlin, Oskar. “Is the ‘Prelude in the Theatre’ a Prelude to Faust?" PMLA 64, no. 3 (1949): 462-70. Sorg, Timo. Beziehungszauber: Musikalische Interpretation und Realisation der Werke Thomas Manns. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: A. Knopf, 1939. Spies, Johann. Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Frankfurt am Main: Spies, 1587. Spitzer, Michael. Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven's Late Style. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006. Stark, Eric. "Research Report: The Use of the Chorus to Provide Time and Place Cues in Hector Berlioz's ‘La Damnation De Faust’." The Choral Journal 43, no. 4 (2002): 85-89. Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1959. Van Rij, Inge. "Back to (the Music of ) the Future: Aesthetics of Technology in Berlioz's "Euphonia" and "Damnation De Faust"." Cambridge Opera Journal 22, no. 3 (2010): 257-300. Weitzman, Ronald. "Schnittke's 'Faust' in Hamburg." Tempo, no. 194 (1995): 27-30. Ziolkowski, Theodore. "Leverkühn's Compositions and Their Musical Realizations." The Modern Language Review 107, no. 3 (2012): 837-56.
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RESEARCH 2018 AWARD RESEARCH WINNERS RESEARCH Sigma Xi Undergraduate Research Awards:
Starting in Spring 2018, the Northwestern University chapter of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society, partnered with Northwestern’s Office of Undergraduate Research to fund awards for the best overall poster and the best overall oral presentation at the University’s annual Undergraduate Research and Arts Exposition (Expo). Expo is the largest student conference on campus and focuses on original research and creative work by Northwestern's undergraduates across all disciplines. The $500 Sigma Xi Best Expo Oral Presentation Award was presented to Jamilah Silver for her research project, “The Role of Home Environment, Temperament, Family Warmth & Attachment: Moderators and Predictors between Exposure to Violence and Depressive Symptoms in Low-Income Preschoolers.” The $500 Sigma Xi Best Expo Poster Presentation Award was presented to Elizabeth Odunsi for her research project, “Droppin’ Knowledge: Hip Hop’s Portrayal of the Criminal Justice System.”
Harold B. Gotaas Award:
This award is given annually to a senior in the McCormick School of Engineering who has performed exemplary engineering research. The winner is determined by a panel of faculty members on the basis of a research paper and presentation by a group of selected finalists before the judging committee. The award is named for Dr. Gotaas, who was Northwestern’s Dean of Engineering between 1957 and 1970. The 2018 Gotaas Award was presented to Alexander Johnson, whose research project was entitled, “Effect of High Frequency in Hearing Aids on Decreasing Listening Difficulty for Hearing Impaired.” Alexander designed and tested speech-enhancement algorithms for hearing aids that reduce users’ discomfort associated with listening to speech in noisy conditions. Biosketches of Jamilah, Elizabeth, and Alexander are featured next. 069
JAMILAH SILVER
Jamilah Silver is a senior in the School of Education and Social Policy with majors in Human Development & Psychological Services and Psychology. She served as a research assistant for the Development, Early Education and Policy Lab for a year and a half under Terri Sabol and currently serves as a research assistant in the Child and Adolescent Mood Laboratory at the Feinberg School of Medicine under Mark Reinecke. She is interested in conducting research at the nexus of developmental psychopathology and intervention, with the goal of identifying and understanding the risk factors and mechanisms of
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depression in early childhood and adolescence. At the expo, Jamilah presented an independent project focusing on the prevalence of depressive symptoms among low-income preschool children, with a particular focus on the child, family and community factors that may influence the development of depressive symptoms. Findings from this study outline the key role of community and home environments in preschool onset depressive symptoms and underscore the importance of early identification of depression, as well as early preventive intervention. 070
ELIZABETH ODUNSI
Elizabeth Odunsi graduated in 2018 with a major in Legal Studies and minors in both African-American Studies and Political Science. From New Jersey, she grew up with an interest in both law and politics and developed a passion for social justice. While at Northwestern, she served as the programming chair of Phi Alpha Delta, the pre-law fraternity, and taught health workshops to Chicago Public Schools freshmen through the Peer Health Exchange. Elizabeth plans to attend law school in the near future and hopes to become a civil rights attorney. 071
For her senior Legal Studies thesis, Elizabeth was interested in researching the intersection between popular culture and the criminal justice system using a form of media that is well known for its sustained critiques of that system: hip-hop music. She studied the genreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effects on listeners' opinions in order to evaluate how hip-hop music can be incorporated into criminal justice reform efforts. Her thesis, titled "Droppin' Knowledge: Portrayals of the Criminal Justice System in Hip-Hop Music and Its Effects," was named a Thesis of Distinction by the Legal Studies Department.
ALEXANDER JOHNSON
Alexander Johnson graduated from McCormick in 2018 with a major in Electrical Engineering and minors in Spanish and Japanese. He is interested in speech and audio processing as well as machine learning. Outside of the classroom, he was in the Northwestern University Marching Band and Basketball Band, participated in the National Society of Black Engineers and worked as a peer tutor. After graduation, he started his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UCLA. Alexander's undergraduate research was in signal processing
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for speech enhancement in hearing aids. In his senior project, he worked closely with professor Thrasos Pappas (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and professor Pamela Souza (Communication Sciences and Disorders) to design and test speech-enhancement algorithms for hearing aids that reduce users' discomfort associated with listening to speech in noisy conditions. He experimented with combinations of selective frequency gains, time-duration expansions and dynamic range compression to create the algorithm and completed rounds of subjective testing to optimize it. 072
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Media Trust and Importance of News Platforms in Qatar Syeda Shageaa Naqvi Jocelyn Sage Mitchell Faculty Adviser
THE RECENT PROLIFERATION OF "FAKE NEWS" HAS DIRECTED CONSIDERABLE SCHOLARLY ATTENTION TOWARD HOW CULTURAL AND POLITICAL IDENTITY INFLUENCE PEOPLE'S TRUST IN MEDIA.
However, most discussions of trust in media have been Western-centric. My study adds to the existing body of literature by analyzing the relationships between these variables in the Arab world, particularly in Qatar. Using the Qatari national samples (n=280 in 2015 and n=508 in 2017) in the 2015 and 2017 waves of the Media Use in the Middle East surveys (Dennis, Martin and Wood 2015, 2017), I examine cultural identity—identifying oneself as culturally conservative or progressive—as a potential predictor of variation in trust in news media as a whole and in the importance of different sources of information. » 073
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y research analyzes the correlations between cultural identity and two dependent variables: trust in media and importance of different sources of information (social media, newspapers, and interpersonal). Overall, I found that trust in mass media and importance of different platforms as sources of news and information decreased from 2015 to 2017 across the board, regardless of cultural identity. There was, however, a statistically significant correlation between cultural identity and social media: the importance of social media decreased among culturally conservative Qataris, while it increased among culturally progressive Qataris. I have two conclusions: first, that media skepticism might be increasing among Qatari nationals, making them more critical consumers of news; and second, conservative nationals might be giving less importance to social media because the proliferation of anti-Qatar news shortly after the country won the FIFA 2022 bid goes against their cultural, social, and political beliefs, while progressives are more accepting of international media’s criticism.
implicates greater media literacy and media skepticism among the population, explanations that came to light through interviews with experts at Northwestern University in Qatar and through analysis of a qualitative survey completed by 36 Qatari nationals. As stated previously, there has been considerable research done on how and why media trust varies and the relation this has with political and cultural identity. However, little research has been conducted on these particular topics from a Middle Eastern standpoint (Guess, Nyhan and Reifler, 2017) and more specifically, from Qatar’s perspective.1 The findings of this research will contribute to the body of literature about news media trust and consumption in the Arab world. After observing the trends in the data and conducting interviews with experts and Qatari nationals, I conclude that media literacy and media skepticism is increasing among the general population, making Qataris more critical of the news they consume, particularly from local and national news organizations.
INTRODUCTION
LITERATURE REVIEW
In recent years, trust in media has drawn considerable scholarly attention. Ever since Internet penetration rates and social media use started increasing, more people around the world have gained access to vast amounts of information, including news sources (Camaj 2014; Kaul 2012, 2-4). Such unprecedented access is beneficial because but not only helps diversify avaliable news options, it also allows them to decide which news organizations to follow. However, this kind of access also has its downsides. One major issue is that because people have to sift through a plethora of news sources, they are more vulnerable to being manipulated or misled by biased news organizations with hidden agendas (Kaul 2012, 2-5). The proliferation of fake news has further complicated this issue. These problems are not restricted to a single region, since the Internet is a global technology. There has been an overall decrease in media trust and importance of different media platforms among Qatari nationals from 2015 to 2017, as shown by secondary analysis on the Media Use in the Middle East survey conducted by Northwestern University in Qatar (Dennis, Martin, and Wood 2015, 2017). This paper will focus on the reasons behind this decrease in media trust among Qatari nationals and will explore whether declining media trust and importance of different news sources
Before delving into the analysis, it is necessary to understand what media trust means as well as the background of media trust and news consumption from a global perspective. The concept of trust is crucial to the functioning of society. Trust determines how we interact with others and the stability of our society (Müller 2013, 42-46; Wang and You 2016). Decisions to trust an actor or institution are based on past experiences with not just that particular actor or institution but also with other dissimilar ones. We decide to trust actors or institutions because we have ample confidence that they will act according to our expectations, or at least come close to them. (Müller 2013, 36-40; Wang and You 2016). Therefore, if we consider the previous point about expectations, the following definition of trust seems logical. Trust in institutions is defined as the “belief that the perceived institutional performance conforms to the expectations of the individuals” (Müller 2013, 40). Having established the meaning of trust, it is important to see how this definition relates to the concept of trust in media.
¹ Personal interview with Iman Khamis, Technical Services Librarian at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 29, 2017. Transcript of key points is available upon request.
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"There is a downward trend in media trust across the globe, with the sharpness of the decline less pronounced in some countries as compared to others." Every time people encounter a new source of news, an encounter that is becoming increasingly common as access to media grows, they have to decide whether they trust the news source. Because it would be cognitively draining to assess new actors and institutions every time, individuals rely on past experiences and stereotypes to make informed decisions—a process called schema (Ardèvol-Abreu and Zúñiga 2016; Müller 2013, 48). An aspect of using schema to reduce cognitive overload means relying on cues of trustworthiness, such as appearance, reputation, past performance and accountability (Sztompka 2000, 7195). Additionally, results from surveys on media trust have shown that people evaluate news media based on the classical norms of journalism—accuracy, fairness, objectivity and completeness (Müller 2013, 108). In this way, individuals utilize past experiences and their familiarity with existing journalistic norms to decide whether they trust news they consume from a particular news organization. Additionally, according to some existing literature, people tend to avoid sources of news and information that challenge their existing beliefs and values (Friedersdorf 2011). Moreover, because news organizations understand the intrinsic quality in people to consume media that cater to their pre-existing cultural and political views, organizations tailor their reporting to cater to these preferences, thereby forming a symbiotic relationship with the public (Park 2016, 7-8). Having established the definition of trust and the factors that influence how much trust people have in news media organizations, it is important to briefly look at the global trends in media trust to get an idea of why roughly similar variations are observed across countries that have different cultural, political, economic and social contexts. Additionally, an overview of global trends in media trust will serve as a springboard for understanding and contextualizing regional trends, particularly those observed in the Middle East as to fit the purpose of this study. There is a downward trend in media trust across the globe, with the sharpness of the
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decline less pronounced in some countries as compared to others. Because of variations in the rate of decline, some countries in the world score better than others even though media trust in those countries is also decreasing (Müller 2013, 128-131). Past analyses on data from the World Values Survey and Freedom House press scores for different countries have shown that despite an overall downward trend, trust in media remains high in authoritarian regimes, while the opposite is the case in democratic regimes (Müller 2013, 131). One reason behind this could be the difference in standards that people hold the press to in different countries. For instance, many people in Middle Eastern countries, which are mostly authoritarian, might be well aware of the state’s intervention in local news coverage of issues. Therefore, they do not hold the media to high standards of objectivity and transparency. However, audience in the democratic Western countries are aware of the independence of media in their countries and therefore hold journalists and news coverage to high standards of journalistic norms (Müller 2013, 134). However, this explanation might be too simplistic for today’s Information Age. In some cases, people living in authoritarian regimes might now hold the press to high standards because the Internet allows them access to different news organizations that offer them various, unbiased points of views about the same issues.2 This point will become more salient when we use Qatar as an example. CASE OF QATAR In order to understand declining media trust and lower importance of different news sources among Qatari nationals, it is imperative to look at how the political and economic context influences media freedom in the country. Qatar, like other Middle Eastern countries, 2 Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
nurj – vol. 14 has developed under an authoritarian regime. Ever since the discovery of oil in 1970s, Qatar, has been characterized as a rentier state—a political model in which the state takes advantage of natural resources, such as oil and gas rents, to increase economic welfare of its population and hence enhance political stability (Mitchell 2013). Although it may be too simplistic, the rentier state model does emphasize how there is little government accountability since citizens are not taxed. Such a lack of accountability encourages a somewhat unrestricted expansion of power, influence and interference from the state, which results in many negative consequences for the country, including media freedom (Sandbakken 2006, 135-140). Currently, there are seven newspapers operating in Qatar and all are either owned by the ruling family or their associates. News coverage in these papers is overtly biased in the country’s favor, with stories shedding little to no light on local issues (Figenschou 2013, 42). However, the poor state of local critical journalism is not in line with the government’s stance towards media freedom. Despite state control of local media coverage, Qatar has portrayed itself as an arbiter of media freedom in the Arab world. Over the last two decades, the government has taken many steps to prove its commitment to enhancing media freedom in the country (Figenschou 2013, 38). One of the most discussed moves was the establishment of Al Jazeera in 1996. Another important step the government took was setting up the Doha Centre for Media Freedom in April 2008. The purpose of the Centre was not just to enhance media freedom but to also assist journalists reporting in dangerous areas (Figenschou 2013, 38). Additionally, even though it was not a government initiative, the establishment of Doha News in the country in 2009 marked a significant stride towards media freedom, since the online news outlet engaged in critical journalism about many local issues (Doha News Team 2009; Townson 2013). The news service, which initially started off on Twitter, was met with praise for its quality reporting. Thus, with a small team of experienced journalists who had previously worked for news organizations such as the BBC and The Wall Street Journal, Doha News quickly became a well-reputed and frequently cited news organization in Qatar (Doha News Team 2009). However, the government also took many steps that were not in line with its purported stance on media freedom. For instance, in the case of Al Jazeera, even though the partially independent news organization has engaged
in critical journalism of the Arab world , it has produced very few stories on local issues, partly because it receives a plurality of funding from Qatari elites and business, such as Qatar Airways and Qatar Gas (Figenschou 2013, 40). In the case of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, the organization faced government crackdown after the editor-inchief allowed the publication of stories and reports criticizing the state of media freedom in the country, such as a 2009 report about prevalent media self-censorship in Qatar (Figenschou 2013, 37-39; Khatri 2017). The government also introduced a cybercrime law in 2014 that further limited media freedom (Amnesty International 2014). In the case of Doha News, the news outlet’s website was blocked in 2016 by ictQatar, the local regulator for information and communication issues in the country (Khatri 2016; Chatriwala 2017). Upon being blocked, Doha News released an official statement that read, “We are incredibly disappointed with this decision, which appears to be an act of censorship” (Khatri 2016). The authorities refused to comment on why such a measure was taken, but several media professionals and readers speculated that the publication of an op-ed piece by a gay Qatari man incited the decision (BBC News 2016). Government censorship of media in Qatar has received considerable international media attention from organizations like the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders. Such international pressure has translated into the emergence of privately-owned news outlets, which in turn has increased audience expectations of plurality in news content as well as publication style (Al-Jaber and Elareshi 2014, 37). As Müller (2013) says, “on the individual level, a culture of distrust represents an actor’s propensity to be critical and not to take available choices at face value” (p.59). The trends observed in this research are thus reflective of greater audience expectations and greater media literacy. METHOD This study analyzes data from the 2015 and 2017 Media Use in the Middle East survey conducted by Northwestern University in Qatar in conjunction with Harris Poll. The survey touches upon topics such as the kind of media people use, what factors affect their use and consumption of media, how their use of media affects their interactions with friends, family and others, the extent to which they trust media, and what factors affect their trust in media (Dennis, Martin and Wood 2017). The 2013, 2015 and 2017 surveys do
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not include questions about entertainment media use, such as the kinds of movies people like to watch, whether they want censorship for violent content, sexual content, etc.; these areas are covered in the 2014 and 2016 entertainment media surveys. Because of the transparency in the survey, we can see that it is a valid source. The survey was funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (NPRP grant #7-1757-5-261), which is part of Qatar Foundation and additional support was provided by Doha Film Institute and Northwestern University in Qatar. The survey was administered to people 18 years and older in six Arab countries—Tunisia, Lebanon, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, Egypt. The survey was conducted in English and Arabic and also in French in Tunisia and Lebanon. The 2017 survey replicated many questions from the 2015 edition, allowing for longitudinal comparisons. In total there were 6,093 completed interviews in the 2015 survey and 6,169 completed interviews in the 2017 edition, roughly translating to 1,000 respondents per country. Specifically, Qatar had 1,000 respondents in 2015 and 1,140 respondents in 2017. Respondents in all countries except Qatar were interviewed face-to-face; respondents in Qatar were interviewed over the phone through random-digit dialing because of government restrictions on how surveys are conducted. (Dennis, Martin and Wood 2017). The 2015 survey fieldwork in Qatar was conducted between February 11 and March 1, 2015, while the 2017 survey fieldwork was conducted between February 7 and March 23, 2017. The margin of error for Qatar in the 2015 survey was +/- 3.2 percentage points, whereas it was +/- 3.3 percentage points in the 2017 edition3 (Dennis, Martin and Wood 2015; Dennis, Martin and Wood 2017). The margin of error means that 95 percent of the time we can be confident that the results reported are within 3 percentage points of the true value. Response rates ranged from 37 percent in Qatar to 87 percent in Tunisia. Similar surveys conducted in the U.S. yield far lower response rates, usually below 20 percent. Using rim weighting, the data from all countries were weighted by gender, age, nationality and geography, among other factors, to best reflect the demographics of the total population. The following study will analyze and contextualize the correlation between cultural identity and trust in media as well as importance of different media platforms,
specifically social media, interpersonal sources and newspapers as news sources. The secondary analysis will focus on cultural identity as the independent variable, with two other questions serving as the dependent variables. For the independent variable, the following question from the survey will be used: “Compared to most nationals in this country, how would you describe yourself?” The responses range from culturally very conservative to culturally very progressive, creating a self-assessed 5-point scale of cultural conservatism or progressivism. Researchers justified this choice because of the varying cultural, social, political and economic contexts of all Arab countries included in the survey and hence, different definitions of conservatism and progressivism in each country.4 There are three dependent variables measuring how much importance respondents place on social media, interpersonal sources and newspapers as sources of news and information as well as how much trust and confidence Qatari nationals have in mass media. Analysis will first be conducted on the question, “For news and information, how important is each of the following to you as a source?” Although the responses include the Internet, TV, radio, magazines, books and news applications, this study will include only social media, interpersonal sources and newspapers because these three categories are clearly defined and provide a good contrast between forms of new and old media (Responses were on a 5-Likert scale where; 1=Not important at all, 2=Not important, 3=Neutral/Undecided, 4=Important, 5=Very Important). Second, analysis will be conducted on the question, “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media – such as newspapers, TV and radio – when it comes to reporting the news fully accurately and fairly?” (Responses were on a 5-Likert scale where; 1=A great deal of trust, 2=A fair amount of trust, 3=Not very much trust, 4=No trust at all, 7=Don’t know, 9=Refused). The study includes only Qatari nationals in order to keep the focus of the research narrow and contextually rich. In addition to secondary analysis on the Media Use in the Middle East survey, the research will incorporate results from a qualitative survey conducted by the researcher among Qatari nationals between ages 13 and
³ Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
⁴ Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
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"Overall trust in media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately decreased from 83 percent in 2015 to 68 percent in 2017." 33.5 While this survey is not drawn from a random sample or nationally representative of the entire Qatari community, the researcher designed this survey to receive indepth explanations that help to contextualize the generalizable numbers from the Media Use in the Middle East survey. The survey, heretofore referred to as the Media Trust and News Consumption survey, was designed using Qualtrics. It was conducted online among Qatari nationals and received 36 responses. The qualitative survey questions were designed to resemble questions from the Media Use in the Middle East survey to match as closely as possible the existing data. Respondents were first asked to self-identify as conservative or progressive. They were then asked a range of questions about how and why their trust in news media has changed over the last two years; which news outlets they trust (responses included local, national and international); how often they rely on newspapers, interpersonal sources and social media for news; and how much trust they have in these three sources (questions about trust were asked separately for each source). Respondents were also asked which source out of the three they prefer the most for news. The following analysis will incorporate data from the secondary analysis of the Media Use in the Middle East survey, qualitative data from the Media Trust and News Consumption survey as well as existing literature to show how declining media trust might be due to more media literacy and media skepticism among the general population. DISCUSSION Secondary analysis on data from the Media Use in the Middle East survey revealed general trends, whereby the overall trust in media and importance of different news sources decreased among Qatari nationals, particularly among conservatives. These general trends are consistent with those
⁵ A full report of the questions and responses from the survey is available upon request.
found in the U.S. (Mitchell et al. 2014). Crosstabs between cultural identity and media trust revealed no significant correlation; however, there was a statistically significant correlation between Qatari nationals’ trust in media over time. Overall trust in media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately decreased from 83 percent in 2015 to 68 percent in 2017 (see Table 1). Further crosstabs between cultural identity and the three dependent variables revealed statistically significant correlations (see Tables 2, 3 and 4). Importance of social media decreased from 66 percent to 54 percent among culturally conservative Qataris, while it increased from 62 to 68 percent among culturally progressive Qataris. Importance of interpersonal sources decreased from 88 to 51 percent among culturally conservative Qataris, while it decreased from 66 to 46 percent among culturally progressives. There was no statistically significant correlation between importance of newspapers and cultural identity; decrease in newspaper importance was roughly similar for conservatives and progressives. Although these trends are roughly consistent with those observed in the U.S., the reasons behind these trends in the Arab world vary because of different social, political and cultural contexts. According to literature cited earlier (see Friedersdorf 2011 and Park 2016), people tend to gravitate towards media that confirm or add to their pre-existing beliefs and values. Thus, is there something about the content Qataris get from interpersonal sources, social media, newspapers, as well as the media as a whole, that has challenged their beliefs and values? The answer to this question can be better understood if we look at the qualitative data from the online survey the researcher conducted. Responses to the online survey indicated an overall decrease in media trust among Qatari nationals, regardless of cultural identity. Out of all the respondents, 61 percent said their trust in media decreased in the last two years—a trend consistent with asdasd the finding from the Media Use in the Middle
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"Most Qataris no longer trust media organizations because they believe the organizations are governmentcontrolled, inherently biased, or do not represent all points of views." East survey. In response to the question about which news outlets they trust more, 63 percent said they trusted international news outlets more than local and national outlets. Out of all those who said they trusted international news outlets more, 68 percent cited objective reporting, higher accuracy and less government interference as the reasons behind their choice. A plurality of the respondents cited social media as their preferred news platform, and out of those respondents, 45 percent said they preferred social media because it allowed them to see news from different organizations, thus exposing them to different viewpoints. The rest cited ease of access as the reason for their preference. Overall, the observations from the qualitative survey reveal how the standards to which Qataris hold the press are becoming more rigorous. Existing literature on media skepticism has shown that access to diverse media sources encourages more skepticism in news consumers (Cozzens and Contractor 1987, 437-440; Tsfati 2010, 22). Additionally, results of the secondary analysis on the Media Use in the Middle East survey show that among all the news platforms included in this research, social media is the most important one for conservatives and progressives even after its importance decreased over the last two ⁶ Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
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years (see Figures 2, 3 and 4 in Appendix A). If there is a high reliance on social media for news and information, that might mean people associate less importance with other sources because social media itself provides people with news and information from all across the world.6 A study by Ashley, Poepsel and Willis (2010, 37-39) found that media skepticism increases when people find out the sponsor of a news organization or more about the journalist who wrote the particular news story in question. This finding is relevant to this research because, as mentioned earlier, even though Qatar portrays itself as an arbiter of media freedom in the region, the government has engaged in direct or indirect acts of censorship that have attracted considerable international media attention. Additionally, since Internet penetration rates are increasing and are quite high among Qatari nationals—91 percent of Qataris were using the Internet in 2015 and 95 percent were using it in 2017—Qataris have access to a wide variety of national and international media outlets. This increases their odds of exposure to news articles with criticism of government censorship of media in Qatar and about underreported societal problems (Ashley, Poepsel and Willis 2010, 37-39; Dennis, Martin and Wood 2017). Furthermore, extrapolating the arguments and findings in existing studies on media skepticism and news consumer behaviors to Qataris shows that media literacy might be increasing among locals since they are becoming more active consumers of news by questioning local and national coverage of issues. Moreover, the responses from the qualitative survey conducted among Qataris showed that most Qataris no longer trust media organizations because they believe the organizations are governmentcontrolled, inherently biased, or do not represent all points of views. This kind of critical consumption of news and other media-related content is consistent with increased media literacy7 (Ashley, Poepsel and Willis 2010, 37-39). Such an increase in media literacy is fitting with some of the actions of the Qatari government, such as the establishment of Northwestern University in Qatar in 2008 that confers undergraduate degrees in journalism and communication, the establishment of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom where many workshops on media literacy have been held and the launch of the Media Information ⁷ Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
nurj – vol. 14 and Literacy program (MIL) in 2011, which has educated students from over 45 schools on media literacy and consumption (Anderson 2016; Doha Centre for Media Freedom 2014; Grizzle et al. 2013, 138). . Additionally, increased media literacy and media skepticism could explain why there was an overall downward trend in the importance of different news sources, except in the case of social media, among conservatives and progressives. One possible explanation is that the importance of different news platforms is decreasing because Qataris rely on multiple platforms for news and information to get the best account of a particular issue, rather than relying on one news source and risking getting a biased account.8 Overall, the trends revealed through secondary analysis of data from the Media Use in the Middle East survey show a general decline in media trust and importance of different media platforms as sources of news and information among Qataris, including conservatives and progressives. An online qualitative survey showed how rising media literacy and media skepticism could be the reasons behind these trends as Qataris cited greater trust in international news outlets because of unbiased, uncensored reporting and greater reliance on social media for news because it provides access to different viewpoints. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH The recent proliferation of “fake news” has directed considerable scholarly attention towards how cultural and political identity influence people’s trust in media. However, most discussions of trust in media have been Western-centric. My study adds to the existing body of literature by analyzing the relationships between these variables in the Arab region, particularly in Qatar. Using the Qatari national samples (n=280 in 2015 and n=508 in 2017) in the 2015 and 2017 waves of the Media Use in the Middle East surveys (Dennis, Martin and Wood 2017), I examined cultural identity—identifying oneself as culturally conservative or progressive—as a potential predictor of variation in trust in
news media as a whole and in the importance of different sources of information. My research analyzed the correlations between cultural identity and my two dependent variables: trust in media and importance of different sources of information (social media, newspapers and interpersonal). Overall, my research showed that trust in mass media and importance of different platforms as sources of news and information decreased across the board, regardless of cultural identity. There was, however, a statistically significant correlation between cultural identity and social media: the importance of social media decreased among culturally conservative Qataris, while it increased among culturally progressive Qataris. I have two conclusions: first, that media skepticism might be increasing among Qatari nationals, making them more active consumers of news; and second, conservative nationals might be giving less importance to social media because the proliferation of anti-Qatar news shortly after the country won the FIFA 2022 bid might be going against their cultural, social and political beliefs, while progressives might be more accepting of international media’s criticism. From the trends revealed through quantitative and qualitative analyses, it may be that the overall decrease in media trust and importance of different media platforms as sources of news could be because media literacy and media skepticism is increasing among Qataris. As Internet penetration rates increase and more Qataris access news from international organizations that criticize the state of media freedom in Qatar, their awareness of government interference in suppressing or censoring politically, culturally, socially, or economically sensitive issues has increased, making them more critical of local news coverage. Future research about media trust and importance of different news platforms among Qataris can focus on how the GCC blockade has affected people’s perception of local, national and international media. Observing such changes in behavior and trust will help solidify the claim that media literacy and media skepticism might be increasing among Qataris, making them less likely to trust media and less likely to give importance to just one source of media for news and information.
⁸ Personal interview with Robb Wood, Former Director of Strategic Partnerships at Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, November 20. Transcript of key points is available upon request
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Al-Jaber, Khalid, and Mokhtar Elareshi. 2014. " Media Landscape in the Arab Gulf States." In The Future of News Media in the Arab World: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 34-61. Amnesty International. 2014. "Qatar: New cybercrimes law endangers freedom of expression." Amnesty International. September 18. https://www.amnesty.org/ en/latest/news/2014/09/ qatar-new-cybercrimeslaw-endangers-freedomexpression/ Anderson, Nick. 2016. "Northwestern University will stay a decade longer in Qatar." The Washington Post. February 23. https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/ grade-point/wp/2016/02/23/ northwestern-university-willstay-another-decade-in-qatar/ Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga. 2016. "Effects of Editorial Media Bias Perception and Media Trust on the Use of Traditional, Citizen, and Social Media News." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly no. 94 (3):703-724. Ashley, Seth, Mark Poepsel, and Erin Willis. 2010. "Media Literacy and News Credibility: Does knowledge of media ownership increase skepticism in news consumers." Journal of Media Literacy Education no. 2 (1):37-46. BBC News. 2016. "Qatar accused of blocking Doha News website." BBC News. https:// www.bbc.com/news/worldmiddle-east-38169032. Camaj, Lindita. 2014. "Media Use and Political Trust in an Emerging Democracy: Setting the Institutional Trust Agenda in Kosovo." International Journal of Communication no. 8:187-209. Chatriwala, Omar. 2017. “An update on Doha News being blocked in Qatar.” Doha News. January 25. https://dohanews. co/an-update-on-doha-newsbeing-blocked-in-qatar/. Cozzens, Michael D., and Noshir S. Contractor. 1987. "The Effect of Conflicting Information on Media Skepticism." Communication Research no. 14 (4):437-451. Dennis, Everette E., Justin D. Martin, and Robb Wood. 2015. “Media Use in the Middle East, 2015: A SixNation Survey.” Northwestern University in Qatar. http://
www.mideastmedia.org/ survey/2015/ Dennis, Everette E., Justin D. Martin, and Robb Wood. 2017. “Media Use in the Middle East, 2017: A SevenNation Survey.” Northwestern University in Qatar. http:// www.mideastmedia.org/ survey/2017/ Doha News Team. 2009. "About Us." Doha News. https:// dohanews.co/about/ Doha Centre for Media Freedom. 2014. Media Information Literacy at Doha Center for Media Freedom trains Qatar's youth. UNESCO: UNESCO. June 9. https://milunesco. unaoc.org/mil-resources/ dcmfs-mil-trains-qatarsyouth/ Grizzle, Alton, Penny Moore, Michael Dezuanni, Sanjay Asthana, Carolyn Wilson, Fackson Banda, and Chido Onumah. 2013. Media and Information Literacy: Policy and Strategy Guidelines. UNESCO. http://www.unesco. org/new/en/communicationand-information/resources/ publications-andcommunication-materials/ publications/full-list/ media-and-informationliteracy-policy-and-strategyguidelines/ Fandy, Mamoun. 2000. "Information Technology, Trust, and Social Change in the Arab World." Middle East Journal no. 54 (3):378-394. Figenschou, Tine Ustad. 2013. Al Jazeera and the Global Media Landscape: The South is Talking Back: Routledge. Friedersdorf, Conor. 2011. "Media Bias Against Conservatives? Here's What the Right is not Told." The Atlantic, November 10. https://www.theatlantic. com/politics/archive/2011/11/ media-bias-againstconservatives-heres-what-theright-isnt-told/248204/ Kaul, Vineet. 2012. "Changing Paradigms of Media Landscape in the Digital Age." Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism no. 2 (110):1-9. Khatri, Shabina. 2016. “Doha News statement on the blocking of its website in Qatar.” Doha News. November 30. https://medium.com/ dohanews/doha-newsstatement-on-the-blockingof-its-website-in-qatar9f3759a99282. Khatri, Shabina. 2017. "It's getting harder than ever to be a journalist in Qatar."
Doha News. April 28. https:// medium.com/dohanews/ its-getting-harder-than-everto-be-a-journalist-in-qatarf262d47e99f Martin, Justin. 2017. “Public Opinion Research in the Middle East.” Lecture, Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar, September 25. Mitchell, Amy, Jeffrey Gottfried, Jocelyn Kiley, and Katerina Eva Matsa. 2014. Political Polarization & Media Habits. Pew Research Center: Pew Research Center. Mitchell, Jocelyn Sage. 2013. Beyond Allocation: The Politics of Legitimacy in Qatar. PhD diss., Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Müller, Jan. 2013. Mechanisms of Trust: News Media in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Accessed December 6, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. Park, Daniel. 2016. Media Bias: How the bias affects public perceptions of the media and what can be done to further prevent erosion of mediapublic relationship. 1-39. The Faculty of Journalism Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Sandbakken, Camilla. 2006. "The limits to democracy posed by oil rentier states: The cases of Algeria, Nigeria and Libya." Democratization no. 13 (1):135-152. doi: 10.1080/13510340500378464. Sztompka, Piotr. 2000. Trust: A Sociological Theory: Cambridge University Press. Tsfati, Yariv. 2010. "Online News Exposure and Trust in the Mainstream Media: Exploring Possible Associations." American Behavioral Scientist no. 54 (1):22-42. doi: http:// citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.924.6188 &rep=rep1&type=pdf. Townson, Peter. 2013. “Doha News and the growth of online media in Qatar.” Doha Centre for Media Freedom. February 21. https://web.archive.org/ web/20130226140217/http:// www.dc4mf.org/en/content/ doha-news-and-growthonline-media-qatar. Wang, Zhengxu, and Yu You. 2016. "The arrival of critical citizens: decline of political trust and shifting public priorities in China." International Review of Sociology no. 26 (1):105-124.
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About the Contributors Erin Dunbar Max Rowe Lillian Siegel Emily Vogt Nikki Baim Grace Pechianu Syeda Shageaa Naqvi
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Erin Dunbar— Stories of the Self: Agnès Varda’s Performative Subjectivity in Les plages d’Agnès and Les glaneurs et la glaneuse Following graduation, Dunbar will be headed to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for a year with a Princeton in Asia fellowshop. After teaching English at a private Mongolian K-12 school, she plans on attending a graduate school to obtain a PhD in French. What is your research about, in a nutshell? Basically, I'm working with two of Agnès Varda's later documentary films and exploring how she uses images of landscapes, objects and other people to craft her own subjectivity. I pull on theories from semiotics and linguistics, as well as visual studies and aesthetic theory.
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How did you come to your research topic? My research started out as a project about Varda in conversation with Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. However, after my initial paper was finished in the fall, I wanted to change directions a bit from merely exploring memory in different media and focusing more intently on Varda's work – which is largely written about in America as a feminist body of films, rather than anything else. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? I am hoping to go to graduate school in France and would love to continue this project. Varda offers such a wealth of opportunities to discuss feminine bodies onscreen, aging, cohesive narratives based on filmic output over an entire lifetime (she's 89 and still making films), as well as the more traditional feminist and Lacanian readings of her films. I just love Varda!
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Max Roweâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels: Repetition and Mu Shiying's Metropolis Rowe is currently working in Chicago at a consulting firm. He hopes to return soon to China and resume his studies of Chinese literature and the Chinese language. What is your research about, in a nutshell? I examine the way that the Chinese modernist Mu Shiying uses repetition in his writing. In particular, I'm interested in the way that Mu deploys repetition to both represent and challenge hallmarks of the modern experience â&#x20AC;&#x201C; clock time, the metropolis, bustling nightlife, jazz music and more. I find that there is an indeterminancy, a displacement, in the text created by the use of repetition that illuminates an analogus displacement in the experiences of modern life.
How did you come to your research topic? I was introduced to Mu's work early in my college career, in a class taught by my Adviser. I was fascinated by his modernist approach and by how sharply he diverged from his contemporaries in the Chinese literary-historical canon. I kept returning to Mu's short stories over the years, began reading some of the scholarship surrounding his work and realized that his use of repetition was one of the things I loved most about his writing. I knew that I wanted to explore this compelling and pecular technique in my own research. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? There is still comparatively little English language scholarship on Mu and his Chinese modernist peers, though a few trailblazing scholars have been publishing on Mu since the 1990s. Those who have written about Mu often focus on his formal experimentation, but rarely tackle his repetitive technique directly. Rather, his most emblematic examples of repetition are often taken as ancillary evidence for a separate argument. I believe Mu's repetition ranks among the most promising areas of future Mu scholarship.
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Lillian Siegel—
Analyzing the Women's Suffrage Movement and the 19th Amendment of 1920 on Health Outcomes Siegel graduated from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern in 2018 with majors in economics and global health and a minor in the business institutions program. Since then she has moved to Washington, DC to work as a paralegal in international arbitration for White & Case. She plans to continue pursuing law and exploring overlaps between this field and the gender equality and health disparity issues that comprised a large portion of her studies at NU.
What is your research about, in a nutshell? The idea is to see whether the women’s suffrage movement of 1920 had spillover effects outside of solely granting women the right to vote. I wanted to measure what impact suffrage itself had on a variety of different health metrics, to see if suffrage allowed women to better advocate for themselves. I ultimately found significant changes in female mortality rates, maternal mortality, and infant mortality. This suggested that a shock to women’s rights such as gaining the right to vote and thus the ability to exercise political opinions and participate in democracy could affect their health outcomes and that of their children.
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How did you come to your research topic? I knew that I wanted to study a topic related to gender, and I was inspired by recent women’s rights movements and victories, such as women gaining the right to drive in Saudi Arabia. However, as I started searching for data sets, I realized I would have more luck if I chose a “shock” to women’s rights that occurred earlier in time, so that there would be sufficient data before and after the event, as well as in the United States, so that I would have an easier time accessing large quantities of data. I settled on suffrage, as the idea that it was enacted in different states at different times would provide for an interesting and challenging analysis. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? Researchers are actually working on practically this same topic. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a study in 2018, called “Who Benefited from Women’s Suffrage?” There is more research to be done surrounding different types of shocks and different types of outcomes. I would want to see if policies regarding abortion rights or divorce rights also had spillover effects. Findings like these could be important support for social and political change, especially in countries where women still lack basic rights that men have. Policy implementation could have impacts beyond the scope of the reform itself.
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Emily Vogt— The Cognitive and Economic Implications of Nonmedical Adderall & Prescription Stimulant Use on College Campuses Vogt graduated from Northwestern in 2018 with majors in Neuroscience and Economics. She is particularly interested in addiction, behavioral economics, and the way in which economic thinking influences our approach to medicine and healthcare reform. She was an undergraduate research fellow for two years within the neurobiology department and was previously a research assistant at the Searle Center for Advanced Learning and Teaching. Vogt is now an Intramural Research Training Awardee at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and plans to pursue a medical degree afterward, with research focusing on sex differences in addiction and health disparities. In her free time, Emily is an avid runner, sailor, DC sports fan and tea enthusiast.
How did you come to your research topic?
What is your research about, in a nutshell?
Where do you see the future direction of this work leading?
This paper explores how we might better understand the cognitive and economic effects of prescription stimulant misuse for its alleged cognitive-enhancing abilities. While these “study drugs” comprise a significant and growing market on college campuses, very few studies have explored the actual effect of prescription stimulants on nonmedical users or the factors underlying continued participation in these markets.
I hope that this study, which is the first of its kind in evaluating measurable impacts of prescription stimulants on certain parameters of economic behavior of nonmedical users, will act as a springboard for future researchers to continue to understand the motivations of and implications for this growing subset of the population misusing prescription stimulants. I am confident that future studies could reveal powerful insights by using my study design in a larger sample population.
While I was aware of individuals using study drugs to get through tough midterms or an extended finals week, I realized how widespread this issue was in a conversation with some friends from other universities. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. When I started searching for additional literature or data on the issue, I realized how little research had been done on this subject. That spring, I wrote my final research paper for a behavioral economics class on these nonmedical prescription stimulant markets. My professor for that class, who eventually became my thesis Adviser, urged me to pursue further research.
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Nikki Baimâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; The Sports Department of Corrections: How false reports by ESPN criminalized the University of Arizona Basketball Program Nikki Baim is a junior at Northwestern University studying journalism and legal studies. She's interested in the intersection of race, gender, culture and sports. She won the 2018 Medill Howell Essay award for her analysis of ESPN's coverage of Arizona Basketball in the NCAA basketball scandal. A year later, the college hoops trial is still making headlines. Baim is currently on her journalism residency in Los Angeles at Yahoo Sports helping their investigative team and writing her own stories. She will return to Evanston next year for one last quarter of college. After that, she plans to attend law school. What is your research about, in a nutshell? I researched the media's coverage of the University of Arizona basketball coach's involvement in the FBI investigation on NCAA basketball. I specifically focused on ESPN and the impact of their erroneous coverage on Arizona's program.
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How did you come to your research topic? The Howell essay is meant to be an analysis of "truth gone awry" â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or an instance of a media outlet publishing false or misleading coverage. My familiarity with the conflict in Arizona inspired me to research the social and legal implications of ESPN's stories. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? I hope to see other researchers who could explore the change in the quality of sports media derived from social media and the immediacy of the Internet.
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Grace Pechianu— Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and the PostWar Concerto Grace Pechianu graduated from Northwestern University in 2018 where she received her Bachelor’s degree with concentrations in musicology and violin performance. During her time at Northwestern, she studied music history and historical composition, worked on the Moldenhauer music collection and participated in various chamber and orchestral ensembles. Grace is interested in the area where music and literature intersect. As a recipient of the Undergraduate Research Grant 2017, she investigated representations of the Faust legend in programmatic and instrumental music, the subject of her senior thesis. Grace was awarded the American Bach Society’s Frances Brokaw Grant for an internship at the Riemenschneider Bach Institute Summer of 2018. In September of 2018, she presented her research on musical compositions related to Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus at the American Musicological Society’s Midwest chapter meeting. Grace is currently researching the use of early electronic instruments in multimedia works as she pursues her master’s degree in musicology at Northwestern beginning fall of 2018.
What is your research about, in a nutshell? My research investigates thematic, diegetic and structural elements present in instrumental concertos inspired by Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus." My thesis explores the relationship of concertos by Hans Werner Henze and Geoffrey Gordon, two previous compositional models, and the significance behind employing the concerto genre for representations of Mann's novel. How did you come to your research topic? Chance encounters with literary Faust adaptations, including Mann's "Doktor Faustus" and Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" prompted me to explore Faustian music. I then studied Faustian musical works from Franz Liszt's "Faust Symphony" to Alfred Schnittke's "Faust Cantata," leading to my investigation of contemporary compositions related to the Faust legend. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? I wish to continue studying Faustian works and contemporary instrumental programmatic music. I hope that scholars, composers and musicians will be encouraged to investigate instrumental representations of moral and ethical dilemmas, not only limited to Faustian literature.
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Syeda Shageaa Naqvi— Media Trust and Importance of News Platforms in Qatar Shageaa Naqvi, who goes by “Jia,” is an undergraduate journalism senior at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus. She had the privilege to intern at The Washington Post for 10 weeks as a science reporter. She wrote 25 stories about health, science or the environment. She also covered the March for Science in Washington D.C. as a photojournalist. Jia also attended the 10th World Conference for Science Journalists in San Francisco, California in 2017. She plans to pursue medical or health journalism in graduate school, with a goal to work as a health reporter for The Post. What is your research about, in a nutshell? My research focuses on the correlation between cultural identity, i.e. whether someone self-identifies as culturally conservative or progressive, and trust in media as well as the importance of different media platforms as sources of information among Qatari nationals and how correlation changed over the course of two years from 2015 to 2017—a time during which the political situation of the Middle East changed considerably in light of the GCC Blockade.
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How did you come to your research topic? Data from the 2015 and 2017 Media Use in the Middle East surveys by Northwestern University in Qatar helped me devise my research question. Where do you see the future direction of this work leading? My research provides a unique perspective on the variables determining overall media credibility in the Middle East, particularly in Qatar and how Qatari nationals’ perception of media credibility changed over time. Future research about the media landscape in Qatar or other Middle Eastern countries can use my research findings and extrapolate on how other factors play a role in similar perceptions about media credibility in light of changing economic, political and social factors.
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