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Research & Innovation

Research in the arts and humanities represents a range of disciplines and distinctive modes of knowledge and methods that result in articles and books, ideas, exhibitions, performances, artifacts and more. This deliberate and dedicated work generates deep insights into the multi-faceted people and cultures of the world, past and present.
Whether individual or collaborative, funded or unfunded, our faculty are leading national networks and conferences, providing research frameworks, engaging students, traversing international archives and making significant contributions to UMD's research enterprise.

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Provost’s Do Good Innovator Award

In partnership with the Office of the Provost, the Innovator Awards highlight the incredible members of our campus community who create, nurture, expand and amplify social impact throughout education, programs and research.

English

Author/Lead: Peter Mallios
Dates:

Peter Mallios created and co-taught the course “ENGL388B, Mass Incarceration and Prison Education: Academic Writing in Prison.” Taking years to develop the course and to build on his experience working with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership, he collaborated with four co-teachers, community partners and our undergraduate students to study mass incarceration and develop a pedagogy for teaching people who are incarcerated. 

Lessons Learned From Telltale Testimonies: A Descriptive Study Assessing Coverage of the Tips From Former Smokers Campaign on YouTube

Co-written with Anna Hogan

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:
Publisher: Routledge

ABSTRACT

Background: Tobacco use and dependence alongside environmental tobacco exposure collectively form a leading cause of morbidity and mortality for the global population. Several clinical and public health interventions have sought to address this growing epidemic on both micro and macro levels. One national campaign, Tips From Former Smokers was prominent across the tobacco cessation landscape. Implemented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this campaign garnered coverage and engagement across the national population and also on virtual spaces via social media platforms in our digital era.

Purpose: This study is the first of its kind to critically examine sources and formats as well as assess the nature of content covered across the widely viewed videos pertaining to this campaign on YouTube. Prior studies have analyzed this campaign’s content on Facebook and Twitter.

Method: This study was cross-sectional, descriptive, and observational in design and involved conducting a content analysis of the most popular videos covered on the campaign across YouTube.

Results: Videos pertaining to health and aesthetic effects stemming from the sequelae of smoking, environmental tobacco exposure, and comorbidities with smoking attracted the most views. The majority of the widely viewed videos on the campaign were in the form of testimonials. There was scant coverage on tips and strategies for cessation across the videos.

Discussion: We present several clinical, campaign and systemic implications from these findings. We also propose recommendations for further considerations in future campaign development and implementation that build off the limitations and draw on the strengths of the Tips From Former Smokers campaign in addressing tobacco use and dependence as well as environmental tobacco exposure as targets for future cessation interventions.

Translation to Health Education Practice: In addition, we further delineate recommendations that account for health equity, diversity, and inclusivity considerations in coverage of content that could heighten engagement, relatability, connectivity, and acceptability of content by viewers worldwide.

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Required to Care: Emotional Labour and the Futures of Work in Catherine Lacey’s The Answers

By John Macintosh

English

Author/Lead: John MacIntosh
Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online

Abstract:

The concept of emotional labour pervades recent popular discourse. However, this discourse tends to emphasize the unpaid work performed in personal and familial relationships. This erases Arlie Russell Hochschild’s distinction between emotion work and emotional labour, the latter of which is a waged ‘management of feeling’ that ‘create[s] a publicly observable facial and bodily display’. This focus on unwaged emotion work identifies a real site of exploitation, but tends to obscure the recent historical tendency of care work to be subsumed increasingly into new forms of low-waged labour. I examine this tendency by turning to Catherine Lacey’s speculative novel The Answers (2017), which follows an indebted young woman, Mary, who takes a contract job in an experiment run by a celebrity seeking love. Alongside ‘girlfriends’ with other intimate roles, Mary is paid to be an ‘Emotional Girlfriend.’ I argue that the novel’s thought experiment of splitting the various roles of a romantic partner into separate, waged jobs not only commodifies affective labour, but also replicates the process of industrial deskilling in its depiction of the real subsumption of affective work into the service sectors. Next, I discuss the role of the experiment’s Research Division, which not only monitors experimental subjects via cameras, sensors, and interviews, but also directly influences their behaviour using ‘internal directives’, or chemical instructions that biologically optimize emotion. I argue that these directives intensify the management of feeling to make working subjects’ emotions more productive for capital. The argument concludes that The Answers updates Hochschild’s theory to account for work that is now often less secure, but fails to address the political questions it raises.

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Digital Trends in Autism: A Scoping Review Exploring Coverage of Autism across YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook

Co-written with Heather Graham and Jennifer Smith

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:

Abstract:

Autism continues to be a leading neurodevelopmental disorder across adult and pediatric populations that transcends racial, ethnic, age, and socioeconomic groups worldwide. Autism care and treatment also exerts immense costs on the healthcare system and lost productivity which are partly attributed to the existing resource limitations globally. Organizations, campaigns, and policies exist worldwide in increasing equity and accessibility of resources and services to individuals with autism. In the context of our digital era, a wealth of information is also more readily available on autism through electronic communication including social media platforms. As YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are ever-growing and among the leading social media platforms in contemporary times, examination of content covered on autism across these communication mediums is timely and warranted. This review consolidates findings from 32 sources on the sources, formats, and nature of content covered on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pertaining to a wealth of dimensions surrounding autism. Strengths and limitations of the studies and endeavors are presented. Implications for future campaign development, health equity, health policy, neurodiversity, and patient care are also delineated. Lastly, recommendations for future research and practice are discussed which present directions for tapping into the potential of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook as health communication mediums across the ever-changing autism landscape.

Inside the Bell Jar of Social Media: A Descriptive Study Assessing YouTube Coverage of Psychotropic Medication Adherence

This article belongs to the Special Issue Assessment of Adherence to Pharmacological Treatment in Patients with Mental Disorders: Methods, Health Impact and Healthcare Policies

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:

Abstract:


The global mental health crisis is a longstanding one that impacts a multitude of patient populations worldwide. Within this crisis, psychiatric medication adherence is yet another complex public health challenge that continues to persist and contribute towards the chronic nature of the increased incidence and prevalence of psychiatric morbidities, which in turn result in the sequalae of substantial costs to humanity, the healthcare system, lost productivity, functioning and disability among patients with mental disorders. Psychotropic medication adherence is a significant part of psychiatric care and treatment across severity levels of mental illness. This health behavior is also filled with complexities, given the abundance of social and behavioral determinants as well as intrinsic and extrinsic factors that surround this health behavior. Examining contexts for promoting this health behavior change is crucial in determining directions for addressing it more optimally. There have been several published studies on considerations and interventions to address this health behavior; however, to date, no studies have been published on assessing coverage and directions of content across social media platforms, which trend as a rising health communication medium in our digital era. The present study is the first of its kind to dive into exploring the nature of widely viewed content and deliverers of this content on a prominent social media platform, YouTube, as the basis to determine potential directions for future intervention that can extend to reaching more patients struggling with this high-risk health behavior across the world, given the global reach of social media.

Handle with Care: A Narrative Review of Infant Safe Sleep Practices across Clinical Guidelines and Social Media to Reduce SIDS

This paper focuses on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a leading cause of infant mortality across the United States and the world.

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:

Abstract:

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a leading cause of infant mortality across the United States and the world. There are multiple environmental and behavioral determinants of sudden infant death which are modifiable risk factors and potential targets for intervention. In this increasingly digital era, health education and communication on SIDS have taken many forms, which extend to social media. Current published studies on coverage of infant safe sleep practices are scant and were published well before the newly revised guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics that review ways to prevent infant sleep-related deaths based on evidence-based SIDS-reduction measures. In this Perspective: Review of a Pediatric Field, the current state of published knowledge and coverage on a range of infant safe sleep considerations across social media are reviewed. We delineate gaps in the knowledge and practice as well as the central differences between the 2016 and 2022 AAP Safe Sleep guidelines. We also present recommendations for further research and practice which support coverage of future content on the revised guidelines across social media as the basis to present the most up-to-date and evidence-based information for reducing sudden infant death from sleep-related causes. Tapping into the potential of social media as a learning modality in health promotion also contributes towards the larger goal of the World Health Organization, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and Healthy People 2030 to reduce infant mortality on both global and national levels.

NEH Public Scholars Grant

Distinguished University Professor Robert S. Levine of the Department of English has been awarded a Public Scholars Grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

English

Author/Lead: Robert S. Levine
Contributor(s): Robert S. Levine
Dates:
Award Organization:

National Endowment for the Humanities

The grant, which provides funding to individual authors writing nonfiction books in the humanities for the public, will support writing and archival research for Levine’s book-in-progress, under advance contract with W. W. Norton, on 19th-century American author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, best known for her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Strengthening Equitable Access to Care and Support for Children with Cerebral Palsy and Their Caregivers

This paper focuses on health equity and access to care considerations for children with cerebral palsy and their caregivers in light of the recent revisions in the clinical practice guidelines for cerebral palsy and their implications.

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:

Abstract:

Cerebral palsy is one of the most prevalent groups of motor disorders affecting children and adults across the world. As increasingly more children with cerebral palsy are living longer into adulthood, it is ever more crucial to ensure access to timely and needed early intervention from the onset of diagnosis, on a continuum, to optimize medical, developmental, socio-emotional, and academic outcomes for these children over time. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in collaboration with the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AACPDM), substantially revised the clinical practice guidelines for cerebral palsy in 2022, after their prior publication of the guidelines in 2006. The revised guidelines account for a range of considerations that are in line with the biopsychosocial, risk and resilience, and family-centered care models as well as promote a more strengths-based approach to care. Furthermore, there is increased emphasis in the guidelines on promoting equitable access to care as part of contributing towards health equity for all children with cerebral palsy. In addition, the 2022 guidelines clearly present recommendations for earlier diagnosis of cerebral palsy, potentially as early as infancy, as the basis for activating access to early intervention services for children that can bolster their neuroplasticity and global development from an earlier age onward. We consolidate the existing literature on caregiver perceptions, beliefs and concerns surrounding earlier diagnosis of cerebral palsy and connect them to the recommendations in the revised guidelines. We also delineate several considerations surrounding education for healthcare providers and caregivers of children in navigating the chronicity of cerebral palsy in
both community and healthcare contexts. There is a scant amount of literature on cerebral palsy across traditional and nontraditional sources of media in published studies, which we also review. Lastly, we present a wealth of recommendations for further research and practice that account for the revised 2022 guidelines, caregiver preferences and acceptability of care, and health equity as the bases for strengthening equitable access to care for children with cerebral palsy on a continuum as they transition into adulthood.

Silenced

Four women. Four enchantments. One man. But he is no handsome prince, and this is no sugar-sweet fairy tale.

English

Dates:
Silenced book cover image

In this novel by Ann Claycomb ’01, Jo, Abony, Ranjani, and Maia all have something in common: they have each been cursed by the CEO of their workplace after he abused his power to prey on them. He wants them silent and uses his sinister dark magic to keep them quiet about what he did. But Jo, Abony, Ranjani, and Maia are not fairy-tale princesses waiting to be rescued. They are fierce, angry women with a bond forged in pain, and they’re about to discover that they have power of their own. In this sharply written, bitingly relevant modern fable, the magic is dark and damaging, and the women are determined to rescue themselves.

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The Perils of Boarding: A Call to Achieve Parity in the Delivery of Acute Psychiatric Services for Children with COVID-19

This study samples 100 acute inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric programs and and reviews a range of considerations and recommendations for clinical practice and the health system in achieving parity in mental health care for these patients.

English

Author/Lead: Aysha Jawed
Dates:

Abstract:

Boarding across pediatric healthcare systems is on the rise during the pandemic. Children with positive COVID-19 test results awaiting psychiatric placements in the emergency department or medical unit settings are at increased risk for decompensation with unmet psychiatric needs during a time of crisis marked by vulnerability. There is scant literature unveiling best practices on delivery of care for these patients to achieve acute crisis stabilization. Recent studies have uncovered substantial increases in mental health disorders among children during the pandemic compared to previous incidence and prevalence rates prior to the pandemic. From the published literature, two healthcare systems have initiated long-term planning, development, and implementation of biodome psychiatric units for patients with COVID-19 in need of acute crisis stabilization services. We sampled 100 acute inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric programs to discern their post-COVID positive clearance policies for admission. Findings were mixed among days of quarantine required, symptomology, covid-designated spaces vs. self-isolated rooms for psychiatric treatment, number of COVID negative retests, and additional considerations. We also review a range of considerations and recommendations for clinical practice and the health system in achieving parity in mental health care for these patients which in turn could contribute towards mitigating the rising global mental health crisis. Furthermore, increasing access to acute psychiatric services for these patients will also contribute towards the larger goal of the World Health Organization, Sustainable Developmental Goals of the United Nations, and Healthy People 2030 in increasing accessibility, quality and equity of mental health care for individuals on both global and national frontiers.