Browsing by Author "Deramo, Michele C."
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- Designing for Teen Open Space Needs: A Study of Adult and Teen Perceptions in Roanoke, VirginiaSaeidi-Rizi, Fatemeh (Virginia Tech, 2014-04-30)The design of public open spaces frequently does not address the physical and psychological needs of their users with regard to their ages. This research gathered and restated the needs and preferences of teenagers, as an understudied group, in public open spaces, with an emphasis on neighborhood parks. Utilizing a neighborhood park in Roanoke, Virginia, the study developed findings that can influence the design of public open spaces, with the goals of providing social and physical benefits of neighborhood parks for teenagers. This research was conducted through two phases of interviews. The first phase of interviews took place with professionals who had experience in working with teenagers. The data collected in the first phase of interviews with adults were utilized for the second phase of interviews, which were with teenagers. Experimental models of the study site were created for the second phase to assist the interviewees in visualizing the various designs. In the second phase, the design options were presented to the teenaged study group in response to teenagers' characteristics and needs as determined by the outcomes of the first phase of interviews. The teenagers were asked to state their preferences among the design options. The different options for designing neighborhood parks utilized a neighborhood park in Roanoke, Virginia, as a study site. The findings of this research suggest that teenagers prefer to utilize spaces closer to the front of the park, by its edges, entrances, and exits, and the parking lot. These findings suggest that there may be no need to design specific spaces dedicated for teenagers in public spaces; however teenager's preferences should be considered in the design process of public spaces. Based on the findings of this research and the suggested relationships among the design attributes of neighborhood parks and teenagers' use of space, this research suggests that providing public spaces is linked with increased opportunities for the social development of teenagers. The primary implications of the findings of this research could help inform landscape architects and urban planners in their designs of future public open spaces that address the needs of teenagers.
- Emerging Questions: Advancing the Human ConditionDeramo, Michele C. (Virginia Tech, 2017-11-30)Slide show with a summation of critical questions emerging from the Advancing the Human Condition symposium sessions.
- How KANERE Free Press Resists BiopowerDeramo, Michele C. (York University, 2016)How does a free press resist state biopower? This article studies the development and dissemination of KANERE Free Press, a refugee-run news source operating in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, that was founded to create “a more open society in refugee camps and to develop a platform for fair public debate on refugee affairs” (KANERE Vision Statement). The analysis of KANERE and its impact on the political subjectivity of refugees living in Kakuma is framed by Foucault’s theory of biopower, the state-sanctioned right to “make live or let die” in its management of human populations. The author demonstrates the force relations between KANERE, its host country of Kenya, and the UNHCR through two ongoing stories covered by KANERE: the broad rejection of the MixMe nutritional supplement and the expressed disdain for the camp’s World Refugees Day celebration. Using ethnographic and decolonizing methodologies, the author privileges the voices and perspectives of the KANERE editors and the Kakuma residents they interviewed in order to provide a ground-level view of refugee’s lived experiences in Kakuma. As KANERE records refugees’ experiences of life in the camp, they construct a narrative community that is simultaneously produced by and resistant to the regulations and control of camp administration and state sovereignty. In doing so, KANERE creates a transgressive space that reaches beyond the confines of the camp.
- Opening remarks for the Advancing the Human Condition SymposiumPratt-Clarke, Menah; Deramo, Michele C. (Virginia Tech, 2017-11-28)The Equity and Social Disparity in the Human Condition Strategic Growth Area engages the campus in conversation about humanity.
- Overview, Advancing the Human Condition SymposiumDeramo, Michele C. (Virginia Tech, 2018-11-27)Michele C. Deramo is Assistant Provost for Diversity Education at Virginia Tech.
- Performing Bantu: Narrative Constructions of Identity in DiasporaDeramo, Michele C. (Virginia Tech, 2017-03-30)This research asks the question of how three young adults construct identity while living in diaspora. The subjects of the research came to the United States as a part of the Somali Bantu resettlement in 2004. The study begins with a trajectory analysis of the people now known as Somali Bantu, beginning with their forced migration to Somalia and the various factors shaping their status in the country. The analysis continues through the period of displacement, flight, and human warehousing in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps of Kenya and includes an examination of how bureaucratic labeling as refugees, and the public rhetoric of mainstream media further shaped the story of the Somali Bantu. Each of these moments through the refugee trajectory are foundational to the self-representations emerging in diaspora. Using autoethnographic and portraiture methodologies, the author analyzes the subjects' discursive practices associated with cultural sustainability, as well as deployment of social media in rejecting and resisting social and cultural influences that threaten the integrity of Somali Bantu identity in the United States. The dissertation also situates the subjects within the broader Somali Bantu diaspora in the United States and Europe as they create home through a Somali Bantu aesthetic, form community through mutual assistance associations, construct mediascapes that circulates information globally, and build a transnational movement that aims to end the suffering of Wagosha people in Somalia. Overall, the research demonstrates the discursivity of identity, showing how a particular group reconstitutes itself through engagements with multiple and often disparate cultures, traditions, languages, and histories.
- Reflecting on the Politics of PietyDeramo, Michele C. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-04-01)This essay reflects on Saba Mahmood's book, The Politics of Piety, The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, which analyzes conceptions of self, agency, and politics among the female practitioners of Da'wa in Egypt. Mahmood draws upon Judith Butler and Michel Foucault to demonstrate that the manner by which practitioners inhabit the norms governing their lives, is the source of their agency and influence in Islamic society. I provide a feminist analysis of the Da'wa conceptions of agency by drawing parallels with two distinct North American phenomena: the emergence of Women‘s Clubs in the 19th Century as purveyors of social and moral reform, and the Christian Patriarchy movement promoting the doctrines of complementarianism and pronatalism.