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1. Placing African American museums in the American tourism landscape

   https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2259351  

   Potter, Amy E.; Cook, Matthew R.; Eaves, LaToya E.; Carter, Perry; Bright, Candace Forbes (January 2024, Tourism Geographies)

   According to the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), there are more than 200 African American history and cultural museums—or other sites with substantial African American collections such as libraries and archives—across the U.S. Many of these museums had their start shortly after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with a surge in establishments in the 1970s. Black museums serve to decenter White stories of America and refocus on Black experiences. While geographers have studied an array of memory, heritage, and tourism sites, museums remain understudied and under-theorized. Building upon the subfields of Museum geographies—particularly by considering the concept of museums as theatres of pain—and Black geographies, our research examines the ways these museums are integral to the relationships between Black placemaking and the tourism landscape, which remains steeped in anti-Black racism. Using museum exhibit documentation, semi-structured interviews of museum staff, and content analysis of online travel reviews (primarily TripAdvisor and Google Reviews), this paper analyzes two case studies: The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, and The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through our two case studies, we show how Black museums enact curatorial practices of commemorative geographies and create redemptive spaces that cultivate not only a homeplace for visitors, particularly for Black Americans and people of the African diaspora but also serve as sites of belonging and joy. 

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2. Digitizing North American Fishes

   Luparell, Jennifer L.; Summers, Adam P.; Buser, Thaddaeus J. (July 2019, American currents)

   In the past decade, the ability to construct digital models of natural history specimens has become faster, cheaper, and easier for researchers. This in part has led to the modern movement to cre- ate models of representatives of all vertebrate species and make these data freely available to other researchers and the general public. The openVertebrate project (or “oVert”) is leading this charge by using micro computed tomographic (μCT) scanners at universities across the United States to synchronously tackle this ambitious initiative. But what happens to a specimen in a museum before a digital model of that specimen is published on the internet? Here we provide a window into some of the steps involved in this process and focus on what is involved in scanning specimens of fishes. 

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3. Record Low North American Monsoon Rainfall in 2020 Reignites Drought over the American Southwest

   https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0129.1  

   Hoell, Andrew; Quan, Xiao-Wei; Hoerling, Martin; Fu, Rong; Mankin, Justin; Simpson, Isla; Seager, Richard; He, Cenlin; Lehner, Flavio; Lisonbee, Joel; et al (March 2022, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)
4. American Indian Storytelling with Alice

   Fasy, Brittany; Hancock, Stacey; Micka, Sam; Theobold, Allison; Madubuko, Jachike (February 2018, SIGCSE Poster Session)

   Research suggests that introducing students to computational concepts at a young age improves the likelihood that they will become interested in computer science later on in life (Super, 1953). As such, it is becoming increasingly important to develop lessons for K-12 students that include computational thinking (Barr, 2011). The storytelling project at Montana State University integrates computational thinking skills into the Indian Education for All (IEFA) curriculum for middle school students in Montana. 1. Identify an object not in Alice and needed for a lesson. 2. Develop rough draft and provide to the model developer. 3. Develop model in 3Ds max. 4. Add model to world, and add methods as needed. References Plateau Indian Beaded Bags 5. Gather feedback from students and instructors. Barr, V., & Stephenson, C. (2011). Bringing computational thinking to K-12: what is Involved and what is the role of the computer science education community? Acm Inroads, 2(1), 48-54. Cooper, J. (n.d.). Plateau beaded bag, ca. 1930 [Photograph found in Fred Mitchell, Montana Historical Society, Helena]. Retrieved from http://mhs.mt.gov/ Portals/11/education/ABeautifulTradition/tradition%20design%20color% 20brochure.pdf Super, D. E. (1953). A theory of vocational development. American Psychologist, 8(5), 185-190. We work to develop lesson plans, plan outreach events, and find relevant literature to satisfy the content standard requirements as well as the essential understandings associated with IEFA. Furthermore, we strive to integrate basic computer science concepts into these lessons to help pique student interest in programming and computational thinking. This is done using the Alice software, a drag-and-drop programming environment that allows students to use computational thinking in a beginner-friendly interface to create animations. 

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5. Race Identification in American English

   https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00228  

   Holt, Yolanda Feimster; Bent, Tessa; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Rothermich, Kathrin (December 2024, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research)

   Purpose:This study examined the race identification of Southern American English speakers from two geographically distant regions in North Carolina. The purpose of this work is to explore how talkers' self-identified race, talker dialect region, and acoustic speech variables contribute to listener categorization of talker races. Method:Two groups of listeners heard a series of /h/–vowel–/d/ (/hVd/) words produced by Black and White talkers from East and West North Carolina, respectively. Results:Both Southern (North Carolina) and Midland (Indiana) listeners accurately categorized the race of all speakers with greater-than-chance accuracy; however, Western North Carolina Black talkers were categorized with the lowest accuracy, just above chance. Conclusions:The results suggest that similarities in the speech production patterns of West North Carolina Black and White talkers affect the racial categorization of Black, but not White talkers. The results are discussed with respect to the acoustic spectral features of the voices present in the sample population. 

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