Selected Research / An interdisciplinary approach



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Life History – Genetics, Epigenetics, and Culture.
by Aaron DeNu



This paper explores the influences of our environments, and more broadly, our cultures, during key windows of human development. Steps toward a gene-culture coevolution ideology are suggested for expressing a life history narrative. Furthermore, both genetic inheritance and epigenetic affects make up a part of life history and must be accounted for in an integrated evolutionary framework.
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Identity: Online Tools for Articulating Narrative - Identity, Narrative, Online Tools
by Aaron DeNu



Narratives help frame our concepts of self. They supply a recognizable and digestible structure for piecing together the experiences we encounter, communicate, and imagine. Theodore Sarbin introduced narratives as a lens for understanding the “storied nature of human conduct”. Over time, a continuing range of tools for expressing human symbolic creativity—our sense of self—have shifted media. Recent proliferation in social networking web development has yielded a variety of online tools that ask the user to Broadcast Yourself ™. In an economic climate in which 9.5% of the American labor force is unemployed, it’s in our best interest to be digitally savvy, to be LinkedIn© to professional opportunities only a connection away.

There are, however, far more powerful creative potentialities to such web sites than their implicit functions as repositories for mundane status updates and static résumés. Such online tools can be creatively harnessed to communicate that which makes us, “us.” With an internet connection and any number of free web sites, I am able to visually arrange specific events from my past and organize such memories into an online developing life story. In his autobiographical account, Confessions, St. Augustine notes the significance of memory as a "great field or a spacious palace, a storehouse for countless images of all kinds". The ability to access such online narratives, as a mnemonic tool for developing and retaining a sense of self, amplifies the possibility to relive, reexamine, or strengthen episodes from our past. Simply put, these tools are making self identity and they make up a portion of our personality. That is, of course, the portions of our personality that we consciously project.
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Transforming Soccer Talk in the U.S.: The Misaplication of a Formulaic Announcing Methodology
by Aaron DeNu - Institute of General Semantics



Major League Soccer and the United States Soccer Federation must reexamine their language ideology. This paper explores steps toward transforming the speech genre of American soccer commentary on television. At present, the traditional two-commentator broadcasting system--comprised of the play-by-play and color commentator--directly conflicts with soccer's natural tongue.

This synchronic trend of unnaturally mixing broadcasting elements and applying linguistic techniques from various sports is a breech in the contract of the genre's standard form. Further linguistic neglect will increasingly distort the sport while it's held hostage to the misapplication of a formulaic announcing methodology.
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Interface Technologies: A Common Sense Approach  
by Aaron DeNu - Master's Essay at Fordham University



It's not surprising when technology gives us a trendy word, yet despite its recent run, there seems to be a genuine fascination with interfaces. One explanation for the buzz can be linked to a series of technological proliferations. New devices which offer alternative, yet practical, connections to information are in high demand.

However, despite an array of new technologies, the trend toward production is increasingly disconcerting. As more products are marketed, each new method of exchange combines elements of isolation and exaggeration which, in turn, facilitate intended and interpreted meaning.
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