‘Pink Tea and Sissy Boys’: Digitized Fragments of Male Homosexuality,Non-Heteronormativity and Homophobia in the Australian Sporting Press, 1845–1954

Researching the gay sporting past is difficult because of the dearth of written evidence. This article employs digital history techniques, specifically the distant and close reading of newspapers, in an attempt to locate references to male homosexuality in the Australian sporting press. The focus is not on finding references to homosexual athletes, but rather on locating attitudes, innuendo and inferences concerning homosexuality, non-heteronormative masculinity and homophobia. The sophisticated search engine provided by Trove – the digitization programme of the National Library of Australia – allows for specific word searches across 170 million articles from 800 newspapers from 1803 to 1954, including a handful of sport-themed publications. This project uses a distant-reading approach to find instances of contemporaneous homosexual-related terms – colloquialism, euphemism, legal parlance and slurs – in four popular sport newspapers and to focus on two words: effeminate and sissy. Given the commonality and multiple meanings of these words, a close reading is necessary to filter these findings in order to facilitate a reading of the ‘snippets and shadows’ of homosexuality that remain.     

Predicting first-time-in-college students’ degree completion outcomes

Higher Education - About one-third of college students drop out before finishing their degree. The majority of those remaining will take longer than 4 years to complete their degree at...     

Team learning in IT implementation projects: Antecedents and consequences

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of team learning, which is composed of information acquisition, dissemination, and implementation, in information technology (IT) implementation projects. By investigating 129 IT implementation project teams, we found that (1) information acquisition and information dissemination have a positive impact on project outcomes, such as speed-to-users, lower implementation cost, and operational effectiveness, and (2) team behavior and enabler variables, such as teamwork, team communication, interpersonal trust between team members, team commitment, and senior manager support, positively influence team learning. We also found that team anxiety moderates the relationship between team learning and project outcomes.     

STAFF AND ELDERLY KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD ELDERLY SEXUALITY

This study compared staff and elderly knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to sexual expression by elderly persons in a long‐term care setting. Volunteers (N = 194) responded agree or disagree to 159 items. Significant differences were observed between the staff and elderly responses on 36 items. Areas of greatest differences involved knowledge and attitudes about consensual sex and sexual abuse, issues related to family attitudes toward remarriage and sexual expression, and age‐related changes and health problems related to sexuality. Items related to masturbation received the greatest percentage of no response. The staff had significantly higher total scores as compared to the elderly reflecting more knowledge, positive attitudes, and support for more proactive responses toward elderly sexuality. Findings have major implications for staff training in long‐term care settings.     

The Pacific Science Board in Micronesia: Science,Government, and Conservation on the Post-War Pacific Frontier

This article examines the planningand execution of scientific field work in thepost-war Micronesian Trust Territory, under theaegis of the Pacific Science Board (within theNational Research Council). It argues that thework of the PSB can be characterized as both`big natural history', and routine `frontierscience' in that scientific expertise wasintended to aid in managing the Trust. It alsoexamines the limitations of scientists whostruggled to extend American conservation andpreservation strategies on distant Pacificfrontier territories.