Featured Scholarship

• Joseph McCarthy, the bombastic and cloying Wisconsin Senator, has become the namesake for the anti-communist witch-hunts during the Cold War. But historians have challenged this misnomer for decades arguing that McCarthy’s career lasted only four years while anti-communism has undergirded US politics since the end of the Civil War. Dr. Lynn argues that not only is McCarthy the wrong person to blame, but it ignores that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was the most consistently anti-communist institution which contributed to an “omnipresent Hooverism” that has lasted well-beyond Hoover’s death. The red scares that targeted Hollywood, government agencies, and educational institutions are only the tip of the iceberg. Hoover’s agency, backed by local law enforcement, veteran’s groups, and corporate interests, violated the constitutional rights of everyday citizens, and perpetuated the belief that progressive politics, like anti-racism, are radical conspiracies to undermine the US. Dr. Lynn’s research has shown that anti-communist politics has had far-reaching consequences, including the expansion of the militarized penal state, the contraction of social welfare programs, and the disabling of worker’s power in favor of capitalist wealth concentration. Anticommunism is not an unfortunate anomalous event of the past; it resonates in the present as social justice movements are dismissed as radical communists and moderate progressive reforms ignite reactionaries. Below are some of Dr. Lynn’s most recent publications.

• Lynn, D. “‘Dirty War: Claudia Jones and Opposition to the Indochina War.’” American Communist History 23, no. 1–2 (2024): 19–34. doi:10.1080/14743892.2023.2255498.

• Lynn, D. Claudia Jones: Visions of a Socialist America. London: Polity Press, 2023

• Lynn, D. “Native Fascism: Evansville’s 1948 Wallace Riot,” Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 119, 3 (September 2023): 233-263.

• Lynn, D. “Shirley Graham Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and the Liberatory Potential of Peace,” In Battle for Peace special issue, American Communist History, Denise Lynn and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, editors, Vol. 21, 3-4 (2022): 187-199. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14743892.2022.2125251.

Misunderstanding of online customer behavior leads to retailers’ unsuccessful application of digital marketing. Dr. Azemi tries to decode the behavior of online customers through research that enhances knowledge in the contemporary field of marketing and supports practitioners’ application of marketing techniques. For instance, her recently published co-authored article titled “How does retargeting work for different Gen Z mobile users? Customer expectations and evaluations of retargeting via the expectancy-theory lens explores mobile retargeting and consumer purchasing decisions. This article presents a framework that showcases usage of retargeting that leads to customer purchasing on the second round of retargeted advertisements. Dr. Azemi has published numerous articles in highly ranked journals such as Psychology & Marketing, and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. You can find some of her research articles here: 

• Azemi, Y. and Ozuem, W. (2023) How does retargeting work for different Gen Z mobile users? Customer expectations and evaluations of retargeting via the expectancy-theory lens. Journal of Advertising Research, DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2023-023 

• Azemi, Y., Ozuem, W., Wiid, R. and Hobson, A. (2022) Luxury fashion brand customers’ perceptions of mobile marketing: Evidence of multiple communications and marketing channels. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 66, 102944.

• Azemi, Y. and Kini, R. (2022) An investigation of customers’ recovery expectations after service failure: Evidence from e-commerce settings at different stages of maturity. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 34(5), 537-551. 

• Azemi, Y., Ozuem, W. and Howell, K. E. (2020) The effects of online negative word-of-mouth on dissatisfied customers: A frustration-aggression perspective. Psychology & Marketing, 37, 564-577.

Do you fondly remember a field trip you took in elementary school? Although field trips in college may be less frequent, they are no less memorable, and research illustrates that field trips in college can have positive impacts on student learning. IASS Vice President Melissa Stacer (University of Southern Indiana) and IASS President Monica Solinas-Saunders (Indiana University Northwest) recently published the final of four peer-reviewed articles examining the impact of field trips in criminal justice education. Their work examined the impact of taking undergraduate students on tours of correctional facilities, finding that such field trips improved student perceptions of correctional officers (Stacer et al., 2017), generally increased student interest in corrections careers (Stacer et al., 2019), allowed students to question their assumptions about inmates and the correctional environment (Stacer et al., 2020), and illustrated how students’ perceptions of corrections were shaped by the media (Stacer et al., 2022). Their research highlights the importance of carefully planning and preparing students to go on field trips as well as the necessity of post-field trip reflections and discussion in order to maximize the connections between the field trip and the curriculum. Longer term experiential learning such as internships or service learning may be inaccessible to some students; this work by Stacer and Solinas-Saunders illustrates that even short-term field trips such as a tour of a jail or prison can have important impacts on student learning. You can find copies of these articles below:

• Stacer, M.J., Moll, L.M., & Solinas-Saunders, M. (2022). Student perceptions of corrections: The influence of media and correctional facility tours. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 22(1), 1-16. 

• Stacer, M.J., Moll., L.M., & Solinas-Saunders, M. (2020). The impact of correctional facility tours on student perceptions and realizations of the correctional environment: A research note. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 31(3), 400-420. DOI: 10.1080/10511253.2020.1784449. 

• Stacer, M.J., Moll, L.M., & Solinas-Saunders, M. (2019). New opportunities or closing doors? How correctional facility tours impact students’ thoughts about careers. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 30(1), 114-135. DOI: 10.1080/10511253.2018.1448094. 

• Stacer, M.J., Eagleson, R.C., & Solinas-Saunders, M. (2017). Exploring the utility of correctional facility tours in undergraduate criminal justice education. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 28(4), 492-513. DOI: 10.1080/10511253.2016.1254266. 

Dr. Selena Sanderfer Doss, Associate Professor of History at Western Kentucky University and a board member of the Academy published a paper titled, "Looking for Better: A History of Black Southern Migration" in the Midwest Social Sciences Journal. 

Her paper is a broad overview of migrations affecting black southerners, including the Atlantic slave trade, the domestic slave trade, colonization movements to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Exoduster movement, the Great Migration, and the Return South migration.