Scholarship @ UWindsor

Scholarship @ UWindsor is the institutional repository of the University of Windsor (UWindsor), showcasing and preserving the UWindsor community’s scholarly outputs, as well as items from the Leddy Library’s Archives & Special Collections. Its mission is to disseminate and preserve knowledge created or housed at the University of Windsor.

Contact scholarship@uwindsor.ca for more information.

Communities in Scholarship @ UWindsor

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Conferences and Conference Proceedings 3304
Papers, presentations and abstracts of conferences held at the University of Windsor, in person and virtually.
Digitized Local Collections 1552
Digitized local items from the collections of the Leddy Library, University of Windsor, and community partners.
Faculties, Departments and Research Units 5989
Open Access Faculty publications, reports and working papers from academic departments at the University of Windsor.
Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers 12868
Formal graduate original research from the University of Windsor's Masters and Doctoral programs.

Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Presidential War Powers and Constitutional Ambiguity: The Historical Evolution of Presidential War Powers and the 2026 U.S.-Iran Conflict
(University of Windsor, 2026-10-05) Riggi, Gabriella; Brooks, Stephen
This paper examines the ongoing constitutional ambiguities surrounding the division of war-making power between the president and Congress of the United States. Through the evolution of executive authority and ongoing civil and foreign challenges, presidents have adapted to address such conflicts. Studying historical presidential practices of military power reveals precedents that have shaped the modern balance of war powers between the president and Congress. Using historical institutionalism—specifically the concept of path dependency, which states initial decisions set in place a specifical developmental trajectory—this study analyzes the current conflict between the United States, under the Trump administration, and Iran and how major prior presidential decisions influenced Trump’s military decisions. By looking from the founding period through to the modern era, focusing on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, and post 9/11 military actions, it provides sufficient evidence to establish the pattern brought about through path dependency. This analysis explores the gradual expansion of presidential military authority during periods of intensive civil and foreign conflict, leading presidents to act in unconstitutional manners as a means of protecting national interests. With a lack of disciplinary measures from Congress through the years, such practices became self-reinforced across each passing presidential term, in which subsequent presidents would increasingly rely upon prior practices to justify their military action. After the effects of the Vietnam War under President Nixon, Congress made its first major step to reinstate its power outlined within Article I of the Constitution. The 1973 War Powers Resolution was established with the intent to limit the president’s ability to start or escalate military conflict, allowing Congress to take part in the decision-making process. However, with such a strong historical pattern set, the Resolution did not employ the outcome it desired. This study compares Trump’s actions toward Iran as a continuation of the established path rather than an isolated incident, demonstrating that historical precedents have great hold, especially in light of the ongoing constitutional ambiguities between the powers of the president and Congress.
Access status: Open Access ,
Russian Imperial Governance in the Western Borderlands in the 19th Century: Discovering How Catholic Minorities Fit in the Multiconfessional State
(2026) Kulaga, Anastasia; Maltseva, Elena
The multiconfessional state is a concept that highlights the construction of religious toleration in the Russian Empire. Along the northwestern borderlands in the 19th century, the Lithuanian and Belarusian populations had the highest concentration of Catholics in the region and will be used as case studies in the comparative analysis. Amid a rapidly changing institutional framework for foreign confessions, Catholics were placed within a tolerated religious category in a hierarchy that privileged Eastern Orthodoxy, yet they still faced restrictions, among which were policies on the language of Church instruction stemming from the fears of Polish nationalism. A critical juncture in the heightened tensions between the Russian Empire and the Catholic community was the 1863 Polish Uprising. Russification, therefore, was largely an imperial concept that depended on administrative discretion in the local implementation of imperial laws. These laws were constantly changing with shifts in local leadership, which could promote agendas ranging from repression to accommodation, shaped by political tensions and Catholic community responses. This ultimately led to the 1905 Edict on Religious Toleration, another critical juncture. This research focuses on the concept of the multiconfessional state and its implications for Catholic communities in the western borderlands, and examines the extent of religious toleration granted to Catholics in the 19th-century Russian Empire.
Access status: Open Access ,
Exploring Authenticity Strategies of Virtual Influencers: Parasociality and Human Connection
(University of Windsor, 2026-09) de Silva, Menura; Manzerolle, Vincent
A fundamental aspect of social media influencers (SMIs) is their parasociality with followers. Initially used to describe one-sided relationships between viewers of television and TV personalities, parasociality has permeated the digital media landscape of the web 2.0 era (Andrejevic & Volcic, 2024), where SMIs develop intimate connections with fans by leveraging two-way interactions. According to Balaban and Szambolics (2022), SMIs depend on being perceived as authentic given that they perform to a mass following - often thousands or millions. In line with recent technological innovations concerning AI content generation, face filters, and 3D modeling software, the emergence of Virtual Influencers (VIs) is already well documented (Dondapati & Dehuri, 2024; Guo et al. 2025; Malik & Singh, 2025; Molin & Nordgren, 2019; Zhang et al. 2024). This study applies a thematic analysis to the content strategies of VIs on Instagram to assess their attempts to develop an authentic media presence in the age of AI content generation. Using a thematic analysis, I sampled the Instagram feeds of up to six popular VIs including Lil Miquela and Imma. Transparency emerged as the dominant approach VIs use when presenting themselves to social media users. VIs with an established following appeared to incorporate transparency-based self-presentation strategies in an attempt to override inauthenticity. Finally, the adherence to existing industrial norms of presenting female bodies that lack imperfections may, according to Roy (2023), “inevitably sustain harmful beauty ideals that can adversely affect the mental and emotional wellness of numerous individuals” (p. 9).
Access status: Open Access ,
Reimagining the Detroit Visitor Across the Gilded Age: The 1878 and 1891 Editions of Silas Farmer’s Illustrated Detroit Guidebooks
(University of Windsor, 2026-09-16) Dufour, Jessica; Palmer, Steven
Silas Farmer was an influential businessman, cartographer, and historian in the City of Detroit during the Gilded Age. As the owner of Silas Farmer & Co., Farmer published numerous works throughout his career, including local guidebooks and comprehensive histories of Detroit. This Major Research Paper critically analyzes two of these guidebooks: Illustrated Guide and Souvenir of Detroit, published in 1878, and Guide and Souvenir of Detroit… with map and illustrations, published in 1891. Comparing the changes and additions between the two editions provides insight into the expansion of Detroit’s built environment, amenities, and leisure opportunities. This paper considers Farmer’s position within Detroit’s elite and how this shaped his presentation of the city’s historic past, ethnic neighbourhoods, and curated itineraries. Through his selection and curation of Detroit’s most noteworthy features, Farmer crafts himself as the expert and authority on the city, a role that becomes increasingly evident between the two editions. These changes reflect not only the city’s development as a destination for leisure, but also the influence of external sponsorship and the commercial success of the project.
Access status: Open Access ,
Chinese Radical Feminist Discourse on Twitter/X: Linguistic Innovation, Patriarchal Resistance, and Boundary-Making
(2026) Jingxuan, Li; Vanner, Catherine
This study examines how Chinese radical feminist discourse on Twitter/X constructs power relations, collective identities, and political Others through language. It draws on 200 Chinese-language post units collected manually through inductive keyword-based sampling. The data were coded in NVivo 15 through two cycles of coding and analyzed through Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings show that users create a shared political vocabulary through homophonic and graphic rewriting, productive morphemes, and new word formation. These linguistic practices challenge male-centred meanings and denaturalize beauty servitude, sexual-romantic relationships, marriage, reproduction, and traditional femininity. They also construct an ideal radical feminist subject defined by strength, autonomy, political awakening, and separation from men, while imagining sisterhood and women’s mutual aid. At the same time, derogatory naming, identity screening, and biological essentialism are used to produce hierarchies among women and dehumanize political Others. Future-oriented discussions envision a women-centred society that reorganizes care, healthcare, and reproduction, yet some also reproduce eugenic logic through the exclusion of male-associated reproductive possibilities. The study therefore argues that Chinese radical feminist discourse on Twitter/X is simultaneously resistant and regulatory: it disrupts patriarchal power while creating new standards of feminist legitimacy and exclusion. By centring Chinese-language discourse on a Western platform, this study extends digital feminism research and highlights how counter-discourse can both resist and reproduce inequality.