American Studies Commons^™

The (Inter)Active Soap Opera Viewer: Fantastic Practices & Mediated Communities, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In today’s cultural realm, everything exists within a hierarchy of sorts – fandom has not escaped this process of judgmental ranking and social stratification. Admitting to be a “fan” of something often earns people mixed responses depending on the subject of their devoted following. The more one’s object of choice strays from the mainstream, the lower one exists on the fan hierarchy. If the masses find the fan subject matter to exist on the cultural periphery, fans are often quite ridiculed. This has historically been the case for soap opera fans. What is often overlooked, however, is the utility of …

Constraining Basin Geometry And Fault Kinematics On The Santo Tomás Segment Of The Agua Blanca Fault Through A Combined Geophysical And Structural Study, Adam Springer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Agua Blanca fault is a major transverse structure of northern Baja California, extending more than 120km east from the Punta Banda ridge near the city of Ensenada to the San Matais Pass in central Baja. Through much of its eastern extent slip on this fault appears to be pure strike slip, however, at the Valle de Santo Tomás the fault makes a ~25°; change in orientation, which coincides with the formation of extensional basins on the fault. Recent evidence of the independent movement of the Baja Micro-plate relative to a stable Southern California Black leads to several possible hypotheses …

Relationships Between Life Satisfaction, Symptoms Of Adhd, And Associated Outcomes In Middle School Students, Lisa Paige Bateman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given increased evidence related to the importance of fostering life satisfaction in the overall population (Diener & Diener, 1996), as well as recent suggestions regarding the importance of increasing positive academic and social outcomes for youth with ADHD (DuPaul, 2007), it is important to gain a clearer understanding of how life satisfaction may be related to ADHD symptoms. Although research has examined the relationship between life satisfaction and externalizing behavior (Suldo & Huebner, 2004a), research on the relationship between life satisfaction and ADHD is currently limited. This study examined if levels of ADHD symptoms predicted reports of life satisfaction in …

Magnetocaloric Effect In Thin Films And Heterostructures, Christopher Bauer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goals of this work are the optimization of the magnetocaloric effect in Gadolinium thin film structures. We approach this issue from two directions, that of process optimization and of interface effects. Past results showed Gd₂O₃ in our Gadolinium thin films, and the presence of such oxide seemed to grow with the temperature at which the film was grown or annealed. Comparison of samples grown without chamber gettering to those that were gettered show differences in their structural and magnetic properties, and we conclude that gettering is an effective step in enhancing the quality of Gd thin …

‘Evil Against Evil’: The Parabolic Structure And Thematics Of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, Larrie Dudenhoeffer

Faculty and Research Publications

This essay examines and deconstructs three sets of antagonisms in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973). It argues that the film describes its own narrative conflicts as a thematics of ‘evil against evil,’ so as to de-ethicize the moral violence of those metaphysical dogmatisms that compete over the ‘souls’ of others. It then re-couches the one-sidedness of scientific and religious orthodoxies, which damage in similar ways Regan MacNeil, one of the film's main characters, as another variation of this thematics. Finally, this essay suggests that The Exorcist surveys certain sociopolitical tensions, thus commenting, in its video and theatrical re-releases, ‘timelessly’ on …

Dreadful Sorry: Spots Of Passion And The Memory Of Being Human In Kaufman’S “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” And Pope’S ‘Eloisa To Abelard’, June-Ann Greeley

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Memory is a journey of infinite possibility, a continuous passage through time and sense that offers each person an opportunity not merely to recall and to reflect on former occasions and previous experiences, but to reconsider and to reexamine the past as a guide, as instruction, for healthy individuation. Memory, then, can be understood to be the aggregate of experiential and emotional recollection that frames the essential ground in forming and realizing individual identity. Both Alexander Pope in his poem “Eloisa to Abelard” and Michel Gondry/Charlie Kaufman in the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” offer portraits of individuals …

Branding America: Patriotic Products And Consumerism After September 11th, Lori Bindig, M. Bosau

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Post-9/11 culture provided an opportunity for companies to rebrand themselves and their products as American. In doing so, they supported the president’s directive to consume, gave Americans a concrete way to express their support for their country, and made a tidy profit in the process.

American Cars: Patriotic Consumption After September 11th, Lori Bindig, M. Bosau

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Beginning September 20, 2001, the same day President Bush reiterated his call to participate in the U.S. economy, General Motors provided an outlet for patriotic consumption with a commercial announcing 0 percent financing on every new GM car and truck.

My Name And My Face, Stuart Ewen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Calvinism And Military Justice In American Literature, Nadia Hamilton Morales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This paper explores judicial process in the military as revealed in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny and Aaron Sorkin's A Few Good Men. The purpose of my project was to conduct an in depth study of Essentialism in military justice that is indicative of a culturally specific form of information management, as revealed in these texts. Essentialism is a form of information management that relies upon classification qualified through intuitive knowledge and superficial signification. This signification is used to certify the existence of self-contained states that function as a metaphorical metonymy for multiple unknowns. Moreover, …

Exile In The Gramola: A Jewinican (Re)Collection, Roberto Alejandro Santos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Exile in the Gramola: A Jewinican (Re)Collection is a poetic attempt at navigating the multicultural landscapes of the ethnic hybrid. It is a collection of poetry that aims to reveal how we ourselves become acculturated in the process acculturating others, and which also aims at promoting opportunities of cross-cultural dialogue, cross-cultural negotiation, cross-cultural overstanding, and cross-cultural endorsement.

Through the themes of exile, divorce, familial separation, and the mixing of the cultural movements of hip-hop and bachata, Exile reaches beyond ideas of ethnicity and cultural norms in order to reveal the hardships we share in our only commonality--our humanity.

Serum Antibodies To Human Papillomavirus Type 6, 11, 16 And 18 And Their Role In The Natural History Of Hpv Infection In Men, Beibei Lu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Our understanding of humoral immune response to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection has been mainly derived from studies in women. Very little is known about humoral immune response to HPV in men. There is also a growing interest in understanding the burden of HPV exposure in the subgroups of the male population, including men who have sex with women (MSW), men who have sex with men (MSM) and men who have sex with both men and women (MSMW). This dissertation was undertaken to understand and characterize humoral immune response, measured by detectable serum antibody IgG, to HPV 6, 11, 16 and …

Heat Stress Evaluation Of Protective Clothing Ensembles, Amanda Lee Pease

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clothing directly affects the level of heat stress exposure. Useful measures to express the thermal characteristics are WBGT (wet bulb globe temperature) clothing adjustment factor (CAF) or apparent total evaporative resistance (R_e,T,_a). The CAF is assigned through laboratory wear trials following a heat stress protocol in which the air temperature and humidity are progressively increased until the participant clearly loses the ability to maintain thermal equilibrium. The critical condition is the point of thermal transition and from these conditions both the CAF and Re,T,a are computed. The first objective of this study is to compare the …

An Exploratory Study Of The Intrapersonal, Socio-Cultural, And Behavioral Factors That Influence Hiv Risk Behaviors Among Ethnic Subgroups Of Black Heterosexual Men: The Intersection Of The Beliefs And Perceptions Of Black Women, Shalewa Noel-Thomas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Twenty five years after AIDS was first scientifically described, the disease continues to take its toll on the human population. HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects marginalized groups such as poor, underserved, minority populations. In the United States, Blacks become infected with and die from HIV/AIDS more than any other ethnic or racial group. Despite a vast body of literature on HIV/AIDS, little research has focused on black heterosexual men and even fewer studies have explored the context of risk among subgroups of black men.

Using qualitative research methods and a socio-ecological framework, this study explored the intrapersonal, socio-cultural, and behavioral factors that …

Rationale For Pride Of Baghdad, Crag Hill Ph.D.

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

A rationale for teaching the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad at the secondary level.

Rationale For Magneto: Testament, Brian Kelley

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

A rationale for teaching the graphic novel Magneto:Testament in secondary schools.

Sequential Art, Graphic Novels, And Comics, Brian Kelley

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The first global distribution of a paper prepared for the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Graphic Novels Special Interest Group of the International Reading Association,the Executive Board of the New Jersey Reading Association, and the Legislative and Professional Standards Committee of the NJRA.

The Shanachie, Volume 22, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

Wolves And The Wolf Myth In American Literature, Cara Erdheim

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Cara Erdheim:

Robisch, S. K. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature. Reno, Nevada: Uniiversity of Nevada Press, 2009.

Twilight Follows Tradition: Analyzing "Biting" Critiques Of Vampire Narratives For Their Portrayals Of Gender & Sexuality, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Vampires have dominated print literature since the 18th century, eventually becoming more visible as they crossed mediated boundaries and genre divides. Now flourishing in neo-gothic realms like science fiction and fantasy, in print genres like chick-lit and young adult, and in the visual realm (from Hollywood’s big screen to daytime television’s sudsy small screen), vampire narratives are finding increased popularity. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series has shined a new spotlight on the all-encompassing umbrella genre that is “vamp lit,” and with it has come renewed attention to the so-called anti-feminist messages present in such narratives, such as the perceived negative characterization …