Digital Commons Network^™

Internal Workings, Earle D. Swope

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Converging my various identities as artist, educator, firefighter and city employee I delved into the City of Boise’s LIV campaign. LIV’s intent is the reimagining of municipal government and its engagement with employees, residents, and business. I pursued three different projects: interning in Human Resources, sitting on the Vista revitalization committee, and coordinating art students with the Boise Farmers Market “Mobile Market” project. I found myself in a very Boise story. This project has several more years until it reaches a maturation point where the final outcomes are known.

My response is the visual documentation of the relationships formed and …

“Right From Hades”: Water And Politics In Boise, Idaho, Molly Lorraine May

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The western United States has, arguably, been shaped by water—both through its presence and its absence. This thesis examines the history of the artesian and geothermal water resources of Boise, Idaho. The development of these resources has taken a trajectory that is defined by busy periods of expansion punctuated by long stretches of inactivity or stasis. These stages of development closely align with major trends in environmental history. Beyond merely providing additional insight to the history of the region, the commoditization of nature in Boise provides further elucidation of national trends of conservation, environmentalism, and green energy. By examining the …

Lekuak: The Basque Places Of Boise, Idaho, Meggan Laxalt Mackey

History Graduate Projects and Theses

Lekuak ("Places") traces how Basque places in Boise reflect the evolution of each generation’s expression of ethnic identity in response to American societal forces of the times. The first-generation Amerikanuak (late 1800s to 1920s) predominantly expressed their ethnicity as an internally-focused, solely-Basque ethnic group and built places such as boardinghouses and frontons that met communal needs. The Tartekoak, ("in-between" second generation, 1930s to the 1950s), mostly expressed a dual Basque and American ethnic identity. Tartekoak places often revealed the individuation of this generation with single-family residences and Americanized businesses, and the Basque Center with ancestry-based membership. The Egungoak ("today" …

Men And The Socially Created Stigma Of Anorexia, Marcus Ogawa

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study illuminates how college men negotiate and communicate their body image in a culture that is placing greater emphasis on the importance of body image for men. Embracing the theory of Social Construction, this study offers a communicative perspective to explore men’s articulation of body image and how they make sense of anorexia. Existing research reveals anorexia as a problem primarily associated with women, and consequently men demonstrating anorexic behaviors often find it difficult to receive help. Literature also affirms that our culture often expects men to be ashamed of behaving in any way that does not conform to …

Looking Back: Publication Of A Seminal Book In Basque Studies Amerikanuak: Basques In The New World

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

Amerikanuak was first published in 1975 and it marked a pioneering study of one of the American West's most important ethnic minorities, providing an engaging, comprehensive survey of Basque migration and settlement in the Americas. Its value endures as an essential introduction to the history of the Basque people and their five centuries of involvement in the New World. The surviving author, and dean of Basque Studies, William A. Douglass (Professor emeritus of the University of Nevada, Reno) agreed to an interview as we look back on the continuing influence of this seminal book in Basque Studies.

Looking Back: The Boise – Oñati Study Abroad Program, 1974-75

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This document is a look back at the 1974-75 inaugural study abroad program from Boise State University to the town of Oñati in the Basque Country. Featured here are excerpts and photos from Boise State Basque Studies program website (the successor of sorts from that first program), and an article written by one of the first participants. As that author notes, the program changed their lives and it had far reaching ramifications in transforming the Idaho Basque Diaspora by strengthening the bond between them and the Basque homeland.

Looking Back: Photographic Essay Of The “Joan-Etorri” Basque Studies Symposium

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This document is a photographic essay that featured well over two dozen presenters at the “Joan-Etorri” (Going and Coming) Basque Studies Symposium that was hosted by Basque Studies at Boise State University. The year 2015 marks two 40th anniversary events: the inaugural Boise State Basque Studies Abroad program in Oñati of the Basque Country, and the publication of the seminal book Amerikanuak in 1975. Together, these events provided a broad spectrum of possible topics for varied sessions of an academic conference, including identity, immigration, international contacts, etc. It also illustrated the back and forth (between the homeland and Diaspora) of …

The International Location Of Basque Studies, Mari Jose Olaziregi

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

The aim of this brief paper will be to comment on the goals and anxieties that have conditioned the globalization of Basque culture in recent times. Questions regarding the desire of the Basque institutions to globalize our culture and the implementation of Basque Studies lectureships and chairs in international universities will be addressed. I will conclude my reflection by alluding to the novelty and debate surrounding the field of Basque Studies, as well as some of the challenges that this discipline faces.

Basque Studies And The Basque Academic Diaspora, Iñaki Goirizelaia

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This paper presents a reflection about the work done by the University of the Basque Country on the Basque Diaspora. A proposal for the development of different strategies to improve the relationship between the University of the Basque Country and the Basque Diaspora is also presented. Two are the main objectives: to create a new space to promote and develop the academic community of the Basque Diaspora and to create the program Basque Yourself Summer School to improve Basque Studies programs among young people.

The Sun Also Sets, William A. Douglass

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

Ernest Hemingway launched his career as novelist with The Sun Also Rises, set in large measure in the Basque Country. It was the beginning of a life-long involvement with things Basque. The present article examines the nature of this fascination and its shortcomings. Ernest became a regular attendee of Pamplona's San Fermín festival (and a key architect of its international fame). During his two-decade residence in Cuba, he surrounded himself with Basque jai alai players and political refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Yet Hemingway remained insensitive, if not downright indifferent, to their fervent Basque nationalism. When he subsequently …

How You Know You Are Not A Brain In A Vat, Alexander Jackson

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

A sensible epistemologist may not see how she could know that she is not a Brain In a Vat (BIV); but she doesn’t panic. She sticks with her empirical beliefs, and as that requires, believes that she is not a BIV. (She does not inferentially base her belief that she is not a BIV on her empirical knowledge—she rejects that ‘Moorean’ response to skepticism.) Drawing on the psychological literature on metacognition, I describe a mechanism that’s plausibly responsible for a sensible epistemologist coming to believe she is not a BIV. I propose she thereby knows that she is not a …

Simmering, Uxue Alberdi, Nere Lete

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

“Su txikian” [“Simmering”] by Uxue Alberdi was published in 2013 as one of the stories in her book Euli Giro [A Sense of Chagrin]. As Alberdi states, “The source of inspiration for this story was an article I had read about an eighty-year-old married couple from Pamplona who had been found in their car parked in the garage after having committed suicide. "Simmering” is a response to the shock the news provoked in me […]. On the one hand, I wanted to hold onto the stereotype of the Basque grandmother. It is not typical to imagine an eighty-year-old Basque woman …

Theorycrafting The Classroom: Constructing The Introductory Technical Communication Course As A Game, Carly Finseth

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

When games are approached as a pedagogical methodology, the homologies between games and technical communication are highlighted: pedagogy that teaches people to play and succeed within certain confines; classroom assessment that provides meaningful feedback to encourage self-improvement; instructional design that incorporates gaming theory and game design principles; and usability to ensure optimum success. This paper provides an overview of these topics for instructors to consider when designing a technical writing course as a game.

Five Poems From Witch In Mourning, Maria-Mercè Marçal, Clyde Moneyhun

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Maria-Mercè Marçal was born in 1952, in the middle of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, which lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1939 to the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Marçal writes, “A l’atzar agraeixo tres dons: haver nascut dona, de classe baixa i nació oprimida” [I thank fate for three gifts: having been born a woman, to the lower class, in an oppressed nation], a phrase that is still famous in Catalan graffiti today.

Recovering Melville’S Hand: An Inaugural Report On Digital Discovery And Analysis At Melville’S Marginalia Online, Steven Olsen-Smith

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This installment of “Melville’s Hand,” a department of Leviathan originally conceived by Founding Editor John Bryant, is the first to appear in the journal since staff at Melville’s Marginalia Online (MMO) printed newly documented marginalia in issue 10.3 of 2008. Through the vision of Bryant’s successor as Editor Samuel Otter and of Associate Editor Brian Yothers, the present installment also constitutes the inaugural printing of what we hope will remain an annual contribution by the online project to Leviathan (appearing in every June issue) for years to come. What gives us confidence that MMO will generate significant material …

Specific Exceptions Driving Variation: The Role Of Orthography In Modern Hebrew Spirantization, Michal Temkin Martinez, Ivana Müllner

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper reports results from a production experiment examining the patterns of variation in the morphophonemic alternations present in spirantization in Modern Hebrew, a phenomenon to which there are many exceptions and diverse levels of variation. Real and nonce verbs were used to elicit variation in a sentence completion task as a follow-up to a perception experiment (Temkin Martínez 2010) which found gradient levels of acceptability in variation due to the presence of exceptionality. The diverse patterns of variation indicate that not all exceptions affect the same level of variation in alternation. Results of the current study suggest that levels …

The Realities Of Foreign Humanitarianism And The U.S. Military: Nineteenth Century Roots, David Mock

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

For nearly two centuries, United States (U.S.) political policy and non-government organizations (NGOs) had delivered foreign humanitarian assistance (FHA) when and where needed. The logistical capability of the professional U.S. military has allowed it to become an enduring delivery method for FHA. Since the 2000s, Congress has actively shaped the Department of Defense’s (DoD) role in humanitarian operations through a wide variety of authorities contained in the Armed Services (Title 10 U.S. Code) and Foreign Relations and Intercourse (Title 22 U.S. Code) statutes, and through annual legislation. Each branch of the military has also developed more defined doctrines in response …

The Evolution Of Prometheanism: Józef Piłsudski’S Strategy And Its Impact On Twenty-First Century World Affairs, Phillip Tadeusz Turner

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

As the Bolsheviks attempted to assert their control over the territory of the Russian Empire during the chaotic years of the Russian Civil War many ethnic groups and nations formerly part of the empire declared their independence. Józef Piłsudski as the leader of the Second Polish Republic implemented a strategy called Prometheanism that sought to secure Poland’s newly won independence by helping neighboring nations, such as Ukraine, break away from Russian control. Promethean ideas survived the destruction of the Polish state in 1939 when Poles with ties to Piłsudski or Prometheanism who fled to the West after the start of …

Comedown, Lacey Daley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

These stories examine the private spaces we keep within ourselves, and the people we claim to know best. The characters are not connected by place or time, but rather their struggles to learn the same lesson: the body is bound to fail us. “Comedown” explores love and loss beyond what is expected and each story ends with the discovery that these emotions are not always visceral.

Land Of Entrapment, Scott M. Anderson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

“Land of Entrapment” is a colloquial pun on the state motto of New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment.” Though not every story is set in New Mexico, all of these stories examine characters trapped by something. In some cases, it’s drugs or terminal disease, while in others, characters are manacled by their emotions and feelings. In almost every case, the characters are haunted by their past, an inextricable part of their story, their existence. The narratives explore how these characters cope with their inescapable past while under some kind of duress, and find that the space between acceptance and despair …

Bleach, Cream, And Other Dolls, Elizabeth Diane Mackness

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Bleach, Cream, and Other Dolls questions current rape culture and the political power plays that take place behind it. As a whole, this work also investigates how the positioning of a speaker affects the ability to communicate, build and participate in relationships. Through this problem each speaker’s identity becomes skewed and the speakers struggle to find their identity through various mediums—revenge, death, penetration, definition, nature, skin and disintegration (among other possibilities).

Auto/Aura, Michael Wanzenried

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems, And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, section 6

Auto/Aura attempts to follow through on Whitman’s project by literally using materials from the world to create a situation that challenges the traditional reader-poet relationship. The poems here diverge from the page into a three-dimensional setting to continue in a largely personal and arbitrary lineage (as all poet-historical lineages tend to be according to Jerome Rothenberg) of 19th and 20th century poetic …

Recruiting For The Collegiate Marching Band: A Study Of Student Perceptions Of Recruitment And College Choice Factors In Kansas And Missouri, Alan Douglas Whitten

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The marching band is an important and iconic part of the game day atmosphere at athletic events and community functions at colleges and universities throughout the United States. At many institutions, the band is a great source of pride and considerable resources are committed in an effort to have the best band possible. A key component to having the best band possible is having effective recruiting practices.

There is a large body of research on recruiting general student populations and many other sub categories of students, including music majors. However, research regarding recruitment of students that participate in marching band …

Sights-Of-Interest: Denial Of Danger In Living Spaces, Rachel Lambert

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Exploring the illusion of protection, I constructed a fiber-based installation to recreate the experience of photographing outside and inside living spaces. This body of work is about the allure of the photographic experience. It is about the experience of seeing, noticing, and thinking that occurs while looking through the camera’s viewfinder. It is about unconsciously ignoring the physical dangers that live in the picturesque land photographed.

In response, I created a two room installation. Two household living rooms are staged as conceptual “living spaces.” One room simulates a damp swamp floor; and the other, the interior of a warm-blooded body. …

Kania, Indrani Sengupta

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Kania begins as a poetic revision of fairy tales, an attempt to extract the potential female narratives buried within the source texts, in their stifling archetypes. In the spirit of Angela Carter, it attempts to manipulate the most recognizable fairy tale motifs in order to explore issues of violence, deviant desire, sexuality, and monstrosity. As the text evolves, the archetypal “monster” shifts in location, becoming increasingly internal to the woman/speaker. First “he” is the abuser, then “she” is the errant woman, then finally, “it” is the interior anxiety, the self”s nightmare, ungendered and constantly in flux. The manuscript strives, through …

Fixate, Kelly F. Cox

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I will provide a brief history of consumer culture and the mechanisms by which it operates: such as the aestheticization of the factory, including the illusions that remove evidence of process from production, a propagated fear of the body, and a cultural rejection of the unfamiliar, the difficult, or the old. Connecting them to ideas in both Art and consumerism, I will poke and prod at the mythologies of progress, dematerialization, and the Orphic complex. In exploring theories of doubt and skepticism, I will suggest an alternative perspective on the body, one that considers the mouth as …

B> Be Greater Than., Eric S. Mullis

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis is designed to accompany the visual portion of this thesis as a didactic product catalog. The written portion of this thesis links consumer experiences to the upholding of a hierarchical definition of human identity that promotes the exceptionalism of specific human individuals over nature (as a broad category and property of things) in order to justify its exploitation.

Citing Foucault’s writings on biopower, the early development of the scientific method, the development of consumer culture during the turn of the 20^th century, and contemporary examples of consumer culture, I will argue that global …

Man Made Paradise: The Boise Water Project, Heidi Coon, Cheryl Oestreicher

College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs Presentations

The development and economic growth of the Boise Valley was made possible by the efforts of private citizens and the Bureau of Reclamation that culminated in the creation of the Boise Water Project.

Prior to the creation of the Boise Project, the area known as the Boise Valley could be an unforgiving unyielding landscape. Availability of water was scarce, making the development of the land nearly impossible unless a person was fortunate enough to live along a waterway. However, being located near water did not always mean success. The very nature of water can have negative consequences. In the spring …

Sexual Violence In India: The History Of Indian Women’S Resistance, Renae Sullivan

McNair Scholars Research Journal

This research seeks to recontextualize the understanding of the ways women resist sexual violence and agitate for change of socio-cultural and political practices in India. Modern Indian women’s social movements were revitalized in the 1970s with the Mathura rape case in Maharastra. The historical context of this impactful activism is framed through analysis of four pivotal rape cases—Mathura, Bhanwari Devi, Imrana and “Nirbhaya,” otherwise known as the Delhi gang rape case. The assertive and innovative resistance of women includes such tactics as sit-down protests, marches, rallies, candle light vigils, street theatre, presentations, ad campaigns, freeze mobs, and social media. The …

The Melville-Hawthorne Friendship And Its Impact On Moby- Dick, Connie Townley

McNair Scholars Research Journal

As arguably one of the most famous literary works produced by any American writer (often deemed as the great American novel), Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick and its genetic history have been subjects of extensive scholarship over the last seventy years. Every aspect of Melville’s personal life, his considerable creative and personal hardships, as well as the influences which brought forth such an enigmatic and uniquely devised novel, have been all deeply explored and hotly debated. Melville's friendship and admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne is widely believed among scholars to be a major influence and catalyst which fueled Melville's decision to depart …