Digital Commons Network^™

John Horton Conway: The Man And His Knot Theory, Dillon Ketron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

John Horton Conway was a British mathematician in the twentieth century. He made notable achievements in fields such as algebra, number theory, and knot theory. He was a renowned professor at Cambridge University and later Princeton. His contributions to algebra include his discovery of the Conway group, a group in twenty-four dimensions, and the Conway Constellation. He contributed to number theory with his development of the surreal numbers. His Game of Life earned him long-lasting fame. He contributed to knot theory with his developments of the Conway polynomial, Conway sphere, and Conway notation.

Viewing History Through A Lens: The Influence Of Film On Historical Consciousness, Brittany Bales

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an interdisciplinary study of the significance of contemporary film in our understandings of gender, race, and sexuality in Georgian England. I argue that while films set in this period may lack the subtleties and depth of the realities that make up the Georgian era, they are still valuable in informing current discussions concerning race, gender, and sexuality. By examining such films, we learn not only more about the Georgian period and how it is presented and understood by contemporary audiences, but these films tell us much about our own biases, attitudes, and society.

A Bargain At Any Cost: The Rise Of Dollar General, Frances Evelyn Barrett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dollar General Corporation has grown into a retail titan with more than 15 000 stores across the continental United States. The first chapter of this thesis traces the history of this multibillion-dollar firm since its founding as a family-run business in Scottsville Kentucky in the late 1930s. Situating Dollar General’s history within the evolving contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries illustrates that Dollar General Stores succeed when the economy staggers. Neoliberalism and global finance capitalism have only exacerbated the geographic expansion and profitability of the company as the second chapter begins to explore. Although Dollar General Stores open at …

Dead Center: Polarization And The Democratic Party, 1932-2000, Colin S. Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Polarization forced massive changes in the institutions of Washington throughout the 20^th century, and the Democratic Party played a key role throughout. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic Party formed the powerful New Deal coalition. The coalition faltered in the turbulent 1960s under the pressures of the Vietnam War and racial unrest. The chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago dealt the coalition a mortal wound. Young voters and activists gained an outsized voice in the party. Several crushing defeats in presidential elections followed as the party chose unelectable candidates who appealed to the passions of left-wing activists …

Byzantine Foreign Policy During The Reign Of Constans Ii, Joseph Morris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the foreign policy of Constans II as the first Byzantine Emperor to rule after the initial Arab conquests in Syria-Palestine. His reign, 641-668, was the first reign of a Byzantine Emperor where the entire reign was subject to Arab raids and invasions. Constans II also had to contend with the Slavs in Thessalonica and Greece and the Lombards in Italy. To complicate matters more, Constans II was forced to cope with the religious division between the eastern and western churches due to Monothelitism in the East. Beset on every frontier and inheriting a much reduced empire after …

Reconciling Order And Progress: Auguste Comte, Gustave Le Bon, Emile Durkheim, And The Development Of Positivism In France, 1820-1914, Khali Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the philosophy of positivism in nineteenth century France. Based on an empirical vision of society, positivism advocated values of rationality, progress, and secularization. In that way, it stood as one of the defining systems of thought of the modern era. I discuss, however, an undercurrent of anxiety about those same values. Positivism's founder, Auguste Comte, argued that all sciences would become unified and organized under universal principles and empirical standards. He viewed the human mind as becoming more rationalized throughout history. In his later career, however, he argued that rationalism was a destructive force and that a …

Confrontational Christianity: Contextual Theology And Its Radicalization Of The South African Anti-Apartheid Church Struggle, Miguel Rodriguez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is intended to analyze the contributions of Contextual Theology and Contextual theologians to dismantling the South African apartheid system. It is intended to demonstrate that the South African churches failed to effectively politicize and radicalize to confront the government until the advent of Contextual Theology in South Africa. Contextual Theology provided the Christian clergy the theological justification to unite with anti-apartheid organizations. Its very concept of working with the poor and oppressed helped the churches gain favor with the black masses that were mostly Christian. Its borrowing from Marxist philosophy appealed to anti-apartheid organizations. Additionally, Contextual theologians, who …

Vox Populi-Vox Belli: A Historical Study Of Southern Ante Bellum Public Attitudes And Motivations Toward Secession, Julian Boyden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines why the south seceded in 1860 as opposed to any other time in the 19th century and what changed the mentalité of the people in the period 1857-1860. The underlying issue in southern politics and the issue of secession was clearly slavery and slavery rested on the economics of cotton. Yet slavery and cotton do not explain why the South seceded in 1860 and not at other times in the preceding seventy years. 1807 saw the outlawing of the international slave trade and 1819 saw Congress pass the Slave Trade Act interdicting the ships involved. In 1828 …

The North Comes South Northern Methodists In Florida During Reconstruction, Heather K. Bollinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines three groups of northern Methodists who made their way to north Florida during Reconstruction: northern white male Methodists, northern white female Methodists, and northern black male and female Methodists. It analyzes the ways in which these men and women confronted the differences they encountered in Florida‟s southern society as compared to their experiences living in a northern society. School catalogs, school reports, letters, and newspapers highlight the ways in which these northerners explained the culture and behaviors of southern freedmen and poor whites in Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Monticello. This study examines how these particular northern men and …

Death And Disengagement: A Critical Analysis Of The International Community's Intervention Effort In Darfur, Victor Hodges

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to analyze the international community's conflict management capabilities through its response to the Darfur crisis. Primarily, it aims to show through the lens of the Darfur crisis, which is widely accepted as the first genocide of the twenty-first century, that the international community has yet to develop a framework to collectively intervene in and resolve crimes against humanity. Additionally, this thesis will show the international community's recognition of their shortcomings through the gradual transformation of policies undertaken by several of its leading entities in response to the crisis. The research will pinpoint several major factors behind the …

Selling Sunshine: How Cypress Gardens Defined Florida, 1935-2004, David Dinocola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between Cypress Gardens and the state of Florida. Specifically, it focuses on how the creator of the park, Dick Pope, created his park after his own idealized vision of the state, and how he then promoted both his park and Florida as one and the same. The growth and later decline of Cypress Gardens follows trends in Florida's growth patterns and shifts in tourism. This study primarily uses a combination of newspaper sources and promotional pictures and other media from the park to explain how Pope attempted to make Cypress Gardens synonymous with Florida. In …

Vibia Perpetua's Diary: A Women's Writing In A Roman Text Of Its Own, Melissa Perez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing the history of women in antiquity is hindered by the lack of written sources by them. It has been the norm to assume that the only sources that can tell us something about them are the sources written by men. This thesis challenges this convention as it concerns the social history of Rome through the exploration of a written source by a woman named Vibia Perpetua. She was a Roman woman of twenty-two years from Roman Carthage, who was martyred on March 7, 203 C.E. The reason that we know of this Roman woman and what happened to her …

A Pure Space To Be Mexican: Ethnic Mexicans And The Mexico-U.S. Soccer Rivalry, 1990-2002, Paola Rodriguez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the soccer rivalry between Mexico and the United States that has been evolving since the early 1990s. Neither Mexico nor the United States are soccer powerhouse nations, yet their rivalry is arguably one of the most passionate contests in the world. For the Mexican National team the rivalry has become a struggle to maintain dominance and power in one of the few arenas where Mexico traditionally has had an advantage. The ability of the United States to challenge Mexican hegemony has intensified the rivalry. Although the United States has been able to score some victories inside the …

Visioning The Nation: Classical Images As Allegory During The French Revolution, Kristopher Guy Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, France experienced a seismic shift in the nature of political culture. The king gave way to the nation at the center of political life as the location of sovereignty transferred to the people. While the French Revolution changed the structure of France's government, it also changed the allegorical representations of the nation. At the Revolution's onset, the monarchy embodied both the state and nation as equated ideas. During the Revolutionary Decade and through the reign of Napoleon different governments experienced the need to reorient these symbols away from the person of the …

Trianon And The Predestination Of Hungarian Politics: A Historiography Of Hungarian Revisionism, 1918-1944, Dezso Bartha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis proposes to link certain consistent themes in the historiography of interwar and wartime Hungary. Hungary's inability to successfully resolve its minority problems led to the nation's dismemberment at Trianon in 1920 after World War I. This fostered a national Hungarian reaction against the Trianon settlement called the revisionist movement. This revisionist "Trianon syndrome" totally dominated Hungarian politics in the interwar period. As Hungary sought allies against the hated peace settlements of the Great War, Hungarian politics irrevocably tied the nation to the policies of Nazi Germany, and Hungary became nefariously assessed as "Hitler's last ally," which initially stained …

Plant City, Florida, 1885-1940: A Study In Southern Urban Development, Mark W. Kerlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the development of Plant City, Florida as a railroad town developing on the Southwest Florida frontier from 1885-1940. The study chronicles the town's origins and economic, political, and social development in relationship to the broader historical theories of southern urban development, specifically those put forward in David Goldfield's pioneering work, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region 1607-1980. Goldfield contended that southern cities developed differently than their northern counterparts because they were not economically, politically, philosophically and culturally separated from their rural surroundings. Instead, they displayed and retained the positive and negative attributes of southern society …

Separation Of Maine From Massachusetts 1785-1820, Ronald Fillmore Banks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The movement to separate Maine from Massachusetts commenced in 178£ as an "anticolonial" movement. Led at first by conservatives who desired independence for Maine in order that they could become leaders in the style of their political brethren who led Massachusetts, the movement was eventually taken over by men such as William King, John Holmes, Albion K. Parris, William Pitt Preble, and John Chandler, all of whom formed the leadership of the Jeffersonian- Republicans in Maine.

These leaders of the Republicans of Maine desired independence in order to be freed from the economic and political constraints placed on their activities …

History Of Public Secondary Education In Louisville., Harold S. Keeling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The development of secondary education in Louisville is significant because this city (together with the City of Covington) took the lead in establishing high schools in Kentucky. Although the state legislature from early days encouraged county seminaries and private academies, it gave practically no attention to high schools until 1908. After the Civil War various cities established high schools. There were few county high schools until the last decade of the century (1890-1900). Fifty-nine Kentucky high schools were accredited by the State University in 1908, but there 1 were perhaps as many unaccredited (with two or three year curricula). The …

A History Of The Kentucky School For The Blind, 1842-1930., Gretchen R. Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Cross Section Of Maine History At The Time Of The Separation From Massachusetts, Harold Howard Inman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is intended to present a picture of Maine as it was in 1820, at the time of the separation from Massachusetts. I have endeavored to give a cross-section of the state just at the time it was taking a place among the more mature council, known as the United States. Maine had been for a long time under the tutelage of Massachusetts, but now felt able to strike out on its own.

In 1820 Maine presents an interesting picture. It is a good period of which to make a sketch for the state was entering upon the new …

Separation Of Maine From Massachusetts, Albert Ames Whitmore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the various efforts in the 18th and 19th century to separate Maine from Massachusetts.