Digital Commons Network^™

Shapeshifter, Kate Kosek

Art and Design Theses

Where is the line between art and craft? “You can be anything you want to be,” they say, “You can have it all!” Shapeshifter is a playful manipulation of form and language pertaining to my perspective as a woman who creates textile sculptures that question the gendered hierarchies within art and craft. Humor and intuition allow me to reclaim power through cute, colorful, and decorative artworks that satirize the dominant narratives surrounding women’s work and leisure. Shapeshifter plays with the stereotypes of gender, labor, and aesthetics within art history to imagine a world where objects like pyramids and scrunchies are …

The Macintosh Professionals: Crises In Industrial Lore And Fan Reception Of Apple's Desktop Computers, Taylor Olmstead

Film, Media & Theatre Theses

This thesis uses industrial discourse analysis and fan studies to posit that fandom has the power to intervene in moments when producers and brands thwart expectations generated by industrial lore. Steve Jobs’ “Four Quadrants” strategy became a crucial piece of Apple’s industrial lore is shown to influence the expectations of Apple fans. Negative fan reactions to new product launches will be used to demonstrate the impact of said lore and the openings it creates for dissent. Analysis of the industrial discourse surrounding the discontinued iMac Pro and redesigned Mac Pro determines the efficacy of fan interventions in eliciting a concession …

The Right To Toil: Labors Fight Against Right To Work Laws, Joshua Da Cruz

History Theses

This thesis is on the passing of Right to Work (RTW) laws in Georgia. It tracks public debate surrounding the passing of Senate bills 10 and 11 in 1947. This thesis examines who was arguing for and against the bills in public forums, mainly in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper and how these bills came to pass. Existing scholarship focusing on the Taft-Hartley Act and RTW laws seemingly overlook the fact that Georgia’s RTW laws were passed months before the Taft-Hartley Act was enacted. Most of the challenges to Georgia’s RTW laws pointed out the laws contradicted the Wagner Act, the …

At Work, Kylie Little

Art and Design Theses

At Work examines internal and societal expectations of relentless productivity through an installation of simple yet absurd mechanical contraptions and sequences of actions. Each piece is a prototype that performs a useless task in a clumsy, inefficient way. I guide each machine through a monotonously repetitive series of motions that emphasize constant work and movement as if busy-ness, in and of itself, is a virtue. By questioning the value of busy-ness, At Work simultaneously forces me to confront the guilt I associate with idleness and to look critically at the sense of pride that comes with a hard day’s work.

An Examination Into Teacher Hiring: Preferences, Efficiency, Stability, And Student Outcomes, Katherine Stewart Georgia State University

AYSPS Dissertations

This dissertation studies teacher hiring practices, an avenue to potentially raise teacher quality which has not been studied extensively. I analyze three aspects of the teacher hiring process, which, if improved, could promote education quality: the principal hiring decision, the teacher application decision, and the effects of information on teacher behavior and market outcomes in the teacher labor market. The first two are empirical studies utilizing administrative data from an urban school district, and the last is a laboratory experiment.

Education is a labor focused enterprise where outcomes are largely determined by teacher quality, so hiring the most productive teachers …

Exploring Wage Determination By Education Level: A U.S. Msa Analysis For 2005-2012, Penelope B. Prime, Donald Grimes, Mary Beth Walker

International Business Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to explain urban wage differentials with a special focus on educational levels. The authors explore whether the share of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher in the community matters to the wages of those within specific educational cohorts, accounting for cost of living, human capital externalities, consumer externalities, policy factors, and local labor market conditions. Using data for all U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas between 2005 and 2012, the authors find that the presence of more highly educated people will result in a higher median wage in the community overall, as do many studies, …

Mlk’S Labor Legacy Began In Atlanta, Traci Drummond

Selections from the University Library Blog

No abstract provided.

Remaking Of Race And Labor In British Guiana And Louisiana: 1830-1880, Amanda G. Lewis Ms.

History Theses

During the nineteenth century, the Gulf of Mexico fostered the movement of people, ideas, and news throughout the surrounding regions. Although each colony and state surrounding the basin had distinct cultures and traditions, they shared the legacy of slavery and emancipation. This study examines the transformation of labor that occurred for sugar planters in British Guiana and southern Louisiana during the age of emancipation. In this comparative project, I argue that in the 1830s planters from the British West Indies set the trajectory for solutions to the labor problem by curtailing the freedom of former slaves with Asian contract labor. …

Ambient Void, Joy Phoenix M. Savage

Art and Design Theses

The constructed works of Phoenix Savage point to the negotiated world of African Americans. Savage explores her artistic process in relationship to racial tensions both personal and historical.

Representations Of Labor In The Slave Narrative, Agnel Natasha Barron

English Theses

This study examines the slave narratives The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself and The Bondwoman’s Narrative to determine the way in which these texts depict the economics of labor in slave society. Taking into account the specific socio-historical contexts in which these narratives were written, this study analyzes the way in which the representations of labor in these narratives interrogate slavery and address issues relating to the social relations and power dynamics of their respective societies. Emphasis is given to the way in which the …

Men Of War: The Seamen Of Hms Mars And The Revolutionary Era, Harold Hansen

History Theses

The late eighteenth century witnessed dramatic changes in the social, economic, and political fabric of the Atlantic World. The Sailors of the HMS Mars fully participated in this transition to modernity. Over the course of their naval careers, the men laboring on the Mars felt the pull of four distinct, but interlocking cultures. Working class, maritime, naval, and British culture all played a part in the sailors’ identity construction. As a result of these myriad influences the sailors could have chosen to join the emerging trans-national maritime working class, but instead the Mars’ seamen fought to gain full British citizenship …

They Know "What Work Is": Working Class Individuals In The Poetry Of Philip Levine, Jeffrey Edmond Rumiano

English Dissertations

ABSTRACT For more than fifty years, Philip Levine has successfully written verse and prose on a number of subjects and themes including the complexities of familial relationships, the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, the importance and effects of memory in life, race relations in the United States, the poet’s Jewish identity, and the very struggles that writing meaningful poetry involves. A cursory look at the scholarship on Levine’s poetry reveals that these are the topics frequently discussed and analyzed. However, as anyone can recognize in the criticism on Levine’s verse, Levine’s reputation does not rest so much on his …

Reconfiguring Memories Of Honor: William Raoul's Manipulation Of Masculinities In The New South, 1872-1918, Steve Ray Blankenship

History Dissertations

This dissertation examines how honor was fashioned in the New South by examining the masculine roles performed by William Greene Raoul, Jr. Raoul wrote his autobiography in the mid-1930s and in it he reflected on his life on the New South's frontier at the turn of the century as change came to the region in all aspects of life: politically, economically, socially, sexually, and racially. Raoul was an elite son of the New South whose memoirs, "The Proletarian Aristocrat," reveals a man of multiple masculinities, each with particular ways of retrieving his past(s). The paradox of his title suggests the …

Strike Fever: Labor Unrest, Civil Rights And The Left In Atlanta, 1972, Monica Waugh-Benton

History Theses

This thesis aims to provide a history of African American working class and Leftist activism in Atlanta, Georgia during the early 1970s. It places a series of wildcat strikes within the context of political and social transition, and charges unequal economic conditions and a racially charged discriminatory environment as primary causes. The legacies of both the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left are identified as key contributing factors to this wave of labor unrest. One path taken by former Civil Right activists was to focus on poor peoples’ movements, and one course taken by the 1960s-era New Left activists …

A Misguided Quest For Legitimacy: The Community Relations Department Of The Southern Organizing Committee Of The Cio During Operation Dixie, 1946-1953, Michael Andrew Sloan

History Theses

This thesis is a study of the Community Relations Department of the Southern Organizing Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations during the CIO’s Southern Organizing Drive, often referred to as “Operation Dixie.” The Community Relations Department was primarily interested in improving relations between organized labor and organized religion, in the hopes that improved church-labor relations would produce a situation more conducive to labor organizing, and reduce attacks on the CIO from religious leaders. This thesis examines the methods utilized by the CRD to achieve this end, and presents an analysis both of their efficacy and of their implementation. Specific …