Digital Commons Network^™

Toward A Philosophy Of Race In Education, Corey V Kittrell

Doctoral Dissertations

There is a tendency in education theory to place the focus on the consequences of racial hegemony (racism, Eurocentric education, low performance by racial minorities) and ignore that race is antecedent to these consequences. This dissertation explores the treatment of race within critical theory in education. I conduct a metaphysical analysis to examine the race concept as it emerges from the works of various critical theorists in education. This examination shows how some scholars affirm the scientifically discredited race concept by offering racial essentialist approaches for emancipatory education. I argue that one of consequences of these approaches is the further …

Bluegrass Nation: A Historical And Cultural Analysis Of America's Truest Music, Leslie Blake Price

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Orange Alba: The Civil Religion Of Loyalism In The Southwestern Lowlands Of Scotland Since 1798, Ronnie Michael Booker Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

This study introduces the idea that, taken together, the major institutional frameworks of the ultra-Protestant culture of loyalism in the southwestern lowlands of Scotland can be conceived as a civil religion. I argue that loyalist civil religion in lowland Scotland was comprised of a distinct set of institutions including the Orange Order, Glasgow Rangers Football Club, loyalist street gangs and paramilitaries and loyalist flute bands. The elements that informed each of these loyalist groups were not unrelated, but part of a multidimensional and interactive civil religious movement. Each institution appealed to a wide range of viewpoints within the loyalist community …

Ein Kleiner, Schwarzer Punkt Am Weisslichen Himmel: Antarctica & Ice In German Expressionism, Joy M. Essigmann

Masters Theses

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey …

The Fantasy Sport Experience: Motivations, Satisfaction, And Future Intentions., Brody James James Ruihley

Doctoral Dissertations

Fantasy sport participation is an online activity consuming the time, energy, and devotion of many sport followers. This activity provides participants a unique way to experience sport aside from simply viewing, listening, or following a sporting contest. Fantasy sport users present marketers and advertisers with a distinct type of sport fan, segmentation strategy, and target market. These users experience sport beyond wins, losses, and championships. They view statistics as fantasy points, individual players as products, and injury reports as team-altering news. These users see sport through a different lens.

The purpose of this research is to gain familiarity with the …

Snaps Of Eden, Michael J. Hudson

Masters Theses

The following poems are and attempt at reclamation and reconciliation. The first section wades through the delicate subject of personal history and is an attempt to show truth as a means of both self and communal healing. The second is plaintive, a brief effort to interlope into and understand worlds outside (but not foreign) to my own. The third is a poetic essay detailing the journey of a young woman facing the horrors of an undeclared, and seemingly eternal war. The fourth and final sections serve as a means of exploration of the self and place; tackling issues of sex, …

“The Youngest Of The Great American Family”: The Creation Of A Franco-American Culture In Early Louisiana, Cinnamon Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

On April 30, 1803, the Jefferson administration purchased French Louisiana. Initially American lawmakers rejoiced at the prospect of American domination of the Mississippi River. Yet within a few short months this optimism was replaced with uncertainty and alarm as lawmakers faced the task of incorporating Lower Louisiana into the Union. As Americans tackled the many unintended consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, Louisianans also had to confront the ramifications of the landmark acquisition and the encroachment of a new American government in their lives. From 1803 to 1815, American lawmakers and Louisianans embarked on a parallel journey to incorporate Lower Louisiana …

Why Foreign Counterinsurgency Campaigns Fail, Donald Frederick Butler

Doctoral Dissertations

Why have foreign counterinsurgency operations had such low success rates since 1945? While operations of this type succeeded at the rate of 85.71% during the period of 1816-1945, they declined by 56.30 percentage points to just 29.49% during period of 1945-1997 (Sarkees, 2000: 123-144). This occurred even though foreign powers were often fighting in the same territories where they had previously been overwhelmingly victorious.

I argue that military defeats suffered by European states during the Second World War convinced the peoples of the developing world that colonial control could be successfully challenged. As guerrilla struggles emerged in post-war Asia and …

Captive To The American Woods: Sarah Wakefield And Cultural Mediation, Sophia Betsworth Hunt

Masters Theses

The life and narrative of Sarah Wakefield, an Anglo migrant who spent six weeks as a captive of the Santee Dakotas during the US-Dakota Conflict, show one woman's experience navigating the changing racial dynamics of the nineteenth-century Minnesota frontier. Using recent conceptualizations of “the frontier” as either a middle ground or woods, this thesis reconsiders Wakefield as a prisoner, not of Indians or her own conscience but of her region‟s ossifying racial divisions. Wakefield's initial attempts at intercultural communication, which included feeding starving Dakotas who knocked on her door, were consistent with Anglo notions about womanhood and Indian-white relations. But …

The Impact Of Culture And National Origin On Educational Aspiration, Personal Responsibility, And Self-Efficacy: A Comparative Analysis Of Views By African Americans And African Caribbeans, Donna M. Dopwell

Masters Theses

The United States is a country of many cultures and peoples. The different cultures need to be understood in order to best support the success of all individuals in the country. One group that has been present, but has only recently received attention as a valid culture, is African Americans. Further complicating the black identity in the country is the presence of immigrants of African descent. While there is existing research on the subjects of race relations, cultural identities, and perceptions regarding opportunities for success, much of this research is qualitative and some of the research uses a deficit approach …

The Return To The Gothicin The Face Of Gender Anarchy At The Fin De Siede, Camille Marie Chandler

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Field Portrait: Poems, Jesse Kendall Graves

Doctoral Dissertations

This creative dissertation is a collection of original poems entitled Field Portrait. The poems in Field Portrait emerge from a long apprenticeship to the aesthetics of poetry, and to the study of how work, family, history, community, and landscape have been represented by poets in the western literary tradition. Many of the poems in Field Portrait are set in rural eastern Tennessee where I grew up, but several poems respond to other places I have lived and visited, such as upstate New York and New Orleans, Louisiana. My poems aspire to an integrated relationship between description and perception, in …

Embodied Vision: Sublimity And Mystery In The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Andrew Patrick Hicks

Masters Theses

This thesis serves as a study of representative pieces of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction alongside three particular theories of the sublime, and offers an exploration of the ways in which O’Connor employs and modifies and aesthetics of sublimity throughout her fiction. Three particular theories of the sublime are considered throughout this study: Edmund Burke’s empiricist sublime, Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern sublime, and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt’s theological sublime. Burke’s theory is considered alongside both the early O’Connor story “The Turkey” and the later “Greenleaf,” while the story “Parker’s Back” is read in light of Lyotard’s theory and the novel The Violent Bear It …

Rights Of Passage: Immigrant Fiction, Religious Ritual, And The Politics Of Liminality, 1899-1939, Laura Patton Samal

Doctoral Dissertations

The novels written by immigrants to the United States during the great wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal a preoccupation with religious ritual as a major means through which they depict the tensions and dynamics at work in the immigration experience and the confrontation with American culture. This dissertation establishes the significance of religious ritual in novels written by immigrants to the United States between 1899 and 1939, and delineates the important spiritual, social, and political functions such ritual served by way of its special properties. I argue that immigrant writers used ritual as …

Experiencing The Modern American City And Addressing The Slum In The United States And Brazil: 1890-1933, Nathaniel Z. Heggins Bryant

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the treatment of slum spaces in the US and Brazil spanning the period 1890-1933, seeking to understand better the ethics of representation regarding the slum as well as the varying aesthetic agendas and political engagements of four novelists. The works under consideration are A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) by William Dean Howells, The Slum (1890) by Aluísio Azevedo, Manhattan Transfer (1925) by John Dos Passos, and Industrial Park (1933), by Patrícia Galvão. I chart the varying methods of representation associated with each novel, from Howell’s critical realism to Azevedo’s unique version of naturalism to the fragmented …

Comparative Study: Educating A Student With Autism In Tanzania And The United States, Laura F. Hippensteel

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Emerging From The Shadow Of Death: The Relief Efforts And Consolidating Identity Of The Irish Middle Classes During The Great Famine, 1845-1851, Jessica K. Lumsden

Masters Theses

This project argued that the leadership of the Irish middle classes was essential in providing relief to the destitute during the Great Irish Potato Famine, 1845-1851. It further argued that middle class leadership in the Famine period translated into a greater class consciousness and subsequent political leadership. Records from the transactions of relief projects from the Society of Friends, pamphlets written by contemporary British and Irish men of the middle and upper classes, and workhouse records illuminated the role of the middle classes in relief efforts. This project joins that primary research to secondary scholarship on the growing political role …

Fracture Biomechanics Of The Human Skeleton, Anne M. Kroman

Doctoral Dissertations

Trauma analysis is a growing area of physical and forensic anthropology. The analysis of fracture patterns is useful in determining cause and manner of death, as well as making inferences about past populations. Traditionally, anthropologists have categorized bone trauma into the discrete categories of blunt, ballistic, and sharp trauma. While these descriptors provide a practical approach, anthropologists need to change the way that trauma is perceived and analysis of fractures is conducted. Bone trauma is best viewed as a continuum (rather than discrete independent categories), with the variables of force, acceleration/deceleration, and surface area of impacting interface governing the appearance …

Writing Back With Light: Postcolonial Film Adaptations Of The Literature Of Empire, Jerod R. Hollyfield

Masters Theses

Since decolonization began after World War II, citizens of colonized nations have attempted to subvert the literature of empire in order to write back to their oppressors and construct national identities. With visual media, such as film, surpassing print as the dominant form of artistic communication, many artists from former colonies have begun using the film medium as another channel to forge identities for their nations. However, in the wake of a decolonized world marked by the increasing power of multinational corporations, artists desiring to write back must address not only their colonizers but also a new form of imperialism …

Shakespeare's Penitents, Lisa Marie Krekelberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Grieving Process: Loss In British Romantic Women's Poetry, Amanda Elizabeth Sharp

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Not So Immaculately Conceived: Imagining The Protestant Madonna 1850-1910, Deborah Ann Scaperoth

Doctoral Dissertations

Pius IX in the 1854 Bull Ineffabilis Deus defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as the belief that Mary; mother of Jesus, was from the moment of her conception free from the "stain of original sin." This idea was a part of ecclesiastical tradition, but prior to this time, the church had not officially defined Mary's sinless nature in writing. The publication of this definition, along with published accounts of Marian sightings, contributed to an already heightened awareness of her in a literate, culturally aware public. As a result, Protestant writers who sought to invoke her image interpreted a …

Fields With Dreams: The Distribution Of Farmland With Publicly-Funded Conservation Easements In Pennsylvania, Amy Sue Hill

Masters Theses

Conservation easements have played an increasingly significant role in the American movement to preserve farmland from urban development. Conservation easements are legal instruments that enable a landowner to sell his right to develop his property to an outside party, typically a government entity or a private land conservancy. The distribution of conservation easements used to preserve farmland is highly variable. Conservation easements often are found in regions where productive farmland and intense development pressure collide. Conservation easements are most common in places where both public and private sectors give strong financial and political support for conservation.

This thesis analyzes the …

From The Voice To The Violent Act: Language And Violence In Contemporary Drama, Richard A. Bryan

Doctoral Dissertations

Aleks Sierz coined the phrase "In-Yer-Face Theatre" to categorize a new generation of plays written by a group of upstart playwrights in Britain and America. In addressing these plays, I draw upon recent contributions within the social sciences in order to understand better the interstices of language and violence in this drama. This interdisciplinary approach underscores the social considerations at the heart of these plays. Although frequently criticized for a perceived lack of social consciousness and a seemingly gratuitous use of profanity, prurient sexuality, and graphic violence, these writers in fact continue, and contribute to, a tradition of theater that …

Dismantling The Master’S Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric Of Education In African American Autobiography And Fiction, Miya G. Abbot

Masters Theses

This thesis examines rhetorical understandings of education for African Americans in literature of three important time periods of American history. From the post-Reconstruction South, to Northern cities in the 1950s, and finally to 1990s Los Angeles, this is an examination of how African American authors of fiction and autobiography have presented the relationship between literacy acquisition and identity. Underlying the historical and rhetorical examination is the argument that, for African American students, the virtue of the educational space is dubious. It is at once the gateway to the "American dream" of prosperity, and the venue for the reinforcement of systemic …

The Pressure Model Of Terrorism: A Behavioralist Model For Ethnonational Terrorism In Western Europe, 1945-2000, Ole J. Forsberg

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine which factors affect an ethnonational group's decision to utilize terrorism to obtain their desired outcomes. Current theories have reached an answer, but theoretical underpinnings of those answers are disparate and weak. Thus, in answering this question, a new model of terrorism is necessary - one which spans the four primary levels of analysis. I do this using a weak rational choice model as a cross-level link, and using psychological models as a basis for the individual-level actions.

While the model is not unequivocally and universally supported by the tests, it is able …

Maritime Terrorism In Southeast Asia, Lara E. Kuhnert

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Changing Votes Through Changing Minds, Julia Anne Stoll

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of The Predictive Validity Of Broad And Narrow Personality Traits In Relation To Academic Achievement, Jessica A. Dunsmore

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the ability of broad and narrow personality traits to predict academic achievement over time in adolescence. Analyses were conducted on a sample of 1328 adolescents from an archival data set. Students were in grades 6, 9, and 12 at time one, and measures were assessed over three consecutive annual testing occasions. Results from correlational analyses showed that all Big Five traits predicted academic performance at Time One and Time Two. All Big Five traits except for Openness predicted academic performance at Time Three. Additional correlational analyses demonstrated that the narrow traits of …

Women’S Experiences And Expectations Of The Physician-Patient Relationship, Jill Denise Compton

Doctoral Dissertations

Past research on gender and the medical encounter has tended to focus on gender differences in behavior of both patients and physicians. Less effort has been expended in assessing how gender shapes and structures the experience of the medical encounter. The present study aimed to provide insight into aspects of the medical encounter from the perspectives of women patients themselves and to offer insight into the ways gender emerges and is enacted in the medical encounter.

Seventeen women recruited from a population of undergraduate and graduate students participated in a semi-structured interview involving questions about their experiences with and expectations …