Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Employing Cultural Criticism In The Teaching Of British Literature For Chinese Undergraduate English Majors, Yu Zhang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The traditional literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors are formalism and biographical criticism. These criticisms use an objective approach focused on details about the author, historical context and literary mechanics to analyze literature. These methods neglect the fact that literature comprehension involves readers’ active participation. Cultural criticism, as a critical approach, considers influences that readers bring to their engagement with a given literary text. This approach is supposed to fit the classroom settings for cross-cultural literature teaching and learning.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of utilizing cultural criticism to teach British literature among Chinese undergraduate English …

The Interactions Of Relationships, Interest, And Self-Efficacy In Undergraduate Physics, Remy Dou

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collected papers dissertation explores students’ academic interactions in an active learning, introductory physics settings as they relate to the development of physics self-efficacy and interest. The motivation for this work extends from the national call to increase participation of students in the pursuit of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Self-efficacy and interest are factors that play prominent roles in popular, evidence-based, career theories, including the Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and the identity framework. Understanding how these constructs develop in light of the most pervasive characteristic of the active learning introductory physics classroom (i.e., peer-to-peer interactions) has …

Desperate Times Call, Hector Duarte Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DESPERATE TIMES CALL is a collection of short stories and a novella about people whose lives intersect with violence. The young girl in Of Course She Would is forced to leave her home after finding her meth-addicted father dead of a heart attack. Tomas Mangual, the main character of She Said Two, sets off on a blind date to discover his counterpart has recently been the victim of a disturbing hate crime. The featured novella, Diablo Corrido, raises the question: How far would someone chase their ambition to see a life-long dream come true?

Using the intimate perspectives of …

Balm Of Gilead, Michael Martin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

BALM OF GILEAD is a collection of poetry that explores the speaker’s rediscovery of love and spiritual meaning in the years after his recovery from addiction and the loss of a parent. BALM OF GILEAD fits within the English poetic tradition of fastening ineffable sacred experience into more personal lyric modes, an inheritance dating not only to the works of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but to the Psalms of David. The often-confessional poems in BALM OF GILEAD borrow from the free verse and emotional urgency of Denis Johnson; the broken sonnets of Molly Peacock; and the …

Becoming Bilingual: Examining Teachers' Perceptions And Practices For Achieving Bilingualism And Biliteracy In English And Spanish In A Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education Program, Carolyn O'Gorman-Fazzolari

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bilingualism characterizes not only people, but homes, schools, and communities across the United States. While some bilingual people are forced to suppress their bilingualism, others are encouraged to develop their skill set to a level of becoming biliterate. Bilingualism and biliteracy are key features in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs where students are provided daily opportunities to develop two languages simultaneously, along with grade-level academic content. Research in DLBE suggest closure of the achievement gap (Valentino & Reardon, 2015). Traditionally, DLBE programs were designed to keep the two target languages (for example, Spanish and English) separate as designated by …

Adhans & Orgasms, Emily Jalloul

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ADHANS & ORGASMS is a collection that includes both free verse and prose poetry. The poems shape the Florida landscape as well as cultural aspects of the speaker’s home life, providing insight to the hyphenated space between Arab and American societies. The frequent use of the female perspective and humor inform the speaker of her own past, while portraying a woman at odds with a patriarchal society.

Many of the poems explore the self through pop-culture, sexuality, and heritage. ADHANS & ORGASMS discusses the family unit’s dysfunction as it tries to bridge cultures. Romantic relationships are examined, and many of …

The String Of 10,000 Firecrackers, Jan M. Becker

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

THE STRING OF 10,000 FIRECRACKERS

by

Jan Becker

Florida International University, 2017

Miami, Florida

Professor Les Standiford, Major Professor

THE STRING OF 10,000 FIRECRACKERS is a collection of personal essays that examines the narrator’s upbringing as a Marine Corps brat, and her experience immigrating into civilian society in the United States after a childhood segregated behind barbed-wire on military bases.

The collection begins with the title essay, when the narrator, at nine years-of-age, tosses an ignited string of 10,000 firecrackers at her stepfather, a decorated Vietnam veteran, triggering post-traumatic flashback, and a reflection on the author’s …

The Last Cold Winter, Gabriela P. Suarez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Last Cold Winter is a historical novel that takes place in Romania at the end of the 1989 Communist Revolution. George Bird, a naturalized American citizen, returns with his thirty-year-old son, Adrian, to the country they had defected from twenty-eight-years earlier. George Bird is dying of lung cancer, and he wishes to see his parents and his country one last time. The trip quickly turns into a nightmare when he is kidnapped the first day back. Adrian, who doesn’t speak Romanian, must now meet the kidnapper’s demand for a list he knows nothing about in order to save his …

Spanish And Cuban Politicians, Publicists And Reporters Facing The Cuban Crisis At The End Of The Nineteenth Century, Maria Aparicio-Torres

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I study a selection of little known Spanish and Cuban texts published during the Cuban War of Independence at the end of the 19th century. In this project, I provide a transatlantic approach of literary texts in various genres and subgenres, and political messages exchanged between Cuba and Spain, which have been neglected by scholars in the field.

By analyzing the emergence of a colonial discourse in the works of novelists, politicians and thinkers who wrote about the Cuban-Spanish confrontation, I establish their ambiguous and frequently contradictory colonial messages. In doing so, this dissertation furthers our understanding …

All My Heroes Are Broke, Ariel F. Henriquez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE is a poetry collection written from the perspective of a first generation American coming to terms with the implicit struggles and disillusionment of the American Dream. The first section takes place in New York, both implicitly and explicitly, and serves to introduce the speaker and reveal aspects of his family’s history. The second section takes place in Florida, and continues to further exemplify the speaker’s growing cynicism towards the circumstances of his life, and the peculiar atmosphere of solitude that it creates.

ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE primarily uses two forms: short, image driven poems …

Thermodynamics And Kinetics Of Ligand Photodissociation In Heme Proteins And Formation Of Dna I-Motif, David S. Butcher

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heme proteins carry out a diverse array of functions in vivo while maintaining a well-conserved 3-over-3 α-helical structure. Human hemoglobin (Hb) is well-known for its oxygen transport function. Type 1 non-symbiotic hemoglobins (nsHb1) in plants and bacterial flavohemoglobins (fHb) from a variety of bacterial species have been predicted to carry out a nitric oxide dioxygenase function. In nsHb1 and fHb this function has been linked to protection from nitrosative stress. Herein, I combine photoacoustic calorimetry (PAC), transient absorption spectroscopy (TA), and classical molecular dynamics (cMD) simulations to characterize molecular mechanism of diatomic ligand interactions with a hexa-coordinate globin from plant …

Us Foreign Policy Toward Azerbaijan, 1991-2015, Galib Bashirov

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to investigate the sources of United States (US) foreign policy toward Azerbaijan by examining the relative impact of domestic, geostrategic and structural factors in explaining US foreign policy toward the country. Azerbaijan is one of the newly independent states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite its small size, the country’s strategic location, vast oil and natural gas reserves, and its conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno- Karabakh region elevated its importance and made Azerbaijan the center of interest for great powers. As the sole superpower after the end of the Cold War, the …

Rubble & Honey, Megan J. Arlett

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

RUBBLE & HONEY is a collection of poems unified by its use of language driven lyricism to recount personal narratives in the life of the poet. The poems in this manuscript depict the landscapes of California, Florida, Mississippi, the South Downs of England, and Anglesey off the northwest coast of Wales. The manuscript engages with these physical spaces, how the speaker reacts to the natural world and how these locations can reflect the internal. The collection is broken into four sections: the first two explore parting, firstly from a relationship and then revisiting the poet’s childhood landscape of Sussex, England; …

Oblivious Network Optimization And Security Modeling In Sustainable Smart Grids And Cities, Kianoosh G. Boroojeni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today's interconnected world requires an inexpensive, fast, and reliable way of transferring information. There exists an increasingly important need for intelligent and adaptable routing of network flows. In the last few years, many researchers have worked toward developing versatile solutions to the problem of routing network flows in unpredictable circumstances. These attempts have evolved into a rich literature in the area of "oblivious network design" which typically route the network flows via a routing scheme that makes use of a spanning tree or a set of trees of the graph representation of the network.

In the first chapter, we provide …

The Effects Of Commodity Disturbances On Open Economics, Richard Whitaker

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the effects of commodity disturbances on underlying economies. The analysis conducted in this dissertation comprises of two main themes. The first is investigating which commodity disturbances affect a country's GDP. I examine twenty three OECD countries and nineteen primary commodities in the energy, metal, food and timber sectors using a New Keynesian model that was estimated using the DSGE method. It was found the oil disturbances and to a lesser extend natural gas were the only commodity disturbances that affect a country's GDP. Also, it was found that a country's openness plays an important role in shaping …

Capture And Densification Of Floating Hydrophobic Liquids By Natural Granular Materials, Daria Boglaienko

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Densification and submergence of floating crude oil is proposed as a novel oil spills treatment method. Surface application of dry granular materials (e.g., quartz sand, limestone) on top of a floating oil layer increases the density of the floating oil phase/granule mixture and leads to formation of relatively large and stable aggregates with significant amounts of captured oil. The aggregates separate from the floating hydrophobic phase and settle by gravity. Implementation of this method will reduce the impact radius of a spill and its mobility, preventing direct contamination of beaches, coastal flora and fauna.

The major objective of this research …

Back To Bluefield, Mary F. Slebodnik

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

BACK TO BLUEFIELD is a collection of ten short stories set in the fictional small town of Bluefield, Ohio. Like “Dance of the Happy Shades” by Alice Munro, BACK TO BLUEFIELD highlights patriarchal limitations women often face in rural communities. In “This Little Light of Mine,” a teenage girl attempts to escape the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her father, while in “Praise Camp,” a youth pastor counsels a teenager to repress homosexual feelings, yet cannot bury her own unrequited love for her female best friend. In the spirit of Hemingway’s “The End of Something,” each story contain a …

Enzyme Catalyzed And Ultrasound Assisted Transformation Of Selected Pollutants, Yi Tan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The widespread use of synthetic drugs and as feed additives has resulted in the release of large amounts of biologically active chemicals into the environment. Exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of chemicals can have severe effects on human health. Therefore, effective degradation of these synthetic, biologically active compounds is of paramount importance.

Diphenhydramine (DPH) has been selected as a target compound for ultrasound remediation. The results demonstrated that ultrasound-induced degradation has potential applications in managing aqueous media contaminated with DPH.

Atorvastatin and roxarsone have been selected as representative substrates for chloroperoxidase (CPO) catalyzed transformation of pollutants. These studies demonstrate atorvastatin …

The Effect Of Hyperthermia On Doxorubicin Therapy And Nanoparticle Penetration In Multicellular Ovarian Cancer Spheroids, Abhignyan Nagesetti

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The efficient treatment of cancer with chemotherapy is challenged by the limited penetration of drugs into the tumor. Nanoparticles (10 – 100 nanometers) have emerged as a logical choice to specifically deliver chemotherapeutics to tumors, however, their transport into the tumor is also impeded owing to their bigger size compared to free drug moieties. Currently, monolayer cell cultures, as models for drug testing, cannot recapitulate the structural and functional complexity of in-vivo tumors. Furthermore, strategies to improve drug distribution in tumor tissues are also required. In this study, we hypothesized that hyperthermia (43°C) will improve the distribution of silica nanoparticles …

Policymaking In The Gulf Region: The Case Of Privatization Policy In The State Of Kuwait, Shahed Altammar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to explore the policy processes in Kuwait by examining the recent privatization legislation, which has been adopted but not yet implemented. First, the research reports data from elite interviews, focus groups, and document reviews about policymaking, to illuminate the processes that lead up to the adoption of privatization. Limited data of this nature currently exist. Second, it is anticipated that findings reported in this study will be of theoretical relevance to scholars of comparative politics and particularly to privatization theorists.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the differences in policymaking processes between …

Worlds Ahead?: On The Dialectics Of Cosmopolitanism And Postcapitalism, Bryant William Sculos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the major theories of global justice (specifically within the cosmopolitan tradition) have missed an important aspect of capitalism in their attempts to deal with the most pernicious effects of the global economic system. This is not merely a left critique of cosmopolitanism (though it is certainly that as well), but its fundamental contribution is that it applies the insights of Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics to offer an internal critique of cosmopolitanism. As it stands, much of the global justice and cosmopolitanism literature takes global capitalism as an unsurpassable and a foundationally unproblematic …

Social Networks, Health & Hispanic Gay Men Living In South Florida, Victor Christian Vila

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aging Hispanic populations are expected to increase in the United States (U.S.) to 21.5 million by 2060 according to the National Council on Aging (NCA) (2014). Although actual estimates vary, Gates (2013) asserts that over one million Hispanics identify as gay or bisexual and their unique needs must be explored (Clover, 2006; Cohn & Taylor, 2010; Fenkl, 2014). Unfortunately, few studies examine aging Hispanic men who identify as gay or bisexual according to the National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) (2013). The objective of the current study was to extend the limited research on aging gay/bisexual men in the southeastern …

The Effects Of Artemisia Derived Natural Products On Adipogenesis, Steven Abood

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the first time in human history, more people worldwide suffer from obesity than are undernourished. Numerous health complications are associated with obesity including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 Diabetes, cancers of reproductive tissues, stroke, depression, anxiety disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease. A deeper understanding of the anti-adipogenic effects and mechanism of action of sesquiterpene lactones may have pharmacological import in the continuing search for therapeutic modalities to ameliorate the effects of this global obesity epidemic.

Dehydroleucodine (DhL), 11,13-dihydro-dehydroleucodine (DH-DhL), and dehydroparashin-B (DhP), sesquiterpene lactones extracted from or derived from compounds extracted from Artemisia douglasiana, were investigated for their anti-adipogenic effects …