Digital Commons Network^™

Biting Range, Effie Bowen

Theses and Dissertations

Biting Range is an essayic text about dogs, process, order, and memory. Structured as a conceptual material list, the writing addresses experiential textures and tensions gleaned from observation. Writing within and against the margins, I address the performativity of the page as its own form to be agitated.

To, From: Of Time, Of Distance, Of Body And Mind, Fanxi Sun

Theses and Dissertations

This paper introduces the concepts, theories, and techniques associated with my thesis project “To, From.” The paper consists of three parts: Time as Structure, Distance as Premise, and Body and Mind. Each chapter is written in a mixture of personal narration and a general introduction to materials that are directly or implicatively relevant and important to the creation of my project. In this experimental narrative comprises film screening and live performance with multi-channel sound, I tell a story of non-story. Words and the exchange of words, movements and non- movements, objects that are being handled and subjects that are handling... …

Heavy Hold: A Physical Score, Alexandra Velozo

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of essays, stories, and fictional interviews that are in conversation with my performance, teaching, and sculpture practice. My research and work considers chronic illness, disability, the historic cultural connection between swamplands and illness, the medical industrial complex, medical theater, the medical gaze, disabled performers, metatactile space, sensory learning, and access.

Surrogate Memories In Animation And Sound, Jared Duesterhaus

Theses and Dissertations

A document in support of my exploration into memory in relation to the mediums of animation, sound, and theater. A reflection on remembering as a creative act.

I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo, Luis A. Vasquez La Roche

Theses and Dissertations

I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo is a series of works--sculpture, installations, and performances--that explore themes of shame, failure, commodity, ephemerality, ritual, resilience, erasure, race, and death. The research and interest in these themes stem from a page of the Trinidad and Tobago Slave Registry. I use the research that surrounds this document to highlight different moments in history, in my personal life, and to imagine near futures.

Ghost Signs Are More Than Paintings On Brick, Eric Anthony Berdis

Theses and Dissertations

My work embraces a maximalist aesthetic that incorporates, archival research, personal secrets, and pubescent gay boy glamour. I seek to create a stimulating yet jarring experience, while building a world that is both familiar and inherently strange to the viewer. Thrift store cast-offs, hobbyist craft supplies, and saturated drawings are reassembled into a cast of characters and costumes that balance on the line between ghosts, creatures, and friends. While we often think of costume and even art installations as meant to cover bodies and walls, my work tends to reveal more than conceal. I aspire through this work to shine …

The Role Of Patient Room-Type, Interruptions, And Intrapersonal Resources In Nurse Performance And Well-Being, Jennifer Early

Theses and Dissertations

Interruptions create a complex challenge in health care. Because some interruptions are necessary in health care, they cannot be completely eliminated. Thus, their effects must be appropriately mitigated. To better understand predictors and consequences of interruptions, as well as factors that may mitigate their negative effects, I employed Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, supplemented by additional constructs from organizational behavior and psychology to develop a model of predictors and mitigators of interruptions. Twenty registered nurses providing care on a progressive acute care unit with single- and double-occupancy patient rooms volunteered to participate in this study. The study incorporated nurse-level questionnaires, event-level …

Singing The Landscape: A Meditation On Song, Sound And Community At The Fall Line Of The James River, Sara Bouchard

Theses and Dissertations

I work in the medium of song. A multidisciplinary artist and composer, I make work that is immersive, time-based and often participatory. I interact with landscape and the complexities of American history, bringing into focus local ecologies through the lens of song.

This document accompanies my thesis performance The Sound of a Stone, an immersive exploration of song, language, ecology and locational listening performed in a 4-channel surround format. In the semi-improvised composition, I sample live vocals, mandolin and found natural objects in a combination of roots music traditions and experimental techniques. Utilizing the software Ableton Live to process …

Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys

Theses and Dissertations

I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …

I Am An Author: Performing Authorship In Literary Culture, Justin R. Greene

Theses and Dissertations

Authorship is not merely an act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard; it is a social identity performance that includes the use of multiple media. Authors must be hyper- visible to cut through the dearth of information, entertainment options, and personae vying for attention in our supersaturated media environment. As they enter the literary world, writers consciously create characters and narratives around themselves, and through the consistent and believable enactment of these features, authors are born. In this dissertation, I analyze the performance of authorship in U.S. literary culture through an interdisciplinary framework. My work pulls from …

Gender Beyond Binary, Sidra Zubairi

Theses and Dissertations

Transgender individuals challenge the binary definition of gender accepted in Pakistani society and as a result, Pakistan’s transgender community is highly marginalized. Pakistani society regards transgender individuals as “abnormal,” because their physical appearance and behavior fail to conform with conventional expectations. Based on contextual research and interviews conducted with transgender individuals in Pakistan, my thesis explores the obstacles transgender individuals face in the course of everyday survival. My research responds to the physical realities of being transgender in Pakistani society and analyzes cultural norms associated with gender, which trigger harassment. By designing transformable apparel for these individuals, informed by primary …

Athletic And Academic Identity, Motivation And Success: An Examination Of Diii Student-Athletes, Savanna M. Love

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine athletic and academic identity and athletic and academic motivation in DIII student-athletes. An additional purpose of the study was to explore the extent to which identity and motivation variables could predict GPA. This study also qualitatively explored students’ perceptions of their success, identity and motivation. Using Expectancy-Value and Identity theories as a theoretical framework, participants (n = 358) were administered an online survey that included AAIS and SAMSAQ scales along with open-ended qualitative questions. Quantitative data were used to conduct confirmatory factor analyses, bivariate correlations, hierarchical multiple regression, and multivariate analyses of …

Favorability Of Financial And Nonfinancial Performance Measures And Analysts' Recommendations, Thomas F. Lewis Jr

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the extent to which sell-side analysts make full use of available financial and nonfinancial information signals in formulating stock recommendations. Prior research shows that investors rely strongly on sell-side analysts’ recommendations and that sell-side analysts pay considerable attention to nonfinancial measures in making their decisions. However, prior research has primarily focused on the mere presence of nonfinancial measures and not the extent to which the direction of such measures (i.e. favorability) is associated with firm value, or assessed the extent to which any interaction between financial measures and the direction of nonfinancial measures may influence analysts in …

The Effect Of Vibrotactile Feedback On Remote Manual Task Performance, Matthew S. Standard

Theses and Dissertations

Vibrotactile feedback offers a unique opportunity to augment or reconstruct impaired tactile sensations, whether that be in the form of enhancing prosthetics or specialized protective clothing. Important information about temperature and object slippage serve to endanger the human operator or equipment. This thesis presents three experiments which investigate amplitude modulated vibrotactile signals as a scalar dimension of roughness, the effect those signals and their locations (finger pad, forearm, bicep) have on the performance of two tasks: the sensing of temperatures simulated by vibrotactile signals and gripping an object of simulated surface texture. The results show task performance increase when the …

The Visual Staging Of Audio Plays, Alex P. Burkart

Theses and Dissertations

The Visual Staging of Audio Plays explores the directing practice of radio dramas that are staged for viewing purposes rather than their typical solo-auditory purposes. The thesis is comprised of three separate parts: a brief history of theatrical sound, an introduction to radio drama theory and practice, and application. The application portion is a detailed first-person account of my personal experience staging It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play by Joe Landry for TheatreVCU’s Mainstage winter special event in 2015. It is also in this section where I integrate history, theory, and practice to formulate technique for directing the …

Determinants Of Stress And Effects On Performance In Internal Medicine Residents, Sarah Braun

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to assess: a) perceived stress, burnout, depression, and empathy at three time points in internal medicine residents, b) the role of gender and trait mindfulness in stress response during residency and c) to evaluate the impact these variables have on performance evaluations. Additionally, specific tasks of the residency that may contribute to the experience of stress and burnout were evaluated to test a model of job strain. Stress predicted subsequent burnout and depression. Burnout predicted subsequent depression, and stress mediated this relationship. Women reported higher mean levels of empathy and burnout than men. …

Play Doh's Cave And The Pursuit Of The American Cream, Becky S. Sellinger

Theses and Dissertations

Take a minute. Imagine Wiley Coyote and Road Runner are in a domestic partnership. What would that look like? Close your eyes and Pause for 30 seconds. Don’t you see? Coyote never catches up. They keep running faster and faster. Everything in the house gets swept into the whirlwind they’ve created in their paths - the books, the shelves, the bed, and the desk lamp. Their circling movement creates a vacuum, which ultimately causes the entire structure to implode upon itself.

This text is an examination of my work and its relationship to the economic and the domestic. The metaphor …

Ceo Characteristics And The Choice Of Using Non-Financial Performance Measures In Compensation Contracts, Melloney C. Simerly Ph.D.

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how CEO characteristics influence the decision to use non-financial performance measures (NFPM) in compensation contracts. Specifically, I examine the CEO characteristics: gender, age, tenure, risk-aversion, overconfidence, and sensitivity of wealth. Using trait theory and the extant literature examining NFPM, females, age, tenure, and risk-aversion are expected to be positively associated with the use of NFPM while competing hypotheses are presented for overconfidence and sensitivity of wealth. Employing a two-way fixed effects method, controlling for fixed effects at the firm and year level, I find that female CEOs are positively associated with the use of NFPM because of …

Held, Erika Diamond

Theses and Dissertations

My work is a symptom of my ongoing quest to achieve immortality. I perpetually attempt to make permanent the traces we leave behind and the impressions we make upon each other. I use the body to portray boundaries – between the skin and the heart, comfort and disquiet, holding and letting go. The objects I make serve both as an agent for physical contact and as the commemoration of an ephemeral interaction. I create personal fossils, revealing the interstices formed when two bodies come into contact with one another. I use materials that reference endurance and longevity to record transient …

Leadership In Collaborative Governance: Understanding The Relationship Of Leadership And Collaborative Performance Of Local Departments Of Social Services Executives, Jennifer Behrens

Theses and Dissertations

Public administration agencies are increasingly called upon to collaborate across organizational boundaries as a regular part of practice. Leaders in the organizations are expected to deliver positive outcomes from collaborations. Common sense implies that good leadership leads to successful collaboration within public administration agencies. However, the exact link between leadership and collaboration continues to be a puzzle for both practitioners and academics in the field. This study examines the relationship of leadership and collaborative governance within a group of social services executives, who are specifically chartered to collaborate with one another and across organizational boundaries for successful delivery of public …

Exploring Hybrid Spm-Cache Architectures To Improve Performance And Energy Efficiency For Real-Time Computing, Lan Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Real-time computing is not just fast computing but time-predictable computing. Many tasks in safety-critical embedded real-time systems have hard real-time characteristics. Failure to meet deadlines may result in the loss of life or in large damages. Known of Worst Case Execution Time (WCET) is important for reliability or correct functional behavior of the system. As multi-core processors are increasingly adopted in industry, it has become a great challenge to accurately bound the worst-case execution time (WCET) for real-time systems running on multi-core chips. This is particularly true because of the inter-thread interferences in accessing shared resources on multi-cores, such as …

Performance And Reliability Study And Exploration Of Nand Flash-Based Solid State Drives, Guanying Wu

Theses and Dissertations

The research that stems from my doctoral dissertation focuses on addressing essential challenges in developing techniques that utilize solid-state memory technologies (with emphasis on NAND flash memory) from device, circuit, architecture, and system perspectives in order to exploit their true potential for improving I/O performance in high-performance computing systems. These challenges include not only the performance quirks arising from the physical nature of NAND flash memory, e.g., the inability to modify data in-place, read/write performance asymmetry, and slow and constrained erase functionality, but also the reliability drawbacks that limits solid state drives (SSDs) from widely deployed. To address these challenges, …

Warm Compression – Damp Gestures, Melanie Mclain

Theses and Dissertations

Thoughts on vulnerability, emotions, social interaction, self-awareness, skin, touching, bodily functions, and the combination of all these ideas into a confined space filled with heat and humidity just enough to leave you feeling damp and perhaps a bit sore.

Performing Tennessee Williams, Augustine Correro Iii

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is dedicated to illustrating the unique challenges of staging works by the playwright Tennessee Williams, and to making suggestions on how to avoid common pitfalls in production, performance, and direction of his plays. It uses evidence from the playwright’s various biographical works as well as insight and conjecture from the author’s experience to illuminate these challenges and help the reader to avoid hackneyed or ineffective staging practices. It touches on the effect of film adaptations on stage performances; the typical portrayal of American Southern characters onstage; the aural ramifications of Williams’s poetry to a now-visually-centered audience; stylistic elements …

The Effectiveness Of Religion-Affiliated Nonprofit Organizations In Social Services: A Survey Study Of Nursing Homes In Virginia, Bulent Ucar

Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study is to determine whether being a church affiliated nursing home influences performance. Performance is measured based on criterion put in place by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The secondary purpose is, regardless of ownership type - religiously affiliated or secular- to investigate if more religiously involved nursing homes perform better than their less religiously involved counterparts. These two purposes are hypothesized with six different hypotheses each of which are tested by utilizing OLS regression analysis. This study extensively discusses the arguments surrounding the Charitable Choice Initiative, which allowed faith-based organizations (FBOs) …

Homage To Everyday People, Sang Ja Chun

Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by an ever-growing sense of alienation with my homeland, I have been determined to discover through my art practice an ability to challenge conventional notions of home, identity, communication and miscommunication. Exploring these themes, I became increasingly aware of the parallels between everyday life and art practice. By creatively connecting with a diverse amount of local people and their communities, I fulfilled desires to discover a sense of belonging and generated opportunities for others to break through traditional social boundaries and roles.

Navigating The Space Of My Body, Ferwa Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores my process of orienting myself within spaces and inhabiting them. It focuses on how I use my own body as an instrument for developing a relationship between the two. A ritual is a social conditioning of the body and Authentic Movement is discovering body’s own route. This paper reviews my process of situating myself within a space by using both of them as the language of my body. It also discusses the development of some of my recent work through understanding the language of my own body.

The Roads Are Bumpy Ones: A Study Of Body Image Through Abstract Performance, Alexis Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

An overwhelming number of contemporary adolescents struggle with difficult issues. Many of these problems are socially related whereas others can be directly related to the degradation of the family unit. Among the most damaging of issues is distorted body image, which infect youth, often causing them to communicate aggressively, and even landing them in compromising situations. I have sought to challenge my students to redefine themselves through expressive movement and the creation of abstract rhythmic sounds. In teaching these techniques, I have given my former students the means to combat negative thoughts and actions, as well as an excellent tool …

Comparative Study Of The Ritual Aspects Of Western And Asian Performance, Hyung Don Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This comparative study focuses on ritual aspects of Western and Asian performance. We may say that ritual in contemporary theater production has limitation to become realization. The limitation arises from contemporary period’s nature. We know that these days we do not have common or collective psyche. However, some theatre artists are trying to get back ritual function and process to recover real communion between spectator and performer throughout performance.

Determinants Of Nursing Home Performance: Examining The Relationship Between Quality And Efficiency, Nailya Delellis

Theses and Dissertations

Determinants of nursing home performance: examining the relationship between quality and efficiency By Nailya O. DeLellis, MPH, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010 Director: Dr. Yasar Ozcan, Professor, Department of Health Administration To assess the relationship between quality of care and efficiency of nursing homes this study used 10% random sample of non-hospital based nursing homes of size 20-360 beds and occupancy rate of 5-100% in OSCAR database 2008 (n=1430). Data Envelopment Analysis was used to calculate efficiency score and Structural …