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Theses/Dissertations

2014

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Please Inside-Out This, Tara S. Waudby Dec 2014

Please Inside-Out This, Tara S. Waudby

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through poetry of witness, this thesis explores the idea of truth as perception. The poems explore the themes of family, expatriate life, and identity in order to give voice to an alternate perspective.


Man Without A Blueprint, Brendan Frost, Brendan Gaquin Frost Dec 2014

Man Without A Blueprint, Brendan Frost, Brendan Gaquin Frost

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.


The First Foretelling, Cynthia M. Davidson Dec 2014

The First Foretelling, Cynthia M. Davidson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This is an original work. It is a full length novel. The main character is Zeso Eliza Greylin.


Clyfford Still In The 1930s: The Formative Years Of A Leading Abstract Expressionist, Emma Richan Dec 2014

Clyfford Still In The 1930s: The Formative Years Of A Leading Abstract Expressionist, Emma Richan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2011, Clyfford Still’s painting 1949-A-No.1 sold for $61.7 million at Sotheby’s auction house. This painting was one of four up for auction by the artist that night, fetching a total of $114 million to build the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver to house his entire estate. Still was among the most celebrated and notorious of the Abstract Expressionists, receiving the highest praise from Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Clement Greenberg during his lifetime. Still’s legacy has faltered since his death in 1980. Until 2011, 95% of his life’s work was stored in a barn in Maryland, hidden from view. …


The Impacts Of Climate Change On The World’S Economic, Political, And Demographic Structures, Dino Kanlic Dec 2014

The Impacts Of Climate Change On The World’S Economic, Political, And Demographic Structures, Dino Kanlic

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change will have negative impacts on the political, economic, and demographic structures of society. These include a rise in ethnic tensions in the Indian Sub Continent, massive immigration to Europe, regional economic collapse and political destabilization in Africa, the inundation of island nations and economic losses in the Americas among many other changes which will combine to destabilize humanity for generations. International affairs has failed to come up with a solution because global warming is a universal prevention focused problem that trades short term gains for long term losses. Global warming will be solved by the onset of grid …


Content-Based Instruction And Corpus Linguistics Curriculum For Early Advanced Efl Saudi Students, Ahmed Alattar Dec 2014

Content-Based Instruction And Corpus Linguistics Curriculum For Early Advanced Efl Saudi Students, Ahmed Alattar

Master's Projects and Capstones

For many years now EFL teaching and learning in Saudi Arabia has suffered from a lack of authentic life-related and meaningful materials. Most of the EFL books available, therefore, pay more attention to form and less attention to meaning. This has resulted in many Saudi EFL students having difficulty improving their L2 proficiency. For this reason, I developed a curriculum that incorporates content-based instruction and corpus linguistics. The curriculum is divided into six units. The units focus on the five basic language skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. Each unit focuses on different content and includes examples form several corpus …


Nonatonic Harmonic Structures In Symphonies By Ralph Vaughan Williams And Arnold Bax, Cameron Logan Dec 2014

Nonatonic Harmonic Structures In Symphonies By Ralph Vaughan Williams And Arnold Bax, Cameron Logan

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the pitch structures of passages within certain works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arnold Bax. A methodology that employs the nonatonic collection (set class 9-12) facilitates new insights into the harmonic language of symphonies by these two composers. The nonatonic collection has received only limited attention in studies of neo-Riemannian operations and transformational theory. This study seeks to go further in exploring the nonatonic’s potential in forming transformational networks, especially those involving familiar types of seventh chords. An analysis of the entirety of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony serves as the exemplar for these theories, and reveals that …


The Case Of Reintegration Of Women Post Incarceration, Deana Raley Noble Phd Dec 2014

The Case Of Reintegration Of Women Post Incarceration, Deana Raley Noble Phd

Dissertations

Women released from prison or jail face particular obstacles and challenges on reentry to the community, many of which are related to their childhood and to gender roles as women and mothers. This study relates the lived experience of one woman's successful transition to economic and mainstream societal reintegration and family reconnection after release from prison and the insights gained by the researcher. Case study methodology congruent with Miller's Relational-Cultural Theory philosophical framework was utilized in this in-depth, single case design and represents a unique case. The overall purpose of this descriptive and explanatory research was to explore precursors to …


Creating Neighborhood In Postwar Buffalo, New York: Transformations Of The West Side, 1950-1980, Caitlin Boyle Moriarty Dec 2014

Creating Neighborhood In Postwar Buffalo, New York: Transformations Of The West Side, 1950-1980, Caitlin Boyle Moriarty

Theses and Dissertations

This project reconsiders post-World War II neighborhood change by examining how various groups in Buffalo, New York conceptualized, experienced and produced the West Side as a cultural and economic artifact between 1950 and 1980. This approach offers an alternative to conceptualizing neighborhoods as bounded, natural entities and it encourages narratives that complicate the prevailing metaphor of decline in rust belt cities by illuminating other components of postwar neighborhood change than population loss and economic disinvestment. This project uses neighborhood retail as a lens through which to examine how city planners, the West Side Business Men's Club, the Federation of Italian …


New Leaves On Old Trees: A Synthesis Of Early American Music Through Contemporary Composition, Leslie A. Robinson Dec 2014

New Leaves On Old Trees: A Synthesis Of Early American Music Through Contemporary Composition, Leslie A. Robinson

Selected Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the hymnody and choral music of 17th, 18th, and early 19th century Protestant communities in America with the goal of creating a historically informed composition that articulates musical and theological ideas of the past with a fresh voice. It will emphasize unique characteristics of the musical communities and connections between the communities. It will also focus on two relationships within individual communities: the association between the community’s music and its texts, and the connection between its theology and musical identity. The thesis and composition should reveal an understanding of early American musical …


"Murderous Mania": Gender And Homicide In Milwaukee Newspapers, 1840-1900, Kadie Kroening Seitz Dec 2014

"Murderous Mania": Gender And Homicide In Milwaukee Newspapers, 1840-1900, Kadie Kroening Seitz

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the ways in which Milwaukee's newspapers used gender norms to make sense of acts of murder during the nineteenth century. First, women victims of men's violence are examined, particularly through the lenses of ethnicity, class and race. Women victims who did not fit into middle class gender norms were less likely to be portrayed as "beautiful female murder victims." Then, women perpetrators of violence (not exclusively against men) are discussed, including a specific examination of women's use of an insanity defense. Newspaper tropes used to describe women's motivations for filicide are also examined, and found to vary …


Constructing Loyalty, Citizenship, And Identity: A Rhetorical History Of The Japanese American Incarceration, Kaori Miyawaki Dec 2014

Constructing Loyalty, Citizenship, And Identity: A Rhetorical History Of The Japanese American Incarceration, Kaori Miyawaki

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reexamines loyalty, citizenship, and identity in the United States by closely reading historical materials about the Japanese American incarceration. The Japanese American incarceration is a unique and important historical event for studying citizenship and identity, since it was a moment in the U.S. history that citizens of the country were incarcerated by their government. This raises a larger question beyond the incarceration. What does it mean to be a loyal American citizen?

By closely analyzing texts generated by the U.S. government, the Japanese American community, and White American photographers, I identify multiple, conflicting meanings and implications behind the …


Blue Mountain: A Chamber Opera For Winds And Voices By Justin Dello Joio: A Unique Contribution For Wind Band Literature, Armando Saldarini Dec 2014

Blue Mountain: A Chamber Opera For Winds And Voices By Justin Dello Joio: A Unique Contribution For Wind Band Literature, Armando Saldarini

Dissertations

Blue Mountain is an opera in one act scored for four voices, and thirty-three instruments, commissioned by Det Norske Blaseensemble. Under the direction of Kenneth Jean, the premiere took place on October 8, 2007, at Kanonhalen in Oslo, Norway, as part of the Edvard Grieg Centennial celebrations and the 2007 Ultima contemporary Music Festival. The opera takes place in Troldhaugen, Norway, during the last days of Edvard Grieg’s life. Suffering from emphysema, Grieg was being treated by his doctor with morphine that created great anxiety, fear, and mental torment. A visit from his friend, Percy Grainger, gave Grieg great …


Zadie Smith's Nw And The Edwardian Roots Of The Contemporary Cosmopolitan Ethic, Laura Domenica Marostica Dec 2014

Zadie Smith's Nw And The Edwardian Roots Of The Contemporary Cosmopolitan Ethic, Laura Domenica Marostica

Theses and Dissertations

British contemporary writer Zadie Smith is often representative of cosmopolitan writers of the twenty-first century: in both her fiction and nonfiction, she joins a multicultural background and broad, varied interests to an ethic based on the importance of interpersonal relationships and empathetic respect for the other. But while Smith is often considered the poster child for the contemporary British cosmopolitan, her ethics are in fact rooted in the one rather staid member of the canon: EM Forster, whose emphatic call to ‘only connect’ grounds all of Smith's fiction. Her latest novel, 2012's NW, further expands her relationship to Forster in …


Understanding Women's Health Promotion In Rural Canadian Churches, Robyn Plunkett Nov 2014

Understanding Women's Health Promotion In Rural Canadian Churches, Robyn Plunkett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many rural health resources are linked to community churches, which are often well attended, especially by rural women. Thus, the rural church may be an effective health resource for rural Canadian women who have compromised access to health resources. Despite the significant role that the rural church plays in the life of rural communities, there is very limited research that addresses how the church acts or could act as a health resource for rural women. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of how the church as a place may influence health promotion in rural communities. This dissertation explores the relevance of …


Black Actresses In American Films: A History And Critical Analysis Of The Mammy/Maid Character, Valerie Coleman Nov 2014

Black Actresses In American Films: A History And Critical Analysis Of The Mammy/Maid Character, Valerie Coleman

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the history of the stereotypical mammy/maid characters in American films. The analysis serves to show the ongoing racialized casting of black women in domestic roles for over a century. Equally important, the analysis includes a discussion of how the black actresses who performed these roles thought about and negotiated them. The actresses themselves faced much criticism for their participation in and contributions to racial stereotyping, and this thesis seeks to show how these actresses understood and responded to such critiques.


Marvel Comics And New York Stories: Anti-Heroes And Street Level Vigilantes Daredevil And The Punisher, Jesse Allen Oct 2014

Marvel Comics And New York Stories: Anti-Heroes And Street Level Vigilantes Daredevil And The Punisher, Jesse Allen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that the creation of street level, vigilante heroes The Punisher and Daredevil created by Marvel Comics authors and illustrators in the late 1970s and early 1980s reflected the socio-economic environment of New York City at this same moment in history. By examining an era of New York that was fiscally and socially tense along with the development of characters created by the New York based Marvel Comics, I aim to show how their creation was directly related to the environment which they were produced in.


Works In Progress: Child Characters In Victorian And Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 - 2006, Kiran Mascarenhas Oct 2014

Works In Progress: Child Characters In Victorian And Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 - 2006, Kiran Mascarenhas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I analyze the relationship between national and individual development in Victorian and postcolonial novels set in India. My central argument is that the investment in the idea of progress that characterizes colonial narratives of childhood gives way in postcolonial fiction to a suspicion of dominant understandings of progress, and that this difference is manifest in the identity formation of the child character as well as in the form of the novel.

In the Victorian colonial narratives discussed in this study, the bildung of the child involves the overcoming of the child's conflicted cultural identity. The children of …


Literature In The Archive Of Terror: Badiou, Blanchot, Beckett, Christopher Langlois Sep 2014

Literature In The Archive Of Terror: Badiou, Blanchot, Beckett, Christopher Langlois

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation conjoins the two most dominant trends in the secondary criticism of Samuel Beckett today: the philosophical and historicist approaches to his work. It explores how the Reign of Terror that erupted during the French Revolution acts as a traumatic catalyst for key developments in modernist literature and continental philosophy of which the philosophical writing of Alain Badiou, the literary-critical writing of Maurice Blanchot, and the literary-narrative writing of Beckett are perhaps the most exemplary expressions. The overarching thesis that this dissertation defends is that Beckett’s post-war prose work in The Unnamable and Texts for Nothing is overshadowed by …


Apocalyptic Expectations Among The Followers Of Pope Benedict Xiii (R. 1394—1423): Ms 940 Of The Trivulziana Library In Milan, Italy, Taylor Aaron Sep 2014

Apocalyptic Expectations Among The Followers Of Pope Benedict Xiii (R. 1394—1423): Ms 940 Of The Trivulziana Library In Milan, Italy, Taylor Aaron

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In 1420 an anonymous follower of Pope Benedict XIII (r. 1394—1423) compiled a group of forty prophecies regarding his belief in the imminent arrival of the Antichrist entitled Las señales que serán quando el Anticristo verná a reynar. Although most scholars of apocalyptic literature during the Great Western Schism (1378—1417) conclude their studies with the Council of Constance and the election of Pope Martin V in 1417, this study demonstrates that apocalyptic thought evolved quickly among the dwindling supporters of Pope Benedict XIII. By examining the social, historical and literary context of Las señales, this dissertation sheds light on the …


Round The Corner: Pawnbroking In The Victorian Novel, Jennifer Tate Becker Sep 2014

Round The Corner: Pawnbroking In The Victorian Novel, Jennifer Tate Becker

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The nineteenth century was a period of great change in the way that money was made, exchanged, and experienced in Britain, especially as wealth became measured increasingly by capital, and a system of banking and credit developed. As Mary Poovey has explained, Victorian writing's preoccupation with money and personal wealth, and its frequent depiction of financial crises, can be seen as an effort to understand the underlying principles of the confusing yet vital financial world that was taking shape. One flourishing financial institution which received much attention in Parliament, the press, and literature was the pawn shop, perhaps because it …


“So Succeeded By A Kind Providence”: Communities Of Color In Eighteenth Century Boston, Eric M. Hanson Plass Aug 2014

“So Succeeded By A Kind Providence”: Communities Of Color In Eighteenth Century Boston, Eric M. Hanson Plass

Graduate Masters Theses

The Freedom Trail has become an iconic symbol and major tourist attraction in the City of Boston. Yet since its Cold War-era inception, the Freedom Trail has remained problematically focused on a consensus history of leading white men who brought forth the American Revolution. Other heritage trails - most notably the Black Heritage Trail - have been established to correct the deficiencies of the Freedom Trail. These organizations have attempted to provide a revisionist counter-point by telling stories of internal struggle and by exploring groups traditionally overlooked by historians. However, with so many trails possessing so many particularized foci, many …


Mount Tom Self-Transformation Retreat: Designing Experiential Architecture To Provoke Stimulatory, Expressive And Sensory Self-Exploration, Kyle B. Young Aug 2014

Mount Tom Self-Transformation Retreat: Designing Experiential Architecture To Provoke Stimulatory, Expressive And Sensory Self-Exploration, Kyle B. Young

Masters Theses

The environment evolved five human senses; through these receptors the majority of us experience life. Or do we? The a vast majority of our daily landscape resides enclosed, shut off from the exterior; separating people from the elements, organizing and distributing the multitude of functions that affect how we live and feel. The mental state of society is poor, the “daily dis-ease” of we wrestle with; stress, emotions, fatigue, exhaustion, disconnection suck the life out of the moments we live to barely even see. These interactions and experiences we encounter in, on, under and around the architectural forms we travel …


Study The Differences On Maritime Search And Rescue System Between China And Britain, Weizheng Chen Aug 2014

Study The Differences On Maritime Search And Rescue System Between China And Britain, Weizheng Chen

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.


Samuel Butler's Ernest Pontifex, Or The Way Of All Flesh: Evolution, Religion, And Wealth, Carla Mills Aug 2014

Samuel Butler's Ernest Pontifex, Or The Way Of All Flesh: Evolution, Religion, And Wealth, Carla Mills

English Theses

In The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903 but written during the years 1873-1884, Samuel Butler presents his Victorian world as one in crisis, unhinged by recent scientific developments. Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 and effectively undercut most religious and theological belief structures with his argument that all species evolved gradually over time from a common ancestor. If this is so, how could the Bible's story of creation be true? Samuel Butler incorporates terminology of evolution and develops his own evolutionary views in response to Charles Darwin's throughout the novel. Butler's protagonist, Ernest …


African American Parents' Socialization Around Racism In The Education System, Allana Zuckerman Aug 2014

African American Parents' Socialization Around Racism In The Education System, Allana Zuckerman

Psychology Theses

African American youth experience individual and institutional level discrimination (e.g., Berkel et al., 2009; Jones, 1997). These experiences negatively impact their overall well-being (e.g., Harris-Britt et al., 2007; Wang & Huguley, 2012). African American parents use racial socialization to teach their children strategies to cope with racial discrimination (e.g., McAdoo, 2002; Peters, 1997). Given the positive impact of racial socialization on the negative outcomes associated with discrimination (e.g., Bynum et al., 2007), more work is needed to understand how contextual factors influence this process. The current study used qualitative methods to examine racial socialization in response to two levels of …


"You Ain't Got No Blueprint On It": How Discovery Channel's Moonshiners Re-Presents And Revises Southern Appalachian Cultural Memory, Kelly Vines Aug 2014

"You Ain't Got No Blueprint On It": How Discovery Channel's Moonshiners Re-Presents And Revises Southern Appalachian Cultural Memory, Kelly Vines

English Theses

This thesis investigates how performers on the television show Moonshiners challenge essentialist characterizations of the Appalachian South as a counterpoint to American nationalism. While many may believe that Moonshiners’ producers merely exploit regional identity to attract audiences, the performers claim a southern Appalachian heritage while redefining what it means to be a southern Appalachian person in the present moment. Furthermore, while the show relies on an imagined past South to create a genealogy that renders performers the authentic inheritors of moonshining’s cultural history, performers present a modern-day Appalachian South that participates in the national economy. Ultimately, my thesis explores how …


American Joyce: Representations Of The United States In Dubliners, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Ulysses, And Finnegans Wake, Briana Casali Aug 2014

American Joyce: Representations Of The United States In Dubliners, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Ulysses, And Finnegans Wake, Briana Casali

Open Access Dissertations

This project is the first comprehensive study of James Joyce’s literary and personal relationship with the United States. With a foothold in both American and Irish fields of literary criticism, it explores a critical gap in Joyce studies that demonstrates a timely, long-standing need for scholars of literature to reconcile the quintessential "Irishness" of one of the twentieth century’s most dynamic and famous authors with the hundreds of allusions to America throughout his canon and to also examine the unflagging personal impact that the laws, culture and customs, politics, history, religion, and people of the United States had on his …


Structural Causes Of Social Conflict In Africa, Lucien Charland Aug 2014

Structural Causes Of Social Conflict In Africa, Lucien Charland

HIM 1990-2015

Social conflict, as opposed to armed conflict, has received less attention in the field of quantitative research. This paper investigates the structural causes of political violence in 35 African states using data from the Social Conflict in Africa dataset and the Beck and Katz panel corrected standard errors time series regression model. Theoretically, a closed political opportunity structure, combined with a weak state unable to provide public goods, should together produce high levels of social conflict. The independent variables attempt to operationalize these concepts from four different angles. In this analysis Access to Education and Infrastructure (AEI), Ethno Linguistic Fractionalization …


Innocent Artists: Creativity And Growing Up In Literatures Of Maturation, 1850-1920, Whitney Elaine Jones Aug 2014

Innocent Artists: Creativity And Growing Up In Literatures Of Maturation, 1850-1920, Whitney Elaine Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

This project combines three subgenres of the novel—children’s literature, the Bildungsroman, and the Künstlerroman—under a new comprehensive category I term “literatures of maturation,” or texts that share a concern with the inner and outer formation of the individual, with growing up, and with childhood. By reading British literatures of maturation from both the Victorian and modern eras (that is, within the time frame of the Golden Age of children’s literature), I reveal that, creativity disrupts literary plots of growth and development, and that social integration and artistic maturation battle for dominance in the child’s journey to adulthood, resulting …