Digital Commons Network^™

The Journal Of Elizabeth Maxwell Alsop Wynne, 1862-1878, Andrew Talkov

Theses and Dissertations

The experiences of Southern women during the American Civil War are often represented through the publication of their journals, diaries, and memoirs. This project consists of the transcription and annotation of the journal of Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Maxwell Alsop Wynne, written from March 4, 1862, through March 20, 1878. During her most intense period of writing from 1862 to 1866, Lizzie Alsop recorded the effects of the American Civil War on an extensive network of friends and family in the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, and at her home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lizzie’s journal offers valuable insight into the wartime politicization …

Ebbing Winds: Life Rituals At Home And Abroad, Asya Fergiani

HIM 1990-2015

The intent of this thesis was to write a memoir of my five month trip to Libya that explores cultural differences through my experiences as an American with Western ideals. This memoir is focused on the cultural norms of marriage in the rural town of Msalata, in the central rural farming belt north of the ever expanding Sahara Desert of North Africa. My goal was to produce a work that is informational while showing the humanity of the local people through my perceptions as an outsider with different expectations. It was a time of discovery for me about the value …

Generations Apart: Exploring The Generation Gap In Theatre, Jesus Briones

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis attempts to find relationships among three different ethnic groups (Jewish, Chinese, and Italian) presented in the following plays. First, there is an explanation of four different types of generation gaps that are discovered throughout the first play of examination, Fiddler on the Roof. There is a technology gap, a cultural gap, a religion gap, and an assimilation gap. Each of these gaps is present within Fiddler on the Roof and is varied throughout the remaining plays examined (Flower Drum Song and Over the River and Through the Woods). Each “gap” will be given an explanation and how it …

In Search Of A Single Voice: The Politics Of Form, Use And Belief In The Kernewek Language, Jesse Owen Harasta

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is based upon fieldwork performed between 2007 and 2011 in Cornwall, a region of Southwestern Britain notable for its ambiguous ethnic identity - caught between England and the Celtic nations - and its unique, revived Celtic language, Kernewek. During the course of the research, work focused upon the role of the language revival movement as a tool for ethnic identification: hardening boundaries, shoring up faltering communities and nationalist purification. However, the language movement is divided into three primary factions, which take differing approaches to the language, and to their corresponding language ideology based upon their relationship to Cornish …

Women, Feminism, And Aging In Appalachia, Sherry Kaye Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aging has become a problem for men and women in Western societies where youth is touted and revered as a standard of success by which individual value is measured and esteemed. Older women in particular find that as they age they face discrimination in the form of ageism and social diminution. The purpose of the study is to remedy a lack of scholarship on aging in Appalachia and to establish a precedent for future studies. A liberal, feminist approach is used to analyze the results of recorded interviews and to interpret transcripts of relevant data. The results of the analysis …

La Gente De Migración Y Acción: African Americans In Revolutionary Mexico 1880–1929, Alfredo Aguilar

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis argues that Mexico historically presented African Americans with options to pursue freedom through outlets of migration (civil) and counter-violence (violent resistance). In addition, the thesis exhibits Mexico’s historical anti-slavery stance which reflects why Mexico was a viable place of relocation and resistance. Furthermore, it argues Mexico and the United States had roles in African Americans’ relation to Mexico and these endeavors of resistance. By using primary sources such as newspapers and government reports, the extent of propaganda methods and use becomes discernible. The objective is to highlight the international assistance Mexico provided towards African Americans, the U.S. role …

Behind The Hijab, A Narrative On The Muslim Presence In Britain In The Postwar Era, Cassidy Alexandra Von Springer

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

I See London, I See France, Molly C. Kessler

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

Southern Honor, Confederate Warfare : Southern Antebellum Cultural Values In Confederate Military Operations, 1861-1865., Matthew D. Goldberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the role antebellum southern cultural paradigms played in Confederate military operations during the American Civil War. The prewar honor culture of the white southern male elite was intensely focused on chivalric values of courage, masculinity, piety, pride, contempt for cowardice, and loyalty. When war broke out between the United States and Confederacy, the southern elite moved from their prewar position as economic, political, and social leaders to military commanders. The violent and militaristic culture that characterized the prewar southern elite guided their actions as the military leadership of the Confederacy. Using the written record of the Confederate …

Discovering Domestic Cemeteries : History, Preservation, And Education., Savannah Leigh Darr 1985-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historic cemeteries and graveyards hold the history of the people and community in which they were built. The inscriptions, iconography, and epitaphs on gravemarkers provide insight into the family, religion, social status, and culture of those interred within a specific cemetery or graveyard. They are primary resources for historical research, as some of the information on a gravemarker may not be found anywhere else. Few scholars have recognized the value of small domestic graveyards, which typically have fewer interments and tend to be more isolated in location. For these reasons, domestic graveyards are the most fragile and their preservation is …

Golfing The Ho Chi Minh Trail, Angela Mary O'Gorman

Theses

A Thesis Submitted to The Graduate School at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Fine Arts – Creative Writing

Imperially-Minded Britons: A Study Of The Public Discourse On Britain’S Imperial Presence In The Cape-To- Cairo Corridor, Military Reform, And The Issue Of National And Provincial Identity, 1870-1900, Timothy Ramer Lay

Dissertations (1934 -)

The Victorian era was marked by the incremental expansion of the British Empire. Such developments were not only of enormous importance for government officials and the contributors of that expansion, but for the broader general public as well, as evidenced by the coverage and discussion of such developments in the Cape to Cairo corridor in the national and provincial presses between 1870 and 1900. Transcending the discussions surrounding the politics of interventionism, the public’s interest in imperial activities— such as the annexation of the Transvaal, the First Anglo-Boer War, the Zulu War, Gordon’s mission into the Sudan, the Jameson raid …

Knowing Nothing: Labor, Nativism, And Class Divisions In Turn-Of-The Century Pittsburgh, Jay Kober , '14

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

This paper examines the labor movement in Pittsburgh between the years 1892-1919. The labor movement at the turn of the century met new challenges as a new wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe flooded the industrial sector. Organization was difficult due to class division, nativist depictions of immigrants, and management’s concerted effort to keep labor disorganized. These factors coupled with the extensive reach of management’s influence helped prevent any significant gains for organized labor.

A Guest In Someone Else's House : The Construction Of Asian Americans As Foreigners, Deepa Ranganathan

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

Social workers, like many people, wrongly tend to think of Asian Americans as beings exempt from the problems of racism. The social work profession considers "race" to be a property inhering almost solely in African Americans. Meanwhile, the profession assigns the property of foreign "culture" primarily to Asian Americans. This thesis uses the work of Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars to show that social workers, in presuming that Asian Americans are a class of people who are essentially foreign, are actually reproducing a form of exclusionist racism that Asian Americans have faced for generations. A partial solution to this problem …

Family Stories: Narrating The Nation In Recent Postcolonial Novels, Erin K. Haddad-Null

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the depiction of family histories and stories of familial interactions and dynamics in eight recent postcolonial novels. I examine the depictions of family and nation in these novels and discuss the counter-histories that emerge as a means of questioning national narratives. This project contributes to discussions of the relationship between the nation and the novel and how postcolonial nationalism reshapes understandings of the construction of the nation-state in an increasingly transnational world.

In this study, I draw upon Anne McClintock’s and Susan Strehle’s examinations of how nationalism often separates the idea of family and home even while …

Queer(Ing) Politics And Practices: Contemporary Art In Homonationalist Times, Cierra A. Webster

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project investigates homonationalism through three different art practices. Briefly, homonationalism is a term to articulate the imbricated systems of contemporary mainstream LGBT politics and nationalist politics. The first article, Queering the Canon: Museum Politics and Hide/Seek at the Smithsonian, unpacks the first major exhibition of gay artwork in America as an example of homonationalist processes in the United States. The second article, entitled Colonial Queeries: Centering a Two-Spirit Critique of Homonationalism, analyses Canadian artist Kent Monkman’s paintings and focuses on the political potential of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. (Pink)Washing the Conflict in Zero Degrees of Separation is …

Ecomorphology And Mating Behavior Of Two Species Of Night-Stalking Tiger Beetles, Omus Audouini And O. Dejeanii, Robert Kent Richardson

Dissertations and Theses

Night-stalking tiger beetles (Cicindelinae: Omus) are among the least studied members of the highly diverse Carabid sub-family Cicindelinae, the tiger beetles. Despite populations of Omus being common in the forest floor habitats of the west coast of North America and their conspicuous predatory role within terrestrial arthropod communities, little is known about the biology and ecology of Omus.

Field studies showed that two species of Omus existed in the forested areas of Powell Butte Nature Park, Portland, Oregon, USA: Omus audouiniand O. dejeanii. The co-occurrence of sympatric, and likely syntopic, species allowed for a comparative approach in examining and analyzing …

Critiquing Academic Culture With Satire Through Lady Lazarus, A Fictional Biography, Amber R. Perry

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the tradition of academic satire, Lady Lazarus is the fictional biography of the daughter of American rock musicians. In her late teens she rises to fame as confessional poet, who, despite only publishing one collection of poems during her brief life, becomes an overnight sensation. Author Andrew Altschul is satirizing academia’s need to be a part of popular culture and in doing so, privileges the ability to use controversy and conventional beauty to sell books as opposed to creating quality art. By focusing on how the author uses Hans Robert Jauss’ horizons of expectations, unreliable narrators, anecdotes in biography …

'This World Of Sorrow And Trouble': The Criminal Type Of Oliver Twist, Megan N. Samples

English Theses

This thesis looks at the criminals of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist as a criminal type: impoverished, unattractive people who lack family roots. It establishes connections between the criminal characters themselves as well as the real-world conditions which inspired their stereotypes. The conditions of poverty and a lack of family being tied to criminality is founded in reality, while the tendency for criminals to be unattractive is based on social bias and prejudice. It also identifies conflicting ideologies in the prevailing Victorian mindset that begins to emerge as a result of research into the criminal type.

From Prodigy To Pathology: "Monstrosity" In The British Novel From 1850 To 1930, Terri Beth Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I explore cultural representations of aberrant embodiment, society’s monsters, to assess the sociopolitical implications of corporeal deviance. I contend that imaginative literature participates in the re/construction of monstrous bodies as an element of a larger social process of individuation and communal boundary-making, the defining of self and community through exclusionary practices embedded in the body. By situating Victorian and Modernist British novels in dialog with one another, I chart a trajectory in cultural understandings of embodied deviance that moves “from prodigy to pathology.” The change occurs, I argue, because the rise of modern medical practices ultimately constitutes …

A In-Depth Analysis Of The Federal Tax System, Esther O Wong

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …

"Wee Women's Work": Women And Peacebuilding In Northern Ireland, Amanda E. Donahoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

International norms on intrastate conflicts, such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, call for women to participate in peace processes in countries emerging from conflict and civil strife, including those divided by identity-based conflict. However, scholars of post-war recovery in international relations and comparative politics have raised questions about the extent and effect of women’s participation in peace processes, and in politics more generally, in divided societies given underlying social, economic, and political barriers that impeded access to decisive or authoritative political decision-making. A critical question in the literature on women’s participation in post-conflict reconciliation-related dialogue and joint action …

Running Among Thorns : Perspectives On Ethiopian/United States Educational Experiences., Bruce Whearty 1952-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative exploration of the perspectives of Ethiopian immigrants to the United States who have educational experience in both cultures. By interviewing five respondents and asking them to reflect on the role that their education played in their acculturation to the United States, a series of case histories was developed. The case histories were analyzed using the Differentiated Multi-Dimensional Model of Acculturation to determine if they upheld the two predictions made by this model: 1) acculturation for any particular individual proceeds independently at different rates across three different dimensions: language, behavior, and cultural identity; and 2) acculturation …

Masquerading From The Periphery: Literary And Visual Representations Of Performative Vampiric Corporeality In The Anglo-American Gothic Tradition, 1816 - 2013, Ana-Gratiela Gal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What might one make of the contemporary vampire's tentative assimilation into the mainstream, as opposed to Dracula's antiquated vampirism? Does the vampire's corporeal permutation reflect progress and freedom from old prejudices or is it, ultimately, a beautifully pre-packaged illusion? These are questions that this dissertation attempts to answer by examining the figure of the vampire in written and visual texts of British and American writers from the nineteenth century to the present. In contrast to readings in the dominant critical tradition that figure the vampiric body only as a reflection of its immediate historical and cultural context, my intention in …

White Teachers, Latino Students: A Case Study Of The Extent Of Cultural Responsiveness Learned In A Teacher Education Program, Edward Michael Ducey Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to address how white preservice teachers understand themselves in relation to other cultures and their perceptions of preparedness to teach Latino students. In this study, the researcher used collective case study methodology to attempt to address whether there is a hidden curriculum of the dominant discourse in society being brought into the classroom by future teachers, either consciously or unconsciously, that is perpetuating a cycle of marginalization of the current Latino student population. Across the cases several similar themes became clear upon further analysis of the presented themes from the individual case analysis. …

Protective Factors In The Relationship Between Urgency And Bulimic Behavior, Eugenia Suzanne Hatchett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Negative urgency, a trait marked by the tendency to react impulsively when experiencing negative affect, has recently been identified as a risk factor for bulimia. Although multiple studies have established a link between urgency and bulimia, few studies have focused on factors that might moderate this relationship. The purpose of the current study was to examine the ability of problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, social support, and self-efficacy for regulating negative affect (SERN) to moderate the relationship between negative urgency and bulimic behavior. Web-based assessments of negative urgency, bulimic symptoms, coping, social support, and SERN were completed by 280 female college …

The Real And Represented Ophelia: An Investigation Of Choreographing Women's Madness In Concert Dance, Jacqueline M. Garcia

Theatre & Dance ETDs

The character Ophelia, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, is an iconographic symbol and cultural emblem of beauty, death and madness. For over four hundred years, her vividly described and picturesque death has inspired the works of countless visual artists and theatrical performers. However, her presence in the larger cultural consciousness of society is not limited only to the realms of fine art, theatre, and literature. Throughout history, her influence has also spilled over into everyday perceptions and beliefs regarding the nature of women and madness. Particularly within Victorian England, Ophelia's character came to influence the recognition and diagnosis of madness in …

Americanization, Language Policy, And The Promise Of Education: Public School Formation And Educational Attainment In Albuquerque, New Mexico, And Nogales, Arizona, 1880-1942, Carlos Francisco Parra

History ETDs

This study analyzes the nature of identity formation discourses and processes in terms of race, gender, citizenship, and educational attainment at the turn of the twentieth century in the communities of Nogales, Arizona, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. This study articulates the labyrinthine nature of the lived experiences of Hispanics with respect to how externally-imposed ideas of social interaction manifested themselves in these borderlands communities. One of the themes of this work is the analysis of the role of early public schools in their effort to create a cohesive identity among their diverse students. In this analysis significant questions relating to …