Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Four Lessons To Build Upon: A Study Of Postsecondary Composition Classroom Curriculum, Tucker D. Nielsen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Soft skills in technical professions may be valued by employers, but post-secondary students engage with a dichotomy arguing against the blend of soft and hard skills. This study utilized activities with LEGO® bricks to determine how plausible kinesthetic learning methods are within university composition classes. Four in-class activities based on the class’s four core assignments were spread across the Spring 2024 semester at Michigan Technological university. Through written reflections, lists, posters, and photos of students’ builds, students practiced and demonstrated engagement with identified composition and critical thinking skills.

Two criteria (Audience Expectations and Genre Expectations, were not demonstrated as clearly …

Recognition, Subject Formation, And Agency: Marginalization And Agency In Feminist Dystopian Narratives, Samantha J. Quade

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Though more frequently discussed in regard to freedom and intersubjectivity, subject formation and recognition have significant potential in helping us understand the structures of power, domination, and resistance in our lived experiences. Through the portrayal of recognition within literature - particularly within feminist dystopian literature - we can see significant examples of not only recognition experiences between characters, but also the acknowledgement of or resistance against unjust and oppressive power structures through recognition. To explore this phenomena, I begin by assessing the experience of empathy – or moral imagination, according to Martha Nussbaum – in reading and in writing, along …

The Implications Of Waste Streams At Camp Au Train, Timothy J. Maze

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Archaeological remains from Camp Au Train provide an opportunity to understand sanitation methods during its use as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp and later used to house German Prisoners of War during World War II. Seven refuse features from this camp were excavated and their contents linked to functional locations within the camp in order to reconstruct waste streams across the site and to observe how military aspects of sanitation were implemented by an organization infamous for its emphasis on cleanliness, order, and hygiene. While the importance of sanitation is often mentioned by historians and archaeologists in research of these …

An Examination Of Scientific And Technical Communication For Forensic Engineering And Forensic Pathology., Tori C. Reeder

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Police communication sits at the unique intersection of risk communication, scientific and technical communication, and medical communication, as we see in forensic reports. In this dissertation, I examine the communicative underpinnings of forensic pathology and forensic engineering reports. I argue that there is not only an inherent link between the unpredictability of a written text and the reception of said text by both its intended and unintended audience, but also a link to the broader socio-cultural contexts. I will examine an atypical forensic pathology report (autopsy report) of George Floyd, a more standard forensic pathology report of an inmate who …

The Flight Attendants Of Academia: Liminality, Emotional Labor, And Feminization In Graduate Student Writing Program Administrators, Laura Vidal Chiesa

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Writing Program Administration (WPA) is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the management and development of writing programs in educational institutions. WPA entails writing instruction pedagogy, curriculum design, assessment, and faculty development pertaining to the teaching of writing. Graduate students in Humanities and English-based programs typically fill this position which can offer a career trajectory. However, the position is often experienced as demanding, unrewarding and does not deliver on the career-enhancing experience it seems to promise. Historically, this is unsurprising given that the position has been a subordinated role occupied by women in composition. And yet, the troubles besetting contemporary graduate …

The Rhetorical Art Of Risk Assessment: Lessons From Risk Management In Rural And Tribal Communities, John L. Velat

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Risk assessment, mitigation, and communication rely on data from multiple sources to form a complete understanding of hazards and how to manage them. Experts can use these data to make informed decisions about the nature and extent of risks and inform the public to protect health, the environment, and economic welfare. However, in an effort to objectively make decisions, technical experts and policymakers increasingly rely on quantitative data as the most important determiner of risk, which can alienate the public, limit risk understanding, and delay or miss obvious signals of impending catastrophe. I examine several cases based on my experiences …

Has Bollywood Lost The Plot? Analyzing The Influence Of Item Songs On Rape Culture In India, Donna Susan Mathew

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

An item song is a provocative musical song and dance sequence that appears in Bollywood films that have little to no connection to the film’s plot, performed by an item girl for the male gaze. Contemporary Bollywood item songs have become highly contested social and political texts in the discourse surrounding rape culture in India. This research explores the socio-cultural context of rape culture in India and examines what makes item songs a popular and acceptable form of entertainment in a patriarchal, conservative society where sexualized violence against women is a major cause for concern.

The study also addresses the …

Discourse, Materiality, And The Users Of Mobile Health Technologies: A Nigerian Case Study, Modupe Omolara Yusuf

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

mHealth, which is the use of mobile phones and other handheld information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been increasingly advocated as the solution to the problems, primarily infrastructure and personnel, facing the healthcare sector of many low-to-lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). Following a series of United Nations Foundation research and advisory publications (in 2012, 2014 and 2016) arguing that mobile phones are approaching ubiquity in Nigeria and across the world, the UN strongly recommended that LMICs undertake mHealth initiatives. Subsequently, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) published a National Health ICT Strategic Framework (Strategic Framework), 2015-2020; the rallying call of …

Rhetoric Of Surrogacy: Re-Considering Agency Through Embodied Performance, Ann Kitalong-Will

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Surrogacy as a medical practice goes back, in a practical sense, to 1988, when the court case, “In the Matter of Baby M, A Pseudonym for an Actual Person,” was tried in the Supreme Court of New Jersey. At the heart of the issue, was the question of who Baby M’s legally-recognized mother was in the relationship between the contracting parents and the woman who gestated and gave birth to Baby M. Using this case as a jumping off point, this dissertation traces a history of surrogacy as a global industry. This project explores rhetorical agency in the embodied performance …

Expatriate Middle Eastern Muslim Mothers’ Stories About Sex Education In U.S. Schools: Communication Privacy Challenges And Narrative Typologies, Nada Alfeir

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This study examines the stories of expatriate Middle Eastern Muslim (EMEM) mothers in the U.S. about how they talked with their children about the sexual education classes offered in U.S. public schools. Three concepts from the Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM; Petronio, 2002) were adapted to an interpretive narrative perspective drawn on Frank's (2013) typology of narrative types. A total of 15 EMEM mothers who had lived for more than one year in the U.S. were recruited in the study. Qualitative data were collected through written stories and interviews, and supplemented by the author's observations. All written stories and interviews …

The Power Of The Panel: How American Comic Book Media Utilizes The Panel To Alter Audience Interaction, Austin Biese

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis traces the evolution of the panel across decades as well as various mediums. In one form, the panel becomes stretched when characters break the fourth wall to immerse readers in a new perspective on how the panel functions and creates meaning. In another form, comic book film adaptations comic imagery to instill a sense of nostalgia and to wink and nod at the audience, stretching the conventions of what the panel can be to impact the devoted audience. Lastly, in modern comic-reading apps, a ‘Smart Reading’ function remediates panels to provide an easier and unified path to read …

Chinese Women’S Reproductive Justice And Digital Technologies, Hua Wang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

It is well known that China has implemented a Family Planning policy. Chinese women have limited options in reproduction, and their agency is constrained by the government, the medical institutions, and the traditional Chinese patriarchal and biased culture. By utilizing rhetorical analysis as a primary methodology with a focus on rhetorical agency, this dissertation analyzes two cases where digital technologies such as social media and apps facilitate users’ rhetorical agency to counter instances of reproductive injustice. First, I focus on China’s most popular pregnancy and mothering app, Babytree, to examine how the app rhetorically positions its users to enable empowerment …

The Motivation To Volunteer: Understanding Volunteer Motivation At United States Industrial Heritage Museums And Organizations, Cooper Sheldon

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Industrial Heritage Museums and Organizations (IHMOs) in the United States (US) and their volunteers are underrepresented in the literature on volunteerism. The motivation and demographics of volunteers in IHMOs within the US are examined in this paper. Research into this topic is exploratory and little is known, therefore any hypothesis was based on personal observations as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in a variety of US museums. An online survey was sent out to three hundred and eighty-five museums across the US, along with conducting twelve in-person or over-the-phone interviews with museum practitioners and volunteers. This research found that a majority …

Quantifying Water Recharge And Water Use In Hand Dug Wells: A Case Study Of Thiawor, Senegal, West Africa, Celine Carus

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

For many rural communities in Senegal, water is an essential life-giving need received only through a network of hand dug wells. Increasing rainfall variability in the Sahel has driven greater water insecurity for those communities that rely on rain-irrigated systems for agriculture. This study investigates the retrieval, purposes, and quantities of seasonal water usage on a small domestic scale, as well as an analysis of perceived water availability in the wells during the rainy season. Additionally, using a combination of interview data and pumping test data obtained from the village wells, water usage and estimated daily needs are calculated and …

Through Her Eyes: The Gendering Of Female First-Person Shooters, Elizabeth Renshaw

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

While the video game industry has attempted to address their years of mistreatment towards women, within games and how they are produced, by hiring more women and including more female characters as playable options, these fixes have been superficial at best. Not only are there still few females as main characters in video games, but that there are so few female video games. By this I refer to the fact that video games told through the eyes of female characters often do not feature a gendered narrative, unlike multiple games with male POVs in which the storyline directly reflects their …

Archaeological Investigations At The Quincy Mining Company Office (Tract 102-04) The Quincy National Guard Encampment (Tract 102-03). Keweenaw National Historical Park, Houghton County, Michigan., Gideon Hoekstra

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report presents the results of preliminary archaeological research at the Quincy Unit as part of the Cooperative Agreement P18AC00178 between the United States Department of Interior/National Park Service and Michigan Technological University titled An Inventory of Historic Archaeological Resources at Keweenaw National Historical Park (KEWE) and Isle Royale National Park (ISRO). Archaeological investigation concentrated on the lot housing the Quincy Mine Office and the location of the Quincy Michigan National Guard encampment located across US-41 from the No.2 Rockhouse, used during the Copper Country Miners’ Strike of 1913-14. This is a multi-year project, primarily looking at the Quincy Mining …

“You Don’T Need People’S Opinions On A Fact!”: Satirical Comedy Corrects Climate Change Disinformation, Shelly A. Galliah

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Satirical comedy has often been recognized as a corrective to, if not alternative for, commercial news as well as a source of accurate science information (Brewer & McKnight, 2015). In this dissertation, I analyze how satirical comedy debunks climate change myths, delivers accurate information, and promotes scientific expertise. Five interconnected assumptions guide the context and methodology of this interdisciplinary study: 1) that various actors have transformed climate change into a “manufactured scientific controversy” (Ceccarelli, 2011); 2) that satire, as a method, both assails targets and aggregates people (Hutcheon,1994); 3) that celebrity activism is impactful but problematic (Collins, 2007; Boykoff & …

Gendered Recreational Fisheries Management And North American Natural Resource Policy, Erin Burkett

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation applies feminist theory to investigate women’s participation in wildlife-based recreation and how natural resource management organizations conduct stakeholder engagement in a North American context. Gendered social processes, including norms and expectations, as well as gendered cultures, can constrain women’s participation in recreation through social sanctions and disenfranchisement. Gender and leisure scholars have studied these dynamics in sport and leisure contexts, but how individuals negotiate these constraints is understudied in a wildlife-based recreation context. Social constructions of gender also contribute to imbalances of power within formal natural resource management organizations and influence how stakeholder engagement policies and programs are …

A Critical Review Of Current Approaches And Practices In Computing Ethics Education, Sophia Farquhar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Recent scandals caused by the results of negligent, malicious, or shortsighted software development practices highlight the need for software developers to consider the ethical implications of their work. Computing ethics has historically been a marginalized area within computing disciplines, so educators in these disciplines do not have a common background for teaching the topic. Computing ethics education, although often a required part of coursework, can vary widely in the method of implementation from university to university.

In this report I summarize the insights I gained from interviewing four educators from three different institutions on their pedagogical approaches to computing ethics. …

Fortune And Failure - Gold And Silver Smelting In The Colorado Rockies 1861 To 1900, Andrew Mueller

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation is a study of small-scale smelting in Colorado during the nineteenth century. Many small smelting enterprises were established throughout the mountains of the state from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. The smelters helped to revitalize a flagging mining industry by fostering its growth and, consequently, the development of the state before being outcompeted by larger smelting establishments developing in the growing cities on the Front Range. However, the life of these smelters was brief, and the majority failed within a few years. The role of these smelters in Colorado’s history has been largely overlooked but provide a rich …

The Implications Of Science And Technology For Chinese Women: A Cultural Study Of The Chinese Era Of Reforms, Wenjing Liu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the gendered implications of science and technology in the era of reforms. It argues that in this era, which began in 1978 and continues today, science and technology are highly romanticized as nearly omnipotent. This results in its being embedded not only into ordinary Chinese people’s lives, hoping to bring them positive changes, but also into the Chinese government’s political practices, hoping to achieve its political purposes through science and technology. It also points out that in the era of reforms, Chinese women’s lived experiences are full of tensions, struggles, and conflicts, as evidenced by the …

“Because We Have Chosen A Life Of Peace”: A Quantitative And Qualitative Study Of Vegan Food Narratives, Silke H. Feltz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Restaurants, grocery stores, fast food chains, and companies all over the United States introduce the consumer to more vegan products, dishes, and services than ever before. The rise of veganism therefore offers a rhetorical platform that should be studied. This dissertation discusses the rhetoric of veganism by analyzing food narratives of vegans through a critical intersectional lens and consists of three research stages. The first research stage investigates the narratology of Glenn Scott Lacey’s documentary, Vegan: Everyday Stories(2016). In particular, this rhetorical analysis focuses on the evaluative belief system of vegan storytelling by applying narrative and ideological criticism. The …

Digital Rhetoric Of Cosmopolitanism: A Case Study Of Thai Students At Michigan Technological University, Aranya Srijongjai

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation lies at the intersection of social sciences and humanities. It aims to examine digital rhetoric of cosmopolitanism of people from a marginalized culture as situated in the context of a transnational experience. I view that this rhetoric encompasses digital practices of cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitan repertoire, a set of skills or strategies used in communication via social media in everyday life. I also argue that this rhetoric is connected to other elements in its broader social and cultural networks.

To illustrate these ideas, a case study of Thai students at Michigan Technological University in the United States is conducted …

The Archaeology Of The Postindustrial: Spatial Data Infrastructures For Studying The Past In The Present, Daniel Trepal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Postindustrial urban landscapes are large-scale, complex manifestations of the past in the present in the form of industrial ruins and archaeological sites, decaying infrastructure, and adaptive reuse; ongoing processes of postindustrial redevelopment often conspire to conceal the toxic consequences of long-term industrial activity. Understanding these phenomena is an essential step in building a sustainable future; despite this, the study of the postindustrial is still new, and requires interdisciplinary connections that remain either unexplored or underexplored. Archaeologists have begun to turn their attention to the modern industrial era and beyond. This focus carries the potential to deliver new understandings of the …

Interactive Sonification Strategies For The Motion And Emotion Of Dance Performances, Steven Landry

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Immersive Interactive SOnification Platform, or iISoP for short, is a research platform for the creation of novel multimedia art, as well as exploratory research in the fields of sonification, affective computing, and gesture-based user interfaces. The goal of the iISoP’s dancer sonification system is to “sonify the motion and emotion” of a dance performance via musical auditory display. An additional goal of this dissertation is to develop and evaluate musical strategies for adding layer of emotional mappings to data sonification. The result of the series of dancer sonification design exercises led to the development of a novel musical sonification …

Communicating The Health Impacts Of Climate Change: From Conviction To Persuasion, Emma Lozon

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Drawing on rhetorical theory as well as research in health and environmental communication, this thesis analyzes the effectiveness of messages that link climate change with health implications at moving audiences to persuasion. The two texts analyzed are a report produced by a group of physicians advocating for action on climate change and an episode from the Years of Living Dangerously Series. The findings indicate that communicators have the opportunity to frame climate-change-health messages in rhetorically sensitive ways that are more likely to empower audiences. Progressing from problems to solutions and to benefits of taking action can frame distressing health messages …

Ecologies Of Sponsorship: What Fitbit Users Can Teach Us About Digital Literacy, Kimberly Tweedale

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

As digital technologies have expanded, so have the literacy sponsors that support and shape how those technologies are used. This project focuses on one of these growing sites of sponsorship surrounding a specific health-tracking technology: wearable Fitbit devices. While much of the work on literacy sponsorship has focused on institutional sponsors as agents, I argue that the picture becomes more complicated and interesting when we place our focus on how users—often considered the sponsored—can become agents in a system that may have marginalized, excluded, or used them.

Using a combination of qualitative methods, this dissertation highlights how various literacy sponsors …

Articulating Digital Archival Practice Within Writing Program Administration: A Theoretical Framework, Amanda Girard

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Throughout Writing Program Administration scholarship there has been a clear call for archivization and archival work. This dissertation project takes an interdisciplinary approach to digital archival practices for Writing Program Administrators to consider and employ in their home institutions. While I recognize that WPAs are not typically identified as “archivists,” I situate the digital archive within the digital humanities as an interdisciplinary, collaborative project and offer suggestions that lead to recommendations for making an institutional archive. I review archival practice in order to justify the digital archive as an appropriate vehicle for WPAs’ work. Further, I argue that the digital …

Digitization Of The World: A Phenomenology Of Digitization, Thomas C. Adolphs

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The dissertation analyzes digitization through a phenomenological lens, understanding the digitization as an “outgrowth” of a potential that was always already latent within our being as the human-being. The analysis primarily utilizes the philosophic work of the 20^th century philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Through their philosophies, I seek to synthesize Heidegger’s concept of de-severance with Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of embodiment and the world as possessing depth. In doing so, I bring these theoretical concepts together to build a phenomenological “picture” of how it is that the digitization of the world came into being. All the while, my ultimate …

Music In The Northern Woods: An Archaeological Exploration Of Musical Instrument Remains, Matthew Durocher

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Archaeological and historical literature neglects music and sound. The quantity and distribution of musical remains found during archaeological excavations at Coalwood, a Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) logging camp active from 1901-1912 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, addresses the importance of music to the people that lived there. Musical reed plates from harmonicas, concertinas, and accordions were recovered and examined. These musical remains have traditionally been ignored as a diagnostic artifact, but here, I use them as primary evidence to access the daily lives of people in the northern woods. To do this, I will present how CCI developed Coalwood …