Arts and Humanities Commons^™

It's All In The Rhetoric: Using Affective Design To Change Users' Perceptions Of Online Help, Robert C. Stultz

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the role of affective design in online help systems. The thesis begins with a discussion of the current research related to online help systems and the rhetorical nature of technical communication. The thesis then provides a heuristic evaluation of two versions of procedural discourse for Microsoft Word 2000. Based on an analysis of the heuristic evaluation, five recommendations are given for improving the affective design of online help systems. The thesis concludes with a proposed usability test and consideration of a related area of study.

Legacy To The People: Community And The Orange County Regional History Center, Robert L. Beatty Ii

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

The development and birth of the Orange County Regional History Center is perhaps unlike any other local history museum in the United States. Its story is worth telling because of its long gestation, the difficulties in bringing this center to life, and the goals of the people who made it possible. All of these elements are a vital part of the history of Orange County, Florida and should not be overlooked.

In this light, this thesis will discuss more fully three topics in relation to the creation of the new History Center. First, it will look at the American museum …

The Magical And The Mundane: Individualism, Corporate Identity, And Postmodern Pastiche In The Detective Novels Of Haruki Murakami, Diana Lynn Garland

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

In Murakami's detective novels, pop culture references, irony, and hard-boiled genre conventions combine with magic realist prose to articulate the search for individual identity in a Japanese milieu structured by traditional communal values. At the same time, Murakami's work remains grounded in Japanese literary tradition, and he sees himself very much as a product of modern Japan. The thesis traces the blending of these diverse tendencies in three of Murakami’s most popular novels: A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Dance, Dance, Dance.

The Introduction provides an overview of the product, …

Information On The Assembly Line : A Review Of Information Design And Its Implications For Technical Communicators, Jason Nichols

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Technological advances have made endless amounts of information on nearly every subject easily accessible, while at the same time fostering an economic climate conducive to international trade and partnerships. The challenge for companies then becomes one of figuring out how best to manage and use this mass of information, a task complicated by the increasingly global nature of business that requires products to be tailored to more specialized user groups in a wider array of formats and in different languages. Hence the emergence of information design, a field that technical communicators would do well to associate themselves with. Information design …

Enterface: A Novella, Hubert Calip Mcleod

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

A computer screen places each of us in an interface and virtual reality provides a totally simulated environment, a virtual world that we can enter. Enterface is a novella that examines the question first posed by Michael Heim: How far can we enter cyberspace and still remain human? It also explores the power and the limitation of language and the role of stories to shape reality in human life. Its themes are death, technology, ethics, and love. It is informed by Wittgensteinian philosophy, Norse mythology, and the "metaphysics of virtual reality."

The plot involves Moses Mackinow, a former Air Force …

Nineteenth-Century American Housekeeping Books : Women's Workplace Manuals Historical Research In Technical Writing, Melanie C. Woods

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes three American housekeeping books—Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife, Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe's The American Woman's Home, and Helen Campbell Stuart's The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking—as historical examples of technical writing. The study follows current recommendations for historical research in the field, namely, to analyze technical writing texts in consideration of their historical context. This involves determining what constituted technical writing in the nineteenth century; considering the publishing context of the study; and applying this definition to analyze three housekeeping books as technical manuals. These texts exemplify technical writing …

The Incident At The Colonel's, Jason G. Clark

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

We Can't Be The Women We Were Before: Mary Livermore And Chicago Women In The American Civil War, Nancy Arlene Driscol Engle

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact of the American Civil War on Union women by focusing on Mary Ashton Rice Livermore and her associates in wartime aid societies in Chicago, Illinois. It argues that Livermore's postwar lecture career epitomizes the new confidence that many benevolent women possessed after the Civil War. From contemporary newspaper accounts and letters it demonstrates that the conflagration broadened the scope of their activity, allowing many to hone their skills and expand their influence while remaining safely inside society's accepted gender standards. concluding that the war changed moderate white middle-class women's lives, it then illustrates that some …

Close To Home, Donald P. Gagnon

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Path To Chaos : Excess, Absence And Anarchy In Tennyson's Idylls Of The King, Peggie A. Howerton

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Hanging Back With The Brutes: Barbarism In Tennessee Williams' The Red Devil Battery Sign, Jeffrey Sowder

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Examination And Analysis Of The Records Of The Chancery Court Of Orange County, Florida, From Inception In 1873 To 1883, Thomas Michael Woods

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

American Opinion Of The Soviet/Vatican Struggle 1917-1933, Jeffrey P. Begeal

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Cultural History And Fiction Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings And Ellen Glasgow, Betty N. Mcdonell

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Timothy Hatherly And The Plymouth Colony Pilgrims, Steven R. Valdespino

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Preparation And Use Of Polymeric Metal Complexes As Fuel Oil Combustion Catalysts, Sebastian Vasquez

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

The effect of high molecular weight carboxylate ligands as compared to naphthenate ligands on the effectiveness of transition metals as additives for reducing soot particulates was studied in the combustion of diesel fuel and distillate fuel oil by use of a laboratory scale burner. A mechanism involving pseudoheterogenous catalytic reactions is proposed. A simple system to evaluate fuel additives by burning only a few milliliters of oil was designed, developed, and used. Polybutene with an average molecular weight of 920 was the raw material in this study. The polymer was oxidized with KMnO4 to the corresponding acid from whose potassium …

A History Of The Lutherans In The Orlando Area, 1868-1948, James D. Prahlow

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The United States And The Restoration Of Costa Rican Democracy, Richard J. Junkins

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Land Grants, Land Use, Land Alienation, Mary K. Garner

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Governments often used the promise of land as a means to implement policy. Whether the land was in the form of a large grant to a successful explorer, or in the offer of a homestead on the frontier, the motive for such grants was seldom entirely altruistic. Most grants contained stipulations for settlement and cultivation because a growing population was necessary for economic development. Rulers of Florida also offered land grants to encourage a particular religion, to protect shipping, or to establish protection against Indian attacks. When Florida became part of the United States, large sections of the territory were …

The Farm Security Administration Photographers : Humane Propagandists, Pioneers In Documentary Photography, Robert Duff Alexander

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.