English Language and Literature Commons^™

Cloning And Characterization Of Sas1738, A Hypothetical Exported Protein From Community-Associated Strain Of Staphylococcus Aureus, Deepak Kumar Vijaya Kumar

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a group of S. aureus strains that has acquired resistance to a class of beta lactam antibiotics and is the major cause of hospital associated infections. Their discovery goes back to 1960 when the first cases were identified. Recently community associated MRSA infections have emerged and are caused by strains that are independent of those from the hospital environment, related only because they carry some of the same antibiotic resistance genes. Community associated infections (CA) are more severe, producing pus filled lesions that are painful and capable of invasion of deep tissues. Virulence factors …

Application Of Strategic Institutional-Information Technology Alignment Model In Four-Year Institutions Of Higher Education, Barbara Lach-Smith

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined an existing corporate model of business-information technology alignment for application in higher education and tested the findings by surveying executive and technology leaders in higher education. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the factors that impact alignment between institutional strategic planning and information technology strategy in higher education. The existing alignment model was examined in the context of mid-size four-year colleges and universities. This study used a combination of Delphi technique and a survey process. The sequence followed was to examine an existing theoretical model for its applicability to higher education …

Stay At Home Fathers: The New Gender Benders, Jessica Fischer

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study compared the gender roles and attitudes toward women‟s and men‟s social roles of stay at home fathers and employed fathers recruited on the Internet. The relationship between gender roles and attitudes toward women‟s and men‟s social roles on reasons for becoming a stay at home father were also investigated. It was predicted that stay at home fathers would endorse more traditionally feminine characteristics for themselves and would have more nontraditional attitudes toward men‟s and women‟s social roles than employed fathers. In addition, it was predicted that fathers who choose to stay at home for practical reasons (i.e. lost …

Tongueless: Representation Of The Mentally Disabled And The Novel, Brent Walter Cline

Dissertations

This study examines the representation of the mentally disabled in the novel for two related outcomes. The first is to prove that the representation of the mentally disabled is not merely a subset of the representation of the disabled in general. This is intended less as a political statement as it is a literary one. Acknowledging and building off the work of writers in disability studies such as David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, and Tobin Siebers who concentrate on the body of the disabled, this study shows that attempts to represent the mentally disabled are fundamentally different than those who are …

A Divided Family : Examining The Physical Displacement In Robert Olen Butler’S A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, Alex William Csedrik

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, the collection focuses on the Vietnamese that emigrated to America because of the Vietnam War. Through these short stories, Butler illustrates the physical displacement of the characters, and their new role within their new home, America, as the Other.

Throughout examining the physical displacement and the characters’ status as the Other, this thesis focuses on the after effects of the Vietnam War. Each character attempts to cope with their displacement and Other-ness through a variety of methods including exploitation of their Other-ness for monetary gains, using their sexuality to …

Life Beyond The Scarlet Letter, Shauna Ciarco Demarco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter recounts the events that occur during a time span of seven years that follows an adulterous encounter between two of the novel’s three protagonists. This act took place before the novel begins and details of it are never disclosed to the reader. The novel’s focus remains fixed on the events that occur after the symbol of this sin, the scarlet letter “A,” is placed upon the breast of Hester Prynne. While Hester boldly and steadfastly confronts a new life as a scorned woman and single mother, the father of her child, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, is …

Beyond Berenice : Edgar Allan Poe As A Magazine Editor, Critic, And Supporter Of Women, Karen Affinito Greco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

While Edgar Allan Poe was editor of the New York-based Broadway Journal and the Literati o f New York in the mid 1840s, he was very supportive of female writers of the time period. Poe gave women writers including Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, and Frances Sargent Osgood key placements in the Broadway Journal and the Literati o f New York and most often favorable reviews. These actions and feelings of support were in contrast to the overall feeling of the time period, which was that women should not venture outside the domestic arena into the literary world.

This thesis …

The Struggle Between The Self And Not-Self : The Influence Of Zen Buddhism And The Upanishads In Yeats’S Later Poetry, William Paul Kadar

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will examine questions about how William Butler Yeats was influenced by his exposure to eastern philosophical thinking. Yeats's work prior to 1927, before his significant and rather esoteric tome A Vision, could classify him as a proto-Romantic, but it was his work after this where we see the influence of an eastern way of thinking. Specifically, this thesis will focus on Yeats's poetry from 1927 on, with references to some of his earlier work to demonstrate how Yeats had already discovered some of the basic tenets of eastern thinking without having studied it. The initial analysis will locus …

Does Introductory Writing Instruction Help Students To Succeed At Montclair State University?, Sean Molloy

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study examines whether Montclair State University (MSU) students who were placed into an introductory writing course between 2005 and 2009 later succeeded as measured by retention rates, academic advancement and available grade data. While available data was limited, retention rates and grade data suggest that most of these students have succeeded so far at MSU. The study also submitted an online survey to former introductory writing course students which asked whether they believe that their experience in that course was an actual contributing cause to their academic success. Survey responses of 68 students confirm that most believe the course …

Attitudes Toward Transsexual People: Effects Of Gender And Appearance, Kelly R. Gerhardstein

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The transgendered community, like other gender non-conforming communities, is the subject of stigmatization, discrimination, and violence. However, there is a notable lack of research investigating the specific attitudes toward various manifestations of transgenderism, and the factors that may be contributing to these attitudes. The goal of this study was to investigate factors that contribute to negative attitudes toward, and discrimination against, this consistently marginalized group of people. The present study explored the relationship between attitudes toward transsexuals and several gender-related variables, including gender of the rater, sex and apparent gender of the transsexual, as well as gender role beliefs, personal …

Diagnosis Of Depersonalization Disorder, Margaret R. Dehoff

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Depersonalization Disorder (DPD) is considered both under-researched and under-diagnosed. A variety of reasons have been proposed for the under-diagnosis of DPD, including the high frequency of depersonalization as a symptom and comorbidity of DPD with other disorders. Under-diagnosis of DPD has also been attributed to inadequate diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV-TR, as it lists only four criteria and only one specifically addresses the phenomenon of depersonalization. Several groups of researchers have proposed more comprehensive and in-depth conceptualizations of DPD. Further, common biases in clinical decision-making, such as an over-reliance on cognitive heuristics and the use of prototypes, can contribute to …

A Comparison Of The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, And Child And Adolescent Taxon Scale: Predictive Utility And Cross Cultural Generalizability, Micheal Bruce Lister

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) is a widely utilized measure for estimating the risk of violent reoffending among forensic populations. However, completing the VRAG can be a lengthy process as it requires entering scores from a second test, the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), which must be administered separately and requires hours to complete. In order to reduce scoring time, the authors of the VRAG have developed a brief checklist, the Child and Adolescent Taxon Scale (CATS), which can be used in place of the PCL-R as a more efficient method of assessing psychopathy (Quinsey et al., 2004). Previous research …

Neural Network Classification Of Hyperspectral Imagery For Urban Environments: A Case Study., Vijay Lulla

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urban environments are complex because many different artificial and natural objects occur in close proximity. Being able to understand the processes and workings of these environments requires the ability to observe and record data with high spatial and spectral resolution. Hyperspectral sensors have been gaining popularity for this task as they are becoming more affordable. In this research, a commonly used maximum likelihood (ML) classifier and artificial neural network (ANN) classifier have been compared for classifying urban land use and land cover (LULC) using AISA+ hyperspectral data. Further, the best set of bands were identified for classification of urban areas …

Parenting A Child With Behavior Problems: Dimensions Of Religiousness That Influence Parental Stress And Sense Of Competence, Chelsea Weyand M.S.

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parenting a child with behavior problems has been associated with an increase in parental stress and a decrease in parental sense of competence. While parental religiosity has generally been associated with greater child and parent functioning, it has been suggested that when parenting a child with behavior problems, some aspects of parental religiousness (e.g., negative religious coping, biblical conservatism) might decrease functioning. One hundred and thirty-nine parents of children between the ages of three and twelve completed a questionnaire in order to examine the influence of religious variables (sanctification of parenting, negative religious coping, positive religious coping, biblical conservatism) on …

Barriers To Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Intervention Implementation In The Public School Setting, Amy Marie Stagg

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the impact of potential barriers on commonly recommended school-based interventions for children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The interventions included were the Daily Behavioral Report Card, token reinforcement, response cost, instructional style changes, and classroom environment changes. The potential barriers studied were the time teachers spent on an intervention, the level of parent support, the level of child difficulty, the acceptability of an intervention, the perceived fairness of an intervention, and the level of administrative support. The study also examined the potential relationship between teachers‟ stress levels and the number of barriers they perceive to these interventions. …

Shakespeare Adapting Chaucer: “Myn Auctour Shal I Folwen, If I Konne”, Scott A. Hollifield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Geoffrey Chaucer's distinctively English spins on such genres as dream vision, fabliau and Breton lai, as well as his liberal citation of authorities in Troilus and Criseyde, offered early modern English poets the license to mingle sources and authorities within their work, rather than bend their writing to fit the format. Few authors took such productive advantage of Chaucerian permissiveness as William Shakespeare, whose narrative poems defer to Chaucer's distinctively English authority with a regularity comparable to his uses of Homer, Ovid, Virgil and Plutarch. This free-associative approach to auctoritee, the whetstone of the poet-playwright's dramatic imagination, suggests that …

Commodifying Creativity: Class, Labor, And Authorship In Isabella Whitney's “A Sweet Nosgay”, Janette Cavazos

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Isabella Whitney, the first woman to publish secular verse under her own name, is generally considered by scholars in terms of gender. My thesis argues she should be seen, instead, through her identity as a working-class writer. Her book of poetry, A Sweet Nosgay (1573), is shaped by her efforts to make her way in the world of print publication by commodifying creativity into a product. My thesis assesses the content of her poetry on the basis of class, which was the impetus for this commodification. My focus gives full authority to her as a Renaissance writer, one who resists …

Feminism, Imperialism, Utopianism, And Science Fiction In Margaret Cavendish's “Blazing World", Terina Garza Vazquez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623-1673), the Duchess of Newcastle, was a woman writer in seventeenth-century England who was the first woman in history to be allowed within the halls of the Royal Society. She was also the first woman to write what should be considered the first work of science fiction by a woman titled The Description of a New World Called, The Blazing World, or simply The Blazing World. This thesis focuses on The Blazing World which offers a proto-feminist critique of imperialism and of gender relations in seventeenth-century England and of England’s emergent imperialist culture and points to a …

Preparing Low-Income Middle And Secondary Students To Participate Effectively In Academic Discourse Through Writing, Franc Lacinski

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Students from low-income families often perform poorly on formal assessments in language arts. Examining data using the 2008-2009 State of New Jersey Department of Education School Report Cards, a comparison was made between low-income districts and affluent districts in three areas: High School Proficiency Assessment Language Arts Literacy Scores, SAT Verbal Scores and SAT Essay Scores. Students from low-income districts performed significantly lower in these areas than students from the higher income districts and from the average performance rates for the State of New Jersey. This lag in performance affects students’ choices for higher education, for job opportunities, as well …

The Effects Of Coauthoring On Student Writing, Stacey E. Spector

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Teaching student writing can be a very frustrating yet rewarding experience. Because there are so many ways to approach writing instruction and the writing process, there is often a disconnect between teachers’ expectations and students’ performances. A plethora of research has been done on teaching the writing process: peer editing, revising, and other areas of writing instruction. However, not much has been explored in terms of how writing can improve if we ask students to write together.

The goal of having students write together, or coauthor, is to allow them the chance to learn from each other and explore the …