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Bio+Terror: Science, Security, Simulation, Melanie Armstrong

American Studies ETDs

The United States government has spent more than $125 billion since 2001 to prepare the nation for bioterrorism. This dissertation examines the emergence of bioterrorism as a credible threat in the contemporary moment, considering how the preparedness practices of the security state constitute new biopolitical formations. To explore how changing ways of knowing disease and risk are reshaping communities, this multi-sited study investigates the material outcomes of biosecurity in people's lives. It shows how complex histories of disease and terror are remade in the modern age to bring about new spaces and forms of biological citizenship.Through interview, observation and detailed …

Time In Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality In 21st Century Programming, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

This collection analyzes twenty-first-century American television programs that rely upon temporal and narrative experimentation. These shows play with time, slowing it down to unfold the narrative through time retardation and compression. They disrupt the chronological flow of time itself, using flashbacks and insisting that viewers be able to situate themselves in both the present and the past narrative threads. Although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the new millennium, never before has narrative time been so freely adapted in mainstream television. The essayists offer explanations for not only the frequency of time play in contemporary programming, …

The Red Revolution From The Perspective Of Visual Cultural Studies: A New Chapter In Art, Commerce And Corporate Social Responsibility, Caroline Karanja

American Studies Honors Projects

This honors project is a critical examination of Project RED, a corporate campaign designed to heighten the appeal of a set of consumer products to a transnational youth demographic by associating these products with the eradication of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The project seeks to understand Project RED in the context of visual cultural studies in the tradition of the Birmingham School, and also of critical work on the use of culture as a tool for corporate growth. The project rests on a close reading of visual texts, including a HBO documentary and a set of advertisements, that constitute Project RED.

Florida: The Mediated State, Julian C. Chambliss, Denise K. Cummings

Faculty Publications

"The Mediated State" addresses the perceived and the real experience linked to Florida and demonstrates the state acts as a bellwether for understanding postwar America in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Examining historical shifts linked to perceptions of the state, Chambliss and Cummings argue contemporary observers, like their historical antecedents, look to Florida to glean some greater understanding of the broader national experience.

Writing The Self: Feminist Experiment And Cultural Identity, Jill Darling

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines how twentieth-century experimental women writers construct non/narrative texts whose text-subjects mediate identity and call for increased possibilities for subject-identification in the world. The use of innovative formal strategies and experiment with narrative, combined with the content of identity critique, make these texts political projects that variously explore gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in relation to contemporary American culture. In this project I bring discussions of identity into the theorization of formally innovative writing. I work to move away from the kinds of essentializing practices of identity politics--in which subjects are fit into specific identity categories--and toward more …

"Only A Girl Like This Can Know What's Happened To You" : Traumatic Subjects In Contemporary American Narratives, Allison Virginia Craig

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This project is primarily concerned with the difficulty of representing traumatic experience and the problem of seeing violence and exploitation as natural and inevitable functions of social life. It argues that texts attempting to expose exploitive hierarchies and structural injustices often risk having their stories subsumed and commodified by the profuseness and proliferation of countervailing messages about individual choice and personal freedom. This struggle is highlighted through historicizing five contemporary American narratives--Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm, the films Boys Don't Cry and Monster, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Linda Hogan's Solar Storms--with and against critical concerns and popular texts. Furthermore, by employing …

Stylizing, Commodifying, And Disciplining Real Bodies: An Examination Of Wwe Wrestling, Isamu Horiuchi

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines professional wrestling in the U.S., in particular, live and television shows produced by the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Through the examination, it addresses complex issues of authenticity, audience, commodification, and discipline in contemporary popular culture and media.

I use three approaches in this study. First, I apply the theory of culture industry, developed by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, to understand WWE wrestling. I examine how the WWE thoroughly stylizes its products to attract fans and condition them to repeat the same calculable reactions. However, contemporary fans often refuse to react as the WWE wants them …

"We Should Have Brought The Tank": Hypermediated Interactivity In Red Vs. Blue, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Machinima, the practice of adapting recorded video game play into short films, highlights an often unacknowledged but significant shift in the consumption of video games and represents a key and underexplored intersection between the two leading theoretical camps. Considering the landmark series Red vs. Blue through the lens of Bolter and Grusin's propositions about "new" media's relationships with other forms offers an entry point for theorizing not only machinima but also the intersections between the ludology and narratology positions in games studies.

Mexican-Americans In Los Angeles: Strengthening Their Ethnic Identity Through Chivas Usa, Stephanie Goldberger

CMC Senior Theses

A large Mexican-American population already exists in Los Angeles and, with each generation, it continues to rise. This Mexican-American community has maintained its connection to its heritage by playing and watching soccer, Mexico’s top watched sport. In this thesis, I analyze how Major League Soccer's Chivas USA serves as an outlet through which many Mexicans in Los Angeles have developed their ethnic identities. Since the early twentieth century, Mexicans in Los Angeles have created separate residential communities and sports organizations to strengthen their connections with one another.

To appeal to Mexican-Americans, Chivas USA has branded itself closely to its sister …

"You Understand Me Now": Sampling Nina Simone In Hip Hop, Amanda Renae Modell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overarching goal of this research is to explicate the implications of hip hop artists sampling Nina Simone's music in their work. By regarding Simone as a critical social theorist in her own right, one can hear the ways that hip hop artists are mobilizing her tradition of socially active self-definition from the Civil Rights/Black Power era(s) in the post-2000 United States. By examining both the lyrics and the instrumental compositions of Lil Wayne, Juelz Santana, Common, Tony Moon, Talib Kweli, Mary J. Blige and Will.I.Am, G-Unit and Timbaland, and bearing in mind the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, …

Reading Between The Numbers: The Colonial Rhetorics Of Fantasy Football And The Illusion Of Control, Robert Kyle Kellam

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this project, I build on existing research in the critical intersection of media, sport, gaming and race to explore how fantasy football, an entertainment byproduct of the National Football League (NFL), rearticulates and recontexualizes the colonial ideology already prolific in the NFL and other products of American media culture. I investigate how fantasy football may represent an innocuous, yet exigent place to study the commodification and consumption of bodies in our contemporary media landscape because of the way that the increasingly popular game operates in a capitalistic logic, where NFL players are almost exclusively valued for their statistical production …

Television, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Monstrous Dialogues: The Host And South Korean Inverted Exile, James Lloyd Turner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bong Joon-ho‟s monster movie blockbuster, The Host (Gweomul, 2006), is the most commercially successful film in South Korean cinema history. The film‟s popularity and significance derive from its unearthing of the ambivalence concerning South Korea‟s rapid transformation from a rural dictatorship to an urban democracy with one of the strongest economies on the planet. This ambivalence is buried beneath a veneer of "progress" blanketing contemporary South Korea and constitutes a condition I call inverted exile. The Host explicitly engages life in inverted exile through my notion of aesthetic dialogue. Aesthetic dialogue, takes influence from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and …

Aliens In Their Native Lands: The Persistence Of Internal Colonial Theory, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Diet, Acculturation And Risk Factors For Heart Disease Among Jamaican Immigrants, Carol Renee Oladele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: The South Florida region is home to over 85,000 Jamaican immigrants. Yet, little is known about the dietary intakes and predictors of risk of disease within this immigrant group. An assessment of dietary intakes and the development of dietary intake methodologies specific to the Jamaican population was important as it permitted accurate estimation of the nutrient intakes of this immigrant population whose dietary habits are not well documented. In addition, nothing is known about the prevalence of risk factors for heart disease or factors influencing risk factors among this immigrant group. The purpose of this study was to assess …

Sorting Through The Junk Box: Dickens's Objects And The Great Exhibition Of 1851, Audrey Raymi Grounds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Bleak House , Dickens satirizes contemporary conditions in London in order to diagnose what he sees as social and industrial ills to prescribe a solution to the "Condition-of-England" question. Beginning with a review of the topicality in the novel, I use Dickens's personal letters, the text of Bleak House , and articles from Household Words to explain his contempt with the Great Exhibition, misguided philanthropy, and sanitary conditions, among others. Ultimately, it is his anathema to the Great Exhibition which drives both Dickens's plot and the issues he explores. Dickens's mockery of England is refracted and emphasized through his …

Review Of Generous Man - Ahxs-I-Tapina: Essays In Memory Of Colin Taylor, Plains Indian Ethnologist. Edited By Arni Brownstone And Hugh Dempsey., Daniel C. Swan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This volume celebrates Colin Taylor's contributions to North American ethnology through the presentation 251 of 14 research articles that reflect the diversity and vigor of Taylor's scholarship. Taylor spent his entire life in the Sussex region of southeastern England and the majority of his career teaching at the University of Hastings. His interest in Native Americans began with a boyhood fascination that matured into a disciplined and enduring passion for research and scholarly discourse. Arni Brownstone and Hugh Dempsey, two respected scholars and close friends and colleagues of Taylor, edited the volume. The three of them, along with John C. …

Ferguson, Lynne Marrs (Hammer), B. 1956 (Fa 569), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text (click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 569. Paper: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Study of a Funeral Ribbon Quilt" written by Lynne Marrs (Hammer) Ferguson for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Los Tres Grandes - Herman Gallegos, Ernesto Galarza, Julian Samora: Rooted In Community, Guided By Friendship, Cultivating Leadership., Carmen R. Samora

American Studies ETDs

Los Tres Grandes, Ernesto Galarza, Herman Gallegos, and Julian Samora, fused intellectual constructs and grassroots strategies to reverse the societal dynamics they understood had marginalized Mexican Americans at both governmental and social levels. In 1968, the three scholar/activists launched the Southwest Council of La Raza (SWCLR), which four years later became the National Council of La Raza. My dissertation explores the relationship of these three men, a nexus of history and personality that launched what became the largest civil rights organization for Latinos in the United States. At a time when foundations earmarked minority support primarily for African Americans, Los …

Land, Gender, And The Politics Of Identity Formation: Uncovering Hispana/Mexicana Voices In The Southwest, Karen R. Roybal

American Studies ETDs

The southwestern United States has an exceptional history that makes the region a prime focus for study concentrating on culture, tradition, language and land. As an area closely tied to the concept of conquest, the Southwest has had its share of issues related to colonization, imperialism, Manifest Destiny, and cultural erasure. This study focuses on the Southwest as a region that is closely linked to the land as it relates to the formation of identities of its people. Mexican Americans in the Southwest have historically experienced struggle, particularly after 1848 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when …

Imagining The Saints: Representations Of Mormonism In American Culture, Jeremy R. Ricketts

American Studies ETDs

The purpose of this dissertation is to address how representations of Mormons in American culture reveal not only key aspects of the history of Mormonism in America but also tell us a great deal about American life and thought since the founding of the religion in 1830 to the present day (2011). Representations are powerful vehicles for creating, shaping, reflecting, and naturalizing society's understanding of religious institutions and revealing cultural concerns and anxieties, and the methodology of this dissertation thus focuses on interdisciplinary analytical critiques of diverse texts to better elucidate the complicated but deeply intertwined history of the Mormon …

The Holistic Complementary Structure Of Western Bio-Medicine And Traditional Healing And Achieving Complete Health, Candace Gail Oubre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Achieving complete health requires a deep understanding of complementary cultural competency sensitivity between physician and patient. This may include but is not limited to access to preventative health care resources, access to health educational resources and access to cultural healing resources, for example, shamans, Ayurvedic physicians, and herbal healers. Advocates of cultural competency emphasize great importance on knowledge of the patients' cultural background; however, the transcendence of this knowledge can be explained further through complementary cultural competency sensitivity. This is when the cultures of the physician and patient complement each other in terms of understanding what is in the patients' …

Tucked In: American Quilts And The Beds They Cover, 1790-1939, Madeleine Roberg

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the size of quilts to determine if changes in quilt size are a reflection of changes in bedstead size. To conduct this study 118 quilt publications and 304 furniture publications (including Sears, Roebuck and Co. retail catalogues). were examined for data on quilts and bedsteads. Using these sources the dimensions of 3299 surviving quilts and 1651 bedsteads were examined to determine whether or not changes in quilts sizes correlate with changes in bedstead dimensions. The study found that quilt size (mean area) steadily declined between 1800 and 1910 and increased in the 1920s and 1930s. The most …

Exploring Dress And Behavior Of The Emo Subculture, Kaci Schmitt

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

The thesis analyzes the dress, behavior, and subcultural characteristics of "emo kids." Interviews, observations, and secondary text analyses are used to determine findings.

Miniature Nation Building: Model Railroading And The Dialectics Of Scale In Post-Wwii America, Ivan Weber

American Studies ETDs

This thesis advances a critical understanding of how scale informs the production and consumption of the American nation, and it makes a foray into Marxist critical analysis by integrating the theoretical and methodological objectives of historical materialism with the multiple, dialectically construed dimensionalities of scale. The hobby of model railroading serves as the case study for this analysis, and the dialectics of scale as the theoretical apparatus with which this analysis is articulated. The central argument of the thesis is that the model railroad hobby builds the nation, in miniature, through the continual regeneration of American masculinity, the traditional American …

From Where I Am Standing: Indigenous Narrative And Photo Documentary, Nestor R. Veloz Passalacqua

Ethnic Studies

Latin American Indigenous Peoples (LAIP) are a marginalized segment in Latin America. They inhabit a sub-America and are forced to migrate due to socio-political struggle and cultural coercion. LAIP experience a transnational and transborder migration that reflects the quality of cultural hybridity and of regional, ethnic, and cultural crossings. The purpose of this study is to research LAIP ways of reclaiming and reproducing cultural practices that elicit Indigenous awareness, knowledge, and ethnic identification in a transnational setting. The study examines through interviews and photographs transborder experiences and the lives of the participants. As a result, the project reveals that LAIP …

Watch What You Eat: From Self-Surveillance To Affective Eating, Constance Calice

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

How is it that Americans are so obsessed with nutrition and dieting and yet remain unhealthy? This project attempts to give a theoretically driven answer to this great paradox within the Western diet. Constance Calice analyzes the practice and rhetoric of dieting as a crystallization of a problematic relationship to food using a Foucauldian understanding of discipline. Using examples from the media, she illustrates the way in which outside forces effect our food choices and the power relationships formed in this exchange. To offer an alternative view to nutritionism she looks to the Local Food Movement and affect theory to …

After The Fall: The Post-Apocalyptic Frontier In The Road And 28 Days Later, Jeffrey J. Lavigne

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Previous scholars have identified three scenes of the American frontier myth: the sea, the west, and space. This evolution of frontiers reflected key changes in the expression of America’s cultural identity. While Janice Hocker Rushing called space “the final frontier,” the prominent place in contemporary society held by zombies and other minions of the occult hint at the emergence of yet another scene of the American mythos: the post apocalypse. In contrast to previous frontiers, which are defined geographically, the post-apocalypse is much broader, for in the wake of a global cataclysm, everywhere is a potential frontier. This decentralization of …

“Speaking With” The Ravine: Representation And Memory In Five Cultural Productions Of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, Karl Germeck

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis examines the rich and layered intertextual relationship between five artistic representations of the razed neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, and its former residents. These works include Seattle-based photographer Don Normark’s 1999 photography collection Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story; the full-length dramatic play Chavez Ravine, written and first performed by Los Angeles-based Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash in 2003; Jordan Mechner’s 2004 short documentary film Chávez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story; Ry Cooder’s musical album Chávez Ravine: A Record by Ry Cooder; and lastly, high school history teacher Ken Aven’s 2006 debut …

Recreating Religion: The Response To Joseph Smith’S Innovations In The Second Prophetic Generation Of Mormonism, Christopher James Blythe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, was assassinated. In the wake of his death, a number of would-be
successors emerged. Each of these leaders - part of what I call the second prophetic
generation - established a unique vision of Mormonism.

In 1844, Mormonism was in the middle of a major shift in its character. Joseph
Smith’s death left numerous theological and practical questions unresolved. This thesis argues that, rather than merely a succession struggle of competition and power, a principal function of the second prophetic generation in Mormonism …