Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Intentionally Engaging Attention When Viewing Restorative Environments: Exploring Attention Restoration Theory, Charles E. Jaggard

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although research exploring Attention Restoration Theory has been extensive, certain procedures for its study seem to be taken as implicit, but require investigation for a deeper understanding and application of both the theory and its underlying processes. This study aimed to answer the questions: “What is the result of engaging directed attention when viewing otherwise restorative environments?” and “Does this intentional engagement have any effect on already fatiguing non-restorative environments?” Participants were asked to complete a task designed to fatigue their directed attentional capacity and then view images of restorative or non-restorative environments, wherein they either were asked to direct …

Using Analogues To Simulate Intensity, Trajectory, And Dynamical Changes In Alberta Clippers With Global Climate Change, Jamie L. Ward

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alberta Clippers are extratropical cyclones that form in the lee of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and traverse through the Great Plains and Midwest regions of the United States. With the imminent threat of global climate change and its effects on regional teleconnection patterns like El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), properties of Alberta Clipper could be altered as a result of changing atmospheric circulation patterns. Since the Great Plains and Midwest regions both support a large portion of the national population and agricultural activity, the effects of global climate change on Alberta Clippers could affect these areas in a variety of ways. …

Acoustic Communication In The Temperate Treefrogs Pseudacris Crucifer And Acris Crepitans, John Keating

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Spring peepers and cricket frogs produce advertisement calls to attract females. As ectotherms their body temperatures are greatly affected by ambient air temperature. Some characteristics of their advertisement calls are correlated with temperature. I analyzed advertisement calls of both species recorded in western-central Indiana. I compared call characteristic correlations with temperature found in our populations to those in populations in other geographic areas and found similar trends throughout the range of both species. Secondly, I examined aggressive calls in the spring peepers. Aggressive calls are used in male-male interactions, and in the spring peeper are a distinct call type different …

Evaluation Of The Gnpv Method For Decision-Making In Non-Conventional Projects, Ningning Song

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Engineering economic analysis techniques are used to evaluate projects and make appropriate decision in capital budgeting. Conventional projects can be solved by the traditional methods such as the net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) methods. These methods may not work in evaluating non-conventional projects. Kulakov and Kulakova (2012) have presented the generalized net present value (GNPV) method for such projects. They have illustrated the method with three examples: a project of 2-year life with multiple IRRs, a project of 2-year life without IRR, and a project of 3-year life with a unique real-valued IRR which is …

Effects Of The Interaction Of Religion And Internalized Homonegativity On Psychological Well-Being, Ashleigh C. Young

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of the current research is to contribute to knowledge regarding the ways in which religion impacts the mental health of lesbian women and gay men. A body of existing literature shows support for religion as a means of bolstering psychological well-being. However, there is a dearth of research on the unique ways in which religious sexual minority individuals may be differentially affected by religion, considering the presence of heterosexist beliefs and norms in many mainline Western religions. The current research explores the effects of the interaction between religion and internalized homonegativity on psychological well-being. Possible relationships between religious …

A New Mmpi-2 Measure Of Psychopathy: An Empirical Approach, Erin M. Greene

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to develop a new scale on the MMPI-2 to identify individuals with global psychopathy, as measured by the PCL-R. The study consisted of four smaller studies, including 1) derivation of the scale 2) cross-validation 3) external validation, 4) factor analysis. The derivation sample consisted of male prison inmates (N = 170) and a second sample of male prison inmates (N = 126) was utilized for cross-validation. A third sample of male and female college students (N = 308) was utilized for the purpose of correlating the developed scale with existing measures of personality …

Ptsd And Disclosure: Understanding The Implications Of Personality, Jena Wierwille

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite decades of research outlining the onset, course, and treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the question of why some, but not others, develop the disorder remains unanswered. One of the most widely accepted predictors of the disorder is the presence of negative posttraumatic cognitions. However, because the term “posttraumatic” implies a retrospective prediction, the clinical utility of this finding is relatively insignificant; it does not allow for the identification of those most at risk for developing PTSD prior to trauma exposure. A more promising area of research concerns the degree to which individuals feel comfortable discussing their thoughts and …

Framing Identity: Repudiating The Ideal In Chicana Literature, Michael A. Flores

All NMU Master's Theses

In the 1960s Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez penned his now canonical, epic poem “I Am Joaquin.” The poem chronicles the historic oppression of a transnational, Mexican people as well as revolutionary acts of their forefathers in resisting tyranny. Coinciding with a series of renewed, sociopolitical campaigns, collectively known as the Chicano Movement, Gonzales’ poem uses vivid imagery to present an idealized representation of Chicanos and encouraged his reader to engage in revolutionary action. Though the poem encourages strong leadership, upward mobility, and political engagement the representations of women in his text are misogynistic and limiting.

His presentation of the “black-shawled …

"But, Whatever The Reason, His Heart Or His Shoes, He Stood There On Christmas Eve, Hating The Whos": Dr. Seuss' The Grinch As The Racialized Other In American Culture, Marina Malli

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes Dr. Seuss’ the Grinch as a modern myth in US society that provides an imaginary resolution to the perceived encroachment of racial and cultural heterogeneity in the various time periods in which the text has circulated. Each chapter closely reads three different versions of the story, including Dr. Seuss’ children’s book published in 1957, the 1966 animated TV special directed by Chuck Jones, and the 2000 film directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey. In each chapter, I consider the racial politics prevalent in each time period in order to elucidate my claim that various media …

Moderating Effects Of Religious Orientation On The Relationship Between Sexual Self-Discrepancies And Guilt And Anxiety, Ann E. Jones

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the moderating effect of religious orientation on the relationship between sexual self-discrepancies and guilt. There is some evidence of a positive correlation between sex-guilt and higher levels of religiosity. In this study it was proposed that sex-guilt in religious individuals is partially driven by discrepancies between actual sexual behaviors and how the individual thinks that they ought or ideally should behave. In order to test this idea a survey was administered to 151 undergraduate students to assess religious orientation, actual, ought, and ideal sexual behaviors, and sex guilt. Gender differences were found in reporting intrinsic religiosity, …

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, And Disorders Of Extreme Stress, Not Otherwise Specified; A Vignette Study Exploring Va And Private Sector Clinicians’ Diagnostic Perceptions, Sara B. Lacy

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to the role of trauma in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and disorders of extreme stress, not otherwise specified (DESNOS), and noted similar clinical pictures, it is important to explore differential diagnosis. There is evidence that gender influences the diagnosis of PTSD and BPD and of an “anchoring effect” in which disclosure of childhood trauma early versus late in a case vignette results in more diagnoses of PTSD or BPD, respectively. Additionally, as many veterans seek care within the private sector, it is important to understand possible diagnostic differences between VA and private …

From Pretending To Supposing: Redeeming The Madwoman In Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, Alexie Mcpherson

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis demonstrates how the emergent genre of girls’ literature in the Victorian period served to destabilize and challenge contemporary restrictive depictions of women. It revises the theory of Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic, which posits that in nineteenth-century literature, women could only function as diseased, insane prisoners or else as angelic rulers of the domestic sphere; this thesis employs examples from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess to prove that even during the height of Victorian literature, books written for and about young girls were already troubling the dichotomy set up by the literature of …

Composing College And Career : Mobility, Complexity And Agency At The Nexus Of High School, College And Work., Brice Nordquist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers and theorizes findings of a two-year mobile ethnography investigating the complexity of students’ movements within and among secondary and tertiary educational institutions and the labor market. The project illustrates the lateral and recursive natures of students’ educational and occupational trajectories and thereby reveals the mutually constitutive relations among scenes of writing across space and time. While the study follows eleven students moving from different tracks of high school English through their first years at research universities, colleges and full-time jobs, this text focuses specifically on the mobilities of three students: Nadif, Katherine and James. I draw upon …

Yours, Mine, And Ours : Confronting The Originality Burden Through Remix And Intertextuality., Barrie Olson Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to ongoing conversations regarding the goal of composition instructors “to empower students to take responsibility for their ideas and their texts while developing their curiosity and persistence in the pursuit of knowledge” (Carpenter, 2014, par. 4). In particular, this dissertation, a classroom ethnography, examines how the originality burden-an encumbrance wherein students feel overwhelmed by the need to write an “original” paper-operates in one second-semester first-year composition course dedicated to relieving students from feeling like they must write “original” texts. More specifically, this study examines the potential of two concepts, remix and intertextuality, to help show students that …

"My Watch Begins" : Identification And Procedural Rhetoric On Second Screens And Social Networks., K. Shannon Howard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Digital rhetoric creates opportunities for examining rhetoric as it evolves daily. This evolution may be described in terms of network circulation and immediate opportunities for publishing and creating. This project analyzes mobile applications and live feeds used during television broadcasts, where rhetoric is closely tied to the work of identifying with another point of view. Producers and designers of dual-screen applications prompt us to answer how we would act if we assumed the role of protagonist and saw the world through her or his eyes. These questions support the idea that identification is not just a relative of empathy or …

Salman Rushdie In The Postmodern Current: New Venues, New Values, Aya Akkawi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is to prove that Rushdie's recent novels are not postcolonial in the sense that they abandon the colonial/colonized binary, the embrace of hybridity, and the theme of undermining the coercion and domination of the colonial country assumed in postcolonial discourse. Instead, his recent fiction is labeled postmodern because it is filled with exuberant postmodern techniques such as historiographic metafiction, the hegemony of mode of productions, the postmodern fragmented self, and suspicions of grand narrative. Furthermore, I will argue that there is an association between Rushdie's postmodern narrative technique (his mixing of history and fantasy) and …

The Influence Of Literacy On The Lives Of Twentieth Century Southern Female Minority Figures, Laura Leighann Dicks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The American South has long been a region associated with myth and fantasy; in popular culture especially, the region is consistently tied to skewed notions of the antebellum South that include images of large plantation homes, women in hoop skirts, and magnolia trees that manifest in television and film representations such as Gone With the Wind (1939). Juxtaposed with these idealized, mythic images is the hillbilly trope, reinforced by radio shows such as Lum and Abner, and films such as Scatterbrain (1940). Out of this idea comes the southern illiteracy stereotype, which suggests that southerners are collectively unconcerned with education …

Reading Nostalgia, Anger, And The Home In Joyce Carol Oates’S Foxfire, Heather A. Hillsburg

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This article draws from Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia to explore the intersections between violence, memory, and the home in Joyce Carol Oates’s novel Foxfire. Through reflective nostalgia, Maddy is able to link the abuse she and her friends endure to various iterations of the home. Reflective nostalgia also allows Maddy to draw connections between anger and the domestic realm, and to write the members of FOXFIRE back into dominant narratives that largely exclude their lived experiences. Ultimately, this paper argues that because nostalgia often centers on the home, it is ideally suited to foreground the untenable nature …

Material And Textual Spaces In The Poetry Of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, And Robinson, Jessica Lauren Cook

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women Poets and Place in Eighteenth-Century Poetry considers how four women poets of the long eighteenth century--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Leapor, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Mary Robinson--construct various places in their poetry, whether the London social milieu or provincial England. I argue that the act of place making, or investing a location with meaning, through poetry is also a way of writing a place for themselves in the literary public sphere and in literary history. Despite the fact that more women wrote poetry than in any other genre in the period, women poets remain a relatively understudied area in …

Six Instructional Best Practices For Online Engagement And Retention, Kathleen Poll, Jeanne Widen, Sherri Weller

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite the growing popularity of online classes, lower retention rates have raised concerns about the quality of online higher education. This article outlines six instructional practices to enhance online engagement and retention. Specific strategies to build community and student centered environments are discussed.

Teaching Attentive Reading And Motivated Writing Through Digital Editing, Amanda A. Gailey

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Though English departments, including my own at the University of Nebraska, have been teaching digital humanities (DH) courses for over a decade, hyperbolic claims about the perils and promises of using computers in the study of literature continue to appear in the press. A piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books likens the algorithms used by some digital humanities methods to fascism (Marche). Another, in The Huffington Post, compares the rise of digital humanities to “our uncritical acceptance of drone attacks” (Mohamed). On the other hand, digital humanists such as Franco Moretti, who famously promote “distant reading” as opposed …

"For 'Tis Your Thoughts That Now Must Deck Our Kings": Affect In Shakespearean Performance, Elizabeth Dieterich

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Because Shakespeare’s plays have been performed consistently for four hundred years, Shakespearean performance is in an ideal position to demonstrate how performance transmits the meanings of texts. This thesis argues that performances of Shakespeare’s plays create meaning through the transmission of affect. Renaissance conventions of audience-actor engagement were based on character tropes and staging practices of medieval theater, to which audiences responded viscerally. To illustrate these responses, I draw upon 3 Henry VI and Richard III. I then examine Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It for their treatment of representation, empathy, and the power of …

Children’S Literacy Report “Restoring The Love Of Reading”, Robert T. Barrett, Mark Graham, Josh Talbot, Melissa Manwill, Nathan Cunliffe, Hana Lee, Chrisanne Hernandez, Jacob Meldrum, Alycia Garrett, Ashley Grace, Renee Bates, Melissa Crowton, Amanda Ho, Liz Pulido

Journal of Undergraduate Research

At the beginning of this ambitious project, 12 students set out to adapt 12 different classic literature stories into short graphic novels. The purpose was to compile them into one handy anthology serving as a transitional media between the picture book and short novel. We envisioned it as a stepping stone for the “reluctant reader” between the ages of 9 and 14 (the ages where students are most likely to lose interest or give up on improving their reading abilities). Although this project fell short of its initial goal of compiling a book, the students involved certainly gained invaluable experience …

Examining Teachers’ Knowledge And Attitudes Towards Immigration And Undocumented Immigrants, Esmeralda Cruz

Open Access Theses

It is projected that by the year 2040, one in three children entering the classroom in the United States will be a second-generation immigrant. Among children of Latino immigrants, four in ten second-generation immigrant children have at least one undocumented immigrant parent and therefore live in mixed-status families. These demographic changes have significant implications for the schools and teachers who must be prepared to educate and meet the needs of these children; however, many teachers are not equipped to address the needs of these students. The present study examined whether participation in an immigration workshop would improve teachers' knowledge and …

When Chat And Email Are Not Enough: Developing Real-Time, Interactive Online Writing Center Tutorials, Lisa Jones

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

As new technologies have become available to facilitate online writing tutorials, university Writing Centers have begun to use these technologies to better serve online students. WPAs now face new difficulties serving remote student and faculty populations, whose native language may not be English, through interactive online tutorials across international borders. Determining the best practices and technologies for real-time, interactive tutorials and implementing these practices are issues that have not been given much attention in recent scholarship, but are vital to best serve growing international campuses. There are a few key concerns with ESOL tutoring that must be addressed when considering …

Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In’T: Using Graphic Shakespeare Texts To Create Meaningful Engagement In The High School Classroom, Eric Kallenborn

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers the attempt to successfully motivate and connect with high school students by giving them the option of reading a graphic form of Hamlet instead of the original text. This research was conducted to not only dispel the myth that comics and graphic novels are juvenile and adolescent but to also explain the benefits of such texts to educators and administrators.

For this research, 10^th graders were assigned Hamlet and were allowed to select the graphic text over the traditional text, allowing for student buy-in from the selection. Students also took part in a project that …

Narrative Space And Serialized Forms: Story-Spaces For The Mass Market In Victorian Print And Contemporary Television, Laura Daniel Buchholz

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite Bakhtin's notion of the chronotope and recent advancements in spatial theory by David Herman, Marie-Laure Ryan and Susan Friedman, narrative space is arguably still one of the most under-researched elements in narrative theory, taking a back seat to its corollary of narrative time and plot. This oversight can be largely attributed to the structuralist separation of text types exemplified by Genette's assertions that description and narrative were distinctly different forms. Recent approaches such as David Herman's rejection of such a separation in Story Logic, however, argue that "spatial reference plays a crucial, not optional or derivative role in …

Humanesis By David Cecchetto, Max Ritts

The Goose

Review of Humanesis by David Cecchetto.

"Making Ourselves Over In The Image Of The Imagery": Overcoming Alienation Through Poetic Expressions Of Experience, Jacqueline Aquino Teusch

Theses and Dissertations

My focus for this essay is on understanding the rhetorical process that occurs when people come together despite their differences—that is what rhetoric is all about. Kenneth Burke argues that this process, for alienated people especially, happens poetically, more than semantically because there are too many differences to overcome semantically between alienated people and the dominant community. This essay is about how the rhetorical process of identification as described by Burke helps us to explain how we cross barriers that divide people who are different to create moments of mutual understanding—identification. In this essay, I look at the experience of …

The Challenge Of Happily Ever After: How Once Upon A Time Fanfic Fairy Tales Model Strategies For Ordinary Life Challenges, Christa M. Baxter

Theses and Dissertations

Although many feminist fairy-tale scholars have theorized how the tales shape the lives of their readers, few have explicitly examined what readers themselves have to say about how fairy tales impacted their choices and expectation. This article turns to fanfiction written by fans of ABC's Once Upon a Time television series to discover how these fans challenge or reify fairy-tale expectations, particularly in terms of gender. After outlining the brief history of fairy-tale reception studies concerned with gender, the article then turns to a close reading of three OUAT fanfiction retellings of Beauty and the Beast that show the couple …