Digital Commons Network^™

The Forever Baby, Carlos Javier Medina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Capitalist's Social Gospel: Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus And The Promise Of Upward Mobility, 1875-1921, Joshua Pretzer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus was a preacher who began his ministry in 1875 as a little-known itinerant Methodist in rural Ohio. Within two decades, he became one of America’s most influential religious figures with a popular style and message of hope for the future. This paper examines the mission of this pulpiteer, who believed Jesus and industrial capitalism could solve the problems of labor conflict, poverty, and sin as the kingdom of God was gradually realized on earth. Where many social gospelers challenged the interests of capital to varying degrees, Gunsaulus was both the businessman’s firm defender and an advocate for …

2/4 Being, Riley R. Woods

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Walking With The Wild: Finding An Ethic Of Compassion In Conservation, Jane Hallie Mcguire

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This collection of five creative nonfiction essays and one poem examines the author's personal encounters with wild life and wild places, primarily through experiences working as a field biologist. Reflections on nature’s fragility, interconnectivity, the autonomy of all living things, and the ethics of conservation are central to each piece. Walking with the Wild invites readers to consider the benefits of integrating compassion and empathy into scientific study, and more generally, into our interactions with the natural world.

The Missionary Enterprise, Racial Conflicts, And The Transformation Of American Evangelicalism, 1945-1980, Timothy Paul Ballard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation examines the history of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to understand the creation of a color-conscious theological discourse about racial identity and racial pluralism that emerged among evangelicals in the mid-twentieth century. Although a colorblind articulation of racial identity had wide currency among white and black evangelicals as a way to counter segregationists’ claims of racial superiority, it had little effect in challenging the exercise of white hegemony even among those who advocated for racial equality. The limits of colorblindness came to light as black evangelicals forged new approaches to evangelization among African Americans and white evangelicals challenged the validity …

Triple Double Diamond: Nevada Stories, Kylie Michelle Westerlind

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In a collection of fictional short stories, Triple Double Diamond explores the relationships and grit of people who dwell in the Nevadan landscape. The stories roam between neon cities like Reno and Las Vegas to small high-desert towns like Wells and Gerlach, focusing on the people who live within these places. The people in this collection are restaurant servers, fur trappers, part- time gold miners, gamblers, park rangers, and veterans, and the stories look at the inner lives of these characters.

Can Nonhumans Be Victims Of Genocide?, Kirstin Waldkoenig

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Genocide” appears commonly in critical animal studies literature and sparsely in philosophy to describe human-caused violence against nonhuman beings. However, such uses of the term have rarely been informed by relevant work in genocide studies, nor otherwise formally substantiated. This thesis explores what is at stake when employing the term and proposes a model for appropriate application to nonhuman contexts. Claudia Card’s notion of genocide as social death allows for the consideration of nonhuman animals as victims of genocide. Social vitality is important to the lives of some nonhuman animals and its forcible diminishment results in social death for those …

Ugly, Odd, And Gorgeous, Joseph Chamberlain Kirk Iii

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ugly, Odd, and Gorgeous is a collection of excerpts from a longer, in-progress work of nonfiction that explores the valences of home, family, and the places we find them.

Quantifying Coat Color Phenology Of Sympatric Snowshoe Hares And Weasels, Brandon Murray Davis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Sexual Dimorphism In Skeletal Trauma Associated With Intimate Partner Violence (Ipv), Keith Biddle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Once known as “Domestic Violence”, Intimate Partner Violence, or IPV, is a problem as old as humanity. Even in our modern era, it continues to plague even the most “enlightened” or “advanced” cultures and societies. Much has been written about the issue from Sociological and psychological aspects and while there is some consensus in the medical field regarding the patterns of injury associated with IPV, that consensus has yet to reach the field of forensic anthropology. It is to this end that this study has been conceived.

The proposed project has three parts. The first part is a validation study …

The Republic Of Catatonia: A Novel, David Byron Queen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My thesis, a novel titled The Republic of Catatonia, is a story of a broken family, and the one man trying to keep their legacy alive. An adrift academic named Miles Cata moves back to Northeastern Montana from New York City, when he learns about the death of his father. When he arrives, it turns out his father isn’t dead, and Miles soon learns of his father’s plan for building an autonomous micro-nation on the property of their Montana ranch. The novel is set in the '90s against the backdrop of the Bakken oil boom, and much of the …

Measuring Recidivism Risk Outcomes: A Pilot Project In Collaboration With The Flathead Reservation Reentry Program, Desiree Lacy Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Native Americans have suffered from vast losses of land, traditional ways and practices, language, and ability to pass on traditional knowledge; and those losses have led to current day health and wellness disparities, as well as small but tangibly different tribal populations. While Native Americans make up a disproportionate number of those involved in the criminal justice system, creating an overrepresentation of Native Americans incarcerated in jails and prisons relative to their overall population size, they still tend to be underrepresented in the creation of validated recidivism measures. Risk assessment tools, such as the Level of Service Index-Revised (LSI-R), …

The Effects Of Argentine Tango On Balance And Quality Of Life In Subjects With Traumatic Brain Injury, Pamela Marie Peterson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study investigated the effect of a six-week tango-based intervention on the balance and quality of life on subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Twenty-two men and women were assigned into three groups TBI group (TBI: n=2; 44.5±2.1 years), Treatment control (TC: n=8; 30.9±12.3 years), Control (CG: n=12; 32.8±9.6 years). The TC group showed an improvement in stress levels compared to the CG p

Whitewater Ecotourism Development In Bhutan: Opportunities And Challenges For Local Communities, Kira E. Tenney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitewater raft and kayak ecotourism can provide environmental, social-cultural, and economic benefits and opportunities to local communities, but can also result in respective challenges. Globally, adventure ecotourism is seen as a potent win-win strategy for conservation and local community development; however, there is a significant proportion of adventure and whitewater tourism that do not meet ecotourism tenets, and there is a call for incorporating greater investment in local community involvement. Whitewater ecotourism is particularly significant because of the unique opportunities and challenges associated with rivers, the resource upon which the industry directly depends. Clean, free-flowing rivers provide a range of …

Eu-U.S. International Education Connections: U.S. Opportunities To Participate In Erasmus Programs And The Case For A Renewed Commitment To Transatlantic International Education Collaboration, Peter N. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract The European Union’s suite of Erasmus programs are an ambitious effort to facilitate educational mobility and research across the EU’s 28 member countries and with partners around the world. It is one of the primary means to achieve a sense of European identity among the citizens across the Union, and governmental and educational organizations in the U.S. are keen to learn more about how they can also engage with it. The Departments of State and Education, because of their respective work in international education, are particularly well-positioned to lead that effort. Erasmus is ambitious in its social objectives and …

A Qualitative Study Of Native American Older Adults And Elderly Depressive Symptoms And Protective Factors, Kristen K. Pyke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Research of depression in Native American older adults and elderly has been limited. The research that has been done has typically fallen into three domains: exploring the frequency of depression (Carleton et al., 2013), identifying or developing culturally competent measurement tools (Ackerson, Dick, Manson, & Beals, 2018), and determining the protective factors that reduce the effects of depressions. More specifically, Kaufman et al. (2013) found that spirituality was beneficial in reducing depression; however, this varied by tribe within their sample. Whitbeck et al. (2002) found that perceived social support among elderly Native Americans was a protective factor for the individuals …

The Alphaback: A Novel Processing Speed Test, Meredith Kathleen Reynolds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Processing speed is a sensitive indicator of normal aging, as well as neurological impairment. Despite the importance of assessing this cognitive domain in neuropsychological assessments, few tests of processing speed are available. The purpose of the current study was to establish the operating characteristics, as well as the convergent and divergent validity of a novel processing speed test, the Alphaback, on a healthy college student population (N = 91). The Alphaback is a 2 min computerized task in which examinees must orally state the alphabetical letter that precedes the letter presented on a screen as fast as possible. Cognitive tests …

Enhancing The Emotional Impact Of Prospections Via Personal Values, Bethany Grace Gorter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prospection involves imagining future events using mental representations. When people engage in positive, vivid, prospections they report “boosts” of mood, and higher rates of well-being. This study sought to cultivate positive affect in response to prospections by incorporating values into future imagery. Two groups imagined everyday future events in detail. One group additionally learned about values and linked these values to the everyday future events. We hypothesized that the values-based prospection would result in greater increases in mood, and that this increase would be mediated by additional access to details and phenomenological features. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no positive …

Disentangling The Relations Between Acute Stress, Chronic Stress, And Prospective Memory, Brandon Taylor Stewart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Given the importance and prevalence of Prospective Memory (PM) in daily life and the common experience of stress, it is critical to understand the relations between them. Despite a growing literature base, the answers to some of the simplest questions about these relations remain unanswered. The present study was designed to investigate the relations between both acute and chronic stress and time- and event-based PM. Several methodological features make this study unique and may contribute to a broadening of our understanding of PM in daily life. The results of the present study revealed that chronic stress was negatively correlated with …

Learning From Stone: Using Lithic Artifacts To Explore The Transmission Of Culture At Bridge River, British Columbia, Anne V. Smyrl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Inherent in all tool-making traditions is the necessity of teaching the next generation of toolmakers. The learning process, although crucial to our understanding of past societies, is difficult to study archaeologically, due to its intangibility. However, some technologies leave visible traces of their production. Key among these are chipped stone tools, known as lithics, which leave distinct archaeological traces of each part of the creation processes. Modern experimenters have recreated these processes, and as a result, have revealed archaeologically-visible differences between novice and expert knappers. These can be identified in archaeological lithic assemblages, and serve as a starting point for …

Heritage Alchemy: A Model For Sustaining The Built Heritage Of Montana In The Changing Landscapes Of The 21st Century Via Perspectives From The Netherlands On Policy, Education, And Stewardship, Jeffrey Macdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This Ph.D. dissertation presents sets of interrelated research problems, and challenges to sustaining the built heritage of Montana, in the context of the changing modern landscapes in the western United States. The research connects issues of heritage policy, education, and stewardship as common, and connected themes in historic preservation, historical archaeology, anthropology, and cultural landscape practices. The dissertation is comprised of three articles that are under review for publication, presenting perspectives and data assembled via empirical, and place-based field research, interviews, and interaction with heritage professionals, and site investigation conducted throughout the Netherlands between August 2013 and February 2017. These …

Exploitation Or Empowerment? Women’S Experiences In The Cam Modeling Industry, Ekaterina Bays

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex work and the experiences of women within it have been studied in-depth over the past four decades. However, the majority of studies on sex work focus on women who work in prostitution, overlooking rapidly growing cam modeling industry and its female workers. Over the past ten years cam modeling has become an increasingly popular adult entertainment industry, gradually displacing traditional pornography from the online sex market (Senft 2008). In this study, I used theoretical frameworks of radical and liberal feminists as well as polymorphous paradigm to investigate if the cam modeling industry is either an empowering or an exploitative …

Recovering Our Roots: The Importance Of Salish Ethnobotanical Knowledge And Traditional Food Systems To Community Wellbeing On The Flathead Indian Reservation In Montana., Mitchell Rose Bear Don't Walk

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis provides a culturally-comprehensive review of the plants utilized for food in the Bitterroot Salish tribe of northwestern Montana. As part of the larger Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CS&KT) of the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Bitterroot Salish historically utilized hundreds of plants for food, medicine and hygiene. This thesis aims to highlight food plants and their important cultural components. The information herein is a combination of history, ethnography, linguistics, ethnobotany, and first-hand experience with the current Salish community to provide a holistic framework of understanding traditional food plants today. A comprehensive plant list is provided with Latin, Salish …

Walking While Asking:Lessons From Agroecology Education In Chiapas, Mexico, Katherine E. Keller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Keller, Kate, M.S., December 2019 Environmental Studies

Walking While Asking: Lessons from Agroecology Education in Chiapas, Mexico

Committee Chairperson: Dr. Neva Hassanein

This professional paper presents an assessment of the most recent project of Schools for Chiapas (SfC), a U.S.-based solidarity organization working in collaboration with the Zapatista autonomous communities in Chiapas, Mexico. It examines the challenges and potentials of SfC’s efforts to implement food forests at 16 autonomous secondary schools. I contextualize this work within a larger conversation amongst food sovereignty activists and scholars around efforts to scale-out the use of agroecology through education. As the organization looks to …

An Investigation Of Historic Euro-American Inscriptions At Madison Buffalo Jump, Jay Thomas Vest

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores the cultural significance and interpretive potential of historic inscriptions left behind by primarily Euro-Americans at Madison Buffalo Jump; a Native American bison jump situated in the Madison Valley of southwestern Montana. The inscriptions are analyzed through the lens of Cultural Landscape Theory and their typology, distribution, and content are examined in detail. By looking at these inscriptions in this manner, opportunities for ongoing research are highlighted, the future potential of these types of inscriptions to contribute to a new interpretive is examined, and the challenges of appropriate conservation strategies is considered. This thesis presents the argument that …

Grant-Proposal Writing As A Craft And Potential Ways To Improve Grant-Proposal Writing Knowledge And Application Readiness For Students Seeking Funding Assistance Attending Postsecondary Education, Eileen L. Flannigan-Lewis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The goal of this dissertation is to examine grant-proposal writing as a craft and potential ways to improve grant-proposal writing knowledge and application readiness for students seeking funding assistance attending postsecondary education. In doing so, this research answers the question: What might experts and professionals in the field recommend to students involved in grant-proposal writing to assist them to better understand the process, develop the necessary skills, utilize the available resources, and explore the possible avenues to writing grant-proposals to enable students to be more successful in their funding pursuits? The objectives that address the specific research actions that have …

Why Does My Town Smell Like Nail Polish?: Using The Toxics Release Inventory To Investigate Industrial Chemical Pollutants In Elkhart County, Indiana, Magdalena Lehman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis investigates 2017 industrial chemical air pollution in Elkhart County, Indiana starting with data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators model (RSEI). TRI requires facilities across the United States to report release amounts for certain chemicals known to cause adverse human health impacts. A related database, the RSEI model adds context to release amounts by modeling for toxicity and exposure. The resulting RSEI score approximates relative risk among releases. In combination, these tools are intended to allow communities to identify risks and provide oversight of point-source industrial chemical pollution in their neighborhoods. …

Anatomy Of Breath, Melissa C. Phelan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Jubah And Nashoba: An Artful History, Theodore Cecil Decelles

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This creative dissertation unites art and history by writing a play using extensive historical research. The main body of work focuses on events surrounding the Natchez Revolt of 1729. The Natchez nation and colonial Louisianans attempted to accommodate each other by reaching a middle ground. Nonetheless, incivility culminated in a massacre at Fort Rosalie. The Natchez experienced profound sociopolitical changes that resulted in a downgrade of female power. North American history asserts many female chiefs interacted with colonial male leaders. Even so, female chiefs have remained at the margins of history. This creative work focuses on the hidden history behind …

Learning From The Landscape: Industrial Processes And Placer Mining Landscapes In The Elk Creek Mining District, Western Montana, Brent Stephen Rowley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 1865 gold was discovered in the Garnet Mountains of Western Montana. This was one of the last of a series of gold rushes in the American West that began with the California Gold Rush in 1849. During this time period miners carried knowledge of geology of placer deposits and placer mining techniques out of California and into the interior west where they encountered quite different geologic conditions. This study examines how miners perceived and learned from these new environments during the construction of placer landscapes in the Garnet Mountains, especially in the Elk Creek Mining District, through a process …