Digital Commons Network^™

Initial Understanding Of Public Stigma Against Childhood Cancer Survivors, Nele Loecher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As childhood cancer survival rates climb to new records, it is increasingly important to focus on improving the psychological wellbeing of survivors living years beyond their diagnosis. One potential contributor to psychological distress for childhood cancer survivors (CCSs) is stigma. The fear of stigma can lead to CCSs concealing their identity as a CCS, which in turn can strain workplace and intimate relationships, creating a strain on CCSs’ social and work life. Additionally, the internalization of negative stereotypes or rejection of falsely positive stereotypes around cancer can exacerbate psychological distress. To establish what stereotypes and stigma CCS might be contending …

A Church Of The People: Coptic Church Building And Direction In Central New Jersey, Bishoy Garis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building off Michael Akladios’ work on early Coptic migration and the ad hoc institutionalization of the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America, this dissertation proposes that the construction and direction of Coptic churches in Middlesex County, New Jersey was laity driven, ad hoc, reactive, and dependent on local variables. Additionally, it reveals that the creation of St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey spurred migration to the Middlesex County area and transformed their small community into a domestic and international Coptic migration center. Unlike previous scholarship that places greater attention on urban Coptic communities and transnational networks, …

“We Need To Have A Place To Vent And Get Our Frustrations Out”: Addressing The Needs Of Mothering Students In Higher Education Using A Positive Deviance Framework, Melissa León

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of mothering students at four different colleges using a positive deviance (PD) framework. PD is an approach that seeks to identify positive behavioral patterns that help members of a community overcome structural barriers (Gross, et al. 2017). The Positive Deviance Framework was applied to investigate how some mothering students are successful in college and how their experiences could potentially help new or struggling mothering students. Eleven mothering students were interviewed to determine what interventions could assist mothering students who lack representation in the traditional college environment, a situation that often leads to feelings of isolation. …

The Weekly Challenger, June 8, 2023, The Weekly Challenger, Et Al

Weekly Challenger Newspaper Collection

The June 8, 2023, issue of The Weekly Challenger.

Exploring The Risk Narratives Of Transgender People Engaged In Do-It-Yourself Hormone Replacement Therapy, Brianna Rae Cusanno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzed the risk narratives of transgender people engaged in do-it- yourself hormone replacement therapy. Transgender (trans) people, those whose gender identities and/or expressions defy normative constructions of gender, experience a variety of health inequities as a consequence of systemic oppression within U.S. society. Many of the health inequities observed in trans people can be traced to structural determinants, such as discrimination at home, work, and school that results in housing, food, and social instability. Yet, medical and public health researchers have often attributed trans health inequities to “high risk” behaviors in which trans people engage.

One such behavior …

Musicking Higher Education: An Analysis Of The Effects Of Music Pedagogy On College Classroom Atmospheres, April Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social scientific literature supports the use of music as a pedagogical tool in children for education, camaraderie, and classroom atmosphere, but the concentration of research ends at grade 12. While music is promoted as entertainment, therapy, a focus aid, a relaxation tool, and a way to create community for adults in previous research, in sociological literature we seem to both forget and ignore the benefits that it has as a learning tool. Using an interdisciplinary lens with supporting works from the philosophy of education and sociology, this paper provides support for the benefits of using music to build classroom culture. …

Shared Philosophies, Conflict, And Critical Reflection: Developing Productive Teacher Collaboration, Erin Nerlino

Journal of Practitioner Research

As top-down mandates regarding what collaboration should look like continue to evolve from the policy level, it is critical to engage the knowledge of teachers – the ones experiencing the collaboration – to inform teacher learning as well as the conditions within schools that help productive collaboration partnerships to evolve. This article seeks to examine the foundational aspects that underpin a mutually productive collaborative relationship between myself – a full time high school English teacher – and another full-time English teacher at the public, regional school in the Northeast where we taught. Utilizing a participant research design, I drew upon …

Negationist Denialism In The "Comfort Women" Issue In Japan, Tetsushi Ogata

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article deals with the pervasive and entrenched nature of Japanese denialism on wartime memories, mainly focusing on the “comfort women” issue. It argues that a lens of “negationism” is more beneficial to address entrenched denialism. The net effect of denialism has been to perpetuate binary identity constructs, the deniers and the denied, one side re-engineering social relations to dominate and continue dominating the other. Conventional approaches to counter such denialism have relied heavily on truth-seeking and justice-dispensing mechanisms, but they are inept at addressing negationist denialism. The article explores a post-atrocity model of narrative and identity to go beyond …

“You Don’T Seek Help, You Are Just Thankful For The Things The Country Provides For You.” The Emotional Burden Of Growing Up Undocumented In The United States, Melanie Anne Escue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For over a decade, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has provided more than 800,000 undocumented young adults with the ability to lawfully reside in the United States. Despite the program’s benefits, DACA falls short of offering long-term security and full societal integration. Over the past few years, political and legal attacks on the DACA program (e.g., actions of the former Trump administration, 2017 DACA recission, ongoing court proceedings) have made visible the precarious nature of the program and threatened the futures of young adults protected under the program. While prior studies have found that the growing anti-immigrant …

Article, Draining Paradise: A Tour Of Salt Creek In St. Petersburg, Florida, April 12, 2023, Thomas Hallock

Creekshed: City Wilds

An article by Thomas Hallock about Salt Creek in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Pillage As The Political Economy Of The Kurdish Anfal Genocide, Kaziwa Salih

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Scholars are critical of how economists overlook “the questions of genocide,” and of how legislatures have not paid adequate attention to the subject of looting, except in the case of the Armenian genocide. This article, informed by interdisciplinary perspectives, uses government documents, data, and semi-structured interviews to discuss the overlooked triangle of looting, economics, and the Anfal genocide of the Kurds in Iraq. The study refuses to limit itself only to the eight stages of the Anfal genocide that started in 1988, and instead offers data on its preliminary phases which occurred earlier in the 1980s. It then discusses the …

China's Strategic Devaluing Of American Social Capital, Garrett Martin

Journal of Strategic Security

The information technology era has opened a myriad of new battlespaces through which nations engage each other. China has advanced their “three warfares” doctrine – political warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare – behind a robust and aggressive economic agenda. Direct financial investment and tightly controlled access to both their large consumer market and cheap labor force has given them considerable leverage in key sectors of American industry, particularly those in the communication sphere. The narrative crafting capabilities increasingly acquired by China are beginning to appear as genuine cultural hegemony. This indicates an ability to shape the American collective …

The Information Age: Transnational Organized Crime, Networks, And Illicit Markets, John P. Sullivan

Journal of Strategic Security

In his landmark trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, sociologist Manuel Castells argued that networks, information technology, and global economic flows were altering the nature of politics, power, and states. This article examines the network dynamics Castells wrote about in relation to transnational crime and illicit economic markets. The article further explores Castells’s influence on the study of transnational organized crime, illicit networks, and the global illicit economy.

Considerations For Curricular Reform In Undergraduate Chemistry: Cooperative Adoption Factors, Modeling Social Influence, And Focusing On Specific Populations, Jacob D. Mcalpin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will go through the details of three projects highlighting considerations for curricular reforms in undergraduate chemistry. Improving the teaching of chemistry is facilitated by considering the problem from multiple directions, namely, faculty and students. In addition to the multiple perspectives, this dissertation also seeks to bring new methodologies into the spotlight to improve the toolbox for other chemistry or discipline-based education researchers. Additionally, this dissertation has shown in several locations how focusing in on subgroups within populations can reveal findings that would not have been apparent from a global average of the population. The three project describes in …

Prepare For, Respond To, Recover, And Learn From Disasters: Using Data-Driven Methods To Model And Understand Disaster Resilience, Jinwen Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community resilience reflects the ability of human communities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and learn from disastrous events. Community resilience carries different meanings in different phases of disaster management (i.e., preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). With the emergence of new geospatial data sources, human activities now can be captured through social media, mobile signals, and nighttime illuminations, which makes it possible to describe the conditions among various communities before, during, and after disasters. Therefore, this dissertation explored the use of different types of geospatial data sources (social media, nighttime light remote sensing, land-use data, and census survey data) during …

Saudi Parents As Advocates For Their Young Children With Disabilities: Reflections On The Journey, Sadeem A. Alolayan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although special education advocates have played an essential role in obtaining rights for individuals with disabilities, there is still much unknown about their motivations, challenges, roles, and the meaning they made from their experiences. Research into Saudi parent advocates of children with disabilities and their complex daily life issues have seldom been investigated, with rare studies that focus solely on Saudi early intervention services needs and supports. This qualitative study aimed to explore the experiences of Saudi parents of children with developmental disabilities who are special education advocates in their communities. One of the goals of this study was to …

Transformative Psychedelic Experiences At Music Events: Using Subjective Experience To Explore Chemosocial Assemblages Of Culture, Gabrielle R. Lehigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical interest in psychedelic treatments in the United States started in the 1950s, but anti-drug policy and anti-social sentiments quickly thwarted future research. The last decade has renewed clinical interest in using psychedelics to treat a diversity of mental health ailments. While these studies provide essential protocols, treatments, and therapy models for patients, they are limited in understanding the role of the contextual elements that influence psychedelic experiences and outcomes. This project examines how people use psychedelic substances outside medical settings by studying transformative psychedelic experiences at music events. This inquiry into psychedelic use utilizes an integrated framework of chemoethnography …

Karl Marx On Human Flourishing And Proletarian Ethics, Sam Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will show that Marx’s philosophy contains a notion of human “second nature” centered on the activity of labor with a corresponding class-centered theory of flourishing and emancipation. This notion shares important similarities with that of Aristotle but also differs in significant ways. Second nature for Marx is created and habituated through education and social labor. Moreover, human nature is molded into different forms as history progresses and modes and means of production change. In a class society everyone becomes is alienated from their nature in a way that inhibits their flourishing. This contrasts with an emancipated society, where …

Why Science Can't Prevent Climate Change: Philosophical Approaches To Creating Societal Shifts, Charlotte Britt

USF St. Petersburg campus Honors Program Theses (Undergraduate)

We live in a society that is consumed with consuming. An inability to escape the urge to obtain more possessions is ever-increasing. Every aspect of our lives is surrounded by product placement with the goal of creating the false narrative that you are lacking something that will if obtained, add to the value of your life and bring you a step closer to becoming the person you long to be. This never-ending necessity to spend is matched with an excruciating pull to accumulate wealth in order to feed these desires. This commodification of our every move and existence is having …

Environmental Justice From The Ground(Water) Up: Coping With Contamination In Tallevast, Florida, Grey W. Caballero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How do communities living with chronic environmental contamination cope with the social, political, and economic impacts of the contamination? This research employs a community-engaged oral history approach with participant observation and archival research to address this question. We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state …

Who Goes And Who Stays: Predicting Hurricane Evacuation For Local Neighborhoods, Shakhawat Hosen Tanim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To reduce the devastating impacts of hurricanes on people’s lives, communities, and societal infrastructures, disaster management would benefit considerably from a detailed understanding of evacuation, including the socio-demographics of the populations that evacuate, or stay, down to disaggregated geographic levels such as neighborhoods. A detailed household evacuation prediction model for local neighborhoods requires both a robust household evacuation decision model and individual household data for small geographic units. To address the first of these, this dissertation performed a statistical meta-analysis of numerous survey-based hurricane evacuation studies to establish mean effect sizes for predictors impacting the household decision. To address the …

L2 Writer Identity Construction In Academic Written Discourse: A Multi-Case Study, Beibei Ren

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Writer identity has gradually become a focus in writing scholarship in recent years. From a social constructivist lens, writer identity is not optional; it resides in all texts. And it is a construct that does not exist in a vacuum, but is shaped by the sociocultural and academic context, and simultaneously individual writers agentively selected from the socially available repertoire to construct their identities in text. Departing from social constructivism, this study adopted Ivanic’s (1998) conceptualization of writer identity, which consists of autobiographical self, discoursal self, self as author and possibilities for selfhood, and highlighted the role of agency in …

Violence, Rents, And Elites: Institutional Determinants Of Political Order In Ethiopia, Rwanda, And South Sudan, Kaleb Demerew

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to investigate why some African states make progress in political development while others remain stagnant or regress. The study adopts a political economy approach within the new institutionalism tradition, focusing on the agency of domestic elites and the impact of violence constraints on institutional outcomes. Specifically, the study employs the violence trap framework, which identifies developing countries as fragile states, basic natural states, and mature natural states. The research applies this framework to case studies of Ethiopia, Rwanda, and South Sudan using an analytic narratives methodology that combines elite interviews with primary and secondary source analysis. The …

Framing, Emotion, And Contradiction In The Tampa Bay Times’ Climate Change Coverage, Madison Veeneman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How the media covers climate change is a crucial issue because it can impact public opinion and influence policy, and local newspapers are an understudied yet essential source of media. Previous media research has utilized framing approaches, considered ideology and hegemony, and begun to seriously examine emotion. The purpose of this research project is to synthesize these approaches to examine how the Tampa Bay Times covers climate change. Using research questions that focus on how the coverage is framed and how emotion is used, I collected two samples of articles from different newspaper sections and conducted textual analysis. I identify …

Deconstructing And Decolonizing Identities Of “Gender” And “Sex” When Viewed As Anti-Black: Black Narratives Outside Of The Binary, Didier Salgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How is “Reality” experienced in the Black body? Is “Reality” an objective article which is outside of the realm of personal experience? Assigned sex is often assumed an objective biological phenomenon that exists everywhere and in all communities. Gender is often thought about as a socially constructed form of identity which is expressed in various ways. In this thesis, I critically examine the terror of “reality” on the Black body, looking at the ways that Black people who’ve experienced discomfort with gender and sex categories experience the “world” around them. Diving deeply into their own experiences and the meanings they …

The 'Charm And Distinction' Of Proverbs: The Duality Of The Gem Analogy In Erasmus's Adagia, Blythe Broecker Creelan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the Adagia, Erasmus of Rotterdam frequently compares proverbs to precious gems and gemstone jewelry. My interdisciplinary study contributes to the broader discussion of Erasmus’s use of imagery by evaluating the specific qualities Erasmus associates with gemstones as analogous to the qualities he argues synonymously describe proverbs, specifically how both possess and imbue “charm and distinction.” The historical use of gemstones as essential for the display of social status and political power coupled with the contemporaneous belief in amuletic and astral magical properties of gemstones reveals the complex connections Erasmus forges between the qualities of gemstones and proverbs. Erasmus’s marked …

The Invisible Victims Of Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Boys And Their Barriers To Access To Services, Amanda L. Connella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While there has been a large body of research conducted on girl (under the age of 18) victims of commercial sexual exploitation, boy (under the age of 18) victims do not seem to receive the same attention. From the few studies that have been conducted, boys and young male victims of commercial sexual exploitation have been shown to have gender specific barriers that prevent them from getting help, yet not many papers explore this unique problem. Using survey data from key providers that work in programs that serve commercially sexually exploited boys, the present study fills this hole in the …

Exploring The Phenomenon Of Hope In Adult Illiterate Haitians, Donita Grissom, Joyce Nutta, Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant, Sherron K. Roberts

Journal of Global Education and Research

Snyder’s hope theory depicts hope, through the frame of positive psychology, as a cognitive construct with the perceived sense of goal-directed, pathways, and agency thinking (Snyder et al., 1991). Hope levels have been measured in various countries; however, no research to date focused on Haitians. This study, conducted in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, addressed this gap by investigating hope, pathway, and agency levels derived from 135 Haitian-Kreyol adult literacy course participants. This manuscript reports scores of illiterate Haitians’ hope levels utilizing Snyder’s Adult Hope Dispositional Scale; the scores are explained by Snyder’s hope theory taking Haitian cultural and social landscapes into account. …

Covid-19 In Bangladesh: A Systematic Review Of The Literature From March 2020 To March 2021, Md. Shahin Parvez, Md. Al-Mamun, Md. Anisur Rahaman, Sheuli Akter, Kaniz Fatema, Halimatus Sadia, Anika Intesar

Journal of Global Business Insights

COVID-19 has undoubtedly absorbed the global public's angst. It has quickly disturbed global life and will have long-term and short-term consequences on several sectors. This comprehensive review study's goal is to discover what research has been done in a year since the beginning of coronavirus in Bangladesh. Consequently, the current study examined the pervasiveness and affiliation of social and economic issues, health and psychological issues and individual perceptions, key challenges, strategies and policy systems, public health, online education, agriculture and food security, criminal activities related to outbreaks, Rohingya refugee issues, and the quality of domestic violence behaviors. The review used …

Stochastic Modeling Of The Eruption History Of Nyiragongo Volcano In The Virunga Volcanic Province, Western Branch Of The East African Rift System, Thystere M. Bantidi, Georges T. Mavonga

Statistics in Volcanology

The modeling of statistical distribution of the eruptive frequency provides basic information to quantitatively assess the volcanic hazard and constrain the physics of the eruptive process. Here, we discuss the statistics of the time series of lateral eruptions of the Nyiragongo volcano in the Virunga Volcanic Province, western branch of the East African Rift System. We examine eruption data with a volcanic explosivity index of at least 1 listed in the Global Volcanism Network Bulletins. After investigating the completeness, stationarity, and independence of the eruption time series, we employ five distribution models (Brownian passage time, gamma, log-logistic, lognormal, and Weibull) …