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The Composition Of Anonymity: Toward A Theory, History, And Pedagogy, Timothy Thomas Dansdill

Doctoral Dissertations

In keeping with its recognized function of non-identity through the suppression of proper name recognition, anonymity is not recognized as "essential" to nominalist consciousness or to intersubjective action through language. The founding philosophical discourses of identity, authority, and community reveal an "anonymous function"---a transgressive discourse of impersonation, authenticity, and immunity---which this dissertation traces in phenomenology, discourse theory, poetics, rhetoric, and composition.

The first two chapters draw from phenomenology (Schutz and Natanson), and discourse theory (Foucault), to propose a theory of anonymity as integral to any understanding of personal identity across the entire performative range of self/other orientations. Chapter three draws …

Taking A Pedagogical Turn: What Happens When The Student /Teacher Conference Moves To The Center Of The Basic Writing Course, Gregory John Bowe

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the redesign of a basic writing course at a large, urban, majority-minority public university in Miami, Florida. In the redesigned course, there are no regular class meetings at all. Instead, small groups of five students meet with a teacher in "writing circles," where they workshop papers. The content of the course is provided by a third-party software program in a dedicated computer lab. The redesign project is examined in light of the particular institutional history of Florida International University, with special emphasis on the roles of space, time, and face-to-face interaction in the teaching of writing to …

Semitic Discourse: English Identity And The Nineteenth -Century British Novel, Heidi Nan Kaufman

Doctoral Dissertations

The following study examines the manner in which nineteenth-century British novels use a Semitic discourse to imagine and construct Christian English people as racially pure. One result of the growing presence of assimilated Jewish people living in England in the nineteenth century was the fear that they might pass undetected and pollute the "purity" of English blood. In response to this phenomenon, the narratives in this study illuminate not only cultural anxiety about the historical lineage that links Judaism and Christianity, but the threat this link posed to the very idea of English Christian racial purity. My claim, that English …

Layering Literacies: Computers And Peer Response In The 21st Century, Christopher Warren Dean

Doctoral Dissertations

Research into peer response work has a long history in the field of composition, and the work of my dissertation is to extend that research into the newer subfield of composition, computers and writing. Specifically I focus on the way students use multiple linguistic competencies (oral, print and electronic competencies) to perform a variety of selves in peer response. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffinan, the extant literature of peer response, work done in ethnomethodology, and research done in three first year composition classrooms, I outline the contours and strategies that students use to engage in peer response while …

The Relation Of Acculturation, Criminal History, And Social Integration Of Mexican American And Non -Mexican Students To Assaults On Intimate Partners, Ignacio Luis Ramirez

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies that have compared intimate partner violence among Mexican Americans and Non-Mexican Whites have found conflicting results. The results can be grouped into three categories, those that found Mexican Americans have higher assault rates, those that found Mexican Americans have lower assault rates, and those that found no differences between both ethnic groups. This study analyzed a sample of 348 college students to examine the role that Mexican ethnicity and acculturation into Anglo American society by Mexican Americans plays in predicting intimate partner violence. Additionally, the role of criminal history and integration into society were analyzed to understand their unique …

Learning And Understanding In Abstract Algebra, Bradford Reed Findell

Doctoral Dissertations

Students' learning and understanding in an undergraduate abstract algebra class were described using Tall and Vinner's notion of a concept image, which is the entire cognitive structure associated with a concept, including examples, nonexamples, definitions, representations, and results. Prominent features and components of students' concept images were identified for concepts of elementary group theory, including group, subgroup, isomorphism, coset, and quotient group.

Analysis of interviews and written work from five students provided insight into their concept images, revealing ways they understood the concepts. Because many issues were related to students' uses of language and notation, the analysis was essentially semiotic, …

Children's Song-Makers As Messengers Of Hope: Participatory Research With Implications For Teacher Educators, Peter J. Baird

Doctoral Dissertations

Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Suni Paz and six other leading children's musicians in the U.S contributed their experience to this study about the crucial role of music and singing for social justice in children's lives and its shrinking presence in U.S. pre-school and elementary schools. The study built its theoretical framework on arts and music education, transformative education, and folk and socially conscious children's music. Participatory research, based on the revolutionary education theories of Paulo Freire, guided the dialogues with the participants. These activist singer-songwriters were asked how they define social justice, how they involve children in singing, and what …

Coming To Voice: Exploring The Experiences Of Teacher Education And Special Education Professors Of African Descent In Institutions Of Higher Education, Kimberly L. Mayfield

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to explore the perceptions of employment experiences and the pursuit of promotion and tenure by teacher education and special education professors of African descent. This study investigated the perceptions held by teacher education and special education professors of African descent in the areas of recruitment, retention and the tenure and promotion process. Lastly, the present study engaged in an inquiry with these professors regarding their perceptions of critical areas of research needed to improve educational equity and achievement for African American students. This population was encouraged to reflect on these areas in terms …

Bottom-Up Design Of Artificial Neural Network For Single-Lead Electrocardiogram Beat And Rhythm Classification, Srikanth Thiagarajan

Doctoral Dissertations

Performance improvement in computerized Electrocardiogram (ECG) classification is vital to improve reliability in this life-saving technology. The non-linearly overlapping nature of the ECG classification task prevents the statistical and the syntactic procedures from reaching the maximum performance. A new approach, a neural network-based classification scheme, has been implemented in clinical ECG problems with much success. The focus, however, has been on narrow clinical problem domains and the implementations lacked engineering precision. An optimal utilization of frequency information was missing. This dissertation attempts to improve the accuracy of neural network-based single-lead (lead-II) ECG beat and rhythm classification. A bottom-up approach defined …

Lifers: A Study Of At -Risk Adolescent Readers, Pamela Nottage Mueller

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I put a face and voice to the at-risk adolescent reader. No strangers to failure, these are students who by and large have struggled with reading their entire educational lives but who for whatever reason have been unable to escape the cycle of frustration in which they find themselves caught. These are students who have a great deal to say but who until now have had no forum in which to say it. These are students who deserve to be heard.

For my primary source of data, I utilized Seidman's phenomenological approach to interviewing, conducting a series …

The Lozanov Method, Ryan James

Doctoral Dissertations

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Domestic Visions And Shifting Identities: The Urban Novel And The Rise Of A Consumer Culture In America, 1852-1925, Nancy Helen Von Rosk

Doctoral Dissertations

Domestic Visions reexamines the tradition of the urban novel in America by reading the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edith Wharton, Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska within the historical and cultural contexts of an evolving urban consumer culture. Bringing together not only a wide range of canonical and non-canonical texts, but also an analysis of America's shifting domestic ideals over the last half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this study traces the impact of a new spectacular urban public culture on both the private realm and those who are …

Fuzzy Logic Applied To System Control To Enhance Commercial Appliance Performance, Glenn Moffett

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to determine the usefulness of fuzzy logic and fuzzy control when applied to a commercial appliance. Fuzzy logic is a structured, model-free estimator that approximates a function through linguistic input/output associations. Fuzzy rule-based systems apply these methods to solve many types of "real-world" problems, especially where a system is difficult to model, is controlled by a human operator or expert, or where ambiguity or vagueness is common.

This dissertation presents fuzzy sets, fuzzy systems, and fuzzy control, with an example conveying the use of fuzzy control of a consumer product and an overview of …

Music And The General Classroom: Literacy In A New Key, F Dan Seger

Doctoral Dissertations

After a personal description of the traditional role of music education and its relationship to the overall curriculum of an American elementary school, this dissertation asks: What do grade 4/5 students do when their classroom and music teachers integrate music more deliberately into classroom life? Set in a classroom in a small New England town, the dissertation describes how a collaboration between a classroom teacher and a music teacher brought the music curriculum into the daily lives of students in a school where scheduled music class occurred only once per week.

Viewing music as a valid means to represent thought …

Issues Of Engendered Entitlement: Who Owns The Classroom? Who Owns Knowledge?, Dorothy Radius Kasik

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which first year female college students have been prepared by educational systems in our culture to handle knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge during the first year of college experience. It is the contention of the author that women are not actively encouraged in our culture to take ownership of educational concepts in the same way as men. This happens for two reasons, first that because women's methods of interaction in the classroom might differ from men's those methods might not be perceived as acceptable or taken seriously; and second that a woman's discomfort …

Character Prominence And Perspective In Narrative Comprehension, Jennifer G. Halleran

Doctoral Dissertations

Current theories of narrative comprehension assume that readers attend to information about the protagonist, including his/her goals, location, and emotions. However, such a Limited view of narrative comprehension does not adequately address the complexity of text. Typically, the reader is exposed to an array of important secondary characters and their relations to the protagonist(s) in narratives. Also included in this story dynamic may be the beliefs or opinions of the secondary character(s) regarding the protagonist.

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of character prominence and perspective on reading comprehension for narratives. The prominence distinction between two characters, a …

The Role Of Shame In Writing: How Lived Experience Affects The Writing Process, Carol Kountz

Doctoral Dissertations

Writing fluently without disabling apprehension requires an ability to control ideas despite the occurrence of censoring thoughts or shameful sensations. Such ability is characteristically lacking in apprehensive or blocking writers, who, therefore, have difficulty in composing. To understand the psychological and social factors that impede the writing process, and to give writers and compositionists insight into the features of writing that result in "writer's block," I held conversational interviews with twenty-four people who designate themselves as apprehensive writers about their literacy experiences and writing behavior. Analysis of these interviews shows that these people, in anticipation of a real or inward, …

Fixation And Incubation Effects In Problem-Solving, Marie Theresa Hansberry

Doctoral Dissertations

In four experiments, the effects of fixation and suppression processes in problem solving ability were investigated. Previous research has shown that efficient suppression mechanisms are integral to verbal ability (e.g., Gernsbacher & Faust, 1991; Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990; Hartman & Hasher, 1991). The present set of experiments demonstrated that such a mechanism is also a component of problem solving ability. The efficiency with which participants were able to suppress inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words was used as a measure of suppression skill. Experiment I established that participants who were able to make use of previously-presented information to solve difficult …

The Teaching Portfolio As A Vehicle For Professional Growth, John James Freeman

Doctoral Dissertations

This study considered the utility of the teaching portfolio as a structure which might enhance the professional growth of public school teachers. The study was guided by the question: Does the development of individual teaching portfolios support reflection, self-assessment, and professional development on the part of teachers who develop portfolios? Other issues considered were reasons for developing portfolios, the nature of artifacts included in portfolios, structures which support teachers in the development of their portfolios, changes in classroom practice which may result from portfolio development, plans for future portfolio use, and suggestions which portfolio developers might have for others considering …

Perceived Versus Actual Attitude Similarity As Predictors Of Change In Interpersonal Attraction, Andrew Robert Mcgarva

Doctoral Dissertations

The present investigation was intended to identify factors that affect the degree to which interpersonal attraction changes over the course of face-to-face interaction. Participants completed a modified version of Byrne's (1971) attitude questionnaire, the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (1964), and Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale and were then paired into attitudinally similar, dissimilar, or neutral dyads. Both before and after interacting for 40-minutes, dyads were asked to rate their interpersonal attraction toward their partner. Attitude similarity better predicted post-conversation interpersonal attraction when controlling for pre-conversation attraction than when not controlling for pre-conversation attraction. Social desirability, self-monitoring, and the coordination of vocal activity …

Talk Before Writing: Oral Rehearsal As A Pre-Writing Strategy For High School Students With Difficulties In Retrieval, Valerie Sebern Aubry

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of oral rehearsal used as a pre-writing strategy by twenty-eight high school students (21 males, 7 females) with difficulties in retrieval. Study participants read texts, wrote summary-response essays, and revised their compositions in two conditions: with rehearsal and without rehearsal. A repeated measures (2 x 2) x (2) design with Passage and Order of Treatment as the between-subject variables, and Condition as the within-subject variable was used to assess differences in compositions.

Eight quantitative measures, with four considered primary, were used to evaluate differences in the quantity, complexity, content, and quality of compositions. Positive changes …

Composition As A Mode Of Being: Politics, Ethics, And History In The Writing Classrooms Of Postmodernity, Lance Michael Svehla

Doctoral Dissertations

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once commented that while he did not "deny the importance, on the level of theory, of the (postmodern) project," such a project did not help him when he was "trying to get a taxi on the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue" (Loose Canons 37-38). The postmodern project lacked what Gates calls "practical performative force." The purpose of this dissertation is to establish postmodernity's practical performative force for the composition classroom. It addresses four central questions: What is postmodernity? What is its relationship to composition? Why should composition teachers and students care about this relationship? How …

American Business Women, 1890-1930: Creating An Identity, Candace A. Kanes

Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1890 and 1930, many thousands of women in fields ranging from millinery, corset making and dressmaking trades to medicine, social work, and advertising called themselves "business women." Organizations of business women and publications aimed at them helped create an identity for "business women" that served to acknowledge and inspire such women. Business women saw themselves as serious, ambitious, competitive, economically independent, career-oriented, and successful. They focused on gaining recognition for women's achievements, opening new opportunities for women, and instilling high ethical values into business. These self-defined business women, most of whom were single, looked to like-minded women for economic, …

A Poetics Of Reconciliation: The Aesthetic Mediation Of Conflict, Cynthia Eames Cohen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation, a philosophical inquiry into the significance of the aesthetic domain for reconciliation, addresses the following question: What is the nature of reconciliation, and what is the nature of the aesthetic domain, that aesthetic forms and processes should be uniquely well-suited to the educational tasks and challenges inherent in the work of reconciliation? The question is answered through the methods of conceptual analysis, with examples from the author's practice of conflict resolution, oral history and cultural work.

The first section of the dissertation identifies 'reconciliation' as an ethical and educational concept. The educational tasks of reconciliation--through which former enemies …

This Is Gonna Hurt Like Hell: A Pentecostal Student Enters The Academy, Stephen R. Barrett

Doctoral Dissertations

The little that has been written about expressions of religious experience in the field of Composition Studies focuses on the many ways religious belief places its adherents at a disadvantage in writing classrooms. We discuss in our journals and staffrooms only those religious conservatives who are most expressive of their beliefs. Many others sit in silence during discussions that may reveal anything of their beliefs, fearing to offend teachers and peers or to expose themselves to offenses from others. Unfortunately, these silent students contribute little or nothing to our understanding of the abilities of faith-centered students. Many are writing with …

Public Poetry, Memory, And The Historical Present: 1660-1745, Paul H. Mccallum

Doctoral Dissertations

"Public Poetry, Memory, and the Historical Present: 1660-1745" examines the role public poetry played in the fashioning of social memory during the so-called Augustan age of English literature; further, it traces in the rise and decline of public poetry during this period the emergence and subsequent estrangement of two distinctive modes of public memory: one highly emblematic and allusive in nature, fostering and indeed dependent upon a well-endowed collective sense of historical and literary tradition; the other far more literal and individualistic, fashioning social memory of the historical present--the present moment set against the backdrop of historical consciousness--by encouraging a …

Giving Voice To The Spirits: Storytelling In The Service Of Belizean Literacy, Gerald Joseph Kelly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the participation of indigenous storytellers in a textbook project undertaken by Belizean educators. A qualitative study of these narrators, who contributed both traditional stories and personal narratives, extended from February 1991 until February 1996 in Belize's Toledo District. Featured narrators were interviewed and audio-taped by the author throughout this time period, as they contributed their oral lore to the project.

This investigation reveals the complex interrelationships of anthropological salvage and cultural renewal. Certain contemporary scholars decry what they perceive as the limited pastoral dimension of salvage, which may suggest that the true value of traditional stories lies …

The Generation Of Predictive Inferences And The Availability Of Contextual Information, Michelle Lenore Rizzella

Doctoral Dissertations

Five experiments were conducted to determine whether readers generate predictive inferences when biasing context was available at either a local level (i.e., in short-term memory) or global level (i.e., in long-term memory). Subjects read passages that described two characters; one description contained contextual information supporting a predictive inference and the other description did not. Experiments 1 and 2 examined whether subjects generated a predictive inference when biasing context was locally available. Reading time differences in Experiment 1 demonstrated that subjects experienced comprehension difficulty when critical sentences were inconsistent with biasing context. Experiment 2 showed that subjects had generated a predictive …

Friend Of Government Or Damned Tory: The Creation Of The Loyalist Identity In Revolutionary New Hampshire, 1774-1784, James Leslie Walsh

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation examines the creation of loyalist identity during the American Revolution. Two distinct identities were fashioned, one by the loyalists themselves and a second competing identity which was created for them by their opponents, the radical faction of the revolutionary movement. Both identities were created consciously and for political or economic motives.

The identity created by the loyalists through their actions and words is to be found in a close reading of the claims filed with the Claims Commission created by Parliament in 1783. The dissertation argues that loyalists self-fashioned an individual political identity, as part of the creation …

"Getting America Told": The Black Press And Its Dialogue With White America, 1914-1919, William George Jordan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of African-American newspapers as a forum for interracial discourse during World War I. The black press addressed itself to white America, arguing that African-Americans' participation in the war made them worthy of full citizenship, pointing out the similarity between the nation's aim of championing democracy in Europe and the goal of creating racial justice in America, and drawing parallels between atrocities against civilians in Europe and the lynching of African Americans in the Southern states. Some influential white Americans paid attention to these arguments and responded to them. In doing so, they sought to use …