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The Rhetoric Of Africa : Historical Turns In Constructing A Continent, 1780-1890., Dexter Peck Mahaffey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines historical rhetoric about Africa in British and American writings between the beginnings of the Abolition period and the 1884 Berlin Conference at which the continent was divided by colonial powers. Tracing rhetorical trends of travel writers and their constituents through the explorations of the continent, it demarcates two turns in the way Africans and Africa were constructed rhetorically. In the process it reveals a 19th-century evolution from depicting Africa largely in terms of its viability for commerce and reception of European culture, to an Africa fallen into darkness, to Africa as the Dark Continent, permanently fixed in …

Principals’ Perceptions Of Successful Leadership, Gary L. Childers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this qualitative multiple case study were to determine the catalysts and pathways that caused principals to move from managers to effective leaders. Data were collected through a series of interviews with 4 principals who were selected through a purposeful sampling procedure. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using inductive coding to determine themes. Findings were presented for each theme within the context of reviewed literature.

National polls indicate that 6 out of every 10 of the nation’s schools need major changes or an overhaul. Can improving the skills of their leaders make a difference in …

The Predictors Of Success Of Palestinian Tawjihi Students In East Jerusalem : A Multilevel Analysis., Rhonda G. Amer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-method research study was to identify the predictors of success of Palestinian Arab Tawjihi students in East Jerusalem schools. Three theories guided this research study and assisted in developing the conceptual framework; social disorganization theory, ecological theory, and achievement motivation theory. Methods: The sample consisted of 20 schools and 522 students from 19 different neighborhoods. This study was based on existing data and observational data as well as some qualitative data to provide context for the model results. The existing data were gathered from the different schools, the Ministry of Education, local organizations, neighborhood representatives, and …

A Content Analysis Of A&E'S Hoarders, Samantha J. Redwine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The interest in hoarding has peaked since its first clinical definition in 1996 and is evident by six television shows centered on the topic. This thesis reports the results a content analysis of two seasons (21 episodes) of the popular T.V. series A&E’s Hoarders. People rationalize hoarding in ways that both differ and overlap. Doctors, professional organizers, hoarders and their loved ones collectively frame hoarding as a medical and mental health problem. The results suggest that Americans’ perceptions of hoarding behavior has shifted from one that is deviant behavior to one that is medicalized.

Remembering Dearfield: A Study Of An Early 20th Century Black Community, Mary Connell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the different meanings of Dearfield, an early 20th Century black farming colony in northeastern Colorado, from the way the settlers’ conceived of their community, to the way that it was portrayed by the founder, to the way that it is remembered today. Through analysis of archival data and government records I show that there were two sides of Dearfield, that remembered by most of the settlers, and that portrayed by the founder O.T. Jackson. A magnetometer survey shows that the townsite was not as densely occupied as the common narrative of Dearfield would suggest, indeed many homesteaders …

¿Del Mar Quién Es Dueño? Artisanal Fisheries, Tourism Development, And The Struggles Over Access To Marine Resources In Playa Gigante, Nicaragua, Nikolai Alexander Alvarado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In post-revolutionary Nicaragua tourism development has been embraced as a way to inject foreign exchange into an ailing economy. Despite rapid growth of the sector, particularly along Nicaragua's southwestern Pacific coast, little attention has been given to the impacts of this development on local producers. This research focuses on the tourism development taking place in the fishing community of Playa Gigante and its impacts on artisanal fisheries. Additionally, I focus on the struggles over access to marine resources, especially with creation of La Anciana Marine Protected Area (MPA), a marine conservation corridor being pushed forth by the largest resort development …

"As Our Elders Taught Us To Speak It": Chinuk Wawa And The Process Of Creating Authenticity, Kylie N. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chinuk Wawa (also called Chinook Jargon) began as a trading language of the Pacific Northwest in the late eighteenth century. As it developed, it became the major heritage language of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, an intertribal nation located in Oregon. Now, as older speakers of the language pass on, there is an effort by the Grand Ronde to revitalize this language not only on the Grand Ronde Reservation, but also in nearby Portland, Oregon. However, revitalization can be a complicated process, as tribal leaders attempt to define Chinuk to maintain its traditions while adapting its vocabulary for …

Penning The Shipper-Worthy Screenplay: Exploration Of Network Television Situational Comedy And The Crime Procedural, Kacie Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Network television writers often utilize ongoing romantic turmoil as a plot device to form loyal fan bases called "shippers," viewers who become deeply invested in the romantic relationships between their favorite television couples. For my thesis, I explored the shipper paradigm and the differences between network sitcoms and crime procedurals by creating one spec script The Big Bang Theory and another for Bones. I used research and my own personal experiences to analyze both series and write episodes that could fit within the established canons of both programs. Through the writing process I came to understand something very important …

News Media Framing Of Gay Teen Suicide And Bullying, Averie Alese Greene

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined patterns of framing in newspaper articles that mention gay teen suicide, gay bullying, and the "It Gets Better" campaign. A content analysis of randomly selected newspaper articles from 2009-2011 was performed. After presenting the frequency of content themes, emergent patterns are discussed. The most consistent theme--an evasive frame-- occurred with regard to homophobia, heterosexism, and meaningful solutions to anti-gay bullying. The day-to-day discrimination that LGBTQ people face was rarely addressed; instead, hot-button political topics such as same-sex marriage and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" were presented as signs of social progress. This research shows the importance of media …

Transformations : Material Terms For Writing On Religion In Composition Classrooms., Mark Alan Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for closer attention to the material conditions of student writing on religion. Writing scholars in recent years have called for the inclusion of students’ religiously inflected perspectives, values, experiences, genres, and texts in the classroom, but I argue insufficient attention has been paid to the broader social contexts in which composition students must write about religion. In the first chapter, I outline the basic principles of my theoretical approach and attempt to articulate the generalized exigency of this work in terms of our current political and religious climate. I contend that a clearer understanding of how changing …

Exploring The Influence Of Social Media On Future Intentions Of Charity Sport Participants., Tara Q. Mahoney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Charity sport participation has gained increasing popularity, with over 11.6 million individuals participating and organizations raising more than $1.7 billion annually through charity sport participation events (Run Walk Ride Foundation, 2012). An increased number of alternatives created a competitive environment among charitable organizations to recruit and retain charity sport participants (Gladden, Mahony, & Apostolopoulou, 2004). The use of social media provides an opportunity for organizations to efficiently and effectively raise awareness about a cause (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009) and build relationships with participants and alumni (Waters & Jamal, 2011), potentially creating a competitive advantage. The purpose of this …

"Two Machines Similarly Constructed" : Humanity Between Apes And Clones., Emily Regina Freund

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Two Machines Similarly Constructed”: Humanity Between Apes and Clones explores the development of scientific taxonomies of difference and the proliferation and evolution of the definition of the “human.” A focus on Enlightenment naturalists’ texts and images of apes reveals how these scientists defined the human “difference” and lends to Michel Foucault’s archaeology of the invention of “man.” This establishes the concept of a classifying discourse and argues that a narrative of human exceptionalism pervaded subsequent ideas of progress and civilization. Analyses of two texts, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, develop a discussion of how the …

The Autodidact : Constantine Samuel Rafinesque And The Limits Of The Posthumanities., Elijah Pritchett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The autodidact has a curious structural relationship to knowledge, education, and that assumed distillation of institutional learning, the academy. Because of its subjectivity-producing function, knowledge represents a site of tremendous cultural investment, and one that is challenged, if not even undermined, by the renegade ethos and idiosyncratic approach of the autodidact. Nineteenth century self-taught scholar and Renaissance man, Constantine Rafinesque, serves as a vivid exemplar, or even theoretical matrix, for demonstrating certain problems that the autodidact raises for post-Enlightenment knowledge as it assumes the various institutional states, metaphysical postures, and ideological closures necessary for its culturally privileged function. As the …

The Social Construction Of Ethnicity And Masculinity Of African American College Men., Jonathan Lee Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how African American college men construct masculine and ethnic notions of their identities, despite disproportionate social obstacles and hegemonic stereotypes. The primary research question of this study was, “how might African American undergraduate males understand and develop healthy concepts of their ethnic and masculine identities at a predominately White public institution?” The following research questions guided this study: (1) how do African American college men characterize their ethnic identity; (2) how do African American college men characterize their perception of their masculinity; (3) how do African American college men perceive their performance …

Translingualism In Post-Secondary Writing And Language Instruction : Negotiating Language Ideologies In Policies And Pedagogical Practices., Nancy Bou Ayash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on text-oriented data from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, this study examines how writing teachers and students constantly negotiate tensions between translingual sociolinguistic realities on one hand and monolingualist assumptions about language and language relations on another that dominate curricular and pedagogical designs in first year writing courses. The study involves a multiplicity of data sources, such as official institutional documents, individual instructional materials, classroom observations, structured interviews, and a method of "talk around texts." Writing teachers in this study sensitively grappled with tensions between the constant political pressures of generating the status quo and their ideological orientations …

Never Quite Settled: Southern Plain Folk On The Move, Ronald J. Mccall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the settlement of the Mississippi Territory through the eyes of John Hailes, a Southern yeoman farmer, from 1813 until his death in 1859. This is a family history. As such, the goal of this paper is to reconstruct John’s life to better understand who he was, why he left South Carolina, how he made a living in Mississippi, and to determine a degree of upward mobility.

Local, state, and federal government records provide the general context of this study and accurately track John’s movements and land purchases within the territory. John's frequent movements and the land he …

Julian Assange: A Content Analysis Of Media Framing In Newspapers Around The World, Meylin K. Menjivar Andrade

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researcher conducted a content analysis in order to examine how the media framed Julian Assange after the Ecuadorian government granted him political asylum at their embassy in London on August 16, 2012. Researchers compared 380 English and Spanish language newspaper articles from North America, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America to examine regional differences in the way Assange was framed.

This study revealed that generally the tone toward Assange was mostly neutral or positive in all continents. Furthermore, European media gave more attention to Julian Assange than did media from North America or other continents.

Exploratory research revealed that …

The Nashville John School : Risk Deterrence And The Reintegrative Shaming Approach., Robin Malony Valenzuela

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary anti-prostitution campaigns focus on curtailing “the demand” by punishing sexual service consumers. One component of this approach is a diversion program, or “john school,” offered to those who are caught buying prostitution. This ethnography focuses upon the Nashville John School (NJS), which consists of informational presentations that educate johns about the risks associated with prostitution. By employing a restorative justice approach, the NJS exemplifies elements of John Braithwaite’s “reintegrative shaming” theory (1989), which seeks to hold offenders accountable for their wrongdoing while avoiding stigmatization. This ethnographic study utilizes participant observation in the NJS, as well as individual interviews with …

The Feeling Of Faith : A Thomistic Account Of Religious Emotions., John K. Dryden 1976-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a philosophical analysis of religious emotions. It draws upon Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the passions to build and apply a framework for thinking about religious emotions and their role in the spiritual life. The first two chapters are dedicated to building the theoretical framework. Chapter one outlines Aquinas’s theory of emotions in a very general way and compares this account to recent versions of cognitivism. By placing Aquinas in conversation with contemporary accounts, I show that his theory is able to capture the central insights of this mainstream philosophical view. According to the Thomistic account that emerges …

Community College Mission Influence On Culture : An Organizational Analysis., E. Gerome Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Strong agreement of mission and culture has been found in more effective colleges (Fjortoft & Smart, 1994). For leaders, the culture of an organization provides the context for which decisions about organizational change processes can be made (Malm, 2008). The purpose of this study was to explore the culture present within a community college through the lens of institutional mission implementation and to examine the perceived relationship of the mission statement to culture by those within the organization. Using qualitative methodology, this research explored the mission of a state community college system in the Midwest and studied the existing culture …

Site Location Modeling And Prehistoric Rock Shelter Selection On The Upper Cumberland Plateau Of Tennessee, Lucinda M. Langston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using data collected from 2 archaeological surveys of the Upper Cumberland Plateau (UCP), Pogue Creek Gorge and East Obey, a site location model was developed for prehistoric rock shelter occupation in the region. Further, the UCP model was used to explore factors related to differential site selection of rock shelters. Different from traditional approaches such as those that use (aspatial) logistic regression, the UCP model was developed using spatial logistic regression. However, models were also generated using other regression-based approaches in an effort to demonstrate the need for a spatial approach to archaeological site location modeling. Based on the UCP …

A Theological Inquiry Regarding The Practice Of The Eucharist In Cyberspace, Janice L. Duce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at the Eucharist in cyberspace, beginning with a case study of a faith community who met with controversy after the group shared the ritual in cyberspace. Based on a qualitative study of the practice and its aftermath, the theoretical analysis includes the nature of the Internet itself and its capacity as a location for networked communities; its capacity to operate as a communication medium for a religious ritual; and the involvement of active users.

The users in this case were members of a religious community interested in preserving their Eucharist theological tradition. The first set of major …

The Hybrid Spirit Animating Chinese Pentecostals In Malaysia, Eu Kit Lim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the assertion in postcolonial scholarship, especially from the work of Homi Bhabha that the construction and performance of hybrid identities act as a form of resistance for marginalized communities against structures of oppression. While this study supports this assertion, it also critiques how hybridity fails to address issues of unequal power relations. This has led to an uncritical use of hybridity that reproduces the very idea of static identity which its proponents claim to transcend.

Through qualitative study of Chinese members of a Pentecostal church in Malaysia, this study argues that church members engage in "unequal belonging" …

Monetary Effervescence: A Sociological Theory Of Religion Applied To Money, David J. Worley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project attempts to answer the question "What holds the construction of money together?" by asserting that it is money's religious nature which provides the moral compulsion for people to use, and continue to uphold, money as a socially constructed concept. This project is primarily descriptive and focuses on the religious nature of money by employing a sociological theory of religion in viewing money as a technical concept. This is an interdisciplinary work between religious studies, economics, and sociology and draws heavily from Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life as well as work related to heterodox theories of …

Performing The Personal Within The Organizational: Communicating Professional Identities Through Taiwanese Commercial Airline Pilots' Personal Narratives, Kai-Chun Chuang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project explored professionalism and the performance of identities by examining Taiwanese commercial airline pilots' discursive practices in everyday life. The intentions for this project were to not only expand current knowledge of organizational communication from a critical rhetorical perspective, but to further explore the under-appreciated concept of professionalism of organizational members. Theoretically, I traced theoretical analysis in the sociology of professions and further investigated scholarship from identity research in organizational communication studies. This research agenda helped to advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professional identity as a complement to the sociological conception. I further merged …

Editorial Collaboration And Control: Laura Riding And The Seizen Press Years, Christina Cain Whitney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the founding of Seizin Press in 1927, Laura Riding began a new epoch in her career as poet and literary theorist. Along with her partner, Robert Graves, Riding worked among and with important literary tastemakers of the Modernist era, such as Gertrude Stein, Len Lye and James Reeves. Riding's demanding and intense editorial and collaborative style resulted in some unique and fascinating works, such as the bizarrely beautiful Life of the Dead and the egomaniacal The World and Ourselves. Beyond close literary examination of the above works, this study looks at the pressures both within the Seizin Press …

Sense-Making Bodies: Feminist Materiality And Phenomenology In Constructive Body Theologies, Heike Peckruhn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Constructive body theology provides an ethical commitment to and a set of analytical principles for understanding bodily experience. If we insist upon the theological value of embodied experience, how can we give an adequate account of it? Are feminist appeals to the senses useful in developing theological truth claims based in embodied experiences? Feminist theologies which explicitly seek to overcome body/mind dualisms often reinscribe them when they neglect to attend to perception as a critical element of bodily experience. Phenomenological analyses of perception (such as suggested by Merleau-Ponty) strengthen and refine our conception of embodiment. Grounding constructive theology in experience …

Spectacle, Sacrifice And The State: The Legacy Of European Fascism And The Revival Of Martyrdom In The Modern World, Gerald Robert Pace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rise of political martyrdom in the contemporary world is not a new phenomenon but can be traced back to at least the early Twentieth Century with the rise of European Fascist movements. Both they, and the fascist-like movements of today, share a cluster of characteristics that allow for fruitful comparisons of the ways in which martyrdom spectacles are used to communicate with constituent populations, facilitate a culture of violence, perpetuate their revolutionary zeal and demonstrate the characteristics of the ideal citizen. Examining four major movements; Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Palestinian Hamas and the modern Iran, this dissertation argues …

The Last Citizen: A Response To Rawls's Challenge On Impairment—A Third Principle Of Justice, And Extra-Rational Contribution, Michael Neil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

John Rawls, in Political Liberalism, acknowledges that justice as fairness, as it stands, "may fail" to deliver justice to people with severe cognitive impairment. He continues, "How deep a fault this is must wait until the case itself can be examined." The intent of this work, then, is to revisit Rawls's justice as fairness in light of intervening decades of disability consciousness and the emergence of competing theoretical constructs pertinent to the lives of people with impairment, specifically to people with an inability to reason or to reason fully, and determine whether new perspectives can expand its scope into a …

Theological Foundations For An Ethics Of Cosmocentric Transfiguration: Navigating The Eco-Theological Poles Of Conservation, Transfiguration, Anthropocentrism, And Cosmocentrism With Regard To The Relationship Between Humans And Individual Nonhuman Animals, Ryan Patrick Mclaughlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past forty years, there has been an unprecedented explosion of theological writings regarding the place of the nonhuman creation in ethics. The purpose of this dissertation is to propose a taxonomy of four paradigms of eco-theological thought that will categorize these writings and facilitate the identification, situation, and constructive development of the paradigm of cosmocentric transfiguration. This taxonomy takes shape within the tensions of three theological foundations: cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology. These tensions establish two categorical distinctions between, on the one hand, conservation and transfiguration, and, on the other, anthropocentrism and cosmocentrism. The variations within these poles yield …