Digital Commons Network^™

Narrativizing Theory: The Role Of Ambiguity In Religious Aesthetics, Benjamin John Peters

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project expands S. Brent Plate's "invented religious aesthetics" by bringing it into conversation with Umberto Eco's theory of ambiguity. It articulates the space that ambiguity opens within the field of religious aesthetics when viewed as a liminal or interdisciplinary theory that neither privileges the starting points of transcendental aesthetics nor the "neo-arches" of theories of materiality. It hints at new ways of studying and describing religious worlds while also illustrating the porous borderlines between narrative and theory. It argues that a religious aesthetic rooted in ambiguity emphasizes both the provisionality of knowledge and the narrativization of reality.

Social Conflict On The Seas: Links Between Overfishing-Induced Marine Fish Stock Declines And Forced Labor Slavery, Jessica L. Sparks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite media attention detailing labor abuses in fisheries, social-ecological systems research has largely failed to consider whether fish stock declines could be contributing to increases in forced labor slavery. Empirical fisheries data suggests, though not a ubiquitous response to declining stocks, many vessels will fish longer, farther from shore, and deeper in waters to maintain yields. This effort intensification increases production costs, and Brashares et al. (2014), consistent with slavery theory, posited cheap and/or unpaid labor as an approach to offset increasing costs and continue harvesting fish species at a rate otherwise cost-prohibitive.

Using fuzzy cognitive mapping - a participatory, …

The Global Dance Network: Reykjaví­K, Iceland, Takes On New Moves, Emily Creek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an exploration of the contemporary dance community in Reykjaví­­k, Iceland. The research questions guiding this thesis were founded in a desire to understand how the dance community in Reykjaví­k creates its own agency and meaning within the city of Reykjaví­­k, as well as how the dance community in Reykjaví­k takes imported dance knowledge, localizes it and creates local meaning. With this goal of understanding the ways the community navigates the wider global dance network from its location as a northern island, I utilize concepts from the anthropology of globalization as well as dance anthropology. I specifically employ …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

A Critical Interpretation Of Olivier Roy: On Globalization, The Cosmopolitan And Emerging Post-Secular Religiosities, Joshua Rey Ramos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is that secularization transforms religion into religiosity. In other words, the secular breaks apart religion, or rather, 'deculturates' religion from a cohesive, collective body embedded within a particular society and within a traditional culture towards an individuated, and existential experience of faith within the autonomous religious subject. There are various reasons for this shift, as there are various consequences. Globalization, which is modernization writ large, is the dominant paradigm through which I conceptualize these changes. The theorist whose work I use as a lens to interpret secularization, religion and societal transformation is Olivier Roy. Roy's theories are of …

Curiosity And Gifted Identification: A Mixed Methods Study, Cameron Hays

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation was designed to explore the link between epistemic curiosity and giftedness, in order to provide an additional potentially non-biased assessment to contribute to gifted identification "body of evidence" files for underrepresented and underserved populations. Students of color and students of lower socio-economic status are less likely to be placed into gifted and talented enrichment programs (Donovan & Cross, 2002). If a significant relationship is found between high curiosity and students who benefit from gifted education, psychometric instruments used for measuring curiosity could be invaluable in placing students in appropriate educational environments.

The study used a mixed methods design …

Now You See Me: A Black Feminist Autoethnographic Poetic Polemic Of Radical Reflexivity And Critical Arts-Based Inquiry, Myntha Anthym

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an autoethnographic poetic illness narrative based on the author's year-long ordeal with unrelenting undertreated chronic pain. The project is grounded in the epistemological tradition of Black Feminist Thought and presented in alignment with the emergent methodological paradigm of critical arts-based inquiry. The purpose of the project is for the author to develop and articulate a radical reflexive praxis within the paradigm of critical arts-based inquiry while demonstrating the value of lived experience as a source of knowledge and poetry as a method of inquiry in revealing subjugated truths about the experiences of marginalized people. The dissertation lives …

Hidden In White(Ness)? Using Racial Logics To Interrogate The Instructional Arc Of A Crisis Intervention Team Training, Tara N. Meister

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars argue that communities of color have been historically considered criminal by law enforcement (Fanon, 1963/2004; Gordon, 1996; Sharpley-Whiting, 1999), and Parenti (2003) and Kendi (2016) traced the history of modern policing to slave patrols. Wynter (2003) illuminated the racial logics undergirding our society - including policing - to the overlay of monotheism and its fixity with racial constructions of human as historically rooted in slavery and colonization. Thus, policing, too, carries a racialized dimension (Gamal, 2016) that creates or amplifies trauma and mental illness (Westcott, 2015). To address mental health, an undergirding feature of use of force and …

Las Hijas De Violencia: Performance, The Street, And Online Discourse, Madison M. Snider

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores street harassment as a contentious practice in the rhetorical spaces of the street and social media posting through a case study of the performance group Las Hijas de Violencia. Through anarchistic direct action resistance tactics, the group confronted harassers in the streets of Mexico City and their recordings launched global media interest which led to viral online sharing. Widespread sharing of their performance led to the creation of public discursive space, through comments sections, which was utilized to measure attitudes toward street harassment and feminist direct action protest. Contextualized in a growing call for an end to …

Defections And Democracy: Explaining Military Loyalty Shifts And Their Impacts On Post-Protest Political Change, Kara Leigh Kingma Neu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Why do militaries shift their loyalty from authoritarian regimes in some instances of anti-regime protests and not others, and why do these shifts sometimes lead to democratic change? These questions are crucial for understanding the role of the military in democratization, given competing expectations in the literatures on civil-military relations, pacted transitions, and civil resistance. They are also important for understanding the outcomes of protests and other nonviolent campaigns for regime change, a topic of increased attention in recent years. To answer them, I propose an argument rooted in the bases of military authority. Militaries are delegated authority by regimes …

Examining The Role Of Liaison Librarians As Research Collaboration Partners: A Mixed-Methods Multiple-Case Study, Kawanna Michelle Bright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This sequential, mixed-methods study explored the professional relationship-building experiences of academic liaison librarians and university professors with a focus on research collaborations. A survey was administered and Chi-square and Spearman's rho analyses conducted on 2,650 responses to identify associations between organizational and individual factors and liaisons' work, perceptions of relationship-building experiences, and confidence in supporting faculty research. Following the survey, seven liaison-faculty pairs were identified and interviewed, and case study analysis utilized to explore specific liaison-faculty research collaboration relationships.

The study explored factors associated with liaisons' work, perceptions of faculty relationship-building, and confidence in supporting faculty research. The most salient …

Looking Through The Trees: An Anthropologist, A Museum, And The Sasquatch, Carissa Kepner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Sasquatch is incredibly popular in American society. This project explores the impact of the Sasquatch phenomenon on those that live in and visit Bailey, Colorado. It focuses on how the Sasquatch Outpost museum contributes to this impact, especially through outdoor activities, visiting the museum, visiting the Outpost general store, and the sharing of sighting stories. This work takes an in-depth look at the concept of the amateur museum, or micromuseum, and how it can contribute to the larger museum world, particularly through the ideas of Outsider Art and serious leisure. By evaluating the processes, exhibits, and procedures of the …

Whither The Gender Of Get Out: A Critique Of The Cinematic (Im)Possibilities Of The Black Political Imagination, Daelena Tinnin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the entanglements of spatialized racial-sexual violence, conceptualizations of black female subjectivity, questions of the limitations and excesses of media representations and the socioeconomic, cultural and spatiotemptoral relations that make black images visible and (im) possible as they are situated in the cinematic black political imagination. Through a materialist media analysis of the 2017 film Get Out, I argue that the film and its articulation of the afterlife of slavery fails to account for gender by tangentially engaging black women in its dissection of race and racism. I contend that black women are the absent presence in …

Symmetry Identified In 2-Dimensional Artwork Compositions Using Visuospatial Ability, Theresa Ferg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At the John Langdon Down Foundation A.C. in the La Escuela Mexicana de Arte Down school in Mexico City D.F., Mexico, art students with Trisomy 21 display the use of a mathematical construct in the painting compositions of their artworks. The mathematical construct is a type of symmetry and it carries a positive affect. This is important because there have been no studies that have investigated the use of the symmetry in the artwork compositions of persons with Down syndrome. The geometric construction of the artwork compositions follows the artistic principle of the Rule of Three and the division of …

The Power Of Resurrection: Early Christian Resistance Through The Rise Of Disciplinary Power, Patrick G. Stefan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an analysis of the spread of Christianity in the first three centuries and the commensurate activation and development of what Michel Foucault calls disciplinary mechanisms of power. It sets out to explore two questions, first, what were the theoretical conditions that led to Christianity's rapid expansion? And second, what were the historical precursors to the mechanisms of disciplinary power? It then seeks to put these two questions together to propose that early Christianity was successful in overtaking the Roman Imperial government because it activated underlying disciplinary mechanisms of power in a world governed and controlled by sovereign …

A History Of Nondenominational Churches In Denver And Beyond, 1945–2000, R. Norton Herbst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From 1945-2000, nondenominational churches in America developed from a scattering of independent congregations to one of the largest groups of churches in the nation. Few scholars have studied these churches as a cohesive movement. And many think they burst onto the American scene around the 1990s, though statistics suggest otherwise. Two questions, therefore, need to be addressed: What is the historical genealogy of nondenominational churches in modern America? And, is there a recognizable nondenominational church identity?

This study explores these questions in three ways. First, I survey the origins and development of Protestant denominationalism from the Reformation through the early …

The African Puzzle: A Study Of Democratic Backsliding In Sub Saharan Africa, Ailbhe Rice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following study examines the future of democratization and the apparent trend towards autocratization within the context of democratic backsliding in Sub-Saharan Africa. Initially, the findings indicate that regionally, backsliding is not acting fundamentally different in Sub-Saharan Africa when compared to other regions. The analysis finds that regime duration and civil conflict are both significant when it comes to the study of democratic backsliding. The variable for the prior military regime's is extremely significant in all of the models and is, therefore, a strong indicator of backsliding in Africa. The chief takeaway from the study is in the variable for …

Digital Citizenship Tools For Cause-Based Campaigns: A Broadened Spectrum Of Social Media Engagement And Participation-Scale Methodology, Jennifer Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Digital Citizenship Tools for Cause-Based Campaigns: A Broadened Spectrum of Social Media Engagement and Participation-Scale Methodology develops and applies two new tools for understanding, measuring, and recursively adjusting small to medium-size social media-based philanthropic campaigns to better foster participation and engagement—in other words, democratic digital citizenship. First, a theoretical model is offered broadening current binary conceptions of success and failure or impact of campaigns, situating specific participant actions in social media on a spectrum. Then, from that model, a new methodology is provided to measure participation and engagement generated by campaign posts. Recommendations are also offered for recursively adjusting campaign …

An Analysis Of Terrorism And Mental Health In Mass Shootings As Perceived By The Media, Amairini Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public mass shootings are the rarest type of mass murder in the United States. Nevertheless, the media tends to focus on mass murders that appear to be the most newsworthy. The most sensational mass murders are those that have the highest victim count, that target perfect victims, and that occur in a public location. Terrorism and mental health are two separate frames that are often used by the media when reporting a mass shooting event. This creates a lack of accurate reporting that displays a distorted image of mass shootings and affects the public's perception. This study evaluated frames used …

Domestic Stalking, Violation Of Protective Orders, And Homicide In Chicago: The Influence Of Social Disorganization And Gender Inequality, Sarah Sacra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Domestic violence has been considered a serious issue for many decades. This problem manifests itself physically, sexually, and emotionally and can affect anyone. However, most of the domestic violence literature focuses specifically on physical intimate partner violence. Various theoretical frameworks have been utilized to explain the occurrence of domestic violence including social disorganization theory and gender inequality. These explanations are limited, however, with the former primarily extended to physical assault and the latter focusing on violence against women. This study is important as it extends our knowledge of how these two perspectives can be applied to domestic violence through the …

Trust-Based Rating Prediction And Malicious Profile Detection In Online Social Recommender Systems, Anahita Davoudi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Online social networks and recommender systems have become an effective channel for influencing millions of users by facilitating exchange and spread of information. This dissertation addresses multiple challenges that are faced by online social recommender systems such as: i) finding the extent of information spread; ii) predicting the rating of a product; and iii) detecting malicious profiles. Most of the research in this area do not capture the social interactions and rely on empirical or statistical approaches without considering the temporal aspects. We capture the temporal spread of information using a probabilistic model and use non-linear differential equations to model …

Rewriting Patriarchal Norms In Academia: Invitational Rhetoric In A Crowdsourced Survey, Rachel Molko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to understand the how texts are constructed to forward feminist communicative objectives through a case study of Dr. Karen Kelsky’s "A Crowdsourced Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Academy." In this research, sexual harassment is understood as an act of power, sexual in nature, enacted by faculty or staff (employed or contracted in different capacities) in their relations with other faculty or staff, who are often lower ranking. By adopting invitational rhetoric as a theoretical framework, this thesis examines the way Dr. Karen Kelsky's crowdsourced survey creates the space to articulate and elevate often suppressed personal testimony …

The American Black Body: Materials,Symbols, And Representations From A Perceived African American, Christopher Santos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a Cape Verdean American, I investigate the idea of what it means to be of the African Diaspora in America. I also consider the experiences of past generations of American black bodies and how their history has molded my world. This series of work began with Mask Drawing 1, an ink drawing inspired by my own interpretation of an African mask. Subjected to colorism, the discrimination of a person based on their skin color, my skin was not enough validation for other people to view me as black. On numerous occasions I have had to clarify my identity, nationality …

Revisiting Roadside Attractions: A "Deep Dive" Into Florida's Weeki Wachee Springs, Rebecca Schwandt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This digital public history project explores one of the oldest and longest running of Florida's roadside attractions, Weeki Wachee Springs, during the years considered to be the park's heyday, the 1950s through the mid-1970s. With the 75th anniversary of the park approaching in 2022 and preliminary discussions of a new or expanded mermaid museum, there is a growing need to document the experiences of aging former employees and preserve park-related ephemera from that period. For this project six oral histories of former mermaids and former employees have been recorded, transcribed, and made publicly accessible through RICHES, the University of Central …

Attitudinal Trends In Support For Police Use Of Force Before And After Ferguson, Tashanda Dennison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 2014 death of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown by a white Ferguson police officer, there has been a string of similar incidents that have occurred in a relatively short period of time. These high profile incidents of police officers using questionable amounts of force have shaken public trust in law enforcement. Studies have shown that public confidence in law enforcement often erodes drastically following heavily publicized, controversial media reports of police misconduct (Tuch and Weitzer 1997; Weitzer 2002). The current levels of public outrage in response to allegations of police brutality have surpassed the levels of outrage …

Understanding City Parks As New Common Pool Resources: A Case Study Of The Dakota Nature Park, Keahna Margeson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines public parks as New Common Pool Resources through a case study of the Dakota Nature Park in Brookings, South Dakota. I identify the formalization and bureaucratization processes experienced by the governing body of the park. These processes occurred as a capped landfill was repurposed and collaboratively managed to serve the community by providing native, natural space and affordable recreational opportunities. The governing structure is assessed using Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) Eight Principles of Common Pool Resource Management, Weber’s (1964) ideas of status and authority and Berger and Luckman's (1966) phenomenological theory. I use three major research strategies: (1) …

Food Availability, Including Traditional Foods, In Grocery And Convenience Stores In 6 High Obese Counties In South Dakota, Including Native American Reservations, Francesca Willard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Native American populations are disproportionately affected by obesity and its associated chronic diseases. Rural areas are also disproportionately affected by obesity and face significant challenges related to their food environment, food security, and food availability. The combination of these barriers make it challenging for rural, NA reservations to combat these health disparities and have opportunities to make healthy food choices. The lack of access to healthy and traditional foods in these areas is of great concern. The purpose of this study is to determine the food availability, including traditional foods, in grocery and convenience stores in six high obese counties …

Extending The Utility Of Public Use Microdata, Eric A. Guthrie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Applied demography employs population studies in the effort to answer real world questions and provide insights for the problems that business and civic leaders face on an ongoing basis. To answer these questions the applied demographer sometimes performs primary research, but more often they attempt to leverage and extend the use of publicly available data to answer the questions presented in an efficient and timeconstrained manner. The work described here looks at a problem presented by the Michigan Department of Education and the solution presented by the Michigan State Demographer. The problem required estimates for a single-year age group at …

Framed By Sexuality: An Examination Of Identity-Messages In “Purity Culture” Reflections, Ashley Pikel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purity culture is a movement many young Evangelical Christians experienced in the 1990s and early 2000s. Purity culture espouses many values including practicing abstinence until marriage, observing strict dating and/or courtship rules, and remaining physically, emotionally, and spiritually pure. In 1997 Joshua Harris authored I Kissed Dating Goodbye (IKDG) which popularized purity culture principles. Over the past twenty years, Harris reflected on his writings as well as feedback from others to determine that some of what he wrote was incorrect. In 2016, Harris requested IKDG readers to submit their experiences with the book in the form of personal stories. Through …

Assessment Of The Impacts Of Marijuana Legalization In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Michael Lynch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As marijuana legalization expands in the United States, communities that are shifting rapidly from prohibition to legalization are impacted greatly. As South Dakota remains one of the only states in the nation that has not engaged the marijuana reform movement in any manner, it is vital to assess potential impacts marijuana legalization might have on the state. Although there are several marijuana impact reports that analyze potential health and economic impacts of legalization, few address political and criminological implications that impacted areas undergo as a result of this policy change. Subsequently, there is a need to analyze the impacts of …