Digital Commons Network^™

Chinese Eco-Films And Their Pastoral Myth, Runlei Zhai

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is a cross-cultural study of Chinese ecocinema after 1978. It begins by introducing the Hollywood practice in simplifying the conflicts between garden and machine, anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, and Tityrus and Meliboeus in American pastoralism, then explains why such simplification does not work on Chinese screen, and finally studies how Chinese filmmakers reconstruct their pastoral myth in three major steps: first, to recognize Chinese social and cultural realities; second, to establish the human-nature connection, and third, to affirm the nature-culture unity. The conclusion is that Chinese eco-cinema exists in a hybrid form. While Hollywood influences Chinese eco-cinema in terms …

Language, Writing, And Social (Inter)Action: An Analysis Of Text-Based Chats In Macedonian And English, Mira Bekar

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the text-based chatting practices of a particular community of native Macedonian speakers who chat both in Macedonian and in English (as their foreign language). Much research in computer-mediated communication (CMC) over the last decade has been done in English as L1. Some of the few studies which explored CMC cross-linguistically include the comparison of French vs. English (Werry, 1996), Japanese vs. English (Nishimura, 2003b), Spanish vs. English (del-Teso-Craviotto, 2006), Serbian vs. English (Radic, 2007) and Turkish vs. English (Savas, 2010). In these studies, a number of different language features (e.g., orthography, code …

The Use Of Oral History And Narrative Research In Broadening The Historical Foundation Of The Agricultural Communication Field, Natalie L Federer

Open Access Dissertations

The historical foundation of the agricultural communication community (consisting of both academics and the profession) is shallow and void of humanistic perspective, and there is a minimal amount of historical content that focuses on academic and professional history. The need to explore and interpret historical dimensions of this field is vital to further development of the discipline as an academic and professional field. Oral history was utilized to capture and preserve the interview content from a small sample of agricultural communication and Extension professionals and faculty while narrative research, interpretative theory, and constructivism were utilized to further understand and interpret …

Anticancer Effects Of Vitamin E Forms And Their Long-Chain Metabolites Via Modulation Of Sphingolipid Metabolism, Yumi Jang

Open Access Dissertations

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death. Studies have shown that vitamin E forms including gamma-tocopherol (γT), delta-tocopherol (δT), and gamma-tocotrienol (γTE) exhibited potent anticancer activities in various types of cancer cells. But molecular mechanisms underlying anticancer actions of γTE are not completely understood. 13’-carboxychromanols (13’-COOHs), major fecal excreted long-chain metabolites of vitamin E, have recently been shown to induce apoptosis in liver cancer cells. However, it is not clear whether 13’-COOHs have anticancer effects on other types of cancer. In the current study, we investigated the anticancer effects and mechanisms of γTE and 13’-COOHs; δT-13’-COOH and δTE-13’-COOH, …

Evaluation Of In Vitro Anti-Inflammatory, Anti-Diabetic And Anti-Lipogenic Activity Of Natural Polyphenolic Extracts And Their Pure Constituents, Pragati P. Nahar

Open Access Dissertations

The long-term goals and objectives of our group are to identify bioactive natural products relevant to human disease prevention and health promotion. To attain this goal, the objective of this thesis was to demonstrate that bioactive polyphenol-rich extracts or preparations exert positive health benefits beyond basic nutrition, thus impacting overall health and wellness. We believe that this project has immense scientific merit from a human health perspective and will be of great public impact given that consumers are seeking natural and organic choices for improving health. In this investigation, we have focused our attention on investigating the biological activities of …

Bringing The World Inside: British Modernism And Taste – Gustatory, Social, And Aesthetic, Michael David Becker

Open Access Dissertations

As nineteenth-century scientific and industrial developments in food processing were increasingly applied on larger scales, and to a greater diversity of food items, modernity made its mark on the early twentieth-century consumer’s daily foods. In addition to industrial and scientific developments, World War I and World War II brought significant changes to food production, distribution, and consumption as populations suddenly worried about the availability, allocation, and quality of food items. Early twentieth-century novels demonstrate a preoccupation with the newly modernized and altered foods and explore how food behaviors and tastes change during the period.

This project examines literary representations of …

Unconscious States: A Novel, Rachel May

Open Access Dissertations

Unconscious States tells the story of three sisters in a rural New England town and aims to explore the class, racial, and agricultural tensions in central Massachusetts while addressing issues of addiction, the choices that three women face in making their lives, and a family’s struggle to sustain themselves after a devastating accident severely injures the oldest of the Roe sisters, Mary. The novel integrates the choices of educated women today—between scholarship, family, and work—and the racist underbelly, subtle but pervasive, in a New England town like Bolton, as well as the financial burdens that all families face in a …

At Home In The Diaspora: Domesticity And Nationalism In Postwar And Contemporary Caribbean-British Fiction, Kim Caroline Evelyn

Open Access Dissertations

This project investigates the ways in which home is conceptualized and represented in sixty years of the literature of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain by balancing texts from the post-World War II period with contemporary texts and considering how the diaspora has been imagined and reimagined. Making a home of a diaspora—typically considered as a collection of scattered and ostracized migrants— requires a conceptual leap, act of agency, and, sometimes, a flight of imagination. Through the imagery of domesticity and the rhetoric of nationalism, literary analyses of representations of diaspora allow us to explore the imagined constructs of diasporic homes. …

Toward A Psychosocial Understanding Of Suicide In American Literature And Culture Of The 1990’S, Sara E. Murphy

Open Access Dissertations

As a means of rectifying the problematic absence of multidisciplinary scholarly work on suicide, this dissertation project interrogates suicide in American literature and culture of the 1990’s across disciplines within the humanities, medicine, and the social sciences. Utilizing a psychosocial approach to the study of suicide – that is, an understanding of suicide as produced both by one’s psychological development within and by one’s social relationship to his or her environment – I address what I have identified as a unique trifurcated suicide response that arose in American culture in the 1990’s as it emerged through major societal and legal …

Off The Hip: A Thermodynamics Of The Cool, Rebecca Kanost

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation asserts that the cool’s significance in 20th-century American culture exceeds that assigned to it by current critiques. It assays a rhetorical model which describes coolness as stillness in behavior that surprises witnesses, given the assumptions they make about the still person and context for his or her behavior. Such stillness agitates witnesses’ normative assumptions about all those in the rhetorical situation, including assumptions about affect, gender, race, class and sexuality. Agitation may also lead to conjecture about what mindset could produce cool behavior. To test this model I investigate representations of coolness in James Baldwin’s short story, “Going …

Mental Health And Human Minds: Some Theoretical Criteria For Clinical Psychiatry, Natalia Washington

Open Access Dissertations

When it comes to the topic of mental illness, there are three broad areas of concern that are of interest to all of us as human beings—and to the theorists, researchers, and clinicians who wish to offer help—besides knowing what our symptoms are. First, we might be interested in finding out some normative facts about ourselves as individuals, such as whether or not we are mentally healthy, perhaps to what extent, and how this should affect our motivations. A second area of concern involves descriptive facts our minds. In what ways do we deviate from typical human psychological nature, and …

The Role Of Bicultural Self-Efficacy And Cognitive-Affective Factors On Psychological Well-Being, Alexandra Broustovetskaia

Open Access Dissertations

Due to increasing number of immigrant and international students, examining factors that contribute to this population’s well-being is of outmost importance. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of bicultural self-efficacy in the relationship between cognitive-affective factors of emotional intelligence (EI) and ambiguity tolerance (AT) and psychological well-being. Immigrant and international students (N = 176) completed measures of Bicultural Self-Efficacy Scale (BSES; David, Okazaki, & Saw, 2009), Trait-Meta Mood Scale (TMMS; Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, & Palfai, 1995), Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale-II (MSTAT-II; McLain, 2009), and Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS; Ryff, 1989). The following hypotheses …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Consumer – Customized Product Identification: An Identity Theory Perspective, Soyeon Kwon

Open Access Dissertations

Customization is considered one of the key sources of value creation in a highly competitive and segmented market. Recent research has demonstrated that the key to successful customization experiences lies in the degree to which consumers feel connected to a product that is customized. This study investigated consumers’ psychological connection to customized products by exploring the variable, “consumer-customized product identification (C-C identification).” Building upon identity theory and research on “extended self,” this study investigated (1) two key antecedents that influence C-C identification, (2) attitudinal and behavioral consequences of C-C identification, and (3) the moderating role of product involvement in C-C …

Race. Nation. Zombie: Imperial Masculinities Gazing At The Undead, Adryan Glasgow

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that zombie narratives have always been about white masculinity and that colonialism is the true living dead monster. The zombie is not the load-bearing signifier in these stories. It is the white men who act as representatives of empire that embody tropes and evolve. This dissertation examines the survivor masculinity in zombie films over time to see how hegemonic masculinity has adapted to a range of national crises. I argue that the failure of white masculinities in these films and novel is rooted in the limited ways of knowing inherent in the Imperial Gaze. Starting in the …

Microbial Controls On The Environmental Fate Of Carbon Nanomaterials, Timothy Dale Berry

Open Access Dissertations

Since the synthesis of the first carbon nanomaterials (CNM) 30 years ago, researchers and manufacturers have recognized the potential of these materials to transform the world. The unique physical properties and incredible resilience of these materials gives them countless applications and has led to significant increases in their production over the last decade. However, despite their growing prevalence, the properties and processes controlling the degradation of CNM in the environment remain poorly understood. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of environmental microorganisms in degrading CNM and to elucidate which CNM properties and environmental processes represent …

First Graders As Sensitive Social Partners And Skilled Readers, Zaira R. Arvelo Alicea

Open Access Dissertations

This mixed methods dissertation is guided by a sociocultural framework and a pragmatist stance to contribute to early literacy scholarship about minority children. In particular, I explore the relationship between low socioeconomic status Puerto Rican children’s reading experience and their social cognition by: (1) assessing them through quantitative and qualitative measures that reveal their capacities in these areas at the end of their first grade year, and (2) documenting their reading experiences at home and at school through ethnographic qualitative methods. The analyses revealed significant positive correlations between the tests of reading and social understanding, a scarcity of conventional reading …

On Becoming A Digital Literacy Mentor: Self-Determination And Media Production In Elementary Education, Yonty Friesem

Open Access Dissertations

Today, anyone with a smartphone has access to a whole suite of tools to create video and multimedia that can be instantly and widely shared. While research shows the cognitive, social, and emotional benefits of media production on students' learning, less is known about how media production is integrated into the context of elementary education and only a few schools have begun to experiment with video production as a means to promote literacy and learning. This research explored some effects of a two-year initiative to integrate digital literacy in a suburban public elementary school. For a period of six months, …

Parental Psychological Control And Emotion Dysregulation Among Anxious Children: A Transactional Model, Monica M. Nanda

Open Access Dissertations

Existing research and theories have consistently highlighted the role of emotion regulation deficits and parental psychological control in the occurrence of childhood anxiety disorders. The aim of the present study was to continue to examine these relationships using observational methods amongst a clinically anxious sample. Additionally, the present study aimed to identify the direction of effects between parental psychological control and emotion dysregulation by examining whether there is a discernible sequence of parent and child behaviors forming a pattern of interaction between parents and their anxious children. This was completed using microanalytic coding methods to observe parental psychological control and …

Influence Of Sociocultural Factors On The Attitudes Toward Intimate Partner Violence Among College Students In Costa Rica, Derby Munoz-Rojas

Open Access Dissertations

Although intimate partner violence (IPV) is a worldwide public health issue affecting millions of people, adolescents and young adults are disproportionally affected. IPV is a complex problem primarily because it is influenced by a web of risks and protective factors, which interact and shape the experiences of each person. However, the exact nature of these interactions is not well understood, particularly among adolescents and young adults and in cultures where gender norms are rapidly changing and less IPV research has been conducted, such as in Costa Rica. Specifically, little is known about the effect of sociocultural factors on the experiences …

Patient Safety Culture, Compassion Fatigue, Compassion Satisfaction: Impact On Nurse-Sensitive Patient Outcomes, Debbie Anglade

Open Access Dissertations

Improved patient safety has been one of the most critical issues facing the healthcare industry. The 1999 IOM report To Err Is Human stated avoidable medical errors contributed to 44,000 to 98,000 deaths in the United States. Current estimates are now between 210,000 and 440,000 patients annually. This study aimed: To examine the relationships between: a) inpatient nursing units’ patient safety culture (PSC), b) nurse compassion fatigue (CF), c) nurse compassion satisfaction (CS), and d) the impact on nurse-sensitive patient outcomes. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model guided this quantitative descriptive correlational design, which used primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected …

The Role Of Adiponectin And The Adipocyte In Energy Metabolism And Inflammation, Sheila Kay Jacobi

Open Access Dissertations

A series of experiments were conducted to characterize the autocrine role of adiponectin in modulating fatty acid metabolism and inflammation in the pig. In the first study, we cloned and sequenced the porcine adiponectin open reading frame and evaluated the regulation of adiponectin, in vitro and in vivo. The porcine sequence shares approximately 88, 86, 85 and 83% homology with the dog, human, cow and mouse adiponectin, respectively, and 79–83% similarity with dog, human, cow and mouse proteins at the amino acid level, based on the translated porcine sequence and GenBank submissions for the other species. Analysis of serum from …

Quantifying Aesthetics Of Visual Design Applied To Automatic Design, Ali Jahanian

Open Access Dissertations

In today's "Instagram" world, with advances in ubiquitous computing and access to social networks, digital media is adopted by art and culture. In this dissertation, we study what makes a good design by investigating mechanisms to bring aesthetics of design from realm of subjection to objection. These mechanisms are a combination of three main approaches: learning theories and principles of design by collaborating with professional designers, mathematically and statistically modeling good designs from large scale datasets, and crowdscourcing to model perceived aesthetics of designs from general public responses. We then apply the knowledge gained in automatic design creation tools to …

Queer Art Camp Superstar: Decoding The Video Cyberworld Of Ryan Trecartin, Ricardo E. Zulueta

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation constitutes the first in-depth study of contemporary artist Ryan Trecartin’s video art. Although the artist’s work has received tremendous critical attention in recent years, currently there exists no academic book-length comprehensive analysis of his art. The primary goal of this dissertation is to fill this gap in the research by closely analyzing a selection that encompasses the breadth of his most significant videos, from his pre-YouTube era video series Early Baggage (2001-3) to his latest project installed at the 55th Venice Biennale, Priority Innfield (2013). The lack of thorough examination of Trecartin’s body of work is partly due …

Blood, Tears, And Sweat: An Intersectional Excavation Of The Literary Vampire In Neoliberal Discourse, Jessica Elizabeth Birch

Open Access Dissertations

This project engages in a critical examination of the figure of the sympathetic vampire in paranormal romance novels and its relationship to neoliberal individualism, using an analytic frame informed by Valerie Smith's conceptualization of black feminist thinking; it focuses on the portrayal of the neoliberal institutions of nationalism, race, heterosexuality, and motherhood within Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories, L.A. Banks's Minion, and Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark. As the ideology of neoliberal individualism has shaped the dominant discourse of the United States, neoliberal individualism has also remade the discourse of monstrosity with regard to vampires. The shifting representation of the …

The City In Mind: Environmental Literacy And Adaptation In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Adam Edward Watkins

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that a new paradigm of selfhood emerged in nineteenth-century British literature, one that recognized the individual will and environmental influence not as antithetical but as dialectical forces in the formation of the self. The concept of an externally negotiated subject challenges both the inward and socially determined conceptions of self that have dominated the relevant criticism. Informed by empiricist, associationist, and evolutionary theories of the mind, the portrayals of subject-formation in this study highlight the radical changes occurring in the human environment in nineteenth-century, which catalyzed the conception of a malleable yet self-forming subject. Along with the …

Effects Of Dip-Coated Films On The Properties Of Implantable Intracortical Microelectrodes, Salah Sommakia

Open Access Dissertations

The successful clinical use of implantable intracortical microelectrodes (ICMs) to treat certain types of deafness, blindness, and paralysis is limited by a reactive tissue response (RTR) of the brain. This RTR culminates in the formation of a tight glial scar and a loss of neuronal density around implanted ICMs, and is accompanied by a decrease in signal to noise ratio and an increase in impedance. While no comprehensive mechanistic understanding of the underlying biology is currently agreed upon in the field, a general consensus exists around a highly volatile acute RTR phase. During this acute phase, the electrical properties of …

"I Have Thought Proper To Inform The World": Reading Unconventional Testaments Of 18th-Century New England Women, Elyssa Tardif

Open Access Dissertations

Early New England women chose to pass down what they owned and valued: clothing, cupboards, pewter dishes, commonplace books, etc. But some women passed down something more: a written testament, which sought to shape public opinion in colonial New England. A "testament" usefully suggests a text that both serves as a witness to lived experience as well as the means by which the individual herself can frame the narrative for those who come after. This project aims to examine not only written records but also their audience: who were the heirs to these testaments and how were the records preserved …

Intimate Otherness: Immigration In Recent Spanish Narrative, Lennie Coleman

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the personal spaces shared by Spaniards and immigrants in recent fiction. Traditional gender models and stereotypical images of immigrants are employed but modified, informing new models of Spanish identities in novels such as José Ovejero's Nunca pasa nada, Pablo Aranda's Ucrania, Lucía Etxebarria’s Cosmofobia, and young adult fiction. This work addresses how the sociocultural negotiations occurring in present-day Spain are represented in narrative. Building on migration studies, Spanish literary history, and concepts of hospitality and intimacy, I show that, whereas most current work on immigration in Spanish literary studies has focused on the public social sphere, intimacy …

Remembering Madrid: Urban Space And Memory From The Spanish Civil War To The Transition To Democracy, Enrique Tellez Espiga

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between memory and urban studies by emphasizing the importance of urban space and its experience in the (re)construction of collective memories of the Spanish Civil War, Francoism, and the Transition to democracy. Urban and memory studies have been relatively disconnected fields in Spanish Peninsular cultural studies so far. This study proposes that merging urban and memory studies allows for an innovative conceptualization of the importance that urban space and its experience plays in the formation and preservation of collective memories. Central to this analysis is the term of “mnemonic collective map,” a concept that I …

Fragmented Memories: The Archival Turn In Contemporary Caribbean Literature And Visual Culture, Marta Fernandez Campa

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which contemporary Caribbean visual artists and writers are creating archives of memory that address the erasures of subaltern perspectives characteristic of colonial, and postcolonial, archives. From an interdisciplinary perspective this project looks at the artwork of visual artists Christopher Cozier and Roshini Kempadoo, Dorothea Smartt’s and M. NourbeSe Philip’s poetry and the fiction of Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz. Their creative work configures modes of archiving ‘counter-memory’, that is, memory that contradicts or revises official history. By looking at different forms of counter-memory across genres and geographies I aim to demonstrate common aesthetic concerns …