Digital Commons Network^™

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Sacred Time In Hinduism, Netty Provost

Open Access Dissertations

In this work, I examine the nature of sacred time in religious experience. Applying the methodology of phenomenology of religion, I inspect the ways in which human beings experience sacred time in Hinduism and present an argument against Mircea Eliade’s understanding of the nature of sacred time in Hinduism. Eliade asserted that all sacred time in Hinduism is fundamentally circular in nature and that the experience of sacred time is an experience of the original act of creation being made consciously present to the individual.

I will scrutinize Eliade’s arguments on two fronts. Firstly, I argue against Eliade’s claim that …

A Unicorn's Tale: Examining The Experiences Of Black Women In Engineering Industry, Monique S. Ross

Open Access Dissertations

Black women have recently been identified as the most educated demographic in the United States, and yet they are grossly underrepresented in engineering. They comprise 6.4 % of the U.S. population and only 0.72 % of engineering industry. Meanwhile, engineers have been identified as the key to the United States’ ability to maintain its prominence and leadership in a competitive global economy due to their contribution to maintaining and improving our infrastructures and standard of living. This significance to society has spawned national initiatives geared towards broadening participation in engineering. This research study was designed to explore the experiences of …

A Critical Investigation Of Florida's Nclb Waiver And School Leader Sensemaking, Stacey Mercedes Kesten

Open Access Dissertations

This study used a combination of descriptive statistics and qualitative methods to investigate Florida’s NCLB waiver with respect to its school accountability grading system as it was applied to elementary, middle, and K-8 schools in a large, urban school district. Using publicly accessible school accountability data for the 2013-2014 academic year, the quantitative component of this study examined the extent to which Florida’s school grading system hides or highlights reading performance disparities across student subgroups. Quantitative results indicate that the exclusion of disaggregated data in accountability rating determinations functions to systematically mask critical disparities in reading proficiency between student subgroups, …

Making Ourselves Intelligible - A Nondescriptivist Approach To Propositional Attitudes, Sarah Beth Lesson

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for a function-first account of propositional attitude discourse that challenges a predominant assumption in philosophy of mind, that propositional attitude terms aim to refer – whether to brain states, functional states, dispositions, or entities posited to explain and predict. Using empirical evidence to support theoretical argumentation, I develop the Intelligibility View of propositional attitude discourse that highlights the distinctively normative role that the attribution of such states plays in social interaction. Building off the Intelligibility View, I argue that some of the most entrenched problems in this domain, including the problem of mental causation, problem …

Fashion Sense: Surfaces, Aesthetics, And Urban Space In U.S. Literature And Culture, 1843-1928, Monica Bowerman Urban

Open Access Dissertations

My dissertation argues that fashion operates in a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts to reveal a new form of perception and a mode of resistance predicated on fashion. Rather than being a tool of manipulation, fashion cultivates a conception of self. I take my cue from Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus’ theory of surface reading to suggest that the authors of novels and advice literature produce a mode of reading the surfaces of others. The key to understanding the role of fashion in the novel depends on what I am calling “fashion sense.” Fashion sense becomes a focal …

The Time Of Liberation: Angela Davis's Prison Abolition And Giorgio Agamben's Coming Community, Amy M. Pommerening

Open Access Dissertations

The project explores the ethical, social, and political subject of incarceration. I investigate Angela Davis’s multifaceted critique of the prison industrial complex – focusing primarily on the tenets of racism, classism, and capitalism – and take an interdisciplinary approach to advancing her call for prison abolition by way of Giorgio Agamben’s radical adjustments to traditional discourses about ontology in his work The Coming Community. Agamben’s rendering of ontology in terms of impotentiality and indifference, when put in dialogue with Davis, exposes latent and unexplored philosophic suggestions Davis is making – specifically regarding a non-normative interpretation of temporality and an operation …

The Acquisition Of Bare Nominals By Three Populations Of Spanish-English Bilingual Adults, Lauren Elizabeth Miller

Open Access Dissertations

The present study contributes to our understanding of cross-linguistic influence by studying three different groups of Spanish-English speakers’ knowledge of the distribution of definite articles in both of their languages using a battery of tests that require them to draw on different linguistic abilities. These three groups include native English speakers who learned Spanish after adolescence, native Spanish speakers who learned English after adolescence and simultaneous bilinguals who grew up in the United States speaking both English and Spanish from birth. Specifically, this study explores interpretation, production and intuition regarding the acceptability of definite articles in different contexts. Since the …

Wayfinding Localized Research Practices Through Mobile Technology, Adam W. Strantz

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents wayfinding—the process of orienting oneself amid the myriad users, technologies, and digital spaces impacting any writing work—as a research methodology for contextualizing writing in mobile environments. Central to web design and non-web service design, wayfinding is an important addition to rhetoric and writing studies. First, it is descriptive: it observes and records first, showing how people go about tasks, and revealing relationships among people and their environments. Second, it helps when people get lost and then found. It records traces of the mental work people do to get unlost. Finding themselves, peoples’ maps help them both narrate …

Data Mining Twitter For Cancer, Diabetes, And Asthma Insights, Kimberly Chulis

Open Access Dissertations

Twitter may be a data resource to support healthcare research. Literature is still limited related to the potential of Twitter data as it relates to healthcare. The purpose of this study was to contrast the processes by which a large collection of unstructured disease-related tweets could be converted into structured data to be further analyzed. This was done with the objective of gaining insights into the content and behavioral patterns associated with disease-specific communications on Twitter. Twelve months of Twitter data related to cancer, diabetes, and asthma were collected to form a baseline dataset containing over 34 million tweets. As …

Knowledge Modeling Of Phishing Emails, Courtney Falk

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates whether or not malicious phishing emails are detected better when a meaningful representation of the email bodies is available. The natural language processing theory of Ontological Semantics Technology is used for its ability to model the knowledge representation present in the email messages. Known good and phishing emails were analyzed and their meaning representations fed into machine learning binary classifiers. Unigram language models of the same emails were used as a baseline for comparing the performance of the meaningful data. The end results show how a binary classifier trained on meaningful data is better at detecting phishing …

The Politics Of Town Hall Meetings: Analyzing Constituent Relations-In-Interaction, Robert J. Green

Open Access Dissertations

The politics of town meetings proposes that town hall meetings are institutions of representative democracy that present an opportunity for constituents to hold their elected representatives accountable in a public setting. Constituent relations-in-interaction glosses a complex set of interactional practices and procedures through which ensembles of participants bring town hall meetings, as structures of social interaction, into being. This study uses conversation analysis, the study of talk-in-interaction, to show that the politics of town hall meetings orients to three types of accountability: Interactional accountability, political accountability, and public accountability. The articulation of these accountability types provides a sense of overall-structural …

The Power Of The Medieval Solomon-Magus And Solomon-Auctor Revealed Through The "Canterbury Tales", "Sir Gawain And The Green Knight", And The "Tale Of The Sankgreal", Karen R. Knudson

Open Access Dissertations

The Solomon-auctor and Solomon- magus traditions begin in the biblical record, and attribute authority to Solomon not only through his ever-familiar wisdom but also his authorship of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs; his administration and craftsmanship in the building of the Temple; his peaceableness as king; his understanding of the natural world; and his weakness for women. The context for these traditions in the Middle Ages illuminates, in particular, the work of Solomon- auctor and Solomon-magus in the Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal, which is …

Listening To Our Stories In Dusty Boxes: Indigenous Storytelling Methodology, Archival Practice, And The Cherokee Female Seminary, Emily M. Legg

Open Access Dissertations

Influenced by a drive to seek out interdisciplinary connections within Rhetoric and Composition and to put these intersections into practice, this dissertation seeks out the ways indigenous ways of knowing, such as storytelling, can provide a heuristic to understand the ways our dappled discipline works to create community-based knowledges, and how these knowledges sustained through storytelling can recover the histories in our discipline by opening up our boundaries framed by dominant origin stories. Building on the work of decolonial and indigenous scholars, this dissertation asserts that indigenous storytelling encourages researchers to re-tool dominant methods in existing colonial structures in order …

The Role Of Experience In Processing Foreign-Accented Speech, Fernando Llanos Lucas

Open Access Dissertations

The present study examines the perceptual accommodation of the bilabial stop-consonant voicing contrast (i.e., /b/ vs. /p/), in several English- and Spanish-accented contexts, by native Spanish listeners with different degrees of experience with accented speech. In a series of four experiments, we confronted three potential mechanisms for the perceptual accommodation of foreign-accented sounds. According to the first mechanism (phonetic relaxation), listeners accommodate foreign-accented sounds by relaxing the phonetic boundary between native speech sound categories. According to the second mechanism (phonetic calibration), listeners accommodate foreign-accented sounds by adjusting the location of native perceptual boundaries according to the phonetic realization of native …

Pedagogy And Profit: Multiethnic Literature, Gender And Young Adult Publishing, Allison S. Layfield

Open Access Dissertations

This project argues that the adult/young adult division has the effect of maintaining social difference—especially along the lines of race and gender—while simultaneously ignoring the process of maintaining social hierarchies that occurs during the publication, reviewing and educational selection processes. Chapter One brings together the history of YAL as a pedagogical tool with its publishing history in order to show that both forces have redefined the genre in response to changing notions of social responsibility tied to American citizenship. There were five major eras within the history of young adult literature, each of which responded to changing notions of citizenship. …

Encounters Beyond The Interface: Data Structures, Material Feminisms, And Composition, Christine L. Masters

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that data literacy should be taught in college writing classes along with other new media literacies. Drawing from several areas of study, this dissertation establishes a definition of data literacy, introduces a feminist methodological approach to Big Data and data studies, and makes a case for teaching data literacy in first year composition and professional writing courses as a foundational writing-related literacy. Information written into and read from databases supports research activities in any number of fields from STEM to the humanities; while different disciplines approach databases and data structures from diverse perspectives, all students need foundational …

Methods To Facilitate Community Participation In Humanitarian Engineering Projects: Laying The Foundation For A Learning Platform, Andrea Mazzurco

Open Access Dissertations

Humanitarian engineering (HE) is a new interdisciplinary field that is rapidly emerging worldwide. Many not-for-profit organizations such as Engineers Without Borders, Practical Action, and International Development Enterprise have been flourishing with the goal of providing technological solutions to those who need them the most. In engineering programs across the U.S., HE, service-learning, community engagement, and similar programs are gaining popularity because they offer an efficient way to meet ABET accreditation criteria, while also teaching valuable technical and professional skills to engineering students. However, the cultural, social, and political differences among communities and engineers often add degrees of difficulty that cannot …

Decentering The Writing Program Archive: How Composition Instructors Save And Share Their Teaching Materials, Stacy Olivia Nall

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation decenters the writing program archive through research on instructors’ digital archives. Artifacts of composition instruction are no longer saved to print archives alone; rather, digital technologies expand the locations where artifacts of writing pedagogy can be archived and accessed. The following archival ethnography, focused on a community engagement writing course in the Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) program, finds that many digital archives of composition are hidden to outside researchers or not sustained (which are theorized as either “abandoned” or “pop-up” archives). At the same time, some pedagogical materials are publicly visible by virtue of personal web spaces …

Intelligent Control Of A Class Of Nonlinear Systems, Phuong D. Ngo

Open Access Dissertations

The objective of this study is to improve and propose new fuzzy control algorithms for a class of nonlinear systems. In order to achieve the objectives, novel stability theorems as well as modeling techniques are also investigated. Fuzzy controllers in this work are designed based on the fuzzy basis function neural networks and the type-2 Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models.

For a class of single-input single-output nonlinear systems, a new stability condition is derived to facilitate the design process of proportional-integral Mamdani fuzzy controllers. The stability conditions require a new technique to calculate the dynamic gains of nonlinear systems represented by fuzzy …

It Is "Broken" And "Accented": Non-Native English-Speaking (Nnes) Graduate Students' Perceptions Toward Nnes Instructors' English, Hyo Jung Keira Park

Open Access Dissertations

This study investigates the perceptions of non-native English-speaking graduate students towards non-native English speaking (NNES) instructors’ accented English. Students (N=161) who were enrolled in an oral English course at Purdue University participated in a survey. Follow-up interviews were conducted with voluntary participants (N=9) to examine the perceptions of NNES graduate students towards NNES instructors in depth. The findings in the survey showed that more than one third of the participants experienced difficulty with their NNES instructors due to their limited intelligibility and restricted command of English. Furthermore, one third of the participants expressed that they would transfer to another section …

L2 Effect On Bilingual Spanish/English Encoding Of Motion Events: Does Manner Salience Transfer?, Heidi E. Parker

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores the potential effect of a second language (L2) on first language (L1) encoding of motion events. The domain of interest is MANNER and the goal is to investigate if the degree of manner salience can be restructured under the effect of a L2. Slobin (2004, 2006) proposes an expansion of Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) binary typology and observes that the degree of manner saliencevaries cross-linguistically. The two languages investigated in this study, Spanish and English, are at divergent points along the cline of manner salience. In addition, Slobin (1996b) suggests dividing MANNER into tier one (T1) …

Pick Yourself Up By Your Broadband: Access, The Digital Divide, And Migrant Workers, Enrique Reynoso Jr.

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a process called pizarron borrado: reorienting “failure” as a productive part of the research process. Using the backdrop of research on migrant workers’ technological access, I argue that classrooms can become much more accessible by moving from failure and looking at points where writing and research have moved in unexpected ways. As scholars such as Grabill have pointed out, access to computers and the Internet is an issue of public policy, and technical communicators are strategically positioned to contribute to, “policy making, research, and teaching” in ways that can help expand these services to underserved and underrepresented …

Emerging Genres, Dangerous Classifications: The Kairos Of Digital Composing Policy, Ellery Sills

Open Access Dissertations

Emerging Genres, Dangerous Classifications: The Kairos of Digital Composing Policy argues that writing policy infrastructure plays a significant (if often invisible) role in affording emerging digital genres in rhetoric and composition. Within the last few decades, the accelerating transformations and instabilities of emerging genres have posed a challenge for contemporary writing programs, which demonstrate a persistent wariness over incorporating digital composing into their mission. In response to this challenge, national educational associations have issued a growing number of policy statements meant to encourage a broader understanding of composing in the classroom. Curiously, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to …

An Evaluation Of A Post-Entry Test: An Item Analysis Using Classical Test Theory (Ctt), Suthathip Thirakunkovit

Open Access Dissertations

This study is an analysis of test reliability of two screening tasks (C-test and cloze-elide) in the Assessment of College English-International test (ACE-In), a post-entry test developed at Purdue University. The study uses Classical Test Theory (CTT) to assess the reliability of these test items. CTT is selected because this theory is the standard comprehensive procedure for developing, evaluating, and scaling test items (DeVellis, 2006). This reliability analysis is important because it is a prerequisite to the test validation process. This study has three major research questions:

1. What is the item characteristics of C-test and cloze elide?

2. What …

Racism And Conceptual Analysis: A Defense Of The Wittgensteinian Approach, Alberto G. Urquidez

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation defends Ludwig Wittgenstein’s grammatical approach to philosophy in the context of contemporary theories of racism. Grammatical analysis does not aim at theory-construction, but at conceptual clarity that is free from conceptual confusion. My aim is to dissolve conceptual confusion in contemporary theories of racism. I clarify ordinary uses of ‘racism’ and its cognates, and key analytical terms (e.g., ‘description,’ ‘correct use,’ ‘definition,’ ‘disagreement,’ and so on). Whereas contemporary ‘descriptive approaches’ are explanatory on the model of hypothetico-deductive theories in the natural sciences, the grammatical method is purely descriptive on the model of clarifying the rules of a legal …

Exploring Animacy As A Mnemonic Dimension, Joshua Edward Vanarsdall

Open Access Dissertations

There is a great deal of evidence across cognitive science that animacy, or more generally, the features that make up what it means to be a living thing, is a foundational dimension of human cognition. In perception, animates both capture attention (Pratt, Radulescu, Guo, & Abrams, 2010) and are relatively immune to change blindness (New, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2007). Developmental work places the animate-inanimate distinction as one of the first categories children learn (Opfer & Gelman, 2011). Work in neuroscience points toward a fundamental role for animacy in semantic memory (Caramazza & Mahon, 2003), and linguists have identified animacy as …

Developing L2 Reading Fluency: Implementation Of An Assisted Repeated Reading Program With Adult Esl Learners, Matthew C. Allen

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether assisted repeated reading is an effective way for adult second language (L2) learners of English to develop oral and silent reading fluency rates. Reading fluency is an underdeveloped construct in second language studies, both in research and practice. This study first lays out a framework of text difficulty levels and reading rate thresholds for intermediate and advanced L2 readers of English based upon a theoretical framework of automatization of the linguistic elements of reading through structured practice and skill development. This framework was then implemented through a single-case design (SCD), an …

Using Reality Television And Media Narratives As Political Commodities To Sell Audiences On The 2016 United States Electoral Campaign, Ramon Febus

Open Access Dissertations

Reality television cultural and media narratives were used and marketed in the 2016 United States Electoral Campaign to reach and incite audiences and media consumers. Film analysis, television analysis, culture studies, rhetorical analysis, multi cultural discourse analysis, and social factor analysis were used as methods to contextualize, explain and juxtapose reality television media discourse as political marketing for audiences. Factual entertainment and reality television are historized to explain the current political environment and how it relates to the media atmosphere of television, social media and analyzing audiences. It is concluded that neoliberal narratives have led to the current media landscape. …

Language Crossing And Multiaccentuality In Women Writers Del Gran Caribe: Narrative, Drama, And Performance, Francisca Aguilo Mora

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for a much-needed reconsideration of language and gender in the constructions of local, postnational, and global identities in the Gran Caribe, which dislocates the Latino US, athough not necessarily dismisses it. I explore the ways in which Caribbean and US Caribbean-origin women writers and playwrights such as Achy Obejas, Mayra Santos Febres, Jennine Capó Crucet, Aurora Arias, Caridad Svich, and Josefina Báez reinterpret language through practices of language crossing and linguistic virtuosity, thus creating a grancaribeña community of practice. By questioning macro-narratives through the linguistic, aesthetic, and thematic components of their texts, these authors and …

South Florida Visual Artists: Meaning And Practices When Making Artwork, Christina Sanchez Volatier

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explored the process of art-making for visual artists through a sociological perspective. Visual artists are distinct in that they interact with and manipulate physical materials on a daily basis in order to visually communicate and share with other people. A visual artist’s creative artistic process is typically considered an expression of individualism and inter-subjectivity, however, this project investigated the social context of making artwork. The aim of this dissertation was to ground artists’ processes in their experiences and practices. This study used a qualitative method to explore artists’ work in order to understand the ways these artists engaged …