Digital Commons Network^™

Out Of Our Depth: Hyper-Extensionality And The Return Of Three-Dimensional Media, Justin Alan Brecese

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work theorizes the contemporary attraction to three-dimensional media. In doing so, it reframes ongoing debates surrounding digital three-dimensional media in order to critique the neoliberal social relations such media engender. I argue that the contemporary interest in dimensionality, especially regarding digital media, is symptomatic of a broad cultural shift, wherein millions of lives are now essentially being lived through two-dimensional, "flat" media, which have consequently generated a lack of spatial relationships and a craving or desire for "depth." This "desire for depth" has arisen in contemporary society because people are being "spread too thin" through a combination of the …

Removal Of Bisphenol A Model Compounds And Related Substances Using Octolig®, Rachael Josephine Alessio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bisphenol A used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins is ubiquitous in the environment. The raw material is released to the environment during the manufacturing process and by leaching from consumer products. Recent studies are suggesting that low-dose amounts of Bisphenol A may have adverse health effects on humans. The possibility of removing Bisphenol A from natural water sources or from solvents used to extract the material from consumer products before they enter the market has been studied. The use of model compounds and related substances (4-isopropylphenol, 4-(t-butyl) phenol, and nitrophenols) have been used to study their …

Renegotiating Identities, Cultures And Histories: Oppositional Looking In Shelley Niro's "This Land Is Mime Land", Jennifer Danielle Mccall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My master's thesis explores the photographic series "This Land is Mime Land," which Shelley Niro made in 1992. Despite this work's complex form and structure, there are currently no sustained studies of this series alone, or books solely dedicated to Niro's art. Instead, "Mime Land" is often discussed in compilations that address a number of Native artists, Western feminist practices, or multiple works in Niro's oeuvre. My thesis fills this gap, as I closely investigate how "Mime Land" asks the viewer to look at visual culture, histories and Niro herself. Bell hooks's definition of the "oppositional gaze" - meaning a …

Tales Of Empire: Orientalism In Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature, Brittany Renee Griffin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children's literature often does not hold the same weight in the studies of a culture as its big brother, the novel. However, as children's literature is written by adults, to convey information which is important for a child to learn in order to be a functioning member of that society, it can be analyzed in the same way novels are, to provide insight into the broad sweeping issues that concerned the adults of that era. Nineteenth-century British children's literature in particular reveals the deep-seated preoccupation the British Empire had with its eastern colonies, and shows how England's relationship to those …

"You Understand Me Now": Sampling Nina Simone In Hip Hop, Amanda Renae Modell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overarching goal of this research is to explicate the implications of hip hop artists sampling Nina Simone's music in their work. By regarding Simone as a critical social theorist in her own right, one can hear the ways that hip hop artists are mobilizing her tradition of socially active self-definition from the Civil Rights/Black Power era(s) in the post-2000 United States. By examining both the lyrics and the instrumental compositions of Lil Wayne, Juelz Santana, Common, Tony Moon, Talib Kweli, Mary J. Blige and Will.I.Am, G-Unit and Timbaland, and bearing in mind the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, …

Economic Culture And Trading Behaviors In Information Markets, Khalid Nasser Alhayyan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are four main components for influencing traders' behaviors in an information market context: trader characteristics, organizational characteristics, market design, and external information. This dissertation focuses on investigating the impact of individual trader characteristics on trading behaviors. Two newly-developed constructs, highly relevant to information market contexts, were identified to increase our understanding about trading behaviors: trader's economic culture and trader independence. The theory of planned behavior is used as the theoretical basis to postulate hypotheses for empirical testing. Data collected from subjects through a series of web-based experiments shows that trader participation can be fostered through recruiting individuals who are …

Becoming The Corporate Native...Virtually: An Ethnography And Corporate Culture Assessment Of A Virtual Organization, Jennifer Laurel Avery

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents an investigation of a rarely studied business entity in the cross disciplinary literature on organizational culture, a completely virtually organized firm. Subscribing to a conviction that any culture can only be understood through an approach that uncovers the lived experiences of its members, I employ the traditional anthropological method of participant observation as my foundational data gathering technique. In an effort to help engage anthropology with the cross disciplinary organizational culture literature generally, I also use two well-known methods of corporate culture assessment from the management sciences. I provide a number of recommendations to the sponsors of …

Socioscientific Issues: A Path Towards Advanced Scientificliteracy And Improved Conceptual Understanding Of Socially Controversial Scientific Theories, Dean William Pinzino

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This thesis investigates the use of socioscientific issues (SSI) in the high school science classroom as an introduction to argumentation and socioscientific reasoning, with the goal of improving students' scientific literacy (SL). Current research is reviewed that supports the likelihood of students developing a greater conceptual understanding of scientific theories as well as a deeper understanding of the nature of science (NOS), through participation in informal and formal forms of argumentation in the context of SSI. Significant gains in such understanding may improve a student's ability to recognize the rigor, legitimacy, and veracity of scientific claims and better discern …

The Rhetoric Of Evidence In Recent Documentary Film And Video, Steven W. Schoen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Documentary is a genre of film that portrays "real" events using depictions that connote the objectivity and facticity implied by the processes of photorealism. Many contemporary documentary theorists and critics observe a constitutive problem in this ethos: despite the apparent constructions and agendas of documentary filmmaking, the framing and assumption of documentary as a window on the world tend to naturalize its own constructions as "real." Critics who engage documentary trace the multitude of ways this problem plays out in particular films. These projects yield many important insights, but they most often approach documentary as a form of inherently deficient …

An Exploration Of The Organization-Public Relationship Through Online Media: The Case Of The Tampa Bay Rays, Steven Lynch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Organizations are working to establish and maintain relationships with their target publics using a wide variety of communication tools. How they work at developing this organization-public relationship (OPR) is open to the organization, but previous research suggests there are measurement scales that can indicate what factors an organization may be doing right and those they may need to improve on.

This study examines relationship building efforts of the Tampa Bay Rays organization and the representation it has demonstrated through online content. Utilizing a content analysis, sample articles were collected and coded to examine if relationship components could be found …

Listening In Action: Students' Mobile Music Experiences In The Digital Age, Rebecca Marie Rinsema

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the introduction of the iPod in 2001, portable music listening devices that play or stream compressed music files have steadily become the standard devices used to listen to music. Despite this, few music education researchers have investigated the role that such devices have in shaping students' music listening experiences. This dissertation is meant to fill that gap in the literature and contribute to the existing sociological and psychological literature on music listening in everyday life.

Phenomenology served as the theoretical framework for the design of the study. 10 college students from three institutions underwent iterative interviews and were asked …

Monstrous Dialogues: The Host And South Korean Inverted Exile, James Lloyd Turner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bong Joon-ho‟s monster movie blockbuster, The Host (Gweomul, 2006), is the most commercially successful film in South Korean cinema history. The film‟s popularity and significance derive from its unearthing of the ambivalence concerning South Korea‟s rapid transformation from a rural dictatorship to an urban democracy with one of the strongest economies on the planet. This ambivalence is buried beneath a veneer of "progress" blanketing contemporary South Korea and constitutes a condition I call inverted exile. The Host explicitly engages life in inverted exile through my notion of aesthetic dialogue. Aesthetic dialogue, takes influence from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and …

An Examination Of Diet, Acculturation And Risk Factors For Heart Disease Among Jamaican Immigrants, Carol Renee Oladele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: The South Florida region is home to over 85,000 Jamaican immigrants. Yet, little is known about the dietary intakes and predictors of risk of disease within this immigrant group. An assessment of dietary intakes and the development of dietary intake methodologies specific to the Jamaican population was important as it permitted accurate estimation of the nutrient intakes of this immigrant population whose dietary habits are not well documented. In addition, nothing is known about the prevalence of risk factors for heart disease or factors influencing risk factors among this immigrant group. The purpose of this study was to assess …

Sorting Through The Junk Box: Dickens's Objects And The Great Exhibition Of 1851, Audrey Raymi Grounds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Bleak House , Dickens satirizes contemporary conditions in London in order to diagnose what he sees as social and industrial ills to prescribe a solution to the "Condition-of-England" question. Beginning with a review of the topicality in the novel, I use Dickens's personal letters, the text of Bleak House , and articles from Household Words to explain his contempt with the Great Exhibition, misguided philanthropy, and sanitary conditions, among others. Ultimately, it is his anathema to the Great Exhibition which drives both Dickens's plot and the issues he explores. Dickens's mockery of England is refracted and emphasized through his …

The Holistic Complementary Structure Of Western Bio-Medicine And Traditional Healing And Achieving Complete Health, Candace Gail Oubre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Achieving complete health requires a deep understanding of complementary cultural competency sensitivity between physician and patient. This may include but is not limited to access to preventative health care resources, access to health educational resources and access to cultural healing resources, for example, shamans, Ayurvedic physicians, and herbal healers. Advocates of cultural competency emphasize great importance on knowledge of the patients' cultural background; however, the transcendence of this knowledge can be explained further through complementary cultural competency sensitivity. This is when the cultures of the physician and patient complement each other in terms of understanding what is in the patients' …

Historical Archaeology Of The Pine Level Site (8de14), Desoto County, Florida, Jana Futch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1866 the seat of Manatee County was moved to Pine Level, a newly-formed town in the wilderness of south Florida. By the 1880s, it contained stores, boardinghouses, churches, and government buildings. In 1887, Pine Level became DeSoto County’s first seat. However, when it lost county seat status to Arcadia only 18 months later, in 1888, Pine Level rapidly declined in population and importance, and eventually died out. The investigations of the Pine Level site detailed in this thesis were carried out as a public archaeology project, involving the DeSoto County Historical Society, University of South Florida, and the Florida …

General Strain Theory And Juvenile Delinquency: A Cross-Cultural Study, Wen-Hsu Lin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

General strain theory (GST) (Agnew, 1992, 2001, 2006a) is an established criminological theory. Although the theory has been examined by many and enjoys empirical support, some limitations of previous studies need to be addressed. First, previous studies have not incorporated all major types of strain in their models; hence, the effects of these strains on delinquency are unclear. Second, many previous studies did not include negative emotions and even negative emotions other than anger. Finally, and the most serious limitation, many previous studies rely heavily on samples from Western countries, mostly the U.S.; thus, possible cultural influences are ignored. Although …

The Relationship Between American Media Exposure And Trinidadian Female Adolescents' Body Image Satisfaction, Clarabelle Ferguson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies have examined the development of body image among people, especially girls and young women. Many factors have been associated with the development of body image dissatisfaction. Especially important are exposure to mass media and its relationship with three theoretical constructs: Awareness of a thin ideal, internalization of a thin ideal, and perceived pressures to be thin. Extending existing research, this study examined through experimentation the relationships among exposure to American media content and the awareness and internalization of the American norms and expectations for thinness, pressures to adopt these norms, and Trinidadian female adolescents' body image satisfaction. Based …

My Bad Romance: Exploring The Queer Sublimity Of Diva Reception, Blake Paxton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the historic relationship between pop music divas and gay male fandom. It charts fan experiences from the early 60s with Judy Garland to contemporary times with pop diva Lady Gaga. This project also gives a description of the embodied experience of Brett Farmer’s “queer sublimity of diva reception.” Farmer (2005) argues that diva worship among gay men has become a queer sublimity, “the transcendence of a limiting heteronormative materiality and the sublime reconstruction, at least in fantasy, of a more capacious, kinder, queerer world” (p. 170). Using the methods of participant observation in drag performance and karaoke …

The Culture Of Mean: Gender, Race, And Class In Mediated Images Of Girls' Bullying, Emily Davis Ryalls

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines narratives about female bullying and aggression through mediated images of "mean girls." Through textual analysis of popular media featuring mean girls (television shows such as Gossip Girl and films like Mean Girls), as well as national news coverage of the case of Phoebe Prince, who reportedly committed suicide after being bullied by girls from her school, this feminist examination questions how the image of the mean girl is raced and classed. This dissertation values an interdisciplinary approach to research that works to make sense of the forces that produce bodies as gendered, raced, and classed.

One of …

The Hippocratic Corpus And Soranus Of Ephesus: Discovering Men's Minds Through Women's Bodies, Megan Michelle Slaughter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses what cultural influences and social circumstances shaped the works of the Hippocratic Corpus and Soranus's Gynecology. This thesis will illustrate how these medical texts are representative of how women were viewed by men in Classical Greece and Early Imperial Rome, respectively. It deals additionally with how these gynecological works in turn impacted the way in which society viewed and treated women. In particular, these medical writers' changing views of the act of conception shed light on the differing attitudes of their cultures. Thus far research on these time periods and works has focused too narrowly on one …

The Abjection Of The Pythia, Alaina Dyann Tackitt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent academic research has garnered considerable popular interest on the matter of whether the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, was high. Current findings aim to prove that vapors emitted from beneath the tripod on which the Pythia prophesied were intoxicating, thereby causing her frenzied state and statements. Contemporary scientists’ intense interest in proving that the Pythia was not prophetic evokes the question of why the once widely accepted, now generally rejected, idea that a female body can serve as a vessel for the words of the immortal deity holds such significance for modern science. When this curiosity is considered in …

Revision And Validation Of A Culturally-Adapted Online Instructional Module Using Edmundson's Cap Model: A Dbr Study, Marie A. Tapanes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the present study, the Cultural Adaptation Process Model was applied to an online module to include adaptations responsive to the online students’ culturallyinfluenced learning styles and preferences. The purpose was to provide the online learners with a variety of course material presentations, where the e-learners had the opportunity to select their preferred structure for learning. The research methodology for the study is Design-Based Research (DBR), which has been identified by many prominent researchers in Instructional Technology as the most productive research approach for the field. DBR integrates different data types and data collection methods (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed) with …

Fantasy, Leisure, And Labor: A Story Of Temple Terrace's Historic Architecture, Rachelle Hostetler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to explore how the community planning and style of housing of Temple Terrace Estates embodies the socio-economic conflicts inherent to the United States in the 1920s. To account for missing narratives, I will approach this research from a critical cultural perspective. I chose this approach as a way to investigate the power dynamics in the city during the time it was known as Temple Terrace Estates Inc. The Estates attracted investors by encouraging northerners to purchase a Mediterranean Revival or Spanish Colonial style villa in conjunction with a parcel of a large orange grove, …

"Take Another Look At 'Em": Passing Performances Of Gender In The Junior-Freshman Weddings Of Florida State College For Women, 1909-1925, Sarah Lynne Jünke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Junior-freshmen weddings were all-female mock weddings that were performed as annual traditions on college campuses throughout the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth-century. In the weddings, college women played both the men's and women's roles, and were joined as husband and wife by their college administration. This thesis focuses on the junior-freshman weddings of Florida State College for Women during the years 1909-1925 and argues that the weddings expressed the conflicted cultural contexts that college women in the Progressive Era confronted, but that, significantly, this expression was done through passing performances of gender. The women's choice of passing …

Role Of Cmc-Embedded Webquests In Enhancement Of Online Students' Knowledge And Understanding Of German Culture - A Case Study, Radhika Lothe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Existing approaches to teaching `culture' in the realm of Distance foreign language (FL) instruction and gaps within; under-researched Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) tool of webquests; and Mediation in Sociocultural Theory (SCT) have all led to the following case study. This study was guided by the constructs of `culture' in FL instruction, Sociocultural Theory, and literature in CALL and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).

This study examines how CMC-embedded webquests (asynchronous and synchronous CMC components built into webquests) developed online students' knowledge and understanding of German culture. Additionally, this study examines what mediating strategies (Lidz, 2002) were used by the online students …

The Return Of The 1950s Nuclear Family In Films Of The 1980s, Chris Steve Maltezos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the 1980s the cinematic nuclear family flourished again after the self-explorative 1960s and turbulent 1970s. This thesis explores the portrayal of the idealized American family in film between the 1950s and 1980s. The 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause reflects the 1950s cinematic family model. My investigation includes the role of the father figure and the bonds in intergenerational relationships. During the early 1980s, films such Ordinary People and ET: The Extraterrestrial reflect the need to reevaluate the 1950s ideal nuclear family. My examination of these films continues to include the importance of the father figure and bonds between …

Cold War Playboys: Models Of Masculinity In The Literature Of Playboy, Taylor Joy Mitchell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"Cold War Playboys: Models of Masculinity in the Literature of Playboy" emphasizes the literary voices that emerged in response to the Cold War's redefinitions of space and sexuality and, thus, adds to the growing national discourse of Cold War literary and masculinity studies. I argue that the literature Playboy includes has always been a necessary feature to creating its masculinity model; however, that very literature often destabilizes the magazine's grand narrative because it presents readers with alternative models of masculinity. To make that argument, I presume five things: 1) masculinity, like femininity, is a construct; 2) the mid-century masculinity …

Translation And Adaptation Of The Center For Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (Ces-D) Scale Into Tigrigna Language For Tigrigna Speaking Eritrean Immigrants In The United States, Mulubrhan Fisseha Mogos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Depression is one of the oldest known mental health conditions. It is acknowledged to be a global health problem that affects people from any culture or ethnic group. The prevalence of depression widely varied across countries and cultures. The cross-cultural relevance of the concept of depression, its screening or diagnosis, and cultural equivalence of items used to measure symptoms of depression has been area of research interest. Differences in prevalence rates in depression have been suggested as being due to research artifacts, such as use of instrument developed for one culture to another culture. With the current trend of globalization …

_Alien_ Thoughts: Spectatorial Pleasure And Mind Reading In Ridley Scott's Horror Film, Cecilia Madeline Bolich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pleasure experienced in an unpleasant film genre, like horror, has prompted numerous discussions in film studies. Noted scholars like Carol J. Clover and Noël Carroll have rationalized spectatorial enjoyment of a genre that capitalizes on human anxieties and complicates cultural categories. Clover admits that horror initially satisfies sadistic tendencies in young male viewers but then pushes them to cross gender lines and identify with the strong female heroine who defeats the film's threat. Carroll provides a basic explanation, citing spectators' cognitive curiosity as the source of pleasure. Both scholars are right to consider emotional, psychological, and cognitive experiences felt by …