Digital Commons Network^™

Elemental Climate Disaster Texts And Queer Ecological Temporality, Laura Mattson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis approaches climate disaster texts as an opportunity to challenge constructions of the body, space, and time. Developed from embodied experiential knowledge about hurricanes, my work will explore how climate disasters can teach us to reimagine human-nature relationships. In my two analysis chapters, I use critical textual analysis and autoethnography to challenge particular representations of the human-nature relationship as a binary between nature and culture. By intervening in the nature-culture binary, I theorize queer ecological temporality as an opportunity to reveal and challenge constructions of nature and time. Working at the intersections of queer and ecocritical theory, this thesis …

How Audiovisual Composition Reveals Gendered Limitations And Possibilities In Lady Bird In The Wake Of #Metoo, Chandler Micah Reeder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the film Lady Bird and the historical coincidence of its release one month after the online movement #MeToo began. By giving frame and sound equal importance in my analysis of the film, rather than opposing these elements, I emphasize audiovisual composition and reveal the mutual dependence within what are considered traditional divisions of theory in cinema. These oppositions relate to control and escape, as they are portrayed through the mother and daughter characters, Marion and Lady Bird, as well as through image and sonic elements. My work demonstrates how the audiovisual composition of the film mediates …

Roots In Antiquity: A Comparative Study Of Two Cultures, Lara Younes Freajah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted with the goal to provide an in-depth analysis of the analogous qualities of two very distinct yet similar cultures: the Arab and Sarakatsan cultures, with a particular focus on personal matters that deal with family and kinship. Despite the difference in religions, both groups demonstrate a substantive set of similar traits especially in terms of the interactions, dynamics, and functionality of family relations in addition to the highly-esteemed values that dictate everyday conduct. As a first-generation Arab Muslim who immigrated to the United States, I use the culture in which I am entrenched as a basis …

The Concept Of Freedom In American Literature At The Dawn Of The Nation, Mykhailo Pylynskyi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes American literature dedicated to the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the events which led to it. The overarching goal of the analysis is to lay out a coherent account of the concept of freedom in American literature of that time period. To reach this goal I will use The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke as a main philosophical text, which outlines the key elements of political freedom. As the main literature pieces of the selected time period, Common Sense by Thomas Paine and The Liberty Song were chosen. I will also use multiple songs by …

An Ecology Of Care: Training In Dependence And Caretaking In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Elizabeth Rossbach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the popular open-world fantasy RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt RED 2015) and the ways in which the Witcher 3 brings questions of care and dependence to a digital medium so often thought of in terms of violence and/or mastery. Much of the previous discourse on video games, particularly role-playing games, has tended to center on violence and what this might mean for players behavior or the potential real world effects of this violence. Departing from a focus on violence I argue that the Witcher 3, reveals the potentials of open-world RPG video games to …

Reading Rape And Answering With Empathy: A New Approach To Sexual Assault Education For College Students, Brianna Jerman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The issue of sexual assault on college campuses is addressed in part by a mandate that all college students complete some form of sexual assault education. While current education programs have proven successful in teaching bystander education and dispelling rape myths, they have not proven to increase reporting rates while also decreasing the number of sexual assaults. This dissertation makes a pedagogical argument for a new approach to sexual assault and prevention education at the college level that would use literary rape narratives to dispel sexual assault myths, teach trauma theory principles, and address intersectional aspects of rape culture with …

Adaptations Of Ovid’S Metamorphoses In Late Medieval France: Material And Moral Recontextualization In The Tapestry Of Narcissus At The Fountain, Morgan J. Macey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a result of Ovid’s prominence in Northern Europe from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, French adaptations of and commentaries on the Metamorphoses from the late medieval period abound. Here, I address the physical and moral transformation of the Narcissus myth in the tapestry of Narcissus at the Fountain. Specifically, I explore how the tapestry’s presentation of the youth transforms Ovid’s verse in a tantalizing yet moralizing image. To aid in this endeavour, I survey the intermediate sources which inspired said transformation. I argue the lavish clothing, lush garden, ornate fountain, and solemn reflection featured in the tapestry …

Human Rights, Emotion, And Critical Realism: Proposing An Emotional Ontology Of International Human Rights, Ben Luongo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a critical realist framework of human rights and argues that emotion plays a foundational role in constituting a human rights ontology. I build this framework as a critical response to other IR human rights theories which have largely been developed in accordance with either empiricist or rationalist paradigms. Both empiricist and rationalist theories fail to articulate a firm ontological foundation which can support their human rights claims.

This ontological concern may not seem too important for human rights scholars interested in more substantive political issues, but it does lead to problems because no human rights theory is …

Selling White Masculinity: An Analysis Of Cultural Intermediaries In The Craft Beverage Industry, Erik Tyler Withers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to use the craft beverage industry as a case study in which to investigate how white masculinity is reproduced within consumer spaces. This study explores the roles that cultural intermediaries in the craft beverage industry play in the reproduction and contestation of white masculinity. Cultural intermediaries can be understood as tastemakers who play a large role in assigning value and legitimacy to products, practices and people within consumer industries. Intermediaries such as marketing and advertising firms, industry writers, and critics have been widely studied in the past. However, the day to day interactional work …

Plasticity In Animated Children’S Cartoons: The Neoliberal Transforming Bodies And Static Worlds Of Ok Ko And Gumball, Rachel E. Cox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through the study of OK KO! Let’s Be Heroes! and The Amazing World of Gumball, I argue that children’s cartoons represent and recreate anxieties toward money’s plasticity in the plasticity of the cartoon bodies and worlds. I closely examine the ambivalence towards abstraction’s plasticity in contemporary children’s cartoons to trace the neoliberal ambivalence towards money’s plasticity. While much scholarship has grappled with what can be understood as animatic plasticity, very little of it takes on the questions raised about neoliberal culture by televised children’s cartoons. Cartoons are important to study in this respect because their form allows for unbridled plasticity. …

Representations Of Indian Christians In Bollywood Movies, Ryan A. D'Souza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses discursive formation as the methodological approach to examine representations of Indian Christians in eleven Bollywood movies released during the 2004-2014 decade. The decade witnessed the exit and eventual re-entry of the Hindu Right, and the citizenry during that period experienced centrist, liberal, and secular governance. Since the present of Indian Christianity is inextricable from a colonial past, and Bollywood emerges in response to colonialism, a postcolonial intervention in methodology and theory is undertaken. A postcolonial perspective illuminates the discourses that enable the formation of the postcolonial nation, i.e., the ways a nation imagines its culture, people, traditions, …

Mobilizing Images Of Black Pain And Death Through Digital Media: Visual Claims To Collective Identity After “I Can’T Breathe”, Aryn Kelly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of Eric Garner’s 2014 public execution at the hands of NYPD officers, online spaces such as Twitter saw an influx of remediated imagery referencing Ramsey Orta’s bystander cell phone video of Garner’s death. These images often explicitly reference the chokehold that killed Garner and/or they reappropriate Garner’s last words: “I can’t breathe.” To what formal dimensions in Orta’s video are these remediated images responding? What broader cultural work is the creation of these images doing?

In this project, I regard Orta’s video as the point of entry for considering the cultural work of remediating images from it, …

Baltimore Mobility: The Wire, Local Documentary, And The Politics Of Distance, Richard M. Farrell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extending scholarship on Baltimore’s media landscape, I observe how two moving-image texts, HBO’s The Wire (David Simon, 2002-2008) and 12 O’clock Boys (Lotfy Nathan, 2013), figure space and, by extension, mobility in the city. Specifically, I articulate how both figures of mobility relate with each other and to the mobility inequality that has historically and disproportionately plagued communities along the city’s east-west axis. Overall, in both texts, I read a shared anxiety toward sources of distant mediation. Through its sober audio-visual style and serial organization, I find The Wire fatalistically figures Baltimore mobility as conditioned by omnidirectional flows of power. …

When Faced With A Democracy: Political Socialization Of First-Generation Ethnic Russian Immigrants In Central And South Florida, Marina Seraphine Mendez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is a qualitative study about political socialization of first-generation ethnic Russian immigrants in Central and South Florida. The method used is a constructivist grounded theory with two-level coding. Based on data collected in forty in-depth interviews, I constructed a model of political socialization. It incorporates a starting point (the legal status in the US), triggers (English language proficiency, spousal support, and parenting), political socialization agencies (English as Second Language classes, a spouse, volunteering, the church) and output structures (bureaucratic institutions). Using respondents’ opinions about American vs. Russian political systems and mass media, their political participation, and views about political …

Assessing Study Abroad Relationship With Perceived Global Competence Levels Of Undergraduate Business Students, Pavla Ozkul

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Educating for global competence is vital if college graduates are to thrive in today’s technology driven and globally competitive world. One strategy for introducing students to unknown cultures and gaining important life skills is participation in a study abroad experience.

The purpose of this exploratory quasi-experimental research design study was to assess the relationship between perceived global competence levels and participation in study abroad experiences of business undergraduate students. The study assessed three dimensions of personal development: cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal in a multicultural environment using a total of six global competence scales. Data were gathered from business undergraduate students …

“Living Creatures Of Every Kind:” An Ecofeminist Reading Of Genesis 1-3, T. G. Barkasy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work will examine the Genesis creation narratives through an ecofeminist critical lens to illuminate the ambivalence regarding both the ecological and feminist concerns pertinent to ecofeminist criticism. While ecology and feminism are major issues in today’s social and political climates, ecofeminism and its presence in biblical scholarship is not as prevalent as one might think. When it is discussed, authors come to varying conclusions on the Bible’s stance about either nature or gender, and discussions that consciously espouse ecofeminist methodology are so far insufficient. This work utilizes the documentary hypothesis in order to examine the parallel narratives of creation …

The Peruvian Minstrel: An Analysis Of The Representations Of Blackness In The Performance Of El Negro Mama From 1995 To 2016, Ana Lucía Mosquera Rosado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peruvian mass media has failed in addressing and representing the cultural and ethnic diversity of its country, as the presence and representation of ethnic minorities (indigenous and Afro-Peruvian) are almost exclusively reduced to the reproduction of stereotypes in comedy shows, in which they are often racialized and the target of offenses directly related with their ethnic identities. The analysis will focus on the figure of El Negro Mama, a very popular character in Peruvian television thought to be a portrait of the Afro-Peruvian population. Through the use of textual analysis, the paper will explore of this character in order to …

Anti-Fascist Aesthetics From Weimar To Moma: Siegfried Kracauer & The Promise Of Abstraction For Critical Theory, Maxximilian Seijo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis re-examines the life's work of German-American critical theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, to recover abstraction from tacit historical associations with modern fascism. Evoked in critical theory more generally, the abstraction-to-fascism-teleology imagines 20th century fascism as the dialectical fulfillment of modern alienation. Rooting such alienation in the flawed Liberal and Marxist conceptions of monetary relations, critical theorists conduct their aesthetic analyses via ambivalent condemnations of abstraction’s assumed primordial alienation. In the thesis, I critique the abstraction-to-fascism-teleology through an affirmation of neochartalist political economy’s conception of money’s essential publicness and abundance. Drawing from this abstract legal mediation, I trace Kracauer’s various condemnations …

Interrogating Homonationalism In Love, Simon, Jessica S. Rauchberg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the portrayal of racial and sexual identities in the film Love, Simon (2018). Love, Simon follows the story of Simon Spier, a white, gay high school student who discovers true love and acceptance from his peers. Many Hollywood entertainment reviewers praised the film for its progressive portrayal of a LGBTQ romance between teenage characters. At the same time, Love, Simon uses Black characters to re-center Simon to show that Whiteness can rehabilitate queerness. I use Jasbir K. Puar’s (2007) idea of homonationalism- LGBTQ rights discourse privilege white gay men while conversely decentering Black and Brown (queer) people- …

Blaxploitation’S Revolutionary Sexuality: Rethinking Images Of Male Hypersexuality In Sweetback & Shaft, Austin D. Cook

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Where scholarship exists on the subject of black male hypersexuality in Blaxploitation film, consensus suggests these films perpetuate racist imaginings of black sexuality. This project reevaluates the significance of Blaxploitation’s sexual imagery and argues against the traditional understanding of it. I assert that Blaxploitation’s images of hypersexuality should be understood as revolutionary for the way that they re-appropriate racist images and repurpose them to serve antiracist ends. Specifically, I argue the movement’s most prolific films, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) and Shaft (1971), supply the two main strategies employed through Blaxploitation in defining the movement’s revolutionary sexuality: one links Black …

Ain't I A Woman, Too? Depictions Of Toxic Femininity, Transmisogynoir, And Violence On Star, Sunahtah D. Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the rate of the murder of Black trans women at the hands of Black cisgender men rises steadily every year (HRC, 2017), discourses regarding the detrimental impact of toxic masculinity within Black communities continue to increase within different branches of feminist literature. However, the role that Black cisgender women and toxic femininity play in the violent and systematic subjugation of Black trans women is largely ignored in feminist literature. In this thesis, I conduct a cultural analysis of the representations of the Black trans character Cotton Brown (from the Fox show Star) to examine how the show illustrates toxic …

Making Sense At The Margins: Describing Narratives On Food Insecurity Through Hip-Hop, Lemuel Scott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberalism is the contemporary political and economic thought that promotes ideas of private property, individualism, and market logic as key to advancing humanity. Scholars generally link neoliberalism to poverty from a broad perspective, but few have explored how it specifically impacts food insecurity. Globally, many people impacted by poverty also experience food insecurity. Hip-hop is important to resistance and fostering my critical worldview. Existing literature primarily describes hip-hop as a critical tool giving expression to people living at the margins. However, there is a need for hip-hop to be used more often as resistance by artists doing research. First, this …

Exploring The Behavior Of Model Fit Criteria In The Bayesian Approximate Measurement Invariance: A Simulation Study, Abeer Atallah S. Alamri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Measurement invariance (MI) is conducted to ensure that differences found in the results of group comparisons are due to true substantive differences and not methodological artifacts. Previous cross-cultural and cross-national studies with large number of groups showed that the advanced measurement invariance level was rarely held when utilizing the traditional (frequentist) MI approach. The Bayesian approximate measurement invariance (BAMI) was introduced to override the traditional MI strict assumption, because trivial non-invariance in parameters across groups is allowed. Although the concept of the BAMI, which has been utilized since 2013, was incorporated into the context of structural equation modeling, there is …

The Spectacle Of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis Of Risk Of The Nevada Test Site In Technical Communication, Popular Press, And Pop Culture, Tiffany Wilgar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of presentations of risk across three different sites of inquiry: technical communication, the popular press, and pop culture. This dissertation focuses on The Nevada Test Site (NTS), a nuclear testing facility near Las Vegas, Nevada, and analyzes presentations of risk in language of the technical report following an NTS accident in December 1970. Project Baneberry, a routine underground nuclear test, became the accident known as "The Baneberry Vent" when it cracked through the earth and vented into the atmosphere, exposing NTS employees and nearby communities to radiation. Presentations of risk in the technical document …

Intercultural Communication Between International Military Organizations; How Do You Turn A ‘No’ Into A ‘Yes’?, Douglas A. Straka

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on both the discovery and analysis of individual elements that define the interaction between dissimilar militaries during communication. This will provide a greater understanding as to how (and how much) intercultural communications factors help or hinder collaboration between differing governments and their military officials. This greater understanding may provide insight that would provide collaborators the opportunity to improve their negotiating performance based on both increased effectiveness and efficiency.

Previous literature informing this research included expatriate adaptation to foreign cultures, power distance, sensemaking theory, intercultural communication. These provided foundations to use phenomenological methods to explore intercultural communication effectiveness. …

Neutrophil Extracellular Traps And Vascular Barrier Injury, Jamie E. Meegan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sepsis is a life-threatening inflammatory condition with high morbidity and mortality rates. Though improvements to diagnosis and management of sepsis have been made, the complexity of the disease process and an incomplete understanding of its endpoint mechanisms have prevented major breakthroughs for early diagnosis and treatment. Representing a common endpoint in a number of inflammatory injuries including sepsis, endothelial barrier dysfunction causes fluid leakage and leukocyte infiltration that leads to tissue damage and multiple organ failure. Therefore, elucidating mechanisms of endothelial barrier regulation is needed to further develop targeted therapies in inflammatory disease.

Sepsis is characterized by a hyperinflammatory response …

Star Power, Pandemics, And Politics: The Role Of Cultural Elites In Global Health Security, Holly Lynne Swayne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Celebrities have historically served a variety of roles in society ranging from the inspirational to the cautionary, utilizing their platforms of visibility to promote themselves, their work, as well as their social and political causes. This study focuses on celebrities as activists engaging with global health issues, with particular attention to the form this engagement takes, the publicity it receives in the mass media, and the types of global health issues that receive the most celebrity attention. An interdisciplinary approach drawing from theories of power, social movement theory, agenda-setting, and cultural studies is used to achieve greater understanding of underlying …

Culturally Relevant Curriculum And Instruction In A Culture Of Care, Johan Von Ancken

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project was part of a group project completed by five school and district administrators in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for teachers who are able to establish a culture of care in their classrooms that support students academically but transform their learning through experiences that enable them to be more highly engaged and productive students, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, perceived academic abilities, and backgrounds.

Our school district has spent significant resources attempting to address the deficiencies that exist within its lower performing schools. A variety of curriculum specialists have addressed challenges these …

Deaf Lesbian Identity, Noël E. Cherasaro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Deaf lesbians are a population that is underrepresented in the academic literature. Through the use of narrative inquiry, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with a woman who self-identified as Deaf and lesbian. She shared her experiences growing up as a woman who is Deaf and later in her life, realized she is lesbian. The researcher juxtaposed her experiences as a hearing, lesbian woman and an ally to the Deaf community to better illuminate the Deaf lesbian experiences. The research delved into how these dual minority identities have affected the Deaf lesbian participant as she makes her way in the world …

Poetics Of Sixteenth-Century Widowhood: Vittoria Colonna’S Use Of Gender And Grief As A Means Of Social And Spiritual Transcendence, Sarah Conner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project surrounds the life of sixteenth-century poet Vittoria Colonna, and the poetry she wrote following the death of her husband Ferrante D’Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, in 1525. Often regarded in tandem with the works of Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna’s literary accomplishments in the face of personal tragedy speak for themselves as she became one of the foremost female poets of her time. Beyond her relationship with Michelangelo, the surrounding literature on Colonna looks at her widowhood as a stage for her poetry, her use of Neoplatonist imagery, and the influence of the Petrarchan sonnet. Expanding on the arguments presented …