Digital Commons Network^™

_Las Vidas Negras_: Examining Identity Among Afro-Latinos In The Us In The Twilight Of Black Lives Matter, Victor Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to name how the Black Lives Matter movement, and related movements for Black liberation and justice, has had an effect on the self-perception and identities of US-based Afrolatinos. Using survey and interview data, I tease out issues of ethnoracial dissonance, social identity, and the ways that Afrolatinos have used the context of Black Lives Matter to make sense of the antiblackness they have faced. This is a significant investigation because it speaks to the potential for a richer tradition of pan-Africanism taking root in Latin America and among Latin Americans of African descent.

Interpreting 9/11: Religious Or Political Event?, Fadime Apaydin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism or violence can be triggered by a variety of circumstances, including the religious, cultural, political, or economic conditions of the social environment, as well as the perpetrator’s personal characteristics. However, studies conducted in the aftermath of 9/11 have largely described the attacks as religious events, arguing that religion inherently causes violence or that religion is the main motivation for violence. The primary argument for the approach adopted by such studies is that secular institutions are inclined to be less violent than religious ones. A second approach, on the other hand, fundamentally opposes the arguments that led to describing the …

The Hybridization Of Home: Establishing Place Between The Garrison And The Wilderness In Mary Rowlandson's (1682) Captivity Narrative, Brooke M. Weltch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scholarship surrounding captivity narratives long agrees that the psychological and philosophical beliefs of their authors lend insight into the contemporaneous hegemonic power structures through literary forms. Looking beyond these forms to the places they describe, however, illustrates the extent to which cultural perceptions infiltrate even the mere relationships that individuals have with their environment as well as the material structures surrounding them. I focus the role of place in Mary Rowlandson’s narrative, The Soveraignty and Goodness of God (1682). I argue that Rowlandson forms an attachment with the wigwam on account of her traumatic experiences while in captivity. Her displacement …

“Worthy Of Emulation:” Mira Behn And Indian Independence, 1925-1959, Tamala Malerk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is lauded for his work in helping to bring independence to India. Historians and authors are correct in asserting Gandhi’s importance to the independence movement of India, but he did not do it alone. Gandhi was helped by followers, foreign and domestic, who believed in his vision of an independent India. One of these disciples was Madeleine Slade, or as she would later be known, Mira Behn. Behn was born into an upper-class British family: her father an Admiral in the Royal Navy and her mother a housewife. Behn came upon a copy of French philosopher, Romain …

Assessing Changes In Actual Air Quality And Public Perceptions Of Air Quality In Kathmandu Valley Nepal Pre And Post Covid-19 Lockdown, Robin Margherita Rives

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Air pollution is a global concern. Cities around the world fail to meet air quality standards set by the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines, which has a significant impact on public health. As the capital city and largest metropolitan region of Nepal, Kathmandu is a hotspot for urban pollution in South Asia. Nepal faces emissions from both internal and external sources. External sources include emissions from Nepal’s neighboring countries of India and China and emissions resulting from tourism. Internal sources of pollution in the country include brick and cement factories, consumption of energy from traditional sources such as biomass, …

“Fast Policy” And “Rule By Aesthetics”: A Preliminary Study Of Water Street Tampa –The “Worlding” Of An Aspiring “Icon Project”, Nousheen Rahman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the age of “global urbanism” (Sheppard et al 2015; Chen and Kanna 2013), we are witnessing a markedly increased preference for mega-gentrification policies and projects by public officials seeking to revitalize deindustrialized and abandoned landscapes within their cities. The goal of this study is to describe how neoliberal public and private actors and institutions in the City of Tampa, specifically along the newly minted “Water Street” near the old Channel District of downtown, have adopted the discourses and practices of “fast policy” (Peck and Theodore 2015), “rule by aesthetics” (Ghertner 2010) and “worlding” (Ong and Roy 2011). To that …

Reconceptualizing Global Citizenship: Experiences From Women Who Have Studied Abroad, Jessica L. Colston

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study used self-curated photo elicitation to express students’ awareness of power, privilege, and identity. The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore how female undergraduate students interacted with their environment and conceptualized a critical understanding of global citizenship. As such, this inquiry asked: (1) To what extent do female undergraduate students from the United States who have participated in a study abroad program develop a critical understanding of global citizenship? (2) How are students’ awareness of power, privilege, and identity reflected in their documentation and narration of their experiences abroad?

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory and transnational feminism explained …

Anthropocene Fiction: Empathy, Kinship, And The Troubled Waters At The End Of The World, Megan Mandell Stowe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anthropocene literature features characters and environments grappling with the devastation of climate change. Donna Haraway’s term Chthulucene narrows this category further by exposing the tentacular connections between overpopulation, dependence on material goods, species loss, and other facets of global warming—such as water as a resource. Three novels of the Chthulucene exhibit these connections, centering on the importance of water to both ecologies and personal identity. As seen in the novels, place attachment brings ecology and identity together by forging a stewardship between person and location, often resulting in efforts to defend and preserve a place. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of …

‘Surest Guaranty Of Peace’: Rhetoric, Consumer Culture, And The Popularization Of American Naval Power, 1883 - 1909, Charles B. Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project a cultural history of the U.S. Navy during an era of a major institutional and technological transformation. In it, I trace the ways that Gilded Age and Progressive Era naval advocates successfully pitched the idea of modernizing the U.S. Navy to the American people. These military promoters justified technological advancement as societal progress, arguing for a more pronounced presence for the United States on the world stage. Marketing experts then seized on the people’s increasing fascination with naval power to rekindle a sense of patriotism by sensationalizing militarism. Riding this wave of popularity and public awareness of naval …

An Edgefield Ceramic Assemblage From The Lost Town Of St. Joseph, Northwest Florida, Crystal R. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From 1835-1842, the train depot at what is today the Depot Creek Depot site (8Gu199) served the historic town of St. Joseph in the Florida Panhandle. This town originated as a competitor to the city of Apalachicola in the cotton industry and grew into an economic boomtown. Imported goods arriving on ships in the Gulf of Mexico were delivered to the Depot Creek Depot by railway, and then were shipped up through Lake Wimico and into the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River System. Unfortunately, after 8 years of occupation, St. Joseph was destroyed by several hurricanes, a yellow fever epidemic, and fires resulting …

Transfer Students And The Excess Credit Hour Surcharge: A Program Evaluation Of An Excess Credit Hour Surcharge Training, Chandra Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transfer student population is rising on college campuses in the United States. Consequently, higher education institutions want to better understand how to support this growing and diverse population. Faced with increased demand for accountability, colleges and universities have developed various initiatives to increase college graduation rates. One such initiative is the Excess Credit Hour Surcharge. The Florida state statute, commonly known as the Excess Credit Hour Surcharge, was introduced by legislators in 2009. The Florida legislature incentivizes state university students to graduate promptly and efficiently to avoid a surcharge. However, the legislation affects transfer students in a unique way …

An Ideology Of Racism: Community Representation, Segregation, And The Historical Cemeteries Of Panama City, Florida, Ethan David Mauldin Putman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mortuary research in historical archaeology has always acknowledged the cultural and symbolic links between cemeteries and the people who created them. Studies across multiple disciplines focus on what data can be gained about past societies from historical cemeteries, and they tend to ascribe to an understanding of the ‘cemetery-as-model.’ This idea of the local burial ground as a mirror of the community that formed it seems reasonable, even logical, but few of these studies have taken the time to compare the historical context of the societies in question to the results of their cemetery analyses. The assumption of the cemetery …

Chlorine Taste Threshold And Acceptability As A Water Disinfectant Among Indigenous Ngäbe And Non-Indigenous In Rural Panama, Ashley Osler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

More than two billion people globally still lack access to safely managed drinking water (WHO & UNICEF, 2021). Although gains in access to water service over the past two decades have been large, universal access to safe and affordable drinking water (SDG 6, target 6.1) is not on track to be achieved. In Panama, safely managed drinking water access has not been measured. However, the data on basic water access illustrates the large disparities between rural and urban areas of Panama. While 98% of urban Panamanian households have basic access to water, only 86% of rural Panamanian households, and 54% …

Assistive Technologies For Independent Navigation For People With Blindness, Howard Kaplan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The necessity for individuals to navigate from location to location is essential to daily life. The majority of humans use sight as the main source for determining how to move through their environment. However, there is a large population of people who are either blind or living with low vision. Based on a 2017 National Health Survey there are around 27 million adult Americans that have experienced vision loss (National Center for Health Statistics, 2017). According to the Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group there are 3.4 million Americans 40 years and older that are legally blind or visually impaired (EDPRG, …

Trajectory Optimization For Connected And Autonomous Vehicle Platooning And Split Operations: Modeling And Experiments, Qianwen Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) platoon technology holds great potential in improving mobility, enhancing riding comfort, reducing fuel consumption, and mitigating congestion. It reduces car-following gaps via cyber connections. Further, it smooths vehicle trajectories via automated control. Smoothed trajectories and improved aerodynamic efficiency from reduced car-following gaps improve fuel and space efficiency, thus improving traffic performance.

Motivated by such promising advantages, this dissertation investigates trajectory optimization for two basic CAV platoon operations, i.e., platooning and split, which are the premise to implement this technology to benefit society. Two two-stage optimization problems are formulated to solve the platooning and split …

Remote Sensing And Gis Integration For Amazon Rainforest Wildfires Applications, Cong Ma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Known as the “Lung of the world”, the Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the oxygen of the world, which was originally a carbon pool for mitigating climate change, but in recent years it has become a significant carbon emitter due to wildfires. In 2019, a large-scale fire occurred in the Amazon rainforest, causing serious damage to the ecosystem and to humans as well. Therefore, managing wildfires effectively has become an urgent task for fire authorities. This thesis tried to incorporate spatial analysis and spatial statistics approaches to study wildfire from two aspects, namely the temporal and spatial distribution …

Instrumental Music Instruction And Executive Functions: A Cross-Sectional Study Of Romanian Children (10-12 Years), Adrian Sorin Iordache

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in verbal fluency, verbal memory, and processing speed of children (age 10-12) enrolled in a Romanian vocational music school as compared to a group enrolled in vocational visual arts school, and a group enrolled in a regular public school. This is the first study to assess children enrolled in a music school in Romania. A total of 105 participants (43 males and 62 females) 10 to 12 years old (M = 11.13, SD = .34) competed the testing. There were 36 participants (15 males and 21 females) in the music …

Soil Accretion And Mass Accumulation In A Scrub And Fringe Mangrove Forest In Biscayne Bay, Florida, Jessica A. Jacobs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study estimated soil accretion and mass (organic carbon (OC), total nitrogen (TN), and total soil) accumulation in a scrub and fringe mangrove forest in Biscayne Bay, FL, to assess how forests of different morphologies (scrub vs. fringe) have kept pace with recently accelerating rates of sea-level rise. Accretion rates (AR) were estimated using the Constant Initial Concentration (CIC) model of lead-210 deposition and it was determined that the scrub forest has accreted at 1.3 ± 0.2 mm yr-1 over 75 years and the fringe forest at 2.8 ± 0.4 mm yr-1 over 92 years. The fringe forest estimate met …

Investigation Of The Effectiveness Of Global Competency-Based Program Modules In Higher Education, Parandoosh Sadeghinia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global competency-based modules are relatively new in higher education. As a way to measure global competency the USF Global Competency Test (GCT) modules objectively measure global competencies for individuals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the value of three global competency-based program modules and undergraduate student perceptions of the Unite Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the basis for the modules.

This study addressed the questions:

1. What are the change scores based on the Global Competency Test module pre/postassessment scores for students who participated in Operation: Global Action/Academic and Cultural Engagement program during Summer 2021?
2. Are there differences in the …

Understanding Nonprofit Boards: An Exploratory Study Of The Governance Practices Of Regional Nonprofits, Susan Ryan Goodman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many researchers have catalogued best practices of board governance. Most of the existing research employed surveys to review compliance with these practices, and the results are highly quantitative as well as self-reported. This study used interviews of board members representing a cross-section of nonprofits to examine conformity with recommended governance best practices and procedures as well as to provide insight into how these practices have changed during their tenure.Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 nonprofit board members in the Tampa Bay area. Using the thematic coding approach proposed by Braun and Clark (2006), four themes emerged from the data: Recruiting, …

Pressure Retarded Osmosis: A Potential Technology For Seawater Desalination Energy Recovery And Concentrate Management, Joshua Benjamin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, a significant challenge with reverse osmosis-based desalination is reducing the energy consumption and environmental impacts of the process. This project analyzed the viability of using pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) for energy recovery in seawater desalination facilities using brine concentrate (the draw solution) and other water sources (the feed solution) such as wastewater effluent. The primary goal of this project is to decrease the cost and overall energy consumption of seawater desalination through PRO-based energy recovery. Process modeling, statistical and sensitivity analysis, energy and cost analysis, geospatial and GIS analysis, laboratory-scale testing, water quality analysis, SEM-EDS microscopy, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), …

Examining The Effects Of Hydrology And Reclaimed Water Application On Nutrient Retention In Wetlaculture Mesocosms In Southwest Florida, Andrew Wilson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The substantial increase among agricultural and urban land use over the past century is widely regarded as the leading cause in a variety of negative environmental impacts, particularly regarding eutrophication of both salt and fresh surface waters. Usage of both synthetic and natural fertilizers on agricultural fields and residential lawns has increased significantly in order to achieve maximum crop yield and green lawns. The nitrogen and phosphorus in these fertilizers inevitably run off the landscape and into downstream surface waters. The geographic scale of this issue makes it a challenge to overcome, as targeting specific sources/polluters is nearly impossible. Landscape-scale …

A System Architecture For Water Distribution Networks, Noha Abdel-Mottaleb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines structure-function relationships of water distribution networks (WDNs), with focus on improving the decision-making process for water utilities. WDNs are lifeline infrastructure systems, necessary for the functioning of cities. Yet water utilities around the world struggle with emerging challenges that include but are not limited to aging infrastructure components, limited budgets, increased interdependencies between infrastructure systems, increased rates of urbanization, and increasing extreme weather conditions. This is why enhancing the performance of WDNs is a priority for water utilities around the world. This research begins to delineate a system architecture for WDNs and evaluates the use of various …

Machine Learning For Species Habitat Analysis, Abigail Lavallin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Management and conservation initiatives will always be controlled by finite resources, whether financialor temporal. Understanding a species’ spatial ecology, and how its requirements vary across habitats and locations is key to a successful species management plan. During recent decades, it has been noted how many species populations have declined, despite conservation practices working to increase their numbers. The most prevalent impacts affecting fauna populations have come from anthropogenic change in the form of habitat loss and destruction, along with fragmentation, and global climate change. There is a clear need for management practices to now operate on an entire landscape instead …

Cool Under Fire: Psychopathic Traits And Decision-Making In Law Enforcement-Oriented Populations, Sean J. Mckinley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Law enforcement is an occupation that is typically characterized by high stress, physical danger, and potential for use of excessive force to subdue suspects of criminal activity. Compared to other jobs, the law enforcement profession is considered a high-stakes occupation that has the potential to greatly impact public safety, and officers must face daily dangers not experienced in other professions. While much research has focused on traditional models of personality and police performance (i.e., Big Five traits; Schneider, 2002; Twersky-Glasner, 2005), there may be utility in examining police officer performance through the lens of the triarchic psychopathy domains (Patrick, Fowles, …

Community Assessment Of Water Perceptions And Household Point-Of-Use Treatment Methods In Madagascar, Isabella Rose Silverman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One in four people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water, which means that two billion people globally lack access. In high-income countries, 0.02% of yearly deaths are attributed to unsafe water sources; however, an alarming 10.6% of deaths occur in Madagascar, for the same reason.

To achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all, a collaboration between public health and engineering is critical. Within the public health sector, social marketing is commonly utilized to address a problem by using commercial marketing principles to change behavior for the good of society. …

Slow Slip Events And The Earthquake Cycle, Nicholas K. Voss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Slow Slip Events (SSEs) represent a new type of strain release along faults, which have onlybeen recognized as a global phenomena with the growth of precision space-borne geodetic techniques. These events represent an important part of the strain budget on faults, sometimes bounding the area of co-seismic release and perhaps limiting the amount of seismic energy release. SSEs have also been suggested to proceed large megathrust earthquakes including the great 2011 Tohoku and 2015 Iquique earthquakes. I document a series of SSE along the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. These events take place both before and after the 2012 M7.6 …

Jane Anger Her Protection For Women And The Emergence Of A Radical Female Voice In Late Sixteenth Century England, Ashley M. Wessel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how women authors responded to masculine discourses of dominance in late sixteenth-century England. Directly, it concentrates on the pamphlet Jane Anger her Protection for Women, written in 1589 and published under the pseudonym Jane Anger. I argue Anger’s pamphlet was a radical voice within Elizabethan print culture which lends a view into gender politics of the time in which this piece was produced. I also argue that though Anger’s target audience was the gentlewomen of England, she crafted her pamphlet for a broad audience that included any literate man or woman across social station. The importance …

Synthesis Of A Multimodal Ecological Model For Scalable, High-Resolution Arboviral Risk Prediction In Florida, Sean P. Beeman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

West Nile virus (WNV) and Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus (EEEV) represent the two greatest endemic arboviral risks to the state of Florida. Currently, no approved human vaccine exists for the prevention of either virus. In the absence of a vaccine, effective disease surveillance is paramount for public health. In Florida, WNV and EEEV sentinel chicken surveillance is conducted by mosquito control programs operated at the county, municipality, or special taxing district level. This program was implemented in 1978 following human outbreaks of St. Louis Encephalitis virus (SLEV) that occurred between 1959 and 1977, with initial sentinel coops placed in proximity …

Assessing Morphological Response And Vulnerability Of Barrier Islands To Extreme Storms In Northwest Florida, Jacob Adam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Barrier islands shield the mainland coast from the effects of extreme storms such as increased wave energy and storm surge. During these events, however, barrier morphology can be altered by erosive forces. Thus, compromising the protection offered and leading to increased impact on the mainland. The St. Joseph Peninsula, located in the Northwest of the Gulf of Mexico, is one such barrier at threat from storm-induced erosion. Presented here is an assessment of morphology change induced by two major storms to impact the peninsula, Hurricanes Dennis 2005 and Michael 2018. These changes characterize the erosive/depositional patterns that can be expected …