Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Links Between Well-Being And Interactional Sense-Making In Married Couples’ Jointly Told Stories Of Stress, Jody Koenig Kellas, April R. Trees, Paul Schrodt, Cassandra Leclair-Underberg, Erin K. Willer

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Narrative theorizing suggests that narrating stress, difficulty, or trauma can be beneficial for improved mental health, yet extant research tends to consider narrating stress as an individual or psychological construct. However, in close relationships, people often experience shared stressors and jointly tell their shared stories of difficulty to others. Thus, joint storytelling processes likely also relate to individual health. We tested this expectation using a series of actor-partner interdependence models and path analyses in a study that included 68 couples’ video-recorded joint storytelling interactions. Findings primarily indicate relationships between husbands’, wives’, and couples’ storytelling behaviors and husbands’ mental health. Generally …

El Testimonio Desde El Exilio: El Compromiso Político En Las Memorias De Dolores Ibárruri Y María Martínez Sierra, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

En sus memorias Una mujer por caminos de España (1952), María Martinez Sierra recuerda su participación en un mitin en un pueblo de Asturias en la primavera de 1936. En aquel acto de propaganda política, además de ella, los otros dos oradores eran la socialista Matilde de la Torre y la comunista Dolores Ibárruri, Pasionaria. Martínez Sierra resalta los lazos comunes que existían entre las tres mujeres: "por encima de toda doctrina, estábamos unidas en una sola voluntad. Queríamosq ue las izquierdasg anasenl as elecciones"( 223).

Factors Influencing Language-Learning Strategy Use Of English Learners In An Esl Context, Ngan Nguyen, Francis Godwyll

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

This study employed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), version 7.0 (ESL/EFL) developed by Oxford (1990) to examine differences in language-learning strategy use. It focused on how learner factors such as gender, age, nationality, and proficiency level influence the choice of language-learning strategies. The participants were 75 international students at Ohio University. The results showed that participants used social and metacognitive strategies at a high frequency level; meanwhile, affective and memory strategies were selected the least. Statistic significance was found in the choice of several strategies across the factors examined. Pedagogical implications were also discussed.

Blackboard Jungle: Delinquency, Desegregation, And The Cultural Politics Of Brown, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1955, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a controversial film about juvenile delinquency entitled Blackboard Jungle. Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver subsequently used the film as a metaphor for what would happen to southern schools were Brown v. Board of Education enforced, marking the beginnings of a much larger campaign to re-articulate southern resistance to integration in popular terms. Taking the intersection between discourses of delinquency and desegregation at mid-century as a starting point, this article advances three claims. One, the NAACP’s reliance on sociological evidence in Brown was a strategic attempt to align black interests with concerns over child development popular at the …

Religion In The Classroom, Allison Kay Carey

Honors Program Theses

When most people hear that one wants to increase the study of religions in a public high school most think that it will infringe on the constitutional rights of the students, but this is not the case. "Teaching about religion in the schools is often confused with the teaching of religion, or religious advocacy and indoctrination." This quotation describes why the study of religion has been left out, but it is imperative to understand why the study of religion is so important in a 21st century education. Diane L. Moore gave five main reasons why she felt students need to …

Speaking Ourselves: The Intersections Of Women Educators' Personal And Professional Lives, Leigh M. O'Brien

School of Education

This paper presents findings from interviews conducted with 33 women educators working at varying levels of education and in diverse fields, and who varied in terms of age, ethnicity, race, family structure, geographic location, and sexual orientation.i Semi-structured interviews, building on variants of this question, Does who you are as person influence what you do as an educator and are there ways being an educator influences your life outside of work?, were conducted, tape recorded, and inductively analyzed. The themes uncovered suggest that women educators function as whole persons, aware of multiple intersections between their personal and professional lives. In …

Beautiful Torment: Interpreting Dissonance And Text-Painting In Selected Sacred Choral Works Of William Byrd And Carlo Gesualdo, Janet M. Mccumber

Masters Theses

The end of the sixteenth century was filled with social, religious, and political turmoil; and yet, the musical atmosphere in England and Italy was conducive to new ideas in text-setting and chromatic inflection that had not been seen in previous eras. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach in looking at two late sixteenth-century composers, William Byrd and Carlo Gesualdo, and describes their personal and political sufferings and how these torments may have affected their compositional styles.

Brief explorations of England and Catholicism in the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Mannerist movement in the arts, the movement toward chromaticism in …

Does Familiarity With A Rape Victim Influence Rape Myth Acceptance?, Christopher Bottger

Masters Theses

The topic of rape myth acceptance has been extensively studied; however, research investigating how rape myth acceptance may be related to a person's familiarity with a rape victim is minimal. To assess this relationship, 160 male and female undergraduate students indicated their degree of acceptance of rape myths on one of two versions of the Illinois Rape ~yth Acceptance Scale (IRMAS). One version presented the traditional IRMAS' items that referred to a hypothetical woman. The other version developed for the present study included personalized items that referred to a friend of the participant. The present study was the first to …

Chronotope And Regional Chinese Independent Films, Jingya Liu

Lingnan Theses

This thesis aims to re-categorize Chinese independent films from a region-based perspective as a critical response to existing literature on Chinese independent films. This thesis analyzes three independent films made in three different regions of China in order to investigate regional Chinese independent cinema as a recently rising phenomenon: respectively, Jia Zhangke’s Xiaowu (1997) made in Shanxi Province, Ying Liang’s Taking Father Home (Bei yazi de nanhai, 2006) in Sichuan Province, and Robin Weng’s Fujian Blue (Jinbi huihuang, 2007) in Fujian Province.

By using Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (literally time-space) as the fundamental framework and exploring the many aspects of …

當代中國文化明星的製造 : 變動的文化生產場, Weizi Huang

Lingnan Theses

本文借助並修訂了布爾迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的理論框架，透過對中國大陸二十世紀九十年代以來文化明星的製造進行研究來理解變動中的文化生產場 (field of cultural production)，並探討在其間知識分子作為的新可能。文化明星問題之所以值得特別研究，首先是由於它處於當代中國文化生產的中心，涉及到電視、圖書、平面媒體、互聯網等不同的文化生產次場域（sub-field），以及製作人、 出版人、文化明星本人、“粉絲” (fans) 和批評者所代表的不同力量。考察圍繞著製造文化明星的複雜的關係網絡，正可以勾勒出當代中國變動的文化生產場域的概貌。其次，文化明星的產生和生產是對九十年代以來知識分子危機的一種回應，是知識分子問題的變奏。理解了文化明星的製造機制，有助於尋找在當下的文化生產場中知識分子作為的新可能。

本文選取余秋雨、易中天、于丹和韓寒四個個案進行深入分析。余秋雨是公認的第一個最成功的文化明星，對其案例進行研究揭示了文化明星產生的歷史轉變。易中天和于丹的案例則代表著著一種可以複製的成熟的文化明星製造模式的出現。韓寒的形象及製造是一種有別于以上主流文化明星的另類模式。

本文綜合運用多種研究方法，包括對十幾名相關的文化生產者進行訪問，組織了一個針對粉絲的焦點小組（focus group），並且到電視節目錄製現場、出版 社和大型書店進行參與式觀察。此外亦有歷史檔案梳理和文本、話語分析。 最終，本文繪製出了不同的文化明星在當代中國文化生產場中的位置，反思了現有文化明星生產模式的後果，並對知識分子/文化生產者參與文化生產提出有針對性的建議。

中國當代故事新編小說研究 (神話傳說類), Wenjun Jiang

Lingnan Theses

魯迅《故事新編》開創了現當代故事新編小說的先河，亦為後世有關此文類的創作奠下了穩固的基礎，在文學史上形成了重要的流派，其重要性與獨立創作一樣應得到重視。 本論文以神話與文學的研究方式為基礎，研究神話傳說類故事新編小說在 當代作家的創作下如何表現出創新意義。本論文共分為六章，第一章主要探討神話傳說類故事新編小說的特質，以釐定本文的研究範圍；第二章是對神話傳 說類故事新編小說在現當代的發展作概觀式介紹，以及顯示個別作家在故事新編創作上的貢獻；第三章是神話類故事新編小說研究，本文選取五個有關神話人物的改編文本(馬彬〈神農〉、劉以鬯〈盤古與黑〉、董啟章《少年神農》、李 碧華〈嫦娥〉和葉兆言《后羿》)，探討作家如何改變神話人物的形象，以達到新編的效果；第四章是白蛇傳故事的故事新編研究，本文以人妖戀的角度，研究不同文本(劉以鬯〈蛇〉、孔慧怡〈雷峰塔〉、李碧華《青蛇》、和李銳及蔣韻 《人間》)對傳說的新編方式，如何表現出故事新編獨特的一面；第五章是梁山伯與祝英台的故事新編研究，本文疏理出傳說忠貞愛情形象，並以此為基礎， 比較不同文本(張恨水《梁山伯與祝英台》、李碧華〈梁山伯自白書〉及〈祝英 台自白書〉、孔慧怡〈梁祝無恨〉和李馮〈梁〉及〈祝〉)對愛情主題的重新演繹；第六章則以文體討論的形式為基礎肯定故事新編小說的價值作結。

Sisterhood Articulates A New Definition Of Moral Female Identity: Jane Austen's Adaptation Of The Eighteenth-Century Tradition, Katherine Curtis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing at a moment of ideological crisis between individualism and hierarchical society, Jane Austen asserts a definition of moral behavior and female identity that mediates the two value systems. I argue that Austen most effectively articulates her belief in women's moral autonomy and social responsibility in her novels through her portrayal of sisterhood. Austen reshapes the stereotype of sisters and female friendships as dangerous found in her domestic novel predecessors. While recognizing women's social vulnerability, which endangers female friendship and turns it into a site of competition, Austen urges the morality of selflessly embracing sisterhood anyway. An Austen heroine must …

The Effects Of Power Distance, And Gender On The Use Of Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors In Symmetrical And Asymmetrical Power Cond, Vincent Santilli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous cross-cultural research in nonverbal immediacy indicates that nonverbal immediacy behavior varies across cultures, and some researchers have suggested that power distance might serve as a moderating variable, however no research has systematically set out to determine whether that is the case. This study assessed the perceived use of nonverbal immediacy under symmetric and asymmetric power conditions, as well as gender, in three cultures: Brazil, Kenya, and the United States. Quantitative data was collected from 527 participants who completed a nonverbal immediacy measure and an individual power distance measure under either a symmetric or an asymmetric power condition. Results related …

Writing Center Handbooks And Travel Guidebooks : Redesigning Instructional Texts For Multicultural, Multilingual, And Multinational Contexts, Steven K. Bailey

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In an increasingly interconnected world characterized by the accelerating interplay of cultural, linguistic, and national difference, the ability to negotiate that difference in an equitable and ethical manner is a crucial skill for both individuals and larger social groups. This dissertation, Writing Center Handbooks and Travel Guidebooks: Redesigning Instructional Texts for Multicultural, Multilingual, and Multinational Contexts, considers how instructional texts that ostensibly support the negotiation of difference (i.e., accepting and learning from difference) actually promote the management of difference (i.e., rejecting, assimilating, and erasing difference).

As a corrective to this focus on managing difference, chapter two constructs a theoretical …

Use Of A 3d Perfusion Bioreactor With Osteoblasts And Osteoblast/Endothelial Cell Co-Cultures To Improve Tissue-Engineered Bone, Matthew J. Barron

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The delivery of oxygen, nutrients, and the removal of waste are essential for cellular survival. Culture systems for 3D bone tissue engineering have addressed this issue by utilizing perfusion flow bioreactors that stimulate osteogenic activity through the delivery of oxygen and nutrients by low-shear fluid flow. It is also well established that bone responds to mechanical stimulation, but may desensitize under continuous loading. While perfusion flow and mechanical stimulation are used to increase cellular survival in vitro, 3D tissue-engineered constructs face additional limitations upon in vivo implantation. As it requires significant amounts of time for vascular infiltration by the host, …

Review Article: Quidditas And Medieval Studies Today, Erin Felicia Labbie

Quidditas

Medieval studies today may be precisely characterized by quidditas. The Aristotelian term quidditas became central to the development of medieval scholastic inquiry in the West when, in 1066 Anselm of Canterbury wrote the Monologion. This eleventh-century foray into the revival of Aristotelian thought is also seen in Porphyry’s third-century translations of Aristotle and in Boethius’ sixth-century concern with universals elaborated in his commentaries on universals and categories. For Anselm and the developing model of medieval scholastic thought, the Monologion and its immediate successor, the Proslogian, assert a double discourse of the difference between quidditas and haeccitas, …

Banishing Ganymede At Whitehall: Jove’S “Loathsome Staines” And Fictions Of Britain In Thomas Carew’S Coelum Britannicum, Jessica Tvordi

Quidditas

Thomas Carew’s masque Coelum Britannicum, performed at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday of 1634, deploys an image of conjugal perfection in order to codify a fiction of national union. Not only are Charles I and Henrietta Maria models of moral and political comportment powerful enough to reform the profligate court of Jove, their harmonious marriage also provides the inspiration for reconciliation between England, Scotland, and Ireland. In order to assert this fiction of unification, the masque invokes images of sexual transgression, symbolically enacts their removal, and equates the strength of Britain with the absence of the deviant monarch, James I. …

Neuraminidase Activity Of Influenza Virus Strains That Differ In The Ability To Cause Disease, Benjamin Hanks Brown, Bart Tarbet

Browse All Undergraduate research

Influenza viruses are classified based on their surface glycoproteins: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase.  Hemagglutinin (HA) is responsible for binding to the host cell, while neuraminidase (NA) facilitates escape of newly formed virus particles. These studies determined the NA activity of three subtypes of influenza A virus that differ in their ability to cause disease in mice:  influenza A/NWS/33 (H1N1), influenza A/Victoria/3/75 (H3N2), and influenza A/Duck/MN/1525/81 (H5N1).  Chemiluminescent quantitation of NA activity in equal amounts of each virus was determined in three replicate experiments.  Results indicate that N1 virus subtypes have higher NA activity than do N2 subtypes.  In addition, the NA …

Review Of The Rhetoric Of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law And The Regulation Of Digital Culture, By Jessica Reyman, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

A short book review of Jessica Reyman’s, The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture.

Evidence Verité And The Law Of Film, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores a puzzle concerning the authority of certain images that increasingly find themselves at the center of legal disputes: surveillance or “real time” film images that purport to capture an event about which there is a dispute. Increasingly, this kind of “evidence verité” is used in United States courts of law as the best evidence of what happened. Film footage of arrests, criminal confessions, photographs of crime scenes (during and after) is routinely admitted into court as evidence. It tends to overwhelm all other evidence (e.g., testimonial or documentary) and be immune to critical analysis. Why would this …

Effects Of Peer & Familial Ethnic Socialization On Processes Of Ethnic Identity Development In Mexican-Descent Adolescents, Christine M. Reinhard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current cross-sectional study had two goals: present the Peer Ethnic Socialization Measure, (PESM) to assess peer contributions to the process of ethnic socialization (the promotion of pride, cultural knowledge and cultural traditions), and explore how family and peer (in-group and out-group peers) ethnic socialization uniquely contributes to the process of ethnic identity development in Mexican descent adolescents (N=111, M age = 14.5 years, SD = 1.2 years). The PESM is a modified version of the Umaña-Taylor Familial Ethnic Socialization Scale (2001). Results indicated that the PESM is a reliable scale, but that it will benefit from refinement and additional …

Rock Climbing With The Gotandas, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Law Of Geography And The Geography Of Law: A Post-Colonial Mapping, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

This article examines the relationship between law and geography through the prisms of colonialism and neoliberal Empire. Using two novels set in nineteenth and twenty-first century India, respectively, it evaluates the so-called first law of geography, namely that "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." It argues that the formative and enduring relationship between global systems of domination and modern law has created a geolegal space that has a global dimension. This geolegal space creates norms and subjectivities that are intimately related to spatially distant forces and projects. Emergence and consolidation of …

Slums, Slumdogs, And Resistance, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Gli1 In Eralpha-Negative Breast Cancer: Promoting Survival, Migration, Invasion, And Metastasis, Yeon-Jin Kwon

All ETDs from UAB

Glioma-associated oncogene homolog 1 (Gli1) is a well-known oncogene and a transcription factor that mediates several signaling pathways important for tumor progression, such as hedgehog, TGFß, Ras, and EGFR. Although Gli1 is known to play an important role in cancers of brain, skin, prostate, and the pancreas, the role of Gli1 in breast cancer was not previously well-defined. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on defining the role of Gli1 and the mechanism underlying Gli1-mediated transcription in breast cancer. Interestingly, the major findings of the dissertation clearly indicate that Gli1 promotes cell survival and is predictive of a poor outcome in Estrogen …

The Role Of Parental Autonomy Support In The Motivation Of The Health Behaviors Of Diet And Exercise In Older Adolescents, Shannon A. Morrison

All ETDs from UAB

regardless of the degree of heteroskedasticity. Moreover, in the presence of high leverage

The Effects Of Weight Reduction On Obesity-Related Cancer Biomarkers And In Vitro Cancer Cell Growth, Maria Azrad

All ETDs from UAB

Obesity increases the risk for breast and endometrial cancers while weight loss reduces the risk for these cancers. One aim of this dissertation was to determine the effects of weight loss from an overweight state [body mass index (BMI) 27-30] to a normal weight state on several obesity-related cancer biomarkers in African-American (AA) and European-American (EA) premenopausal women. We also sought to determine whether the method of weight loss, caloric restriction alone (CR) or combined with exercise resulted in similar changes in cancer biomarkers. The biomarkers of interest were urinary estrogen metabolites, and serum adiponectin, leptin, insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, …

Cardiovascular Endothelial Regeneration On An Electrospun Scaffold, Xing Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

A bi-layer electrospun nano-fibrous scaffold comprising synthetic polymers and natural proteins was constructed as the prototype of an arterial substitute for coronary ar-tery disease. This scaffold featured a highly porous microstructure analogous to native extracellular matrix. Uni-axial tensile test suggested that its excellent mechanical strength could restore normal blood flow immediately after implantation. Subsequent biocompati-bility study demonstrated that scaffolding materials, either traditional or degraded, were non-toxic to the regenerated human endothelium on the luminal layer. Moreover, this re-generated endothelium possessed critical functions, such as the formation of tight junc-tions, the secretion of prostacyclin, and the prevention of platelet adhesion. Thereafter, …

From Urban Student To Urban Educator: A Narrative Of The Lived Experiences Of Urban Middle School Teachers In A Southeastern School District, Nichole S. Davis

All ETDs from UAB

ABSTRACT The purpose of this narrative study was to explore the thoughts, perceptions, and experiences of 12 urban middle school teachers who were once urban middle school students. The study sought to discover reasons why these teachers returned to urban middle schools to teach and why they decided to stay. A qualitative methodology, using the narrative design, was chosen for this study and interviews were conducted in order to obtain quality re-tellings of authentic experiences. The researcher sought to gain an understanding of life in the urban middle school environment. Purposeful sampling was used to select the 12 participants. The …

Roles Of Adiponectin And Its Receptors In Foam Cell Transformation, Ling Tian

All ETDs from UAB

Macrophages play a critical role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis by producing pro-inflammatory mediators and transforming into lipid-laden foam cells. The prevention of lipid accumulation and inflammation in macrophage foam cells, therefore, represents a promising target for effective therapy for atherosclerosis. Adiponectin is a circulating cytokine primarily expressed and secreted by adipocytes, and is downregulated in obesity-linked diseases including type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and hypertension. In oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL)-induced human THP-1 macrophage foam cells, adiponectin suppresses lipid accumulation through decreasing lipid uptake and increasing high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-mediated lipid efflux. The potential mechanisms that adiponectin utilizes …