Digital Commons Network^™

Pedagogy And Identity In "The Night Lessons" Of Finnegans Wake, Zachary Paul Smola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores chapter II.ii of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939)—commonly called "The Night Lessons"—and its peculiar use of the conventions of the textbook as a form. In the midst of the Wake's abstraction, Joyce uses the textbook to undertake a rigorous exploration of epistemology and education. By looking at the specific expectations of and ambitions for textbooks in 19th century Irish national schools, this thesis aims to provide a more specific historical context for what textbooks might mean as they appear in Finnegans Wake. As instruments of cultural conditioning, Irish textbooks were fraught with tension arising from their investment …

Chinese Female Graduate Students' Academic Socialization Across Disciplines - Perspectives On Language, Culture, And Gender, Sheng Bi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From the mid-1950s, international education in the United States has witnessed stupendous growth. China boasts the largest number of English language learners in the world, and contributes to an increasingly large share of the global international student market. Being informed by a community of practice perspective and poststructuralist conceptualization of identity, the present study aims to explore the academic socialization experience of three female Chinese graduate students in the United States. The ethnographic case study collected data from various sources such as classroom observations, open-ended questionnaires, interviews with participants and with their course instructors, and written documents. The findings revealed …

Cultural Competency In Health Care: Framework, Training And Evaluation - A Review Of The Literature, Diana Salas Coronado

Center for Social Policy Publications

Healthcare professionals are now more aware of the challenges they face when providing healthcare services to a culturally and racially diverse population. Cultural competency has emerged as a framework for understanding health disparities among racial and ethnic groups in particular, but also for women, the elderly, sexual orientation and gender identity, people with disabilities, and religious minorities. Although there are several definitions of cultural competency, each emphasizes the need for healthcare systems and providers to be aware of and responsive to patients’ cultural perspectives and backgrounds. One example defines cultural competency as “a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies …

Community Mediation Of Parenting Disputes Between Estranged Parents, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Kaila Obstfeld Eisenkraft

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

Community mediation, characterized by free or low cost mediation services delivered primarily by volunteer mediators, aims to provide effective dispute resolution services to a broad spectrum of the population, particularly to underserved and low-income populations. The present study seeks to determine whether community mediation fulfills this goal with respect to divorce/separation-related parenting disputes while concomitantly testing the legitimacy of concerns about the quality of mediation services offered according to a community mediation model. Thus, the effectiveness of community mediation in resolving these disputes is measured through indicators reported by mediation participants, such as the population served, mediation results and party …

The Right To Language, T. Humphries, R. Kushalnagar, G. Mathur, Donna Jo Napoli, C. Padden, C. Rathmann, S. Smith

Linguistics Faculty Works

We argue for the existence of a state constitutional legal right to language. Our purpose here is to develop a legal framework for protecting the civil rights of the deaf child, with the ultimate goal of calling for legislation that requires all levels of government to fund programs for deaf children and their families to learn a fully accessible language: a sign language.

The Impact Of Group Personality Characteristics On Group Decision-Making, Kevin Shawn Bottomley

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine (1) how group information sharing impact group decision effectiveness, (2) how group personality composition impact group information sharing, and (3) how group personality composition impact group decision effectiveness. The data collected was FIRO-B® scores on the expressed scale, group information sharing data as measured by the Process and Issues Questionnaire (PIQ), and group decision effectiveness data as measured by the PIQ. Correlation analysis were performed to analyze the group psychological characteristics (H₂, H₃, & H₄,) based on an index created for each group where the data …

A Case Study Of Principals' Knowledge Of Early Childhood Literacy, Christine Elizabeth Leblanc

Theses and Dissertations

Nationally approximately 40 percent of third grade students do not read at grade level. Principals play a critical role in providing leadership in the implementation of Response to Intervention (RtI) to ensure that students not making adequate yearly progress receive targeted instruction to address their deficiencies. The purpose of this study is to explore the experience of five principals through an investigation of their understanding of the reading process as it relates to the implementation of RtI in their schools. I specifically wish to understand: What do principals know about early childhood literacy and how do they use that knowledge …

Assessing The Impact Of The Court Response To Domestic Violence In Two Neighboring Counties, Gillian Mira Pinchevsky

Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1970s, there has been a proliferation of research on domestic violence (DV). The majority of research, however, has focused on the correlates of DV and far fewer studies have examined the criminal justice system's approach to addressing DV. This is particularly concerning given that historically, the criminal justice system was rooted in English Common Law and tolerant of marital discipline to maintain household stability. Through the efforts of women's rights advocates, policy makers began devising innovative strategies for responding to DV, including provisions for mandatory arrests, no-drop policies, and the establishment of specialized DV courts. Although there has …

A Global Joyce: Early Sightings Of Cosmopolitan Ethics In Ulysses, Matthew Zeller

Theses and Dissertations

'Ulysses is like a great net let down upon the life of a microcosmic city-state, Dublin, wherein lie captured all sorts and conditions of men and minds,' wrote Stuart Gilbert, the famous literary scholar whose landmark 1930 book-length investigation into Joyce's magnum opus cemented his legacy as one of the first Joyceans. In saying so, Gilbert quietly proposes an early reading of Joyce's global ethics long before the study of humanities had developed the post-colonial focus necessary to more fully grasp the cosmopolitan ethics asserted in Ulysses. Gilbert was not alone. Because of his self-imposed exile and thematic insistence on …

The Rhetorical Event Of Modern Southern Humor: "A Requisite Element In Discourse", David Allen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical nature and dynamics of Southern humor in the second half of the twentieth century by analyzing, from a distinctly rhetorical perspective, a selection of popular Southern humor texts. It seeks to understand how Southern humor happens--its methods and techniques--and it also seeks to understand, as much as possible, the implications of these events for the various interlocutors and participants involved. By investigating the stylistic, storytelling, and linguistic techniques of Southern humor, while relying on the scholarship of writers in a variety of academic disciplines, I hope to answer the following research question: how does Southern …

Perceptions Of Breast Cancer-Related Stigma And Genetic Knowledge Among Latina Women: El Mejor Entendimiento Del Miedo., Jade Cognetti

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among Latina women, with BRCA1/2 gene mutations accounting for a commensurate proportion of breast/ovarian cancer in Latina women as compared to non-Latina women. Despite this statistic, it has been shown that Latino populations exhibit low awareness and use of genetic services and that they hold culturally-related beliefs which stigmatize cancer. We hypothesized that a simple, culturally-tailored educational flier would improve genetics knowledge as well as decrease breast cancer-related stigma among Latina women in our sample. Method: Two groups of Latina women (N = 19) were provided with a pre-survey, educational …

Does Human Genetic Diversity Affect Net Productivity?, Breyon Jontae Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galors' (2013) study, "The `Out of Africa' Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development", seeks to explain cross-country variations in economic development, particularly per capita income, through variations in human genetic diversity. Their analysis depends on two fundamental assumptions; genetic diversity's positive effect upon technological productivity and its negative effect upon social capital. This study tests the validity of the results presented by Ashraf and Galor. Specifically, this study seeks to test whether or not the hump-shape relationship observed between income per capita and predicted genetic diversity is validated. Our empirical work supports their findings.

Hiding In Plain Sight: The Rhetorical Workings Of Simone De Beauvoir's Feminist Language, Emily Crawford

Theses and Dissertations

Simone de Beauvoir's 1952 English rendering of The Second Sex translated into instant U.S. feminist acceptance, but by 1981 Julia Kristeva's call for "Women's Time" coupled with the rise of poststructuralism in the academy essentially sounded the death knell for Beauvoir in the world of feminist language theories. Where the new French feminists explored experimental ecriture feminine, Beauvoir's language appeared unsophisticated and outdated. In the past twenty years a handful of feminists have slowly and intermittently begun to reconsider Beauvoir's language from a variety of post-poststructuralist perspectives. My dissertation adds to this growing scholarship by exploring the rhetorical workings of …

The Development Of The Femme Fatale On Stage As Seen In The Works Of Jesse Lynch Williams And Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hillary Elizabeth Macarthur

Theses and Dissertations

The Femme Fatale in the United States developed from certain characteristics represented by the New Woman movement of the 1920's. Jesse Lynch Williams and Edna St. Vincent Millay capture the identifying factors of what a Femme Fatale is and should be. This paper will explore the differences and similarities in the images of the Femme Fatale and New Woman, and discuss how those differences are related to origins of the image of the New Woman.

Cortisol And Working Memory In Boys With Fragile X Syndrome, Jessica F. Scherr

Theses and Dissertations

Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder and the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability. Although FXS is associated with global cognitive impairments, specific deficits in working memory have been reported in young males with FXS. Working memory is an important cognitive process that involves the ability to temporarily store and manipulate information over a short period of time. Deficits in working memory can negatively impact an individual's academic, behavioral, and social functioning. Chronic stress can adversely influence working memory performance and can be measured physiologically through salivary cortisol. It is important to study the complex relationship of …

Using Multivariate Pattern Analysis To Investigate The Neural Representation Of Concepts With Visual And Haptic Features, Laura Bradshaw Baucom

Theses and Dissertations

A fundamental debate in cognitive neuroscience concerns how conceptual knowledge is represented in the brain. Over the past decade, cognitive theorists have adopted explanations that suggest cognition is rooted in perception and action. This is called the embodiment hypothesis. Theories of conceptual representation differ in the degree to which representations are embodied, from those which suggest conceptual representation requires no involvement of sensory and motor systems to those which suggest it is entirely dependent upon them. This work investigated how the brain represents concepts that are defined by their visual and haptic features using novel multivariate approaches to the analysis …

Antecedent Topicality Affects The Processing Of Both Np Anaphors And Pronoun, Evgenia Borshchevskaya

Theses and Dissertations

Information structure and grammatical constraints are known to affect the salience of discourse referents and referential processing, but it is not clear whether the two types of constraints have comparable effects. We report two visual-world experiments that contrasted the effect of a grammatical constraint (subjecthood) and the effect of an information structure constraint (fronting) on processing noun and pronoun anaphors. Experiment 1 tested whether fronting a non-subject referent can eliminate the Repeated Name Penalty (RNP; Gordon et al., 1993) when referring to the subject. Experiment 2 tested whether fronting a non-subject referent can elicit the RNP. The results show that …

International Graduate Students' Experiences With Race, Racial Identity, And Racialization At Home And In The United States: A Comparative Case Study, Ashlee Amanda Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

As the number of students studying in the United States (U.S.) has risen, scholars have increasingly paid attention to multiple aspects of the international student experience. Despite a proliferation of studies generally addressing the topic of international students, few studies have explicitly addressed the ways in which international students' sense of identity may be complicated during their time living and studying in the U.S. Scholarly inquiries into how international students experience racialization and the American racial paradigm have been missing from the overall discourse around "the international student experience."

This dissertation study contributes to that discourse by examining international graduate …

I Hope It Rains So My Corn And Your Okra Grows: A Case Study Of A Kindergarten Teacher's Language Use In Expanding Children's Language Repetoires, Linda D. Mook

Theses and Dissertations

The continuing disparity of academic success, commonly referred to as the achievement gap, the gap between economically disadvantaged subgroups and their more economically advantaged peers, is the greatest problem we face in the United States today (Slavin & Madden, 2006). In this dissertation, I studied in-depth the complexity of a quality teacher and her program at the kindergarten level, I focused my study on three areas, realizing that each of these areas is very complex. Although they overlap, they also have their own unique subtopics within the larger topic. The three areas of study are: oral language development, teacher/child interactions, …

The Evolution Of The Politics Of Genocide: Why American Efforts To Prevent And Intervene In The Sudan Failed, Shane Andrew Lesko

Theses and Dissertations

DISS_para>This thesis aims to examine and critique the United States' historical response to genocide. Beginning with the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide in 1948, the author will highlight the lives of Raphael Lemkin and Senator William Proxmire in their personal crusades for U.S. ratification of the genocide ban. Culminating in a case study of the genocide in Sudan, the U.S. foreign policy towards genocide will be evaluated and charted through its evolution since 1948, through to ratification, and then at its applications in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. The self-proclaimed …

Working Memory-Learning Condition Interactions: Proficiency In L2 Russian Under Naturalistic And Formal Learning Conditions, Marc Canner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the relationships between working memory (WM) and three commonly used learning strategies or conditions in the nature of proficiency among adult L2 Russian learners. Based on the aptitude-learning condition interaction framework articulated by Robinson (2002b), the study identifies two types of relationships between the fixed variables of working memory and learning condition, and four variables related to second language proficiency (SLP) in Russian: accuracy, fluency, overall general proficiency or `native-likeness', and the occurrence of potentially fossilized forms in speech. Three main learning contexts were identified, including strictly naturalistic conditions resulting from immersion …

Charlie: A New Robot Prototype For Improving Communication And Social Skills In Children With Autism And A New Single-Point Infrared Sensor Technique For Detecting Bbeathing And Heart Rate Remotely, Laura Boccanfuso

Theses and Dissertations

This research delivers a new, interactive game-playing robot named CHARLIE and a novel technique for remotely detecting breathing and heart rate using a single-point, thermal infrared sensor (IR). The robot is equipped with a head and two arms, each with two degrees of freedom, and a camera. We trained a human hands classifier and used this classifier along with a standard face classifier to create two autonomous interactive games: single-player ("Imitate Me, Imitate You") and two-player ("Pass the Pose"). Further, we developed and implemented a suite of new interactive games in which the robot is teleoperated by remote control. Each …

'We The Peoples': The Global Origins Of Constitutional Preambles, Tom Ginsburg, Nick Foti, Daniel Rockmore

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Semantic + Multimodal Communication Program For Switching Behavior In Severe Aphasia, Shannon A. Carr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Treatment for severe aphasia includes teaching alternative modalities to improve communicative effectiveness by circumventing deficits in verbal expression. Traditionally, alternative communication modalities are trained separately to augment or replace verbal output. However, adults with aphasia often have executive function deficits, specifically deficits in cognitive flexibility, which affect the communicative flexibility of the individual. The result is an inability to switch to a previously learned alternative modality when a communication breakdown occurs. This study explored a combined semantic + multimodal communication program (S+MCP) for an individual with severe aphasia and coexisting semantic deficits. The effect of S+MCP on his ability to …

Language Development Among Preschool Age Children Born Prematurely, Brittany Nicole Peters

Wayne State University Theses

Premature birth has been shown to be associated with various deficits in neuropsychological functioning during early childhood; however, few studies have attempted to understand the variables that contribute to variability in performance among children born prematurely. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationships between specific perinatal factors and language and cognitive outcome measures in a group of preschool-aged children born prematurely (N=47). As predicted, there were significant relationships between sex and specific outcome measures, with boys performing more poorly than girls; however, contrary to hypotheses, significant relationships failed to be found between outcome measures and both …

Structural Processing Of Language Components: Detection And Comprehension, Samantha Rose Crow

Wayne State University Theses

Although music and language share many perceptually functional characteristics, research endeavors are still focusing on the underlying neural circuitry. Past research has indicated a distinction of hemispheric lateralization between music and language processing. Recently, efforts have shifted to the notion of an initial general shared pathway in the brain with auditory stimuli differentiated in later processing to specialized regions. Therefore, both linguistic and musical components have been examined in numerous experiments to discern the possible influence of music and language components on auditory perception and comprehension, including their potential interaction. However, the effects of sentential prosody on early language structural …

Neurobiological Correlates Of Personality And Emotional Expression In Traumatic Brain Injury, Christina G. Wong

Wayne State University Theses

Many individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) experience cognitive, emotional, and functional deficits, all of which can contribute to chronic stress. Unfortunately, individuals with TBI often engage in less effective coping than non-brain-injured individuals, which has negative implications for rehabilitation. Differences in personality traits have been linked to individual differences in coping styles, physiological stress reactivity, and emotional disclosure. Research on personality and coping after TBI has been sparse. Thus, the present study examined the influence of TBI on the pattern of the relationships between personality, emotional expression, and stress reactivity. Eighty-one adults who sustained moderate to severe TBI and …

Filling The Gaps: Playing The Semiotic Network In The Extemporization Of Scores For Improvisational Theater, John Edwartowski

Wayne State University Theses

The Art of Scoring for Improvisational Theater draws on traditions whose origins are obscured by the fog of History and Myth. With no prior plan, a musician is tasked with providing accompaniment that creates or reinforces mood, era, location, or genre. Through such accompaniment, a musician reads and activates nodes in a semiotic network, to generate context, subtext, or both. Drawing from sources in Semiotics, Multimedia, Marketing, Sociology, Artificial Intelligence, Film Music History, Theater, Music Theory, and Musicology, as well as interviews with an array of Participants and the Author's personal experience, this paper seeks to articulate a framework of …

Anger Expression: Evaluating The Construct Validity Of Several Emotion Regulation Measures, Matthew James Jasinski

Wayne State University Theses

Researchers have used the Anger Expression Inventory (AEI), Ambivalence of Emotional Expression Questionnaire (AEQ), and Toronto Alexithymia Scale 20 (TAS) self-report measures to draw conclusions about relationships between emotion regulation and many other variables, but there is an insufficient amount of validation evidence about these measures. After first filling out the self-report measures, 75 participants with chronic low back pain completed a videotaped anger induction paradigm, in order to provoke the naturalistic experience of anger. Participants were next given the opportunity to express their anger to the experimenter, in either a guided or unguided condition. We then coded the videos …

Charles S. Wainwright: The Development Of Loyal Dissent From 1861-1865, J.J. Beck '13

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

Charles S Wainwright had participated in all three days of battle at Gettysburg. He witnessed his close friend and compatriot General Reynolds struck down on the first day. On July 5th, 1863, Wainwright traveled to what would later be known as Pickett’s Charge. Upon seeing the battlefield scattered with the bodies of the dead and smelling the stench of bloat, he lamented: “There was about an acre or so of ground here where you could not walk without stepping over the bodies, and I saw perhaps a dozen cases where they were heaped [sic] one on top of the other”. …