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Playing By New Rules: Board Games And America's Cold War Culture, 1945-1965, Matthew John Sprengeler

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis examines the domestic culture of the United States during the first two decades of the Cold War, using popular games as an interpretive tool to expand our understanding of the changes that took place. Four board games which were popular during the 1950s – Scrabble, chess, Clue, and Risk – explain some of the anxieties and evolutions in mass culture. Scrabble illustrated the nation's growing respect for expertise and, along with game theory, the hope for intellectual solutions to the country's problems. Chess, often seen as a symbol of the Cold War, served as a proxy battlefield for …

Suboptimal Social Science And Judicial Precedent, Ben Grunwald

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Danger Of Difference: Tensions In Directors’ View Of Corporate Board Diversity, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the results from fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons (including institutional investors, search firm personnel, and the like) regarding their views on corporate board diversity. It highlights numerous tensions in these views. Most directors, for instance, proclaim that diverse boards are good, but very few directors can articulate their reasons for this belief. Some directors have suggested that diverse boards work better than non-diverse boards, but gave relatively few concrete examples of specific instances where a female or minority board member made a special contribution related to that director’s race or …

Collective Action Federalism And Its Discontents, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

An increasing number of scholars argue that the Commerce Clause is best read in light of the collective action problems that the nation faced under the Articles of Confederation. The work of these “collective action theorists” is reflected in Justice Ginsburg’s opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. Writing for four Justices, she stressed the “collective-action impasse” at the state level to which the Affordable Care Act responds.

In its purest form, a collective action approach maintains that the existence of a significant problem of collective action facing two or more states is both necessary and sufficient …

Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom in international law is that dispute resolution institutions sharpen the reputational costs to states. This article challenges this understanding by examining how the inclusion of dispute resolution tribunals and remedy regimes can alter reputational analysis by shifting the audience¹s understanding of how mandatory a treaty's substantive obligations are. Drawing on the distinction between prices and sanctions, this article contests the assumption that the introduction of a remedy regime in international agreements will regularly increase compliance with the treaty¹s substantive terms. Instead, some remedy regimes may 'price' deviations from the treaty¹s terms and thereby facilitate breaches of the …

Can We Build Behavioral Game Theory?, Gale M. Lucas, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

The way economists and other social scientists model how people make interdependent decisions is through the theory of games. Psychologists and behavioral economists, however, have established many deviations from the predictions of game theory. In response to these findings, a broad movement has arisen to salvage the core of game theory. Extant models of interdependent decision-making try to improve their explanatory domain by adding some corrective terms or limits. We will make the argument that this approach is misguided. For this approach to work, the deviations would have to be consistent. Drawing in part on our experimental results, we will …

Happiness Surveys And Public Policy: What’S The Use?, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based on coefficients in a happiness equation.

But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur …

Regulating Shadows: Financial Regulation And Responsibility Failure, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

In the modern financial architecture, financial services and products increasingly are provided outside of the traditional banking system—and thus without the need for bank intermediation between capital markets and the users of funds. Most corporate financing, for example, no longer is dependent on bank loans but raised through special-purpose entities, money-market mutual funds, securities lenders, hedge funds, and investment banks. This shift, referred to as “disintermediation” and described as creating a “shadow banking” system, is so radically transforming finance that regulatory scholars need to rethink their assumptions. Two of the fundamental market failures underlying shadow banking—information failure and agency failure—were …

“One Size Can Fit All” – On The Mass Production Of Legal Transplants, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Law reformers like the World Bank sometimes suggest that optimal legal rules and institutions can be recognized and then be recommended for law reform in every country in the world. Comparative lawyers have long been skeptical of such views. They point out that both laws and social problems are context-specific. What works in one context may fail in another. Instead of “one size fits all,” they suggest tailormade solutions.

I challenge this view. Drawing on a comparison with IKEA’s global marketing strategy, I suggest that “one size fits all” can sometimes be not only a successful law reform strategy, but …

Narrative, Truth, And Trial, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article critically evaluates the relationship between constructing narratives and achieving factual accuracy at trials. The story model of adjudication— according to which jurors process testimony by organizing it into competing narratives—has gained wide acceptance in the descriptive work of social scientists and currency in the courtroom, but it has received little close attention from legal theorists. The Article begins with a discussion of the meaning of narrative and its function at trial. It argues that the story model is incomplete, and that “legal truth” emerges from a hybrid of narrative and other means of inquiry. As a result, trials …

Nonsense And The Freedom Of Speech: What Meaning Means For The First Amendment, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

A great deal of everyday expression is, strictly speaking, nonsense. But courts and scholars have done little to consider whether or why such meaningless speech, like nonrepresentational art, falls within “the freedom of speech.” If, as many suggest, meaning is what separates speech from sound and expression from conduct, then the constitutional case for nonsense is complicated. And because nonsense is so common, the case is also important — artists like Lewis Carroll and Jackson Pollock are not the only putative “speakers” who should be concerned about the outcome.

This Article is the first to explore thoroughly the relationship between …

Deflationism About Truth And Meaning, Onyoung Oh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of my thesis is to defend a deflationary view of truth and meaning. I characterize the view as a doctrine holding that truth is a purely logical notion, and truth-theoretic notions don't play a serious explanatory role in an account of meaning and content. We use truth-terms (e.g. `true') everywhere, from the discourse of ordinary conversation to those of the hard science and morality. The ubiquity of truth-terms gives rise to the impression that truth is a profound notion playing substantive explanatory roles. This impression, say deflationists, is unduly inflated--the ubiquity of truth-terms is not a sign of …

The Lived Experiences Of Transition To Adult Healthcare In Young Adults With Cerebral Palsy, Ellen Mclaughlin Carroll

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Health Care Transition (HCT) describes the purposeful, planned movement of adolescents from child to adult-orientated care. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to uncover the meaning of transition to adult centered care as experienced by Young Adults with Cerebral Palsy (YA-CP) through the research question: What are the lived experiences of young adults with cerebral palsy transitioning from pediatric to adult healthcare?

Method: 6 females and 3 males, aged 19 -25 years of age, who identified as carrying the diagnosis of cerebral palsy without cognitive impairment were interviewed. Giorgi's (1985) method for analysis of phenomenology was the framework …

Teachers Working With Families: Natural Enemies Or Necessary Allies?, Kirsten Cole

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The complex and crucial connection between families and schools is embodied in relationship between individual teachers and their students' families. Research findings demonstrate that high levels of family engagement lead to greater success for students. Such findings drive policy mandates that hold individual teachers accountable for cultivating this relationship. However, not enough is known about how such mandates are enacted on the ground. In an era when teachers are required to adhere to the standardization of curriculum and the uniform recommendations of "best practice" pedagogic models, teachers must still draw on their whole, complex, human selves when seeking to foster …

Dissociation And Potential Space On The Rorschach As Predictors Of Concurrent Ptsd And Substance Dependence Treatment Outcomes, Stephen John Anen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Both posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) are ongoing public health crises. Dissociative experiences are considered core processes within both of these conditions (van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1989; Briere & Runtz, 1987; Schafer et al., 2010). Dissociation, which involves the compartmentalization of psychic experience, also exerts a significant influence over psychotherapies that aim to address both PTSD and SUD (Davidson & Foa, 1991; Spitzer, Barnow, Freyberger, & Grabe, 2007). However, dissociation is a wide concept that encompasses several perceptual, cognitive, affective, memory, and self-state processes (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986; Briere, Weathers, & Runtz, 2005). …

Children And Elephants: A Study Of Mentalization, Empathy, And Attitudes Towards Conservation In Participants Of An Elephant-Based Environmental Intervention In West Africa, Erica C. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent research suggests that children's identification with animals and propensity to learn from animal experiences might make animal-focused interventions ideal for social and emotional development. A child's ability to understand their own and others' feeling states has been linked to emotional resilience and has been identified as a protective factor against the development of pathology later in life (Allen & Fonagy, 2006). This study examined the impact of an ongoing conservation-based intervention in Burkina Faso on conservation attitudes, mentalization and empathy. Participants were 106 Burkinabe students, 56 male and 50 female, ages 9-15. Participants were split into four groups, a …

Producing Bodies, Knowledge, And Community In Everyday Civilian Struggle Over Surveillance, Michelle C. Billies

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a global context of rapidly expanding security practices, those cast as social threats are themselves often most risk of harm. In this dissertation, I develop the concept surveillance threat (ST) to describe the perception or experience of impending or actual harm faced by targeted civilians when they are stopped or screened by law enforcement. Singled out by race and other lines of sociocultural force, those stopped risk physical, legal, sexual, and spatial consequences. Yet focusing solely on the risk of harm limits the full meaning of this encounter. As I show in my research, civilians persistently struggle against these …

Pathways Of Activity: Lessons From Dominican College Students, Monika L. Son

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

High attrition rates among Latino students have long been identified as a major problem in college. Few attempts have been made to understand the normative developmental experiences among this population. This study, based on a study of lives, a narrative approach, examines the experiences of urban Dominican-American college students. Their strategies for effectively navigating a wide variety of contexts (e.g., school, work, family, and neighborhood) are analyzed, and implications for their educational efforts are examined within a developmental framework. Gender disparities and immigrant processes are also explored.

Two part interviews were completed with eleven participants. The first interview was semi-structured …

Pathways To High-Lethality Suicide Attempts, Megan Schaffer Chesin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to develop a model of the trajectory to high-lethality suicidal behavior for individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). An increased number of previous suicide attempts, substance use immediately prior to the attempt, and objective planning were proposed to lead directly to an attempt of higher lethality. Meanwhile, aggression and impulsivity were hypothesized to lead indirectly, through their association with past suicidal behavior, to a higher lethality attempt. Path analysis revealed a revised model that applied only to individuals with BPD. In this final model, impulsivity was found to be …

Writing The Visual In "Baroni: Un Viaje" And Other Recent Work By Sergio Chejfec, Margaret Carson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation has three parts. First, I explore the ways in which word intersects with image in several recent texts by the contemporary Argentine writer Sergio Chejfec, whose oeuvre is replete with verbal descriptions of visual artifacts. Second, as a complement to the critical essay, I present my English translation of Chejfec's Baroni: un viaje (2007), a novel featuring the Venezuelan artist Rafaela Baroni, whose extraordinary wood carvings of Virgins, saints and other figures are described in key passages. Third, as a bridge between these two parts, I reflect on the related critical discourses of ekphrasis and translation and on …

Can We Get Along, Long Enough To Collaborate?, Martha Lucia Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Successful collaborations take effort. This study analyzed the process followed by 20 groups of diverse professions that were brought together to solve a community health problem. To this goal a four part model of conflict was adapted and used to understand how conflict emerged, was managed or resolved. The model allowed for the identification of five routes to conflict. Conflict was either averted or managed constructively by most of the groups and a set of productive behaviors is associated with this ability. Experienced collaborators utilize these behaviors at various times throughout the collaborative process to promote group cohesion and the …

Reconciling Life Balance: A Grounded Theory Study Of Overcoming Failure, Kathleen Karsten

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Academic failure has been described as endemic in nursing education. Although, associate degree nursing programs graduate the largest number of nurses each year, the on-time graduation rate is 59%. Every semester students fail nursing courses and are required to successfully repeat the course before they can progress in the nursing program. Students who re-take a failed course are often called "repeaters." This qualitative Grounded Theory research explored the process of overcoming failure and becoming a successful student repeater. This emergent mode grounded theory study applied qualitative analysis techniques to prospectively verify and refine this emergent concept by delineating dimensions embedded …

Unexpected Work Intrusions Into Employees' Personal Lives: Investigation, Measure Development, And Exploration Of Causes And Consequences, Angela R. Grotto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present research explored unplanned work performed during employees' nonwork hours in response to unexpected work intrusions. Three studies were conducted to achieve four goals: 1) better understand the nature of switching from nonwork roles to the work role in response to work intrusions during nonwork hours, 2) help distinguish unplanned role switching from planned role transitions (e.g., bringing work home), 3) develop and validate new episodic measures of work intrusions and three aspects of unplanned nonwork-to-work role switching (frequency, mental difficulty, and physical effort), and 4) begin developing a nomological net of antecedent and outcomes variables surrounding the construct. …

Are Black Girls The New Number Runners? An Analysis Of Black Girls And High School Mathematics, Carolyn Denise King

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), one out of every 100 employed scientists and engineers in the United States is a Black female. This statistic prompts the examination of Black females and mathematics. How do individual-level (educational aspirations), familial-level (support), and school-level (school characteristics) variables impact Black female students' proficiency in high school mathematics as well as predict their enrollment in postsecondary math courses?

Employing four waves from the National Education Longitudinal Study (1988, 1990, 1992, & 1994), this study seeks to add to the discourse on achievement in mathematics by examining factors which impact outcomes in mathematics for …

Refugees And Resistance: International Activism For Grassroots Democracy And Human Rights In New York, Miami, And Haiti, 1957 To 1994, Carl Lindskoog

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the evolution of political activism among Haitians in the United States from the formation of Haitian New York in the late 1950s to the return of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti in 1994. It traces the efforts of Haitian activists to build bridges connecting New York and Miami to the grassroots organizations in Haiti, finding a considerable degree of success in their efforts to construct a transnational movement that had a substantial impact both in Haiti and in the United States. Shedding additional light on the interconnected history of Haiti and the United States, this dissertation …

Cafeteria, Commissary And Cooking: Foodways And Negotiations Of Power And Identity In A Women’S Prison, Amy Brooks Smoyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses foodways theory to build knowledge about the lived experience of incarceration by analyzing women’s narratives about prison food and eating. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 formerly incarcerated women in New Haven, CT. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Findings explain the different ways that inmates collect, prepare, distribute and consume food, and the centrality of these activities to incarcerated life. By shedding light on these daily routines, the world of prison life comes into greater focus.

Thematic analysis of the data further illuminates the prison experience by suggesting the positive and negative ways that food …

(In)Justice On The Streets: The Long Housing Crisis In Hungary From Above And Below, Éva Tessza Udvarhelyi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hungary today is the only country in the world that has encoded in its constitution the possibility of penalizing homelessness in public spaces. The intensity of criminalization of homelessness in recent years has given rise to a tug-of-war between the ruling party and grassroots activists. This dissertation explores the politics of homelessness in Budapest from three interlocking perspectives, drawing on primary historical sources, social science literature in English and Hungarian, the secondary analysis of a participatory action research project as well as the author’s experiences as a housing rights activist. It will first examine how the state has addressed homelessness …

Script Fading For Children With Autism: Generalization Of Social Initiation Skills From School To Home, Alison Marie Wichnick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A critical component of teaching social skills to people with autism is the generalization of behavior change across a variety of untrained situations during which social skills are appropriate. The script-fading procedure is an effective technology for teaching social skills to people with autism, but few researchers have established cues in the natural environment as the discriminative stimuli for social initiations. The purpose of this study was to use a script-fading procedure to teach young children with autism to initiate to one another across various activities in the school setting, and to program for generalization across untrained stimuli in the …

From Property Abandonment To Predatory Equity: Writings On Financialization And Urban Space In New York City, Desiree Justina Fields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Financial markets, actors and imperatives are increasingly central to today's global capitalism, even in areas of the economy traditionally distinct from finance, such as real estate. This financialization changes the role of mortgage capital in urban space from building place-bound wealth to facilitating the extraction of value from place. This dissertation addresses questions about how financialization operates in the rental market, specifically its relation to: earlier processes of urban disinvestment, ongoing social and political struggles around urban space, the meaning of home and social reproduction. These questions correspond to broader theoretical debates about the contingent relationship between today's urban context …

Social And Emotional Learning: An Argument For Religious Pluralism, Debra Mayconich Baron

Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to argue that in order for social and emotional learning (SEL) goals to achieve their intended outcomes for students and society, religious pluralism must be reflected in student instruction. SEL involves the use of evidence-based practices to provide opportunities to develop competencies related to self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making which are intended to enable students to demonstrate morally appropriate actions and ethical decisions, which I am calling "right behavior."

It is my argument that one's understanding of right behavior embodies both implicit and explicit moral beliefs based on one's …