Digital Commons Network^™

Scale As A Key Factor For Sustainable Water Management In Northwest Honduras, E. Christian Wells, Karla L. Davis-Salazar, Jose E. Moreno-Cortes

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

In northwest Honduras, community-based interventions by outside development agencies seeking to assist communities with the treatment and delivery of potable water have been largely ineffective. This article examines the social, economic, ecological, and engineered contexts of gravity-fed water systems in the Palmarejo Valley of this region, identifying key barriers to long-term sustainability. Drawing from the results of our mixed-methods research in the valley incorporating ethnographic and spatial analyses along with water quality testing, we outline the limitations of community-based development approaches that ignore the broader social and political scales of resource inequalities. We find that water provisioning often requires coordination …

Alaska Athabascan Stellar Astronomy, Christopher M. Cannon

Arctic and Northern Studies

Stellar astronomy is a fundamental component of Alaska Athabascan cultures that facilitates time-reckoning, navigation, weather forecasting, and cosmology. Evidence from the linguistic record suggests that a group of stars corresponding to the Big Dipper is the only widely attested constellation across the Northern Athabascan languages. However, instruction from expert Athabascan consultants shows that the correlation of these names with the Big Dipper is only partial. In Alaska Gwich'in, Ahtna, and Upper Tanana languages the Big Dipper is identified as one part of a much larger circumpolar humanoid constellation that spans more than 133 degrees across the sky. The Big Dipper …

Effect Of Temperature On The Phenology Of Chilo Partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera, Crambidae); Simulation And Visualization Of The Potential Future Distribution Of C. Partellus In Africa Under Warmer Temperatures Through The Development Of Life-Table Parameters, N. Khadioli, Z. E.H. Tonnang, E. Muchugu, G. Ong'amo, T. Achia, I. Kipchirchir, J. Kroschel, B. Le Ru

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Maize (Zea mays) is a major staple food in Africa. However, maize production is severely reduced by damage caused by feeding lepidopteran pests. In East and Southern Africa, Chilo partellus is one of the most damaging cereal stem borers mainly found in the warmer lowland areas. In this study, it was hypothesized that the future distribution and abundance of C. partellus may be affected greatly by the current global warming. The temperature-dependent population growth potential of C. partellus was studied on artificial diet under laboratory conditions at six constant temperatures (15, 18, 20, 25, 28, 30, 32 and 35 °C), …

Parasites And Skeletal Indicators Of Anemia In The Eastern United States, Erin Dinneen

Anthropology

The goal of this research is to examine the influence of parasitic infection and diet in the etiology of anemia in prehistoric human populations of the eastern United States. Prehistorically, anemia is often attributed to a nutrient-deficient diet, while parasite infection is discussed as a secondary cause if at all. However, parasite infection is a leading cause of anemia in the developing world today. Modern epidemiological studies have demonstrated that parasites thrive or perish under particular environmental conditions, and risk for parasite infection can be predicted based on environment using GIS. Here I apply this method to see whether environmental …

Molar Size And Shape In The Estimation Of Biological Affinity: A Comparison Of Relative Cusp Locations Using Geometric Morphometrics And Interlandmark Distances, Michael W. Kenyhercz

Anthropology

The study of teeth has been a central tenet in biological anthropology since the inception of the field. Teeth have been previously shown to have a high genetic component. The high heritability of teeth has allowed researchers to use them to answer a myriad of anthropological questions ranging from human origins to modern variation due to microevolution. Traditionally, teeth have been studied either morphologically, through the assignment of nonmetric character states, or metrically, through mesiodistal and buccolingual crown measures. Increasingly, geometric morphometric techniques are being used to answer anthropological questions, especially dentally. However, regardless of analytical technique utilized, the biological …

Toolstone Procurement In Middle-Late Holocene In The Kodiak Archipelago And The Alaska Peninsula, Devon Rains

Anthropology

The Norton tradition (2300-950 BP) in the Alaska Peninsula and the Late Kachemak phase (2700-900 BP) in Kodiak are distinct cultural traditions yet contain some similarities in lithic assemblages and house form, suggesting some contact or influence occurred. The subsequent Koniag tradition (900-200 BP) is present in both the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak, indicating direct influence or migration. While the Koniag tradition is found in sites located throughout the North Pacific region, the Koniag tradition in Kodiak is characterized by changes in social climate and subsistence strategies including greater warfare/raiding and resource consolidation. In order to obtain these resources, Koniag …

Honda Country: Relocalization Through Technology In Nanwalek Alaska, David Dehass

Indigenous Studies

It should not be assumed that the introduction of a new technology automatically wipes out past cultural practices. Instead, it is often the case that these offerings are integrated into a current routine. For the Sugpiat of Nanwalek, Alaska, there is a constant need to negotiate between what to change and what to preserve. My research explores how a cultural group judges a new technology based upon shared boundaries and understandings. I examine how the decision to accept all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) has allowed for increased participation in subsistence practices, effective resource management, and material and emotional reunification with those things …

Monitoring Energy And Nitrogen Availability For Arctic Caribou (Rangifer Tarandus), Lindsay L. Vansomeren

Biological Sciences

Arctic caribou and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are an economically and ecologically important species. Rangifer populations are often affected by nutritional factors. Our ability to monitor nutrient supply to arctic ungulates is presently limited by a lack of techniques to consistently and easily measure availability of specific nutrients and which may disproportionately affect different segments of Rangifer populations. I refined and validated a method to measure availability of specific nutrients including nitrogen (N) and energy to caribou using purified fibrolytic enzymes and acid/pepsin to simulate digestion. I then used this method to measure how availability of nitrogen and energy was altered …

Migrant Construction And Domestic Workers In The Arab Gulf States: Modern - Day Slaves?, Omaya Chidiac

LLM Theses

This thesis examines the conditions of migrant construction and domestic workers in the Arab Gulf. I explore literatures on migrant labour, precariousness, and slavery. I also look at international and domestic legal instruments as well as data produced by several human rights organizations. This thesis shows how the mechanisms involved in the migration of migrant construction and domestic workers exacerbate vulnerability and precariousness. I examine the ways in which social locations including gender and race play a role in discrimination against migrant construction and domestic workers in the Arab Gulf, thus assisting conditions of slavery to arise. My aim is …

Style Shifting In First-Encounter Conversations Between Japanese Speakers, Kenichi Shinkuma

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines style shift between formal and informal styles in first- encounter conversations between Japanese native speakers and demonstrates how the speakers shifted the speech style in the context. Many researchers have studied this type of style shift and demonstrated that style shifts occur within a single speech context where social factors, such as differences in age, status, and formalness remain constant (e.g., Cook, 2008; Geyer, 2008; Ikuta, 1983; Maynard, 1991; Okamoto, 1999). This study contributed support to these previous studies. In this study, both quantitative and qualitative analyses focusing on Japanese native speakers' use of style shifting in …

Transferential Poetics, From Poe To Warhol, Adam Frank

Literature

Transferential Poetics presents a method for bringing theories of affect to the study of poetics. Informed by the thinking of Silvan Tomkins, Melanie Klein, and Wilfred Bion, it offers new interpretations of the poetics of four major American artists: Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Andy Warhol. The author emphasizes the close, reflexive attention each of these artists pays to the transfer of feeling between text and reader, or composition and audience— their transferential poetics. The book’s historical route from Poe to Warhol culminates in television, a technology and cultural form that makes affect distinctly available to perception. …

Feminist Legal Theory As A Way To Explain The Lack Of Progress Of Women’S Rights In Afghanistan: The Need For A State Strength Approach, Isaac Kfir

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Cultural and religious practices are critical to explaining Afghanistan’s dreadful reputation concerning the preservation, protection, and promotion of women’s rights. Those advocating misogynistic practices assert that the calls for reforms challenge their religion and culture, while also claiming that many women’s issues exist within the private realm. Accordingly, they assert that reforms that aim at addressing disempowerment are not vital to the state and go beyond the established limits of state authority. Building on feminist legal theory, which distinguishes between the public and private spheres, I argue in Afghanistan misogynistic and discriminatory practices stem from contrived cultural and religious norms. …

Bibimbap: Identity Construction In Korean Third Culture Kids During Higher Education, Megan I. Beard

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst increasing interconnectedness and transmigration of the 21st century, a number of families are leaving South Korea for business, work, or education; their children are raised as Third Culture Kids (TCKs)—children who accompany their parents abroad. This study used the lens of cultural globalization to examine how Korean TCKs used their life experiences to inform their identity construction, especially during higher education. Participants were Korean students and recent alumni from universities in Korea, the United States, and abroad who had spent at least three childhood years living outside Korea with their families. Data were collected through a series of unstructured …

Independence At Large: Contemporary China's Alternative Music Scenes And The Cultural Practices Of Post-Socialist Urban Youth, Shan Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Using contemporary Beijing’s alternative music scenes as a focal point, this ethnographic research seeks to enrich the understanding of China’s post-socialist urban youth by examining their cultural practices. First, this thesis offers an analytical account of the popularizing embrace of “independent cultures,” which is defined as a collection of experienceable objects and activities in musical, filmic, theatric, and other cultural forms that are well recognized yet believed by advocates as having aesthetic and participatory features that are different from those produced in the popular culture industry. While the vogue for independent cultures is substantially conditioned by the socioeconomic attributes of …

When Life Happens: Theatres Of Hiv And Complexity In South Africa, Jessica S. Ruthven

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines theatre as part of an artistic movement in South Africa to address the social, structural, and emotional repercussions of HIV, as well as a space in which knowledge about HIV/AIDS is actively created, mediated, reproduced, challenged, and presented for public consumption. Although applied theatre has a long history in the country, I focus on innovation in recent theatrical practices that have occurred as artists and members of broader civil society struggle to understand the trajectory of the country's AIDS epidemic and question the scope of popular national HIV intervention campaigns. I use emerging forms of cultural production …

Feeling Doctrine: Religious Meanings Of Emotion In Sixteenth-Century German Literature, Georgia Anna Leeper

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersections of emotion and Protestant theology in late-16th-century German literature. The project demonstrates the availability of even secular texts to confessional readings through the analysis of representations of emotions. Post-Reformation texts practice an emotional exemplarity that highlights the effects - including the spiritual effects - which emotional experiences have on the individual. I argue that narrative representations of emotions at this moment reflect anxieties about the nebulous nature of faith, and its central role in Protestant salvation. Close readings of widely-read texts such as the 1587 Faustbuch, Melusine, and Hans Sach's Judith: ein Comedi, among others …

Bronze Age Potters In Regional Context: Long-Term Development Of Ceramic Technology In The Eastern Eurasian Steppe Zone, Paula Naify Doumani

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between mobility, social interaction and flows of material technology in Bronze Age Semirech'ye, in southeast Kazakhstan. The work is directed at questions of operational complexity and issues of scale in understanding local and regional material assemblages and craft production in the Bronze Age. The thesis represents the first comprehensive technological analysis of Handmade Steppe Ceramics (HSC) from Semirech'ye. The ceramics date to the Bronze Age (ca. 2400-800BC) and are associated with the work of mobile pastoralists who occupied disaggregated seasonal campsites along the piedmont zone of the Dzhungar Mountains. Pottery data was obtained from newly …

Innovation Among Georgian Journalism Educators: A Network Analysis Perspective, Ana Keshelashvili

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid developments in technology in recent years have disrupted the media’s traditional role as a main informer for citizens. The changes have challenged journalism educators worldwide, pushing them to innovate and experiment. One purpose of this dissertation is to examine adoption of innovations by journalism educators in Georgia, a small post-Soviet country with partly free media and lack of professional outlets, that has been and still is a beneficiary of Western aid for media development. Employing innovation diffusion theory and the network analysis perspective, this dissertation uses a census of journalism educators and journalism program leaders in Georgia to understand …

Going Up The Country: A Comparison Of Elite Ceramic Consumption Patterns In Charleston And The Carolina Frontier, Rebecca E. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

The 18th century colonial world is characterized by a dramatic increase in the consumption of goods identified as the “consumer revolution.” During this period fashionable material culture and the social performances associated with their use became universally recognized symbols of group membership. This thesis uses archaeological evidence to explore variation in the degree of participation in the consumer revolution between urban and rural settings in late eighteenth-century South Carolina. The data used for this research will be taken from excavated ceramic assemblages of two domestic archaeological sites, both of which were homes owned consecutively by the wealthy Brewton and Motte …

A Phenomenological Study Of Student Engagement In United States History Classrooms, Emily Louvette Manigault

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the relationship between student engagement and the perception of academic achievement (learning) by teachers and students in an urban high school social studies course. Over the past several years, educational leaders and researchers have tried to find a cause for a number of issues in public education, including low academic achievement, increasing student drop-out rates and the decline of positive perceptions of schools in general. As a result, there has been increasing research done on the level of engagement that students experience during their schooling. Much of the research has focused …

Science Fairs Before Sputnik: Adolescent Scientific Culture In Contemporary America, Sarah Michel Scripps

Theses and Dissertations

"Science Fairs before Sputnik: Adolescent Scientific Culture in Contemporary America" traces the formation and evolution of science fairs in America, focusing on the ways in which adolescents established communities of practice by engaging in these competitions. Over the course of the twentieth century, generations of American children conducted their first experiments by crafting science fair projects. The dissertation evaluates this understudied phenomenon against the backdrop of American fascinations and fears of science and evolving notions of adolescence. It argues that science fairs were central to shaping an adolescent scientific culture in the United States during the early to mid twentieth …

Southern Language, Ideology, And Identity In A High School Sorority, Sara Lide

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the language practices of high school sorority members in a mid-sized city in the U.S. South. Specifically, it describes how economically privileged, white, female youth in the Young Ladies’ Society of Midway (YLSM) used Southern language to position themselves and others in relation to widely and locally circulating ideologies of language, region, gender, and class. Drawing on sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods, this study addresses the issues of how Southern language practices and language ideologies relate and how indexical meanings and social identities emerge through linguistic interaction. As a study that examines the language of a group …

Commencement Convocation Program, Sarasota - Manatee Campus, December 14, 2014, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

Golden Bull Service & Outstanding Leadership Award - Mariana Barboza; Outstanding Graduate Award - Stephanie Boynton; Outstanding Professor - Fawn T. Ngo

Commencement Convocation Program, St. Petersburg Campus, December 14, 2014, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

Regional Chancellor's Award for Civic Leadership - Mary Anne Reilly; Outstanding Graduate - Angela Wilson; King O'Neal Scholar Award - Jesse Stuart Daw and Heather Lee

Impact Of Role Model Gender And Communality On College Women’S Math Performance And Interest In Stem, Elizabeth K. Lawner

Master's Theses

The current project examined the effect of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) role model gender and communality and communal goal endorsement on college women’s math performance and their interest in, perceived belonging in, and perceived communal goal affordance of STEM. The first study was conducted online and did not include math performance, while the second study was conducted in the laboratory and added a math assessment. It was hypothesized that exposure to a female role model would result in greater math performance and interest and perceiving belonging in STEM, exposure to a communal role model would result in increased …

Comparative Analysis Of Intercultural Communication Apprehension Displayed By International Students In The Us Interacting With American Students And Other Internationals, Laura Nunez Quero

Theses

This study compares the levels of intercultural communication apprehension of two groups of international students in the United States when interacting with American students and with each other. These groups are Indian students and Dominican students. Results indicate no significant difference on the levels of anxiety that both populations experience while interacting interculturally. However, in both cases, subjects with a poorer dominance of the English language, regardless of other variables such as gender and age, experience higher levels of intercultural communication apprehension (ICA).

Fall Commencement Program, December 13, 2014, Coastal Carolina University

Commencement Programs

Program of Commencement Exercises at Coastal Carolina University.

Ua45/6 Commencement Program, Wku Registrar

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program listing graduates.

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Graduate, December 13, 2014, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters - Gilbert A. King

An Analysis Of U.S./Canadian Fisheries Policy In Regards To Pacific Salmon And The Preservation Of Indigeneity In The Pacific Northwest, Michael James Lockwood

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

For more than 160 years, the Pacific salmon has been an important resource for the United States and Canada. However, it has been overexploited. Proper management of the species is essential not only for maintaining healthy populations but also maintaining the interests of diverse stakeholders. One set of stakeholders consists of the indigenous peoples of North America because the Pacific salmon are crucial to their food, social, and ceremonial traditions.

This thesis explores the impacts of Canadian and U.S. public policies on the cultural integrity of native peoples in the Pacific Northwest, specifically as those peoples rely on wild Pacific …