Digital Commons Network^™

Love's Labour's Lost: A History Of The Question "Why Is There No Socialism In The United States?", Alexander M. Dunphy

University Honors Theses

Why is there no socialism in the United States? This question has plagued radicals and scholars alike for over a hundred years, and various responses are beyond count. However, less attention has been paid to what asking the Question actually means. A chronological study of the various attempts to answer it reveals far more than a history of radicalism. As the Question has been passed from Marxists, to Socialists, to Progressives, to Communists, to Consensus oriented social scientists to the New Left, to Cultural scholars, to Neoconservatives, and up to today, each generation of scholars, commentators and activists has tackled …

Comics And The Complicit Reader: Closure As A Transgressive Technique In Transmetropolitan, Kyle Knox

University Honors Theses

In recent years, the critical analysis of comic books has come to be a respected field in popular culture studies. Transmetropolitan, a 60 issue comic book created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Darick Robertson, became a one of the most popular nonsuperhero series throughout its publication by DC Comics in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Since the beginning of the present decade, scholars have paid increased attention to the thematic content of the series, identifying the text as a brutal transgressive satire of Western consumerist culture. This paper examines the formal structure of the work, primarily through …

Cultural Competency: A Quantitative Analysis Of Cultural Awareness In U.S. Healthcare, Jordan Nomie

University Honors Theses

A growing issue in healthcare in the United States is whether consideration and attentiveness of physicians and other healthcare providers towards a patient’s culture has an effect on the treatment process. An anthropological term, cultural competency, describes a medical professional’s respect and integration of the patients’ cultural beliefs and practices throughout the treatment process in order to reduce cross-cultural health disparities and to improve overall satisfaction. Although there is significant literature outlining a theoretical need for increased implementation of these practices, little work has been done to address actual quantitative evidence supporting or refuting the articulated need. The goal of …

Américo Castro, Saint James, And Spain: The History Of A Belief, Daniel Blanchard

University Honors Theses

The present essay is broadly interested in the problem of writing history, and the way different manners of confronting this problem are received and represented in the modern day as our historiographical compass increases in depth, scope, and capacity. Within the breadth of this theme, my case study is centered on the Spanish historian Américo Castro (1885–1972), an author whose work embodies not only the Spanish intellectual trends of his day, but also a substantial swath of Western philosophy and academic scholarship. I demonstrate the influence of existential philosophy on Castro, as well as the myopic filter of nationalism through …

The Secret Life Of The Cross-Cultural Fairy Tale: A Comparative Study Of The Indonesian Folktale "Bawang Merah, Bawang Putih" And Three European Fairy Tales, Sarah Nicole Donaldson

University Honors Theses

Folklore was one of the earliest developed forms of story telling, and fairy tales especially remain influentially pervasive in society today. In this paper, I seek to deconstruct five versions of the Indonesian folktale "Bawang Merah, Bawang Putih," through comparisons with the European fairy tales "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes," "The Fairies," and "Mother Holle," using an interdisciplinary approach incorporating psychoanalytic and feminist theories in a close reading of the tales. Through tracking the transfer of money in the tales, I establish that heroines rarely keep their money as young, marriageable girls are considered commodities themselves within the fairy tale world. …

Sexism, Statements, And Audits, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Working Papers

Gender stereotypes and gender-discriminant behaviors have been shown to have strong and undesirable organizational, managerial, and economic effects. We examine the relationship between sexism and accounting practices, and the effect of contextual feedback using laboratory experiments. Sexist stereotypes and contextual feedback may affect the likelihood of financial misstatements and audits when auditors and issuers are of known gender. To investigate these aspects of sexism at zero acquaintance and after contextual feedback, we presented males and females with incentivized belief elicitation tasks about anticipated interaction behaviors and then a series of strategic-communication game decisions in same, other, and unknown gender interactions. …

Bringing Down The Island: Rebellion, Colonial Hierarchy, And Individualized Leadership In Nuñez’S Novel Prospero’S Daughter, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

“Bringing Down the Island: Rebellion, Colonial Hierarchy, and Individualized Leadership in Nuñez’s novel Prospero’s Daughter” offers an analysis of Elizabeth Nuñez’s (2006) novel Prospero’s Daughter and Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest (1969), both of which draw upon multicultural tradition of European and Caribbean literatures, retelling Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). The paper is concerned with the ways in which leadership has been transformed from the original story, through Césaire’s text, and into Nuñez’s. Each work acts as an agent of leadership in literary and social terms, attempting to enact paradigmatic shifts away from hierarchy and classification and toward individualized transformational leadership.

“The 15-M Movement: Formed By And Formative Of Counter-Mapping And Spatial Activism” By Stephen Luis Vilaseca, Eugenia Afinoguénova

Spanish Languages and Literatures Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Female Identity And Experience In Abc's Lost, Jennifer L. Reichart

Masters Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the female characters and their roles as mothers, daughters, and lovers in the television series LOST (ABC, 2004-2010). During its original runtime, the series presented intriguing yet complex women whose personal experiences were revealed in flashbacks. With the move from these flashbacks to flashforwards and flashsideways, the series further complicated both its form and its content by demonstrating how individual identity and experience informed each female character's decisions, motivations, and agendas. In this way, the series deconstructs various stereotypical roles women are placed in such as single mothers, pampered princesses, and imprisoned women. Oftentimes, …

Best Practices And Attributes Of Bicultural Leaders, Shefali Khandhar Mody

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to uncover the attributes of successful bicultural leaders. Findings suggested that any one of four acculturation strategies chosen by bicultural leaders depended on the intensity of the dominant spouse's alliance to their Country of Origin, their identity self-construal and opportunities to create supportive in-groups that made the bicultural individual the center of in-group connectivity. Integrated biculturals exhibit a tendency to create networks, where over time they become "central connectors" affording them unique positions of influence, knowledge transfer and power. This study posits that Network Centrality is a Bicultural Competence, recognized by its users as a pivotal antecedent …

Tracking Discourses Of Occupation And Genocide In Lithuanian Museums And Sites Of Memory, Alexander Craig Wight

Plymouth Business School Theses

Tourism visits to sites associated to varying degrees with death and dying have for some time inspired academic debate and research into what has come to be popularly described as ‘dark tourism’. Research to date has been based on the mobilisation of various social scientific methodologies to understand issues such as the motivations of visitors to consume dark tourism experiences and visitor interpretations of the various narratives that are part of the consumption experience. This thesis offers an alternative conceptual perspective for carrying out research into museums that represent genocide and occupation by presenting a discourse analysis of five Lithuanian …

Tasha: A Practice-Based Problematisation Of Australian Comedy Cinema’S Representation Of Gender, Family And Nationhood, Vanessa Barnett

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Between 2007 and 2012, 140 fictional feature films were financed with the assistance of Australian film funding bodies. Of these 140 films, only 31 featured female protagonists and of these 31 films, only 8 were comedies (see Appendix B). These figures show statistically, Tasha, the creative film component of this research project, is not a typical Australian comedy film; it is the story of Tasha, an unemployed girl from Girrawheen in her early twenties, who has lost her sense of identity. As Australian films such as Little Fish¸ Candy, Jedda and Muriel’s Wedding would suggest, this is certainly …

Sighting Circus: Perceptions Of Circus Phenomena Investigated Through Diverse Bodies, Katrina Lavers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an investigation into modern circus from its beginnings in 1768 through to present day contemporary circus arts. Eight diverse bodies in modern and contemporary circus are explored. These eight bodies act as different lenses to focus enquiry into gaps or ruptures in the grand narratives of circus, to reveal previously missing voices and histories and to set in place new approaches to perceiving circus phenomena.

In The Political Body, the phenomenon of embodied protest is identified and explored in relation to contemporary circus works. The importance of the engaged spectator is identified in determining political, poetic …

Meaningful Encounters: Creating A Multi-Method Site For Interacting With Nonhuman Life Through Bioarts Praxis, Donna Franklin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research advocates a multi-method approach to bioarts praxis, reflexively and critically questioning the contemporary contexts that frame our engagement with nonhuman life. In doing so, the research aims to generate further community engagement with nonhuman life and the environment, and engender critical discourse on the implications of developing biotechnologies.

Hegemonic institutions influence the way culture is produced and how information is constructed and understood. Habermas (1987) suggests that these institutions will inevitably influence the individual’s lifeworld as they shape lived experience through the process of systemic colonisation. I assert that this process also shapes how individuals engage with or …

Generational Dream: First Generation American Citizens And Their Relationship To The American Dream, Anna A. Mintz

Honors Theses

The term the "American Dream" was coined in 1939 by James Truslow Adams and has undoubtedly become an integral part of the American ethos. This narrative has brought thousands of immigrants to American shores with the promises of prosperity and success for centuries. Yet in 2014, it must be questioned whether this dream still holds significance for the young people of this country. By studying first-generation American citizens, whose parents did not grow up here, it can be ascertained how relevant this narrative still is and the sort of power that it retains. The following research describes my interactions with …

重讀八、九十年代的「恐怖喜劇」: 殭屍電影與香港後殖民, Yee Man, Mandy Liu

Lingnan Theses

八十年代是香港電影工業的「黃金時期」，電影的類型也可說是「百花齊放」，當中包括了一批以「殭屍vs. 道士」為結構的電影，並廣受歡迎，直到九十年代初衰落。本論文就是以這批電影為研究對象，先借助電影研究中的類型研究的框架，從體裁說明這批電影本身就能自成一個類型／次類型──「恐怖喜劇」，繼而集中分析殭屍和道士這兩個主要角色，並指出這批電影其實是呼應著香港後殖民處境複雜的中港關係。

本研究提出電影中的殭屍和道士都是來自中國的「他者」，而且帶有不同程度的「怪物 性」，因此形成了不同的「自我」與「他者」的權力結構和張力。本文借用了後殖民研究的「我──他」框架以及怪物研究的「怪物性」概念，進一步解讀殭屍和道士的獨特性。最後，本文提出整個類型其實是以香港為本位，透過「馴化」殭屍和「吸納」道士來處理不同「中國他者」所引起的情緒與張力，並在流行文化中實現了中港融和的幻想。

Eurocentrism, Modernity And Chinese Sociality : An Ethnographic Study Of Everyday Socio-Cultural Life In New-Millennium China, Tung Yi Kho

Lingnan Theses

This dissertation seeks to contribute to our understanding of Eurocentrism, Modernity,and their impacts on traditional Chinese cultural formations. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in Shenzhen, South China and Qinghai, West China, and explores the impacts of Chinese modernization on everyday forms of sociality.

I conceive of Eurocentrism foremost as an Ontology, a mode-of-being grounded in a cosmology about the nature of reality and human being-and-becoming in the world. I argue that because Eurocentrism is an ontology predicated on materialism and individualism - “matter” being the basis of reality and the “individual”, the fundamental unit of society, respectively - …

On The Digital-Political Topography Of Music, Daniel William Lawrence

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

The persuasive power of music is often relegated to the dimension of pathos: that which moves us emotionally. Yet, the music commodity is now situated in and around the liminal spaces of digitality. To think about how music functions, how it argues across media, and how it moves us, we must examine its material and immaterial realities as they present themselves to us and as we so create them. This dissertation rethinks the relationship between rhetoric and music by examining the creation, performance, and distribution of music in its material and immaterial forms to demonstrate its persuasive power. While …

A Phenomenology Of Mimetic Learning And Multimodal Cognition: Integrating Experiential Knowledge Into Programs In Rhetoric, Composition, And Technical Communication, Kevin R. Cassell

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

My dissertation emphasizes a cognitive account of multimodality that explicitly integrates experiential knowledge work into the rhetorical pedagogy that informs so many composition and technical communication programs. In these disciplines, multimodality is widely conceived in terms of what Gunther Kress calls “socialsemiotic” modes of communication shaped primarily by culture. In the cognitive and neurolinguistic theories of Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, however, multimodality is described as a key characteristic of our bodies’ sensory-motor systems which link perception to action and action to meaning, grounding all communicative acts in knowledge shaped through body-engaged experience. I argue that this “situated” account of …

Kultur Als »Operativ Verschatteter Begriff« Bei Cassirer Was Ist Das Objekt Von Cassirers Kulturphilosophie - Und Was Ist Die Aufgabe Dieser Kulturphilosophie?, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

The Factor Structure And Psychometric Properties Of The Greek Version Of Career Motivational Types (Cmt-Q): Cross-Cultural Comparison In Greece And Bulgaria, Vaitsa Giannouli, Stanislava Stoyanova

Archives of Assessment Psychology

The psychometric properties of a Career Motivational Types Questionnaire based on Moses (2003) typology of major career motivators were studied in a Greek sample of 123 subjects (workers and unemployed people) in 2013. The results were compared with those coming from a Bulgarian sample of 132 subjects (workers, unemployed people and students) studied in 2013. A cohort comparison was performed on major Bulgarian career motivational types between the years 2007 and 2013. The similarities in the major motivators in both countries concerned prevalence of Personal developers, Stability seekers and Authenticity seekers as career motivational types and more diverse career motivators …

The Language Flagship Model And The Humanities, Sam Eisen

Russian Language Journal

The Language Flagship program provides a model that strengthens and deepens cultural engagement within the humanities and creates bridges to collaboration across disciplines. Flagship addresses needs for national security and global competitiveness and integrates professional and life experience into the humanities and other fields for the students who engage in this course of study. The cross-disciplinary nature of the Flagship program and the level of personal, cultural and professional engagement required to complete the program are successfully changing the undergraduate study experience in ways that address significant issues in the ongoing discussion of a crisis in the humanities. The Language …

The University Of Rhode Island International Engineering Program: A Model For The Merger Of Technology And The Humanities, John M. Grandin, Sigrid Berka

Russian Language Journal

Contrary to a long-established and seemingly irrefutable tradition, American parents, educators, private and public sector leaders, and students are beginning to doubt the value of a university education. Charges have been leveled, for example, that students today are spending substantially less time on academics than their predecessors and are making little progress during their undergraduate years in their ability to read, write, speak, or think analytically and critically (see, for example, Arum and Roksa 2011, Vedder and Denhart 2011). Others have argued that college is burdening young people with lifelong debt to the degree that it is stifling their creativity …

Politeness And Sociocultural Values In American And Russian Cultures Emerging From The Speech Act Of Complaint; Pragmatic Competence Of L2 Learners Of Russian, Beata Gallaher

Russian Language Journal

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing number of empirical studies on complaints that explore the effects of sociocultural values and linguistic politeness on the language performance of nativeand non-native speakers of English (Kasper 1981; Piotrowska 1987; Olshtain and Weinbach 1987, 1993; Trosborg 1995; Arent 1996; Murphy and Neu 1996; Kraft and Geluykens 2002, 2007; Tanck 2002; Umar 2006; Prykarpatska 2008). However, the empirical data on complaints by Russian native and non-native speakers remains scarce (Olshtain and Weinbach 1993; Gershenson 2003; Kozlova 2004; Perelmutter 2010). The research on complaints is particularly important for studying the impact of …

Queer Emplotment: Lesbian Caretaking In North American Canonical Fiction From 1980 – 2011., Penelope Gay Dane

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation argues that lesbian caretaking in late 20th century and early 21th century North American fiction disrupts normative temporalities while repairing damage protagonists sustain from intra-familial trauma. Aligned with queer studies’ growing interest in representations of time, my project explores this paradox of lesbian representation. How can lesbian characters be both reparative and disruptive? Lesbian characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1980); Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992); and Louise Erdrich’s Shadow Tag (2010) are reparative as they clean up the psychological and physical damage caused male violence, sexual abuse, and neglectful mothers. Yet their caregiving disrupts …

Characteristics Of Dental Follicle Stem Cells And Their Potential Application For Treatment Of Craniofacial Defects, Maryam Rezai Rad

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Utilization of patient-specific stem cells in regenerative medicine provides a novel treatment approach for diseases and disorders. Embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells can differentiate into any cells found within the body; however, ethical, technical and safety concerns have to be overcome before they can be used in clinics. Patient-specific stem cells can be isolated from adult tissues with no ethical, fewer technical, and safety concerns. Obtaining tissues for stem cell isolation usually requires invasive procedures, but impacted teeth are often extracted in the clinics and can be used for isolation of dental follicle stem cells (DFSCs). The …

Restoring Cultural Capital Through Preservation In The Holy Cross Historic District, Jennifer Ann Hay

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research analyses the social construction of a neighborhood’s history through the architectural narrative visible in its housing stock, critically engaging with modern practices of evaluation and interpretation of historic significance espoused by preservationists. Physical manifestations of the application of the National Historic Preservation Act and local regulations, in conjunction with efforts of preservationists as agents of recovery targeting the Holy Cross Historic District in New Orleans after the hazard events of 2005 reveal new and altered perceptions of the neighborhood through changes in space and structure. Methods include quantitative analysis of property values and demographics, (economic capital), and documenting …

Fatherhood In Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, And Australia, David W. Shwalb, Barbara J. Shwalb

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

This article illustrates that the roles of fathers are highly variable and context-dependent. Research data from five diverse societies (Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, and Australia) show that fathers, fathering, and fatherhood differ within societies according to eight types of contextual influence. Examples are provided of each contextual factor: (1) geographical location (e.g., dispersion of fathers across huge land masses in Russia and Australia; impact of dense populations in Japan and Bangladesh); (2) long-term historical legacies (centuries of patriarchy in Brazil) and short-term historical events (fall of communism in Russia); (3) family characteristics (joint, extended families of Bangladesh; small Japanese families); …

Engineering Fibroblast-Remodeled Electrospun Matrices For Full-Thickness Skin Regeneration, Paul Bonvallet

All ETDs from UAB

Skin is often severely damaged, resulting in the need for surgical intervention. There are many limitations to current therapies, therefore a synthetic skin graft would be invaluable for skin regeneration. The focus of the current study is on developing engineered scaffolds with embedded dermal fibroblasts that can be remodeled into native skin tissue upon implantation. To achieve this goal we created electrospun scaffolds composed of collagen I and polycaprolactone (PCL), and then introduced pores to allow fibroblast infiltration. In initial experiments performed to optimize pore size and collagen to PCL concentration, we determined that a 160 µm pore diameter, and …