Digital Commons Network^™

Academic Asset Or Instructor’S Indulgence? The Effect Of Arts & Cultural Institutions On Academic Achievement, Hank Harned

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Across the country arts and cultural institutions seek to preserve our past and use it to educate our future. As their exhibits expand these institutions have become treasures in their own rights; places like the Smithsonian Institute are landmarks that attract visitors from around the world. In addition to travelers they also attract school groups. For decades schools have been using “field trips” to museums as a way to supplement their curriculum. But do these trips actually benefit the students or are they a waste of resources? This project aims to evaluate whether these institutions are an asset to academics …

Undergraduate Catalog, Georgia Southern University

Undergraduate & Graduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

The Universal Roar: Walt Whitman, John Muir, And The Song Of The Cosmos, Jason Balserait

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The idea of an ancient harmony uniting the universe has been theorized since the ancient Pythagoreans got the idea of musica universalis, often translated as The Music of the Spheres. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, not only recognizes similar musical patterns in the wilderness but emphasizes how they bring a sense of balance his life. Walt Whitman, often coined America’s poet, uses the harmonies resonating throughout the natural and urban worlds to demonstrate unity throughout the cosmos. Similarly, Aldo Leopold revolutionized our understanding of ecology, as he wrote about reciprocity and the connection of all things to the …

Writing To The Edge: Motivating Reluctant Rural Adolescent Male Learners, Marcia Scott Wright

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects

High levels of motivation contribute to significant learning for high school English students in rural school settings. The current qualitative study examined the attitudes surrounding the motivation of six rural high school students and their teachers. These students had been identified as reluctant learners and placed in a remedial writing class during their ninth grade year. The students, two 12th graders and four 10th graders, discussed their perceptions of the motivational practices used by their English teachers and other teachers, revealing what they did and did not find to be personally motivational in the classroom. This study also investigated the …

Neiu College Of Education News & Notes- Winter 2014/15, Russell Wartalski

News & Notes - College of Education

No abstract provided.

Subscribing To Governmental Rationality: Hbo And The Aids Epidemic, Shayne Pepper

Communication, Media and Theatre Faculty Publications

Between 1987 and 2013, HBO produced or distributed over twenty HIV/AIDS programs. These films trace a cultural shift from an early focus on AIDS as a public health issue to be dealt with through individual “safe-sex” practices and ethical citizenship to a later focus on AIDS as a global pandemic where the explicit strategy becomes a reliance on non-state actors to combat AIDS. This article argues that HBO's HIV/AIDS films are embedded within a cultural approach to AIDS that relies on governmental logics and neoliberal solutions – not direct action, but directing action.

Bgsu Graduate College 2014-2015 Catalog, Bowling Green State University

Course Catalogs

Bowling Green State University graduate catalog for 2014-2015.

Social Determinants Affecting The Mental Health Of Hiv Infected Latino Men Who Have Sex With Men Living On The U.S. - Mexican Border, Oscar Beltran

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The HIV/AIDS global pandemic is more than three decades old, and although the continual advancement of antiretroviral therapies have successfully decreased the mortality rates of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), little has been done to improve their mental health status and positive inclusion in society (eliminating discrimination and stigma). This is especially true with the Latino PLWHA living in the U.S.-Mexico border area.

This paper presents data from a qualitative study focused on exploring the mental health issues of a subsample of 40 Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV/AIDS on the U.S.-Mexico Border. This subsample …

Decollations, Joseph Mcbirnie

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following presents the critical preface to the unpublished manuscript, Decollations. Through the tapestry metaphor, the author describes the process of creating the collection through the lenses of aesthetics, psychology and mythology.

Edge Of The Wind, A Novel, James Euedell Cherry

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Edge of the Wind, a novel

James E Cherry

December 2014

Literature

A twenty-five year old African American man, Alexander van der Pool, loses his job and his insurance to purchase his meds for Schizophrenia. He his holed up in his sister's bedroom for three months where he reads incessantly, begins to write poetry and hears voices. The primary voice he hears is that of Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright's Native Son. After writing numerous poems, Alex wants to see if they are any good and takes his work to a local community college. He visits a literature …

Developmental And Autism Screening Process By Pediatrician Offices In El Paso County, Julian Thomas Murillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by either an emerging and gradual course or developmental regression in early childhood. Symptoms of ASD typically include deficits in social interaction and communication with unusually restricted interests. Due to the concern of the recent increase in diagnosis of ASD and the broadening of ASD diagnosis with the updates to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel (DSM), the process of how qualified physicians and other clinicians go about diagnosing ASD is often overlooked. Early diagnosis of ASD is crucial given that the earlier the diagnosis is given, the sooner intervention …

Practicing Philosophical Pluralism With `Forrest Gump' A Speech-Act Body-Mind Analysis, Robert Lorenzo Oropeza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This essay looks at three different types of philosophy: Pragmatism and communication, phenomenology and Zen Buddhism. I discuss these philosophies using the film, Forrest Gump as a guide to get through the convoluted ideas and make the concepts easier to understand. We first wade through the waters of analytical philosophy and the language game in communication. We discuss speaker's intention in meaning according to Paul Grice and Forrest's problems with the implicatures of language. In the second chapter I focus on the phenomenology of the characters as well as the perspective of the person viewing the film. How do we …

Exploring Dance Teachers' Perceptions: Video As A Teaching Tool, Daralyn Scurlock

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The process in which dance instructors evaluate dance students' technical skills has been dependent on spontaneity; it is time sensitive and almost synchronous. However, video introduces an asynchronous evaluating component. Video recording can be utilized in the dance profession not only to improve a dancer's overall performance, but as an injury prevention tool. Therefore video permits deeper reflection.

This is a preliminary study designed to open the door for future studies in the dance field. In order to gain the in depth knowledge required for this thesis, an instrumental case-study design was utilized based primarily on the analyses of broad, …

Sustainable Public Transportation In Large Cities: Demand Estimation, Tadeas Umlauf

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Public transportation helps to decrease the negative externalities caused by people's mobility. In many countries, the total number of vehicles and traffic has risen many times in the last decades but there is limited space to improve infrastructure in the cities. Large cities all over the world have a lot of issues with congestion, traffic noise, emission of greenhouse gases, and accidents. According to many international examples, sustainable public transportation in combination with synergistic projects (park & ride, kiss & ride, bike & ride) can help to overcome these issues. Therefore new transit modes and routes have been implemented in …

A Model Treaty For The Age Of Beps, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Oz Halabi

Law & Economics Working Papers

The OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project promises to bring about the most fundamental changes in the international tax regime since its inception in the 1920s. The fundamental idea behind the various BEPS projects is that the OECD has fully embraced the idea that double non-taxation can have as deleterious consequences as double taxation and that therefore the various aspects of the current rules that enable multinational enterprises (MNEs) to achieve double non-taxation should be reconsidered.

The BEPS Action Plan, adopted by the OECD in July 2013, sets an ambitious time table for the various items, which are …

Brave New Forms: Adaptation, Remediation, And Intertextuality In The Multimodal World Of Hugo Cabret, Chelsea Marie Bromley

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Digital technologies have changed the way readers approach, experience, and respond to texts. In our hyper-mediated culture, images and texts converge and disseminate across multiple media platforms, changing once-passive readers and spectators into active agents in the intellectual and creative process of interpretation. This thesis examines the multimodal world of Hugo Cabret—the hybrid graphic novel, the film adaptation, and the novel’s official website—in an effort to better understand how intertextuality, convergence culture, and remediation play with media forms, represent an ideological shift toward participatory culture, and rework older, traditional media in the creation of new media and new media users. …

Balancing Design Theories And Individual Needs In Residential Modifications For People Living With Als, Gail J. Weber

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This research and design project examines the philosophies and psychological factors of aging in place and universal design, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG), and how they can be realistically applied in interior design for people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal illness with an approximate two- to five-year prognosis. The case study explores the design needs and preferences of one couple living with ALS. Analysis of the case study suggests that a complete universal design or ADAAG-compliant overhaul in the home is ill-advised for these subjects, given their modest budget and limited …

Empathy And Reasoning In Context: Thinking About Anti-Gay Bullying, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

“Empathy” has negative connotations for many legal theorists, who may conceive of it as subjective, lacking in intellectual rigor, and emphasizing sensitivity over reason. Even those legal scholars who have embraced the importance of empathy in legal work have emphasized its affective dimensions: pointing out that empathy is central to human relations and motivations, and is therefore a crucial lawyering skill. This paper builds on social science literature that identifies both cognitive and affective dimensions to empathy, and recasts empathy as in part a central component to higher-order thinking in law. It draws examples from empathetic reasoning in foundational cases …

Currents Of Time And Universe, Carmen Malsch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Malsch, Carmen, M.F.A., Summer 2014. Fine Art Currents of Time and Universe Chairperson: Professor James Bailey Abstract Currents of Time and Universe explores personal awareness and connection to the universe. Large woodcut and intaglio prints describe a visual vocabulary for universal themes. In this vocabulary, a current is the image for awareness, connection, and motion in space and time. Bird forms frequenting the images represent the habitation of both earth and sky. Less grounded and more of the air than the human, the bird image identifies with the inner life of a person more than with the physical body. However, …

When Law Reform Is Not Enough: A Case Study On Social Change And The Role That Lawyers And Legal Clinics Ought To Play, Jeff Carolin

Journal of Law and Social Policy

Based on his experience as a law student in the clinical legal education program at Parkdale Community Legal Services in 2010, the author draws on poverty law scholarship to better understand his frustrations with a law reform campaign he worked on related to refugee family reunification. The scholarship’s central critique of law reform campaigns is that they are excessively narrow: they focus on a particular law and construct the law itself as the social injustice. This leads to two subsidiary problems. First, law reform campaigns ignore the underlying socio-political context that produced the law, foregoing opportunities for broader societal transformation. …

Louise Josephine Sarazin De Belmont: Her Inspirations And Innovations, Alexandria Samantha Guillory

LSU Master's Theses

Mademoiselle Louise Josephine Sarazin de Belmont (1790-1870) was a landscape painter, born in Versailles, France. A gifted artist with natural talent, she studied under Pierre Henri Valenciennes. Though not his most remembered pupil, her work was picturesque and popular in the French art market. Sarazin de Belmont had no patrons and relied on auction sales to fund her lifestyle as a traveling artist. Venturing from Naples, Rome, and Sicily to the Pyrénées Mountains of France, she evaluated the romantic vistas of the masters who came before her. After becoming the first female artist to have her works sold in a …

Caves And Class: Excavations At The Lang-Jourdan House In Mandeville, Louisiana, Matthew James Chouest

LSU Master's Theses

Jean Baptiste Lang, a divorced tobacco merchant from Belgium, constructed a summer home in Mandeville, Louisiana, in the mid-1850s. The most noteworthy feature of this house (16ST248) is its cave, a semi-subterranean room which he likely used as a wine cellar. The house was continuously occupied for over a century and remained one of few examples on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain of an original Anglo-Creole cottage. There are very few extant examples of caves in Louisiana due to the difficulty in maintaining such structures. The principal research questions addressed were (1) Can the cave be identified in the …

"Les Miserables: The Twitter Revolution" : A Study Of Fan Activity, Parasocial Relationships, And Audience-Persona Interactions, Lance Stephen Bordelon

LSU Master's Theses

This study simulated a fan extension of the Broadway-renowned musical Les Miserables on a community level and measured the effects of fan interactions—both online and with the characters’ narratives as performed at Theatre Baton Rouge during summer 2013. The stimulus materials in this study were Tweets distributed via Twitter identities for each of the lead characters whereby their thoughts and narratives were communicated with audiences and Twitter followers—coinciding with the opening of the live theatrical production. Patrons of Theatre Baton Rouge were surveyed online after the closing of the production. This study served as a practical use of Twitter for …

Construction De L'Identité Culturelle Afro-Antillaise : Regards Croisés Entre Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau Et Fabienne Kanor, Jeanne Jégousso

LSU Master's Theses

The theme of cultural identity is one of the main problematic of francophone literature. Through the years, women writers, especially in Guadeloupe and Martinique, used this theme as the main topic of many of their writings. Characters, especially women narrators, try to understand this notion of cultural identity and its construction in other to make this theme theirs, since cultural identity is at the crossroads of their own story, the history of the Caribbean, and the perception these young women have of themselves. A new generation of writers, born in France of Caribbean families, tries today to offer a new …

The Art Of The Circle, Yvette Creel

LSU Master's Theses

The circle is a primary shape, a closed curve that divides a plane into two regions: an interior and an exterior. This exploration has allowed me to place what I like inside the circle and then use that piece to complete a composition. In graphic design, the circle is not only a ring, a disc or a sphere; it is also the fifteenth letter of the Roman alphabet. ‘O’ is not only a letter, but a vowel that is the same shape in upper and lower case. It can also be a number. Beyond its ability to participate in statistics …

Can You Hear The People Sing: Community Theater, Play And The Middle Class, Heather Marie Moats

LSU Master's Theses

Over the last century community, or “little”, theaters have popped up all over the United States as a way for amateur actors to perform. Academic research in both anthropology and theater studies have greatly overlooked and dismissed these theaters. Using data collected via ethnographic methods over the course of two musical productions, approximately seven months total, at a community theater in Baton Rouge, Louisiana I hope to demonstrate both why individuals, predominately within the middle class, with limited leisure time choose to spend it volunteering at a community theater as well as some of the social and interpersonal benefits it …

Deflating Autonomy, Charles R. Mendez

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 16 Fall 2014

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Hysteria And The Performance Of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading Of James Joyce’S “A Painful Case”, Adam Quinn

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

What Arts Entrepreneurship Isn’T, Gary D. Beckman

Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Research

No abstract provided.