Digital Commons Network^™

"Follow The Bodies": (Re)Materializing Difference In The Era Of Neoliberal Multiculturalism, Briana Grace Brickley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a transnational literary archive in addition to analyzing shifting U.S. American cultural and political landscapes, and shows how critically attending to the various terms, figures, and valences of corporeality opens generative avenues for addressing the contemporary historical conjuncture, often referred to as the neoliberal capitalist era. Neoliberal capitalism, understood here to be a complex, diffuse ideology that manifests in part as a number of broadsweeping economic changes—including widespread deregulation and privatization, the increasing influence of international financial organizations, governmental cuts in social spending, and structural adjustment programs for the formerly colonized nations of the global south—operates in …

An Examination Of Black Male Success In High School Mathematics, David Walters Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For a national sample of Black male students, what is the relative impact of instructional technology on 10th and 12th grade math scores? This dissertation employs two waves of the Education Longitudinal Study (2002 & 2004) and multivariate statistical techniques to explore the relative importance of instructional technology (implementation by teachers and training for teachers), student perception of math ability, teacher and school effects, as well as socioeconomic status on high school math scores for this unique population.

Bourdieu’s cultural and social capital, Coleman’s cultural capital and social action, Martin’s equity-based math education, and Gutierrez’s socio-political mathematics will serve as …

Playing With Matches: Matchmaking As Authorship In The Nineteenth-Century Marriage Plot, Colleen Cusick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the narrative treatment of matchmakers in British marriage plots across the nineteenth century. In an era of increasing state control over marriage and the rising ideology of romantic marriage, the matchmaker represents the communal courtship practices of the past. As such, she offers both a threat to the emerging status quo and a reminder of the persistence of superseded cultural forms in the modern marriage system. Simultaneously, she constitutes an image of female creativity and authority that speaks to concerns about the professionalization of novel-writing and the place of women writers within that profession. Through this focus …

Breaking Cover: Confronting Crisis And Displacement In Timbuktu, Mali, Andrew Hernann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Spring 2012, a loose alliance of ethnic Tuareg nationalist and Jihadi-Salafist militant groups occupied Mali’s northern regions, forcibly displacing nearly 300,000 residents and ultimately imposing their harsh interpretation of shari’a among those who remained. Later, in January 2013, as these groups began marching towards southern Mali, the French army suddenly intervened, “liberating” urban centers in the North as the militants fled into the Sahara Desert and across the Algerian border. My research examines this period of occupation, displacement and intervention, which most Malians have come to term “the crisis.” Specifically, I analyze the cultural and religious frameworks through which …

Kongo To Kings County, Marcus Alan Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to provide evidence to support the hypothesis that the artifact assemblage found in 1998 under the garret room floor in the attic of the Lott Farmstead is an extension of Kongo-descended cultural practices. This connection is shown by the presence of several artifacts that taken together, invoke a Kongo Cosmogram called the diKenga, alongside artifacts arranged in what is believed to be a Kongo N’Kisi, or spiritual container, that also originates in Kongo ideology. The ceramic found in the kitchen house with an incised X indicates a reverence to this diKenga symbol. Similar symbols have been found …

Crossing Boundaries: The Transnational Third Space Of Contemporary Chinese-Francophone Writers, Paula S. Delbonis-Platt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades, a group of Chinese writers who pen their works in French, their adopted language, have garnered prizes in France and received international acclaim. The transnational voices of these writers have drawn attention to Chinese history, literature, and human-rights issues, as well as to their own diverse intersections with French culture. The four Francophone-Chinese writers studied—François Cheng (b. 1929), Gao Xingjian (b. 1940), Dai Sijie (b. 1954), and Shan Sa (b. 1972)—constitute themselves as subjects at least partially through their Chinese birth and French citizenship or residency and through the production of literary works that range …

Darwinian Debunking Reconsidered, Amanda J. Favia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What can evolutionary theory tell us about morality? From descriptive claims that explain morality as an evolved trait to normative (or prescriptive) claims that rely on evolution to describe how humans ought to behave, philosophers have debated whether or not evolutionary theory can or should inform moral theory. Most recently, the debate about evolutionary ethics has shifted to metaethics. In this case, philosophers have sought after evolutionary explanations in the hopes of resolving long-standing debates between moral realists and moral antirealists.

These metaethical debates have centered on what are called Darwinian debunking arguments. Proponents of the Darwinian debunking argument, …

Fallible Justice: The Dilemma Of The British In The Gold Coast, 1874-1944, Neal M. Goldman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the manner in which the British administered justice as a technique of colonial administration in one of its West African dependencies, the Gold Coast, during the first seventy years of formal colonial rule. In this study that covers the period from the creation of the Gold Coast Colony in 1874 to 1944, I argue that the British were caught between their honest desire to deliver prompt and fair justice to their Gold Coast subjects and their perceived need to support indigenous authorities through whom they wished to govern despite their recognition that those authorities were too often …

Social Ties And State Formation In Post-Soviet Central Asia, David Siegel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines state formation in newly or recently independent states. Why are state authorities able to exert control over provincial areas in some cases but not others? How do the national authorities of newly independent states build centralized bureaucracies, control state cadre, and ensure deference among their regional subordinates? Why do they sometimes fail? I answer these questions by focusing on the social ties of state officials in the periphery. Specifically, I argue that where the state’s regional officials are socially embedded in local communities, the process of administrative centralization will proceed unevenly and incompletely. It is only by …

How Do Open Educational Resources (Oers) Impact Students? A Qualitative Study At New York City College Of Technology, Cuny, Cailean Cooney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis reports on findings from a study conducted with students using open educational resources as the primary course material in their Health Psychology course. The study took place at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), of the City University of New York (CUNY), a comprehensive college located in Brooklyn. Students were assigned the OER by their course instructor, who developed it as part of a library funded pilot initiative. Two research instruments were employed to collect qualitative data from students: a survey and one-on-one interviews with a smaller student sample. Both survey and interview items asked students …

Ethnicity Matters: Implications For Understanding And Acting Upon Disparities In Health Affecting Black Men In The United States, Helen V. S. Cole

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Compared to non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks have higher rates of mortality from heart disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and HIV/AIDS. Black men have a life expectancy approximately 4.7 years than the life expectancy of non-Hispanic white men, due in part to higher prevalence of chronic disease among black men. Many factors are hypothesized to contribute to disparities in health between races, including differences in socioeconomic status; culturally-linked behaviors such as diet, substance use, and physical activity; access to quality healthcare and other resources; and experiences of racism, both institutional and interpersonal. However, in public health research, race is usually treated as …

Saving Animals: Everyday Practices Of Care And Rescue In The Us Animal Sanctuary Movement, Elan L. Abrell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This multi-sited ethnography of the US animal sanctuary movement is based on 24 months of research at a range of animal rescue facilities, including a companion animal shelter in Texas, exotic animal sanctuaries in Florida and Hawaii, and a farm animal sanctuary in New York. In the last three decades, animal welfare activists have established hundreds of sanctuaries across the United States in an attempt to save tens of thousands of animals from factory farms, roadside zoos, and other sites of contested animal treatment. These facilities function as laboratories where activists conceive and operationalize new models for ethical relationships with …

Bilingual Latino Middle Schoolers On Languaging And Racialization In The Us, Sarah Hesson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores bilingual Latino middle schoolers’ articulated understandings of their language practices as well as the links between language practices and processes of racialization and discrimination in the US. The research was conducted in the context of an after-school program whose explicit aim was to not only document students’ experiences, but to use those experiences as a basis for generating individual and collective critical understandings among participants. The findings of this case study center on the ways youth understand processes of racialization, translanguaging, and translation in the context of an English-dominant society, and how these understandings are connected to …

2016 Printed Program

Colloquium Schedules

No abstract provided.

Evolving Patterns: Conflicting Perceptions Of Cultural Preservation And The State Of Batik’S Cultural Inheritance Among Women Artisans In Guizhou, China, Katherine B. Uram

Lawrence University Honors Projects

My exploration features Miao batik-making in Guizhou Province and explores several sets of overlapping questions. The first set focuses on the status of the craft of Miao batik-making and the perceptions of its future. Is batik-making a dying art form? To what extent is Batik-making a thriving cultural practice today, or do Miao in China (and other ethnic groups involved in batik-making) perceive an inheritance crisis? My next focus is on the role of institutions and the tourism industry. If taught less and less in the domestic sphere (traditions passed from mother to daughter), what role do public domains such …

Isom Center Director Grayzel Returns To Full-Time Teaching, Michael Newsom

University of Mississippi News

History faculty member says she is proud of accomplishments during her tenure

Restoring African Women To History: A History Of Pre-Colonial East African Baganda Women, Maria Matovu

History

In his narrative, colonial administrator Harold Ingram describes the perspective that many missionaries and colonial executives held towards the African peoples. The notion of the ‘White man’s burden’ to save the world from uncivilized, and animalistic customs coupled with the theory of Africa as the Dark Continent, is one of the main reasons why early explorers and missionaries placed women in subordinate positions. This move thus overlooked the critical significance of contributions that pre-colonial African women contributed to the political, economic and social developmental structure in African communities. Missionary C.W. Hattersley confirmed the same notion towards pre-colonial Baganda women when …

Language Crossing And Multiaccentuality In Women Writers Del Gran Caribe: Narrative, Drama, And Performance, Francisca Aguilo Mora

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for a much-needed reconsideration of language and gender in the constructions of local, postnational, and global identities in the Gran Caribe, which dislocates the Latino US, athough not necessarily dismisses it. I explore the ways in which Caribbean and US Caribbean-origin women writers and playwrights such as Achy Obejas, Mayra Santos Febres, Jennine Capó Crucet, Aurora Arias, Caridad Svich, and Josefina Báez reinterpret language through practices of language crossing and linguistic virtuosity, thus creating a grancaribeña community of practice. By questioning macro-narratives through the linguistic, aesthetic, and thematic components of their texts, these authors and …

Reimagining Cubanidad: Transnational And Alternative Spaces In Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production, Eva Silot Bravo

Open Access Dissertations

The dissertation surveys the impact of the 1990s crisis in the de-construction of the revolutionary and exile imaginary in Cuban literature and music respectively, by less politically visible agents and cultural spaces within and outside the island. By conducting close readings of novels written during and about the crisis, a series of thematic coordinates that delineate a post-Soviet literary moment are identified. The analysis of the negotiation of narratives of identity and practices of music production documents a relatively unexplored transnational network of music collaborations among singers, songwriters and academically trained musicians that massively migrated at the time. The study …

Wofford Today Summer 2016, Wofford College. Office Of Marketing And Communications

Wofford Today

No abstract provided.

National Register Of Historic Places (Nhrp) Eligibility Determinations For Previously Recorded Archaeological Sites At Wright Patman Lake, Bowie And Cass Counties, Texas, Bryan C. Harrell, Chris Sypniewski, Alex Decaro, Nick Linville

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Between 19 October and 11 November 2015, SEARCH conducted National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility determinations at previously recorded archaeological sites at Wright Patman Lake in Bowie and Cass Counties, Texas. This project was conducted under Contract W912HY‐11‐D‐0002, Task Order 0006 between the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Fort Worth District, and SEARCH.

Scholarworks Statistics - June 2016, Scholarworks

ScholarWorks Reports

For the month of June 2016, ScholarWorks recorded a total of 20,499 full-text and additional file downloads and 9,212 page views.

Ideology, Access, And Status: Spanish-English Bilinguals In The Foreign-Language Classroom, Michael E. Rolland

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Spanish language teaching in US higher education is today generally divided between ‘foreign language’ courses for novice learners and ‘heritage language’ courses for Hispanic/Latinx students with some knowledge of the language. However, ‘heritage’ students are a linguistically diverse group, and are also often enrolled at institutions where heritage courses are not offered. Little research to date has studied ‘heritage’ speakers enrolled in ‘foreign’ language courses. For this study I conducted semi-structured interviews to explore the affective and ideological characteristics of bilingual students enrolled in elementary Spanish courses. As the literature suggests, I find that these students have a generally low …

2016 Summer - Schedule Of Classes, Office Of The Registrar, East Tennessee State University

Registration Resources

No abstract provided.

Folk Music In A Digital Age: The Importance Of Face-To-Face Community Values In Filk Music, Sally Childs-Helton

Scholarship and Professional Work

Filk is broadly defined as the traditional folk-based music and related community created by and for a sub-community of science fiction and fantasy fans. Born in the 1950s, filk today includes international participants of various experience levels and musical styles. Social context and music are equally important in this tradition; prominent values include self-expression, play and building a face-to-face co-creative, collaborative group experience. This article, founded on Textual Poachers (1992), assumes that filk remains a folk music in many ways, and that filkers still prefer face-to-face musical and personal interaction in spite of a lively, diverse online filk community. I …

Lgbtqia Mentoring Program, Office Of Diversity And Inclusion

LGBTQIA Archive

This document lists faculty and staff at the College of the Holy Cross who have identified themselves as members or allies of the LGBTQIA community working to create networking and mentoring opportunities for current students.

Lg Ms 041 Jean Vermette Papers, Anthony Marvullo

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Provenance: The Jean Vermette Papers were donated by Jean Vermette in 2009. Ownership & Literary Rights: The Jean Vermette Papers are the physical property of the University of Southern Maine Libraries. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the creator or her legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Head of Special Collections. Cite as: Jean Vermette Papers, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries. Restriction on Access: Some materials are restricted until the year 2061 to protect privacy rights.

For further information, consult the Head of …

The Environmental Heritage And Wellness Assessment: Applying Quantitative Techniques To Traditional Ecological Knowledge And Wellness Relationships, Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

This paper quantifies relationships between health and traditional ecological knowledge/practices in a Mopan Maya community in southern Belize, illuminating how changes in daily practices might be related to changes in wellness. Findings from statistical analyses of data related to household practices are presented. These data were collected using a Likert survey designed based on previously collected ethnographic and pile sort data related to health and heritage, and then administered to households in the community (n=64). The paper concludes that the data, while exploratory, show links between higher scores on both the health and heritage indices and warrant further engagement with …

Muslimska Församlingar Och Föreningar I Malmö Och Lund – En Ögonblicksbild, Leif Stenberg, Rickard Lagervall

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Participation, Empowerment And Capacity Building: Exploring Young People's Perspectives On The Services Provided To Them By A Grassroots Ngo In Sub-Saharan Africa, Je Morgan

Plymouth Institute of Education

This paper explores young people's perspectives on the services that were provided to them by one NGO in sub-Saharan Africa. Semi-structured interviews and discussion groups were carried out with 71 young people, aged between 10 and 18 years old, who lived and worked on the street. Volunteer facilitators (n = 26) who run the groups and who had either previously lived on their street themselves or who lived in the ‘informal slum areas’ also took part in the discussions. A number of challenges and tensions became apparent from discussions including issues around capacity building, empowerment, participation and the depoliticised nature …