Digital Commons Network^™

Key Issues Of Identity In The Lives Of Adult Survivors Of Japanese Internment Camps: Exploring Utah's Own Internment Camp Through The Usu Digital Archives', Lori Qian

Student Research Symposium

Under the direction of Professor Sherry Marx, Professor of Cultural Studies and Education, doctoral students explored the USU digital archives and were assigned the task of choosing one of the sets and conducting qualitative research. I examined the experiences and perspectives of a group of Japanese Americans, who were adult survivors of Topaz, Utah's internment camp following WWII. As I studied the history of the event and the recollections of survivors, who had been very young children when they arrived at Topaz, the notion of Identity stood out most. With the lens of identity, I looked at their experiences and …

Exploring Female, Non-Binary, Or Genderqueer Scientists' Intersections Of Experience When Engaging In Science Communication, Emily Slater

Student Research Symposium

Our USU research team worked with the Cosplay for Science non-profit who are dedicated to reducing barriers to science and scientists through their events and initiatives. As a part of this collaboration, we observed how scientists interacted with comicon attendees at a pop-up museum booth. We are interested in finding out how scientists shift norms and assumptions about who participates in science. We collected one-on-one in-depth interview data from nine scientists from a variety of education and work fields who identify as female, non-binary or gender queer after their involvement with the pop-up museum booth. Our findings indicate that scientist …

Incredible Witnesses: ​An Analysis Of Thomas Of Cantimpré’S Use Of Witnesses In The Lives Of Christina The Astonishing And Margaret Of Ypres, Marianne Hale

Student Research Symposium

I will be analyzing two of the works of Thomas of Cantimpré. An initial study of the secondary literature surrounding Christina the Astonishing and Margaret of Ypres showed a lack of attention to the witnesses used by Thomas. I researched primary and secondary literature surrounding the hagiographies of Margaret of Ypres and Christina the Astonishing and the function of witnesses in secular and religious courts to generate guidelines to assess how witnesses were used. What I found is that Thomas used many kinds of witnesses from various levels in society and various relationships to the subjects. The preponderance of his …

"Women Can(Not) Have It All In Academia": Neoliberal Feminism And Female Phd Digital Influencers In China, Eva Liu

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

Recent years have witnessed heated debates in Western societies on how neoliberal discourse has hijacked feminism, but little is

Níksókowaawák As Axiom: The Indispensability Of Comprehensive Relational Animacy In Blackfoot Ways Of Knowing, Being, And Doing, Sandra Bartlett Atwood, Ninna Piiksii (Chief Bird) Mike Bruised Head, Mark W. Brunson, Aahsaopi (State Of Being) Laverne First Rider, Tim Frandy, James Maffie, Aakaomo'tsstaki (Many Victories) Michelle Provost, Miiniipokaa (Berry Child) Peter Weasel Moccasin, Itsiipootsikimskai

Environment and Society Student Research

This paper outlines a proposal, based on Blackfoot worldview, for a collective method to stand alongside Western qualitative and quantitative methods and highlights the value of collective methods in collaborative social-ecological research. Neither qualitative nor quantitative methods are adequate to disclose a world where all things are alive, where “objects” are subjects—agentive beings in their own right. Most Indigenous cultures understand and experience the world as a network of living beings, a collective, with whom they are interrelated/connected and therefore, any efforts to collaborate with Indigenous peoples must acknowledge comprehensive relational animacy. Applying coproduction principles in concert with Blackfoot ways …

Sailing Towards Freedom: Discourses Of Domination And Resistance In Online Piracy Communities, Lewie Andrew Carmichael

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

For this study, 22 people over 18 years of age who illicitly downloaded media, sometimes called ‘pirates,’ were interviewed to explore how they accounted for their behavior and their communities. They claimed poverty, convenience, habit, archiving, and fun as their primary motivations for piracy. A Pirate Bill of Rights is proposed to represent foundational ethics from which many participants drew their basic moral and ethical assumptions. James C. Scott’s transcript theory is used to frame how pirates perceive domination and how piracy acts as a form of resistance against it. The concepts of the ‘pirate other’ and the ‘corporate other’ …

Botanical Empires: The Politics Of Plants In Theocritus' Idylls, Christian Rhoads

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project identifies a system of plant-based identity politics in Theocritus’ Idylls. In Chapter One, I trace a paradigm of unequal reciprocal interactions, “plant-hubris,” throughout the erotic relationships of the Idylls as one partner acts violently against another who “overwaters” them with affection. I argue that characters in the Idylls use plants to explain their own relationship dynamics. In the second chapter I examine Idyll 1 and identify social commentary on culturally specific poetic competition that relies on vegetal imagery. The competition between the goatherd and Thyrsis in Idyll 1 is informed by both the immediate vegetal …

Finished, Shayla Frandsen

Theses and Dissertations

Sixteen-year-old Tiny Sinclair begins her first year at Charity Ambrose Finishing School in 1953 already feeling like an outcast: her mother, a glamorous movie star, is dead, and her father is imprisoned under suspicion of being a Communist. All her classmates seem to have it so easy: beautiful Betty is an elegant and popular socialite, while Diane, the richest girl in school, is dangerous and mysterious (and, for some reason, hell-bent on ruining Tiny's life). When a classmate is found dead and Tiny becomes the number one suspect, the situation seems to go from bad to worse. Determined to clear …

Mandala: On The Logos Of Place, Michael Schwartz

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Suddenly, during the night, one awakens while dreaming – aware that this is a dream. The “rules” of action, reaction, and of form itself are not that of the waking state – one might leap in the air and fly, transform one’s body into any number of forms, reach up in the sky and grab the sun and clouds, pulling them to the side, bringing forth a canopy of moon and stars. The entire scene, in the lucid dream, has a heightened sense of radiance and joy, vitality and freedom.

Imagine this sense of lucid dreaming is occurring right here …

The Trouble Department: May Brotherton And The Agency Of Women Cutters In The Early Film Industry, Rachael Camp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This study examines the pioneering film editor May Brotherton as a case study to explore how studio industrialization in pre and early Hollywood influenced the contributions of women post-production workers. It considers why film editing, once categorized as a feminized sector, was recategorized after its creative power and financial implications were realized. As a result, we may become aware of the systematic gender discrimination in studio film, as well as an extremely important but unrecognized editor. Incorporating evidence from primary and secondary sources on early film industry development, including testimony, archival artifacts, and interviews with Brotherton’s descendants. The methodology is …

Path To Utopia, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The way to survive in the Anthropocene and transform the world is to end capitalism. Humanity must stop commodifying everything and reifying its value for consumption for the sake of power and survival. The way to do this is through love. This is an inquiry into methods and processes for confronting and transforming the planetary destruction caused by capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism among other phenomena. This paper challenges the idea that it is unrealistic to believe that love can change the world. It posits that loving is caring and caring is the way humanity will shift consciousness so that capitalism …

Remembering The Future: Wild Time And The Cosmic Imagination, Arabella Thaïs

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental …

Sr 22-23-40 Cc, Marshall University Faculty Senate

Recommendations

No abstract provided.

The Minutes Of The Marshall University Faculty Senate Meeting, February 2023, Marshall University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

A Content Analysis Of A Black Plus-Size Woman And Social Media Influencer Making Policy Change: Through The Lens Of Instagram, Tamika Nicole Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examines how a Black plus-size woman social media influencer, @CurvyNyome, encounters censorship, dehumanization, sexualization, and body-shaming on Instagram. Social media, such as Instagram, have formed communication channels and opened avenues for people to be expressive, positive, hostile, or indifferent. The long history of the sexualization and dehumanization of Black women is rooted in centuries of oppression, which led the recipients of oppression to inadvertently adopt dehumanizing beliefs and behaviors (Burnette et al., 2017). The study’s significance is that Black plus-size women are often made to believe and feel that their body is not beautiful. Black women have struggled …

How Is The Public Imagined By Public Librarians? A Case Study Of One Us American Public Library During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Allister Chang

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper explores how librarians from one US American library imagined their publics during the exceptional circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. By revisiting Habermas' positioning of the public sphere, this paper inquires librarians' own understanding of publics. Through the imagination of their publics after the buildings of the library closed in response to the pandemic, the librarians deepen our understanding of how publics are imagined, and thereby, how publics are made and how publicness is performed.

In Knowledge We Trust(Ed): A Case Study In Abolition Theatre, Misty Dawn Saribal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues for performance art’s role(s) in growing abolition on higher education campuses. After defining abolition’s intersections with higher education, and discussing why performance is often diminished and overlooked, I examine a university abolitionist performance I co-directed that highlighted prison labor on our university’s campus titled ‘In Knowledge We Trusted: Red Tape, White Institutions, and Blue Students.’ A rationale for abolition performance and an abolition performance praxis is detailed with attention to avoiding the pitfalls of authenticity policing in prison abolition and genre policing in abolitionist art. Conclusions about how the performance contributed to and embodied abolition politics and …

"Needles Inside The Earthen Pot" Historicizing And Exploring The Terms "Native American Renaissance" And "The Fourth Wave", Pamela Haynes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

ABSTRACT Haynes, Pamela L, PhD. The University of Memphis, May 2023 “Needles inside the earthen pot”: Historicizing and Exploring the Terms “Native American Renaissance” and “The Fourth Wave” Major Professor Verner Mitchell. This dissertation explores the controversies surrounding the following questions: in what ways are the appellations “First Wave,” “Second Wave,” “Third Wave,” and “Fourth Wave” accurate and appropriately descriptive of the burgeoning efflorescence among literary artists of the Native American Nations? In what ways could descriptive appellations be more historically and contextually compelling? This dissertation specifically examines the “intense poetic aesthetic” of “The Fourth Wave” of “The Native American …

Effect Of Methylphenidate On Alzheimer's And Dementia, Smrithi Mukund, Priyanka Prasanna, Aishwarya Muppoor, Maheen Khan

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form of dementia, is a neurogenerative disorder that causes impairments in cognitive abilities, behavior, and personality. AD is distinguished by extracellular plaques containing beta-amyloid proteins and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles containing hyperphosphorylated tau proteins. Current FDA-approved drugs for AD have questionable efficacy and carry potential risks. Methylphenidate (Ritalin), a stimulant drug currently used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy, has been used off-label to treat AD patients, primarily for relieving the symptom of apathy. While our literature review suggests that relatively short-term (< 6 weeks) use in patients with AD and related diseases is safe and effective in clinical trials, little is known about the longer-term effects of the drug in this population. More work is needed, as there is also a paucity of animal research investigating chronic effects of methylphenidate in rodent models of AD and related disorders. Findings from animal studies in wild-type rodents on chronic use of methylphenidate, as well as cell culture studies, have reported adverse effects of methylphenidate, including increases in neuroinflammation and oxidative stress, neurodegeneration, vascular impairments (e.g. blood brain barrier dysfunction), and altered cognitive-behavioral performance. While the clinical significance of methylphenidate treatment in AD patients may be unclear, studies over longer periods of time including testing on animal models will help us understand how methylphenidate treatment can affect our brain activity in the long term and how it can be administered more safely and effectively.

Times Of Crisis: A Comparative Discourse Analysis Of U.S. And Mexican Presidential Rhetoric, Kassandra Gonzalez-Ramos

LSU Master's Theses

Language is a communicative tool that in the possession of politicians holds the power to be persuasive and aggressive, empowering and uniting, or disruptive and dividing. Previous research has relied on numerous methodological approaches to analyze political discourse from different viewpoints to reveal the manner in which politicians as part of political institutions transform and manipulate language. The current investigation performs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on the framework developed by Van Dijk (1993,1997) in order to demonstrate the speech act realization in a total of 14 political speeches delivered by American presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama and Mexican …

The Hollowed-Out Bookstore: Amazon’S Promotion Of Empty Discourses In Their Online Bookstore: Amazon’S Promotion Of Empty Discourses In Their Online Bookstore, John Rodzvilla

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

Amazon is considered the world’s largest bookstore but what kind of books hide on the ‘darkest’ digital shelves? By looking beyond the new titles and best-sellers, this paper finds evidence of a wasteland of titles composed of content-free titles, corrupted reprints, and dangerous misinformation. Changes to publishing in the twenty-first century and the pressure of the market on Amazon can help to explain how this wasteland formed, but this paper also explores how this wasteland provides for specific audiences who live in their own cultural bubbles.

Examining Framing Of Local And National Media Coverage Of Sandy Hook And Robb Elementary School Shootings, Gabrielle L. Debruler

LSU Master's Theses

There have been over 350 K-12 school shootings since the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 (Cox et al., 2023). Thousands of journalists cover these attacks each in their own way with unique motives. This information goes to the public, and it is up to that person how they want to consume the story and view the shooting. National and local journalists tend to cover school shootings quite differently throughout time with unique frames. The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary and Robb Elementary Schools illustrate this framing distinctively.

Through a qualitative study of national and local coverage of the …

Decolonizing Assessment: Witnessing, Disrupting, And Reimagining Assessment In Rhetoric, Composition, And Technical Communication, Lisa Schuler Dooley

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the context in which assessments are conceptualized and designed, with the implications of assessment for its participants and their communities, and with the institution of assessment—its claims, its values and practices, its relationships to power. With this in mind, in this project I will propose decolonization as a framework through which to: 1) recognize, witness, and address the complicit nature of assessment practices in maintaining “normal;” 2) disrupt and redress the slow violences of assessment in rhetoric, composition, and technical communication studies; 3) reimagine assessment through decolonial methodology, research methods, and assessment pedagogy with the …

Literature Through The Looking Glass: How Fan Fiction Can Save English, Jacob C. Quinn

Honors College Theses

English departments face a crisis of student disinterest. Scholars are struggling to sell the study of literature as practically useful in an increasingly STEM-dominated world. The literary realm of fan fiction, which can serve as a guiding star, demonstrates how a community of readers and writers can reach for ideals of democracy and creativity that acknowledge the inherent worth of studying literature while also examining how such study can help students thrive in a world threatened by censorship and authoritarianism. This is a prescription for a total shift in philosophy for the academic study of literature. Such study has been …

Disproportionate Discourses: Analyzing The Media’S Coverage Of Police Brutality, Tatyanah Santiago

Honors College Theses

This thesis examines how the media covers fatal confrontations between minorities and the police. Since the media is a primary vehicle for interpreting events as they unfold, it is important to recognize the ways news coverage frames these violent encounters. This paper focuses specifically on the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014 and George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, MN in May 2020. News articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, and CNN were analyzed to see how authority narratives, witness narratives, and character depictions were reported. Three theoretical lenses (Critical Race …

2023-2024 Boise State University Undergraduate Catalog, Boise State University Office Of The Registrar

University Catalogs

This catalog is primarily for and directed at students. However, it serves many audiences, such as high school counselors, academic advisors, and the public. In this catalog you will find an overview of Boise State University and information on admission, registration, grades, tuition and fees, financial aid, housing, student services, and other important policies and procedures. However, most of this catalog is devoted to describing the various programs and courses offered at Boise State.

Spring 2023 Notes From The Stacks, Central Washington University

Notes from the Stacks: CWU's Library Newsletter

Newsletter from James E. Brooks Library at Central Washington University.

Publication Citations (Calendar Year 2022), Valparaiso University

Valparaiso Scholarship and Creative Works Reception

No abstract provided.

Southern Register. 2023.2 (Spring/Summer 2023), University Of Mississippi. Center For The Study Of Southern Culture

Southern Register

No abstract provided.

Women On The Silver Screen: A Look At The Various Roles Of Women Across Film Genres, Ryann Bahnline, Dimitar Donovski, Kelly Ryan, Emily Simon

Spring 2023

This Zine seeks to explore the various roles of women in several films across a multitude of genres and their significance, or lack thereof, in their respective films. Genres explored include romantic comedy, science fiction, action/adventure, and horror/thriller. Films often depict the state and views held by a society during its inception, either intentionally or subconsciously. Women have often been relegated to roles in films that affirm gender and cultural stereotypes.