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Fallibility And Normativity, Joshua Dipaolo Nov 2016

Fallibility And Normativity, Joshua Dipaolo

Doctoral Dissertations

We are fallible, and knowledge of our fallibility has normative implications. But these normative implications appear to conflict with other compelling epistemic norms. We therefore appear to face a choice: reject fallibility-based norms or reject these other epistemic norms. I argue that there is a plausible third option: reconcile these two sets of norms. Once we properly understand the nature of each of these norms, we aren’t forced to reject either.


Multimodal Assessment In Action: What We Really Value In New Media Texts, Kathleen M. Baldwin Nov 2016

Multimodal Assessment In Action: What We Really Value In New Media Texts, Kathleen M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

As the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing illustrates, writing teachers at all educational levels can no longer ignore multimodality and the challenges that come with incorporating multimodal writing—texts composed using a combination of sound, images, video, etc.—into the classroom (NCTE, Framework). A chief struggle most writing teachers face is how to evaluate the multimodal texts their students produce, texts that are inherently diverse. In answer to the calls of scholars such as Yancey, Herrington, and Moran for research exploring multimodal assessment in situated classroom practice, my dissertation examines what K-16 writing teachers are and should be valuing in …


Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford Nov 2016

Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford

Doctoral Dissertations

The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts' role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory of concepts' formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism …


Protest Lyrics At Work: Labor Resistance Poetry Of Depression-Era Autoworkers, Rebecca S. Griffin Nov 2016

Protest Lyrics At Work: Labor Resistance Poetry Of Depression-Era Autoworkers, Rebecca S. Griffin

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that scholarly inquiry into American poetry of the Great Depression is incomplete without a critical understanding of poems produced within the labor movement. Through archival research and methodologies drawn from American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and labor history, this dissertation demonstrates that autoworkers from 1935-1941 developed a rich poetic discourse that championed their cause. Autoworker poets—including autoworker song lyricists—used humor and borrowed extensively from popular, religious, and “folk” cultures to craft their own poetic styles and trope sets. They wrote about a diverse range of topics from their hopes for the unionization movement, to scab conversions, …


A Period Examination Through Contemporary Energy Analysis Of Kevin Roche’S Fine Arts Center At University Of Massachusetts-Amherst, L Carl Fiocchi Jr Nov 2016

A Period Examination Through Contemporary Energy Analysis Of Kevin Roche’S Fine Arts Center At University Of Massachusetts-Amherst, L Carl Fiocchi Jr

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies of buildings belonging to a subset of Modernist architecture, Brutalism, have included discussions pertaining to social and architectural history, critical reception, tectonic form and geometry inspirations, material property selections, period technology limitations, and migration of public perceptions. Evaluations of Brutalist buildings’ energy related performances have been restricted to anecdotal observations with particular focus on the building type’s poor thermal performance, a result of the preferred construction method, i.e. monolithic reinforced concrete used as structure, interior finish and exterior finish. A valid criticism, but one that served to dismiss discussion that the possibility of other positive design strategies limiting energy …


Children In Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films, Delene M. White Nov 2016

Children In Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films, Delene M. White

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS SEPTEMBER 2016 DELENE CASE WHITE, B.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA M.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barton Byg This dissertation is about central functions children play in the Holocaust films of (East) German director Frank Beyer: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1974), and Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (While all Germans Sleep, 1994). Beyer’s child characters contribute to resistance and challenge oversimplified ways the Holocaust and German division have often been remembered. Beyer’s …


Women, Convergent Film Criticism, And The Cinephilia Of Feminist Interruptions, Rachel L. Thibault Nov 2016

Women, Convergent Film Criticism, And The Cinephilia Of Feminist Interruptions, Rachel L. Thibault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which female film critics practice film criticism in the convergent age. In original research drawn from ethnographic interviews with eight female film critics and bloggers as well as textual, historical, and reception analyses of criticism, this dissertation argues that women who write film criticism in the convergent era are not only writing from a space of marginalization based on the patriarchal dominance of the film industry, but also face a series of obstacles through gendered and discursive conflicts that are unique to writing online and which do not exert the same impact on male …


Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics Of Student Scientist-Activists, Jesse Priest Nov 2016

Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics Of Student Scientist-Activists, Jesse Priest

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative study of the experience of undergraduate students learning how to teach issues of sustainability to their campus communities through an innovative outreach program at a large northeastern research university. While most previous work on science writing and rhetoric focuses on disciplinary, publishing, or genre practices, I examine the holistic student experience by placing outreach, writing, and the classroom in conversation with each other, illuminating how discourses can cross institutional and contextual borders. Furthermore, while most previous work involving student engagement has focused on the positive and rewarding aspects of engagement, I examine how tension and …


Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot Nov 2016

Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot

Doctoral Dissertations

Anglophone theatre provided a solid cultural bridge between Britain and America and served as an influential, informative, and accessible mode of social, political and cultural exchange transported throughout the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. Unlike works focusing on colonial American restrictions on theater, or examining its subsequent role in constructing American nationhood and identity, I explore how theatre served to both cultivate and challenge transatlantic connections. I show that actresses and women playwrights played a distinctive role in this process; they exercised agency in helping shape Anglo identity, influenced the formation of the cult of celebrity, challenged physical gendered spaces and normative …


Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action In Digital Spaces, Jessica Ouellette Nov 2016

Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action In Digital Spaces, Jessica Ouellette

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation raises questions about the possible efficacy of digital spaces as sites for transnational feminist action and engagement. Using a qualitative approach, I analyze a case study involving the digital circulation of texts that arose from activist Amina Tyler’s decision to post a nude photo with controversial, provocative language sprawled across her chest. The circulation of this image by feminist groups such as FEMEN and Muslim Women Against Femen, as well as the mass media, led to global conversations about women’s roles and rights, definitions of feminism, and statements about the body. In employing a transnational feminist rhetorical analysis …


From What Remains: The Politics Of Aesthetic Mourning And The Poetics Of Loss In Contemporary African American Culture, Kajsa K. Henry Nov 2016

From What Remains: The Politics Of Aesthetic Mourning And The Poetics Of Loss In Contemporary African American Culture, Kajsa K. Henry

Doctoral Dissertations

While critical analyses of loss and mourning in African American studies have tended to focus on narratives that primarily concentrate on the Atlantic slave trade/slavery and music, particularly blues and gospel spirituals, this project advocates reimagining the boundaries of our discussions of loss to include other art forms, including assemblage art and performative dance. From What Remains: The Politics of Aesthetic Mourning and the Poetics of Loss in Contemporary African American Culture includes the assemblage art of the 1966 exhibition Signs of Neon and Tyree Guyton’s ongoing Heidelberg Project that respond to the violence of urban rebellions and decay and …


"Daring Propaganda For The Beauty Of The Human Mind:" Critical Consciousness-Raising In The Poetry And Drama Of The Black Power Era, 1965-1976, Markeysha D. Davis Nov 2016

"Daring Propaganda For The Beauty Of The Human Mind:" Critical Consciousness-Raising In The Poetry And Drama Of The Black Power Era, 1965-1976, Markeysha D. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a literary and intellectual history of the contributions of black American theorists, poets, and dramatists in the 1960s and 1970s towards the establishment of black critical consciousness in order to lay grounds for black people to experience a fuller existence as human beings through black-centered creations and presentations. Through the following chapters, I establish the framework and evolution of black psyche-liberation theories—spanning Du Bois’s theory of double-conscious through the contributions of black artist-theorists like Baraka, Neal, and Woodie King, Jr., followed by examinations at length of the theories of black liberation in praxis by the poets and …


Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard Nov 2016

Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1969, militant factions within both Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) began to form the United States’ first clandestine revolutionary urban guerrilla organizations: the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). These groups carried out bombings, police ambushes, and other attacks throughout the country, prompting responses from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Several historians have analyzed U.S. leftist guerrillas’ motives, and much has been written on FBI operations against the Black Power movement and New Left, including the Bureau’s covert counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) …


Mesa Para Dos. La Gastronomía En La Poesía Y El Cine Españoles, Dolores Juan Moreno Nov 2016

Mesa Para Dos. La Gastronomía En La Poesía Y El Cine Españoles, Dolores Juan Moreno

Doctoral Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation examines the alliances between Gastronomy, Film and Poetry in Peninsular Spanish Culture between 2000 and 2015. The thesis that I defend in this project argues that poetry and cinema employ the same tools in their display of culinary elements. These techniques are rooted in a concept promoted by the Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià: the “extrañamiento” that comes from a process of culinary deconstruction. Because of their need to enhance multiple meanings in a limited space, poets and filmmakers turn to “extrañamiento” as a means to capture the attention of the public who, unexpectedly, is able to shed …


Deconstruction Of The Sacred, Ontologies Of Monstrosity: Apophatic Approaches In Late Modernist Cinema, Scott D. Vangel Jul 2016

Callar Y Revelar Dos Novelas Extremas De La Transición Chilena: Entre La Censura Y La Reconquista De La Palabra, Robert Silveri Jul 2016

Callar Y Revelar Dos Novelas Extremas De La Transición Chilena: Entre La Censura Y La Reconquista De La Palabra, Robert Silveri

Doctoral Dissertations

This investigation proposes to explore relationships between politics and literature within the framework of three decades (1970-2000) that include a particularly dramatic period in Chilean society: the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and the later transition to democracy (1988-2000). Such exploration focuses on the narrative genre, a form well suited to show the perverse effects of the censorship and the destruction of public and private life under the dictatorship, but also a form that converts itself into a symbolic space in which takes place, upon the transition back to democracy beginning in 1988, an explosion of important Works that characterize …


Prosthetizing The Soul: Reading, Seeing, And Feeling In Seventeenth-Century Devotion, Katey E. Roden Jul 2016

Prosthetizing The Soul: Reading, Seeing, And Feeling In Seventeenth-Century Devotion, Katey E. Roden

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation proposes a new context for reading early modern devotional writing’s rich engagement with the language of the body in its focus on the relationship between gendered representations of devotional desire and spiritual ability in the religious poetry of seventeenth-century England. By tracing how somatic speech and bodily conditions are portrayed in the devotional poetry of John Milton, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne, and An Collins, this project examines how these writers fashion spiritual states through the language of a sometime sorrowful and sometime ecstatic, but always desiring body. My project reveals how early modern authors manipulate or respond to …


Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt Jul 2016

Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that understanding possesses unique epistemic value. I propose and defend a novel account of understanding that I call the management account of understanding, which is the view that an agent A understands a subject matter S just in case A has the ability to extract the relevant information and exploit it with the relevant cognitive capacities to answer questions in S. Since inquiry is the process of raising and answering questions, I argue that without understanding, it would be impossible to engage in successful inquiry. I argue that understanding is indispensable for effective cognition and …


The Effect Of Enhancing Learner Input Via Computer Assisted Language Learning Tools: On The Acquisition Of Clitics By Spanish Second Language Learners, Bridget C. Pinsonneault Jul 2016

The Effect Of Enhancing Learner Input Via Computer Assisted Language Learning Tools: On The Acquisition Of Clitics By Spanish Second Language Learners, Bridget C. Pinsonneault

Doctoral Dissertations

The current project contributes to the growing body of research in second language acquisition that investigates the facilitative effects of drawing learner attention to problematic aspects of linguistic input through input enhancement. Specifically, the research examines the extent to which input enhancement (Sharwood Smith 1991, 1993) via typographically altered texts facilitates the acquisition of third person dative and accusative clitic pronouns in Spanish for university level native English speakers enrolled in both beginner and advanced levels of Spanish second language courses. A number of past studies have indicated that all verbal clitics have been an obstacle in gaining L2 Spanish …


Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira Jul 2016

Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira

Doctoral Dissertations

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification.


The Path To Supersubstantivalism, Joshua D. Moulton Jul 2016

The Path To Supersubstantivalism, Joshua D. Moulton

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is divided into two parts. In the first part I defend substantivalism. I do this by offering, in chapter 1, a counterpart-theoretic defense of substantivalism from Leibniz’ shift arguments. Then, in chapter 2, I defend substantivalism from the hole argument and argue, against the consensus, that the question of haecceitism is irrelevant to substantivalism in the context of general relativity. In the second part of the dissertation I defend supersubstantivalism. I do this by offering, in chapter 3, an argument against dualistic substantivalism. The argument appeals to plausible principles of modal plenitude to show that the dualist is …


A Soulful Egg Can Break A Rock: A Case Study Of A South Korean Social Movement Leader's Rhetoric, Eunsook Sul Jul 2016

A Soulful Egg Can Break A Rock: A Case Study Of A South Korean Social Movement Leader's Rhetoric, Eunsook Sul

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation introduces and analyzes Ven. Hyemoon’s rhetoric emanating from his leadership of the civic group, the Committee for the Return of Korean Cultural Property in South Korea. On the surface, he seems focused on retrieving cultural artifacts, pillaged by the Japanese colonial invasion. His work, upon deeper analysis, emerges to be about regaining a Korean cultural and national identity that is historically grounded, civically engaged and morally reflective. This study is informed by multiple theories (i.e., framing, narrative, social semiotics, critical geography, rhetoric, and social movement) to examine aspects of a phenomenon in depth – involving nationalism, social movement, …


Minor Subjects In America: Everyday Childhoods Of The Long Nineteenth Century, Gina M. Ocasion Jul 2016

Minor Subjects In America: Everyday Childhoods Of The Long Nineteenth Century, Gina M. Ocasion

Doctoral Dissertations

In my American studies dissertation, I argue that contrary to dominant discourses of separation between spaces of childhood and adulthood, representations of indigeneity, both explicit and implied, affirm the quotidian presence of social and political structures naturalized through children’s culture. Children’s literature, Native American autobiographies, and advice literatures historicize gendered inequalities reliant on particular racial representations. In other words, the intersections of gendered and racialized inequalities surface forcefully in these genres as spaces produced to reify the subjugation of minor and marginal identities through historical narratives. I understand children and the spaces they inhabit to constantly negotiate power, agency, and …


Pessimism In Progress: Hermann Sudermann And The Liberal German Bourgeoisie, Jason Doerre Jul 2016

Pessimism In Progress: Hermann Sudermann And The Liberal German Bourgeoisie, Jason Doerre

Doctoral Dissertations

Once ranked among the most internationally read authors at the turn of the nineteenth century, the name Hermann Sudermann (1857–1928) today has been all but forgotten. This dissertation frames the life and work of this once famous author in the context of the liberal German bourgeois milieu. Not only was Sudermann a liberal bourgeois, his works reflected the preferred styles, attitudes, and worldview of this social class. I argue that the rise and fall of Hermann Sudermann’s career, as it was inextricably connected to the fortunes of the liberal German bourgeoisie, mirrors the trajectory thereof. As the appeal of bourgeois …


Assembling Creative Cities In Seoul And Yokohama: Rebranding East Asian Urbanism, Changwook Kim Jul 2016

Assembling Creative Cities In Seoul And Yokohama: Rebranding East Asian Urbanism, Changwook Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

By investigating institutional and cultural practices as well as the consequences of the creative industry-led development policy in Yokohama, Japan and Seoul, South Korea, this dissertation critically reexamines the key rationales of creative economy-driven urban development and considers social costs and tensions between the state, capital and citizens that are embedded within creative city policy discourses and practices. This dissertation intervenes in the conventional understandings, which consider the influx of neoliberalism as the key to explain the rapid global circulation of creative city policy, typically based on cities in the West. By considering the policy transfer as endless processes of …


Reclaiming Voices And Identities: An Examination Of African American Educators’ Experiences Before And After Brown V. Board Of Education, Leta Hooper Jul 2016

Reclaiming Voices And Identities: An Examination Of African American Educators’ Experiences Before And After Brown V. Board Of Education, Leta Hooper

Doctoral Dissertations

The Brown v. Board of Education rulings in 1954 and 1955 are often regarded as cases that set the precedent for dismantling schools operating on a racially “separate but equal” system. The outcome of the Brown v. Board of Education rulings led to the closing of Black schools as well as the dismissal and displacement of Black educators (Fultz, 2004). Black educators’ experiences of teaching in segregated and desegregated schools, as well as their role in challenging inequitable education conditions, are topics that continue to be ignored in mainstream society (Fultz, 1995; 2004; Siddle-Walker, 2013). The purpose of this life …


El Estudio Contrastivo Y Comparativo De La Perífrasis De Gerundio En El Español Y En El Portugués Hablado En Massachusetts Y Rhode Island, Judy De Oliveira Jul 2016

El Estudio Contrastivo Y Comparativo De La Perífrasis De Gerundio En El Español Y En El Portugués Hablado En Massachusetts Y Rhode Island, Judy De Oliveira

Doctoral Dissertations

Esta disertación explora desde un punto de vista sociolingüístico las formas alternantes en español y en portugués para expresar la actualidad y la habitualidad. El objetivo del presente trabajo de investigación es determinar los contextos que propician la variación de las formas consideradas para así determinar los factores lingüísticos y/o sociales que inciden en la elección de una u otra forma dentro de un determinado contexto. Se realiza un análisis cuantitativo de la variación morfosintáctica de la perífrasis de gerundio y del presente de indicativo en español y a la vez la perífrasis de gerundio, el presente de indicativo y …


Physical Geometry, James P. Binkoski Jul 2016

Physical Geometry, James P. Binkoski

Doctoral Dissertations

All physical theories, from classical Newtonian mechanics to relativistic quantum field theory, entail propositions concerning the geometric structure of spacetime. To give an example, the general theory of relativity entails that spacetime is curved, smooth, and four-dimensional. In this dissertation, I take the structural commitments of our theories seriously and ask: how is such structure instantiated in the physical world? Mathematically, a property like 'being curved' is perfectly well-defined insofar as we know what it means for a mathematical space to be curved. But what could it mean to say that the physical world is curved? Call this the problem …


“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal Jul 2016

“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity's forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. …


Addictive Reading: Nineteenth-Century Drug Literature's Possible Worlds, Adam Colman Jul 2016

Addictive Reading: Nineteenth-Century Drug Literature's Possible Worlds, Adam Colman

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks at nineteenth-century British writers who developed strategies for making use of the patterns of addiction. I consider how writers built texts around addicted characters whose condition drives them always to search for something more even while they live repetitiously, resulting in repetitive texts of endless pursuit. Such literary strategies of addiction, evident in works by writers ranging from Percy Shelley to George Eliot and beyond, emphasize narratives structured around affectively charged, exploratory repetition. The theoretical framework for this project draws from a tradition of criticism that focuses on literary orientation toward possibility and possible worlds. Possible-worlds theorists …