Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Discriminación Racial: Discurso Oficial Versus Realidad En Cuba Postrevolucionaria, Sergio Rojo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

El objetivo de esta investigación es buscar y analizar las causas que han mantenido la discriminación racial dentro de Cuba después de 1959. En mi investigación pretendo examinar cómo la Revolución Cubana no eliminó la continuidad histórica de discriminación racial heredada del pasado. En mi análisis quiero verificar cómo el estereotipo y la imagen política del afrocubano que ha sido formada tras los cambios sociales ocurridos después del 1959, no es más que el resultado de una falacia política montada en nombre de la igualdad.

Muchas de las políticas adoptadas por el estado se hicieron en pos de eliminar la …

The Strategic Naturalism Of Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: A Path Toward Epistemic Progress, Dahlia Guzman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the “strategic naturalism” of Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory in the philosophy of science, and it should be applied to epistemology. Strategic naturalism stipulates that all elements of inquiry are historically and culturally situated, and thereby subject to critical reflection, analysis, and revision. Allegiance to naturalism is de rigueur, yet there is no clear agreement on the term’s meaning. Harding’s standpoint theory reads the lack of definition as indicative of its generative possibilities for epistemic progress. The driving question is why Harding’s approach has not been considered a viable candidate for determining progress in epistemology. Beyond the fact …

"He Didn't Mean It": What Kubrick's The Shining Can Teach Us About Domestic Violence, Kelley O'Brien

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With Second Wave Feminism and the Women’s Rights Movement, 1970’s Americans began to see a shift in gender norms affecting how we relate to one another, particularly within a family structure. Scholars have noted an anxiety permeating the decade over the potential negative ramifications of such a drastic cultural shift. We see these issues of gender politics played out in numerous popular films from the 1970s and into the 1980s. Kubrick’s The Shining, like many horror films of the time, preys upon the societal fear for the family, due to these shifting gender norms, by featuring a crumbling patriarch (Jack), …

Eliminating The Uncertainty Of Hong Kong In 1990s: Tsui Hark’S Once Upon A Time In China (1, 2, 3), Zhanwen Peng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My argument is that the Wong Fei-hung film series, Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, Chapters 1, 2, 3), not only affirms the ideas of Confucianism but also criticizes them. Tsui Hark’s film series express Hong Kong’s tension of selecting eastern tradition and western modernity before it returned to mainland China in 1997, which represents the selection of entirely different values between East and West. Though the film series was made from 1991 to 1993, Hark started considering how to eliminate the uncertainty in selecting ideology after Hong Kong’s return. He provides his answer by combining eastern Confucianism …

The Portrayal Of Women In The Oldest Russian Women’S Magazine “Rabotnitsa” From 1970-2017, Anastasiia Utiuzh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the portrayal of women images in Russia, particularly the transformation from Soviet woman to modern woman based on the analysis of one of the oldest Russian women’s magazine- “Rabotnitsa”. The sample for this study covers two periods: three decades of Russia during the era of the Soviet Union period (1970-1990) and two decades of the Post-Soviet period (1991-2017). A total of 586 relevant images were identified; 311 images by Rabotnitsa over the three decades during the Soviet Union’s period by random sampling of 20 issues published by Rabotnitsa between 1970- 1990, and 275 images by Rabotnitsa …

The Viability Of Democratic Governance In De Facto States: A Comparative Case Study Of Iraqi Kurdistan And Syria Rojava, Chelsea Vogel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following comparative case study of Iraqi Kurdistan and Democratic Federation of Northern Syria-Rojava seeks to fill a gap in literature on the viability of democracy in cases of de facto statehood. There is yet to be an assessment of the potential influence of support from patron states on the degree to which democratization in de facto states is possible. This research expands upon on the argument that the decision to recognize de facto states is at least partially dependent upon the national interests of influential third party states. Syria Rojava has relied heavily on the strength of its internal …

Cool Moms & Cool Media: Returning To, Morgan Wallace

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I posit that contemporary fears about the effect electronic media has on us and our children is anything but new. Therefore, reminiscing about the "good ole days" and wanting to go back would not actually solve the problem. However, looking back to a time when there was also anxiety about electronic media and the shifting field of public and private may reveal new possibilities for relating to and with these media. Rather than flatly blame media as an apparently new cause of harm, it is essential to reveal media's historical and political conditions, only in this way can we better …

Performing "Hurt" : Aging, Disability, And Popular Music As Mediated Product And Lived-Experience In Johnny Cash's Final Recordings, Adam Davidson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sitting at a rarely examined intersection between aging, disability, and popular culture, this project explores how the aging body becomes the disabled body in the context of popular music. In what follows, I trouble the distinction between bodies and mediation, between lived-experience and cultural product, and I argue that the voice of the aging artist engages with his lived-experience even as he performs socially-constructed conceptions of aging and disability.

I read Johnny Cash’s 2002 cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” on American IV: The Man Comes Around as a performance of the singer’s age and disabled condition. Through pain- saturated lyrics, …

Analysis Of User Interfaces In The Sharing Economy, Taylor B. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers claims of discrimination and the interfaces that six platforms use as companies in the sharing economy.

In 2015, Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and an Svirsky did an experiment with Airbnb to test the discrimination of names that sounded distinctly African American. Before and after their findings, there were members of the community who claimed that they had been discriminated against, some suing the company for not upholding their anti-discrimination policy. This leads to the question of how is one able to discriminate against someone whom they have never met and lives thousands of miles away? What information …

The Revival Western And, Kevin Thomas Mckenna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I create a dialogue between films credited with reviving the Western film genre in the early 1990’s. I examine spatial representations in a group of films I label “the revival westerns”: Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), and George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993). Through the use of extreme long shots, characters demonstrating a confined sense of place, and continuity editing, the revival westerns erect a concentrically scaled conception of space and place and maintain a linear temporality. However, I offer Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) as an intervention that reassembles these spatial and temporal notions. Dead …

A Queer And Crip Grotesque: Katherine Dunn's, Megan Wiedeman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The grotesque has long been utilized in literature as a means for subverting societal constraints and inverting constructions of normalcy. Unfortunately, in many instances, it has been constructed at the expense of disabled characters using their embodiment as metaphorical plot devices rather than social and political agents. Criticism of the grotesque’s use of bodily difference has prompted this analytical project in order to rethink disability as socially and politically positioned within texts, rather than simply aesthetics for symbolic means. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways the literary grotesque can be reread using queer theory and crip …

Reproducing Intersex Trouble: An Analysis Of The M.C. Case In The Media, Jamie M. Lane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How do members of the media represent intersex people? Do the voices of intersex activists find their way into mainstream media representations, or are they ignored? What types of discourses are produced by the presence (or lack thereof) of activist voices in news articles? The goal of this thesis is to interrogate the discourse surrounding intersex, or individuals who fall outside of the typical male/female binary for sex classification, and intersex activism in the media. The legal case M.C. vs. Aaronson, settled in 2017, was one of the first legal cases in the United States involving an intersex person. This …

Penalizing Pregnancy: A Feminist Legal Studies Analysis Of Purvi Patel's Criminalization, Abby Schneller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purvi Patel is an Indian American woman who, in 2015, was the first U.S. citizen to be convicted under feticide statutes for allegedly attempting her own abortion. Though her 2015 conviction was overturned the same year, the feticide conviction was significant as a legal precedent as well as part of a larger trend criminalizing pregnant women of color. With an eye towards the greater pattern of the criminalization of other pregnant women of color (Boyd, 1999; Faludi, 1991; Humphries, 1999; Mahan, 1996; Roberts, 1997), in this thesis I employ a feminist legal studies methodology and the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality …

Porter’S Bar: A Coastal Middle Woodland Burial Mound And Shell Midden In Northwest Florida, Kerri Knigge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis should serve as a comprehensive site report for both Porter’s Bar (8Fr1) and Green Point (8Fr11) mounds in northwest Florida. These prehistoric burial mounds and their associated village shell midden are determined to have been constructed during two different time periods, Middle Woodland and Early Woodland, respectively. This is the first time that all materials and data have been described and compiled for both sites, despite the fact that they were both originally recorded over a century ago and described differently later by multiple researchers.

The mounds served as an important ceremonial center along Apalachicola Bay some 1500 …

Failing To Move Forward: Journalism, Media, And Affect In David Fincher's, Nicholas Orlando

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) offers a critique of the mass media’s efforts to restore American valiance with heroic narratives of ordinary people in the aftermath of 9/11. Amending prior scholarly readings of Zodiac as a serial killer narrative, I reconfigure my analysis by taking Fincher at his word and treating it as a journalism film. Borrowing a term from political theorist Elisabeth Anker, I argue that, unlike other contemporary journalism films, Zodiac is constructed as a “melodrama of failure” that, rather than seeking mastery, unveils the instability of evidence and the obsessive uncertainty of procedure.

With his film sitting between …

Once Upon A Genre: Distant Reading, The Newbery Medal, And The Affordances Of Interdisciplinary Paradigms For Understanding Children’S Literature, Melanie Griffin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Typical critical patterns for studying children’s literature, defined in this study as a written text intended for a reader up to the age of 14, make it difficult to chart generic change across a large corpus of texts. Traditionally, criticism of children’s literature focuses on cherry picked archetypes, exemplars, and the standout extraordinary. This study employs interdisciplinary methods and data sources from library science, education, and literary studies to create a method for analyzing a sample corpus of children’s literature more holistically vis-à-vis distant, macroscopic reading techniques.

In this dissertation, I macroscopically read the corpus of Newbery Medal-winning texts in …

The Promised Body: Diet Culture, The Fat Subject, And Ambivalence As Resistance, Jennifer Dolan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the turn of the twentieth century, middle-class Americans have considered the thin body--ostensibly the result of self-control and self-discipline--a moral imperative and a symbol of good citizenship. In this thesis, I provide a critical perspective on fat studies by examining the ways in which the field authorizes itself in a society that deems the fat body unhealthy, costly, and immoral. As one potential solution to fat-hatred, fat studies proposes fat-positivity, but I argue that fat-positivity requires an extraordinary act of imagination in which the fat person overcomes what I term the ideology of thinness and subsequently feels good about …

Collecting The Past: Using A Private Collection Of Artifacts To Assess Prehistoric Occupation Of The Chipola River Valley In Northwest Florida, Kelsey Kreiser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Chipola River Valley in northwest Florida is an area of extensive occupation by pre-contact peoples, dating as far back as the Paleo-Indian time period (approximately 11,000 BC). With such a rich archaeological history, it has enticed many local divers to explore river bottoms and collect artifacts. I worked with one local collector to study over 700 projectile points found in the Chipola River. The collector has taken great care to protect and preserve these points and, in many cases, documented the GPS coordinates from where they were collected. Using the GPS coordinates and ArcMap, I have been able to …

Book Review: Nation Building In Kurdistan: Memory, Genocide And Human Rights, Michael Gunter

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: La Muerte Del Verdugo: Reflexiones Interdisciplinarias Sobre El Cadáver De Los Criminales De Masa, Vincent Druliolle

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review of La Muerte del Verdugo. Reflexiones Interdisciplinarias Sobre el Cadáver de los Criminales de Masa, ed. Séviane Garibian (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila editores, 2016)

Book Review: The Failures Of Ethics: Confronting The Holocaust, Genocide, And Other Mass Atrocities, James J. Snow 4995784

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review: John K. Roth, The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities

Film Review: The Cut, Anna Batori

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Concerning Virtual Reality And Corporealized Media: Exploring Video Game Aesthetics And Phenomenology, Matthew Morales

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the birth of the New Hollywood blockbuster out of the Hollywood Renaissance in the 1970s, popular moving image media has continually exhibited an intense interest in play with Newtonian physics and tactile, immediate experience. As the entertainment industry has moved further away from analog and celluloid and deeper into a digital media space, we have begun to see new a new breed of media project that differently engages with our sensorium in order to newly use (and abuse) this interest. I term this digital media project “corporealized media.” Corporealized media, as I define it, refers to media that includes, …

Señoritas And Cigarmaking Women: Using ‘Latin’ Feminine Types To Rebrand And Market Ybor City, 1950-1962, Brad Massey, L. J. Russum

Sunland Tribune

“Pretty señoritas” and “tractable” cigarmaking women were two Latin female types created by marketers to promote Ybor City—historically known for industrial cigar production, Latin immigrants, and labor strife—as both a major tourist destination and continuing cigar manufacturing center after World War II. This article—through an examination of promotional materials, news accounts, and other archival sources— describes how Anthony Pizzo, Tampa mayor Curtis Hixon, and other area businesspersons and politicians used señoritas and female cigar workers to rebrand and market postwar Ybor City as a distinct and exotic hybrid space, which combined industrial production with tourist- centered consumption.

The Haunting Of Egmont Key: A Soldier’S Story, Carlo G. Spicola Jr.

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Finding Relics In The Burgert Brothers Photographs, Bill Harris

Sunland Tribune

The Burgert Brothers Photographic Collection presents a pictorial record of the commercial, residential, and social growth of Tampa Bay and Florida's West coast from the mid-1800s to the mid-1960s. The photographs came from Burgert Brothers Inc., a commercial photography studio founded in 1917 after Al and Jean Burgert purchased William A. Fishbaugh’s commercial photography studio. The Burgert Brothers’ studio took approximately 80,000 photos during its operation up to the mid-1960s. After the Burgert Brothers Studio closed, the photographs and negatives were stored in a tin-roofed garage in South Tampa. Many negatives were destroyed by heat, humidity, and rain.

Oral History With Gary Mormino, Andy Huse

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Oral History With Joseph Knight: Grandson Of Peter O. Knight, Andy Huse

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Memories Of Cuscaden Park, Donna Parrino

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

A Perspective On Preservation In Tampa: The Anglo Side Of Town, L. Glenn Westfall

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.