Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Meadow: A Novel, Scott Albert Winkler

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE MEADOW: A NOVEL

by

Scott A. Winkler

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor George Clark

The Meadow considers the question of how all Americans, both civilians and military personnel alike, are affected by the United States’ military actions. Set during the Vietnam era, The Meadow tells the story of Walt Neumann, who is torn between his dream of going to college and his father’s insistence that his sons serve their nation as he did in World War II. Circumstance unexpectedly enables Walt to pursue his dream, but he also comes to realize the source …

The Reverend Jim Jones And Religious, Political, And Racial Radicalism In Peoples Temple, Catherine Barrett Abbott

Theses and Dissertations

On November 18, 1978 over 900 members of Peoples Temple committed suicide or were murdered in Jonestown, Guyana under the direction of Reverend Jim Jones. This thesis explores the radical ideology of Jones leading up to and including the day of the murder-suicides by poisoned Flavor-Aid. Jones was a radical theologically, politically, and in racial thinking, although he was not an advocate for women’s rights. Jones claimed to be a prophet and then God, criticized the Bible and became atheistic, called himself a Marxist, a socialist, and a Communist, and strove for equal rights for minorities in the United States …

Retrograde Returns Of The American Housewife: Reimagining An Old Character In A New Millennium, Ruth Emelia Wollersheim

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the immensely popular return of the housewife character in the twenty-first century. From films like The Stepford Wives (2004), to television dramas like Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) and The Good Wife (2009- ), to reality shows like Wife Swap (2004- ), Bravo’s The Real Housewives franchise (2006- ), Basketball Wives (2010- ), Mob Wives (2011- ), and most recently on the blogosphere with personalities like The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, the housewife character has reentered our imaginations on a mass scale. This anachronistic character trend is in stark contrast to the urban, working superwoman ideal of the 1980s …

Kant On Radical Evil, Kyoung Min Cho

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to propose an interpretation of Kant’s claim that the human being’s evil nature is the effect of the free power of choice. I suggest that if his concept of free choice is properly understood, Kant’s claim should be interpreted as follows: the human being’s radical evil is the effect of a failure to use freely the power of choice that determines its fundamental disposition, a failure that is to be presupposed as universal for all human agents. According to this reading, we are evil by nature since evil lies in our fundamental disposition. Still, …

Incorporation Of Latino Police Officers Into The Milwaukee Police Department: How A Group Of Latino Police Officers Shed The "Blue Shield" For A Latino Identity, Antonio G. Guajardo Jr

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

INCORPORTATION OF LATINO POLICE OFFICERS INTO THE MILWAUKEE POLICE DEPARTMENT: HOW A GROUPS OF LATINO POLICE OFFICERS SHED THE “BLUE SHIELD” FOR A LATINO IDENTITY

by

Antonio G Guajardo Jr.

The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Joe Rodriguez

This study examines the issue of ethnic identity and its importance to the Latino police officers in the MPD. The study also explores the relationship between these officers and Milwaukee’s Latino communities, analyzing historical incidents of activism within these communities meant to pressure the Department into hiring Latino officers. It also examines the officers’ experiences and …

A Preliminary Museological Analysis Of The Milwaukee Public Museum's Euphrates Valley Expedition Metal Collection, Jamie Patrick Henry

Theses and Dissertations

Destruction of ancient sites along the Euphrates River in northern Syria due to the construction of the Tabqa Dam resulted in excavations conducted between 1974 and 1978 by the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) at the site of Tell Hadidi, Syria, by Rudolph Dornemann. The hundreds of thousands of artifacts at the MPM have never been completely published. This preliminary analysis presents an inventory and analysis of the 941 metal artifacts as well as new archival information about the Tell Hadidi/ Euphrates Valley Expedition, whose publication has recently become critical, in order to make the material more useful for future research.

A Case Study: The Role Of Women In Creating Community On The Dakota Frontier, 1880 To 1920, Ruth Page Jones

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

A CASE STUDY: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN CREATING COMMUNITY

ON THE DAKOTA FRONTIER, 1880 TO 1920

by

Ruth Page Jones

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Genevieve G. McBride

During the Dakota Boom years of 1878 to 1887, Dakota Territory welcomed droves of new families, adding close to 400,000 people in the 1880s. Creating new homes on the treeless prairie, many people faced the challenge of sustaining life without the benefit of an established community. The conditions were too harsh, the weather too unpredictable, and the economy too fragile for anyone to live in …

Critical Affects: Laughter As Inquiry In First-Year Writing Courses, Nicholas James Learned

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

CRITICAL AFFECTS: LAUGHTER AS INQUIRY IN FIRST-YEAR WRITING COURSES

by

Nicholas J. Learned

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Dennis Lynch

In this dissertation, I work to rethink our current approaches to teaching critical thinking and writing in attempt to collapse the distance between the critical/rhetorical methods we teach in Rhetoric and Composition and the ways students interact rhetorically in their everyday lives. I am prompted to this line of inquiry by a problem I note in both theory and practice: the critical methods we teach in our writing courses rarely translate to real-world behaviors, …

Regional Perspective Of Recuay Mortuary Practices: A View From The Hinterlands, Callejón De Huaylas, Peru, Victor Manuel Ponte

Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological investigations of burial chambers in the north-central highlands of Peru constitute the corpus of this thesis. Most of the stone structures correspond chronologically and culturally to the Recuay Tradition, a time span of 100 to 800 CE. The study area is located in the Cordillera Negra of the Callejón de Huaylas basin (Ancash Department). CRM projects developed in the impact zone of the Pierina mine have contributed valuable information on the mortuary practices of a Recuay agro-pastoral community. This thesis relied on grave goods inventories, osteological analysis, and types of stone architecture in the burial chamber. Data from this …

Tyne Darling: A Novel, Thomas James Vollman

Theses and Dissertations

Tyne Darling spent most of his youth dreaming about the saints. They came 15 to a pack with a single stick of stale, pink bubble gum. Their posters hung on his walls, and their pictures—cut from the Sports Illustrated magazines he got from his uncle—were tacked to his cork board and taped above his desk. His saints were Hank Aaron and Oscar Gamble, Carlton Fisk and Tom Seaver. His saints had rocket arms and sweet, smooth swings. They played a game that existed out of time on a sacred square within a circle. His saints were baseball players.

Now, as …

All Play And No Work: The Protestant Work Ethic And The Comic Plays Of The Federal Theatre Project, Paul Gagliardi

Theses and Dissertations

Given the massive unemployment of the era, the subject of work dominated the politics and culture of the Great Depression. In particular, most government programs of the New Deal sought to provide jobs or reinforce long-standing American views of working. These aims were reflected by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which was charged with providing jobs to unemployed theatre workers and uplifting the spirits of audiences. But the FTP also strove to challenge its audiences by staging overtly political theatre. In this context, many comic plays -which have long been ignored by scholars of the FTP - actually challenged work …

Disciplinary Literacy: A Case Study On How Secondary Teachers Engage Students In Disciplinary Discourses, Ann Marie Hillman

Theses and Dissertations

Secondary teachers are currently pressured to address low adolescent literacy rates by adopting disciplinary literacy approaches. While the pressure mounts, direction on how such approaches may be modified to meet the learning objectives of different subject areas is limited. Each subject area will have different Discourses or ways of speaking, writing, listening and thinking about its field, necessitating different literacy strategies for each subject’s curriculum. Successful disciplinary literacy entails learning which strategies and approaches to learning are most effective for student learning for each subject area. In this multi-case study, I observed two high school teachers in Chemistry and Psychology …

Institutional Influence On Documentary Form: An Analysis Of Pbs And Hbo Documentary Programs, Mark Joseph Irving

Theses and Dissertations

INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCE ON DOCUMENTARY FORM - A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PBS and HBO DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMS

by Mark Irving

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Michael Z. Newman

Beginning in the 1980s, the documentary genre has undergone a transformation to accommodate modes of stylistic expression and subjective thematic exposition previously not evident in the genre. This deviation from the form’s traditional modes of expression typically associated with fact-based, journalistic pursuits can be attributed to the institutional underpinnings of media outlets that exhibit documentary programming. These institutional factors, a consequence of an evolving marketplace and shifts …

Welfare Queens To Childcare Queens: The Political Economy Of State Subsidized Childcare In Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2009-2012), Anika Yetunde Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Through the privatization of childcare in Wisconsin, thousands of impoverished, under-educated and low skilled African-American women became micro-enterprising entrepreneurs. In 2006 through the instituting of Wisconsin Shares (Shares), Wisconsin’s low-income childcare program, the average family daycare provider in Milwaukee County earned over $50,000 a year (Pawasarat and Quinn 2006). Drawing on neoliberal ideas of micro-enterprising entrepreneurship, these women were successful, but this success appeared to not align with the architects of Shares. Loic Wacquant (2009, 2012) argues that neoliberalism should not be viewed as market strategies or exercises, but rather, it should be viewed as a quintessential political project that …

Three Research Essays On Human Behaviors In Social Media, Jiao Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media (SM) has grown to be one of the most popular Internet technologies for individual users and has fostered a global community. For instance, recent statistics reveal that monthly active users of Facebook are almost 1.5 billion by Mar 2015. At the same time, 20% of internet users in the US are expected to have Twitter accounts. This figure has grown from 15.2% in 2012, and is expected to rise to 24.2% by 2018 (Twitter 2015).

People like spending their time on SM to track the latest news, seek knowledge, update personal status, and connect with friends. It is …

A Think Tank On The Left: The Institute For Policy Studies And Cold War America, 1963-1989, Brian Scott Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

For American intellectuals, the Cold War involved a battle far more important than the ones taking place in faraway lands. While the nearly half-decade conflict never degenerated into a nuclear war, the combat between intellectuals resembled a nuclear explosion at times. Participants in the war of words believed that intellectual debates would determine the direction of American foreign policy, and possibly whether the United States survived the Cold War. Led by groups such as the Americans for Democratic Action, liberal intellectuals held the dominant position during the first decades of the Cold War as they became hardened Cold Warriors intent …

"Bring The Fan To The Game:" Football, Baseball, And The Transformation Of Sports Television Into Entertainment, Ethan Collins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the growing symbiosis of the sport-television relationship as it evolved during the 1960s. Professional football and baseball are primarily considered they demonstrate the ways television impacted local and national audiences. Football embraced television as a way to disseminate the game to a wider, national audience. Baseball, because of its long history as a local attraction, resisted the encroachment of television. Baseball prioritized the live game over the televised version, while football became more visually descriptive for viewers and took on characteristics of entertainment programming. These changes were technologically, industrially, and economically based, and this thesis discusses the …

American Beauty: Nineteenth-Century Landscapes, Katherine Gelshenen Rafferty

Theses and Dissertations

Using Thomas Cole’s 1836 “Essay on American Scenery” as a touchstone, “American Beauty” argues that Cole’s influence on American landscape painting goes well past the second generation of Hudson River artists, to include painters such as George Inness, Alexander Wyant, Edmund Darch Lewis and other late nineteenth-century artists. These artists had different life experiences, different technique and for the most part a different spiritual outlook. Yet the fundamental message of Cole’s essay—that citizens and artists should value American scenery for its pristine wildness—carries through to the end of the century and is evident in their art. Cole’s “Essay” is visionary …

Animating Aesthetics: Pixar And Digital Culture, Eric Duwayne Herhuth

Theses and Dissertations

In the pre-digital age of cinema, animated and live-action film shared a technological basis in photography and they continue to share a basis in digital technology. This fact limits the capacity for technological inquiries to explain the persistent distinction between animated and live-action film, especially when many scholars in film and media studies agree that all moving image media are instances of animation. Understanding the distinction in aesthetic terms, however, illuminates how animation reflexively addresses aesthetic experience and its function within contexts of technological, environmental, and socio-cultural change. “Animating Aesthetics: Pixar and Digital Culture” argues that the aesthetics that perpetuate …

"Anne Rice For Kids" And Twilight For Tv: Young Adult Media Franchising And The Vampire Diaries, Megan Corinne Connor

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines The Vampire Diaries as representative of the contemporary state of feminized media franchises, especially those that address young women. The Vampire Diaries exists primarily as a book series and a television series, produced by Alloy Entertainment and The CW Network respectively. Alloy’s production of the franchise, and others like it, connects to the company’s history of feminized media production as a book packager, and is indicative of its current transmedia consumerist model. Further, it underlines the importance of trends and the problematic role of the author in YA literature. The CW’s use of franchises like The Vampire …

Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley

Theses and Dissertations

I tackle a troubling question of interpretation: Does Berkeley's God feel pain? Berkeley's anti-skepticism seems to bar him from saying that God does not feel pain, for this would mean there is something to reality 'beyond' the perceptible. Yet Berkeley's concerns for common sense and orthodoxy bar him from saying that God does have an idea of pain. For Berkeley to have an idea of pain just is to suffer it, and an immutable God cannot suffer. Thus solving the pain problem requires answers to further questions: What are God's perceptions, for Berkeley? What are God's acts of will? How …

Rethinking Responding To Raymond: Re-Replying To Reproaches Of Transsexualism, Evan Isaiah Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of transsexualism was most prominently brought into the feminist movement's consciousness through the critical work of cultural radical feminist Janice Raymond. In this paper I will argue that the original response given by trans theorists to Raymond's critiques has allowed for the propagation of certain mistaken notions about trans people. In order to correct these misconceptions a different tack must be taken in responding to Raymond. I will begin by overviewing how two schools of feminist thought have lent themselves to theories of transsexualism, then focusing on radical feminist critique by Janice Raymond and a post-structural feminist response …

Semi-Living: Tissue Culture & Art Project's Challenge To New Museum Theory, Leigh Margaret Wilcox

Theses and Dissertations

With the rising visibility of modern innovations in biotechnology that have been defining factors in the turn into the twenty-first century, it is not surprising that artists would engage and critique the implications of these scientific advancements. One artistic partnership working to raise awareness through the critique of biotechnological progressions in their work is the collaboration Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) comprised of artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr. Working to bridge the gap between the fields of arts and sciences, TC&A employ living and growing cells as the foundation for their semi-living sculptures and manipulate and coach the …

El Greco's Portrait Of Giulio Clovio As Creator: An Artistic Affinity And Assertion Of Creative Identity, Jordan Michael Severson

Theses and Dissertations

EL GRECO’S PORTRAIT OF GIULIO CLOVIO AS CREATOR: AN ARTISTIC AFFINITY AND ASSERTION OF CREATIVE IDENTITY

by

Jordan M. Severson

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Tanya Tiffany

In 1571, Domenikos Theotokopoulos of Crete, today remembered as El Greco, painted a spectacular portrait of the manuscript illuminator Giorgio Giulio Clovio while in Rome. In this portrait, El Greco commemorated Clovio and his work by depicting him with his most praised creation, The Farnese Hours. Despite the portrait’s renown, scholars have generally only mentioned it in larger studies of portraiture or in comparison to El Greco’s other …

Rhetorical Lessons In Advocacy And Shared Responsibility: Family Metaphors And Definitions Of Crisis And Care In Unpaid Family Caregiving Advocacy Rhetoric, Rachel Diana Davidson

Theses and Dissertations

In this rhetorical analysis, I analyze pro-caregiving advocates, individuals and organizations who are attempting to energize policy change for unpaid family caregiving. I piece together an expansive text that includes online advocacy discourse, public policy statements, and hard copies of organizational promotional materials. Pro-caregiving advocates are attempting to expand shared responsibility for an issue that is traditionally assumed to be private--unpaid family caregiving.

Throughout this dissertation, I argue that pro-caregiving advocates are standing in the way of their own goals by rhetorically constructing inherent barriers to policy change. Each analysis chapter analyzes a dominant frame that is commonplace in pro-caregiving …

The Bel Composto In Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Cornaro Chapel, Samantha Landre

Theses and Dissertations

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptural altarpiece, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, in the Cornaro Chapel of the Roman Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria (1652), is regarded as the pinnacle of Baroque “theatricality” in Bernini’s use of the bel composto, or unification of the arts. In this thesis, I argue Bernini’s representation of the mystical event referred to the Counter-Reformation’s canonization process due to the artist’s profound engagement with Teresa’s controversial autobiography, El Libro de la Vida (1562-5). Bernini presented the patron of the chapel and other esteemed members of the Cornaro family as witnesses who authorized her mystical experience. Through …

Examining Whether School Finances And Academic Achievement Predict The Quality Of Reading Intervention Implementation In Response-To-Intervention, Joshua Anderw Looser

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how financial capacity and reading achievement contribute to the implementation of high-quality reading interventions in the context of RtI. As a secondary research interest, the relationship between reading achievement and intervention intensity was examined. Financial capacity was operationalized in terms of per-pupil expenditure, while achievement was examined based on performance on the state standardized test. The quality of reading interventions was defined by four indicators: 1) evidence-based reading interventions, 2) psychometrically sound progress monitoring, 3) treatment integrity measures, and 4) interventionist training. Data regarding these four indicators and intervention intensity were obtained …

Materiality, Craft, Identity, And Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy, Kristin Prins

Theses and Dissertations

Too often in Rhetoric and Composition, multimodal writing (an expansive practice of opening up the media and modes with which writers might work) is reduced to digital writing. “Reworking Digital Writing” argues that the opportunities and insights of digital writing should encourage us to turn our attention to all kinds of nondigital materials that have not traditionally been considered part of composing—including the materials that are already familiar to crafters and do-it-yourselfers (DIYers). Further, I argue that the material, technical, rhetorical, economic, and social dimensions of DIY craft provide a coherent framework for teaching multimodal writing in ways that encourage …

Interface Fantasies And Futures: Designing Human-Computer Relations In The Shadow Of Memex, Rachael Bradshaw Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is about how designers, experimental writers, and innovative thinkers have imagined both computer interfaces and the human/machine relations that might emerge through engagement with different kinds of interfaces. Although futuristic thinking about digital media and their interfaces has changed over time, we can isolate some constants that have persisted through almost all mainstream practices of interface design, particularly in American culture. Drawing from a historical trajectory that I associate with Vannevar Bush and his speculative invention, which he called “memex” in a 1945 essay, I name these constants sterilization and compartmentalization. They are two tendencies or values that …

Disordered Eating And Spiritual Well-Being In College-Age Women, Laura Carter

Theses and Dissertations

The Theistic Model of Human Nature and Psychopathology suggests that human development and personality are influenced by biological, social, psychological, cognitive, and affective processes, but the essence of identity and personality is spiritual (Richards and Bergin, 2005). Religious/spiritual issues are often crucial components in understanding the etiology of and recovery from mental illness, including but not limited to eating disorders (Plante & Sharma, 2001; Richards, Hardman, & Berrett, 2007). There is a paucity of quantitative research, however, examining the relationships and role of spirituality and eating disorders. The present study examines the relationship between spiritual well-being and disordered eating. Upper-level …