Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Music As An Instructional Modality To Increase Attending Behavior Of Elementary Students, Zachary Grossman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Audio and audiovisual cues, when used as teaching tools, result in desirable learning outcomes for young learners when compared to visual cues alone (Havy et al., 2017; Kirkham et al., 2019; Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). Previous research has demonstrated that music can be an effective delivery method for teaching math in the elementary classrooms (An & Tillman, 2015; An et al., 2014; Azaryahu et al., 2020). However, the effectiveness of music at increasing attending behavior specifically has not been assessed in these studies. This study evaluated the effectiveness of music based instruction on students’ attending behaviors compared to non-music based …

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

The Ontological Grounds Of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, And Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Stanford L. Howdyshell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation explains the psychologism debate as it played out in the 19thand early 20th Centuries and then shows how Martin Heidegger radicalized the debate by undermining its key themes and assumptions. First, I explain each side of the psychologism debate, starting with the psychologicists. I explore the philosophies of Jakob Friedrich Fries and John Stuart Mill in order to encapsulate the full spectrum of psychologism in the 19th Century, from Neo-Kantian to British Empiricist. The investigation will show a set of common themes within psychologism, such as the grounding of logic in the constitution of the human subject, …

Early Agricultural Lives: Bioarchaeological Inferences From Neolithic And Early Copper Age Tombs In The Central Po Valley, Italy, Christopher J. Eck Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current project seeks to illuminate the diets of the earliest farming societies in central Northern Italy. Neolithic peoples who first began settling in the Central Po Valley sometime at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth millennium BCE forever changed the landscape from one of expanding sub-continental forests to one of intensive agricultural production and anthropogenic influence. A total of 109 individual burials from 24 separate infrastructure project excavations of 17 sites surrounding the modern city of Mantua, Italy were analyzed utilizing a biochemical approach and a bioarchaeological explanatory theoretical framework based within embodiment and life …

Dreaming To Get Out The “Sunken Place”: Fantasy, Film, And The Inner-White- I(Eye), Jordan Battle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception during the transatlantic slave trade, blackness within the collective unconscious of Western society has been sutured to negative stereotypes, images, and feelings. In modern discourse on race and racism, the unconscious manifestations of anti-black racism adopted from cultural impositions, the impact of enslavement and colonization on the psyche of the subjugated, and the importance of the mind in revolutionary efforts are all too often undertheorized. Through an Afropessimist framework, this thesis uncovers the origination of the black imago in Western society, how and why it is habitually recreated, and how black theorists, artists, political activists, and others …

Bookends: Freemasonry In Russia, Past And Present, James Patrick Greene

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to explore Russian Freemasonry in both the reign of Peter I and in theRussian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, two periods where the relevant scholarship has largely fallen silent. The first chapter argues that early Masonic influences were both present at the court of Peter I and accepted by the Tsar. These intellectual trends, traceable in the libraries, social connections, and writings of individual Jacobites, would reemerge in the institutional Freemasonry in the reign of Catherine II. The printing and translation activities of Novikov and Lopukhin indicate a strong interest in these mystical ideas …

Spatial Pattern And Environmental And Social Factors Of Monkeypox In The Contiguous United States, Linbo Han

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Monkeypox is a rare viral disease that is usually transmitted to humans through contact with infected animals, such as rodents or primates. Although its symptoms are similar to those of smallpox, monkeypox is generally less severe and rarely fatal. In recent years, however, there has been an uptick in the number of reported cases, with a large outbreak occurring in several parts of the world in May 2022. This has raised concerns among public health officials and researchers, who are working to better understand the factors that contribute to the spread of the disease. One promising approach to studying the …

Losing The Streaming Wars: What Netflix Loses In Television Narrative And Participatory Fan Cultures, Annabelle G. Naudin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the rise of streaming television and subsequent “binge-watching” and its impact on the narrative structure of a series. By looking at shows such as Stranger Things, which pioneered the rise in this new form of television, one can see the shift in narrative structure in comparison to previous long- form television such as LOST. This shift can be seen in the slow disappearance of “game-changer” cliffhangers within episodes that build to a larger implication in a season arc in favor of one longer mystery that stretches throughout the season. In this thesis, I argue that this …

"Emerging And Submerging": Silence, Commemoration, And Sexual Violence In Minneapolis, Alissa Roy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dedicated in Minneapolis in October 2020, the Survivors Memorial became the first permanent memorial to survivors of sexual violence in the United States. However, as my research reveals, sexual violence has long been a part of the commemorative landscape in northeast Minneapolis. Whereas the Survivors Memorial explicitly commemorates survivors of sexual violence, a much older site, the 1936 Pioneers Monument - commemorates sexual violence through silence. This thesis argues that with the building and dedication of the Survivors Memorial, a different memory than the one embodied within the Pioneers Monument begins to take shape. An older narrative of peaceful conquest …

The Politics Of Waves: A Transnational And Cultural Surfing History Of Popoyo, Nicaragua, Jason R. Old

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the 1970s and 1980s, as surfers were carving out new international surf spaces around the globe, Nicaragua was on a much different trajectory—one that engendered the Sandinista guerrilla insurgency that deposed a four-decade-long, US-backed dictatorship in 1979. In response, the United States waged a decade-long, low-intensity counterinsurgency against the Sandinista government. While other surfing destinations were growing in popularity, notably neighboring Costa Rica, Nicaragua was, by most accounts, considered off-limits due to the conflict. In 1990, a watershed moment fostered an environment conducive to international tourism and foreign investment. The election of Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro ushered in …

Deconstructing And Decolonizing Identities Of “Gender” And “Sex” When Viewed As Anti-Black: Black Narratives Outside Of The Binary, Didier Salgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How is “Reality” experienced in the Black body? Is “Reality” an objective article which is outside of the realm of personal experience? Assigned sex is often assumed an objective biological phenomenon that exists everywhere and in all communities. Gender is often thought about as a socially constructed form of identity which is expressed in various ways. In this thesis, I critically examine the terror of “reality” on the Black body, looking at the ways that Black people who’ve experienced discomfort with gender and sex categories experience the “world” around them. Diving deeply into their own experiences and the meanings they …

The 'Charm And Distinction' Of Proverbs: The Duality Of The Gem Analogy In Erasmus's Adagia, Blythe Broecker Creelan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the Adagia, Erasmus of Rotterdam frequently compares proverbs to precious gems and gemstone jewelry. My interdisciplinary study contributes to the broader discussion of Erasmus’s use of imagery by evaluating the specific qualities Erasmus associates with gemstones as analogous to the qualities he argues synonymously describe proverbs, specifically how both possess and imbue “charm and distinction.” The historical use of gemstones as essential for the display of social status and political power coupled with the contemporaneous belief in amuletic and astral magical properties of gemstones reveals the complex connections Erasmus forges between the qualities of gemstones and proverbs. Erasmus’s marked …

Social Media And Women Empowerment In Nigeria: A Study Of The #Breakthebias Campaign On Facebook, Deborah Osaro Omontese

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines how the March 2022 #BreakTheBias campaign on Facebook was used as an empowerment platform in Nigeria, where women experience gender disparity. Research on the role of social media in women’s empowerment in Nigeria is an area that has not been fully studied. Previous studies have looked at women’s empowerment mainly through an educational or political lens, neglecting how social media have also been effective in empowering women. Other researchers have studied how women utilize social media platforms for leisure, entertainment, and media sharing. In the present study, non-probability sampling was used to identify 20 posts that convey …

Against God, Good Faith, And Reason: The 1381 Peasants’ Revolt In Cambridge, Reagan T. Vernon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 as it occurred in the university town of Cambridge. The historiographic understanding of the Cambridge wing of the Peasants’ Revolt has categorized it as foundationally motivated by town and gown resentment. Using legal records and chronicle accounts, this thesis demonstrates that the crowd did not exclusively target the university. As one of the town’s wealthier and increasingly authoritative institutions, the university and its constituents were targets in the uprising—but this was in addition to several attacks on local churches, monastic institutions, and manors. These attacks against higher authorities reflect a loss …

Of Mētis And Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis As A Theoretical Framework For Marginalized Communities, Justiss Wilder Burry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This LGBTQ+ rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) community-based research explores the ways community members and queer community participants communicate about potential intimate partner selection in Central Florida. The dissertation introduces the theoretical framework of “collective mētis” as a way to analyze and discuss community communication against Florida’s required HIV disclosure laws that attempt to medicalize this and control this community’s intimate partner selection. Research questions include: 1) How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential intimate partner desires to others in the community including the types of disclosures they express and negotiate, and how? 2) How …

What On Earth Are We Doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration Of Design Courses In Tpc, Jessica L. Griffith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores design related courses within the field of Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) to uncover programmatic trends in undergraduate courses at a field wide level. This applied study uses a mixed methods approach to understand the following questions: what do the range of design courses look like in the field of TPC, how are these courses taught, and what would an effective design course look like? To answer these questions, this study uses a mix of three types of data: (1) institutional data on courses, (2) interviews with faculty and administrators who have taught (or are currently teaching) …

Modules, Mandates, & Morals: A Self-Study Of The Creation Of An Online Secondary Holocaust Course, Alexander C. Ledford

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process of the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of an online secondary Holocaust education course. Employing self-study methodology, it critically examines the decision-making of the researcher as they engage in the tasks of each phase of the ADDIE model of instructional. Special attention has been paid to the intersection of prevailing pedagogical and curricular recommendations from scholars in the fields of both Holocaust education and instructional design, a practice that has not received adequate scholarly attention. Drawing upon both bodies of literature, the researcher stresses the use of pedagogical practices which are put forward as …

Testimonios Of Civic Pedagogy: Developing Critical Literacy Skills Using Civics And Holocaust Studies, Tameka Parenti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Civics using Holocaust Studies offer a variety of pedagogical advantages. Regardless of the topic, Holocaust events can be used to build critical analytical skills and cultivate essential literacy skills about the social world. Further, the Holocaust can be used to introduce and grapple with the complex/abstract ideas of the civics content. Given the relationship that social studies has to critical literacy development, civics used in conjunction with Holocaust resources present teacher(s) (educators) with the opportunity to explore (theoretical) concepts foregrounding manifold relationships making up the social world.

This research aimed to examine how secondary students connect to the social world …

Where We Live And Learn To Know: An Oral History Of The Rochelle High School Music Program, John Sargeant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For the greater portion of the 20th century Black Americans in the US South had severely restricted access to a high school education. Segregation Era Jim Crow laws effectively created two education systems in Southern US states, one for White students and another separate system for Black students. In Florida, elementary, junior high, senior high schools, and colleges were segregated by race. In Lakeland, Florida from 1928–1969 Rochelle Senior High School conferred high school diplomas to Lakeland area Black students. Rochelle Senior High School provided Black students in the Lakeland area an opportunity to partake in the 20th century American …

An Anthropology With Human Waste Management: Non-Humans, The State, And Matters Of Care On The Placencia Peninsula, Belize, William Alex Webb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The management of human waste is a seldom studied phenomenon in anthropology. Yet across the globe, in countries both rich and poor, it presents pervasive and difficult to tame problems. This dissertation draws on complimentary theories of management and entanglements to explore the practices and processes of organizing human waste on the Placencia Peninsula, Belize. The results illustrate how problems are conditioned and defined by messy relations between institutions, people, technologies, materials, and ecological life.

Fieldwork and analysis for this work was a culmination of years of interdisciplinary collaboration between other anthropologists and engineers at the University of South Florida. …

Minecraft In Language Teacher Education: Acceptance And Integration In Practice, Kristen E. Fung

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today’s technological era, understanding if and how teachers’ acceptance and integration of technology evolves is critical to understanding their needs. Technology creates complicated demands on educators and research shows various factors may contribute to their limited success at integrating it (Bustos & Nussbaum, 2009). Research also shows that teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards pedagogical innovations and information and communication technologies are prominent factors that impact adoption and integration (Tejedor & Muñoz-Repiso, 2006), and the perceptions teachers develop as pre-service teachers influence their classroom performance as in-service teachers (Moon et al., 2016). While research shows plentiful evidence of the educational …

American Horse Power During The Great War, Hanna K. Lipsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation charts the significant, if understudied, history of American horses during the era of World War I, from roughly 1914 to 1919. Its chapters trace how the US Army acquired, used, cared for, and ultimately demobilized horses over the course of that conflict. Beginning with their acquisition, via either an Army Horse Breeding Program or a complicated buying process, horses faced a complex introduction into military service. Life for these animals did not get any easier once they reached the European front. Although the US military was beginning to replace horses with motor trucks and tractors, horses remained central …

Towards More Task-Generalized And Explainable Ai Through Psychometrics, Alec Braynen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we propose that adopting the methods, principles, and guidelines of the field of psychometrics can help the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to build more task-generalizable and explainable AI. Three arguments are presented and explored. These arguments are that psychometrics can help by providing 1) a framework for formulating better datasets, 2) psychometric AI data that can lead to models of generalization in AI, and 3) explainable AI through more informative evaluations.

A review of psychometrics and psychological generalization is performed, along with an overview of evaluation, generalization, and explainability in AI. Various ideas are presented throughout for …

Heidegger And The Origin Of Authenticity, John J. Preston

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the publication of Sein und Zeit in 1927, scholars have coupled Martin Heidegger’s reflections on authenticity with a rich tradition of thought which reminds us that philosophy can, from time to time, function as a catalyst for self-discovery. While this function is an undeniable feature of Heideggerian authenticity, I would like to suggest that it is secondary to the role that authenticity plays in Heidegger’s philosophical investigations. By analyzing the full phenomena of authenticity and tracing its first technical uses back to Heidegger’s early lectures on Aristotle, I show that Heidegger’s methodological breakthrough in the early 1920s, the development …

African American Males' Perception Of Factors That Contribute To Success In Higher Education, Gary D. Oliver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decades, many studies have concluded that African American students' college completion rate and success lag far behind other students attending college in the United States (The JBHE Foundation, Inc., 2006). More specifically, these studies have confirmed that African American male students' success rates remain disproportionally low compared to other ethnic male groups. Unfortunately, few notable studies identifying African American males achieving higher education or completing their academic pursuits have been presented as part of the Black male student narrative.

This study aimed to understand better the resources and experiences that positively affect African American males who completed …

Reviving The Christian Left: A Thematic Analysis Of Progressive Christian Identity In American Politics, Adam Blake Arledge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While Christianity in American politics today is mostly dominated by the voice of the Religious Right, many are unaware that there also exists a significant number of progressive Christians throughout the country. This diverse group, often referred to as the Christian Left, is not as organized or outspoken as conservative Christians and tends to shy away from the restrictive influence of identity labels. However, members all share in common a passion for social justice issues. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the identity of Christian Left individuals through a thematic analysis of interviews. By interrogating participants’ identity …

Impact Of Language Sampling Context On Language Productivity And Complexity, Trina J. Tolentino

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language sampling is a familiar tool in the speech-language pathologist’s (SLP’s) repertoire, used to assess a student’s language ability and inform treatment targets. The current literature has several studies comparing various dimensions of language sampling context, but with relatively small samples. The goal of this study was to identify what sampling contexts elicit the most productive and complex language, thereby contributing insight into what conditions may yield the most accurate representation of a child’s language skill, as well as the resulting intervention focus.

One-thousand thirty-seven kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade students (mean age [years; months] ≈ 7;5; range = 5;0-10;9), …

Ambient Athleticism: Politicizing Akira’S Accelerationist Olympiad, Thomas G. Chaplin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis politicizes Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animated cyberpunk film, Akira, specifically through how it stages its myriad neoliberal crises as opportunities for accelerationist solutions mediated by the Tokyo Olympics. Akira’s display of fully animated and intense action physics produces an aesthetic relation to its own athletes that contracts around their bodies in an attempt to transgress classical and oppressive compositions. Akira’s vague utopic promise receives broad acceptance and affirmation by extant scholarship, often relying on the accelerative impulses found in the works of Gilles Deleuze to substantiate Akira’s hopeful ending. Invoking Gilles Deleuze’s notion of athleticism, this thesis critically rereads …

Organizing For Here And There: Exploring The Grassroots Organizing Of The Puerto Rican Diaspora In The Tampa Bay Area, Dominique Rivera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon participant observations and semi-structure interviews with 10 Puerto Rican grassroots organizers from the Tampa Bay area of Florida, this project examines the processes by which Puerto Rican diaspora members build, maintain, and utilize social and symbolic ties as resources for organizing and executing grassroot projects and campaigns with a dual focus on the Puerto Rican community in the Tampa Bay area and in Puerto Rico. Complex webs of interlocking social and symbolic ties that transcend region of origin and regions of destination constitute a transnational social field, within which exchanges of ideas, practices, and resources are organized among …

Queering The Weeki Wachee Mermaid And Its Renewed Aesthetic Value, Jacqueline D. Merveille

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scholars have asserted that the visual representation of womanhood responds to a cultural context, which often adheres to patriarchy and the satisfaction of the male gaze. The mediated depiction of the mermaid through time is polysemous and therefore deserves a thorough examination substantiated by robust theories. As a gendered feminine figure that complies with the patriarchal pressure of subjugation to gratify male desire, the mermaid can, however, elude the socially constructed dichotomy of genders, contributing to her agency and queerness. By investigating the Florida roadside attraction of Weeki Wachee Springs’ mermaid shows and other mediated visual depictions of the sea …