Arts and Humanities Commons^™

An Evaluation Of The Pointe Program To Guide Dance Instructors To Use Behavioral Coaching Procedures With Their Dance Students, Mallory J. Quinn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the POINTE Program, a manualized behavioral intervention designed for use by dance instructors to improve student dance performance using behavioral coaching procedures. This study consisted of three phases. Phase 1 was a formative evaluation of the POINTE Program, which assessed the technical adequacy of the manual. Feedback from 3 experts in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and 4 dance instructors were used to improve the manual content in this phase. Overall, the experts and instructors viewed the POINTE Program as providing accurate information on the basic ABA backgrounds and suggesting behavioral coaching procedures appropriate for use in a …

Cartesian Method And Experiment, Aaron Spink

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The conception of René Descartes as the arch-rationalist has been sufficiently exploded in recent literature; however, there is still a large lacuna in our understanding of how empirical research and experimentation fits within his philosophy. My dissertation is directed at addressing just this problem. I contend that Descartes’ famed method is not a singular monolith but instead two interdependent methods: one directed at metaphysical and epistemological truth, while the other directed at empirical questions and contingent facts of the world. I claim there is evidence for this position not only in his actual scientific practice, but also in the rhetorical …

Traveling Women And Consuming Place In Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters And Journals, Cassie Patricia Childs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traveling Women and Consuming Place in Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters and Journals considers how various women-authored travel narratives of the long eighteenth century employ food in the construction of place and identity. Chronologically charting the letters and journals of Delarivier Manley, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Janet Schaw, and Frances Burney, I argue that the “critical food moments” described in their letters and journals demonstrate material, cultural, and social implications about consumption. My interdisciplinary project is located at the intersection of three seemingly divergent topics: food studies, human geography, and women-authored travel narratives. Approaching “place” as a way of being-in-the-world, my project …

Heteroglossic Chinese Online Literacy Practices On Micro-Blogging And Video-Sharing Sites, Yi Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates Chinese online users’ adoptions of various languages and other meaning making signs in their online literacy practices in two popular Chinese CMC sites, Weibo (micro-blogging) and bilibili.com (video-sharing). Adopting the theoretical framework of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981), I explore how various meaning making resources are creatively and playfully utilized by Chinese users in their online communication. After two-month data collection, I sampled the non-standard literacy practices (e.g., foreign language transliteration) identified from micro-blogging postings and comments in Weibo, as well as spontaneous (known as “bullet curtain” comments) and traditional text-box comments from featured videos in bilibili.com. The findings …

“The Nations Of The Field And Wood”: The Uncertain Ontology Of Animals In Eighteenth-Century British Literature, J. Kevin Jordan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the relationship between important intellectual discourses of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries and the ontological status of non-human animals. The Enlightenment marks a distinct change in the ways in which humans gather knowledge and interact with the world, a change that forms the foundation for modern relationships between human and non-human animals. Through a theoretical framework that draws from animal studies and ecofeminism, I analyze the ways in which the status of non-human animals is shaped by the intersection of multiple anthropocentric concerns. In doing so, this dissertation probes the foundation of what defines the animal apart …

Practical Theology In An Interpretive Community: An Ethnography Of Talk, Texts And Video In A Mediated Women's Bible Study, Nancie Hudson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study of social interaction in a small religious group used ethnography of communication as a research method to collect and analyze data from 20 months of fieldwork. As a long-term participant-observer in a women-only interdenominational Bible study, I investigated the group’s patterned ways of speaking, how print and electronic learning materials influenced the practical application of Scripture to daily life, and how the contemporary format for women’s Bible study alters the traditional Bible study experience. Patterned ways of speaking in this setting included group discussions and conversational narratives about religion, motherhood and lack of time. Using affirmations of faith, …

Active Suffering: An Examination Of Spinoza's Approach To Tristita, Kathleen Ketring Schenk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Humans' capacity to attain knowledge is central to Spinoza's philosophy because, in part, knowing things enables humans to deal properly with their affects. But it is not just any sort of knowledge that humans should attain. There are different types of knowledge, but only two of them–rational and intuitive knowledge–enable humans who attain them to know things clearly. Because rational knowledge attends to universals whereas intuitive knowledge attends to particulars, intuitive knowledge is better than rational knowledge at enabling humans to deal with their affects. Most scholars recognize both the importance of knowledge to humans' dealing with their affects and …

Humanitarian Military Intervention: A Failed Paradigm, Faruk Rahmanovic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the end of the Cold War, traditional justifications for war have diminished in relevance and importance, while the use of Humanitarian Military Interventions (HMI) has proliferated, to the point that formerly traditional wars – e.g. Afghanistan and Iraq invasions – have become retroactively redefined as HMIs. While HMI suffers from a number of problems, from international law to historical track record, its proponents have managed to turn aside all arguments by claiming they represent either statistical outliers, improper implementation, or at best indicate a need for a certain degree of fine-tuning. Crucially, the validity of the HMI practice is …

Institutional Review Boards And Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study, Johanna Phelps-Hillen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this multi-method dissertation project I conduct policy analysis and utilize results from a discipline-wide survey (n=258) to examine the intersection of Writing Studies researchers’ disciplinary affiliation, research context, and personal disposition in relation to the local implementation of federal policy regarding human subjects research. I elaborate on the context of this project, discussing the September 2015 release of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise and update the Common Rule, 45.CFR Part 46, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s formal comment in response to the proposed rule’s provisions. I discuss the process of designing and implementing …

Speaking Of The Self: Theorizing The Dialogical Dimensions Of Ethical Agency, Bradley S. Warfield

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation attempts to fill, in part, three lacunae in contemporary philosophical scholarship: first, the failure to identify the two distinct types of dialogism—psychological and interpersonal—that have been operative in discussions of the dialogical self; second, the lack of acknowledgement of the six most prominent features of interpersonal dialogism; and third, the unwillingness to recognize that interpersonal dialogism is a crucial feature of human ethical agency and identity.

In Chapter One, I explain why dialogism has been relatively neglected—and certainly underappreciated—in contemporary Western philosophy. In Chapter Two, I offer a picture of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism. I explain why …

The Dislocated Spectator's Relationship To Enchanted Objects In Early Film And Modernist Poetry, Rachel Christine Ekblad

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the early 1900s, industry and new technologies dislocated our sense of selfhood. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world had become increasingly crammed with material objects, leading up to when the invention of radio and the rise of electricity perpetuated and evidenced an interest in the immaterial. A similar fascination with magic as expressed in cultural forms such as the traveling show and the séance pointed to our new relationship to the object world: the self, dislocated from the body, could relocate in objects, forming a circuitous relationship akin to electricity. This phenomenon is encapsulated by the representation of enchanted …

Self-Representation Of Women In Eighteenth-Century Europe: Lady Anna Miller And The Grand Tour, Annie Kristina Polzella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Grand Tour is known to scholars as a significant period of travel in which members of English society could immerse themselves in the foreign, while also adhering to established social customs. Scholarship previously regarded the Grand Tour as an intellectual journey for aristocratic Englishmen; however, an incorporation of women into this narrative has introduced many new and important themes that merit further study. Women’s increasing participation in the Grand Tour, which gained in popularity in the eighteenth century, reveals many unique aspects of British society in the period. The integration of women into the Tour is also an indication …

(Age)Ncy In Composition Studies, Alaina Tackitt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The number of adult learners entering or returning to institutions of higher education is increasing in general and in relation to the traditional student population, and projections suggest that the trend will continue. As automation and technology impact the labor force, educational access is becoming a national concern and a necessity for more adult learners. Access to higher education impacts minority and economically depressed populations disproportionally and increases the personal and professional success of adult students and the long-term prosperity of their families. Although Composition Studies has a history of recognizing and facilitating student populations as they enter the Academy, …

“Ya I Have A Disability, But That’S Only One Part Of Me”: Formative Experiences Of Young Women With Physical Disabilities, Victoria Peer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Amidst our ableist social world, there are people with disabilities who are living the lives they want to be living and are, so-to-speak, “doing their own thing.” This project focuses on what a few young adult women attribute as having helped them get to where they are today. There were two overarching open-ended research questions guided this project: (1) what opportunities and experiences have influenced the four women with physical and mobility disabilities in terms of getting to where they are today? And (2) how have these opportunities and experiences helped and/or challenged them along their journeys? The study analyzes …

"You Want It All To Happen Now!": The Jinx, The Imposter, And Re-Enacting The Digital Thriller In True Crime Documentaries, Brett Michael Phillips

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I outline the changing shape of the reenactment in the contemporary true crime documentary to illustrate a burgeoning crisis of epistemology and anxieties about the authority of evidence in the Digital Age. I examine two works—The Jinx and The Imposter—that deal with evidence in formally similar but ideologically opposite ways.

Logic in the Digital Age prioritizes an ever-widening collection of increasingly more precise artifacts and details, which supposedly paint a more complete picture but end up highlighting what is unknown more often. Key to this examination is the adoption of classic Hollywood thriller techniques (e.g., non-traditional narrative …

"Mothers Like Us Think Differently": Mothers' Negotiations Of Virginity In Contemporary Turkey, Asli Aygunes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Even though virginity in Turkey is commonly defined, thus gendered, as losing the hymen, in Turkish society, discourses of virginity connect to broader discussions, such as modernity, morality, social honor/shame, religion, family values, and even medicine (vaginismus and artificial hymen surgery). Previous scholarship on women’s rights in Turkey outlines how historical approaches by Kemalist secularism were not enough to diminish oppressive social norms such as virginity and how the current conservative government and elements of traditional Turkish society perpetuate virginity as an important virtue for unmarried women. This study adds seven Turkish mothers’ interpretations of what I am calling the …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …

Transgressions: Corps Féminin, Langue D’Adoption Et Légitimation Dans La Littérature Maghrébine, Souad Bouhayat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the voice of female writers from the Maghreb in the 1980s and their efforts to change the status of women of their respective countries: Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar and Badia Hadj Nasser. These writers exchange silence for voices in French, the language of ex-colonizer. They managed to stage in their novels strong women protagonistes who fight for their emancipation. These characters know how to overcome the obstacles of the Maghreban patriarchal society, who impose on them religious and traditional prohibitions, to find their freedom. In their fight, these women regain their feminine body in a society that …

Playing-With The World: Toy Story's Aesthetics And Metaphysics Of Play, Jonathan Hendricks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pixar’s Toy Story (John Lassiter, 1995) is not just a story about toys and the children that play with them, but a demonstration of how we interact with the world. This thesis looks at the way in which both main children, Andy and Sid, interact with their toys and how this interaction is one that is structured by way of what Martin Heidegger calls “Enframing.” In this modality of playing, toys and other things and entities in the world, and the world itself, appear to the children as on-hand resources for use at any time and can be molded, as …

Resistance From Within: Domestic Violence And Rape Crisis Centers That Serve Black/African American Populations, Jessica Marie Pinto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses feminist critical discourse analysis to find and understand the discourses embedded in the mission statements and program documents of three domestic violence and/or rape crisis centers that primarily serve Black/African American populations in three distinct geographic locations in the United States. Existing literature addresses the discourses present in domestic violence and sexual assault service provision, but no literature addresses the discourses present in the mission statements of domestic violence and rape crisis centers, leaving a considerable gap in the literature. This project uses frameworks of feminist understandings of Foucauldian discursive patriarchal power, intersectionality and material feminism to …

Re-Ethnicization Of Second Generation Non-Muslim Asian Indians In The U.S., Radha Moorthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When discussing Asian Indian population in the U.S. their economic success and scholastic achievement dominates the discourse. Despite their perceived economic and scholastic success and their status as a “model minority”, Asian Indians experience discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization from mainstream American society. These experiences of discrimination and perceived discrimination are causing second generation Asian Indians to give up on total assimilation and re-ethnicize. They are using different pathways of re-ethnicization to re-claim and to create an ethnic identity. This thesis provides evidence, through secondary sources, that Asian Indians in the U.S. do experience discrimination or perceived discrimination, and it is …

Orthoplanar Spring Based Compliant Force/Torque Sensor For Robot Force Control, Jerry West

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A compliant force/torque sensor for robot force control has been developed. This thesis presents methods of designing, testing, and implementing the sensor on a robotic system. The sensor uses an orthoplanar spring equipped with Hall-effect sensors to measure one component of force and two moment components. Its unique design allows for simple and cost effective manufacturing, high reliability, and compactness. The device may be used in applications where a robot must control contact forces with its environment, such as in surface cleaning tasks, manipulating doors, and removing threaded fasteners. The compliant design of the sensor improves force control performance and …

"Ocurrió La Unión Con La Divinidad, Con El Universo": La Representación De La Religión En Los Cuentos De Jorge Luis Borges, Rachel K. West

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jorge Luis Borges is considered by many to be a pioneering author in 20th-century Latin American literature. Although he had a wide variety of themes and leimotifs in his literature, one of his most apparent was religion. However, given that he was agnostic, the way in which Borges often utilized it varied, creating a tangled web of many different religions and traditions in his literature. Further, the religious representations one sees in his literature serve a greater purpose by allowing him to both uncover his own concept of literary creation while at the same time exploring philosophical and metaphysical themes. …

L’Évolution Du Petit Chaperon Rouge, Sophia Boules

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Creating and writing fairy tales is a literary exercise that was introduced in the salons of the XVII century. Madame d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault began to write the fairy tales that became fashionable at the court of King Louis XIV. Despite the simplicity of their narrative patterns, the tales carry messages that affect all readers. First addressed to adults, fairy tales dealt with anxieties, fears and desires of the human being.

Little Red Riding Hood is one of the most famous tales in the world. Universally loved, this cautionary tale has experienced much evolution through the centuries. There are some …

Opportunities To Mainstream Gender In Water And Wastewater Infrastructure Projects: A Case Study In Barbados, Wainella Isaacs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to the World Resources Institute, Barbados is one of seven Caribbean countries ranked as being the most water stressed territories in the world. Prevailing drought conditions for the period 2010-2016 further compromised its water security while confirming predictions of a drier regional Caribbean climate. The simultaneous failing of at least 50-year-old water infrastructure at many points in the distribution network adds to these water stress conditions, and presents a financial burden to the local water utility in the form of lost revenues, and increased energy consumption for pumping.

Climate change and its impacts are not gender-neutral, and water infrastructure …

Con Su Propia Voz: Un Estudio De Cinco Mujeres Mexicanas, Matthew Steven Wilkinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Este estudio se centra en las vidas de cinco mujeres mexicanas—Malintzin, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Leona Vicario, Rosario Castellanos y Julieta Venegas—de cinco etapas históricas diferentes de México—la Conquista, el Virreinato de Nueva España, la lucha por la independencia, la modernidad y lo contemporáneo—al estudiar el uso que cada figura hace de su “Voz” según la época. Empieza presentando y descomponiendo el concepto de “malinchismo” revisando los detalles reconocidos de la vida de Malintzin/doña Marina/la Malinche. Después, continúa con un resumen de ciertos aspectos interesantes de las vidas de cada figura, empezando con Sor Juana y concluyendo con …

Science In The Sun: How Science Is Performed As A Spatial Practice, Natalie Kass

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes how spatial organization impacts science communication at the St. Petersburg Science Festival in Florida. Through map analysis, qualitative interviews, and a close reading of evaluation reports, the author determines that sponsorship, logistics, exhibitor ambience, and map usability and design are the factors most affecting the spatial performance of science. To mitigate their effects, technical communicators can identify these factors and provide the necessary revisions when considering how science is communicated to the public.

Get Ye A Copper Kettle: Appalachia, Moonshine, And A Postcolonial World, Christopher David Adkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For little over a century, the American region of Appalachia was an internal mineral colony of the United States. This internal colonization produced innumerable negative environmental and economic effects, as well as – most insidious of all – the constructed stereotype of the Hillbilly that even in the Twenty-First Century refuses to die. Yet part and parcel of that same stereotype is something found all over Appalachia, representing a freedom, an identity, and an heritage so long denied to Appalachia and the Appalachian people on its own terms: moonshine, the colorless, unaged corn whiskey long produced both in Appalachia …

The Apatow Aesthetic: Exploring New Temporalities Of Human Development In 21st Century Network Society, Michael D. Rosen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a critical examination of what I call the “Apatow aesthetic” in order to analyze the social processes of growing up in contemporary neoliberal network society. While doctors, psychologists and social scientists still proffer a model of mid- 20th century human development centered around a chronologically-determined life cycle, the Apatow aesthetic imagines a non-linear reality where traditional life events and social practices don’t always correspond to specific age groups. Specifically, I argue, the Apatow aesthetic subjects the spectator to the pleasures and pains of these life-cycle disruptions, and reveals the unfolding of a new cultural shift which challenges …

Nothin' But A Good Time: Hair Metal, Conservatism, And The End Of The Cold War In The 1980s, Chelsea Anne Watts

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a cultural history of the 1980s through an examination of one of the decade’s most memorable cultural forms – hair metal. The notion that hair metal musicians, and subsequently their fans, wanted “nothin’ but a good time,” shaped popular perceptions of the genre as shallow, hedonistic, and apolitical. Set against the backdrop of Reagan’s election and the rise of conservatism throughout the decade, hair metal’s transgressive nature embodied in the performers’ apparent obsession with partying and their absolute refusal to adopt the traditional values and trappings of “yuppies” or middle-class Americans, certainly appeared to be a strong …