Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Developing Little England: Public Health, Popular Protest, And Colonial Policy In Barbados, 1918-1940, Brittany J. Merritt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes struggles over the development of Barbadian health and sanitation during the period between the world wars. In doing so, it examines how the British Empire tried to use development policies to maintain its power overseas during the interwar years. During this period, British policymakers sought to improve health and sanitation to pacify restive Barbadian laborers influenced by transnational pan-African and socialist ideas following the First World War. However, white Barbadian elites, influenced by ideas of eugenics and population control, opposed metropolitan efforts to develop health and sanitation in the colony. Rather than repairing the colonial relationship, British …

Solid Metaphor And Sacred Space: Interpreting The Paradigmatic And Syntagmatic Relations Found At Beth Alpha Synagogue, Evan Carter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, more than an iconic symbol of Jewish identity was destroyed. As the epicenter of religious life for Jews within the land of Israel, the Temple stood as both a symbol for religious hope and as the physical embodiment of Judaism. Yet, in the centuries that would follow synagogue’s like the one found at Beth Alpha would come to fill its absence.

In this thesis I will demonstrate how the use of Christopher Tilley’s theory of the solid metaphor helps us to better understand both the art and architecture of the …

Investigating Alternative Subsistence Strategies Among The Homeless Near Tampa, Florida, Matthew Peter Rooney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern homelessness is one of the most pressing social and political problems of our time. Several hundred thousand people experience homelessness in the United States each year, and the U.S. Department of Housing, which attempts to count those people, has admitted that their statistics are conservative estimates at best. A recent archaeological study (Zimmerman et al 2010) examining material culture associated with homeless communities in Indianapolis has suggested that those who are considered chronically homeless have generally abandoned wage labor and are instead pursuing urban foraging as a subsistence strategy. In order to better understand the structures of homeless communities, …

In Search Of Solidarity: Identification Participation In Virtual Fan Communities, Jaime Shamado Robb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study questions the way sports fans create (a sense of) community through online conversations. Here, ‘community’ and ‘internet’ are seen as invitational terms that suggest an authentic social interaction. By examining the language used by fans to sustain a sense of solidarity in the virtual realm, this study questions the ways in which rhetoric frames the situation. Participation in the virtual space relies on practices of identification derived from physical engagements. By using a rhetorical approach, this study illuminates the way individual participants operationalize a rhetoric in virtual conversations that spiritualize the fan’s experience at the base of a …

Archaeology Of Silver Springs State Park, Marion County, Florida, Rudy J. Westerman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An archaeological survey was conducted of the Silver Springs State Park in Ocala, Florida, between August 2014 and December 2015. The project goals were to relocate and assess the previously recorded archaeological sites in the park and attempt to discover new sites. Background research, archaeological fieldwork including surface collection, shovel testing, and informant interview were conducted with this aim. Each site is described and addressed, and most were relocated; twelve new resources were added to the inventory. The Silver Springs and Silver River watershed have been occupied from the Paleo-Indian period at least 13,000 years ago through the twentieth century. …

Incongruous Conceptions: Owen Jones’S Plans, Elevations, Sections And Details Of The Alhambra And British Views Of Spain, Andrea Marie Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra (1836-1842) by British Architect Owen Jones in relation to British conceptions of Spain in the nineteenth century. Although modern scholars often view Jones’s work as an accurate visual account of the Alhambra, I argue that his work is not only interested in accuracy, but it is also a re-presentation of the fourteen-century monument based on Jones’s ideologies and creative faculties. Instead of viewing the Alhambra through a culturally sensitive, historical lens, Jones treated it as an Imaginary Geography, as Edward Said called it, through which he could promote his …

Science, Policy, And Decision Making: A Case Study Of Deliberative Rhetoric And Policymaking For Coastal Adaptation In Southeast Florida, Karen Patricia Langbehn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to observe and analyze the process of regional climate adaptation planning and the role of stakeholder deliberation in decision making about adaptation actions. It employed a case study approach based on one of three total study sites of an international, multidisciplinary grant titled, “METROPOLE: An Integrated Framework to Analyze Local Decision Making and Adaptive Capacity to Large-Scale Environmental Change”. The purpose of the case study of this project was to analyze stakeholder deliberation at two workshops at the grant’s Broward County, Florida site regarding two adaptation options: elevation/floodproofing and voluntary buyouts. Analyzing stakeholder deliberation …

The Effects Of Processing Instruction On Chinese Learners' Acquisition Of Spanish Copulae, Wesley Curtis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Processing instruction (PI) is a language teaching technique based upon the model of input processing developed by VanPatten (1993, 1996, 2002, 2004). The present study investigated the effects of PI as well as two other experimental conditions (traditional instruction and control) on the acquisition of the Spanish copulae ser and estar by 66 Chinese university students enrolled in a blended (partially presential and partially online) fourth-semester language course. The PI treatment condition included non-paradigmatic grammar explanations, processing strategies designed to help learners avoid commiting errors they may be predisposed to make, and structured input activities which eliminate redundant features of …

Living Among The Ruins Of An Unknown Past: Economic Realities, Sociocultural Perceptions, And Archaeological Practice In The Naco Valley, Honduras, Jose Enrique Moreno-Cortes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses the relationship between perceptions of cultural patrimony, socioeconomic realities, and interactions with archaeological sites in two rural communities in the Naco Valley, Honduras. Palmarejo and Palos Blancos are communities situated around the Naco Valley, that share their space with two major archaeological sites.The residents of these communities interact with the archaeological sites by using their area for farming, cattle grazing, and social/recreational activities. On several occasions, the mounds in the archaeological sites have been used as a source of raw materials for construction. Thus far, the damage to the ruins by these activities has been minimal. However, …

A Gadamerian Analysis Of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis Of Interpretations Of Romans 1:17-2:17, Steven Floyd Surrency

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Catholic exegesis of scriptural and dogmatic statements has become rigid in the period following the Enlightenment. Gadamer’s account of philosophical hermeneutics, when applied to the Catholic situation, elaborates how Catholic exegesis might return to its premodern, freer form. Following Gadamer, I hold that to understand is to fuse the horizon of the old with today’s horizon using the preunderstandings that have been provided by the tradition while at the same time bringing the questions of today into dialogue with the text.

Examples of how Romans 1 and 2 have been interpreted historically serve to support this thesis. Origen reads Romans …

A Comparative Analysis Of Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry And Stable Isotopes In Assessing Ancient Coastal Peruvian Diets, Theresa Jane Gilbertson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a cross-cultural analysis of the dietary signatures of four coastal cultures of prehistoric Peru. A combination of elemental analysis based on portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), testing trace elements presented in 209 individuals’ skulls representing the Nazca (38), Cañete (33), Lima (40), and Moche (98) valleys and/or cultures of the first millennium AD, is weighed in conjunction with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to analyze human bone collagen and bone apatite derived from a portion of the individuals represented in the Nazca, Cañete, and Lima cranial samples.

Evidence from the results of both tests are weighed using …

Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis And The Charge Of Error Against Fermat And Leibniz", Richard Samuel Lamborn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to defend Pierre Fermat and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against the charge of error made against them by Pierre Maupertuis that they errantly applied final causes to physics. This charge came in Maupertuis’ 1744 speech to the Paris Academy of Sciences, later published in different versions, entitled Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible. It is in this speech that Maupertuis lays claim to one of the most important discoveries in the history of physics and science, The Principle of Least Action. From the date of this speech up until the end …

John Duns Scotus’S Metaphysics Of Goodness: Adventures In 13th-Century Metaethics, Jeffrey W. Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the center of all medieval Christian accounts of both metaphysics and ethics stands the claim that being and goodness are necessarily connected, and that grasping the nature of this connection is fundamental to explaining the nature of goodness itself. In that vein, medievals offered two distinct ways of conceiving this necessary connection: the nature approach and the creation approach. The nature approach explains the goodness of an entity by an appeal to the entity’s nature as the type of thing it is, and the extent to which it fulfills or perfects the potentialities in its nature. In contrast, the …

#Networkedglobe: Making The Connection Between Social Media And Intercultural Technical Communication, Laura Anne Ewing

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Preparing students of technical communication in the twenty-first century means training them to rhetorically utilize a wide variety of online tools. Technical communicators are now required to employ social media applications on a daily basis to communicate with clients, consumers, colleagues, and other organizations. These online modes have also opened the door to global communication wider and continue to present opportunities and challenges to technical communicators worldwide. Using Japan as a model, this dissertation sought to demonstrate a rhetorical exigency for teaching intercultural social media communication strategies to future technical communicators in the United States. The goal of this dissertation …

Now, We Hear Through A Voice Darkly: New Media And Narratology In Cinematic Art, James Anthony Ricci

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersection of new media and narrative, as it is presented through a cinematic aesthetic. The narrative language of film is analyzed through the theoretical framework of Bakhtin’s concepts of Heteroglossia, Chronotope, and Dialogism. Bakhtin’s ideas of classifying language act as strong tools for demonstrating how cinematic narrative can inform and alter the perception of its spectators. Lev Manovich’s principles of New Media, specifically Variability, Modularity, and Automation are also utilized to demonstrate how cinema is a constantly evolving paradigm.

Chapter one focuses on the theoretical terminology, outlining the conceptual definitions and illustrating their relevance in precise …

A Case Study Of Four Female Electrician Technicians In A Male-Dominated Occupation, Maniphone S. Dickerson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the reasons the four female participants decided to pursue electrician technician training, their perspectives of the apprenticeship program, their perceptions of successful employment in a male-dominated occupation, and differences in treatment based on their gender. The exploratory questions that guided the study were: what led the females to make the decision for applying to the electrician technician apprenticeship; what was the nature of the education and training experiences of the participants in the electrician technician apprenticeship program, what were the participants’ perceptions of being successful in advancement within the workforce as a …

Genre, Justice & Quentin Tarantino, Eric Michael Blake

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The films of Quentin Tarantino have held a significant influence on modern cinema, and therefore on cinema studies. As such, studies on the social and philosophical implications of his work have appeared over the years, mostly in regards to content. However, with the exception of references to his use of cinematic violence, studies of his technique—i.e., his cinematic style—have been rare, and rarer still have been studies of the social implications that arise from the patterns of his style as well as those his subject matter.

The following thesis seeks to use the concept of Auteur Theory—specifically, that Tarantino …

He_Rtland: The Violence Of Neoliberalism, Hector Sotomayor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps, under the consciousness of today, “neoliberalism” has defined our world during the previous and current centuries more than any other socioeconomic system. But the evolution of this ideology, which initially aimed to enhance, or rather, reinvent capitalism and individual freedom, has, in essence, induced an unrecognized problem. I argue that neoliberalism is the catalyst for much of the hostility in this globalized society where tensions and poverty are casualties of individual and corporate prosperity. Because of this revelation, I argue that neoliberalism inadvertently instills violence that is both unseen and gendered. In order to formulate my argument, I introduce …

Factors Associated With Treatment Seeking In Automotive Manufacturing, Khin Thingyan Chit

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Introduction

The prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders is very common. The main objective of the study was to identify any association between the severity of musculoskeletal symptoms and treatment choice by workers in automobile manufacturing plants.

Methods

A cross-sectional study of 1017 production workers in six automobile manufacturing plants was performed. The study included the structured interviews to determine symptoms, preexisting personal risk factors, treatment choices (health care provider or no treatment sought), job strain, and job satisfaction. Nordic style questionnaire for symptoms, Karasek’s Demand Control Model and three job satisfaction questions were used to assign symptom severity, job strain, …

At The Intersection Of Human Agency And Technology: Genetically Modified Organisms, James Libengood

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the Neolithic period and the rise of agriculture along Mesopotamia’s “Fertile Crescent,” greater societies have formed thus requiring laws and governance to ensure their continued preservation. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is one such example of how agricultural technologies directly created new social and institutional structures in codifying slavery into law, or how mercantile transactions are to be conducted. Similarly, GMOs are the result of modern agricultural technologies that are altering laws and society as a result of their implementation. This transformation informs the central inquiries of my research question: Why are GMOs necessary, and what influences do they …

Like Blood From A Stone: Teasing Out Social Difference From Lithic Production Debris At Kolomoki (9er1), Martin Menz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Early phases of Kolomoki’s occupation have been characterized as relatively egalitarian, with little evidence for status differentiation. However, patterned variability in lithic raw material use and intensity of production in domestic areas suggests heterogeneity in the community at multiple scales. In light of Kolomoki’s emphasis on communal ceremony, internal divisions between groups of households highlight the tension between public and private expressions of status and social solidarity. New radiocarbon dates from the southern margins of the village have allowed us to assess the contemporaneity of this pattern, and by extension, the chronology of village aggregation.

Design, Fabrication And Analysis Of A Paver Machine Push Bar Mechanism, Mahendra Palnati

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Now-a-days, the major challenge that’s being faced by the concrete industry is the cleaning of concrete handling equipment. Concrete consists of aggregates, which harden with time, and the transportation of concrete mixture within the plant is a significant problem. This will not only increase the overall maintenance cost, but will lead to loss of raw materials, affect the rate of production, and reduce the lifetime of concrete handling equipment.

The present study focuses on the design and implementation of an adaptive cleaning mechanism in the concrete industry and its importance in achieving efficient cleaning, which is tested to verify its …

To "Plant Our Trees On American Soil, And Repose Beneath Their Shade": Africa, Colonization, And The Evolution Of A Black Identity Narrative In The United States, 1808-1861, Edward Jason Vickers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the role that ideas about Africa played in the development of a specifically American identity among free blacks in the United States, from the early nineteenth century to the Civil War. Previous studies of the writings of free blacks in the Revolutionary period, and of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which was devoted to removing them back to an African homeland, have suggested that black discussions of Africa virtually disappeared after 1816, when the colonization movement began. However, as this work illustrates, the letters, books, newspapers, and organizational records produced by free blacks in the antebellum era …

Todo Tiempo Pasado Fue Peor: La Representación Literaria Del Nazismo En Vásquez, Pardo, Borges Y Bayer, Cristhian Camilo Alfonso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After the end of War World II, Latin-American literature has used the theme of Nazism to create and recreate a wide variety of stories. In some cases, these stories are conceived as a critique to specific aspects of real life, which reminds the reader of the often blurred duality between reality and fiction. This critique is based on the relationship of the characters in the stories, as well as by the socio-political and philosophical views they represent, as can be seen in Juan G. Vásquez’s Los informantes or Jorge E. Pardo’s El pianista que llegó de Hamburgo, both novels …

Let’S Move! Biocitizens And The Fat Kids On The Block, Mary Catherine Dickman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzed First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign for how it constructs obesity and health. Let’s Move! is a national internet-based campaign to end childhood obesity. The literature on Let’s Move! is limited and focuses on the privatization and corporatization of children’s physical education in public schools. Taking an intersectional approach to critical fat studies, I use critical discourse analysis to investigate how the language used in the Let’s Move! campaign (re)enforces and (re)signifies cultural notions of fat as a social problem – specifically that fat bodies are diseased, unproductive, and a financial burden. I maintain that the …

Identifying Humanized Ecosystems: Anthropogenic Impacts, Intentionality, And Resource Acquisition At Crystal River (8ci1) And Roberts Island (8ci41), Charles Trevor Duke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The impact of human activity on ecosystems is an issue at the forefront of global concern. Marine ecosystems are a particular concern, given their importance for human sustenance. Through the removal of species that are highly susceptible to the effects of overfishing, global fisheries have been driven to near collapse in recent decades. The long-term effects of such practices has resulted in declines in mean trophic level of aggregate fish catches over time, as well as decreasing diversity of species available for regular harvest (Jackson et al. 2001; Pauly et al. 1998). These supposedly “modern” problems have been recently identified …

Finding A Home: Latino Residential Influx Into Progress Village, 1990-2010, Christopher Julius Pineda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Progress Village in Tampa Florida was developed in the late 1950s in response to the dislocation of black families during the construction of Interstate-4. Furthermore this community became an opportunity for many black and more specifically, African American families, to live in a community devoid of racist attitudes and tensions rampant in inner city Tampa at the time. For over thirty years this community’s residential population was overwhelmingly (90 percent) black or African American. In the 1990s though this community would begin to experience the first wave of Latino residents and by 2000 this group would comprise over 2 percent …

Pottery Exchange And Interaction At The Crystal River Site (8ci1), Florida, Kassie Christine Kemp

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Crystal River site (8CI1) is a Woodland-period mound (ca. 1000 BC to AD 1050) complex located on the west-central Gulf coast of Florida. Links to the Hopewell Interaction Sphere suggest that the people of Crystal River had connections with a broad range of communities, yet little is known concerning the role the site played in local, regional, or long-distance exchange networks. Pottery traditions vary amongst different communities of practice, therefore the level of interaction at Crystal River can be measured by looking at variation in the ceramic assemblage. I combine type/attribute, vessel form and function, gross paste, and chemical …

Domestic Spaces In Transition: Modern Representations Of Dwelling In The Texts Of Elizabeth Bowen, Shannon Tivnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In much of the writing of twentieth century Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen, houses, and in particular family homes, often reflect the psychological and social status of their inhabitants. They can be understood as the structural embodiments of the vast cultural and economic network taking shape as the forces of urbanization and industrialization changed the landscape. Yet, even as these domestic spaces represent the predominant social relations characterizing the first half of the twentieth century, the family homes also can play a key role in character development and gender identity, defining the lives of those who inhabit them, by perpetuating these …

On The Convergence Of Cinema And Theme Parks: Developing A Predictable Model For Creative Design, Ryan Luke Terry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research study is to develop a model of information that will enable media conglomerates and other companies, with theme park investments, to make informed and effective decisions based on scholarly and empirical evidences. In order to do this, the following research study uses historic, scholarly, journalistic, and focus group evidences to consolidate the information necessary to create a model to support concepts and designs. The paper begins with establishing why it is important for media conglomerates, with theme park investments, to integrate cinema into the park’s design. Then it looks back through the history of cinema …