Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Muckraking And C.O.B.Y (Cry Of Black Youth): Uncovering A History Of Organizing In Belle Glade, Raymond A. Hamilton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a local activist group in the rural town of Belle Glade, Florida during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This research falls in line with many New Black Power studies. These New Black Power studies challenge existing notions of the Black Power and Civil Rights eras and their relationship to one another. It challenges the time frames, geography and ideology of both of the eras. This case study of a the group in Belle Glade is not the first to examine the similarities of the Black Power and Civil Rights eras, where many groups who affiliated with …

The Role Of The Interruption In Young Adult Epistolary Novels, Betty J. Herzhauser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within the genre of young adult literature, a growing trend is the use of epistolary messages through electronic methods between characters. These messages are set apart from the formal text of the narrative of the novel creating a break in the text features and layout of the page. Epistolary texts require a more sophisticated reading method and level of interpretation because the epistolary style blends multiple voices and points of view into the plot, creating complicated narration. The reader must navigate the narrator’s path in order to extract meaning from the text. In this hermeneutic study, I examined the text …

Was It Something They Said? Stand-Up Comedy And Progressive Social Change, David M. Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From our earliest origins in every civilization across the globe, comic performances have fulfilled an important social function. Yet stand-up comedy has not attracted the serious academic inquiry one might expect. This dissertation argues that in the absence of public intellectuals stand-up comics are important to how we talk about and negotiate complicated issues like gender and race. These comic texts are sites of cultural critique, public discourse, tools for articulation, a means of persuasion, and serve to galvanize communities.

This dissertation argues that stand-up comedy performances are a vital part of modern American intellectual and social life and are …

Experimental Reporting And Networks Of Political Information: Lorenzo Magalotti's Framing Of Courts And Nature, Bradley L'Herrou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores changes in experimental reporting during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In particular, I examine and compare some of the works of Count Lorenzo Magalotti, namely the Saggi di Naturali Esperienza or Essays on Natural Experiments and the Relazione d'Inghilterra. In 1667, as secretary of the Accademia del Cimento – the Tuscan experimental academy founded in 1657 – Magalotti (1637-1712) authored the Saggi, a collection of experimental reports. These reports included extensive written descriptions of experiments along with dozens of engravings depicting the instruments custom-made for the experiments. Magalotti also served as ambassador and agent of …

The Meaning Of Stories Without Meaning: A Post-Holocaust Experiment, Tori Chambers Lockler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dissonance exists in efforts to communicate about suffering and despair. Showcasing common societal flawed reactions to despair begs for discourse to create a more communicatively healthy response. Attempting to communicate the suffering of others and feeling like I was failing at that goal led to my own suffering. Using writing as a method of personal healing created an intersection of personal narratives of suffering and victim’s narratives (which can arguable only allow for the co-opting of the story and narcissism). Grappling with the limits of writing to heal provided a lens to see the victim’s narratives in such a way …

Estudio Y Edición De La Más Constante Mujer De Juan Pérez De Montalbán, Philip Allen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

La más constante mujer is a Spanish Golden Age play written by Juan Pérez de Montalbán in 1631 and published for the first time in 1632. Although he was once one of the most famous playwrights in Madrid, known for running in the same literary and social circles as Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, the bulk of the dramatist's work has been greatly ignored by scholars, or is referred to as being of second rate, and the author himself has nearly tragically been forgotten throughout the centuries following his short life. Although research has been conducted to …

Tell Sir Thomas More We've Got Another Failed Attempt: Utopia And The Burning Man Project, Gracen Lila Kovacik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Burning Man, a weeklong experience in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, has become an oasis for those looking to escape the corporatized grasp of modern culture. Burning Man serves as a reprieve from judgment and allows participants to embrace and perform their inner identities. The intensions of Burning Man have been widely debated, from scholars concentrating on the rejection of consumerism to analyzing sacred space and religious connectivity for festivalgoers. What deserves further analysis, however, is the utopian nature of the event. I will explore previous utopian attempts--literary, political, etc.--and define what characteristics from those societies were present during the inception …

Weakness Of Will: An Inquiry On Value, Michael Funke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One dominant scientific view holds that willpower is a type of muscle which can be weakened through use in the short term and strengthened through use over time. However, evidence from neuroscience, social psychology and behavioral economics suggest that willpower is regional, subverted through desire and strengthened by strategy--these are features a muscular account would not predict. It is better to think about willpower as a skill with a physiological component. Willpower strategies extend the brute effort of self-control through the use of reason and have the practical effect of increasing self-regulation. Willpower is "worth wanting" because there is a …

Heidegger And The Problem Of Modern Moral Philosophy, Megan Emily Altman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The guiding question of this project is, "Why does it count as a critique of Heidegger that he does not defend a particular moral position?" A standard criticism levied against Heidegger is that, since he has nothing positive to say about post-Enlightenment moral theory, he has nothing to contribute to moral philosophy, and this marks his greatest shortcoming as a philosopher. Why is there a demand for Heidegger, or any other philosopher, to theorize about morality, when we do not have this expectation for, say, aesthetics, theology, or various other regional domains of human life? Why should we expect Heidegger …

Responsibility And Responsiveness In The Novels Of Ann Radcliffe And Mary Shelley, Katherine Marie Mcgee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation looks at the ways in which humans interact with and respond to other humans and nonhumans in Ann Radcliffe's and Mary Shelley's novels. I argue that in light of the social and political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, Radcliffe and Shelley call not so much for Revolution or drastic reform but for a change in the ways in which individuals respond to the needs of others, both human and nonhuman, and take responsibility for each other. The ways in which humans interact with the nonhuman inform the positive and negative practices that they should use to interact with …

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, And Colonialism In Three Adaptations Of Three Plays By William Shakespeare, Angela Eward-Mangione

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What role did identification play in the motives, processes, and products of select post-colonial authors who "wrote back" to William Shakespeare and colonialism? How did post-colonial counter-discursive metatheatre function to make select post-colonial adaptations creative and critical texts? In answer to these questions, this dissertation proposes that counter-discursive metatheatre resituates post-colonial plays as criticism of Shakespeare's plays. As particular post-colonial authors identify with marginalized Shakespearean characters and aim to amplify their conflicts from the perspective of a dominated culture, they interpret themes of race, gender, and colonialism in Othello (1604), Antony and Cleopatra (1608), and The Tempest (1611) as explicit …

The Birth Of A Nation: The Case For A Tri-Level Analysis Of Forms Of Racial Vindication, Charles Fred Hearns

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Early American film scholars often critique the relative ineffectiveness of a single literary work, protest movement or silent film to achieve racial vindication following the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Thomas Cripps, for example, examines a relatively ineffective isolated attempt to counter the notions of White supremacy promoted in the film. This study makes the case for applying a non-traditional tri-level analysis when measuring the effectiveness of such attempts. The paper focuses on efforts to redeem the image and the potential of African Americans after 1915 in the Black public sphere in three concurrent vehicles: the …

Enlightenment On The Margins: The Catholic Enlightenment As Reflected In Ludovico Antonio Muratori's Il Cristianesimo Felice Nelle Missioni De' Padri Della Compagnia Di Gesù Nel Paraguai, Joshua Edward Britt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My research analyzes the way in which Ludovico Antonio Muratori portrayed marginal peoples of the New World in his Il Cristianesimo Felice nelle Missioni De' Padri della Compagnia di Gesù nel Paraguai, published in 1743. I argue that Muratori used his portrayal of the native people of Paraguay as a means to express his ideas of how to reform the Catholic Church, at a time when Catholicism was just experiencing the first waves of enlightened influence from the north. I engage with scholarship on the Enlightenment that has addressed specifically the cultural impact of what has been called the Catholic …

A Forgotten Community: Archaeological Documentation Of Old St. Joseph, Gulf County, Florida, Christopher N. Hunt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The town of St. Joseph, established in 1835, served as an important deep-water port for receiving and shipping dry goods up the Apalachicola River north along the vast network of navigable inland waterways in southeastern U.S. during the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this town was hit with a yellow fever epidemic and a series of hurricanes that, combined with the infancy of its cotton trade activities, eventually devastated its economy and population. The town disappeared by 1842, only much later to be replaced by modern Port St. Joe (est. 1909), located north of the original settlement. However, St. Joseph's influence …

Estudio Y Transcripción Del Libro Declarante Atribuido A Abner De Burgos (Ms Escorial P-Ii-21), Vivian M. Mills

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Este trabajo supone un estudio y análisis, así como una transcripción semipaleográfica, del manuscrito inédito P.iii.21 de la Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, que contiene una copia del Libro declarante o el Libro de las tres creencias, una obra generalmente atribuida al converso castellano Abner de Burgos y que se cree se redactó a mediados del siglo XIV. Consiste de dos partes principales: Una introducción crítica donde se analizan la estructura y el propósito del Libro, así como varios temas que todavía generan controversia y a los que no se ha llegado a dar una …

Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis Of Pottery At The Bayshore Homes Site In Pinellas County, Florida, Rachel Nostrom

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Bayshore Homes site was occupied intermittently over a period of approximately twelve hundred years, with the two main occupation periods being CE 150-550 and CE 900-1350. During those lengthy occupations a substantial amount of plain and decorated pottery was discarded at the site. A portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer was utilized to analyze the elemental composition of 133 sherds, both decorated and plain. The resulting elemental composition data were then analyzed using multivariate statistics in an attempt to discern discrete clay sources that may have been exploited by inhabitants of the Bayshore Homes site. Principal component analysis (PCA) and …

Risk Of Compliance: Tracing Safety And Efficacy In Mef-Lariam's Licensure, Julie Marie Gerdes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Walter Reed Institute of Army Research developed the antimalarial drug mefloquine then collaborated with Hoffman-La Roche to produce the drug under its brand name "Lariam," after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved licensure in 1989. For over twenty years, the Army used this pill as its "drug of choice" for soldiers deployed to endemic regions until 2009, and in 2013 the Food and Drug Administration warned that the drug's neurotoxic effects could be lasting, if not permanent. The sociopolitical exigence of developing a new biochemical antimalarial drug rushed the development and licensure processes, and the modern craving for certainty …

Four Women: An Analysis Of The Artistry Of Black Women In The Black Arts Movement, 1960s-1980s, Abney Louis Henderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project honors and recognizes the art and activism of four Black woman--Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Catlett, and Ntozake Shange that contributed to the revolutionary movements of the 1960s through the early 1980s. This thesis examines the works and political challenges of Black women by asking what elements in their artistry/activism addressed issues specifically related to Black women's unique position in America during the Black Revolution and feminist movements? Both primary and secondary sources such as literature from advocates of the Black Arts Movements and the lyrics, poetry, and visual art of the four Black women artists were used …

Overcoming The 5th-Century Bce Epistemological Tragedy: A Productive Reading Of Protagoras Of Abdera, Ryan Alan Blank

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the most prominent account of Protagoras in contemporary rhetorical scholarship, Edward Schiappa's Protagoras and Logos, loses critical historiographical objectivity in Platonic overdetermination of surviving historical artifacts. In the first chapter, I examine scholarship from the past thirty years to set a baseline for historiographical thought and argue that John Muckelbauer's conception of productive reading offers the best solution to the intellectual and discursive impasse in which contemporary Protagorean rhetorical theory currently resides. The second chapter explains the pitfalls of Platonic overdetermination and the ways in which Plato himself was inextricably situated within an ideological blinder, from …

Material And Textual Spaces In The Poetry Of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, And Robinson, Jessica Lauren Cook

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women Poets and Place in Eighteenth-Century Poetry considers how four women poets of the long eighteenth century--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Leapor, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Mary Robinson--construct various places in their poetry, whether the London social milieu or provincial England. I argue that the act of place making, or investing a location with meaning, through poetry is also a way of writing a place for themselves in the literary public sphere and in literary history. Despite the fact that more women wrote poetry than in any other genre in the period, women poets remain a relatively understudied area in …

Incredi-Bull-Ly Inclusive?: Assessing The Climate On A College Campus, Aubrey Lynne Hall

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students have unique experiences on campus such as discrimination, exclusivity, and homo/transphobia. Stated simply, this research project intends to address these issues by 1) identify students' perceptions of gender identity and sexual orientation diversity on campus, 2) identify the experiences of LGBT students during their time at the institution, and 3) acknowledge suggestions from the student body for ways the University being studied is, or may continue to be, inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Through the application of the campus climate framework and modification of existing climate surveys, a student-centered campus climate …

Her-Storicizing Baldness: Situating Women's Experiences With Baldness From Skin And Hair Disorders, Kasie Holmes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A general goal to my study was to promote an inclusive approach to baldness by sharing and centering women's experiences with baldness from skin and hair conditions, such as autoimmune alopecia areata conditions and monilethrix. Specifically, a main goal of my study was to her-storicize the lived experiences of women who are bald from skin and hair conditions by examining medical and cultural discourses surrounding these conditions, femininity, and female baldness. Additionally, my study considers strategies of accommodation and resistance that bald women perform in a given context, space, or time. For instance, I consider the ways participants manage their …

Development Of A New Guidewire Torque Device, Erika Rigaud

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Guidewires have been used in many operating rooms by vascular surgeons to assist them in positioning and maneuvering through a tortuous stenosis or lesion to a desired location, and to be used as a guide for the implantation of a catheter. Surgeons are tasked with having to insert a guidewire inside a small cavity, which requires a high level of skill and patience. The insertion of the guide wire is controlled by a torque device, which allows a surgeon to advance, rotate and grip the wet hydrophilic coating of the guidewire. Despite its many advantages, the torque device does, in …

The Problems And Potentials In Haunted Maternal Horror Narratives, Sarah Laura Novak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine the representation of motherhood in horror cinema in order to discuss the problems and potentials of repeated domestic traditions. While maternal horror narratives impose gender roles based on heterosexual hegemonic biases, some of these films also examine the feminine experience and criticize the patriarchal institutional structures that affect domesticity and femininity. If we discuss these promising features, we can build on the implied trajectories, and engender more representation of marginalized experience in order to seek out new methods of cultural stabilization and unity. This proposal relies on Jacques Derrida's theory of hauntology, which addresses past and …

Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, And Matter In English Literature, Elizabeth Stuart Angello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation follows a collection of agentive objects around and through the networks of humans and nonhumans in four disparate works of English literature: the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, William Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders, and Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. Applying the emergent discourses of object-oriented analyses, I posit the need for a critique that considers literary objects not as textual versions of real-world objects but as constructs of human imagination. What happens when we treat nonhuman or inanimate objects in literature as full …

In The (Radical) Pursuit Of Self-Care: Feminist Participatory Action Research With Victim Advocates, Robyn L. Homer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite victim advocates' missions of helping survivors of abuse, advocacy work takes a toll on workers. Advocates perform a multitude of tasks in their jobs including care work, emotional labor, and empowerment counseling which may subject them to consequences such as burnout, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction. As such, this thesis details the work I conducted with the Butterfly Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault agency shelter advocates. The purpose of my thesis was to (1) document and review advocates' self-identified work-related needs and to (2) co-construct an educational intervention with the advocates using feminist participatory action research that would help …

"Is That What You Dream About? Being A Monster?": Bella Swan And The Construction Of The Monstrous-Feminine In The Twilight Saga, Amanda Jayne Firestone

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This dissertation argues that Bella Swan is a representation of Barbara Creed's monstrous-feminine which serves to reinforce ideologies that insist women are abject, inherently dangerous to men, and threatening to a patriarchal status quo. Through close-textual analysis of The Twilight Saga, I demonstrate how the monstrous-feminine frames the hysterical teenage body, hypersexuality, and eternal motherhood as simultaneously unacceptable and unavoidable. These negative women's stereotypes continue to persist in dominant popular culture, and this doublebind is overcome only by the impossible perfection of vampirism. The monstrous-feminine invites constructions of teenage bodies as unstable and unreliable, women's sexuality as dangerous and …

In Search Of The Artist: The Influences Of Commercial Interest On An Art School - A Narrative Analysis, Michael Leonard Sette

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current study will investigate how identities and roles of the artist converge with competing identities and roles fostered at the institutional level within an art college as revealed through the marketing literature that they produce to attract students and business partnerships. The sociological focus for this proposal is the tension between art as a creative expressive endeavor and art as a commodity that has entered into social transactions unintended by the original expression of the artist. The researcher documents and describes (via narrative analysis) how an art school negotiates competing relationships between the pressures to teach and promote art …

The Rhetoric Of Corporate Identity: Corporate Social Responsibility, Creating Shared Value, And Globalization, Carolyn Day

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today's global political and media climate, the stakes are high for corporations, local or otherwise, to create and maintain an `ethical' perception of not only their daily business activities and how they can benefit society or protect the environment, but also their enduring characteristics or `corporate identity' (Conrad, 2011) for numerous, sometimes conflicting stakeholder audiences (Cheney, 1983). This dissertation examines how such forms of `socially responsible' corporate identities are created and maintained through the use of persuasive language. In particular it examines the role and implications of rhetoric within the contexts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as well as …

Illness Perceptions Of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Elizabeth Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a chronic illness that affects approximately five million premenopausal women in the United States and is associated with significant cosmetic, reproductive, metabolic, and psychological consequences. Despite its prevalence, few studies have explored the lived experiences and illness perceptions of women living with PCOS. Identifying illness perceptions of women living with (WLW) PCOS is important, because mounting research suggests that a person's perceptions of their chronic illness and its management determine that person's coping behaviors (e.g., adherence, self-management) and, consequently, illness outcomes.

In this dissertation, the Common Sense Model (CSM) is used as a framework to …