Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ghosts, Orphans, And Outlaws: History, Family, And The Law In Toni Morrison's Fiction, Jessica Mckee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores Toni Morrison's most prevalent motifs: the ghost, the orphan, and the outlaw. Each figure advances a critique of dominant narratives, specifically those that comprise history, family, and the law. In Chapter One, I argue that Morrison's ghost stories contrast two methods of memory, one that is authoritative and another that is imaginative, in order to counter the official renderings of history. Her ghosts signal forgotten aspects of American history and provide access to another storyline--one that lies in the shadows of the novel's principal narrative. This chapter compares the ghosts of Love and Home in order to …

Sobering Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, And The Intoxicated Social Body In Dutch Painting During The True Freedom, 1650-1672, David Beeler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the second half of the seventeenth century, alcohol and tobacco were consumed at all levels of the social strata in the Dutch Republic. These products and their consumption were important to long standing traditions and were vital to the Dutch economy. Paradoxically, however, moralists and ministers attempted to curb intoxication by associating it with the loss of one's masculinity or femininity. Intoxicated men and women were stigmatized as morally inept, unruly, and a threat to the family, community, and even the nation. Dutch genre paintings depicting alcohol and tobacco consumption are often described as moral warnings or didactic messages, …

"We're Taking Slut Back": Analyzing Racialized Gender Politics In Chicago's 2012 Slutwalk March, Aphrodite Kocieda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined bodied activism in Chicago's Slutwalk 2012 march, a contemporary movement initiated in Toronto, Canada that publicly challenged the mainstream sentiment that women are responsible for their own rape and victimization. Adopting an intersectional approach, I used textual analysis to discuss photographs posted on the official Chicago Slutwalk website to explore the ways this form of public bodied protest discursively engages women's empowerment from movement feminism as well as third wave and postfeminisms. I additionally analyzed the overall website and its promotional materials for the Slutwalk marches as well as how Chicago's photographic representations privilege the white female …

Time Wounds All Heels: Human Nature And The Rationality Of Just Behavior, Timothy Glenn Slattery

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We share our world with many people who ignore the principles of justice and who regularly take advantage of others by breaching trust or breaking agreements. This dissertation is about the irrationality of the actions of these covenant-breakers. A covenant-breaker typically believes that unjust behavior is to his advantage and that only a fool would act in any other way. Would it not be disturbing if this were true?

My central claim will be that adherence to the precepts of justice is a rational strategy for a self-interested actor. I intend to demonstrate that con men and covenant-breakers do not …

Cuba's Chords Of Change: Music, Race, Class & Motherhood At The Turn Of The 21st Century, Saundra Marie Amrhein

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an ethnography and biographical study that examines the impact of the immense socioeconomic changes underway in Cuba at the turn of the 21st century and the flexible identity categories through which individuals navigate a social crisis.

The biography and ethnography in this thesis are centered on the life of Violeta Aldama, an aging revolutionary and Afro-Cuban mother who struggles to make ends meet while fighting to steer her son, Brian, through a classical music education and into a music career. Amid growing racial inequalities when many Afro-Cubans are locked out of the most lucrative jobs in the …

The Hopewellian Influence At Crystal River, Florida: Testing The Marine Shell Artifact Production Hypothesis, Beth Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Crystal River site (8CI1) in west-central Florida is famous as the southernmost major participant in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, and certainly has the most Hopewellian goods of any Woodland site in Florida. Sharon Goad (1978), among others, proposed that Crystal River secured this position by controlling the production and exchange of marine shell ornaments and cups. I test this hypothesis through the analysis of marine shell recovered from previous excavations, recent surface finds, and shell debris from 58 core samples extracted from the Crystal River mounds, plaza, middens, and surrounding marshland. The analysis reveals an abundance of shell ornaments …

Maximizing Citizenship With Minimal Representation: An Analysis Of Afro-Argentine Civil Society Organizing Strategies, Prisca Suarez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the organizing strategies and successes of Afro-Argentine civil society organizations (CSO) in Buenos Aires. I argue that despite low representation, Afro-Argentines have strategically designed their initiatives in ways that draw on national discourses of identity rights and nationalism; and, as well, have used cultural inclusion to influence state actors, creating agency and increasing visibility. Afro-Argentines are a highly understudied population due to the common belief that they do not exist in Argentina as a group. This thesis not only dispels that myth with a history of the long hidden importance of Afro-Argentines contributions to the formation of …

"It's This Simple, You Really Have To Want To Be Together": A Qualitative Study Of African American Military Couples, Emelda Curry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies have reported that African American couples in the military are less likely to divorce than their civilian counterparts. This dissertation was designed to document the experiences of African American military couples in order to understand the challenges they face while serving in the armed forces and the strategies they have used to maintain their marriages. A grounded theory approach was utilized to produce 12 main themes that categorize experiences of both the individual and the couple within the context of their respective military branch. Photo-elicitation was incorporated into semi-structured interviews with 10 couples to identify what they consider …

Embodying Social Practice: Dynamically Co-Constituting Social Agency, Brian W. Dunst

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, …

The Terror Of Possibility: A Re-Evaluation And Reconception Of The Sublime Aesthetic, Kurt Fawver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While the sublime aesthetic has a long and complex critical history, it is nonetheless a schizophrenic concept. Indeed, in the over two thousand years since the sublime became a subject of learned inquiry, it has not been resolved into any one concrete idea, but has become, rather, an expansive tapestry of disparate if interconnected theoretical threads from which aestheticians may pick and choose to define what they mean by the term "sublime." Kant postulates one sort of sublime, Burke another, and Lyotard, Zizek, and the Romantics still others. In this way, the contemporary sublime aesthetic is, in essence, an ever-extending …

The Role Of Consumer Gender Identity And Brand Concept Consistency In Evaluating Cross-Gender Brand Extensions, Laura Rose Frieden

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cross-gender brand extensions are a developing and valuable strategy that has quickly grown to become a vital component of strategic communications management. The goal of this study is to gain a greater insight on what makes for a successful cross-gender brand extension. In order to expand upon the Basic Model of Brand Extension Evaluation (Doust & Esfahlan, 2012), this study examines how marketing factors, more specifically product positioning, combined with consumer gender roles and brand concept, affect how consumers evaluate cross-gender brand extensions. In the past gender and brand concept have been studied within cross-gender brand extension research. Yet, the …

Significance Is Bliss: A Global Feminist Analysis Of The Liberian Truth And Reconciliation Commission And Its Privileging Of Americo-Liberian Over Indigenous Liberian Women's Voices, Morgan Lea Eubank

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my research is to analyze the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (LTRC) lack of attention towards accessing rural Liberian women's voices as opposed to privileged Liberian women residing in urban and Diaspora spaces. By analyzing the LTRC and its Final Report from a critical global feminist perspective, I was able to not only illuminate, but bring a spotlight over issues including access, privilege, and multicultural insensitivity related to Liberia's indigenous tribal cultures. Liberia, being a country founded by American colonials, is socially constructed by Western ideological norms. As Western ideology is mainly normalized and enforced by the …

European Union Institutions, Democratic Discourse, And The Color Revolutions, Lizette G. Howard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the Treaty of the European Union in 1993, the EU has embraced institutional reforms with the stated purpose of achieving greater unity in foreign affairs. Despite the EU's leading role in the political and economic reforms of former Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU has been less consistent and cohesive in former Soviet space further east--in regions fraught with undemocratic qualities and places where the EU enjoys fewer credible incentives and less leverage. While scholars point to divergent national interests as obstacles for unity abroad, few have unraveled how the institutions of the EU itself pose …

Ten Thousand Years Of Prehistory On Ocheesee Pond, Northwest Florida. Archaeological Investigations On The Keene Family Land, Jackson County, Caitlin Kelley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to record the private archaeological collection of the Keene family, which was previously unknown to the professional community. While at the two sites, Keene Redfield site (8Ja1847) and Keene Dog Pond site (8Ja1848), in Jackson County, northwest Florida, USF archaeologists also conducted field investigations to look for prehistoric cultural materials in undisturbed contexts.

This research was conducted at the request of the Keene family. The field crew systematically documented, cataloged and photographed each artifact in the Keene collection while at the sites. Surface survey and testing were also carried out in order to determine …

The Strange Life And Stranger Afterlife Of King Dick Including His Adventures In Haiti And Hollywood With Observations On The Construction Of Race, Class, Nationality, Gender, Slang Etymology And Religion, Alan Thomas Lipke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Richard "King Dick" or "Big Dick" Crafus, Cephas, or Seaver(s) first attracted attention by his size, strength and the authority he exercised as leader of U.S. African American Prisoners of War in Britain during the War of 1812. After the War he was celebrated as a boxing pioneer, ceremonial King of Boston's black community and almost certainly auxiliary law officer. Very little has been known about his life, and much of that obscured by his black working-class status; his true standing within his own community remains mysterious. Yet paradoxically he's been made much of, in academic writing and fiction alike …

Monsters Under The Bed: An Analysis Of Torture Scenes In Three Pixar Films, Heidi Tilney Kramer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With background information on militarism, nationalism, and torture, this study analyzes Monsters, Inc., Toy Story 3, and The Incredibles, three Pixar films released from 2001 through 2010, for the ways in which the torture scenes are framed. These frames, state control, prisons, and 60s spy thrillers, invite laughter through intertextuality, while deflecting attention from torture of central characters in the films. The implications of this analysis are: these films present torture as deserved and normative; the tortured characters stand outside the frames of recognition for humanness; and they redefine children as threats and dangers. This study concludes that these ideologies …

Eschatology In A Secular Age: An Examination Of The Use Of Eschatology In The Philosophies Of Heidegger, Berdyaev And Blumenberg, John R. Lup, Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The topic of eschatology is generally confined to the field of theology. However, the subject has influenced many other fields, such as politics and history. This dissertation examines the question why eschatology remained a topic of discussion within twentieth century philosophy. Concepts associated with eschatology, such as the end of time and the hope of a utopian age to come, remained largely background assumptions among intellectuals in the modern age. Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Berdyaev, and Hans Blumenberg, however, explicitly addressed the subject in their philosophies. The impetus of this study is Heidegger's statement, "Being itself is inherently eschatological," which indicates …

Exploring Potential Applications Of Portable X-Ray Fluorescence On Earthen Materials From Southeast Mesoamerica, David Rafael Mccormick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of geochemical analysis for characterization studies of archaeological material has been increasing for decades. In recent years, advancements in X-ray fluorescence (XRF) instrumentation have led to hand-held portable XRF (pXRF) instruments capable of on-site, rapid, non-destructive analysis. The addition of pXRF to the archaeologist's toolkit has the potential to revolutionize geochemical characterization studies as research design can be informed by field analysis, once off-limits museum collections may now be analyzable, and data can be gathered on in-situ objects without disturbing their context. This new instrumentation has shown promise in characterization studies on a variety of archaeological materials, including …

Pottery Production During The Late Horizon In The Huancabamba Valley, Cajamarca - Peru, Jose Luis Pena

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Elemental analysis of pottery sherds provided insights on the ceramic production in the Huancabamba Valley (northern highland-Peru) and the way in which the Incas administrate the provinces. The pottery sherds from six archaeological sites selected for elemental analysis indicated the use of similar clay sources in the manufacture of pottery. The production of ceramic vessels took place at the local level without the strict control of the Inca state. The Incas built administrative structures in the Huancabamba Valley in order to maintain control of their road system, which connected the north area of Peru to Ecuador. The ceramic assemblage recovered …

Mapping Dissertation Genre Ecology, Kate Lisbeth Pantelides

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Though the pervasive rumor that the “traditional” dissertation persists because of the “I suffered, so they too should suffer” mentality — the professor revenge theory — students are often the ones eager to pin down writing genres so that they can master them. However, hopes to stabilize and thus capture the secret or equation of the dissertation genre are futile, since genres, like language, are alive: rhetorical, evolving, and flexible. Thus, to demonstrate the contemporary context of the dissertation genre, the conflicting perspectives of university stakeholders, the forces working on the genre to enact change, and the process by which …

Archaeology Of The Early Eighteenth-Century Spanish Fort San José, Northwest Florida, Julie Rogers Saccente

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Spanish Fort San José, located on the St. Joseph Peninsula, was occupied from 1719 until 1723. This site is significant as it preserves key details on Spanish settlement, trade, and ethnic diversity on the northern Gulf Coast and relationships with aboriginal and other European peoples of the region. The first archaeological testing of this site was conducted in the 1960s, but limited information exists on this work, and the fort's structural remains are now gone. My research examines a recently discovered artifact collection from this site and combines the new data with information from extant collections from Florida State …

Collecting Stardust: Matter, Memory, And Trauma In Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia For The Light, Nora Szegvari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work situates Patricio Guzmàn's Nostalgia for the Light in the broader field of essay documentary film and unveils it as a locus of discursive resistance and the generative crux of diverse conventionally isolated academic dialogues. In doing so, it addresses the challenging and controversial questions of historical meaning-making, remembrance and oblivion, melancholia and mourning. My thesis also endeavors to detect the dynamic and anxiety-inducing threshold between singularity and collectivity, and the human and the cosmic. I lay the historically unprecedented common ground for trauma theory and the essayistic comportment and argue that bearing the clash of time planes, paradoxicality, …

Archaeological Site Distribution In The Apalachicola/Lower Chattahoochee River Valley Of Northwest Florida, Southwest Georgia, And Southeast Alabama, Adam M. Schieffer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines and compares the distributions of archaeological sites and materials in order to investigate native settlement patterns and resources use throughout 12,000 years of prehistory and protohistoric time within the Apalachicola/Lower Chattahoochee River valley of northwest Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used to map the distributions of sites from different time periods and to explore their relation to various environmental characteristics that are now available in digital format. I employ tools now available in GIS to examine several longstanding research questions and expand upon archaeological interpretations within this region, where the University …

"When You Tell Them, Your Secret Is Out There": Experiences Of Sexuality And Intimacy Among Hiv Positive Black Women, Mackenzie Rae Tewell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

HIV/AIDS infections disproportionately impact African Americans within the United States. In 2010, black Americans made up 12 percent of the United States population, yet accounted for 44 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections (Kaiser Family Foundation 2013). The majority of black women (85 percent) are infected with the virus through heterosexual contact, meaning it is critical examine their sexual lives in order to gain insight into this infection within this population (CDC 2011b). Through semi-structured interviews at a Tampa, Florida AIDS service organization, this study presents the experiences of sexuality and intimacy among HIV positive black women. Results demonstrate that HIV …

Refiguring Indexicality: Remediation, Film, & Memory In Contemporary Japanese Visual Media, Janine Marie Villot

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through an analog between film and memory, I argue contemporary Japanese visual media constantly remediates this relationship in order to develop a more inclusive, plastic indexicality that allows media without direct material contiguity access to an indexicality not typically attributed to it. Amidst the early twenty-first century shift from old, mechanical media to new, electronic media, each Japanese text engages the West through intercultural discourses and intracultural responses, just as Japan has continually encountered the West since its forced opening by Commodore Perry in 1853. The plasticized indexicality figured by contemporary Japanese visual media implies the plastic nature of abstracted …

The Sopranos Experience, Eli Benjamin Weidinger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My thesis explores what I call the "Sopranos Experience," which draws upon both the historical conventions of the gangster genre as well as the aesthetics and economics of pay-cable television to complicate The Sopranos' (HBO, 1999-2007) psychological relationship with the 21st-century, neoliberal American audience. The Sopranos Experience explicates how wavering identifications and dis-identifications that develop for the spectator through the series' form and content draw the responsibility of an audience away from moral ultimatums that attempt to finalize their experience with the genre, and towards a more personal ethical entanglement with the characters and their socioeconomic anxieties and desires. The …

"Of That Transfigured World" : Realism And Fantasy In Victorian Literature, Benjamin Jude Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"Of That Transfigured World" identifies a generally unremarked upon mode of nineteenth-century literature that intermingles realism and fantasy in order to address epistemological problems. I contend that works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde maintain a realist core overlaid by fantastic elements that come from the language used to characterize the core narrative or from metatexts or paratexts (such as stories that characters tell). The fantastic in this way becomes a mode of interpretation in texts concerned with the problems of representation and the ability of literature to produce knowledge. Paradoxically, each of these …

Modeling And Design Of Photocatalytic Reactors For Air Purification, Yangyang Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Photocatalysis is a promising technique for the remediation of indoor air pollution. Photocatalysis utilizes semiconductor photocatalysts (such as TiO₂ or ZnO) and appropriate light to produce strong oxidizing agents (OH*) that are able to break down organic compounds and inactivate bacteria and viruses. The overall goal of the research is to develop an efficient photocatalytic reactor based on mass transfer for indoor air purification. This study has focused on the enhancement of the effectiveness of the photocatalytic process by the introduction of artificial roughness on the reactor catalyst surface. The major effect of artificial roughness elements on the catalytic …

Environmental Implications Of Pavements: A Life Cycle View, Bin Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Environmental aspect of pavement, unlike its economic counterpart, is seldom considered in the theoretical study and field practices. As a highly energy and material intensive infrastructure, pavement has great potential to contribute to the environment protection, which, in root, depends on the in-depth understanding of the environmental impacts, holistically and specifically. A life cycle assessment (LCA) model is used to fulfill the goal.

This research firstly carried out extensive literature review of LCA studies on pavement to identify the major research gaps, including: incompleteness of the methodology, controversy of the functional unit, and unawareness of feedstock energy of asphalt, etc. …

Rhetorical Spirits: Spirituality As Rhetorical Device In New Age Womanist Of Color Texts, Ronisha Witlee Browdy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Throughout history African–American women have struggled against oppressions that have stereotyped their identities, scrutinized their character, and ultimately labeled their bodies inferior and inhuman. Despite the debilitating ideologies and barriers African–American women have been forced to operate within, they have fought against these racist, sexist, classist, homophobic environments, crafting their own “new” ethos through writing, as well as entertainment and popular culture. Although Black women remain plagued by history, the New Age of the 1980s as discussed by Akasha Gloria Hull in Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African–American Women seemed to spark a new spirituality amongst African–American women. During …