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Pillars Of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention: Parents, Police, And Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), Jonathon Stuever May 2024

Pillars Of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention: Parents, Police, And Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), Jonathon Stuever

Theses and Dissertations

In 1983 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officials teamed with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) health curriculum specialist, Dr. Ruth Rich, to redesign an anti-tobacco curriculum, Project Self-Management and Resistance Training (SMART), into Project Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). In the first four years of Project DARE, local, state, and, federal government branches endorsed the program as an efficient tool in the local and national fight against youth drug abuse. Early program evaluations, conducted by the Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI), demonstrated DARE’s ability to change attitudes of students, school faculty, and parents concerning social tolerance of underage drug …


Games And Time, Evelynn Kersting Dec 2023

Games And Time, Evelynn Kersting

Theses and Dissertations

Video games are a medium uniquely immersed in time. While the topic of time and games has been broached by many in the field of game studies, its centrality to both how games function and the experience of playing games remains underexamined. Reading games as literary texts, this holistic study uses queer and social theories to survey the myriad of ways games play with time. I argue games are time machines, each idiosyncratically allows players to experience time differently from traditional linear time. Beyond games with literal time machines, this dissertation examines games which structure themselves around labyrinthine and existential …


Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden Dec 2023

Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis connects the rhetoric of Bryan Stevenson which advances truth and reconciliation for racial healing in the United States to a case study of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. I examine common cultural invocations of the bridge that support the persistence of a blurry public memory that occludes visibility of its original memorial dedication to a known white supremacist and instead celebrates it as a landmark of the civil rights movement. I also analyze arguments for both changing and keeping the name of the bridge that occurred between 2015-2020, illustrating ways in which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical …


Dancing Mi Cultura: The Production Of Ethnic And National Identity In Midwestern Mexican-Americans Through The Performance Of Ballet Méxicano Folklórico, Katrina J. Frank Dec 2023

Dancing Mi Cultura: The Production Of Ethnic And National Identity In Midwestern Mexican-Americans Through The Performance Of Ballet Méxicano Folklórico, Katrina J. Frank

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies how Mexican Americans living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago produce connections to their Mexican heritage and culture through the performance of ballet Mexicano folklórico. Through ethnographic interviews of current and former folklórico dancers, as well as participant observation of adult folklórico dance practices, I contextualize the experiences of the interviewees using the anthropological theories of habitus, continuous and discontinuous selves, double-consciousness, liminality, and collective effervescence, as well as the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon, with the discussion of folklórico as an art, and the concept of institutional use of dance as …


Beyond Their Smiling Faces: Reconstructing The Remojadas Ritual And Culture Through The Sonrientes Figurines From The Mpm Collection, Abigail Munoz Dec 2023

Beyond Their Smiling Faces: Reconstructing The Remojadas Ritual And Culture Through The Sonrientes Figurines From The Mpm Collection, Abigail Munoz

Theses and Dissertations

Sonrientes (Smiling Faces) scholarship has waned after a brief period of archaeological interest in the mid to late 20th century by both Spanish and English language scholars. Since then, brief attention to these figurines in the Remojadas style, or similar, has been given when discussing the Classic Period on the Gulf Coast and few direct studies on their interpretation or reinterpretation have been given within the last few years. The present study attempts to contribute my own interpretation of these Remojadas-style figurines and answer five major questions driving my research: What kind of rituals did Remojadas or other people carry …


From Creator To Curator To Author As Content: Nicolas Winding Refn, Transdiscursive Authorship, And Self-Branding In Twenty-First Century Media, Christopher J. Olson Dec 2023

From Creator To Curator To Author As Content: Nicolas Winding Refn, Transdiscursive Authorship, And Self-Branding In Twenty-First Century Media, Christopher J. Olson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s development from creator and curator to author as content within an evolving media ecology driven by capitalist ideology. A close critical study of Refn’s career from 1996 to 2019 offers insight into contemporary techniques of creating, collecting, and curating media texts, as well as the phenomenon of presenting oneself as content via discursive branding. Given that Refn’s career coincided with the emergence of the World Wide Web and the rise of digital platforms, he thus emblematizes what it means to be a creator working within an increasingly interconnected media ecology. Refn initially …


Deconstructing Decapitation In Late Roman Gloucestershire And Oxfordshire, Uk, Shaheen M. Christie Dec 2023

Deconstructing Decapitation In Late Roman Gloucestershire And Oxfordshire, Uk, Shaheen M. Christie

Theses and Dissertations

The Roman conquest in Britain (AD 43) led to significant changes in indigenous settlements and agricultural systems, population diversity, social organization, economic activities, and funerary traditions. Archaeological investigations of burials from the first to fifth centuries AD in Britain have revealed a complex array of burial treatments and attitudes toward the dead, including decapitation burials, which are the most common form of differential burial represented in this period. Traditional interpretations of these burials have included infanticide, punitive execution, trophy taking, fear of the dead, and veneration practices. This project investigates a sample of decapitation burials from Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire dating …


Life Styles, Death Styles, And Posthumous Portraiture: Elite Female Burials In Iron Age Europe, Emily Ryan Stanton Aug 2023

Life Styles, Death Styles, And Posthumous Portraiture: Elite Female Burials In Iron Age Europe, Emily Ryan Stanton

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the grave good assemblages in 222 burial contexts from HallstattD (c. 600-400 BCE) tumulus cemeteries in west-central Europe to test the hypothesis that certain combinations of grave goods were associated with particular categories of persons based on an intersectional marking of gender, status, age and social role. The primary data set consists of high-status graves – male, female, ungendered/pre-gendered subadults, and those of indeterminate gender – in the Heuneburg interaction sphere in southwest Germany. The results of this analysis are compared to a secondary data set of comparable burials from other west-central European locations, to determine whether …


Student Perceptions Of The Impact Of Kinesthetics In The Choral Rehearsal, Lucas G. Krogmann Aug 2023

Student Perceptions Of The Impact Of Kinesthetics In The Choral Rehearsal, Lucas G. Krogmann

Theses and Dissertations

Using movement activities, or kinesthetics, in the choral rehearsal is a studied and established teaching technique that some music educators regularly employ. The movement-based strategies have their roots in the work of Jaques-Dalcroze, Laban, and Kodály, as well as other choral pedagogues of the 20th century that have built on their foundation. However, upon literature review, few studies have been done to establish the student perspective regarding the use of movement in the choral rehearsal. Three research questions guided this qualitative, action research study: 1) Do students have a positive or negative perception of the use of kinesthetics during the …


The Context And The Commissioner: The Effect Of Milwaukee’S Health Commissioners’ Social, Cultural, And Historical Understanding Of Milwaukee’S People During The Last Five Pandemics, Madeline O'Dea Fruehe Aug 2023

The Context And The Commissioner: The Effect Of Milwaukee’S Health Commissioners’ Social, Cultural, And Historical Understanding Of Milwaukee’S People During The Last Five Pandemics, Madeline O'Dea Fruehe

Theses and Dissertations

Resistance to pandemic response policies was observed globally throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This resistance has been linked by researchers to the prolonged duration and higher mortality rate of COVID-19 compared to previous pandemics, despite advancements in modern medicine, extensive surveillance networks and record vaccine production. However, the strategies implemented by public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic closely mirrored those successful in mitigating past pandemics. To elucidate this disparity, a historical analysis encompassing the 1918, 1957, 1968, 2009, and Covid-19 pandemics was conducted within the city of Milwaukee. By examining archival documents and over 800 newspaper articles, this research found …


Translanguaging To Sustain Multilingual Communities In Higher Education, Mohammad Anisur Rahman Aug 2023

Translanguaging To Sustain Multilingual Communities In Higher Education, Mohammad Anisur Rahman

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study investigates the translanguaging interactions among teachers and students who share a common non-English language and what these exchanges might entail. It finds that multilinguals often hesitate to bring out their non-English languages in academic settings as they fear it (translanguging) may result in othering them in academic spaces since it is predominantly monolingual. Despite these challenges, multilinguals interact with their instructors through rhetorical translanguaging (Bloom-Pojar) often in peripheral spaces like the instructors’ offices. The study illustrates multilinguals rhetorically translanguage through the primary step of relationship building that reveals their complicated language ideologies. It also shows through cultivating …


“For What We Do Today Becomes The History Of Tomorrow”: A History Of The Bay View Historical Society, 1979-2015, Bradley Wiles Aug 2023

“For What We Do Today Becomes The History Of Tomorrow”: A History Of The Bay View Historical Society, 1979-2015, Bradley Wiles

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a history of the Bay View Historical Society (BVHS), a non-profit cultural heritage institution located in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since its creation in 1979, the BVHS has assumed numerous roles related to preservation, documentation, education, information provision, social interaction, and public appreciation around the neighborhood’s history. This study’s overarching purpose is to examine how a modern local historical society assumes and approaches its role within the community it seeks to document, preserve, celebrate, and enrich. The central contention is that such institutions are given life when a range of conditions are conducive for …


Screening Bodies: Post-Dictatorship Chilean Cinema, Elaine Joy (Ej) Basa Aug 2023

Screening Bodies: Post-Dictatorship Chilean Cinema, Elaine Joy (Ej) Basa

Theses and Dissertations

Censorship was the modus operandi during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. People and media alike suffered as the oppressive Chilean government suppressed many truths about the Coup, the torture and disappearance of victims and their families, and facts about the state violence that took place from 1973 to the late 1980s. The resulting trauma nurtured a culture of silence, a divided social fabric, and many gaps in historical knowledge. Those who absorbed the media experienced a lack of connection and identification with fabricated and falsified histories, thereby essentially cut off from truly engaging with the traumas of Chile’s dark history. The struggle …


Ezhi-Nisidotamang Ininaatigoog Miinawaa Anishinaabeg Maamawibimaadiziyang (A Cultural, Ethnographic And Scientific Framework For Understanding Maple And Human Relations), Nathon Breu Aug 2023

Ezhi-Nisidotamang Ininaatigoog Miinawaa Anishinaabeg Maamawibimaadiziyang (A Cultural, Ethnographic And Scientific Framework For Understanding Maple And Human Relations), Nathon Breu

Theses and Dissertations

Ininaatigoog, Acer saccharum, or sugar maple trees have been around 66 million yearsproviding sustenance for thousands of years for those who utilize it1 . They provide food and shelter, supplying necessary provisions for all. For Indigenous people when ininaatigoog sap starts to run, it is a sign of springtime, a celebration of life. In Spring the Anishinaabeg, specifically the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, go to their sugar camps, and start the rigorous process of harvesting the sap. In the past the Anishinaabeg moved from their winter camps into their spring sugar camps to transform the sap into maple sugar. Stories …


A Typology Of Bad Characters: Understanding Moral Badness As Mental Illness, Aidyn Cooper Aug 2023

A Typology Of Bad Characters: Understanding Moral Badness As Mental Illness, Aidyn Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents Susan Wolf’s theories on freedom and responsibility. It places special emphasis on her Reason View as presented in her book, Freedom Within Reason. I analyze three types of bad characters, where a “bad character” is defined as someone with a stable and pervasive pattern of acting badly. I argue that Wolf’s Reason View entails that bad characters are psychologically incapable of doing the right thing for the right reasons. Therefore, according to the demands of Wolf’s Reason View, we cannot hold them responsible for their actions. This spells trouble: aren’t bad characters precisely the type of people …


Design Thinking & The Entrepreneurial Mindset In The Collegiate Music Classroom, Antonina M.C. Johnston Aug 2023

Design Thinking & The Entrepreneurial Mindset In The Collegiate Music Classroom, Antonina M.C. Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the implementation of design thinking andan entrepreneurial mindset into a collegiate music classroom, where students have an interest in applying business acumen and entrepreneurship to their future plans as teaching and performing artists. The following questions guided this study: 1) are there benefits to introducing design thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset to music students as they transition from student to professional?; 2) will the addition of these approaches give students greater confidence as arts entrepreneurs?; 3) how can design thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset methodologies be successfully introduced and practiced throughout …


Peripheral Citizens: “Colonial Christians,” Caste, And The Politics Of Minoritization In Postcolonial Literature, Suchismita Banerjee May 2023

Peripheral Citizens: “Colonial Christians,” Caste, And The Politics Of Minoritization In Postcolonial Literature, Suchismita Banerjee

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation looks at the politics of minoritization of Christian communities in post-independent India. I use the term “colonial Christians” as a descriptive category to analyze the three Christian groups (Anglo-Indians or Eurasians, poor domiciled Europeans employed by the Raj, and lower-caste Christian converts) that were formed in the colonial period either by inter-racial mixing between the British and South-Asians or due to Christian missionary conversion. The communities are not united simply by the virtue of their faith. The internalized hierarchy based on class, gender, caste, skin color, European lineage, and access to the English language creates a crucial axis …


The Re-Emergence Of American Pastels, Mary Beth Drabiszczak May 2023

The Re-Emergence Of American Pastels, Mary Beth Drabiszczak

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the production, exhibition, and reception of American pastels as both a process and product in conjunction with artist groups, societies, and institutions. The growing field of illustration influenced pastelists to produce work for print reproductions through commercial publications and advertisements. Despite this, a shift back to the fine arts developed later in the twentieth century with the rise of television and digital media, reducing the need for hand-illustrated ads. While pastel has been historically marginalized as a secondary medium reserved for preliminary work or sketching, recent scholarship by technical art historians like Thea Burns and Marjorie Shelly …


Rethinking The Role Of Cultural Empowerment In African Identity, Madina Tall May 2023

Rethinking The Role Of Cultural Empowerment In African Identity, Madina Tall

Theses and Dissertations

Narratives pertaining to the cultural inferiority of Africans have plagued the mindsets and consequently, the actions of millions around the world. The undermining beliefs of societies globally towards the African continent and its people has historically created opportunities for colonialism, imperialism and various other forms of exploitation. Various educational, political and socio-cultural gaps have manifested themselves in disguise of fundamentally/intrinsically poor African management. Examples range from more educational and socio-cultural issues such as cultural rejection/dissociation to everyday manifestations of identity displacement which can be understood as western cultural mimicry. Throughout this thesis, I shall argue that the core of the …


Political Commitment Of Hmong Americans: A Study Of A Grassroots Feminist Movement Against Abusive International Marriages 2007-2022., Ni Made Frischa Aswarini May 2023

Political Commitment Of Hmong Americans: A Study Of A Grassroots Feminist Movement Against Abusive International Marriages 2007-2022., Ni Made Frischa Aswarini

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Hmong American community-led movement against abusive international marriages (AIM) in Wisconsin as an instance of activism or resistance related to marriage-migration phenomena in the 21st century. Through an analysis of oral histories of Hmong American community activists, Hmong American community media, archival materials, born-digital sources, and other contemporary sources, this study incorporates experiences underexplored in U.S. historical scholarship. The findings unearth that the feminist movement against AIM emerged not solely as an active response to a trend of gender-based violence cases in the early 2000s but also as a resistance to the persisting stigmatization from the …


The Unusual Prominence Of The Burial Shroud In The Deponitur Christi Corpus E Curce From The Adnotationes Et Meditationes In Evangelia, Valerie Vespalec May 2023

The Unusual Prominence Of The Burial Shroud In The Deponitur Christi Corpus E Curce From The Adnotationes Et Meditationes In Evangelia, Valerie Vespalec

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I analyze the iconography and the accompanied text of Hieronymus Wiericx’s Deponitur Christi corpus e cruce (Christ’s body is taken down from the cross; Image 132, Chapter 105; hereafter referred to as the Deposition) from Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels; hereafter referred to as Adnotationes et meditationes) by Jerome Nadal, originally published in 1595. I examine the unusual prominence of the burial shroud depicted behind Christ whereas in previous sixteenth-century deposition imagery, the burial shroud was either omitted or not given such prominence. Scholars in recent decades have devoted significant attention …


Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing The Past For The Present, David Symanzik-Stock May 2023

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing The Past For The Present, David Symanzik-Stock

Theses and Dissertations

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing the Past for the Present explores how reproductions connect us to the past. From Rembrandt restrikes to plastic souvenirs, reproductions occupy an important chapter in an object’s biography. This exhibition considers the complex relationships between "original” artifacts and their reproductions, which historically has been the focus of scholarly debate. Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction, highlights the intrinsic questions posed of this relationship – when an original work of art (or object) is reproduced, what relationship does both the reproduction and its model (the original) have with …


"With The Butterfly Sleeves Naka Filipiniana": Contemporary Study Of Filipinx American Women In Popular Music, Georgette Luluquisin Patricio May 2023

"With The Butterfly Sleeves Naka Filipiniana": Contemporary Study Of Filipinx American Women In Popular Music, Georgette Luluquisin Patricio

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines contemporary Filipinx-American women artists and the ways in which they use their music to construct their identity against Western portrayals of the Filipinx/a woman. Unlike other Asian Americans, Filipinx Americans try to attain the status of the "model minority" because they were at one point in history considered US nationals with American training, but they also do not adhere to it in the same way that Japanese and Indian Americans do. The model minority myth is the notion that Asian Americans have to overcome a certain struggle or challenge in order to achieve the American Dream. Of …


Body Bound, Rachel Allison May 2023

Body Bound, Rachel Allison

Theses and Dissertations

Body Bound is an exhibition catalog that corresponds to an exhibition of objects on display in the Emile Mathis Gallery that opened on February 23, 2023. The Exhibition traces the historically grounded and long-standing tradition of using bodily material as the basis for bookmaking. This practice has not subsided entirely in its traditional form but has also branched off and informed contemporary book-making practices. Contemporary books, specifically artist books, are a part of a longer history of using and presenting bodies with books. This exhibition includes historical books and contemporary artist books from the UWM special collections as well as …


Determinants Of Indigenous Rights Adoption In Latin America: Political Implications And Incrementalism 1960-2016, Samantha Ann Hagle May 2023

Determinants Of Indigenous Rights Adoption In Latin America: Political Implications And Incrementalism 1960-2016, Samantha Ann Hagle

Theses and Dissertations

Broadly, this work asks: what leads to the varied political status of indigenous populations in Latin America? From a uniform point of political exclusion, in recent decades governments in the region have adopted various degrees of constitutional reforms to protect their original populations. Some indigenous populations in Latin America remain unrecognized, like those in Chile. Others have gained some recognition and access to equal democratic rights. In other countries, like Bolivia, indigenous peoples have the potential to gain constitutional autonomy and regional self-government for their communities. First, I argue that the rights expansion process depends partially upon the content of …


The Liminality Of Identity And Place: Chinese Transracial Adoptees And The Built Environment, Roe Draus May 2023

The Liminality Of Identity And Place: Chinese Transracial Adoptees And The Built Environment, Roe Draus

Theses and Dissertations

International adoption of children from China began in 1992, and between 1999 and 2019, China adopted out approximately 267,000 children. At this time, around 82,000 Chinese children were adopted by American families and raised within a culturally and racially different environment. As a unique diaspora community that has been involuntarily and forcefully displaced, Chinese transracial adoptees (TRAs) are often fragmented across the United States. The outcomes have especially complex effects as their identities are often situated in perpetual in-betweenness as they must negotiate the meanings of their Chineseness, Chinese Americanness, and adopteeness. Since a sense of self and identity is …


The Meanings Of Musics And Technologies In The Twentieth Century: Case Studies In Postwar Pop, Afrofuturist Jazz, And Chilean Electronic Music, Lawton Hall May 2023

The Meanings Of Musics And Technologies In The Twentieth Century: Case Studies In Postwar Pop, Afrofuturist Jazz, And Chilean Electronic Music, Lawton Hall

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Les Paul and Mary Ford’s high-tech pop, Sun Ra’s proto-afrofuturist jazz, and Chilean electronic music to explore how new modes of musical expression and technological advances were shaped in relation to gender, race, and political policy. Les Paul’s development of new recording techniques reflected postwar attitudes toward scientific progress, and the way he presented these “New Sounds” with his wife Mary Ford reinforced gendered notions of domestic space. Sun Ra’s appropriation of Space Age themes with the Arkestra was a synthesis of 1950s Black radicalism and racial uplift initiatives from his early life in Birmingham, Alabama that …


Aestheticization As A Type Of Erasure: An Ecocritical Examination Of Three Etchings From James Mcneill Whistler's 'Thames Set' (1859-1871), Sydney Ion May 2023

Aestheticization As A Type Of Erasure: An Ecocritical Examination Of Three Etchings From James Mcneill Whistler's 'Thames Set' (1859-1871), Sydney Ion

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores “A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames” (1859-1871), Thames Set, by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), a group of etchings that negotiates the effects of the “Great Stink” on the Thames riverbank and its people. I argue that the series exhibits a strange paradox: the intentional exclusion of accurate environmental elements and sensorial details to achieve a romanticized nostalgic framework that serves Whistler’s aesthetic ideals. This aestheticization of the environmental crisis is the foundation from which Whistler’s modernization grew. Recent research has understood the Thames Set as evidence of Whistler’s involvement in depicting lower-class …


Infrastructural Cinema: Seeing Energy On Film In The Long 1930s, Joni Kay Hayward Marcum May 2023

Infrastructural Cinema: Seeing Energy On Film In The Long 1930s, Joni Kay Hayward Marcum

Theses and Dissertations

American energy and infrastructure are at points of major reckoning. Electrical grids suffer major outages, while climate change threatens every known way of harnessing energy resources. But how did we get here? My dissertation, “Infrastructural Cinema: Seeing Energy on Film in the Long 1930s” analyzes the characterization of energy resources in American government and corporate films from the 1920s-1930s, or “infrastructural cinema.” Specifically, I interrogate how infrastructural cinema has affected our understanding of how to control and manage energy, and to what extent our reliance on such infrastructures limits present-day energy solutions. Infrastructural cinema is concerned with how energy and …


Soul Quest Church Of Mother Earth: Ayahuasca Decriminalization And The Struggle Of An Institution To Become A Church, Tarryl Janik May 2023

Soul Quest Church Of Mother Earth: Ayahuasca Decriminalization And The Struggle Of An Institution To Become A Church, Tarryl Janik

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahuasca church, in Orlando, Florida, seeks to become a legal church in order to be exempted from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which classifies DMT, the psychedelic by-product of the boiled ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, as an illicit substance. The three-year study charts the process by which Soul Quest undertakes to demonstrate their practice and belief in terms that will conform to the State’s idea of what “church-ness” looks like and how sincere belief should be demonstrated in terms the law will find …