Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ambiguous Recognition: Recursion, Cognitive Blending, And The Problem Of Interpretation In Twenty-First-Century Fiction, Christopher David Kilgore

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses theories of cognitive conceptual integration (as outlined by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner) to propose a model of narrative reading that mediates between narratology and theories of reception. I use this model to demonstrate how new experimental narratives achieve a potent balance between a determinate and open story-form. Where the high postmodernists of the 1970s and 80s created ironic, undecidable story-worlds, the novels considered here allow readers to embrace seemingly opposite propositions without retreating into ironic suspension, trading the postmodernist “neither/nor” for a new “both/and.” This technique demands significant revision of both descriptions of radical experimentation in …

The Gendered Soul: Victorian Women Autobiographers And The Novel, Robbie E Spivey

Doctoral Dissertations

This project considers ways mid-Victorian fictional autobiographies created new models for women's spiritual formation, testing Nancy Armstrong's theory that novels are antecedent to the cultural conditions they describe. I pair three mid-Victorian fictional texts Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh, and The Mill on the Floss with three later non-fictional autobiographies written by women near the end of the Victorian Era: Annie Besant (1847- 1933), Mary Anne Hearn (1834-1909) and Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). These women came to spiritual maturity during the same time period in which the fictional heroines Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh and Maggie Tulliver became prominent in the popular …

Saint Oswald, Christ And The Dream Of The Rood: Mutable Signs At A Cultural Crossroad, Scott Hutcheson Mac Kenzie

Doctoral Dissertations

The first decades following a country’s conversion to Christianity are sometimes marked by experimentation with native expressions of piety. Out of the multicultural environment of early Christian Northumbria such experiments created an insular Germanic version of sanctity. In the mid-seventh century, Oswiu of Northumbria (642-670), the younger brother and successor to King Oswald, constructed an elaborate narrative of God’s plan for England (without consent or guidance from the Roman Church). His narrative would weave his family into the sacred fabric of his nascent, Christian kingdom. Through skillful manipulation of oral tradition, material culture and sacri loci he crafted a unique …

“Holla If You Hear Me”: A Conversation With Black, Inner-City Youth On Career Preparedness Programs, Theressa N. Cooper

Doctoral Dissertations

This research study specifically addressed; how vocational preparedness programs effect the career aspirations of Black youth, within the context of the Middle Tennessee Council Boy Scouts of America’s Exploring program. The goal of this research is to represent Black youth participating in a vocational preparedness program. Interviews, journals, and rich, thick descriptions are utilized in this work.

Using the lens of narrative inquiry and cultural studies, I hoped to further the field of career development through the experiences of some of its key players, African American youth. Within the context of their stories five major themes surfaced around the ideas: …

Grass-Roots Struggle In The "Culture Of Silence": Collective Dialogue And The Brazilian Landless Movement, Genny Petschulat

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Novel Mezclada: Subverting Colonialism’S Legacy In Junot Díaz’S The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Emily A. Shifflette

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Epistemological Axiology: What Is The Value Of Knowledge?, Eric Walter Thompson

Masters Theses

It is my overall aim in this work to defend the view that knowledge is no more valuable than true belief or empirically adequate belief, and thus is not the primary epistemic good. I engage predominately with Jonathan Kvanvig‟s work for an assessment of the value of knowledge. In turn, I assess the arguments for the value of knowledge for their ability to support the view that knowledge is uniquely valuable. First I will consider an argument which relies on a purported connection between knowledge and proper action. It will then be suggested that arguments tying knowledge to our proper …

Conspicuous Publicity: How The White House And The Army Used The Medal Of Honor In The Korean War, David Glenn Williams

Masters Theses

During the Korean War the White House and the Army publicized the Medal of Honor to achieve three outcomes. First, they hoped it would have a positive influence on public opinion. Truman committed to limited goals at the start of the war and chose not to create an official propaganda agency, which led to partisan criticism and realistic reporting. Medal of Honor publicity celebrated individual actions removed from their wider context in a familiar, heroic mold to alter memory of the past. Second, the Army publicized the Medal of Honor internally to inspire and reinforce desired soldier behavior. Early reports …

Understanding The Sources Of Abnormal Returns From The Momentum Strategy., Yu Zhang

Masters Theses

This thesis studies the sources of the returns from the momentum strategy and attempts to find some hints for the heated debate on the market efficiency hypothesis over the past twenty years. By decomposing the momentum returns from a mathematical model, we investigate directly the contributors and their relative importance in generating these momentum returns.

Our empirical results support that autocorrelation of own stock returns is one of the driving forces for the momentum expected returns. The magnitude of the autocorrelation decreases as the ranking period becomes more remote. The second important source comes from the cross-sectional variation of the …

God In My Sporting: A Justification For Christian Experience In Sport, Sean Sullivan

Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sports Studies

Examining the intersection between sport and religious faith can be challenging for kinesiology professionals. Many in academics disregard religious statements and experience as meaningless, unscientific, and even dangerous. Others recognize religious experiences as valid forms of knowledge and opportunities to encounter the sacred. Each of these groups has different explanations of religious experience and the areas of life in which such experience can occur. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the legitimacy of and potential for religious experience in general, as well as Christian religious experience in sport and physical activity. After reviewing previous sport and other …

Leisure In The Life Of The 21st Century Black Church: Re-Thinking The Gift, Steven N. Waller Ph.D.

Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sports Studies

Scholarship devoted to examining the role that leisure plays in the life of the Black Church is lacking. Leisure is an important facet of congregational life in African American churches and permeates congregational dynamics on multiple levels. The purpose of this essay is to examine leisure in the life of the Black Church and posit how a healthy, theologically accurate understanding of the value of leisure can help with health and wellness promotion, community-economic development and church growth. The Black Church is defined as the eight historically Black denominations: African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal, Church …

The Impacts Of European Colonial Terrorism On Africans, Asafa Jalata

Social Work Publications and Other Works

This article critically explores the essence and characters of European colonial terrorism and its main consequences on various African peoples during racial slavery, colonization, and incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world system between the late 15th and 20th centuries. It employs multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terrorism to critically understand the connections among terrorism, the emergence of globalization, and African underdevelopment. The piece focuses on four central issues: First, it conceptualizes and theorizes terrorism to clarify its roles in creating and maintaining the global system. Second, it focuses …

European Colonial Terrorism And The Incorporation Of Africa Into The Capitalist World System, Asafa Jalata

Sociology Publications and Other Works

This article critically explores the essence and characters of European colonial terrorism and its main consequences on various African peoples during racial slavery, colonization, and incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world system between the late 15th and 20th centuries. It employs multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terrorism to critically understand the connections among terrorism, the emergence of globalization, and African underdevelopment. The piece focuses on four central issues: First, it conceptualizes and theorizes terrorism to clarify its roles in creating and maintaining the global system. Second, it focuses …

Beyond The Battlefield: Direct And Prosthetic Memory Of The American War In Viet Nam, Susan L. Eastman

Doctoral Dissertations

“Beyond the Battlefield: Direct and Prosthetic Memory of the American War in Viet Nam” examines shifts in American, Viet Namese, and Philippine memorial, literary, and cinematic remembrance of the war through the cultural lenses of later wars: the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the “War on Terror” that began in 2001. As opposed to earlier portrayals of the American War in Viet Nam (1964-1975), turn-to-the-twenty-first-century representations engage in an ever-broadening collected cultural memory—a compilation of multifaceted, sometimes competing, individual and group memories—of the war. “Beyond the Battlefield” begins with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) because it serves as the impetus for …

On Alvin Plantinga’S Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, Emmett Frank Mashburn

Doctoral Dissertations

Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (EAAN) begins with the following simple idea: the evolutionary process of natural selection selects organisms due to adaptive behaviors, but not necessarily due to true beliefs. If this notion is even possibly true, then it is also possible that some (or many) of our own beliefs are not veridical and that our reasoning processes may not successfully point to truths (but are merely evolutionarily advantageous).

Once the deliverances and processes of our cognitive faculties have been thus called into question, it seems improper to provide an argument that one can trust one’s cognitive faculties …

Orange Alba: The Civil Religion Of Loyalism In The Southwestern Lowlands Of Scotland Since 1798, Ronnie Michael Booker Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

This study introduces the idea that, taken together, the major institutional frameworks of the ultra-Protestant culture of loyalism in the southwestern lowlands of Scotland can be conceived as a civil religion. I argue that loyalist civil religion in lowland Scotland was comprised of a distinct set of institutions including the Orange Order, Glasgow Rangers Football Club, loyalist street gangs and paramilitaries and loyalist flute bands. The elements that informed each of these loyalist groups were not unrelated, but part of a multidimensional and interactive civil religious movement. Each institution appealed to a wide range of viewpoints within the loyalist community …

The Relationship Management Process Of Public Diplomacy: U.S. Public Diplomacy In Romania, Antoneta Vanc

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks at U.S. public diplomacy practices in a country that until twenty years ago was controlled by a hard-line Communist regime: Romania. The study investigates the relationship management approach to public diplomacy employed by U.S. diplomats in Romania and it is the first to empirically test the application of relationship management theory of public relations to public diplomacy. Through in-depth interviews with six former U.S. diplomats who served in Romania during 2001-2009, we learn how diplomats must find various ways to build and maintain relationships with the civil society to which they are assigned. The findings reveal that …

Archaism, Or Textual Literalism In The Historical Novel, Linell B Wisner

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the technique of archaism as it has been practiced in the historical novel since that genre’s origins. By “archaism,” I refer to a variation of the strategy that Jerome McGann calls textual “literalism,” whereby literary texts use “thickly materialized” language and bibliographic forms to foreground their own “textuality as such” (Black Riders 74). Archaism is distinguished from Blake’s, Pound’s, or Robert Carlton Brown’s literalism by its imitation of older literary idioms, yet the specifically historical quality of its intertextuality also seems different from primarily formal imitations such as pastiche and parody.

Although archaism appears to have originated …

In Sickness And In Health: Analyzing The Ethical Limits Of The Marriage Between Health Care And The Market In The United States, Thomas D Harter

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to determine what should be the appropriate base ethical limits of health care markets in the United States. I argue that because we do not value health care goods and services as commodities, treating them as commodities available for market sale can only be ethical when health care markets accord with at least the principles of honesty, respect for autonomy, and increased access to essential health care goods and services.

I begin by establishing the theoretical foundation of my argument by expositing three theories of commodification and ethical markets that critically examine the relationship of goods to …

El Tema De La Simulación En El Teatro De Cinco Países Hispanoamericanos Del Siglo Xx, Koji Nishida

Doctoral Dissertations

I have investigated the theme of imposters in three Hispanic American plays and two Caribbean plays from the early twentieth century; I selected each play from a different country so that I can present a broader perspective of Hispanic American and Caribbean themes. In these five plays, the main characters fabricate their own identities for various reasons. My focus is on analyzing those imposters and on presenting how the dramatists present this type of imposters in their works. Identity is one of the most prominent themes in Hispanic American and Caribbean literature because the history of these regions involves a …

Welcome To Boomland, Cebrun Abe Gaustad

Doctoral Dissertations

Abe Gaustad's first collection of stories, Welcome to Boomland, explores the lives of disparate characters longing for some escape. Whether a paraplegic blues aficionado or a boy who finds a strange object in the woods, they are each searching for a way out of their stagnation. Yet each character is trapped by their own unique circumstance: some of them by their mistakes, some by ruthless dictators, some by the very notion of death. As they search for their freedom, they find out new things about themselves and manage to wage quiet rebellions against those that would control them. In the …

I Am Not My Hair...Or Am I?: Exploring The Minority Swimming Gap, Dawn M. Norwood

Doctoral Dissertations

A review of literature has revealed a dearth of research on leisure swimming patterns of Black females. Black youth, both male and female, have a higher rate of drowning than any other racial/ethnic group in the United States (“Water‐related injuries: Fact sheet”, 2005). Two known studies produced by (Irwin et al., 2009; 2010) examining hair as a constraint to swimming for African American youth produced conflicting results. In order to comprehensively examine hair as a constraint to African American female participation in swimming, the current study adopted a qualitative approach which allowed exploration of the cultural background and experiences of …

Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, And The Ostjuden Under German Occupation: 1915-1918, Tracey Hayes Norrell

Doctoral Dissertations

“Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, and the Ostjuden during Occupation: 1915-1918" addresses the interethnic experience in Poland during the German occupation of 1915-1918. This dissertation demonstrates that the German design for 'modernization' of the East began with the First World War, which envisioned the Jews as a critically vital component, rather than an obstacle to their success. The German military made its connection to the peoples in the East via its own army rabbis and Jewish administrators. This work examines the role of the German Army rabbis, in 1915, in establishing a Jewish press and Jewish schools, along with Jewish relief …

Mongo Béti Ou L’Écriture D’Un Révolté En Exil: Anatomie, Analyse Et Impact De Ses Critiques À Travers Ses Articles Dans « Peuples Noirs, Peuples Africains » (1978 À 1991), Kodjo Adabra

Doctoral Dissertations

Following their independence in the 1960s the new governments of such French-speaking, African nations as Togo, Ivory Coast, Congo and Chad (to name only few), for the most part embraced policies that were authoritarian. A direct upshot socially of the lack of free speech imposed by certain African regimes was the migration of a large number of intellectuals from the black continent, yearning to rediscover their voices in more developed, democratic countries. Many, while living in exile, turned to writing or continued to write in such a way that the painful stories of the Africa they left behind could unfold …

Ein Kleiner, Schwarzer Punkt Am Weisslichen Himmel: Antarctica & Ice In German Expressionism, Joy M. Essigmann

Masters Theses

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey …

Spuren Visionärer Multikulturalität: Fantasie Und Wirklichkeit In Campes "Robinson Der Jüngere": Auf Dem Weg Vom Kolonialismus Zum Kosmopolitismus., Claus Huxdorff

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to investigate the traces of multicultural implications in Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere 1779/80. On one level, Campe’s adaptation of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe appears to awaken or sustain potential colonial fantasies among its German readers. However, Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere does not follow colonial conventions, such as exhibited in Defoe, but instead depicts a society based much more on the concept of a common humanity shared by Europeans and Caribbean natives alike. It conceives of cooperation and exchange as a mutual gain for both parties. Robinson’s island functions as a kind of social testing ground offering …

Counselor Preferences Of White University Students: Ethnicity And Other Important Characteristics, Yi-Ying Lin

Masters Theses

In the last several decades, multiculturalism has became the one of the most popular research topics in psychology and counseling, and the counselor preferences of ethnic minority clients has been well researched. However, in the history of research on counselor preferences, the needs and preferences of ethnic majority clients have been neglected. This study investigated the counselor preferences of White university students.

This study examined three primary research questions: whether counselor ethnicity influenced White university students’ initial counselor preferences, what were White university students’ preferences for various counselor characteristics, and whether White university students preferred specific counseling styles for different …

William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast: Orientalism And The Continuation Of The English Oratorio, Elissa Hope Keck

Masters Theses

This study investigates aspects of Orientalism found within the genre of the English oratorio, specifically William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1931). Building on Edward Said’s research on Orientalism, analyses of Orientalist representations in music exploded the field of musicology in the 1980s and 90s. However, the examination of Orientalism in sacred genres remains lacking. Bringing forth cultural, political, and musical conflicts between East and West, Walton’s oratorio encourages further investigation in previously unaddressed genres. I argue that, by combining dramatic operatic elements with sacred text, Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast reflects a continuation of Orientalist ideologies through binary opposition aimed at perpetuating the …

A Tomb With A View And Two Stories, Matthew Louis Blanshei

Masters Theses

In the “Introduction,” I discuss how the works presented in this “creative” thesis draw upon traditions of both experimental fiction and realism. The novella makes up Volume I of a longer work. The episodes in the life of the protagonist are depicted in chronological order, but not as chapters in a seamless narrative. In constructing the novella in this way, I attempted to convey how an individual might, for reasons peculiar to himself, choose to view certain moments of his life as turning points. But I do not rely upon the first-person point of view. By using a third-person limited, …

Sexuality, Gender And Identity In Selected Works Of Arthur Schnitzler, Michelle L Webster

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate Arthur Schnitzler’s depiction of three female figures in short stories with a specific focus on how the figures are portrayed in relation to socially sanctioned roles in late nineteenth and early twentieth century German-speaking Europe. The figures and works selected as subjects of this study were Friederike in Die Frau des Weisen (1898), Elise in Der Mörder (1921) and Else in Fräulein Else (1924). The primary question that was investigated was whether Schnitzler depicted these female figures in a manner that could be interpreted as impacting the loosening of the grip of …