Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics In A Posthuman Age, Daniel Patrick Richards

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When a disaster the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill takes place, is it natural for the news media stories, investigative reports, and public deliberation to focus almost exclusively on finding the person or group responsible for such a horrendous scene. Rhetorically speaking, the discourse surrounding the event can be characterized as a reductive form of praise and blame rhetoric (epideixis). However, these efforts, while well-intentioned, are troublesome because searches for the one technical cause and the sole personal culpability are thwarted by the sheer complexity of the ecological, technological, scientific, institutional, and communicative network required for …

Critiquing Cultural Relativism, Jaret Kanarek

The Intellectual Standard

Cultural relativism is the ever-popular theory claiming that, “any set of customs and institutions, or way of life, is as valid as any other” (Hartung,1954). In its appeal to tolerance—the seemingly incontrovertible “virtue” of the modern era—it has gained wide appeal amongst myriad disciplines, most notably in the social sciences (UNESCO, 1995). However, the theory is destructive in both theory and practice. In theory, cultural relativism emphatically denies reason and objective reality (Zechenter, 1997). In practice, it sanctions the worst manifestations of violence and oppression.

In Situ Vision: The Student Experience Of Collaborative Learning In A Virtual Drawing Class, Annette Cohen

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the construct of collaboration and the co-construction of knowledge in a distance learning drawing class. Distance learning drawing classes are rare, due to resistance by fine arts departments holding onto traditions that date back to Renaissance times. As a result, there is a paucity of literature on the subject. This multiple method study seeks an understanding of how students collaborate in critiques, form virtual communities and socially construct knowledge about learning how to draw. The study commences with the following three research questions: what social processes facilitate learning to draw from the …

Servant Leadership And African American Pastors, Clarence Bunch

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Robert Greenleaf (1977) took a follower’s, rather than a leader-centric, point of view of leadership by describing a leader as one who leads by serving. He identified a leader as one who sets other people’s needs above his or her own. He argued that motivation of leaders must begin with the conscious choice to serve others. Greenleaf’s concept provides the basis for a theoretical model of servant leadership. This dissertation examines the extent to which African American pastors exhibit servant leadership characteristics, using the Servant Leadership Questionnaire (Barbuto & Wheeler, 2006). A sample of 358 African American pastors from 11 …

A Women's Talking Circle: A Narrative Study Of Positive Intergenerational Communication, Pamela Ferris-Olson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Narrative inquiry was used to understand how women’s experiences with their mothers, grandmothers, and daughters and as mothers, grandmothers, and daughters contribute to their meaning making of communication and connectedness with unrelated women. A purposeful sample of nine women aged 31-69 from a small Midwestern city was studied. Six African American and three white women were chosen for their membership in a group that has regularly engaged in positive intergenerational communication for nearly two years. The women’s narratives of personal communicative experiences within their families and with the other women were recorded and interpreted to gain a deeper understanding of …

Urban Indian Perspectives Of Traditional Indian Medicine, Annette Squetimkin-Anquoe

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

American Indians (AI) represent two percent of the United States population with over five hundred and sixty federally recognized tribes. In comparison to mainstream society AI show disparate rates for a number of health conditions. While some AI use traditional forms of medicine and healing practices that encompass mind-body-spirit approaches, studies conducted on the topic of Traditional Indian Medicine (TIM) among American Indians are sparse. Considering the fact that two thirds of the entire AI population currently lives in urban areas, it is timely to learn more about how TIM is seen by them. The purpose of this study was …

Museums As Sites Of "Being In Conversation": A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study, Randy C. Roberts

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In times of great change, institutions must be able to adapt while not losing their essence, those qualities that are central, enduring, and distinctive. While it is understood and acknowledged that museums must change their approach to be relevant and sustainable in a world in which there have been monumental shifts in the ways that people communicate, access information, and experience connection, the essential qualities of museums are not well-defined or agreed upon. More than a decade into the new century and in spite of much discussion, contemplation, and experimentation, the 21st century museum model remains unsettled. To explore the …

What Are The Key Competencies, Qualities, And Attributes Of The African American Municipal Police Chief?, Patrick Oliver

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and understand the dimensions of leadership of those African Americans, who are effective as the chief executive officer (CEO) of a municipal law enforcement agency, and thereby to educate and inform both those aspiring to be police chiefs and those presently serving as police chiefs, particularly African Americans. Four content areas were examined to gain a better understanding of the research question: (1) Police executive leadership literature; (2) African American leadership; (3) The trait theory of leadership; (4) emotional intelligence. Study participants were all African American police chiefs with the expertise and …

Laughing Buddhas: The Everyday Embodiment Of Contemplative Leadership, Kim Nolan

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Many of us struggle to find a theoretical framework within which to approach leadership. We may draw upon personal aspects of spiritual practice, scholarship, and vocational experience with hopes of developing a deeper method of conceptualizing all the elements that comprise relevant and meaningful ways of being and leading in the world. The purpose of this phenomenological study extends the inquiry, examining leadership as a path toward wholeness and investigating the research question – what is called into being for the contemplative leader? The roots of the question originate with the conceptual framework set forth by Kriger and Seng (2005), …

Applying A Leadership Framework To Historically Black Colleges And Universities (Hbcus) Post Fordice, Armenta Hinton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a list of outstanding accomplishments that span over a century; however, this segment of higher education continues to be underfunded and remains in a position of justifying its existence in a postracial America. The issues facing HBCUs are significant. Race-based legislation has created a dual system of American higher education that adversely affects these minority serving institutions, impacting the quality of education they dispense and producing potentially negative effects on vulnerable and under-served collegians. Supreme Court Justice Thomas’s opinion in the U.S. v. Fordice (1992) case opposed the creation of HBCUs as “enclaves …

Exploring Tribal College And University (Tcu) Faculty Collegiality, Nora Antoine

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation study explores Tribal College and University (TCU) faculty collegiality utilizing qualitative and indigenous research methodology approaches. Since collegiality is a multidimensional construct, a Rolling Survey process was developed to provide a vehicle for discussion. Within focus group settings, TCU faculty participants created a composite about their relationships, communications, and professional development. Dialogue affirmed important professional relationships and explored issues that contribute or detract from TCU faculty work experiences. The results of this study further suggest wider applications for leadership and businesses in general, affirming the importance of and the need to support professional working relationships. The electronic version …

Melungeon Portraits: Lived Experience And Identity, Tamara L. Stachowicz

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The desire to claim an ethnicity may be in response to an institutional and systemic political movement towards multiculturalism where ethnic difference is something to be recognized and celebrated (Jimenez, 2010; Tatum, 1997). Those who were a member of a dominant or advantaged group took that element of their identity for granted (Tatum, 1997). Identity work has included reflections and congruence between how individuals see themselves and how they perceive others to see them, including Optimal Distinctiveness Theory where one determines the optimal amount of individual distinctiveness needed to feel a healthy group and personal identity (Brewer, 2012). When most …

A History Of Place: Using Phytolith Analysis To Discern Holocene Vegetation Change On Sanak Island, Western Gulf Of Alaska, Cricket C. Wilbur

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study investigated a terrestrial climate proxy, phytoliths, as a complimentary approach to documenting the dynamics of present and past vegetation on Sanak Island, the largest island in a small island group in the eastern Aleutian archipelago, and as a new basis by which to interpret Holocene environmental variability in Alaska. A phytolith reference collection was established from 59 selected plant species of maritime tundra belonging to 27 families. The grass species and a sedge species produced abundant phytolith forms whereas the majority of dicotyledons in this study were trace producers of phytoliths. A paleoenvironmental reconstruction from fossil phytoliths recovered …

Zombies And The Post-Colonial Italian Unconscious, Simone Brioni

Department of English Faculty Publications

This article analyses the relationship between the horror genre and colonialism by focusing on Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) and discusses how and to what extent the colonial overtones of this film provide a fictional representation of the Italian collective unconscious fear of African immigration, which resurrected the memory of forgotten colonial crimes in Africa. Drawing on postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis, this article also underlines how xenophobe political propaganda has employed horror imagery – and especially that provided by zombie movies – in order to discriminate against immigrants.

Costruire La Razza Come Mostruosità, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ball Don’T Lie: Connecting Adolescents, Sports, And Literature, Alan Brown, Chris Crowe

Faculty Publications

A few months ago, a group of middle and high school media specialists invited me to help them consider approaches for engaging reluctant male readers. I thought long and hard about my own experiences, both as a reluctant male reader and as a teacher of reluctant readers. To begin to respond to such a query, I suggested, meant that we must first ponder several equally important questions:

• What are students doing instead of reading?
• In what literary practices are they already engaged outside of school? 
• How can educators connect current extracurricular interests with ongoing curricular activities? 
• How can books further …

School Culture, Struggling Adolescent Readers, And The Dialogical Self, Dawan Coombs

Faculty Publications

Sociocultural perspectives of literacy emphasize the role of the larger environment in the shaping of literacy practices. As a result, some researchers theorize students don’t fail in school, but that schools fail students by denying them opportunities to practice literacy in personally meaningful ways. Evidence of such is manifest in the narrative identities of struggling adolescent readers. Identities result from the selective emplotment of events, signs, and symbols into narratives that help the individual make sense of the world and the self’s role in it. Narratives, and the identities that result, represent the coming together of the stories individuals tell, …

Religious Faith And Transformational Processes In Marriage, Michael A. Goodman, David C. Dollahite, Loren D. Marks, Emily Layton

Faculty Publications

Leading scholars of marital processes strongly recommend supplementing the current focus on marital conflict to include research on transformative processes. This qualitative study examines the connection between religion and the transformative processes of commitment and coping in marriage. The sample for this study includes 184 married couples (N = 368 individuals), making it far larger than most in-depth, qualitative interview-based studies. Participants included Christians, Jews, and Muslims with an over sampling of minorities and immigrant families living in all eight regions of theUnited States. For several decades studies have shown a largely positive correlation between (a) religiosity and marital commitment …

Using Elicited Oral Response Testing To Determine The Need For An Interpreter, Troy L. Cox, William G. Eggington

Faculty Publications

Hamza,' an African immigrant, travels on a domestic flight in the United States. He harmlessly flirts with his young seatmate, until she becomes angry with him and moves. When he exits the plane, the police approach him and request an interview. He quickly realizes that something serious is happening and he is being interrogated about his conversation with the young lady. He does not understand what is occurring, but because, in his culture, compliance with authority is seen as a practical and civic duty, he agrees with many of the police's statements. Unfortunately, his English language ability is too poor …

Empirical Validation Of Reading Proficiency Guidelines, Troy L. Cox, Ray Clifford

Faculty Publications

The validation of ability scales describing multidimensional skills is always challenging, but not impossible. This study applies a multistage, criterion‐referenced approach that uses a framework of aligned texts and reading tasks to explore the validity of the ACTFL and related reading proficiency guidelines. Rasch measurement and statistical analyses of data generated in three separate language studies confirm a significant difference in reading difficulty between the proficiency levels tested.

Cathedral Of Kairos: Rhetoric And Revelation In The “National House Of Prayer”, Richard Benjamin Crosby

Faculty Publications

Traditionally, kairos is defined by its transience. Scholars assume that in order to capitalize on the rhetorical power of kairos, a speaker must capture the “opportune moment” before it passes. his article makes the case that the kairic moment can be sustained indefinitely through the sacralization of physical space. Linking rhetorical theories of kairos as “God’s time” to Mircea Eliade’s discussion of “sacred hierophanies,” the article performs an analysis of the National Cathedral in Washington DC and concludes that rhetoric can circumvent traditional contingencies when deployed within kairic space.

Review: "Of Africa", Aaron Eastley

Faculty Publications

“A truly illuminating exploration of Africa,” suggests Wole Soyinka in the preface of his new book, Of Africa, “has yet to take place.” Soyinka is not writing here of a physical exploration, of course, but of a humanistic or spiritual one. This, at the root, is what the eight essays that comprise Of Africa urge readers to consider: ways in which Africa can lead the world forward into “a deeply craved Age of Universal Understanding.” In Soyinka’s estimation Africa today is very nearly as misapprehended and undervalued by the world at large as ever it was in the past. But …

Borges And The Basques: Notes On Reading An Invisible Literature, David Laraway

Faculty Publications

The Basques, the narrator of Jose Luis Borges’ “El congreso” [The Congress] once sniffed, are an unjustifiably proud people on the margins of history who have never been good for anything but milking cows (Obras 3:24).² To be sure, the literary heritage of the Basques had for many years been nothing to brag about: as recently as the mid‐nineteenth century, the total number of works written in Euskera barely reached a hundred. Ironically, by the time Borges published his story in 1975, a major literary renaissance in the Basque Country was well underway, one that saw Basque writers condense …

Representing The Agent Through Second-Order States, David A. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Some recent views of action have claimed that a correct conceptual account of action must include second-order motivational states. This follows from the fact that first-order motivational states such as desires account for action or mere behavior in which the agent’s participation is lacking; thus, first-order motivational states cannot by themselves account for action in which the agent participates, so-called full-blooded action. I argue that representing the agent’s participation by means of second-order states is bound to fail because it misrepresents what an agent is doing when acting in the full-blooded sense. I begin by characterizing full-blooded action and explaining …

Back To The Future: Salvador Allende’S Steampunk Chile, David Laraway

Faculty Publications

The 1973 coup that deposed Salvador Allende is, in a way, everywhere in plain sight in today’s Chile. The president whose popular support among not only the middle but the working class had dwindled abymsally by August 1973, whose government was regularly excoriated by both the right (for his economic nationalization program) and the far left (for his willingness to let constitutional fealty trump the need for radical structural change) is now spoken of in reverent tones by observers from across the political spectrum. Visitors to El Palacio de La Moneda today are greeted by a monument to Allende outside …

Phenomenological Insights Into Oppression: Passive Synthesis And Personal Responsibility, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Drawing on phenomenology’s account of “passive synthesis,” this paper seeks to provide a phenomenological vocabulary that could be useful in explaining institutional oppression to those who find it difficult to understand that we can be responsible for acts and meanings that we do not intend. Though the main goal of the paper is to justify the use of the terminology of passive synthesis in the discourse on oppression, the paper ends by suggesting how employing passive synthesis in this manner suggests ways of combating oppression.

Some Kind Of Monstrosity: What Youth Ministry Can Learn From Heavy Metal, Jason Lief

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This article brings Slovoj Zizek’s articulation of Pauline Christianity into conversation with Norwegian Black Metal (Gorgoroth) in order to demonstrate the subversive role of popular culture as it challenges the panoptic ideological power of the status quo. Through dialogue with elements of popular culture, like Black Metal, youth ministry is reminded of its prophetic function to challenge the powers of this age as it proclaims the monstrosity of the crucified and resurrected Christ.

Review Of Predestination: Biblical And Theological Paths By Matthew Levering, Mickey Mattox

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Afterword, David G. Schultenover

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Today many books appear regarding Vatican II. Yet, only very few of them manage to locate this crucial event in the life of the twentieth century Roman Catholic Church against the broad horizon of both its prehistory and its aftermath. This book does just that. In seven chapters, this volume offers a survey of the evolution of Post-Enlightenment Catholicism, in the period spanning from ca. 1830 to the present, tying together the renewals proposed by the first and the Second Vatican Councils. Each phase in this evolution is discussed from a double angle: on the hand from the viewpoint of …

Contingency And The Giftedness Of Creation: Enacting Grace In A Fractured World, Philip J. Rossi

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.