American Studies Commons^™

The Rise Of Clostridium Difficile In Florida, Owen Bendixsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes diarrhea in hospitalized patients, is on the rise in the United States as well as in other countries. This study was done to determine the extent of the problem in Florida's acute care hospitals. The Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) provided data for patients discharged from Florida's acute care hospitals for the years 1998 through 2004.

This study will focus on changes in the prevalence of Clostridium difficile associated disease (CDAD) over time. The mortality and morbidity of patients that have CDAD will also be examined to show if the disease is increasing …

Naming And Inhibition In Aphasia, Lori R. Bartels-Tobin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lexical retrieval models illustrate both activation and inhibition between concepts, words, and phonemes. When semantic activation spreads from one concept to its related concepts, inhibition is recruited so that competition between related concepts can be overcome and a target production achieved. Persons with aphasia often exhibit difficulty with producing the desired response, which could be the result of inadequate inhibitory processes to overcome response competition.

Inhibitory processing is typically measured using a negative priming task. Twenty participants with aphasia, twenty-five young participants, and twenty age-matched aphasia group controls were recruited for this study. Participants with aphasia completed a picture-naming task, …

The Influence Of Dialect On The Perception Of Final Consonant Voicing, Stacy Nicole Kile

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children at risk for reading problems also have difficulty perceiving critical

differences in speech sounds (Breier et al., 2004; Edwards, Fox, & Rogers, 2003; de-

Gelder & Vroomen, 1998). These children rely more heavily on context than the acoustic

qualities of sound to facilitate word reading. Dialect use, such as African American

English (AAE) may influence literacy development in similar ways. Dialect use has been

shown to affect speech sound processing and can even result in spelling errors (Kohler, et

al., in press). The purpose of this study is to determine if children who speak AAE

process cues indicative of …

Making Sense Of Complex System Failure: The Case Of 9/11, Sandra M. Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks attributed the September 11 attacks on the U.S. homeland to the terrorists' exploitation of "deep institutional failings." These findings are similar to the conclusions of the Presidential Commission investigating the 1986 Challenger accident and the Columbia Accident Investigative Board (2003). Generally Commissions aim to provide the fullest possible account of events contributing to the catastrophe under investigation and to identify lessons learned, but avoid specifying responsibility and accountability. For this reason, various commission reports have been criticized for being abstract and shallow. These criticisms make a valid point. How commissions make sense of failures …

American Odyssey, Bernadette Kafwimbi Cogswell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of the two opening chapters of American Odyssey, a nouveau plantation novel that has its roots in two American fiction traditions---the nineteenth-century plantation novel and the twentieth-century neo-slave narrative. It is 1855 and Charles DeCoeur's only motivation to remain Riverwood's owner and master is that his widowed mother and sickly sister rely on the profits of the estate. Charles chafes under the responsibility and physicality of plantation life, unable to reconcile himself to the role of master of a cotton estate in the forgotten heart of East Florida. Then a female Negro, Hellcat, wanders onto the …

Kauffman-Harary Conjecture For Virtual Knots, Mathew Williamson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we examine Fox colorings of virtual knots, and moves called k-swap moves defined for virtual knot diagrams. The k-swap moves induce a one-to-one correspondence between colorings before and after the move, and can be used to reduce the number of virtual crossings. For the study of colorings, we characterize families of alternating virtual knots to generalize (2, n)-torus knots, alternating pretzel knots, and alternating 2-bridge knots. The k-swap moves are then applied to prove a "virtualization" of the Kauffman-Harary conjecture, originally stated for classical knot diagrams, for the above families of virtual pretzel knot diagrams.

Government Public Relations: A Quantitative Assessment Of Government Public Relations Practitioner Roles And Public Relations Model Usage, Joelle Wiley Castelli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to identify how public relations are practiced in local governments. Traditional literature has stated that the public information model of public relations is the model of public relations practiced in local governments. This study also attempts to determine which roles are most common for lead communicators in municipal organizations governments. Based on Internet survey research methods, research findings indicated that while most practitioners stated they practiced a two-way communications model, they had the most expertise in the public information and press agentry models. The researcher also found that the role most often held by the highest ranking …

The John Muir Newsletter, Spring/Summer 2007, The John Muir Center For Environmental Studies

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

The John Muir University of the Pacific, Stocktoi, CA BER2/3 Sprint; Summer 2< John Muir's World Tour (part V) Lex Chalmers, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Preface by W. R. Swagerty, Director, John Muir Center This past spring, I had the good fortune to travel to New Zealand and Australia through sponsorship of the J. William Fulbright Program of the U.S. State Department. At University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand on the North Island, Dean Daniel Zirker introduced me to Professor Lex Chalmers, a distinguished geographer and researcher on his faculty. It turns out that Professor Chalmers had plans to travel to the United States on family business. After learning my interest in following John Muir's trail from his 1904 visit to New Zealand, Lex agreed to help with this project. In May, Chalmers visited us in Stockton and spent time in the John Muir Papers, clarifying the route and obtaining pertinent transcripts and details from the manuscripts. The document that resulted is his excellent work, not mine. I am indebted to Chalmers and the University of Waikato for the time spent helping the world better understand Muir's unpublished travels in New Zealand from the difficult-to-read notebooks that he kept while traveling abroad, and from Linnie Marsh Wolfe's transcriptions from the 1940s or 1950s. We are planning a more extensive academic publication from this preliminary work and share with you the fifth of six segments in the piece that follows. WRS John Muir's remarkable 'World Tour' began on May 29, 1903 with his departure from New York, and ended almost exactly a year later when he arrived back in San Francisco on May 27,1904. For most of this time Muir maintained a detailed daily journal, commenting on the botany, geomorphology and the patterns of human occupance that he encountered. These journals, closely written in pencil and often illustrated, are held in the Holt-Atherton Collection at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Ca. The collection also holds some of Muir's correspondence written during his travels, and part of the Library collection he established. The journals have attracted scholarly attention, most notably in the transcription work undertaken by Linnie Marsh Wolfe to support her commentaries and 1946 biography of John Muir (Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir). Wolfe's biography, not without its critics, place her at the forefront of commentators on John Muir's contribution to conservation, and her work was recognised by the award of the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Her typescript records of John Muir's journals are an important contribution and they provide the best research source for (Continued on page 6) page 1

Jews John Muir in the New World Proposed Film Documentary with Director Catherine Tatge PRESS RELEASE Source: Global Village Media/PRNewswire/USNewswire New York, July 18, 2007 The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a grant of $80,000 to Global Village Media in support of their new documentary, "John Muir in the New World." The grant will be used during the scripting phase of the project. John Muir is one of the tall trees in environmentalism and western ecological thinking. He was one of the first conservationists …

The Eastern Real Estate Company Of Portland, Maureen Elgersman - Lee (Ed.)

The Griot

No abstract provided.

Family Affairs Newsletter 2007-04-01, Jean Vermette

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Equality News (Spring 2007), Matthew R. Dubois

Equality news / EqualityMaine (2004-2008)

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan

Publications and Research

Introduction to the special issue, "The Sexual Body," edited by Shelly Eversley and Jennifer L. Morgan.

Entitles: Booker T. Washington's Signs Of Play, Susanna Ashton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard & Pulp Studies

Articles:

Editorial Comments (The Dark Man V3n2),by Charles Allen Gramlich [as by Charles Gramlich]

The Influence of Joseph A. Altsheler’s “Young Trailers” Series on Howard’s Pictish Wilderness Fiction, by Robert M. McIlvaine

Mind-forg’d Manacles? Back to School with Robert E. Howard, by Steve Tompkins

Conan the Shakespearean / Hamlet the Barbarian, by Jeffrey Kahan

News (The Dark Man V3n2), by Paul Herman and S. T. Joshi

Letters to the Editor (The Dark Man V3n2), by Jeffrey Kahan

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Mark Finn

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Chris Gruber

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Darrell …

Lynching The White Imagination: Changing The Dynamics Of Lynching And Rewriting The Cult Of True Womanhood In Grimke, Johnson, And Terrell, Melissa L. Antonucci

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite critics'ack and forth argument over the merits, or lack thereof, of a uniquely black theatre experience, black women playwrights, much like their male counterparts, were once wholly invisible to the white community. But what makes their invisibility unique is their absence in the black world and in literary scholarship. Unfortunately, modern scholarship has oftentimes dismissed these exceptionally powerful plays, cataloging them as poorly written and lacking stylistic and formal elements. It was only recently that they were included in a highly male-dominated history of African American theatre and art. The question of their use of sentimentality, however, remains unanswered. …

Jazz On The River By William Howland Kenney (Book Review), Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Jazz has not always been "America's classical music." In the first decades of the twentieth century it was regarded by much of the black and white Establishment as unsettling, provocative, even dangerous - attitudes exacerbated by the social upheaval of the Great Migration around the time of World War I. Enter black riverboat jazz bands to negotiate the color line: to help "white Americans approach in an oblique manner underlying social and cultural changes that were too deep and too heavily laden with pain, guilt, and fear for most citizens to discuss openly" (5). Such is the thesis of Jazz …

Women Of The New Walden: Gender In Sound Culture, Now And Then, Phylis Johnson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Sonic diversity in the midst of wilderness, as original and untamed, can confound and discomfort the novice listener who becomes overwhelmed by its plethora of mysterious languages. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, author of Summer on the Lakes (1844), expressed sensory overload when she was confronted with the sights and sounds of Niagara Falls. Sound permeates our life, from conception, birth, and varied sonic spheres of influence that penetrate our physical space. Sound acknowledges its relevance as a cultural influence within the socialization of the individual. For instance, high-powered car stereos and subwoofers swimming in bass overtones have become associated with masculinity. …

Gestures Toward Cross-Species Reciprocal Relations In Contemporary Poetics, Mary Newell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this essay, I explore some embodied bases of ethical attitudes toward human/ animal exchanges in the texts of three contemporary authors: Mary Oliver, Heller Levinson, and Adrienne Rich. Since other species share with humans varieties of agency, sentience, and purposive activity, I suggest that reciprocity is a fundamental aim in cross-species relations. Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicts the correlation between embodied actions and attitudes, for example, between the hand movement of grasping and an appropriative attitude toward the natural world. His concept of reciprocity, grounded in the experience of one hand touching another, provides a reference for encounters that …

Questioning The Lives Of Kings: American Class Myths, Lana Cook

Inquiry Journal 2007

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Computer-Mediated Communication In Non-Native Speakers’ Acquisition Of Academic Literacy, Rui Cheng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that academic literacy is discipline specific. Students have to learning the ways of communication in order to gain access to the discourse community of the selected discipline through understanding and performing required genres and learning necessary disciplinary knowledge. Scaffolding is important in the process to help students internalize the disciplinary knowledge and improve students' performance on academic papers. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) provides good chances of scaffolding and mediation especially for non-native graduate students who may have lost many opportunities of class participation due to their limited language proficiency or other cultural issues.

In this dissertation, the researcher investigated …

An Unexplored Realm In The Heartland Of The Southern Gulf Olmec: Investigations At El Marquesillo, Veracruz, Mexico, Travis F. Doering

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines El Marquesillo, a settlement in an archaeologically unexplored region of the Southern Gulf Lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico. Evidence suggests the site has been consistently occupied from the Early Formative period (c. 1500 BC) to the present. Thus, this investigation presents an opportunity to re-examine the sociopolitical continuum encompassing the Olmec cultural phenomenon (c. 1150-300 BC), the emergence of which has been used repeatedly as an example of incipient social complexity.

Theorists have portrayed the development of sociopolitical complexity as a mosaic process in which environmental, social, political, economic, ideological, and demographic variables act independently or in combination …

How Individual Values And Trait Boredom Interface With Job Characteristics And Job Boredom In Their Effects On Counterproductive Work Behavior, Kari Bruursema

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among individual values, trait boredom, job boredom, job characteristics, and CWB. Job boredom and trait boredom were expected to be positively related to CWB. Individual values and job characteristics were expected to moderate the relationship between boredom and different types of CWB.

Completed online questionnaires were received from 211 participants, and 112 co-worker matches also submitted online surveys. The Schwartz Value Survey, Job Descriptive Index, Job Boredom Scale, and Boredom Proneness Scale were used to assess independent variables. The Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist measured the dependent variable. Results were analyzed using …

Maximizing Manipulation Capabilities Of Persons With Disabilities Using A Smart 9-Degree-Of-Freedom Wheelchair-Mounted Robotic Arm System, Redwan M. Alqasemi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Physical and cognitive disabilities make it difficult or impossible to perform simple personal or job-related tasks. The primary objective of this research and development effort is to assist persons with physical disabilities to perform activities of daily living (ADL) using a smart 9-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) modular wheelchair-mounted robotic arm system (WMRA).

The combination of the wheelchair's 2-DoF mobility control and the robotic arm's 7-DoF manipulation control in a single control mechanism allows people with disabilities to do many activities of daily living (ADL) tasks that are otherwise hard or impossible to accomplish. Different optimization methods for redundancy resolution are explored and …

The Conundrum Of Women’S Studies As Institutional: New Niches, Undergraduate Concerns, And The Move Towards Contemporary Feminist Theory And Action, Rebecca K. Willman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I address current debates on the perceived lack of contemporary feminist activism and concerns of Women's Studies as existing within university institutions. I propose that Women's Studies programs and departments serve as locations useful for feminists interested in participating in feminist activism in and beyond the university. By viewing Women's Studies programs and departments as contemporary abeyance structures in feminist movements, I revisit the ways in which debates on differences between second and third wave feminisms have contributed to social change. In doing so, I highlight how the feminist movement maintains itself between upsurges in mass-based visible …

The Constructions Of Fay Weldon, Woman Of Letters, Harriet Blymiller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary British novelist Fay Weldon negotiates the postmodern "culture industry" as the self-conscious heir to a traditon of women writers dating back to the Middle Ages. Like her predecessors, Weldon defensively and offensively negotiates ideological constructions of womanhood, including injunctions to chastity, modesty, and silence; prohibitions against formal education for women; disdain for the literary production and commercial success of women writers; and the application of double standards in the critical reception of their works. Modernizing the strategies traditionally deployed by women writers, Weldon engages with the advertising industry and the mass-oriented literature of radio and television, using them to …

Academic Capitalism In The Social Sciences: Faculty Responses To The Entrepreneurial University, Deanna Barcelona Bullard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how faculty in the social sciences experience and respond to academic capitalism. Academic capitalism is about market and market-like activity at the university and professorial efforts to secure external money. This research expands existing literature which has focused on the hard or natural sciences, and other areas more closely aligned with the market.

Thirty-seven qualitative research interviews were conducted between March and July of 2006 with professors of sociology, criminology, economics at the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida. Results reveal academic capitalism in the social sciences is mostly about grant …

Internalized Racism As A Moderator For Stereotype Threat: Effects On Self-Handicapping, Performance, And Cardiovascular Responses In Black Individuals, Nicole Ellis Jagusztyn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationship between internalized racism, stereotype threat, self-handicapping, test performance, and cardiovascular responses in Black individuals. Stereotype threat, or apprehension about confirming a negative stereotype, has been shown to lead to self-handicapping, poor academic performance, as well as increased cardiovascular reactivity. Internalized racism, or the acceptance of negative stereotypes about one's group, is a factor that may moderate these relationships. One-hundred nine (84% female, 16% male) Black undergraduates participated in a laboratory study. Half of the participants were put in a stereotype-threatened condition and the other half were in a neutral …

Queer Identity? Discussing Identity And Appearance In An On-Line “Genderqueer” Community, Sharla N. Alegria

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The relatively new field of Queer Theory creates ways of thinking about people living without binary gender, but does not provide for a research model with which to give context to the material struggles of such people. Through the use of Internet discussion groups, the current research project attempts to examine the challenges that people who identify with the concept "genderqueer" describe facing as they fashion selves in social interactions; a process which inevitably requires consumer goods that typically only allow for heteronormative binary gender. Findings suggest that there are similarities in how respondents came to identify with "genderqueer," but …

The Relationship Between Sleep-Wake Disturbance And Pain In Cancer Patients Admitted To Hospice Home Care, Marjorie Acierno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is evidence of a relationship between sleep-wake disturbances and pain variables in cancer patients. It is hypothesized that pain affects all aspects of sleep patterns. Pain has been known to affect sleep disturbances; however there are different facets of sleep-disturbances and pain that can be evaluated. These variables include pain distress, pain intensity, pain at its worst, relief from pain, sleep distress, how well the patient sleeps, how tired one feels, and drowsiness distress. Several studies identify relationships between sleep-disturbances and pain. This study using secondary analysis was designed to correlate variables related to sleep-wake disturbance and pain in …

Evaluation Of Unknown Foundations, Ronald W. Florkowski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, bridge foundations have been in the spotlight throughout the nation. Bridges built over running water are susceptible to erosion or scour around their foundations. The reduction in load capacity to piers and abutments pose a safety risk to highway motorists. It has become necessary for engineers to examine and monitor these "scour critical" bridges. The difficulty arises with subsurface foundations of which very little is known about their construction. Hence, the methods applied to analyzing "Unknown Foundations" have become a necessary topic of research.

This thesis explores a method to determine foundation lengths. Similar to Sonic Echo …