Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons^™

“9/11 And The Collapse Of The American Dream: Imbolo Mbue’S Behold The Dreamers”, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

Behold the Dreamers follows a Cameroonian couple who, as newcomers to America, harbor dreams of success unavailable to them back home. Undocumented immigration, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the thinly veiled racism of an avowedly "post-racial" culture converge in this new generation of immigrants' painful encounter with the American dream. I consider the ways Mbue's novel shares themes with a "second wave" of post- 9/11 literature—first, in centering the disillusionment of a protagonist aspiring to the American dream; next, in its representation of New York as a space haunted by 9/11, but also of resistance to the …

An Experiential Analysis Of Job Site Safety: Delineating Between Positive Safety Culture And Excessive Safety, Steven Tighe

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In general industry and in construction many safety requirements are mandated on job sites and in facilities. Many requirements move past simple compliance and enter the realm of cultural safety. This high level of cultural safety is what is typically the level most safety professionals strive for in any company. The balance is tipped to excessive when we move past the cultural safety into redundant or multi layers of requirements that affect production rates and have no actual value to safety but have the appearance of safety. This research looked into a large construction project that had multiple layers of …

Adoption Of Bonded-Cellular Technology, Gregory Edward Phipps

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzed four determinant factors attributed to the acceptance of Bonded Cellular (BC) technology and applies the tenants of Diffusion of Innovation and Technology Acceptance Models. BC “bonds” available cellular channels and transmits a multiplexed signal to a broadcaster. This study will advance the understanding of factors that may impact the acceptance of BC at the management level. Research Questions 1. Can behavioral intention (BI) to adopt BC tools be predicted by using an independent variable representing Perceived Ease-Of-Use (PEOU)? 2. Can behavioral intention (BI) to adopt BC tools be predicted by using an independent variable representing Perceived Usefulness …

Leveraging Machine Learning To Identify Quality Issues In The Medicaid Claim Adjudication Process, Cyrus Hoseini

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Medicaid is the largest health insurance in the U.S. It provides health coverage to over 68 million individuals, costs the nation over $600 billion a year, and subject to improper payments (fraud, waste, and abuse) or inaccurate payments (claim processed erroneously). Medicaid programs partially use Fee-For-Services (FFS) to provide coverage to beneficiaries by adjudicating claims and leveraging traditional inferential statistics to verify the quality of adjudicated claims. These quality methods only provide an interval estimate of the quality errors and are incapable of detecting most claim adjudication errors, potentially millions of dollar opportunity costs. This dissertation studied a method of …

Mitigating Black Claustrophobia: Space, Trauma, And Healing Modalities In The Postcolonial Narrative., Saleema Mustafa Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the space or spaces of blackness and the black body in the United States. This nation was shaped by the institution of slavery, and its greatest legacy is the trauma that still resonates in social structures and spaces complicating the lived experiences of many. The various responses to these traumas are documented in literary form by authors who serve as cultural witnesses. The narratives featured in this research project, collectively and individually, offer a voice to the traumatic plight of individuals in the U.S. who struggle to contemplate and rectify the traumas of this nation’s past. This …

“Fetch M’Dear”: Healers, Midwives, Witches, And Conjuring Women In Select Ya And Toni Morrison Novels, Diane Mallett-Birkitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accusations and persecution of witchcraft have been embedded in global culture for centuries. For as long as these persecutions have occurred, women have found themselves accused most frequently. Older women with herbal knowledge were often called on to assist with childbirth or termination of pregnancies and this “secret knowledge” often led them to be suspected of supernatural abilities, often of a satanic nature. Intrigued by these wise women who appeared to have mysterious powers and a penchant for arousing the ire of men in the legal, medical, and religious communities, I began to notice their frequent appearance in novels. Does …

Bodily Evidence: Racism, Slavery, And Maternal Power In The Novels Of Toni Morrison, Jonathan Garren

South Carolina Libraries

Jonathan Garren reviews Bodily Evidence: Racism, Slavery, and Maternal Power in the Novels of Toni Morrison by Geneva Cobb Moore.

The Chronology Of Harlem, Danielle Carr

Open Educational Resources

this course covers the chronology of harlem and the building of freshman composition genres for the high school student

A Brief Genealogy Of White Women's Reform Literature: Uncle Tom's Cabin To American Dirt, Benjamin "Josh" Doty

American Dirt

A presentation given by Benjamin "Josh" Doty as part of a discussion on the book American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.

The Controversy Of American Dirt, Margaret Cantú-Sánchez

American Dirt

This presentation talks about the current criticism and controversy surrounding the book American Dirt. The presentation includes information on panelists and questions to consider while reading the text.

Panelist: Benjamin "Josh" Doty; Diane Gonzales Bertrand; Diane Duesterhoeft, Alex Salinas, Cathy Whitlow

American Dirt - Event Flier, St. Mary's University

American Dirt

This flier advertises a presentation held on September 30th, 2020 discussing the controversial text, American Dirt and the problem of Latinx and Black representation in literature and media.

Representations Of Hustling Women: The Figure Of The Black Sex Worker In Ann Petry’S The Street And Louise Meriwether’S Daddy Was A Number Runner, Deborah L. Uzurin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis provides a close reading of Ann Petry’s The Street (1946) and Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970) by analyzing how these two black women authors wrote about sex work and black women sex workers in their novels. Black women writers in the mid-twentieth century were reluctant to write about black women’s sexuality as a result of discourses of racial uplift that rejected the white supremacist stereotype of the hypersexual black woman. While not the focus of their novels, the inclusion of sex workers in their fictional narratives provide a complicated representation of a particular form of …

Eating The Heart Of Weetigo World: Decolonial Imaginaries In The Stories Of Louise Erdrich And Tomson Highway, Rebecca Lynne Fullan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation asks what the decolonial possibilities of fiction are in the context of the settler colonial imaginaries particular to the United States and Canada. The ongoing process of settler colonialism demands various forms of conversion from Indigenous people: ecological/land based, religious, educational, legal, familial, but the construct of “conversion” obscures Indigenous worldviews, and indeed worlds, which function according to different principles. I interpret Erdrich and Highway's work in the context of Anishinaabe and Cree narratives and story-structures. These offer examples of what can constitute broader decolonial imaginaries, through which perception and creation of other, more liveable worlds is possible. …

Relationship Counseling For The U.S.: Understanding White America's Role In Asian American Experiences, Alison N. Lawrence

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

This paper explores the relationship between White Americans and Asian Americans in an effort to discover the root of the difficulties that first and second generation Asian Americans experience while attempting to integrate into American society. Through an analysis of perspectives from Asian American literature as well as historical and current events, it highlights the racist systems that are ingrained in our everyday lives, continuously reminding Asian Americans that they are out of place in their own country. It concludes with a discussion of White America's necessary role in dismantling these systems, and offers strategies to create a more welcoming …

Faulknerian Echoes And The Grotesque In Mccarthy’S The Orchard Keeper, William Haynes

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Faulknerian Echoes and the Grotesque in McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper (August 2020)

William Leland Haynes, B. A., Texas A&M International University

Chair of Committee: Dr. Manuel Broncano

This thesis is an exploration of Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner’s craft through a focus on their works The Orchard Keeper and “Barn Burning.” This analysis charts the two dialoguing or conversing with each other across times through the art of their writings.

The basis of this project examines a key phrase from “Barn Burning,” where the problem of doing the right thing creates a conflict of identity within the story’s young …

Lessons From Hybridity: A Look Into The Coupling Of Image And Text In Karen Tei Yamashita’S Letters To Memory, Claudia Rankine’S Citizen: An American Lyric, And Ilya Kaminsky’S Deaf Republic, Elizabeth Chen

English (MA) Theses

The spoken and written word has always been a platform for voices to be heard, but being heard is not always enough. This thesis focuses on the use of hybrid forms in recent publications that address this issue, placing images alongside the written word, letting readers also personally visualize and interpret a perspective different from their own. Specifically, it will look into three examples of hybrid literary works: the placement of photographs beside epistolary writing in Karen Tei Yamashita‘s Letters to Memory (2017), the blend of visual art and lyric prose poetryfound in Citizen: An American Lyric(2014) by Claudia Rankine, …

The Impact Of Occupational Self-Efficacy On Job Performance, Kaeley A. Tener

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From business-related literature, the occupational-self efficacy (OSE) theory has been used to explain employee confidence, motivation, success, or lack of success when used in conjunction with measurable training or evaluation. The presence and effects of OSE have been seen in various occupational sectors and industries. For Human Resources practitioners, utilizing the concepts of OSE in the workforce is more than just training or communication. The present study analyzed the presence and effects of OSE on an online student population at a technical college in a Midwestern University. The results from frequency, correlation, and cross-tabulation tests reveal that levels of OSE …

A Quantitative Study Of Transformational Leadership And Safety Incidence In A Unionized Public Utility, Ronald D. Schoff

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Worker Safety is an area of high focus. Costs and impacts associated with incidents of workplace injury or fatality can have powerful effects on the organization. Workplace leadership style studies have shown statistically significant relationships between leadership style and rates of OSHA incidence and severity. One such example is transformational leadership. Studies have been completed in various industries, including high hazard industries that confirm this positive relationship. Organized labor offers many benefits of value to the employment sector. Such benefits as higher wages and better workplace safety practices contribute to society in economic and health related ways, among others. Transformational …

Retaining Moroccan Millennials To The Workplace, Omaima Hajjami

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this present study is to understand the factors that influence Moroccan millennial employees to stay at or to leave their organizations. To reach this purpose, the study followed a qualitative phenomenological research design, using interviews as a data collection type. Interviews were conducted with ten Moroccan millennials who have worked or still work in a private organization based in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco. Findings of this study discovered five factors that influenced Moroccan millennials to stay, including links with co-workers, good leadership style, responsibilities and tasks, training opportunities, and career advancement. Additionally, five factors were …

Technology Attributes, Organizational Learning Attributes, Service Attributes, And Electronic Health Record Implementation Success, Anuradha Rangarajan

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a technology innovation which has the potential to offer valuable benefits to the healthcare industry such as improved quality of patient care and safety, optimization of healthcare workflow processes and availability of electronic data for clinical research. The implementation success of EHR is therefore significant to the healthcare industry in the United States and around the world. Prior studies in research literature have considered the impact of technology attributes, organizational learning attributes, and service attributes on information technology implementations in various other domains based on theories such as Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of …

Creating New Suns: Early Examples Of Afrofuturist Literature, Makeba Lavan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last twenty years, specifically with the summer 2002 issue of Social Text edited by Dr. Alondra Nelson, Afrofuturism has become a serious focus for academic inquiry. For people familiar with the term, Afrofuturism is presented as a movement borne of our contemporary moment. However, this dissertation explores the ways in which Afrofuturism is actually a cornerstone for both African American literature and the struggle for civil/human rights. I do this by exploring the following questions: How does the enslavement of African/ African Americans and its aftermath play out in early African American literature? How do African Americans writers …

Their Eyes Were Watching A Goddess: Zora Neale Hurston's Vodou Subtext, Laura R. Sheffler

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Written in Haiti but set in Florida, Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God makes rich use of Haitian religious traditions to empower African American women. Vodou, the religion of the slaves, was both a religious act and a political one in Haiti. African slaves continued to find power in the evocation of their gods to defy the colonial powers. Hurston taps into the subverted powers of the Vodou pantheon and rituals to speak to her American audience, linking the physical rebellions of the earthly world with the spiritual world. One voice of Hurston's double narrative speaks to …

The Rise Of Totalitarianism, Colonial Mimicry, And Gender And Sexuality In The Twentieth Century English Literature, Shahin Hossain

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Shahin Hossain provides an alternative reading of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable.

Front Matter, Toyon Literary Magazine

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Managing The Wear Of Heavy Construction Equipment Steel Track Undercarriage By Soil Sand Content, Frederick Ashburn Rich

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heavy construction equipment owners and managers have few predictive tools that can estimate wear rate of undercarriage track propulsion systems working in various soil types and changing operational conditions. Managing the timely maintenance of these track systems is critical for they represent over half of the non-fuel operating cost of the equipment fleet. Understanding the major influencing factors that impact undercarriage system wear rate can help determine the most economical time to stop a machine for track maintenance thus positively impacting the equipment’s return on investment (ROI). This research analyzed the population of track type dozers in the eastern half …

A Study Of Quality Requirement Conveyance For Assignments In Technology And Engineering Master’S Degree Programs, Heather J. Mccain

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quality requirements are not easy to define. In higher education, defining quality requirements and communicating those requirements to students may be accomplished through a variety of mechanisms. Students still may not know what it takes to get a good grade on an assignment and may have to wait for an instructor to clarify the assignment. This study was conducted because students and instructors may have different opinions as to which forms of feedforward and what technology are best to convey assignment requirements. The purpose of this study was to determine effective feedforward mechanisms as well as the technology used to …

A Qualitative Study Of Information Technology Project Portfolio Management In Higher Education, L. Andy Miller

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to understand the variables, processes, organizational structures, and governance structures that are important and/or that support higher education decision makers in their selection and prioritization of information technology (IT) projects into their universities’ portfolios. IT project portfolio management (PPM) is comprised of many different activities, and the selection and prioritization of projects are just two interconnected activities amongst many. Research has suggested that these PPM activities are both important and beneficial; but there is a dearth of research on the subject specifically within higher education IT environments, and some higher education organizations struggle in this area. …

The Pen As Your Sword: Writing Through The Lens Of Depression, Chris Lownie

English

Tragedy is one of writing’s earliest genres, and yet, why do we involve ourselves in the subject and write our own grief for the rest of the world? This thesis explores the act of tackling the subjects of mental illness and bereavement through the use of memoir, and simultaneously to analyze the use of such subject matter in contemporary fiction. Through creating a memoir of my own charting my journey through mental illness, familial death, and suicide, and analyzing the memoirs and works of those who have been through comparable experience, this thesis illuminates how grief is depicted in the …

Implementing Lean Six Sigma Principles In The Automotive Collision Repair Industry: A Three Case Study Analysis, Matthew A. Houseworth

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research provides the automotive collision industry empirical evidence of the effects of Lean-for-Collision Training and Development Initiatives facilitated by a targeted sample of three automotive collision repair centers. Through formal interview and review of artifacts, the findings showcased in this study are in terms of automotive collision industry metrics; a balance in cost, quality, and service delivery, specifically, vehicle cycle-time, vehicle touch-time, employee turnover, and the Return-on-Investment (ROI) of their Lean training. In addition, this research provides automotive collision centers with critical knowledge and understanding of how to successfully navigate and progress through the Framework for Six Sigma Implementation …

The Effects Of Bioinspired Infill Designs And Density On The Compressive Strength Of Parts Produced By Additive Manufacturing Via Fused Deposition Modeling, Joseph D. Long

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current state of additive manufacturing (AM) is still primarily used for prototyping and modeling. However, with the increase in available materials and more advanced machines, AM is beginning to become a production process in which ready-to-ship products are being manufactured. This makes it all the more important to effectively and efficiently use the material in AM machines. One of the ways that material usage can be improved upon is more efficiently structuring the infill material that is used. This dissertation reports on the testing and statistical analysis of the compressive modulus of elasticity, the compressive proportional limit, and the …