Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Language Vitality Of Nahuatl In Santiago Tlaxco, Mexico, Grace Gomashie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis assesses the language vitality of Nahuatl (also known as Mexicano) in Santiago Tlaxco, a rural bilingual community in the municipality of Chiconcuautla, located in Puebla, Mexico, in the face of the growing trend of language endangerment for many Indigenous languages. It explores the linguistic use and attitudes of community members, and how they contribute to language maintenance and language shift of Nahuatl. The main research questions are: a) what are the language use patterns of the community? and b) what are the prevailing language attitudes of this Nahuatl-speaking community towards its Indigenous language? Data on the language practices …

Toward A Fluid Cinematic Spectatorship And Desire: Revisiting Laura Mulvey’S Psychoanalytic Film Theories, Taylor Ashton Mcgoey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis project re-evaluates Laura Mulvey’s film theories regarding psychoanalysis and the “male gaze,” first found in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). By re-evaluating the limitations of Mulvey’s use of the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic model this project seeks to understand the desires and processes of identification of cinematic spectators who reject the ideological imperative of the “male gaze”. As many critics have noted, Mulvey’s initial examination of cinema does not account for LGBTQ+ spectators and/or black spectators who occupy looking relations that reject cis-normative and heteronormative white Hollywood cinematic conventions. From this standpoint, we begin the …

Indigenous Land Claims And Reconciliation: The Importance Of Land And Relationship Between Indigenous Nations And The Government Of Canada, Joy S. Spear Chief-Morris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis discusses whether Indigenous land claims settlements signal reconciliation between Indigenous nations and the Government of Canada. Using Indigenous methodologies, anti-oppressional and intersectional lenses, and process tracing, it argues that land claim settlements do not signal reconciliation of the Indigenous-Canadian relationship. This is because the modern land claims settlement process exists as a reiteration of the colonial policies and institutions that proceeded it. It examines the historical treaty process, case law on Aboriginal rights and title, existing documents, and statutes that protect and promote Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood. Lastly, it examines the 2015 Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission as …

“Born Of A Spirit That Knows No Conquering:” Innovation, Contestation, And Representation In The Pcha, 1911-1924., Taylor Mckee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) was a professional North American hockey league that operated from 1911 to 1924. With markets in Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, Seattle, and Portland, the bourgeoning league was a viable competitor to the NHA and offered a distinctive approach to the developing sport. Through innovations and rule changes, the PCHA made significant strides in player safety, in line with the vision of “clean” hockey promoted by the league’s founders, Frank and Lester Patrick. In turn, these innovations were represented through newspaper accounts from the period, which helped promote a modern, scientific, and highly-marketable brand of …

Global Governance And Imperial Entanglements: Competition, Cooperation, And Catastrophe In Anglo-Italian Relations, 1922-1940, Jessi Gilchrist

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study reconsiders the road to war narrative by focusing on cooperation rather than conflict in Anglo-Italian relations. I link international and imperial historical methods in order to examine British and Italian efforts to cooperate over their clashing interests in empire between 1922 and 1940. By comparing six case studies drawn from British and Italian archives, this thesis explains why the two governments pursued cooperation over empire; how imperial methods facilitated or challenged cooperation; and what this tells us about the global order and the norms that governed it during the interwar years.Three case studies highlight imperial spaces where cooperation …

On Polysemy: A Philosophical, Psycholinguistic, And Computational Study, Jiangtian Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most words in natural languages are polysemous, that is they have related but different meanings in different contexts. These polysemous meanings (senses) are marked by their structuredness, flexibility, productivity, and regularity. Previous theories have focused on some of these features but not all of them together. Thus, I propose a new theory of polysemy, which has two components. First, word meaning is actively modulated by broad contexts in a continuous fashion. Second, clustering arises from contextual modulations of a word and is then entrenched in our long term memory to facilitate future production and processing. Hence, polysemous senses are entrenched …

Resonance, A Step Towards A Fluency For Complexity: The Science, Language, And Epistemology Of Gregory Bateson, Won Jeon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis confronts the urgency with which new language and vocabulary is required to move beyond linear assumptions in mainstream science and humanities, as well as global policy making. I examine Gregory Bateson’s body of work in history and philosophy of science, psychiatry and psychotherapy, anthropology, biology and ecology designed to communicate the necessarily interdisciplinary consideration for a nonlinear and recursive investigation of the self, other, and environment. Such intellectual forays cannot be dismissed as non-scientific. I offer definitions and contextualizations of key terms derived from cybernetics, new materialisms, and posthumanism (such as emergence, process, paradox, metaphor, fractality) to speak …

"Dance Like Nobody's Paying": Spotify And Surveillance As The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, T. Andrew Braun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, and its usage of music as a data extraction tool. I position Spotify as a surveillance capitalist firm that puts music at the centre of an enclosed environment designed to condition users’ affective responses and behaviors and reorient production of music. I analyze three features of the platform: a campaign in which Spotify invites users and producers to share the data it collects about them, the arrangement of the platform’s architecture into mood-based playlists, and its penchant for music that is “Chill.” I show how each serves the surveillance …

Music Education In A Liquid Social World: The Nuances Of Teaching With Students Of Immigrant And Refugee Backgrounds, Gabriela Ocádiz Velázquez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated-article dissertation explores the multiple ways in which music teachers, community facilitators, and students engage in music teaching and learning in social contexts prone to change due to human mobility. Drawing upon Bauman’s sociological understanding of modern societies as liquid and the larger implications of processes of human mobility in schools and communities, this research focuses on exploring music education as it happens within an increasingly diversifying Canadian society.

In the first article, a philosophical research study, I conceptualize the notion of coping with discomfort as a form of response possibly experienced by music teachers. Here, I draw from …

The General Artificial Intellect, Ramon S. Diab

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In passages of Marx’s Grundrisse known as the Fragment on Machines, Marx suggested that advanced capitalist development leads to the production of autonomous machines that replace labour-power in the direct production process. Autonomist Marxist interpretations of this text have emphasized that the proliferation of immaterial labour is the historical condition that is leading to a crisis in the measure of value based on labour-time and that will lead to a future communist mode of production. Further, Mario Tronti posited that as capitalist development unfolds, it subsumes both the state and society, a concept known as the ‘social factory thesis’. …