Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Into The Red: A Look Into The Reasons Why Refugees Decide To Flee, Settle Or Migrate To And From Morocco, Fadeelah E. Holivay

Master's Theses

This research paper explores some of the main reasons why refugees and asylum seekers, particularly from sub-Saharan African countries, embark on a journey and decide to settle, flee or migrate to and from Morocco. Because of this phenomenon, Morocco has seen a 96% increase of refugees migrating to the borders of Morocco each year for the past three years. Many say that this astonishing increase of migrants choosing Morocco is due to such factors as: wars breaking out regionally across central African and Middle Eastern countries causing them to flee; Morocco being a culturaly diverse francophone country whose laws and …

Creating Neighborhood In Postwar Buffalo, New York: Transformations Of The West Side, 1950-1980, Caitlin Boyle Moriarty

Theses and Dissertations

This project reconsiders post-World War II neighborhood change by examining how various groups in Buffalo, New York conceptualized, experienced and produced the West Side as a cultural and economic artifact between 1950 and 1980. This approach offers an alternative to conceptualizing neighborhoods as bounded, natural entities and it encourages narratives that complicate the prevailing metaphor of decline in rust belt cities by illuminating other components of postwar neighborhood change than population loss and economic disinvestment. This project uses neighborhood retail as a lens through which to examine how city planners, the West Side Business Men's Club, the Federation of Italian …

The Queer And The Bodily: Explorations Of Power In Women's Visionary Writing In The Book Of Margery Kempe 2014, Jayne Emerson Stacconi

Master's Theses

The provocative Book of Margery Kempe is a seminal text in the history of female authorship. Claiming to be the first written autobiography, The Book serves as a literary representation of womanhood during the late fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries when Margery was writing, and also speaks to circulating medieval discourses of religion, pilgrimage, and sexuality. Participating in medieval women’s visionary writing as a genre, Margery’s visionary power is a tool by which she is able to emancipate herself from the limiting roles of wife and mother. Additionally, by working within the conventions of visionary writing, Margery is able to …

The Sacrality Of The Mountain, Manuel Rivera Espinoza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I explore the conception of the mountain as a "sacred space" based on the definition provided by Mircea Eliade in The Sacred and The Profane and other works. I recognize three major elements in Eliadean sacral spatiality: a) order and orientation b) liminality and c) reality. Using various sources but mainly the oracle bones inscriptions, the Yugong ("Tributes of Yu") of the Shujing ("Book of Documents") and the Shanjing ("Classic of Mountains") of the Shanhaijing ("Classic of Mountains and Seas"), I demonstrate how the three basic components of sacrality are to be found in each of the …

Global Climate Change: The Political Impact Of Global Warming On Developing Countries. The Case Studies Of Egypt And Oman, Eugene Thomas O'Neal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The discourse of climate change has become important in the field of political science, as well as in the policy-making community. Climate change has become a political phenomenon that has and will greatly impact political stability regionally and globally. Using the ecological security theory as a framework, I explored the relationship between climate change and political stability in developing countries.

This study utilizes both qualitative and quantitative analyses to investigate the relationship between climate change and its effects on political volatility in developing countries. Using regression models, the author examined all non-OECD countries (140 countries) and their relationship to political …

No Prejudice Here: Racism, Resistance, And The Struggle For Equality In Denver, 1947-1994, Summer Marie Cherland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study chronicles a story of civil rights that has been left untold until now. Recent scholarship contributing to the history of the "long civil rights movement" has reframed our understanding of civil rights beyond the years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition, it has also demonstrated that civil rights activity occurred in regions other than the South. However, most work on the long civil rights movement demonstrates that activism among blacks began much earlier than the Brown v. Board Supreme Court case and instead, was a part of a longer freedom struggle that, in many ways, …

Mishoonash In Southern New England: Construction And Use Of Dugout Canoes In A Multicultural Context, Jacob M. Orcutt

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the history of New England’s dugout canoes – a history that can be traced from 8500 BCE to the twenty-first century. The historical record and archaeological evidence surrounding dugout canoes suggests that the use of dugout canoes changed significantly over time, and that their form varied considerably in different regions of New England. While historians have claimed that these varied forms represent European and colonial influences, I argue that the Eurcolonial influence on dugouts was much more visible in the way the canoes were used than in the shape the vessels took. In addition to analyzing the …

A Forgotten Community: Archaeological Documentation Of Old St. Joseph, Gulf County, Florida, Christopher N. Hunt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The town of St. Joseph, established in 1835, served as an important deep-water port for receiving and shipping dry goods up the Apalachicola River north along the vast network of navigable inland waterways in southeastern U.S. during the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this town was hit with a yellow fever epidemic and a series of hurricanes that, combined with the infancy of its cotton trade activities, eventually devastated its economy and population. The town disappeared by 1842, only much later to be replaced by modern Port St. Joe (est. 1909), located north of the original settlement. However, St. Joseph's influence …

Imperial Janus: Patterns Of Governance In The Western Borderlands Of The Tsarist Empire, Nicklaus Laverty

Doctoral Dissertations

Why did the Tsarist Empire opt for different governance strategies in each of the territories of the Western Borderlands (here defined as Poland-Lithuania, the Baltic territories, Finland, and Hetman Ukraine)? The existing political science literature tends to reduce such a question to a distinction between direct and indirect rule, usually developing in the context of a Western European maritime empire. This literature falls short of explaining the Tsarist case and requires the addition of intervening variables concerning the role of local elites and leadership choice. Employing an interdisciplinary literature combining sources from political science, sociology and history, this dissertation develops …

Troubled Waters: Security, Economic Development, And The Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands., Kevin Mckenzie

Theses and Dissertations

This project uses a case-study approach to determine the causes of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute between Japan and the People's Republic of China.

Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Preference For Chinese Tas And American Tas In The U.S. Context, Ruochen Li

Open Access Theses

This study researches and compares Chinese undergraduate students' (N=70) perceptions of and preferences for American TAs and Chinese TAs, and identifies factors that play significant roles in influencing Chinese students' perceptions and preferences. Multiple independent variables were measured, including age; gender; years at Purdue; years in the U.S.; GPA; overall TOEFL score; experiences with Chinese TAs; effectiveness of Chinese TAs; effectiveness of American TAs; English ability of Chinese TAs; and native speaker preference, ethnic identity, and level of acculturation, among which ethnic identity and level of acculturation are the major variables the current study aims to examine. Preference for Chinese …

"With The Class-Conscious Workers Under One Roof": Union Halls And Labor Temples In American Working-Class Formation, 1880-1970, Stephen Mcfarland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a historical geography of interior spaces created by labor unions and other working class organizations in the United States between 1880 and 1970. I argue that these spaces-- labor lyceums, labor temples, and union halls-- both reflected and shaped the character of the working class organizations that created them. Drawing on Neil Smith's theories of geographic scale, I spatialize Ira Katznelson's framework for understanding working class formation. I demonstrate that at their best, these labor spaces furthered working class formation at multiple scales, enabling collective action across lines of racial, ethnic, and gender difference, and bridging the …

Politics As A Sphere Of Wealth Accumulation: Cases Of Gilded Age New York, 1855-1888, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines political wealth accumulation in American political development. Scholars have long understood the political system selects for "progressive ambition" for higher office. My research shows that officeseekers have also engaged in "progressive greed" for greater wealth. I compare the career trajectories of four prominent New York political figures during the Gilded Age: William Tweed, Fernando Wood, Roscoe Conkling, and Chester Arthur. Using correspondence, census, tax and land records, government reports, investigations, and newspaper coverage, I explain why each political figure chose to either seize or pass up opportunities for political wealth accumulation. I also examine the principal sources …

The Tea Party Movement As A Modern Incarnation Of Nativism In The United States And Its Role In American Electoral Politics, 2009-2014, Albert Choi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Tea Party movement has been a keyword in American politics since its inception in 2009. Widely regarded as having helped the Republican Party to engineer a comeback during the elections of 2010, the Tea Party movement offered the American public a Republican agenda that was distinguishable from the Bush era by limiting its talking points to issues such as fiscal discipline and budget deficit. However, fact that the image of Republicans changed because of the Tea Party presence and the Republican focus on fiscal issues leaves whether the Republican agenda as influenced by Tea Partiers changed much in substance …

The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst The Ruins And Beyond In Testimony, Literature And Film, Aviva Atlani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

ABSTRACT

Jewish humour sheds a crude light on the social, political, and historical realities of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, contentiously, doses of levity during this period were very much a reality, and even a psychological necessity. The purpose of my thesis is to explore the historical, social, and political ramifications of such laughter provoking manifestations. In doing so, the nuances are highlighted which are found within the laughter of the ghettos, the transit camps, and the concentration camps. Furthermore, some of these jokes, and their subsequent variations, reappear within the discourse of children of survivors. The dissertation explores how some of …

From Horse To Electric Power At The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: Archaeology And The Narrative Of Technological Change, Miles Shugar

Graduate Masters Theses

The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, was first excavated in the late 1970s by staff of the Museum of Afro American History. Researchers recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts related to the site's life as a horsecar street railway station and carriage manufacturer from 1860 to 1891, its subsequent conversion into an electric street railway until around 1920, and finally its modern use as an automobile garage. Using the framework of behavioral archaeology, this project uses GIS-based spatial methods and newly collected documentary evidence to reexamine the site's assemblage of horse accoutrements and carriage manufacturing byproducts. Artifact distribution maps …

Altered Lives, Altered Environments: Creating Home At Manzanar Relocation Center, 1942-1945, Laura W. Ng

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to understand how individuals exiled from their homes due to racial prejudice cope with institutional confinement. Specifically, this study focuses on the World War II mass incarceration of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States after Japan's attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbor. Under the guise of national security and without due process, the United States government forcibly removed over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and imprisoned them in camps spread throughout the country. This thesis examines institutional confinement at one Japanese American carceral site: an incarceration camp …

Disturbed But Not Destroyed: New Perspectives On Urban Archaeology And Class In 19th Century Lowell, Massachusetts, Katelyn M. Coughlan

Graduate Masters Theses

Through the artifacts from the Jackson Appleton Middlesex Urban Revitalization and Devolvement Project (hereafter JAM) located in Lowell, MA, this research explores social class in nineteenth-century boardinghouses. This thesis is a two-part study. First, through statistical analysis, research recovers interpretable data from urban archaeological contexts subject to disturbance. Pinpointing intra-site similarities between artifacts recovered from intact and disturbed contexts, data show that artifacts recovered from disturbed and intact contexts in urban environments are not as dissimilar as previously believed. In the second phase using both intact and disturbed JAM contexts, the analysis of four boardinghouse features highlights two distinct patterns …

Final Rest At The Hilltop Sanctuary: The Community Of Mount Gilead Ame Church, Meagan M. Ratini

Graduate Masters Theses

The Mount Gilead AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, perched on a mountain in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, has been a focal point of African American heritage in the area for over a hundred and seventy-five years. Though the second church building, dated to 1852, is still standing with its cemetery beside it, very little about its history has been thoroughly explored. Oral histories link the church with the Underground Railroad, a highly clandestine operation--yet the church itself was built of stone and advertised its location during the height of the movement of self-emancipated people out of the South. While it is said …

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

The Cable Network In An Era Of Digital Media: Bravo And The Constraints Of Consumer Citizenship, Alison D. Brzenchek

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation takes a historiographical approach to the evolution of cable television over thirty years. Case analysis of archival data is used to trace the trajectory of the Bravo cable network from 1980 through 2010. My dissertation is a vital contribution to critical cultural studies, feminist studies, citizenship studies, and media history because it historicizes the role branding, commodification, and convergence played in Bravo’s evolution from a highbrow arts programmer guided by bourgeois consumer citizenship, to a affluent lifestyle network guided by nouveau riche consumer citizenship. My combination of production studies and political economic analysis gives visibility to the interpenetrating …

The City Of Minas: The Founding Of Belo Horizonte, Brazil And Modernity In The First Republic, 1889-1897, Daniel Lee Mcdonald

Masters Theses

The foundation of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais in 1897 represents a pivotal moment in urban planning and the search for modernity in Brazil. This thesis argues that the decision to move the capital of Minas Gerais at the outset of the First Republic and the designing of the new city encompassed an evolving vision of modernity that helped establish the planned city as a means to transport Brazil into the future. It also situates the effort to build Belo Horizonte within the wider theoretical discourse on modernity and the development of urban spaces in Brazil. The …

Robber Barons And Humbuggers: The Rise Of Philanthropic Museums In Nineteenth-Century New York, Meaghan O'Connor

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

New York City's most recognizable museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the support of wealthy benefactors. At the same time, social reformers, mostly Protestant and middle or upper-class, were combating the vice and poverty that they saw in the diversifying city with a moralizing rhetoric of character building. This paper will show that these two movements, the rise of Philanthropic Museums and the Social Reform movement were connected and that the large temple-like museums that thrive to this day …

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

City2 Buffalo: A Smartphone App Designed To Establish A Mobile Museum Without Walls, Exhibiting The Living City Of Buffalo, Ny And Its Rich History And Environment, With A Purpose To Inform And Inspire All Toward Global Cultural Awareness And Civic Engagement, In Order To Collectively Create A Better Future., Deborah L. Russell

Museum Studies Theses

ABSTRACT OF THESIS

City² Buffalo:

a smartphone app designed to establish a mobile museum without walls, exhibiting the living city of Buffalo, NY and its rich history and environment, with a purpose to inform and inspire all toward global cultural awareness and civic engagement, in order to collectively create a better future.

The present environment, including the technological capabilities inspired by the Information Revolution, requires American museums to reconsider their traditional practices. American history museums are specially challenged to address future possibilities and difficulties resulting from social, economic and demographic change. This paper proposes a new type of history …

Tempo And Mode Of Domestication During The Neolithic Revolution: Evidence From Dental Mesowear And Microwear Of Sheep, Melissa Zolnierz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Neolithic Revolution marked a dramatic change in human subsistence practices. In order to explain this change, we must understand the motive forces behind it. Researchers have proposed many different stimuli, with most theories invoking environmental dynamics, human population density increases beyond environmental carrying capacity, and the natural outgrowth of human and plant/animal interactions. However, unanswered questions remain concerning the mechanics of animal domestication. Traditional studies of changing faunal morphology and skeletal population profiles offer some clues, but such research has had limited success identifying stages intermediate between wild and domesticated forms, which makes it difficult to discern initial attempts …

Historiographical And Archaeological Study Of The M.S. Thomson Collection At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Sara T. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a historiographical and archaeological study of artifacts collected by avocational archaeologist M.S. Thomson, focusing on sites in and near the Sheboygan Marsh, Wisconsin. Evidence from this indicates continuous occupation beginning as early as 12,000 years ago. The history of the acquisition of the collection by the Milwaukee Public Museum is summarized and a comprehensive description of the various kinds of materials in the collection is provided. The locations of sites where Thomson collected are mapped and then compared to other known collectors' assemblages from the area. These other known sites were documented as part of the Great …

The Effects Of The Nat Turner Slave Revolt On The Health And Welfare Of 19th-Century Slaves In Southeastern Virginia, Jeffrey Clifford Auerbach

Master's Theses

The Nat Turner Slave Revolt stands as a major turning point in the history of American slavery and represents a fundamental shift in the master slave relationship. This event shattered the previous paternalistic view and caused a fundamental reorganization of slave life. Included in this reorganization was a shift in the subsistence practice, moving away from morenutritious food grown by the slaves themselves to poor quality rations provided by the masters. This change in subsistence practices dealt a serious blow to the nutritional health of those living in the area surrounding the revolt.

By examining stature recorded in the County …

The Responses Of The Roman Imperial Government To Natural Disasters 29 Bce-180 Ce, Michael Timothy Mccoy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the practice of imperial disaster relief between 29 BCE and 180 CE. It focuses upon both the process of disaster aid delineating how Roman emperors were petitioned for assistance, the forms disaster relief took, and the political motives individual emperors had for dispensing disaster aid. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the topic. Chapter 2 outlines the scope of the study as well as the examples used to establish disaster relief in context. Chapter 3 gives an overview of euergetism and also discusses two cases of disaster assistance that pre-date the reign of Augustus. Chapter 4 …