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Title: "Todo por mis hijos" (everything for my children) : exploring the parenting experiences and needs of Guatemalan mothers
Creator: Escobar-Chew, Ana Rocio
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Guatemalan women are exposed to various health and mental health disparities due to the scarcity of appropriate interventions aimed at responding to their life experiences and specific parenting needs. This investigation had two major goals: (a) To understand the life experiences of a group of Guatemalan mothers, particularly as it refers to being a woman in the Guatemalan context, and (b) to identify the participants' parenting experiences and needs. A series of focus groups were implemented...
Show moreGuatemalan women are exposed to various health and mental health disparities due to the scarcity of appropriate interventions aimed at responding to their life experiences and specific parenting needs. This investigation had two major goals: (a) To understand the life experiences of a group of Guatemalan mothers, particularly as it refers to being a woman in the Guatemalan context, and (b) to identify the participants' parenting experiences and needs. A series of focus groups were implemented with a total of 30 low-income Guatemalan mothers. Findings from this investigation clearly describe the multiple challenges that Guatemalan mothers experience in their daily lives, which also impact their parenting practices. Moreover, data show relevant individual and contextual variables associated with the participants' extraordinary sense of resilience. Finally, research findings describe the participants' high desire to participate in interventions aimed at improving their quality of life and parenting skills. This investigation constitutes the foundation of a long-term program of research aimed at culturally adapting and disseminating mental health and parenting interventions responsive to Guatemalan mothers and their families.
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Title: "To the editor" : ideological themes expressed by individualist and collectivist newspaper letter writers
Creator: Fox, Dennis Roy
Date: 1985
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "To find shelter she knows not where" : freedom, movement, and gendered violence among free people of color in Natchez, Mississippi, 1779-1865
Creator: Ribianszky, Nicole S.
Date: 2011
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This thesis explicates how freedom, movement, and violence were inextricably linked for free people of color in Natchez, Mississippi from 1779-1865. It considers the relevance that violence or the implicit threat of it--in the form of sexual exploitation, re-enslavement, kidnapping, deportment, poverty, and racial discrimination--exerted on this population. This work centers itself within the field of violence studies.

Title: "To better serve God and to save my soul" : marriage, gender & honor in Spanish New Mexico, 1681-1730
Creator: Gonzalez, Jennifer de la Coromoto
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Marriage in New Mexico, and indeed in all of colonial Spanish America, was significantly influenced by Spanish ideals of faith, honor, virtue and race. While it has long been argued that such ideals were handed down to the American colonies from the Iberian Peninsula unaltered, more recent scholarship asserts that the honor code, rather than a monolithic concept to be either accepted or rejected, was contextually determined and significantly influenced by socio-economic milieus and geo...
Show moreMarriage in New Mexico, and indeed in all of colonial Spanish America, was significantly influenced by Spanish ideals of faith, honor, virtue and race. While it has long been argued that such ideals were handed down to the American colonies from the Iberian Peninsula unaltered, more recent scholarship asserts that the honor code, rather than a monolithic concept to be either accepted or rejected, was contextually determined and significantly influenced by socio-economic milieus and geo-political circumstances. The contingent nature of the honor code and its influence on the institution of marriage clearly emerges in an investigation of colonial New Mexico, a region that for its peripheral position in the Viceroyalty of New Spain has suffered from a lack of deep historical analysis.Using prenuptial investigations, prenuptial disputes and deflowerment cases from the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe conducted between 1681 and 1730, as well as administrative records from the Archivo General de Indias, I challenge current assumptions regarding what constituted an appropriate marriage partner in this remote/distant area of the Spanish Borderlands. The "voices" I capture from these investigations allow me to analyze concerns regarding free will, sexuality, legitimacy, honor, and race, and how these informed marriage choice in colonial New Mexico fifty years after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Moreover, by examining the mechanisms Spanish colonists used to contract their preferred marriages-sometimes despite familial opposition-I challenge current assumptions regarding the importance of free will, what constituted an appropriate marriage partner in this remote area of the Spanish Empire, and detail the ways the inherent flexibility of the sistema de castas was manipulated in this region to buttress the cultural hegemony of the Spanish Empire.
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Title: "To Be Termed Men" : Women's Representations of Men and Masculinity in Early Modern England
Creator: Bartholomew, Janet Lynn
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: As social gender dynamics require all sexes to define, critique, and police the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, the definition of “man” in early modern England remains incomplete if only men’s writing is consulted; women’s writing, therefore, is essential to our understanding of early modern definitions of manliness and manhood. To isolate men as a subject, a survey of writing by nine English women—Margaret Roper, Anne Clifford, Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Grymeston,...
Show moreAs social gender dynamics require all sexes to define, critique, and police the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, the definition of “man” in early modern England remains incomplete if only men’s writing is consulted; women’s writing, therefore, is essential to our understanding of early modern definitions of manliness and manhood. To isolate men as a subject, a survey of writing by nine English women—Margaret Roper, Anne Clifford, Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Grymeston, Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Jocelin, Rachel Speght, and Aemilia Lanyer—spanning from 1557 to 1676 was conducted across multiple genres such as letters, autobiographical writings, closet dramas, mothers’ advice manuals, poetry, and polemical tracts. By organizing the subject of men and masculinity through the lens of a woman’s experiences of patriarchy throughout her life, male experience was thus decentralized, ultimately placing an emphasis on women’s relationship with men throughout her life-cycle: daughters and fathers, wives and husbands, mothers and sons, and female citizens and larger patriarchal structures within the community. The results of the study indicate that women were both validating some manly characteristics defined by the dominant male-authored discourses, such as men being patriarchal heads of households in companionate and affectionate relationships toward their wives, as well as rejecting some dominant tropes as markers of manliness, such as martial bravery generally, and specific practices such dueling. Thus women were active participants—rather than passive recipients—in the discursive and cultural constructions of masculinity, critiquing, and policing of early modern definitions of men and manliness, as men were navigating their own struggle between masculine codes of moderation and dominance, evident in male writings.
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Title: "Thou shalt laughen al thy fille" : the comic body in medieval English and Scottish literature and culture
Creator: George, Michael W.
Date: 2000
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "This most democratic province of the republic of letters" : autobiography and periodical publishing in turn-of-the-century America
Creator: Dykema-VanderArk, Anthony M.
Date: 1998
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "This land is good for this animal" : a methodology to see the knowledge dynamics communicated among Sardo-Modicana breeders in a time of scientific uncertainty and technological probabilities
Creator: Vagnetti, Cynthia
Date: 2012
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: For this dissertation, I designed and conducted qualitative research adhering to an ethnographic approach that builds on the notion of culture as narrative. This study will contribute to the growing literature addressing how visual data can be applied in narrative inquiry. One of the challenges for researchers and practitioners in rural development is getting at sensory or embodied knowledge so that it can be made conscious and represented through language. Interdisciplinary investigations...
Show moreFor this dissertation, I designed and conducted qualitative research adhering to an ethnographic approach that builds on the notion of culture as narrative. This study will contribute to the growing literature addressing how visual data can be applied in narrative inquiry. One of the challenges for researchers and practitioners in rural development is getting at sensory or embodied knowledge so that it can be made conscious and represented through language. Interdisciplinary investigations that align rural conservation studies with language-based fields are gaining interest among policy makers and funding institutions. This dissertation provides evidence that a documentary video toolkit enlarges an emic perspective of situated practices, grounded in local knowledge, that necessarily serves the interests of scientific research.Specifically when focusing through the lens of a camera, attention can be directed towards tacit knowledge or specifically, "the practices that exists in people's hands and in their actions." For this dissertation, I am seeking the knowledge dynamics communicated among Sardo-Modicana breeders, whose livelihood depends on the well-being of this rare and endangeredbreed of cattle. From this study, a narrative account was crafted from the stories of six individuals that draw from a pool of knowledge that has been passed down over generations and has remained stable for nearly 150 years. A burgeoning market economy for grain was the exigency leading to innovation: the Sardo-Modicana was bred for traction in the 1880s, to cultivate wheat and carry it to the market-place. Today, men still draw the cow's milk by hand, while the women continue to produce an artisanal cheese for family and local consumption. The traditional production system maintained through intergenerational animal husbandry practices became the source of innovation for the breeders in the 21st century.In 2001 a "code of practice" indicating a formal discipline specifying new fattening procedures how the animal was drawn up in the document, "The Discipline of Production for the Protected Geographic Indicator (I.G.P. in Italian): Il Bue Rosso Del Montiferru." While this document acts as a network of communication that makes affordances for both "farmer know-how" and the "schooled knowledge" by technical or scientific experts, it necessarilyacts on the age-old livelihood practices of the Sardo-Modicana breeders. The protected geographical indications (P.G.I. in English)" is intended to fulfill the goal to conserve and to support traditional resources and protect farmers' rights and their impact on the preservation of indigenous species and traditional and local knowledge. This is a story of how each of thebreeders make sense of their world as they attempt to maintain or change cultural patterns, during a time of rapid changes in agriculture, the environment and market-driven demands.
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Title: "They wasn't makin' my kinda music" : hip-hop, schooling, and music education
Creator: Kruse, Adam J.
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: With the ambition of informing place consciousness in music education by better understanding the social contexts of hip-hop music education and illuminating potential applications of hip-hop to school music settings, the purpose of this research is to explore the sociocultural aspects of hip-hop musicians' experiences in music education and music schooling. In particular, this study is informed by the following questions:1. How do sociocultural contexts (particularly issues of race, space,...
Show moreWith the ambition of informing place consciousness in music education by better understanding the social contexts of hip-hop music education and illuminating potential applications of hip-hop to school music settings, the purpose of this research is to explore the sociocultural aspects of hip-hop musicians' experiences in music education and music schooling. In particular, this study is informed by the following questions:1. How do sociocultural contexts (particularly issues of race, space, place, and class) impact hip-hop musicians and their music?2. What are hip-hop musicians' perceptions of school and schooling?3. Where, when, how, and with whom do hip-hop musicians develop and explore their musical skills and understandings?The use of an emergent design in this work allowed for the application of ethnographic techniques within the framework of a multiple case study. One case is an amateur hip-hop musician named Terrence (pseudonym), and the other is myself (previously inexperienced as a hip-hop musician) acting as participant observer.By placing Terrence and myself within our various contexts and exploring these contexts' influences on our roles as hip-hop musicians, it is possible to understand better who we are, where and when our musical experiences exist(ed), and the complex relationships between our contexts, our experiences, and our perceptions. Employingboth authenticity and identity as dynamic and performative concepts, findings demonstrate that these elements can have an important impact on musical experiences and perceptions.My history as a professional educator and Terrence's perspective as a high school dropout offer a valuable contrast of beliefs, values, and assumptions about school and education. Exploring Terrence's experiences with and perceptions of school provide additional material for placing him as a musician and learner and also allow for a criticalinvestigation of my own perspectives. Recognizing my privileged and assumption-laden perspectives offers valuable layers of nuance toward better understanding the relationships between schools, those who school, and those who are schooled.In addition to exploring Terrence's musical learning experiences, I participate in the study as a novice hip-hop beat producer under Terrence's mentorship. Investigating our musical teaching and learning delivers compelling findings toward better understanding music education as it exists outside of school. The relationships betweencollaborators, the spaces in which they work, and the backgrounds that inform their perspectives all perform important roles in the development of applicable music skills in a practice far more complicated and demanding than I had initially imagined.Terrence's experiences with and perceptions of music, school, and education challenge many of my preconceived notions and offer important considerations for music educators. My experiences as both researcher and case in this project reveal complex issues of privilege and provide opportunities to better understand and confront theseissues. I ultimately contend that hip-hop cultures possess the potential for critical improvements in some school music settings and that music educators might consider making a place for hip-hop within scholarship and practice.
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Title: "They say wealth is in the soil" : local knowledge and agricultural experimentation among smallholder farmers in central Malawi
Creator: Hockett, Michele T.
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: For smallholders in central Malawi, farm management is complex and dynamic. Farmers' seasonal decisions are determined by a range of factors including resource availability, environmental changes, and farmer priorities. Moreover, management decisions are influenced by a combination of local knowledge and expert recommendations. Although local knowledge is developed over centuries of experimentation within volatile agroecological systems, smallholder experimentation processes are not well...
Show moreFor smallholders in central Malawi, farm management is complex and dynamic. Farmers' seasonal decisions are determined by a range of factors including resource availability, environmental changes, and farmer priorities. Moreover, management decisions are influenced by a combination of local knowledge and expert recommendations. Although local knowledge is developed over centuries of experimentation within volatile agroecological systems, smallholder experimentation processes are not well documented in literature and are underutilized in agricultural development projects. This study aimed to examine the decision-making processes of experimenting farmers and explore the drivers of on-farm experimentation. A mixed methods design incorporated field observations, survey data, and in-depth interviews, where quantitative and qualitative threads had multiple points of interface. This study found that Malawian farmers across a range of socioeconomic characteristics are inclined to experiment. While experimental methods differ between farmers, there are commonalities in the drivers of experimentation, including climate change, income generation, and improving household nutrition. Farmers' current practices should be taken into account in the development and implementation of agricultural intervention projects so that such projects might work effectively with smallholders to improve Malawian farming systems.
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Title: "They look at your color" : children of Nigerian immigrants in the Republic of Ireland and their beliefs and expressions of being Irish
Creator: McClure, Donald Robison, II
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Since the 1990s, Ireland has experienced a significant increase in racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity due, in large part, to immigration. A major cause for immigration in Ireland has been economic growth, although other influences, such as social factors, have played a role, too. Perhaps one of the most visible effects immigration and increased diversity have had on Irish society appears in Ireland’s classrooms. Students from a variety of cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds now...
Show moreSince the 1990s, Ireland has experienced a significant increase in racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity due, in large part, to immigration. A major cause for immigration in Ireland has been economic growth, although other influences, such as social factors, have played a role, too. Perhaps one of the most visible effects immigration and increased diversity have had on Irish society appears in Ireland’s classrooms. Students from a variety of cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds now attend Irish schools and are beginning to reshape the overall demographics of Irish society. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how a group of four second-generation Nigerian youths born and raised in Ireland make sense of what it means to “be Irish” today. The dissertation is a case study that investigates how the four children—two girls and two boys in the fifth and sixth grades at an Irish primary school—perceive Irish citizenship and national identity, how they learn to be Irish, and how they express their Irish identities as youths of color. This dissertation’s research questions and methodological approach are rooted in two frameworks: Ogbu’s (1998) classification of minority groups, and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of legitimate peripheral participation. The dissertation draws on five main data sources: 1) one-on-one interviews with students, teachers, and school administrators; 2) focus group interviews with students; 3) school observations; 4) school curricular materials; and 5) student schoolwork. Although there is a growing body of literature regarding diversity and schooling in the Republic of Ireland, there is a significant need for additional research to investigate the beliefs of students from diverse racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds in Irish schools, and how these students make sense of their identities as Irish citizens. This dissertation aims to help fill this gap and to inform policymakers, educators, and others in the Republic of Ireland to think more deeply about the way Irish schools are preparing all students for active citizenship, and how these schools can more precisely mirror the changing demographics in Irish society.The dissertation concludes that the four second-generation Nigerian students in Ireland developed racialized perceptions of what it means to be Irish based on their experiences of racism and other forms of discrimination they encountered both inside and outside school. As a result, the students often felt excluded from social groups. In addition, although the four students were born in Ireland, identified as Irish (to varying degrees), and were legal Irish citizens, the children claimed that they felt not fully Irish because of how they were treated. However, despite these challenging circumstances, the children demonstrated resilience as they accessed different forms of cultural capital in creative ways that allowed them to express their Irish identities. Ultimately, the students’ ingenuity helped them carve out a place for themselves as youths of color in Irish society. This dissertation’s findings enhance understanding about the way youths circumnavigate social challenges to create opportunities, as well as how second-generation youths develop conceptions of citizenship and national identity as active social agents in the world.
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Title: "They can't be patient. They can't wait. They have to fight." : How migrant youth experience identity, policy, and learning at a Michigan summer migrant program
Creator: Crandall, Kristina A.
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The children of migrant farmworkers are a population of young people with very unique lived experiences. They travel with their families multiple times a year in search of agricultural or fishing work opportunities. This consistent uprooting often causes interrupted educational experiences as their moving patterns do not necessarily align with the academic calendars of schools. The lack of curricular consistency between states, districts, and even schools often translates into a disjointed...
Show moreThe children of migrant farmworkers are a population of young people with very unique lived experiences. They travel with their families multiple times a year in search of agricultural or fishing work opportunities. This consistent uprooting often causes interrupted educational experiences as their moving patterns do not necessarily align with the academic calendars of schools. The lack of curricular consistency between states, districts, and even schools often translates into a disjointed education causing migrant youth to fall behind academically from their non-migrant peers. Without the assistance of supplementary support systems, it is no surprise that migrant youth are one of the most educationally deprived populations and has one of the highest high school drop out/push out rates in the United States. Due to their extreme marginalization from dominant society living in the campos and working in the fields for tremendously low wages, migrant farmworkers and their children often live in poverty and have high rates of malnutrition. Furthermore, a large percentage of migrant farmworkers are undocumented immigrants, leaving them in very vulnerable positions when it comes to work, education, and even access to health care. Migrant farmworkers are hard workers and dedicated people, and with the help of additional support systems, such as summer migrant programs, are able to provide their children with an aptitude for resiliency. This study explores how migrant youth make sense of their identity as Mexican and indigenous migrants in U.S. schools and society. Furthermore, the study addresses how Migrant Educational Policy is structured at the Federal level, interpreted and implemented at the State and local levels, and then how such policy is experienced by migrant youth in a summer migrant program called Van Buren Intermediate School District’s Project NOMAD in Michigan. It is a case study of emergent bilingual migrant youth as they experience and engage in education in a summer migrant program, how they experience policy as it reaches them at the local level, and how they identify themselves and understand their unique experiences as migrant youth.Based on findings from this study, I come to several conclusions: (1) migrant youth are unique individuals with unique needs and an incredible amount of strength and resilience; (2) migrant youth deserve powerful, excellent, and humanizing educational opportunities that help them not only overcome any academic gaps but also help them grow to be the critical thinking leaders they are capable of becoming; (3) programs like Project NOMAD provide a range of invaluable support for and empower migrant youth and their families; and (4) programs for migrants and educators of migrant youth must continue to reflect on how they can provide humanizing educational experiences within the constraints of educational policy.
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Title: "They always wished to talk to everything" : recovering the border-walking mystics of Middle-Earth
Creator: Fontenot, Megan N.
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The stories of J.R.R. Tolkien overflow with references to the spiritual and the ecological. Often, however, scholars interpret these themes as inherently traditional: spirituality is boiled down to staunch Catholicism and an intellectual interest in paganism; radical environmentalism is translated into the conservative ideal of stewardship, an anthropocentrism that negates the vibrant co-dependency that enlivens Arda. This new exploration of Middle-earth's spirituality and materiality seeks...
Show moreThe stories of J.R.R. Tolkien overflow with references to the spiritual and the ecological. Often, however, scholars interpret these themes as inherently traditional: spirituality is boiled down to staunch Catholicism and an intellectual interest in paganism; radical environmentalism is translated into the conservative ideal of stewardship, an anthropocentrism that negates the vibrant co-dependency that enlivens Arda. This new exploration of Middle-earth's spirituality and materiality seeks to overcome these reductive tendencies by practicing a hospitable mode of critique: one which is open to a variety of voices, interpretations, and ways of being-in-the-world. In it, I deconstruct the term "intercessor" and rebuild it to refer to those persons who stand in the in-between, the gaps. I look at those persons who walk the borders and constantly call us to refocus our attention, to be accountable for our ethics of living. This reversal of our usual mode of attention is facilitated by a unique cast of characters, some of whom are quite popular among critics, and others of whom have often found themselves neglected or excluded. My purpose here is to provide an honest yet hopeful diagnosis of the communion of the spiritual and material, primarily through the lens of The Lord of the Rings, but also other texts as the need arises. Eventually we'll see that both the spiritualities and the environmentalisms represented in Middle-earth are not only often radical or confrontational, but also diverse, complex, and contradictory. In all, they call characters and readers alike into account: they demand a reassessment of the ethics of our being-in-the-world and aspire to a communion of all things, envisioning a riotous celebration of our entanglement in the great becoming-with of our world.
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Title: "They all came from someplace else" : Miami, Florida's immigrant communities, 1896-1970
Creator: Shell-Weiss, Melanie Rebecca
Date: 2002
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "There shall be no woman slackers" : the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense and social welfare activism as home defense, 1917-1919
Creator: Anthony VanOrsdal, Anita
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: When the United States entered the Great War in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of War Newton Baker organized the Council of National Defense, a group of civilian businessmen in essential industries, labor leaders, and transportation experts, to coordinate for wartime needs. President Wilson and Secretary Baker also created the Woman’s Committee as a semiautonomous branch of the Council of National Defense to represent and coordinate the nation’s women to organize and maintain...
Show moreWhen the United States entered the Great War in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of War Newton Baker organized the Council of National Defense, a group of civilian businessmen in essential industries, labor leaders, and transportation experts, to coordinate for wartime needs. President Wilson and Secretary Baker also created the Woman’s Committee as a semiautonomous branch of the Council of National Defense to represent and coordinate the nation’s women to organize and maintain the home-front for the duration of the war. Under federal mandate, the Woman’s Committee defined “home-front defense” as the protection of the American family, most notably the nation’s women and children, from the social disruptions of World War I. The Woman’s Committee established coalitions with Progressive Era women’s clubs to assist the U.S. Food Administration with wartime food and nutritional needs, coordinated a massive child-savings campaign with the federal Children’s Bureau, and conducted sociological research to support demands from working-class women. The Woman’s Committee’s goals supported the war effort and expanded women’s domestic political power through social welfare activism. The American involvement in the war, however, steered women reformers into relationships with each other that remained loosely-defined during the war and ultimately created a false sense of political solidarity among women’s groups and federal agencies partnered with the Woman’s Committee. The war presented over 10 million American women with opportunities to become involved in local, state, and national politics through social welfare activism on behalf of children and women in their local communities and states. The social welfare activism of American women who joined in the Woman’s Committee’s wartime programs helped shape women’s political power in the early 1920s. Once the crisis of the war ended, the coalitions the Woman’s Committee helped foster splintered into warring camps that divided over the course of women’s post-war politics.
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Title: "There is something in all this very like democracy" : cultures of political discussion in the Victorian novel
Creator: Volkova, Inna Yevgenievna
Date: 2012
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACT"THERE IS SOMETHING IN ALL THIS VERY LIKE DEMOCRACY": CULTURES OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION IN THE VICTORIAN NOVELByInna Yevgenievna VolkovaI examine a strain of Victorian novels that I call "novels of discussion" and their imaginings of various models of political discussion in the public sphere. In their aspiration for the liberal ideals of a "free and equal discussion (15)," to use John Stuart Mill's phrase, these novels articulate a variety of such blueprints that compete with and...
Show moreABSTRACT"THERE IS SOMETHING IN ALL THIS VERY LIKE DEMOCRACY": CULTURES OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION IN THE VICTORIAN NOVELByInna Yevgenievna VolkovaI examine a strain of Victorian novels that I call "novels of discussion" and their imaginings of various models of political discussion in the public sphere. In their aspiration for the liberal ideals of a "free and equal discussion (15)," to use John Stuart Mill's phrase, these novels articulate a variety of such blueprints that compete with and build on one another. Analyzing the potentialities and internal contradictions of these models, I intervene in three areas of scholarly interest: Victorian liberalism, the form of the novel, and public sphere theory. I focus on Victorian liberalism's investments in the formal organization of political discussion in the public sphere and suggest that the changeability and free play among discussion models lie at the heart of liberalism's project, calling for on an ongoing revision of how to discuss ideas and exchange opinions. I argue that Victorian liberal culture had high stakes in conceiving of the individual's agency in terms of an active discursive presence in the public arena and a collaborative pursuit of "truth" through face-to-face discussion. I seek to show the limitations of a commonly held view among Victorianists that nineteenth-century liberalism privileged privatized interiority and individuated reflection and conceived of social agency through the processes of inward cognition. In contrast, I show that novels often cultivated the argumentative energy and the intersubjective collaboration in discussion as a means to grapple with socio-economic and cultural issues. While I refrain from reading novels as instruments of disciplinary power, I also do not view them as texts that simply propagate a "free and equal discussion." Rather, my close-readings reveal how the novels showcase the progressive potentialities of various discussion models, while also exploring these models' dangers, impracticability, ambivalences, and internal tensions. In an attempt to strive for social justice and inclusion, the novels gesture specifically to face-to-face discussion as a process that facilitates a sincere exchange of opinions, ensures equality based on mutual respect and recognition, and so lays the foundation of democratic sociality. As an artifact of print culture that created a mediated relationship with its anonymous faceless readership, the novel becomes a seemingly paradoxical site of advocating for a face-to-face unmediated political discussion. I do not view this phenomenon as Victorians' nostalgia for the golden age before print. Rather, novelistic representation of face-to-face discussion was a way for Victorian novelists to bring it into full relief. They often self-consciously contrasted face-to-face discussion with the very medium through which it was represented. The project is arranged chronologically, spanning the late 1820's to the Edwardian period of the early twentieth century. The chapters focus on Harriet Martineau's tales of political economy, Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil, Charles Reade's Put Yourself in His Place, Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, George Gissing's Demos, and Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. While these novels at one time enjoyed widespread popularity, they are no longer staples of Victorian literature today. However, these novels' past popularity suggests that their preoccupation with political discussion reflects crucial facets of Victorian culture. Similar preoccupations, perhaps in less explicit ways, surface in more canonical authors such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and others. In what Walter Bagehot called the "age of discussion," the novels operated as an experimental ground for Victorians' ideals, hopes, and competing views about the public sphere.
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Title: "Theory begins with a story, too" : listening to the lived experiences of American Indian women
Creator: Riley-Mukavetz, Andrea
Date: 2012
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACTTHEORY BEGINS WITH A STORY, TOO: LISTENING TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMENByAndrea Riley-MukavetzThis dissertation argues that the stories American Indian women tell about their lived experiences are rhetorical theories used to survive institutional spaces like academia. One community-based study is central to this argument: my research with a group of multi-generational Odawa women who live and work in Lansing, Michigan. By listening to the stories from the Little...
Show moreABSTRACTTHEORY BEGINS WITH A STORY, TOO: LISTENING TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMENByAndrea Riley-MukavetzThis dissertation argues that the stories American Indian women tell about their lived experiences are rhetorical theories used to survive institutional spaces like academia. One community-based study is central to this argument: my research with a group of multi-generational Odawa women who live and work in Lansing, Michigan. By listening to the stories from the Little Traverse Bay Band women, I hear their stories as theories and use them as the primary framework for the dissertation project. Their theories draw attention to how Native women take deliberate positions that resist Euro-centric identities and practices. Yet, these positions affect how tribal and mainstream discourses acknowledge American Indian women's roles and responsibilities. I build a relational theory of visibility by weaving the theories from the Odawa women, the writing of indigenous feminists, and rhetorical histories written by or for American Indian women into each other. This theory examines how American Indian women negotiate the challenges of being visible in the community, at work, or while living and working in the university. This dissertation develops a cultural rhetorics methodology to continue to disassemble colonial rhetorics and cultivate a space to examine what practices should be used to rebuild our tribal communities inside and outside of the university. By drawing upon indigenous rhetorical practices, I show how researchers are complicit in using colonial rhetorics and provide a model to decolonize how we live and work in institutional spaces.
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Title: "The whole furshlugginer operation" : the Jewish comic book industry, 1933-1954
Creator: Mercier, Sebastian T.
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Over the course of the twentieth century, the comic book industry evolved from an amateur operation into a major institution of American popular culture. Comic books, once considered mere cultural ephemera or quite simply “junk,” became a major commodity business.The comic book industry emerged out of the pulp magazine industry. According to industry circulation data, new comic book releases increased from 22 in 1939 to 1125 titles by the end of 1945. Comic book scholars have yet to...
Show moreOver the course of the twentieth century, the comic book industry evolved from an amateur operation into a major institution of American popular culture. Comic books, once considered mere cultural ephemera or quite simply “junk,” became a major commodity business.The comic book industry emerged out of the pulp magazine industry. According to industry circulation data, new comic book releases increased from 22 in 1939 to 1125 titles by the end of 1945. Comic book scholars have yet to adequately explain the roots of this historical phenomenon, particularly its distinctly Jewish composition. Between the years of 1933 and 1954, the comic book industry operated as a successful distinct Jewish industry. The comic book industry emerged from the pulp magazine trade. Economic necessity, more than any other factor, attracted Jewish writers and artists to the nascent industry. Jewish publishers adopted many of the same business practices they inherited from the pulps. As second-generation Jews, these young men shared similar experiences growing up in New York City. Other creative industries actively practiced anti-Semitic hiring procedures. Many Jewish artists came to comic book work with very little professional experience in cartooning and scripting. The comic book industry allowed one to learn on the job. The cultural world comic books emerged out of was crucially important to the industry’s development. Comic strips, pulps, movies, and science fiction all inspired Jewish writers and artists. An exploration of the comic book industry’s working environment reveals how Jewish comic book writers, artists, editors, and publishers simultaneously created a space for themselves as Jews while developing successful comic book titles and characters. While many of them created an environment suitable to workplace camaraderie and collaboration, there were several areas of conflict. An investigation of these areas of conflict show how Jews responded to workplace disagreements, management exploitation, and battles over artistic credit. In particular, the practice of ghosting art remains a particularly contentious issue. Jewish writers and artists in the comic book industry did not form or join a labor union in order to protect their rights and interests. A consideration of this development shows that they stood in stark contrast to other industries with a large Jewish workforce. Finally, the examination of World War II through the comic book industry’s internal development provides a variety of different ways to unearth how the Jewish writers, artists, editors, and publishers shed their amateur roots and became a professionalized industry. This professional turn brought increased sales and increasingly mature content for an older readership. Many Jewish writers and artists feared being drafted into the military. However, those that were drafted came away from their experiences with a sense of pride and accomplishment. They could not foresee that their industry was coming under attack. Many comic book historians place the roots for the comic book industry’s cultural downfall in the 1950s. However, primary sources from the 1940s reveal that social critics and parents were already concerned about mature comic book content in the 1940s. Comic book publishers were slow to respond or outright ignored complaints from social critics and concerned parents.
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Title: "The white man's burden" in Anglo-Indian fiction
Creator: Dulai, Surjit Singh
Date: 1965
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "The soul is the prison of the body" : freedom and autonomy in David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"
Creator: Lauder, Maureen Elizabeth
Date: 2001
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

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