In this thesis, I examine composition scholarship on the intersections of religious faith and writing pedagogy over the past twenty years, tracing the origins of compositionists' discomfort with religion and focusing on pedagogical approaches for working with religiously-committed students. In particular, I emphasize the way in which these approaches are...
This thesis is an exploration of writing from two communities of practice addressing different aspects of hypertext--an electronic medium used to link text, images, and other content such that it can be accessed by users non-sequentially. In particular, I examine multiple narratives of hypertext development and key theoretically oriented approaches...
In this thesis, I discuss the uses of two different forms of young adult novels for relaying messages about adolescence and femininity to adolescents from adult authors. I explore the traditional and organized quest narrative as written by Anne McCaffrey in her Harper Hall Trilogy with a young female hero....
Current estimates indicate that between one-third and one-half of women in the United States have at least one abortion in their lifetime, and that many women encounter socioeconomic, logistical, or social obstacles in the process of seeking care (Jones 2005, Guttmacher 2008). The purpose of this study is to critically...
This thesis is an exploration of literary representation of professors, specificially in Willa Cather's The Professor's House and Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin. I explicate the political unconscious of these texts by teasing out the tensions and ironies stemming from the conflict between the radical political consequences of the titular characters' scholarship...
Fort Yamhill, located in the eastern foothills of the Oregon Coast Range near modern day Grand Ronde, Oregon, was a U.S. Army post established in March 1856 as part of a three fort system to guard the newly established Coast Reservation and to provide a Union presence in the state...
Anne Frances Wysocki, a scholar in the field of new media and composition studies, has published many articles, book chapters, a textbook, and is a major contributor to a multi-authored collection titled Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. This thesis considers the five openings...
Traditionally, Renaissance studies have neglected or overlooked the contributions of early modern female poets, many of whom produced lively, engaging, and highly creative work despite the limitations imposed on them by a rigidly patriarchal society. In my thesis, I examine the life and work of Aemilia Lanyer, a 17th century...
Not only does the publication of Ovidian adaptations online increase public awareness of Ovid, but it also offers new material for research and pedagogical purposes. Consequently, in this thesis, I explore both the historical tradition of Ovidian adaptations, specifically adaptations of Ovid's Orpheus tale, and the modern presentation of Ovidian...
This ethnographic study examined some of the ways that global markets and the infrastructure of agribusiness affect local smallholder farmers in the Ten Rivers region who are transitioning toward more sustainable and traditional agricultural methods. The purpose of this research was to discover what barriers smallholder farmers face in developing...
Since the early twentieth century, manufacturers of toxic products have attempted
to discredit research linking their product with disease. At the same time they have manufactured their own science designed to minimize risks associated with their products. Much of this activity has been conducted by or through corporate attorneys, endeavors...
In this ethnographic study, I examine how women living in downstate Illinois decide to give birth at home. I view decision-making as a process that unfolds throughout pregnancy and continues into the postpartum period, contextualizing "choice" in a region where homebirth is a politically and socially marginalized practice. The methodology...
Since the 1952 Bolivian agrarian reform, farmer unions have sought to establish themselves as producers for regional markets. Development strategies led by the World Bank and IMF have largely jeopardized small farmers, and challenged farmers to meet market demands. At present, a new agrarian revolution is being implemented and is...
Literacy projects can lead to community empowerment, particularly when roundtable discussions initiate goals and students draw on their experiences and strengths to serve as "literacy ambassadors." In the two following linked manuscripts, I make my case for a literacy ambassador model of literacy service learning project that engages communities and...
Around the globe, an array of alternative agrifood movements has emerged largely in response to the ecological and socio-economic threat caused by industrialized agricultural processes. From organic agriculture, to Slow Food, Locavore, and the Food Sovereignty movement, people around the world are reasserting their right to healthy and culturally appropriate...
The purpose of this study is to ethnographically examine traditionally prescribed notions of sons and daughters in an Indian diasporic community located on Devon Avenue in Chicago. Informed by the association between "ideal" and "actual" family building patterns, this study situates reproductive behaviors and demographic outcomes in its local context...
This thesis explores the metaphor of hospice nurses as "midwives to the dying" by
applying philosophical inquiry to the field of hospice. I focus on the history of the
movements, their professional approaches to caregiving, and the core commitments of
both the modern midwifery and hospice movements. Although focused on...
This ethnographic research aims to discover the implications of the
commodification of production processes amongst the Ersu Tibetans of Sichuan,
China. This thesis examines the commodification of Ersu agriculture and ethnic
identity in the historical context of both China and the world-system. Ethnohistorical
and ethnoecological methodologies are utilized to answer...
This thesis examines the characterization of the femme fatale and the implications of this trope for late-Victorian gender and sexuality in the ghost stories of female aesthete Vernon Lee. In her treatment of the femme fatale figure, Lee both reinforces and complicates the image of the sexualized, often bestialized woman...
The following thesis explores the potential for autoethnography to serve as an enabling method for developing a grounded understanding of literacy, performance, gender and sexuality. As autoethnographic writing insists that even the seemingly most personal aspects of a researcher's character are deeply embedded in larger political and sociocultural narratives, this...
This thesis proposes expanding the locations where literacy narratives are currently used as readings and as writing assignments and considering broad conceptions of the types and uses of literacy narratives read in classrooms. In particular, this thesis asserts the value of expanding the literacy narratives read beyond the current canonical...
This research examines the relationship between health literacy among End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) patients and its relevance for communication between patients and providers. The study was conducted among dialysis services providers at the Good Samaritan Dialysis Center and dialysis patients receiving care at the Center. Data collection techniques included...
In this thesis I argue that Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel Blood Meridian serves as a critique of the American Western mythos by collapsing aspects of myth, ideology, and the sublime into the question of violence's relationship to language. In explicating the novel, I demonstrate how the ironies staged between the...
Sixteenth century Elizabeth I of England has long been a figure of interest to Renaissance scholars, and their work largely focuses on how her gender impacted the power, politics, and culture of her day. Many have perceived her to be a heroine whose ingenuity and determination circumvented the limitations imposed...
This thesis is a study of the shifting philosophical trends in the works of Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, and Kurt Vonnegut as representations of a greater shift from modernism to postmodernism. I have chosen to explore Beckett's plays Waiting for Godot and Krapp's Last Tape, Barthelme's short stories "Nothing: A...
This research explores differences in environmental worldviews and connections to the land globally and more specifically in a case study of NGOs working in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest. The aims of this project are to investigate different environmental worldviews expressed between western NGOs and non western local NGOs and to...
Current calls for prison abolition have been met with major public resistance.
It is time for movements for prison abolition to engage with these questions: How
have contemporary people of the United States come to accept mass incarceration and
the prison industrial complex, and, what is the impact? Using an...
Within the U.S. there is a growing interest in the case of female adolescents being coerced into the sex industry (Bernstein, 2010; Estes & Weiner, 2001; Soderlund, 2010; Williams and Frederick, 2009). This interest, which emerged due to U.S. involvement in the international trafficking phenomena and grassroots organizing, has resulted...
Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World (1692) has traditionally been dismissed
as a failed missive attempting to defend the controversial Salem Witch Trials. What is
missing from this characterization is an analysis of the degree to which the text, written
at a moment of crisis in Puritan culture, actually...
This thesis is comprised of two articles that examine sympathy, material culture, and ownership in Victorian literature. In the first article, I explore the figure of the heiress in the Victorian literary tradition, focusing on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. George Eliot marked the heiress figure...
Research shows that women's lives are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. While the topic of women is largely absent from climate discourse overall, the representations of women that occur reveal underlying structures of power rooted in imperialism and colonial dominance. This thesis presents an analysis of the...
Thesis explores the ways in which Information and Communication Technology (ICT)use, specifically that of telephones and the Internet, impacts the lives of Eritrean refugees in Rome, Italy. Informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation were carried out in a 'center of second reception.' Results show that information obtained through the...
This thesis argues for significant correlations in the politics of representation of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships in two literary texts by Maxine Hong Kingston and Fae Myenne Ng. The two novels do not follow traditional representations of Chinatown and provide critical representations of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships. First, Kingston's The...
This thesis seeks to better understand the most pressing cultural barriers to progress in the sustainability movement, and to offer suggestions for overcoming barriers. This research includes a two-year long case study of the sustainability movement at OSU, where the researcher coordinated projects encouraging behavior change. Despite increasing severity and...
In India, globalized flows of bio-medical discourse, practices and technologies are reshaping the field of reproductive healthcare, and the performance of childbirth more specifically. These projects aim to produce institutional delivery rooms that are "safe and modernized" by equating the utilization of westernized, obstetric techniques for managing delivery with better...
Throughout the course of this thesis, I argue that the prose of David Foster Wallace, specifically his posthumously published novel The Pale King, inhabits a middle ground between universal sincerity and the particularized authenticity of postmodern irony. I examine Lionel Trilling's definitions of sincerity and authenticity before moving toward an...
Since the inauguration of the King Abdullah-Aziz Foreign Scholarship Program in 2005, the number of Saudi university students in the United States has increased exponentially, and an unprecedented amount of Saudi women are seeking international degrees. The absence of scholarly research within these women’s home and host countries highlights the...
This ethnographic research examines socioeconomic vulnerabilities to resettlement from a large hydropower dam and agricultural commodification in a Tibetan village in Yunnan Province, Southwest China. After providing an initial background on the dynamics of the research region and hydrodevelopment on its rivers, the research framework of examining vulnerability through a...
This study investigated the local and sustainable food movements in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The aim of the research was to better understand the current condition of the phenomenon, what it means to the communities studied and the future role it will play in the state. Other research objectives...
Personal preparedness and self-‐reliance have been themes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-‐day Saints since its early days as an organized religion. These themes are still strong and vibrant today and one of their key aspects is the practice of food storage. Personal and familial preparation for problems...
My thesis is comprised of two articles, titled "Interpreting Britomart's Encounters with Art: The Cyclic Nature of Ekphrasis in Spenser's Faerie Queene III," and "Picture This, Imagine That: Teaching Visual Literacy in the Disciplines." The purpose of my first article is to argue that Edmund Spenser uses ekphrasis in his...
In this thesis, I use modern concepts of feminism, gender performativity, and psychoanalysis as a means to understand female characters and authors of Renaissance England in a new way. In my first article, I analyze various texts and performances of Queen Elizabeth I, as well as texts of Renaissance female...
In this thesis I examine the ideological mechanisms that work to constitute, construct, and maintain subject identity. Such mechanisms include repetition, performativity, identification, and interpellation. I incorporate structuralist, post-structuralist, and psychoanalytic theories as a means to discuss the ways in which gender, sexuality, and identity are performative masquerades. Furthermore, these...
This thesis employs a narrative analysis of more than twenty-five films that are
centrally concerned with immigrants and the immigrant experience. In Part One,
drawing from the work of Yosefa Loshitzky, I will focus on films that feature an
immigrant lead character. In Part Two, I will explore movies that...
In this thesis, I examine the experiences of breastfeeding mothers who chose to give birth with Certified Professional Midwives at a free-standing birth center, and the factors that influence their known high rates of breastfeeding initiation and duration. Using grounded theory and data collected from participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and...
In Uganda, there are an estimated 200,000 women suffering from obstetric fistula, with
1,900 new cases expected annually. These figures, combined with a persistently high
maternal mortality rate, have led to an international discourse that claims the solution to
improving maternal health outcomes is facility-based delivery with a skilled birth...
Haiti's political and economy history has led to a maternity care system that lies out of reach, geographically and financially, of most Haitians, resulting in excessively high maternal and infant mortality. The most common birth practitioners are homebirth midwives (matwòns), who attend roughly three-fourths of all births in Haiti (UNICEF),...
In the contemporary U.S., the state, through the Legislative Assembly, the State Board of
Education, and the Department of Education, sets policies for K-12 education. These include goals
and standards that affect the kinds of influences local officials, parents, and students can have
on various education programs, required and elective...
The cultural and historical construction of African American identity in the United States has been closely tied to the dialectical relationship formed between sound and silence. This thesis examines the modernist and postmodernist representation of sound and silence in the African American novels Passing (1929), by Nella Larsen, and Jazz...
The following thesis presents a case study analyzing a service-learning project implemented in a second-year level Writing in Business course at Oregon State University. The classroom project required business writing students to serve as cultural ambassadors and conversation partners with international students through INTO OSU's Cultural Ambassador Conversant Program. Relying...