In Culture and Imperialism, Said illustrates that we have no "autonomous cultural forms," but rather "impure" ones that are the products of historically "discrepant experiences." American culture has an interesting relationship with the history of imperialism. The Europeans that settled the U.S. imported slave labor to assist in the growth...
This thesis seeks to explain how Lord George Gordon
Byron achieves catharsis through the writing of his truth
in Don Juan. In the poem the narrator expresses Byron's
innermost emotion while at the same time the protagonist,
Juan, relates to readers on a more conscious level. The
ability that Byron...
The eighteenth-century female of sensibility was characterized by delicate nerves that allowed her to feel her surroundings and enabled her to choose virtue over vice more consistently than males. While females were considered virtuous, their "innate" delicacy or weakness became their dominant trait and the true focus of male admiration....
Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and wrote in an age of reform efforts, and the progressive movement with which he was most familiar was Transcendentalism. However, he was not sympathetic with Emerson's idealism, a sentiment which comes out in his fiction in way of critique. Throughout Hawthorne's work there is an emphasis...
The creative writing project Circles in the Sand began as a collection of
interrelated short stories but is now the three opening chapters of a novel, a chapter and an
early draft of what was originally the ending to a novella, and one short story. The
landscape is the upper...
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...
This study aims to identify conceptions of the body, as well as "rational" treatment
among primary care practitioners (PCPs) and emergency medicine practitioners (EMPs)
dealing with managed care plans. I conducted ethnographic study throughout 1996, and
interviewed six PCPs and four EMPs. In the course of my interviews, I discovered...
Recent conflicts in America concerning the environment (the harvesting of old growth timber in the Pacific Northwest, or the proposed opening of public lands in southern Utah to mining interests, for instance) have precipitated a personal examination of "historical others" (Jensen 64), individuals that possess very different sensibilities from a...
The four stories within, "Jim of India," "Shooting the Breeze," "Bridge," and "Point Reyes," are part of a longer work in progress, tentatively titled The Andy Stories. The stories follow Andy, a woman in her 50s, on a voyage across the continent and into herself. Of these, all are written...
Violent right-wing groups have emerged in the German youth scene since reunification in 1990. By the early 1990's, many groups of people have had to face racist violence and harassment as a threatening part of everyday life.
With the social, political, economic, demographical and ideological changes which have taken place...
The classroom practices discussed in this thesis come slowly and at a "slant" to feminism through critical reading of texts, a practice that I call a (re)presentation of the silent women in texts. Given our patriarchal western culture, making meaning, and especially making sense, of the role and representations of...
This thesis comprises a collection of six short stories written and developed in
the Creative Writing program at Oregon State University and particularly in fiction
workshops with Dr. Tracy Daugherty and Marjorie Sandor. These stories explore the
human condition, and human connections, in contemporary society. The characters
here are ordinary...
Within literacy and composition studies, writing, as a
social act, is believed by many to have the potential to effect
change in and transform situations of injustice. Community literacy,
as an emergent practice within composition studies, embraces
and stretches this notion of linking literacy to social
change. Community literacy also...
Presenting and synthesizing several paradigms for the teaching of literature in American colleges, I investigate how definitions of reading, readers, texts, interpretations, and knowledge affect student acts of reading and writing. In addition, I draw upon specific examples of text-based, reader-based, and social-cultural based models for the teaching of reading...
In his works, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses
(1922), James Joyce demonstrates what he perceives to be the paralyzing effects of
those institutionalized religions that sit at the center of cultures. Drawing on Michel
Foucault's analysis of institutional dressage as well as his...
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 explore experiences with my identity, looking at the identity people have
seen me as, who I've thought I was, and the identities my mother's and father's different family
backgrounds suggest I should be. I have divided this discussion into three main areas: my
complexion, the first...
Past experiences have relevant truths for the present. An uncommon work
and living situation from this writer's undergraduate days shows how prejudice and
stereotype can be subtly arranged, and participated in, by the nature of his
surroundings. This thesis explores, through the combination of related past events
with an interspersed...
As the embodiment of the religiously unsettled Victorian Era in which she lived,
George Eliot sought to discover a system of belief that would allow her to reaffirm and
maintain her feelings of faith and morality. She believed that the subjective nature of
traditional Christianity needed to be replaced with...
This is a collection of eight short stories, all of which deal on some level with
alienation and the struggle to find meaning in one's life. Although most of the stories deal
with issues related to women or feature female protagonists, I did not set out to create a
political...
In their respective novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and
Passing (1929), both Charles Chesnutt and Nella Larsen utilize racial
passing, the process of a mixed-race individual living as "white," to
explore the relations between black and white people during early-twentieth century America. This thesis specifically argues that
Chesnutt...
"This Long Disease, My Life": Alexander Pope and the
Sciences by Marjorie Nicolson and G.S. Rousseau has been the
standard work on Alexander Pope and Newtonian science ever
since it was published in 1968. Literary scholars and
biographers continue to be swayed by its influence.
Unfortunately, the work they so...
This thesis is a collection of three short stories and the
beginnings of a novel. A similar thread is woven through all the
stories: in the attempt to know spiritual truth, what it is to be a
woman, and to know themselves, the various protagonists precariously
oscillate between the seemingly...
This collection consists of autobiographical essays which center around my father,
my first husband, and my backyard. All of the pieces are recollections, and most occur
either from my study inside the house, or from the deck outside, looking at the yard. The
Preface is the story of how I...
These six stories investigate characters who must
begin to understand their own actions, which are often
made in response to authority. In the lives of these
characters, there are schemas which they believe they
fit, certain rules placed on them by society that they
each feel they must obey. It...
The purpose of this study was to develop and test a data
collection instrument that would facilitate description of the clothing
of Oregon school boys 1867-1910. In addition, the researcher attempted
to describe Oregon school-aged boys' clothing and determine if fashion
changes occurred in Oregon boys' clothing. The researcher also...
Shocked porous granular material experiences pressure dependent compaction. D. John
Pastine introduced a model in which the degree of compaction is dependent on the pressure induced
by the shock wave, the shear strength of the material, and the distribution of void sizes. In the
past, the model could only be...
The study of the question of why Shakespeare's Hamlet delays killing
Claudius in revenge for his father's murder is examined in light of the major
critical theories from neo-classical to modern scholarship. An expanded
treatment of the works of Fredson Bowers, Eleanor Prosser, Bertram Joseph,
and Roland Frye, is provided...
These five stories investigate characters who must deal with their unresolved,
emotionally troubling pasts. The characters attempt to journey back to life having
recognized that their isolation, safe and undisturbing as it is, is worse than a life in which
the possibility of joy is mixed with the inevitability of...
This thesis is a collection of essays about Paxton, a
small town in western Nebraska, and an exploration of the
contradictions and complexities found there. It is also a
reflection on the layers of history and connections that
exist not only among families that have lived in these towns
for...
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...
The success of NIKE, Inc. is deemed miracle by professionals on both Wall
Street and Madison Avenue. Research done in the past tends to credit the growth
of NIKE, Inc. to its marketing strategies. By placing the achievement of the
company in the postmodern context, this study analyzes the cultural...
Dedicated to recording, portraying, and indicting
the social inequities that he witnessed in nineteenth
century Victorian England, one of Charles Dickens' many
concerns was the roles assigned to women both in the
public and private spheres.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the
narratives of Amy Dorrit and...
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...
The problems of Russian speaking refugees from the
Ukraine region of the former Soviet Union are the basis for
ethnographic inquiry and the delineation of the role of
voluntary agencies who assist their resettlement in Portland,
Oregon.
Interpretive methods are the foundation for an analysis
of Ukrainians' perceptions of problems...
The goal of this research project is to determine the fractal nature, if any, which
certain surface water waves exhibit when viewed on a microscopic scale. We make
use of the mathematical formulation of non-viscous fluids describing their physical
properties. Using these expressions and including boundary conditions for free
surfaces...
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...
This work was performed on Trillium albidum Freeman (Liliaceae), to
clarify the pattern of morphological variation between the small-flowered
populations at the northern limit of its range ( T. parviflorum Soukup) and the
larger-flowered populations from southern Oregon and northern California. It was
hypothesized that only a single species of...
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),...
Zora Neale Hurston was a Black American writer
during the period of the Harlem Renaissance. The
purpose of this study is to show that three of her four
novels form a protracted discussion of a particular
type of freedom which was of especial interest to
Hurston. The study seeks to...
The alien abduction phenomenon has garnered considerable media attention in the last fifteen years, including many representations in books, film, and television. An overview of significant abduction literature is presented. Contrasts and comparisons are noted between popular written accounts and both the visual representations they engender and reports outside the...
This collection of personal essays, inspired by Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, raises questions about the separation that becomes apparent through writing, education, and transitions between class. The author uses her personal experience of writing in, and attending a private university to explore the interactions of class, literacy, and education....
The syllid polychaete Autolytus varius reproduces in the spring
and early summer in Yaquina Bay, Oregon, The fertilized female
epitokes, or Sacconereis, carry the developing eggs and larvae in a
ventral sac until the larvae are ready to be released; incubation
lasts 14 to 18 days in the laboratory, The...
The study of the social dimensions of Shakespeare's art is represented by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, C.L. Barber, Robert Weimann, Edward Berry, and Michael Bristol. Their work analyzes the background in Elizabethan social practices and popular dramatic traditions that contribute to the form, structure, and meaning of Shakespeare's comedies....
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...
Products as diverse as soda-pop, fashion and
automobiles are selling to the tunes of classic and current
pop and rock music. The combination of MTV (Music
Television), the latest audio-visual technology, and the
replacement of movie stars by rock stars as the idols of
contemporary youth (Beckett, 1985; Hartman, 1987),...
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...
My thesis is comprised of two articles, titled "Journeying Through (An)Other World: Examining the Role of Magic and Transformational Otherness in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Magic, Muggles, and Mudbloods: Examining Magical Otherness in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series." The introduction frames the thematic, theoretical, and critical connections...
As the necessity grows for undergraduate English teachers to incorporate various multimodal texts into their course material due to the changing landscape of what is considered English studies, comics can be an increasingly viable source for such texts. This thesis introduces several formal qualities of comics available for teachers to...
At first glance, Edgar Rice Burroughs's wildly popular romantic fantasy novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1912), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist science fiction-utopian novel, Herland (1915), with its dystopian companion, With Her in Ourland (1916), may appear to have little in common. Tarzan celebrates the human connection with wild nature...
This thesis explores the electrified female subject in two novels, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905). As cultural touchstones, two literary works that prominently feature electricity -- Henry James' story "In the Cage" and Henry Adams' biography The Education of Henry Adams --...
This thesis merges the fields of Ecology and Anthropology by applying Habitat Suitability Modeling to the relationship between people and plants in the Pacific Northwest. In it, I create and optimize two Maxent habitat suitability models for camas (Camassia spp.) in Oregon. The first model describes the physical environment of...
This thesis takes an auteurist approach to the films of director Terrence Malick by reading them through the spiritual philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I establish Malick's thematic concern with the human struggle to achieve better existences in a broken material world, a concern buoyed by his signature aesthetic that...
A majority of eighteenth-century novels remain in regular print over two hundred years since their inception. Yet with the possible exception of Robinson Crusoe, they have largely fallen out of popularity, rarely appearing on "The Summer's Hottest Reading" lists or receiving celebrity endorsement. I consider Ian Watt's foundational study, The...
Monstrous beings, or distortions of nature, were a tangible object of fear in the medieval and early modern eras. Aristotle, as a precursor to the scientists and magical practitioners of the twelfth century or the barber-surgeons of the sixteenth century, understood monsters to be human or animal beings deformed by...
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of advertisement strategy (informational, positive emotional, negative emotional) and brand awareness (high, low awareness) on brand name recall and change in brand attitude. The study extends previous research by focusing on the sportswear market and including personal involvement towards...
The purpose of this study is to examine the lived experiences of women small-scale entrepreneurs in Qingdao, China by placing their collective experiences within relevant social and economic frameworks. This study, conducted in 2011 over a six-month period, applies an ethnographic approach based in modified grounded theory to bring together...
This thesis explore the effects of China's Grassland Contract policy on sedentary and mobile Inner Mongolian pastoralists' attitudes towards cooperation, current grassland management practices, and the future viability of livestock herding in New Barag Right Banner, Inner Mongolia. Semi-structured interviews, a scaled survey instrument, and participant observation were carried out...
Wendy Bishop's lively voice and scholarly contribution continue to resonate and be important in composition studies. Bishop--poet, scholar, feminist, teacher, ethnographer, and compositionist--sought to blur the lines between creative writing and composition. This thesis argues that in challenging the boundaries that exist between creative writing and composition, Bishop also challenged...
During the Late Pre-Hispanic period, settlements in Northern Highland Ecuador were organized under a number of chiefdoms. While a basic hierarchical political system is described in the ethnohistoric literature, the nature of the interactions between specific settlements has remained unknown. This study utilizes two methods for describing the degree and...
A provenance study of crypto-crystalline silicates was performed at the Cooper's Ferry archaeological site in west-central Idaho on the Columbia Plateau. In this research, the author used instrumental neutron activation analysis as well as portable x-ray fluorescence to examine and characterize the geochemistry of 300 geologic samples of crypto-crystalline silicates...
This is an interactive, self explanatory computer
program on real roots of polynomials with real
coefficients. This program called POLYROOT has the double
feature of tutoring and problem solving. It allows the user
to enter on one line any polynomial with real coefficients.
Then, the user can find :
1....
In their modern context questions of heredity have come to be
closely aligned with theories of evolution because all such theories
require the presence of heritable variation. Thus the need for an
understanding of a source of variation and a mechanism for its inheritance
became very apparent with the general...
To determine whether meiotic maturation of ovarian follicles,
ovulation, and oviposition are influenced by male mating behaviors,
female rough-skinned newts (Taricha granulosa) were captured prior
to contact with males and maintained in simulated pond conditions.
Females were either exposed to male courtship and inseminated or
were isolated from male contact....
The need for and problems related to string processing are
discussed and a definition of the term "string" is derived. A
brief review of some existing string processing systems leads
to the presentation of a design for a string processing extension
to the programming language Pascal. A rationale for the...
The Mien are recent United States immigrants from Laos. They left
Southeast Asia at a time of great political upheaval. Because of their
close ties with United States governmental operations during the Southeast
Asian war, conditions for Mien in Laos made flight imperative as
Pathet Lao forces now control the...
In this thesis I argue that in contemporary Oregon, the policies and design of group homes for individuals with developmental disabilities emphasizes an ineffective conception of autonomy, and this emphasis should be shifted to provide better opportunities for the growth of individuals both within the homes and in their communities....
Two numerical methods are presented that can be used to solve
second order nonlinear ordinary differential equations with periodic
boundary conditions. One of these methods is a shooting method developed
solely for the periodic problem. The other, "quasilinearization,"
is a method applicable to a wide variety of problems. It is...
To determine whether a homologous neurohormone, arginine
vasotocin (AVT), can elevate the occurrence of clasping behavior in
male rough-skinned newts (Taricha granulosa), intact, sexually inactive
males were injected with either AVT or saline. The incidence
of courtship was elevated in the group of males injected with AVT,
but not in...
In regards to animation created and aimed at them, girls are largely underserved and underrepresented. This underrepresentation leads to decreased socio-cultural capital in adulthood and a feeling of sacrificed childhood. Although there is a common consensus in entertainment toward girls as a potentially deficient audience, philosophy and applied ethics open...
Ecological factors associated with the relictual distribution of
the endemic shrub Kalmiopsis leachiana (Ericaceae) were investigated.
A prostrate evergreen species with small coriaceous leaves,
K. leachiana is restricted to two disjunct populations in the Siskiyou
Mountains and southern Cascade Mountains of southwestern Oregon,
USA. Exact distributions of individual populations were...
During a 13-month period starting in October of 1976, adult
male rough-skinned newts (Taricha granulosa) were collected periodically
to study seasonal changes in reproductive status. Plasma
androgen concentration, measured by radioimmunoassay, is elevated
during autumn and spring (about 50 ng/ml). Winter and summer levels
are considerably lower (less than 10...
Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) is considered here in the
context of the Enlightenment effort to develop a science of man. His
Philosophie zoologique (1809) and the Systeme analytique (1820) are
the two principal relevant works examined in depth to discover how
he meant to base a science of man on...
Juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) were orally
immunized against the bacterium Flexibacter columnaris (formerly
Chondrococcus columnaris), the causative agent of columnaris disease
in fish, with a vaccine-food preparation containing formalin-killed
cells. Fish immunized for 1, 2, 3, and 4 months were challenged
with selected concentrations of F. columnaris by exposure...
The gamma contribution to reactor afterheat
depends on gamma energy since high-energy commas are
more likely to escape from tilt. fuel. The objective of
this work is to investigate the gamma-energy spectrum
of a pure U-235 fission reactor.
Fission-product nuclides are first listed in order'
of importance as contributors to...
This study explored the relationship among marital role expectations,
religiosity, and other variables including age, dating status of
subjects, living arrangement, marriage plans and parents' marriage.
Data were obtained from a sample of 460 Oregon State University
students in April, 1976. They were primarily young students, 18 - 19
years...
The objective of this thesis is to develop criteria for a data
acquisition system for electrical machinery capable of sampling a
signal every 0.2 msec with a desired accuracy of 0.1%. The system to
be measured includes both AC and DC voltage and current signals from
several points. The main...
The shoe repair transaction, as it occurs in the 5000 or so remaining shoe repair shops in the United States, is currently unexamined in academic literature for the significance it holds for either shoe repairers or their customers. Making use of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection, this...
The primary purpose of this study was to explore the relationships
between the variables of sex, age, sibling status, age relationship
of sibling, age spacing between siblings and sex-role preference among
preschool-aged children.
Seventy-one children, 32 boys and 39 girls, ranging in ages
from two-years-eleven-months to five-years-seven-months, served
as subjects....
Photoperiod controls the duration of both the fourth and fifth
stadia in Agalliopsis abietaria Oman. Development was arrested in
the fourth stadium unless short days were given during the second
and third instars; a short arrest of development occurred if the short
days did not begin until the fourth instar....
We investigate in this thesis, the problem of stability
of thermo-viscoelastic fluid flow between rotating
coaxial cylinders. By using the thermo-viscoelastic
constitutive equations given by Eringen, we reduce the
equations of motion into a form suitable for stability
analysis. The course of reduction which we follow yields
some interesting intermediate...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships
that were hypothesized to exist between the variables birth order,
family size, and parents college attendance and the dependent variable,
college graduation. The three general hypotheses tested were:
1. A positive relationship exists between a given position in
birth order...
Note: From here on Minimum Pollution Product and MPP will be used
interchangeably.
This study was initiated to develop a trademark which could be
registered and used for advertising purposes by companies producing
and selling products which are minimum pollutants relative to competitive
products in the same market.
One of...
The purpose of this study was to determine whether one ear
of a profoundly deaf student could duplicate a response rate
similar to the response rate achieved by the opposite ear on an
auditory training program. The formal hypothesis of this study
was: a student that reaches criterion level of...
This research details the adoption, implementation, and outcomes
of Project C. 0. R. E. (Careers Oriented Relevant Education)
in District #19 junior high schools in Springfield, Oregon. Information
was gathered from teachers, students, and parents associated
with each District #19 junior high school via questionnaires, interviews,
and by field observations....
There were two viable theories of generation, preformation
and epigenesis, existing in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries. Due to their irreconcilable nature,
they were often at loggerheads during this time interval.
The status of these generation theories can be effectively
understood in terms of Thomas Kuhn's conception of preparadigm
science....