Curricular models and teaching techniques that support college students as the primary authors of their writing-across-the-curriculum experiences remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses that research gap by investigating the use of a start-of-term writing self-assessment and goal-setting questionnaire (STQ) for upper-division undergraduates taking writing-intensive (WI) college courses in their majors....
This study examines the interactions between the scientific communities of the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(SLAC) in the discovery of the tau lepton by physicist Martin Perl between 1973-
1977. Perl became interested in searching for heavy leptons through positron-electron
collision experiments using the...
This thesis examines the cultural context in which Japanese children are constructing their
own perspective of the environment because in the development of environmental education in
Japan, the perspectives of children and teachers have not been taken into consideration. Although
educators have made efforts to give direction to environmental education,...
The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, truly a synthesized work of natural history, coincided with the emergence of specialized disciplines in the 19th century. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between the specialization of knowledge, in the form of disciplinization, and the reception of new...
St. Lawrence Island, Alaska is home to two Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) under remediation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 1985. After more than two decades the local residents continue to be concerned about inadequate site characterization and cleanup. During the summer of 2005, I collected ethnographic...
This thesis evaluates the programs, activities, and relationships of Enfoque Ixcan, a non-profit eye care project providing services to a rural area of Guatemala.
I conducted ethnographic interviews with key stakeholders of the organization and carried out participant observation in the Ixcan region of Guatemala in February 2006. The research...
This research focuses on the economic and social impacts to women’s and children’s dental health after methamphetamine abuse. Family oral health status, access to professional services, health literacy and home hygienic practices are evaluated in the frameworks of critical medical anthropology, applied anthropological praxis and matrix and bio-psycho-social addiction models...
The objective of this thesis is to provide a predictive model for the archaeological investigation of the first farmsteads in the Pacific Northwest, established in the early- and mid-nineteenth century by Canadien and Métis families retiring from their service in the fur trade. Past studies of this population have either...
This thesis examines the impact of urban renewal on individual health, specifically focusing on an urban planning model called Smart Growth that is being used in Portland, Oregon. Findings are based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of interview and survey data from study participants living in a community where renewal...
In his Nick Adams stories, Ernest Hemingway traces the life of a single man as he moves from boyhood to adolescence to adulthood to fatherhood. From the beginning of Nick Adams life, it is clear that he does not fit into the role of the traditional hero. In addition, Nick...
Both conflicts and new identities result when indigenous' traditional values of landscape and resource management are superimposed with federal governments' management of archaeological and forest resources in federally designated protected areas. This thesis examines the relationship and discourse between two Cuicatec towns in Oaxaca, Mexico and three Mexican government agencies...
In this thesis I argue that Alice Munro’s work takes part in an ongoing feminist discourse that examines alterations in male and female gender relations, as they have been represented in domestic fiction by women writers since the late nineteenth century. I analyze two short stories written by Munro: “Meneseteung,”...
My thesis, entitled “The Clerk’s Tale: Literal Monstrosities and Allegorical Problems,” argues that Chaucer’s Clerk is engaging both sides of a binary system. The Clerk has situated himself in a precarious position between two major schools of thought in the medieval culture, Franciscan and Dominican; the former promotes the will...
This thesis is arranged in three main chapters, each of which focuses on a particular type of Anaїs Nin text, and each of which is intended to enlarge Nin's complexities through distinct but overlapping perspectives. The idea connecting these three chapters is that Nin, who has been radically misrepresented by...
A number of researchers view farmers’ markets as an appropriate vehicle for
re-embedding food markets into communities (O’Hara & Stagl, 2001, Feenstra, 2002,
Lyson, 2005). Amidst astounding growth in the number of farmers’ markets in the
United States in recent decades, many markets struggle and fail. Recent research
suggests that...
Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov (1711 – 1755) was a successful early Russian naturalist whose professional and social destinies were linked to eighteenth-century Russia's nascent but growing naturalist tradition. During his own time Krasheninnikov bridged the gap that existed in Russia between a distinctly European scientific practice and a tradition of Russian...
For centuries humans have been searching for precious metals. The search for gold has greatly changed the landscape of the American West, beginning in the 1850s and continuing today. Various gold rushes around the country created mining colonies in remote areas, thereby connecting the frontier with the rest of America...
Hunter-gatherers depend on naturally occurring resources and, in order to survive, must overcome resource procurement challenges inherent in their environment. One challenge relates to the temporal and spatial availability of resources, which hunter-gatherers address, in part, through the strategic use of space to position themselves for optimal access to necessary...
This thesis employs the study of gender to demonstrate how recent Hollywood
western films have constructed a hero that is reflective of contemporary beliefs
regarding masculinity. Beginning with a New Historicist approach at studying gender,
this work first considers the construction of masculinity in post World War II America
and...
In this thesis, I conduct an analysis of blogs in order to understand their potential use in the composition classroom with the goals of students writing for a public audience and developing their rhetorical and civic agency. I do so by exploring the potential for the blogosphere as a public...
Kate Chopin, author of the proto-feminist novel The Awakening, was also a prolific writer of short stories. Nineteen of her stories were originally published in Vogue magazine between 1893 and 1900. This study looks at six of these stories, "The Father of Desiree's Baby," "A Respectable Woman," "The Dream of...
The relationship between literature and nation-building has been one of the most
crucial issues in postcolonial studies. The novel in particular is regarded as a means by which writers forge national consciousness among the colonized during the time of colonization. Many African writers themselves, for example, conceive of their work...
Scholars are ushering autobiographical writing of all kinds into the world of literary and scholarly writing: in course titles and syllabi, in academic journals and on bookshelves, autobiographical writing is flourishing. People's real stories offer insights into how people really live and view this life. They offer perspectives which necessarily...
In This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and several of his short stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald questions the importance of wealth as a factor in supporting happiness and fostering the American Dream on an individual basis. With these texts, Fitzgerald acknowledges that wealth is a factor and, simultaneously, a...
Nineteenth-century England witnessed burgeoning urban growth and the resultant struggle of the poor to find adequate shelter. Against this backdrop, Charles Dickens was a fierce advocate for the rights of the street people of London to have sanitary and adequate housing, earning him the title of radical. By combining sentimentality...
Thesis summarizes interviews with growers residing within the Groundwater Management Area (GWMA) in the Southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. Informal and semi-structured interviews were used to identify perceived impediments and incentives perceived by local farmers in following best management practices related to water quality. Results from the interviews were coded...
In this era of free trade and globalization, food is traveling greater and greater distances to its consumers. This is causing small farms and small farmers all over the world to protest as their livelihood is being undercut by cheap agricultural commodities from outside their communities. In the Ecuadorian Andes,...
The two literary touchstones of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Willa Cather examined in this thesis anchored a larger discussion of the discourse about gender and sexuality during the First and Second Waves of feminism in America. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman deconstructed the notion of "femininity" manifested at the turn...
Ireland's Catholic Church played an important role in the turn-of-the-century nationalism that shaped James Joyce's identity and writing; yet it also played an important part in preventing that nationalism from achieving its goals of autonomy and cultural independence. For Joyce, this was particularly evident in the dialects and
thought structures...
This thesis examines the representation of consumer culture in Fight Club within the context of Frederic Jameson's theory of postmodernism. I propose that the film represents consumer culture as a totalizing system. This representation is evident in the setting of the film and in the Narrator's attempt to escape from...
In this thesis, I argue that the cooptation and commodification of young peoples’ creative expressions of individuality through the practice of “coolhunting” causes alienation within said young people and is, therefore, unethical. I support this claim by using Marxist theory of the Frankfort Institute, viz., Max Horkheimer and Theodor W....
Studies were conducted within a 12-mile radius of Camp Sherman, Oregon, in the Deschutes National Forest during the spring and summer of 1965 and the spring of 1966, with one follow-up visit in the summer of 1967. The feeding and foraging activities of Eutamias amoenus and Citellus lateralis were observed,...
This thesis contains the cultural biography of Buddhist and Hindu items in a
small college town in the United States. It explores different factors that have led to
the availability of these items here, what attracts Americans to them, and the meanings
they give these items. Semi-structured interviews were conducted...
This thesis undertakes an examination of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, as a layering of genres. A futuristic dystopia that imagines late twentieth-century America as having fallen into neo-Puritanism and totalitarianism following widespread infertility and violence, The Handmaid’s Tale invites contemplation of various forms of fundamentalism, radicalism, and...
Food insecurity and hunger have become persistent problems resulting from an increase in impoverished segments of populations worldwide. For those not affected, the problem seems unnoticeable – it is happening somewhere else far away from them. However, in the United States, the number of people living below the poverty level...
This thesis examines how changes made to the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) in 2003 impacts those now utilizing the emergency room (ER) for primary health care. This thesis also examines how these changes impact staff members working in the ER of Salem Hospital. Through the utilization of qualitative research methods,...
The Second Pandemic had a profound impact on the people of Europe. In the few years between 1347 and 1350, a new epidemic disease spread across the entirety of Europe and killed between one third and two thirds of the population. While this initial wave was important, the real significance...
This research covers Japanese animation and its popularity in the United States. It focuses on hardcore fans for whom this animation has become part of their lives. Using interviews of self-identified anime fans, this research explores how anime fandom has become a part of American life despite originating in a...
This thesis is a study of Herman Melville’s symbolism. I have chosen to investigate the elemental images of water, fire, and stone in Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852), and Clarel; A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). This work is a semiotic study, insofar as the...
In this thesis I explore the ways in which twenty-first century Americans have access
to Geoffrey Chaucer and his works. I look at issues surrounding Chaucer within the
canon debate, high school history and literature textbooks, and Chaucer in popular
culture, such as in movies like A Knight's Tale. I...
Between 1927 and 1930 the Nevada Contracting Company of Fallon, Nevada constructed the Zion Tunnel and a portion of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway in Zion National Park, Utah. During the construction approximately 200 workers lived at the contractor's camp, known today as the Nevada Camp. This camp, a temporary work...
Microfinance, or the technique of lending small amounts of money to the world's poor for productive activities, has emerged as a dominant approach to poverty alleviation among international development organizations. However, consensus does not yet exist as to the best mechanism for delivery of loans. While most organizations simply offer...
Site formation processes at Ayia Varvara Asprokremnos, a potentially early Neolithic archaeological site on Cyprus, are examined in order to build a larger predictive model. The study area immediate to the site encompasses 6.33 hectares and includes the site and alluvial terraces on both sides of the Gialias River. Fourteen...
Pacific lamprey (Lampetra tridentata) have historically been considered by the Western scientific community as a "trash" fish and generally overlooked in West Coast fisheries management. Recent population declines in Pacific Northwest streams have triggered new research to understand the life history and ecological significance of this species. These new studies...
This thesis employs cultural analysis to better understand the meanings consumers have for the brands they consume. This research uses qualitative methods to elicit and analyze the brand meanings alumni and students have of their alma matter and alumni associations. Results from this research suggest that consumption is a ritual...
The present thesis chemically examined 174 industrial North Staffordshire pottery fragments from an archaeological context, using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). In an integrated effort to combine an archaeometric approach with archival research and traditional analysis methods, the purpose of the thesis was to link industrial pottery manufacturers recipes to...
In the early 1990s, a cutback in harvestable timber led to economic stress among the families and communities of Oregon's Santiam Canyon. This ethnographic study uses symbolic anthropology and cultural ecology to examine the changing relationships among the timber industry, timber communities, and gender roles. Timber-dependent economies have always struggled...
As recent interest has grown in the connections between how food is produced, distributed and consumed, and the overall health of food systems for people and the environment, a movement toward localizing food systems has emerged. In Lincoln County, Oregon, citizens, restaurateurs and university extension faculty, among others, have started...
This thesis uses both feminist and new historic theories to argue that the women's romance novels The Last September (1929) by Elizabeth Bowen and The Country Girl's Trilogy (1960, 1962, 1964) by Edna O'Brien are tragic bildungsroman that subvert and challenge the Irish patriarchal marriage expectations of their respective time...
What students need most from instructors’ written response on their texts is commentary that evokes a sense of exchange. Teachers often believe that their job is to point out the deficits in a student’s paper and help eliminate those deficits. While this is a part of the function of response,...