States

The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Relationship: George Washington and Thomas Paine, 1776-1796 (open access)

The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Relationship: George Washington and Thomas Paine, 1776-1796

This study is a cultural and political analysis of the emergence and deterioration of the relationship between George Washington and Thomas Paine. It is informed by modern studies in Atlantic history and culture. It presents the falling out of the two Founding Fathers as a reflection of two competing political cultures, as well as a function of the class aspirations of Washington and Paine. It chronologically examines the two men's interaction with one another from the early days of the American Revolution to the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. Along the way this study highlights the dynamics that characterized the Washington-Paine relationship and shows how the two men worked together to further their own agendas. This study also points to Thomas Paine's involvement with a web of Democratic Societies in America and to Washington's increasing wariness and suspicion of these Societies as agents of insurrection.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Hamilton, Matthew K.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Saying Sorry: Conflict Atrocity and Political Apology (open access)

Saying Sorry: Conflict Atrocity and Political Apology

This study proposes and tests a comprehensive theory detailing the motivations behind political apologies. A brief survey of the literature shows a field rich in case studies but lacking in rigorous scientific analysis. The theory presented proposes a three-level examination of political apology at the state, dyadic, and system levels and incorporates the effects of culture, conflict, and the nature of the international system into analysis. This study makes use of a new dataset recording the occurrence of political apologies for interstate conflict atrocities from 1900 to 2006. The results suggest that the existing literature, while rich, does not account for all the motivating factors behind apology. The results also confirm that political apology is a creation of the modern era and a result of the liberalization of the international system. In conclusion, paths for future research are suggested and the advent of a global "age of apology" is confirmed.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Chalkley, Marie Leone
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality (open access)

The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality

Barnes's Vagaries Malicieux, and Nin's Delta of Venus, are examples the developing vision of female sex, and both authors use their literary techniques to accomplish their aesthetic vision of amorality. Nin's visions are based on her and her friends' extreme experiences. Her primary concern was expressing her erotic and amorally aesthetic gaze, and the results of her efforts are found in her aesthetic vision of Paris and the amoral lifestyle. Barnes uses metaphor and linguistics to fashion her aesthetic vision. Her technique in "Run, Girls, Run!" both subverts any sense of morality, and offers an interesting and challenging read for its audience. In "Vagaries Malicieux" Barnes's Paris is dark while bright, and creates a sense of nothingness, indicated only by Barnes's aesthetic appreciation.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Dunbar, Erin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Missionary Millennium: The American West; North and West Africa in the Christian Imagination (open access)

Missionary Millennium: The American West; North and West Africa in the Christian Imagination

During the 1890s in the United States, Midwestern YMCA missionaries challenged the nexus of power between Northeastern Protestant denominations, industrialists, politicians, and the Association's International Committee. Under Kansas YMCA secretary George Fisher, this movement shook the Northeastern alliance's underpinnings, eventually establishing the Gospel Missionary Union. The YMCA and the GMU mutually defined foreign and domestic missionary work discursively. Whereas Fisher's pre-millennial movement promoted world conversion generally, the YMCA primarily reached out to college students in the United States and abroad. Moreover, the GMU challenged social and gender roles among Moroccan Berbers. Fisher's movements have not been historically analyzed since 1975. Missionary Millennium is a reanalysis and critical reading of religious fictions about GMU missionaries, following the organization to its current incarnation as Avant Ministries.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Garrett, Bryan A.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Debate over the Corporeality of Demons in England, c. 1670-1700 (open access)

The Debate over the Corporeality of Demons in England, c. 1670-1700

According to Walter Stephens, witch-theorists in the fifteenth century developed the witchcraft belief of demon copulation in order to prove the existence of demons and therefore the existence of God. In England, during the mid-seventeenth century, Cartesian and materialist philosophies spread. These new philosophies stated there was nothing in the world but corporeal substances, and these substances had to conform to natural law. This, the philosophers argued, meant witchcraft was impossible. Certain other philosophers believed a denial of any incorporeal substance would lead to atheism, and so used witchcraft as proof of incorporeal spirits to refute what they felt was a growing atheism in the world. By examining this debate we can better understand the decline of witchcraft. This debate between corporeal and incorporeal was part of the larger debate over the existence of witchcraft. It occurred at a time in England when the persecution of witches was declining. Using witchcraft as proof of incorporeal substances was one of the last uses of witchcraft before it disappeared as a valid belief. Therefore, a better understanding of this debate adds to a better understanding of witchcraft during its decline.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Patterson, Patrick
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Clutch (open access)

Clutch

Clutch is the title of the creative portion of my thesis as well as the name of my theory 'clutch' which I outline in the preface section. The purpose of the clutch theory is to recognize modes of inspiration in the body, heart and mind so that the poet can consciously move beyond passive receptivity to engage inspiration more fully. Mechanically, to "clutch" does not mean to create inspiration, but it is the opportunistic, spirited encouragement of these moments of inspiration and, more importantly, the direction of the artist's own response in moving from inspiration to creation. The clutch process unfolds through three centers: body, heart and mind, where we initially encounter inspiration. And, through a discussion of three notable poets' work, Henri Cole, Li-Young Lee and T.S. Eliot, the relationship between a completed work and clutch as a process further explains the boundaries of each mode.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Bauge, Jessica M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 33, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 13, 2009 (open access)

Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 33, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 13, 2009

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.
Date: August 13, 2009
Creator: Wisch, Rene
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
The Parent Participation Discourse of a Community School: Diverse Ideas and Perceptions about Educational Partnership at an Inner City Community School (open access)

The Parent Participation Discourse of a Community School: Diverse Ideas and Perceptions about Educational Partnership at an Inner City Community School

Despite the widespread recommendation that schools "collaborate" with parents, little is found in the literature to elaborate on what this term or the common synonym "partnership" means, and further, how schools can invite diverse parental contributions to the table of educational discourse. The current study looks to contribute to the literature by analyzing the parent participation discourse in one community elementary school, utilizing critical discourse analysis and ethnographic observations. The findings reveal both school and parents' conceptions of the parents' partnership role as ancillary to that of the school's and the subsequent lack of true collaboration so advocated by the literature. Implications arise from this analysis which calls into question the examples of "collaboration" found in the literature, given the lack of theorizing regarding what collaboration inside of parent participation means. Contributions may shed light on the unintentional inequality of diverse parents in an effort toward true collaboration utilizing both the European American, middle class contributions of the educational institution alongside those of non-mainstream parents in creating an authentic educational atmosphere for diverse students.
Date: August 2009
Creator: Coe, Alice Elizabeth
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English (open access)

Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English

I investigate the spoken dialogue of four Indian novels in English: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable (1935), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan's The World of Nagaraj (1990), and Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters (2002). Roger Fowler has said that literature, as a form of discourse, articulates ideology; it is through linguistic criticism (combination of literary criticism and linguistic analyses) that the ideologies in a literary text are uncovered. Shobhana Chelliah in her study of Indian novels in English concludes that the authors use Indian English (IndE) as a device to characterize buffoons and villains. Drawing upon Fowler's and Chelliah's framework, my investigation employs linguistic criticism of the four novels to expose the ideologies reflected in the use of fictionalized English in the Indian context. A quantitative inquiry based on thirty-five IndE features reveals that the authors appropriate these features, either to a greater or lesser degree, to almost all their characters, suggesting that IndE functions as the mainstream variety in these novels and creating an illusion that the authors are merely representing the characters' unique Indian worldviews. But within this dialect range, the appropriation of higher percentages of IndE features to specific characters or groups of characters reveal …
Date: August 2009
Creator: Muthiah, Kalaivahni
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library