UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item SETTING THE TRANSPACIFIC KITCHEN TABLE: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF FOOD IN THE KOREAN AMERICAN DIASPORA(2024) Kim, Jung Min; Forson, Psyche W; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Setting the Transpacific Kitchen Table: The Cultural Politics of Food in the Korean American Diaspora” is a material culture analysis of key dishes and ingredients of the Korean American diaspora. The study begins in South Korea following the Armistice on July 27, 1953 and follows the movement of Korean people, foods, and ideas to the United States in the decades after the war to the present day with a specific focus on three dishes: Budae jjigae (Army Base Stew), kimchi (traditional fermented vegetable), and rice. This dissertation unpacks the recipes and some of the meanings of these dishes to understand and contextualize their importance in Korean and Korean American foodways historically and into the present moment. Central to this project is the material “afterlife” of these ingredients and dishes- some introduced by foreign powers, while others are the most Korean of dishes- the lingering impact on how Korean and Korean Americans create place and meaning from these dishes. How do these dishes come to be? How do they come together to become symbolic of the Korean diasporic experience? In answering these questions, I hope to document and interrogate the range of emotional, cultural, and material responses that budae jjigae, kimchi, and rice have engendered from artists, chefs, mothers, and everyday Koreans and Korean Americans. With the increase in visibility and popularity of Korean foods in the American food lexicon, the aim of this study is to help historicize and contextualize this rise through exploring the complex relationship between Korea and the United States through foodways. In doing so it will interrogate and analyze the “entanglements” of transpacific power and political economies through foodways to understand the dialectic between state power and community resilience and resistance.Item Evaluation and Modeling of Food Safety Risk Factors Associated with Toxoplasma gondii Infection in the Farm-to-Fork Framework(2020) Rani, Surabhi; Pradhan, Abani K; Food Science; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Toxoplasma gondii is a widespread zoonotic parasite with a high seroprevalence in the human population and the ability to infect almost all warm blooded animals. Animal meat may contain viable T. gondii tissue cysts that can potentially cause infection if undercooked meat is consumed. The goal of this research is to estimate T. gondii distribution in animal meats by integrating experimental data with predictive modeling and statistical analyses to better understand the ecology of T. gondii infection and further evaluate mitigation methods to reduce the public health burden of toxoplasmosis. To understand the infectivity and transmission of T. gondii from the environment to animals and thereafter humans, the formation and distribution of T. gondii tissue cysts was estimated in varying sizes (5 g, 10 g and 50 g) of animal muscle tissues. Experimentally and naturally infected pigs, lambs and goats were evaluated. The sensitivity and specificity of different diagnostic tests for detecting T. gondii were also evaluated using logistic regression modeling and meta-analysis. Bootstrap and Gibbs statistical sampling techniques were used to assess the complete inactivation of T. gondii in pork through cooking and freezing. Dynamic compartmental modeling was used to simulate one year on a hypothetical pig farm to understand T. gondii infection transmission via the environment and in multiple hosts such as cats, rats, pigs and humans. Further, this modeled analyzed some of the dynamical behaviors of the T. gondii infection in the definite (cat) and intermediate (e.g. rat, pig and human) host populations. The results suggested that T. gondii tissue cysts can develop as early as 7 days after infection in experimentally infected pigs and are unevenly distributed in the muscle tissues of naturally infected lambs and goats based on bioassay in mice. Meat samples as small as 5 g have the potential to cause T. gondii infection if consumed raw or undercooked. The regression model predicted varying specificity and sensitivity for different sized meat samples with the highest sensitivity and lowest specificity for the largest samples (50 g). T. gondii tissue cysts in fresh pork were completely inactivated at or above 64°C (147.2°F) and below -18°C (0°F). Tissue cysts can remain viable in fresh meat for up to 30 days stored at 4°C (39°F). With the calculated predation rate of the hosts and the transmission rate of infection from environment, the T. gondii infection is expected to persist (R0 > 1) in all hosts over the simulation run of one year. This dissertation evaluated the T. gondii infection flow in different hosts, assessed mitigation strategies for food safety risks and estimated the distribution of the parasite in fresh cut meats of food animals.Item Identification of Precursor Signals to Impending Cooking Related Fires(2015) Zevotek, Robin; Milke, Jim A; Fire Protection Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cooking related fires continue to be the leading cause of fires in homes. In an effort to reduce the number of cooking fires Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the University of Maryland (UMD) partnered to evaluate detection of cooking related fires. An experimental protocol was developed to examine if precursor signals capable of predicting an impending fire can be detected to provide adequate warning prior to flaming fire. A series of eleven different experiments were conducted to acquire signals from sensors located at or near an electric coil range. The data recorded was analyzed to identify element gas temperature, carbon monoxide concentration, optical density and ionization signal as potential indicators of an impending fire. Further work is needed to evaluate sensor threshold values and the algorithms developed for other cooking styles and cooking appliances.