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.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item THE ENDURANCE OF GENTRIFICATION: THREE ESSAYS ON MEANING, MEASUREMENT, AND CONSEQUENCES(2022) Finio, Nicholas James; Knaap, Gerrit J; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gentrification is the process through which an influx of new investment and new residents with higher incomes and educational attainment flow into a neighborhood over time. This dissertation expands scholarly understanding of gentrification’s meaning, measurement, and consequences through three essays. The first essay reviews, inventories, and critiques the numerous methods scholars have used to identify gentrification. The second essay critiques the normative foundations of the smart growth movement and improves empirical understanding of how that urban policy agenda and gentrification are linked. The final essay identifies gentrification in Maryland’s Purple Line Corridor and with quantitative methods illustrates how gentrification impacts the local business economy. The findings of this dissertation show that gentrification is often not properly identified, smart growth and gentrification can be linked, and that businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods are more likely to close.Item Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850(2017) Slaughter, Joseph; Sicilia, David; Ridgway, Whitman; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850, answers the question of how theologically conservative Protestants approached business in the expanding market economy of the early national period. Recent Supreme Court cases (such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.) have cast light on an important and controversial intersection of capitalism and religion in the United States: the Christian Business Enterprise (CBE). Three CBEs of the early nineteenth century form the core of my study: George Rapp & Associates (the Harmony Society of Western Pennsylvania/Southern Indiana), the Pioneer Stage Coach Line (upstate New York), and Harper & Brothers (New York City). These proprietors embraced the most influential strains of Christianity in early America: Pietism, Calvinism, and Arminianism while attempting to create an ethical marketplace. Their efforts produced three distinct visions of a moral economy in the early national period: Christian communal capitalism, Christian reform capitalism, and Christian virtue capitalism. Faith in Markets challenges the prevailing notion in the historiography that concludes CBEs were the product of twentieth century Bible Belt Protestants reacting to the New Deal, World War II, or the Cold War. Instead, Christian Business Enterprise has a deeper history, that dates back to the earliest decades of the American republic. Melding the new history of capitalism with the revived field of American religious history, Faith in Markets demonstrates how individuals’ religiously motivated choices shaped market activity, as well as the market itself. The Methodist Harper brothers, for instance, rose to prominence as the most powerful publishers of the nineteenth century, dramatically shaping American culture with their middle class Victorian literary products, all while serving as a model of trustworthy business in an age of anonymous market exchange. Ultimately, whether reforming the market by successfully limiting the workweek to six days, presenting an alternate vision for republican industry and community, or fostering middle class Victorian values, the key figures in Faith in Markets illustrates how Christian Business Enterprises indelibly shaped antebellum American culture.Item Beyond Words: A Post-Process Business Writing Pedagogy(2016) Lloyd, Adam M.; Wible, Scott A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goals of this dissertation are twofold: to identify shortcomings in contemporary business writing pedagogies that result in students being insufficiently prepared for the writing challenges of their post-college careers and, to develop an alternative pedagogy that addresses these problems. To achieve these ends I review the recent history of business writing pedagogy, examine 105 business communication syllabi from U.S. colleges, and perform a close textual analysis of the five textbooks most commonly used in these courses. I then perform a communication audit of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network as an exemplar of how communication functions in a workplace setting. Armed with this data I assert that contemporary pedagogical models do not adequately account for the atomistic complexity and fluidity of actual workplace discourse: the historical and organizational factors that affect every discursive interaction, the personal preferences and individual relationships that determine success with each new dialogic engagement, the very nature of communication as uncodifiable and paralogical, or the generative, living genres that allow these activity systems to function. “Beyond Words” presents a new pedagogy that accomplishes several objectives: first, it accounts for the weaknesses of current business writing pedagogies. Second, it addresses the challenges of contemporary workplace communication, in which writing expectations are constantly evolving and progressively intricate. Third, it incorporates the principles of post-process theory—that writing is public, interpretive, and situated—and draws on aspects of activity theory and ethnographic analysis that remain consistent with a post-process framework but add depth to the holistic conception of discourse practices. Fourth, rather than trying to teach students how to write—which post-process theory argues is impossible—it focuses on helping students to “read” the situated contexts of what are commonly considered discourse communities as evidence of prior communicative theories so as to better triangulate the passing hermeneutic strategies of each of their interlocutors. Most importantly, this pedagogy prepares students for the increasingly complex, unstable, diverse writing conditions of the contemporary workplace and empowers them to better analyze and adapt to whatever communications challenges they face throughout their professional careers.Item The Effects of Campaign Contributions on State Legislators(2005-04-11) hoffman, adam howard; Herrnson, Paul S; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tremendous increases in campaign contributions at the state legislative level, both from labor and business interests have led to suspicions regarding the influence of money on legislative voting. This study seeks to assess the degree to which campaign funds flowing from private interests to state legislators, influence how legislators vote on bills that affect those private interests. This study addresses the influence of money on roll call votes using campaign contribution data from 4,000 legislators in 22 states for the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. The analysis shows that in states with nonprofessional legislatures, campaign contributions from business interests do indeed influence how legislators vote on business-supported legislation. Unlike professionalized legislatures, where such factors as significant staff support, and stricter campaign finance laws mitigate the influence of lobbyists and campaign contributions, legislators in nonprofessional legislators are often overburdened with complex policy proposals along as well as numerous contributors and lobbyists ready to provide both campaign money and advice when it comes to voting for business-backed legislation. Disaggregating the analysis to the individual state level provides for a detailed examination of the political forces and policy environments, both historically and in the present that have shaped how and why the major players in state capitols maintain their influence over policy outputs. Findings that link the contributions of business interests to legislative voting raise important concerns including the declining representativeness of state legislators as well as the possibility of corrupt practices or the perceptions of corruption among the public when money is exchanged for votes.