Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Educational Experiences Amid Crisis, Trauma, and Displacement: An Ethnographic Case Study of Children Abducted by the Islamic State in Iraq(2020) Webb, Amber D.; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Education in emergencies (EiE) is a growing field within discourse on humanitarian aid, international development, and global education. It brings to the fore the challenges of educating children in crisis-contexts, a growing problem in regions around the world. Since the 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to this vulnerable population of children; however, evidence-based practice has historically been weak but improved considerably over the last decade. In this dissertation study, I aim to add to the body of literature and empirical research in the field of education in emergencies. I offer succinct problems and interventions that can enhance educational outcomes for a particular group of crisis-affected children in Iraq. Specifically, I examine the lives of five Yazidi children who had been abducted and held captive by the Islamic State before returning to their families now residing in displacement camps far from their native homeland. Using qualitative methods consistent with ethnography and case study research, I present findings garnered from the five participants that offer a window into their lived realities. As a bounded case, data collection was consolidated to Yazidi children living within a single camp in Iraq from 2016-2017. The findings suggest several key barriers and opportunities for accessing quality education during periods of crisis. These findings are divided into three categories that reflect psychological, institutional, and cultural factors impacting the education of displaced and traumatized Yazidi children. The trends that emerge in each of these categories display important points of consideration for how educational aid is conceptualized and delivered during emergencies. The research also extrapolates on the findings to speculate broad reforms that can transform for the better how the field of EiE operates globally. Implications for research and theory include a need to advance theoretical discourse on children caught up in crisis, methods for facilitating research in active conflict zones, and uncovering opportunities for greater cross-sector holistic service provisions for children.Item The Crisis of Scale in Contemporary Fiction(2020) Kason, Daniel Joshua; Konstantinou, Lee; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Crisis of Scale in Contemporary Fiction studies how globalization has transformed our relationship with scale and creates a problem of representation in fiction. After the Second World War, new geopolitical, economic, cultural, and technological developments radically changed the form of existing spaces such as the nation-state, while producing new ones like the global city. By the late twentieth century, with the end of the Cold War, the spread of free trade policies like NAFTA, and the start of the Internet Age, these historical developments led to what I term the crisis of scale; that is, humanity’s growing awareness of the planet’s complexity and interconnectedness has called into question established narratives about the spaces we inhabit, necessitating the development of new representational strategies. Analyzing depictions of the global city, nation-state, world, and galaxy in novels by China Miéville, Karen Tei Yamashita, Nalo Hopkinson, and Samuel R. Delany respectively, I uncover the set of narrative strategies they use to account for the way globalization shapes daily life. Turning to popular genre fiction to describe the disorienting and dislocating effects of the crisis of scale, these novelists join a tradition of writers of literary fiction interested in advancing generic traditions such as science fiction and detective fiction. While most critics read the generic turn starting at the end of the twentieth century as a response to the decline of postmodernism, I interpret the literary movement as a formal solution to the problem of representation under the crisis of scale. By self-reflexively and intertextually engaging with their own generic histories, popular genres develop a language for the perspectival experience of the crisis of scale. This dissertation contends that tracking literary developments in genre provides us with a theoretical toolkit not only for articulating and understanding new globalizing conditions, but for developing new subjectivities capable of contending with them.Item COMPLEXITY IN DISASTERS: A CASE STUDY OF THE HAITIAN EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE(2011) Connor, David J.; Toth, Elizabeth; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This case study explores the development of an international crisis response from the perspective of the United States Coast Guard (USCG). Crisis managers, responders, and communicators from the USCG and from partner agencies were interviewed, as well as representatives from the Haitian publics of the response. The resulting narrative was used to test the previously untested Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STPS) and complexity theory, which had not previously been applied to international disaster response. Findings validated both theories and demonstrated the importance of cultural translators in effecting international disaster response. This study served as a preliminary test of STPS, and a first international application of complexity theory. Practical implications include guidance for crisis managers on how to respond to crises in a complex world, as well as how to harness cultural awareness when responding internationally.Item Foreign Policy Decision-Making and Violent Non-State Actors(2004-11-23) Andersen, David R.; Wilkenfeld, Jonathan; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A state's foreign policy is directed toward a variety of external actors. Most understanding of foreign policy behavior, however, is derived from observations of states interacting with other states. This study examines how foreign policy decision-making during crisis differs when it is directed toward violent non-state actors. A crisis is defined as an event in which a state perceives a threat to one or more of its basic values, along with an awareness of finite time for response, and a heightened probability of engaging in military hostilities. Violent non-state actors are those non-state groups that pursue their political goals through the use of or threat to use violence. Additionally, the non-state actors of interest are those that threaten an external state's national interests in such a way that it represents a crisis for that country, necessitating some form of foreign policy response. This study argues that because non-state actors lack many of the structural characteristics associated with a state, such as a recognized foreign ministry or the lack of trust states have in a non-state leader's ability to enforce agreements, states respond to these crises more violently than they do when responding to crises triggered by states. International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data confirms that the major response by states toward crises triggered by violent non-state actors are more violent than responses to crises triggered by states. Empirical results also show that non-state groups with more pronounced political and military structures are less likely to be responded to violently. Other factors, such as the nature of the value threatened and type of violence used to trigger the crisis, do not have a significant impact on how states respond. This study argues that a set of international norms have emerged that help mitigate the level of violence between states and that these norms do not apply as strongly to these violent non-state groups. However, non-state groups that are able to establish institutional structures similar to those of states are more likely to lessen the level of violence directed toward them.