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
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Dissonant Belonging and the Making of Community: Native Hawaiian Claims to Selfhood and Home(2016) Soon-Ludes, Jeannette; Kim, Seung-kyung; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1898 the United States illegally annexed the Hawaiian Islands over the protests of Queen Liliʽuokalani and the Hawaiian people. American hegemony has been deepened in the intervening years through a range of colonizing practices that alienate Kanaka Maoli, the indigenous people of Hawaiʽi, from their land and culture. Dissonant Belonging and the Making of Community is an exploration of contemporary Hawaiian peoplehood that reclaims indigenous conceptions of multiethnicity from colonizing narratives of nation and race. Drawing from archival holdings at the University of Hawaiʽi, Mānoa and in-depth interviews, this project offers an analysis of public and everyday discourses of nation, race, and peoplehood to trace the discursive struggle over Local identity and politics. A context-specific social formation in Hawaiʽi, “Local” is commonly understood as a multiethnic identity that has its roots in working-class, ethnic minority culture of the mid-twentieth century. However, American discourses of race and, later, multiethnicity have functioned to render invisible the indigenous roots of this social formation. Dissonant Belonging and the Making of Community reclaims these roots as an important site of indigenous resistance to American colonialism. It traces, on the one hand, the ways in which Native Hawaiian resistance has been alternately erased and appropriated. On the other hand, it explores the meanings of Local identity to Native Hawaiians and the ways in which indigenous conceptions of multiethnicity enabled a thriving community under conditions of colonialism.Item Taxing Ourselves: Understanding School Tax Elections(2015) Kobren, Martin Edward; Morris, Irwin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Americans have increasingly segregated themselves over the last 40 years by wealth and political orientation. I argue that this segregation affects the way communities react to school tax ballot issues, which are ostensibly non-partisan matters. Using a database containing 232 school tax elections that took place during 2011 in 10 states, I show that in affluent communities that favor Democrats, high levels of educational attainment make it more likely that a community will adopt a tax increase. By contrast, in downscale communities that favor Democrats, economic concerns play an important role in election outcome; large percentages of homeowners decrease the likelihood of passage while large percentages of renters and poor people make tax increases more likely. In downscale Republican leaning communities, a sense of attachment to the community, indicated by large percentages of households with members who are at least 60 years of age, small community sizes and long tenures in the same house, make it more likely that the community will adopt a school tax increase. Finally, in affluent Republican oriented communities, school tax increases are extremely difficult to pass and become more so as community size increases. High levels of educational attainment tend to moderate the impact of Republican anti-tax ideology and high population sizes to make school tax increases more likely.Item ENVIRONMENTAL CHOLERA TRANSMISSION TRIGGERS IN DELTA BENGAL(2014) Elnemr, Wessam; Colwell, Rita; Huq, Anwar; Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prediction of water-borne diseases is a critical aspect especially for developing countries. The current study focuses on cholera since it is considered to be a continuous public health threat. Vibrio cholerae, causative agent of cholera, is an autochthonous bacterial inhabitant in the aquatic environment and it is highly unlikely that cholera will ever be fully eradicated. Consequently, to reduce the disease burden, enhanced cholera prediction models that include several months' lead-time are still needed to further the development of effective mitigation and intervention strategies. Both regional- and large-scale environmental conditions can aid in understanding and predicting how and when outbreaks may occur. The overall goal of the research reported here was to develop a quantitative cholera prediction model with high quality, using regional and remote-sensing data from endemic and epidemic regions, respectively, in the Bengal Delta. This research involved four separate supporting objectives: 1) Determination of the role of environmental factors associated with the seasonality and modulating dynamics in a cholera outbreak; 2) Development of a physically plausible hypothesis of how local environmental factors modulate cholera outbreak dynamics; 3) Identification of the major environmental controls triggers sporadic cholera outbreaks in epidemic regions ; 4) Construction of an accurate model for the Bengal Delta simulating and predicting the two transmission routes of cholera (primary and secondary). The modeling results show that, for a high quality model > 70% Pseudo-R Square, Bengal Delta cholera in coastal regions is characterized by a single spring peak, whereas Bengal Delta cholera in inland regions occurs in bimodal peaks, with distinct hydroclimatological explanations for the geographical differences. Results confirm that spring season cholera is associated with coastal seawater intrusion, and fall cholera outbreaks are driven by floods related to the monsoon. This is the first study that demonstrates the relationship between in situ environmental conditions with regard to cholera outbreaks. Furthermore, results from remote-sensing data show that ambient temperature followed by high rainfall periods are the main triggers of cholera outbreaks in epidemic regions. These findings provide important steps and contributions toward development of environmental factor-based predictive models for cholera outbreaks in the Bengal Delta region.Item THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF TELEVISION NEWS AT A TIME OF DEREGULATION: A CASE STUDY OF PRACTITIONERS IN THREE MAJOR MARKETS.(2013) Swift, Kevin Patrick; Beasley, Maurine H.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Broadcast news has undergone monumental changes since 1980. Longstanding rules regarding ownership and practices began to be loosened at this time, forever changing the practice of local broadcast television news. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 stimulated groundbreaking changes as rules of ownership were significantly relaxed. The result was a buying frenzy of television stations by major corporations in some places where small group and local ownership once dominated. The way broadcast news operated was changed dramatically in the years following these changes in policy. The purpose of this research was to gain qualitative knowledge regarding the effects of changes in FCC deregulation policy on practitioners of local broadcast television news during a time of great technological change and audience fragmentation. I examined what effects took place as a result of expanded corporate ownership and policies during this time of an already shifting landscape. To complete this research, which was conducted from 2007 to 2009, broadcast news professionals who had been in the business a minimum of fifteen years were interviewed. I interviewed a total of ten news professionals in three separate large broadcast markets, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. What I found was that broadcasters felt they had been affected negatively by the changes and were unhappy about the state of the broadcast news business. Practitioners said they were doing more with less, supervising inexperienced help, struggling with unstable work routines and working in newsrooms where morale was at an all-time low. Many experienced reporters were being told to learn how to shoot and edit their own video or quit. The practitioners also described a split in philosophy with ownership. Negative changes, said many of the practitioners, were partially the result of expanded corporate ownership, which was allowed by deregulation. While deregulation did not dictate how news should be produced it was mentioned repeatedly as one of the factors that paved the way for a period of major change in the broadcast news landscape. Other factors, such as rapidly changing technology, internet expansion and an economic downturn were also mentioned among the many changes that practitioners said they had experienced. During the time of a shifting media landscape broadcast deregulation allowed expansion of media ownership which resulted in further changes that affected practitioners. This case study gave a voice to a sample of those practitioners and allowed them to explain the challenges it meant for them as professionals.