Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Federal Probation Officers and Sentencing Disparity: Examining the Role of Extralegal Factors in Guidelines Calculations(2024) Mullaly, Cara; Johnson, Brian; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the years, the relationship between extralegal factors and federal sentencing disparity has attracted a significant amount of research attention. Much of this work, however, has focused on judicial and prosecutorial decision-making, largely ignoring other influential actors. One such actor is the federal probation officer. Using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, this study explores the relationship between extralegal factors and federal probation officer’s guidelines calculations. This study uses a theoretical framework that combines focal concerns and causal attributions to argue that federal probation officers attribute the causes of criminal activity differently across demographic groups, shaping their perception of the defendant’s blameworthiness and dangerousness and ultimately resulting in differing guidelines calculations. Findings showed mixed support for the hypotheses in this study. After discussing the results and limitations of the current study, I provide direction for future study of federal probation officers and their influence on federal sentencing outcomes.Item DOMINICAN GAGÁ FROM OUTSIDE AND WITHIN: DISCOURSES ABOUT GAGÁ, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC(2024) Hernandez-Sang, Victor; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the discourses that surround Gagá, an African-derived ritual tradition that entails processional music and dance performances to honor deities of Vodou, which is primarily practiced by Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin in the Dominican Republic. This study explores the characterization of Gagá from the perspective of outsiders (the media and public figures) and the viewpoint of insiders (the partakers of the tradition). In the analysis, I identify correlates between the characterization of Gagá in the media over time and major political and economic developments in the Dominican Republic. Additionally, I explore the work that community members of Gagá conduct to combat racism and harmful stereotypes about their music and religion. Based on fieldwork, archival research, and compilation of online media, this work provides a nuanced view of the perspective of gagaseros (practitioners of Gagá) regarding their tradition, self-identification, and racial discrimination.Item The Race Palimpsest: Examining the Use of Ancestry Testing in the Rhetorical Construction of Identity(2022) Lee, Naette Yoko; Pfister, Damien S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Race is a palimpsest or layered rhetorical formulation that imbricates competing interpretations of human diversity. Efforts to understand the race concept and intervene in the effect of systemic inequity have been premised on the treatment of race as a social construction. However, the ascendancy of genetic ancestry testing and related biotechnologies have spurred the reiteration of biological categories, rivaling, or supplanting the constructivist perspective. In this dissertation, racial constitution is a rhetorical process that determines how novel understandings of human diversity are interpreted and integrated into the racial palimpsest. This project proposes a theoretical model for understanding the discursive interaction between genomic testing and current racial categorizations. Three case studies were conducted to demonstrate the operation of Kenneth Burke’s positive and dialectic terms for order in this process. The cases examine the genetic test reveal genre and situate their discursive circulation in digital media ecologies. The findings elucidate the operation of rhetorics of genetic certainty, heritability, and narrative invention through which publics process genetic test results and integrate them into understanding of human difference. This dissertation identifies the need for more accurate discursive terms to make sense of ancestry testing and disrupt the integration of genomic data into the palimpsest of race.Item A BLACK NATIONALIST WORLD: THE RHETORIC OF LEADERS OF THE UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION FROM 1914 TO 1925(2022) Carroll, Darrian Robert; Parry-Giles, Shawn; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Black people continue to struggle for freedom. This project examines the way that leaders of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) fought for the freedom of Black people from 1914 to 1925. UNIA leaders rhetorically fought for Black people’s freedom by building on their belief in Black self-determination to practice world-making and envision a public. Turning back to UNIA leaders’ espousal of evaluations of the present and expectations for the future illustrates how UNIA leaders developed a view of a public capable of including all Black people and left behind a roadmap for how to make a more equitable world now. Chapter One investigates Marcus Garvey’s “Address to the 2nd Universal Negro Improvement Association Convention.” Garvey’s evaluations and expectations, his world-making, and his freedom dream, provided the foundation for UNIA leaders’ view of their public as one that included all Black people. Chapter Two examines the rhetoric of UNIA leaders Henrietta Vinton Davis, William Ferris, and Marcus Garvey during the “Africa for the Africans” campaign. The second chapter reveals how leaders’ world-making rhetoric provided them with the opportunity to envision a parallel public—a public inclusive of all Black people and insulated from the negative views of the “dominant” public. The third chapter examines how leaders articulated evaluations of the past and present and expectations for the future to develop a view of their public as one still capable of supporting Black self-determination despite the imprisoning of Marcus Garvey. UNIA leaders like Henrietta Vinton Davis, William Ferris, Amy Jacques Garvey, William Sherrill, T. Thomas Fortune, and Marcus Garvey exemplified a rhetoric of champions as they predicted the future success of their public. The fourth chapter investigates how the most indispensable women leaders of the UNIA reflected on the UNIA’s successes from 1914 to 1925 after the UNIA had passed its prime. Chapter Four turns to Amy Ashwood Garvey’s and Amy Jacques Garvey’s reminisces of Marcus Garvey in their interviews for “The Ghost of Garvey” conducted by Lerone Bennett Jr. In their interviews, Ashwood Garvey and Jacques Garvey produced a rhetoric of falling forward by evaluating the UNIA’s past and expecting that the efforts of the UNIA leaders would have purchase for Black people fighting for freedom in the future. Ashwood Garvey’s and Jacques Garvey’s rhetoric pushed a view of leaders’ public as strong and supportive of Black self-determination into perpetuity. This project concludes by reflecting on what UNIA leaders’ world-making and envisioning of a public illuminate about Black Nationalism in the 1960s and world-making now. Leaders did not get to see their Black Nationalist world come to fruition, but UNIA leaders did bring millions of Black people together around the idea that if they believed in self-determination, the future was theirs for the making. Turning back to UNIA leaders’ rhetoric from 1914 to 1925 evinces how by believing in Black self-determination and articulating their own evaluations of the present and expectations for the future, UNIA leaders charted a path to a different world.Item APPLICANT REACTIONS TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SELECTION SYSTEMS(2022) Bedemariam, Rewina Sahle; Wessel, Jennifer; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Practitioners have embraced the use of AI and Machine Learning systems for employeerecruitment and selection. However, studies examining applicant reactions to such systems are lacking in the literature. Specifically, little is known about how job applicants react to AI-based selection systems. This study assessed fairness perceptions of hiring decisions made by AIdriven systems and whether significant differences existed between different groups of people. To do so, a two-by-two experimental study where participants in a selection scenario are randomly assigned to a decision-maker condition (human vs AI) and outcome variability condition (hired vs rejected) was utilized. The results showed that the condition had a significant effect on the interactional justice dimension. The interaction effect of outcome and condition had an impact on job-relatedness, chance to perform, reconsideration opportunity, feedback perceptions, and interactional justice. The three-way interaction of outcome, race and condition influences general fairness reactions and emotional reactions. Given these findings, HR personnel should weigh the pros and cons of AI, especially towards applicants that are rejected.Item Examining the State-Level, and Racial and Ethnic Impact of Cigarette Taxes on Youth Smoking and Cessation(2022) Shinaba, Muftau; Boudreaux, Michel; Health Services Administration; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between per-pack cigarette taxes at the state level and smoking behavior among youth in the United States, based on race and ethnicity. State-level Youth Behavioral Risk Surveys (YRBS) from 2017 and 2019, as well as Tax Burden on Tobacco (TBOT) data, were used to analyze current (past 30-day) cigarette use and quit attempts among high school students, stratified by race/ethnicity and adjusting for age and sex. The findings found that overall odds of cigarette use were lower with higher cigarette taxes across states. The findings look to further evaluate a key tobacco control policy from both an economic and public health perspective.Item “THE GREAT QUESTION”: SLAVERY, SECTIONALISM, AND THE U.S. NAVAL OFFICER CORPS, 1820-1861(2021) Bailey, Roger; Bell, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes how United States naval officers’ beliefs about race and slavery shaped sectionalism between the North and South in the antebellum era. As agents of the federal government operating far from the capital, naval officers had significant influence on the implementation of American foreign policy. With reputations as respected professionals and travelers, they also shaped national discourse with their reports, speeches, and publications. These traits made officers important public figures as the future of slavery became a pervasive issue that increasingly affected American naval operations. The study examines the US Navy’s suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, support for African colonization in Liberia, policing of unauthorized “filibustering” invasions in Latin America, and exploring expeditions. It argues that up until the secession crisis at the outbreak of the Civil War, the naval officer corps was remarkably resilient to the growing divide between the North and South. Most officers considered themselves to be politically moderate on the issue of slavery, and they tried to curtail the institution’s worst excesses, eliminate threats to the stability of slavery, and promote external, compromise solutions to the nation’s domestic crisis that prioritized rule of law. These solutions sought to unify white Americans around visions of empire and the expatriation of African Americans. In pursuing such goals, officers tried to enact their own version of American foreign policy. Though they had limited material success, their efforts supported political moderatism in the antebellum United States. As more and more Americans took up pro- and antislavery stances, naval officers used federal power and their personal influence to help maintain the belief that compromise could preserve the Union.Item Laughing to Keep Human: Disruptions of Racist Logic in African American Humor(2021) Morgan, Abbey A.; Washington, Mary Helen; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project examines black humorists who challenge the Eurocentric, racist logics delimiting what it means to be human while demarcating blackness as inferior. While many scholars in black humor centralize humor as a means of resistance, a source of comic rage or redress, this project suggests that black humor offers a space to celebrate black humanity as it broadens representations of blackness. By turning to the staged parodies of Frederick Douglass in the 19th century, the stand-up routines of Jackie "Moms" Mabley and Richard Pryor in the 20th century, and the satire of novelist Paul Beatty, the project uses this unlikely assemblage to reveal a lineage of black humor that has effectively and cogently disrupted white supremacist logics while enacting a type of self-actualization of a fuller sense of humanity.Item Sex- and Race-Based Differences in the Effects of Acute and Chronic Exercise on Vascular Function and Circulating MicroRNA(2021) Sapp, Ryan M; Hagberg, James M; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading global cause of death. Disparities in CVD development exist, with greater rates observed in men than women and in African Americans (AA) than Caucasian Americans (CA). It is crucial to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying these disparities in order to formulate preventative strategies. Regular aerobic exercise reduces CVD risk, while acute exercise is a useful stimulus to reveal impairments in cardiovascular function not apparent at rest. This dissertation utilizes approaches to identify sex- and race-based differences in vascular function within young, healthy individuals, indicative of future CVD risk, including the use of acute exercise as a cardiovascular stimulus and the exercise-trained individual as a model of superior cardiovascular health. Aim #1 shows that exercise training is associated with beneficial effects of the circulating factors in serum on vascular endothelial cells, in a sex-specific manner, suggesting that circulating factors are differently affected by exercise training in men and women. Aim #2 shows that endothelial function and central arterial stiffness respond similarly to acute exercise in AA and CA. Carotid arterial compliance, however, is increased only in CA during exercise recovery. MicroRNAs (miRs) are epigenetic modulators of gene expression implicated in CVD development. Blood-borne circulating miRs (ci-miRs) are paracrine/endocrine molecules and preclinical biomarkers, yet sex- and race-based differences in ci-miRs are understudied. Additionally, ci-miRs are altered with exercise and may mediate training-induced vascular adaptations. Aim #3 of this dissertation reveals that the resting concentrations of select vascular-related ci-miRs differ based on sex and exercise training status, but not race. In response to acute exercise however, several anti-inflammatory ci-miRs increased significantly in CA, but not AA. Additionally, the changes in one anti-inflammatory ci-miR exhibited race-specific correlations with the changes in carotid arterial compliance identified in Aim #2. Aim #4 investigates the hypothesis that exercise elicits endothelial integral damage, and that this may mediate changes in vascular function and endothelial-derived ci-miRs. By measuring different endothelial-derived circulating factors, we show that exercise likely does not cause endothelial cell detachment or apoptosis. Thus, ci-miR are likely released via a selective method of secretion, rather than passively leaking from damaged endothelium.Item The place of race in past and present: Student and state narratives of race in U.S. History(2021) Lee, Justine Hwei Chi; Brown, Tara M; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This three-study dissertation addresses the broader question of identifying a collective memory of race in the Northern United States. The studies are conceptually linked by a critical race perspective and are distinct in research focus, methods, and findings. In the first study, I examined how 128 students from two New England states represented their understandings of the history of enslavement in the United States. I used inductive and deductive approaches to investigate how they connected this history to race and notions of national progress. In the second study, I used document analysis to investigate the representation of people of color in New York’s state standards for 11th grade U.S. history. I found that less than one-third of standards cited people of color, and the majority of such standards cited them alongside White people. This practice of exclusionary grouping reinforced Whiteness as normative by implying a essentialist view of race and ethnicity. In the third study, I employed discourse analysis to examine the representation of race in the New York U.S. history curricular framework and in the policy context of its intended use. I found that policy defining the purpose of social studies promoted nationalist and race-evasive discourses. Through strategic periodization, the curriculum segregated explicit references to race into an “alternate timeline,” whose narrative arc strongly implied racial progress. Moreover, I found that the selectively ahistorical use of the word “American” was used to mark groups as non-White. Ultimately, the state’s manipulation of time and language functioned to preserve discourses of national progress and U.S. moral exceptionalism and to suppress the study of race in history.