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 Understanding the Unthinkable: A Comparative Analysis of Mass Shooters, Homicide Offenders, and Violent Extremists Using Criminological Theory(2024) Yanez, Yesenia A.; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As mass shootings continue, the need for more theoretically driven solutions grows. Criminologists can offer tremendous insight, though they should be wary of applying existing theories to this relatively new phenomenon. In this dissertation, I explore how mass shootings fit into our understanding of crime and violence. I begin by describing mass shooter demographics and motives over time. I then compare mass shooters to homicide offenders and violent extremists. Focusing on social control and general strain variables, I find that mass shooters are significantly different than single-victim homicide offenders in terms of common correlates of crime. Mass shooters and violent extremists, on the other hand, show fewer differences and greater definitional overlap. Finally, I consider how mass shooting definitions shape our perception of mass shooters. Considering these results, I conclude that a mass shooter’s path to violence does not resemble that of a common homicide offender but rather one of a violent extremist. Future scholars can thus reimagine existing criminological theories to help explain mass shootings and provide solutions that are more appropriate.Item Black Nightmare Imaginary: Popular Music, Collective Trauma, and the Intransigence of Antiblack Violence(2024) Donnell, Dallas Taylor; Bruce, La Marr J; Avilez, GerShun; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Black Nightmare Imaginary: Popular Music, Collective Trauma, and the Intransigence of Antiblack Violence” is an interdisciplinary examination of the Black Nightmare Imaginary, a form of ideological common sense about the precarity of Black life and the necessity of various modes and maneuvers of contestation and escape needed to survive. I argue that Black Americans have shared access to a psychic repository of scenes and scenarios of antiblack violence that exist in vivid detail out of a collective awareness of the omnipresent violence foundational to Black life itself. Black musicians can tap into this shared terrain of terror through creative works that return us to these traumatic moments and perform perseverance in the face of that trauma. These scenes of violence include the horror of the auction block, the humiliation of the minstrel show, the degradation of the social services visit, the tension of a traffic stop, and more. This is the stuff of our nightmares—the full spectrum of antiblack violence that persists through what Saidiya Hartman calls “the afterlives of slavery.” Foregrounding these scenarios of violence, Black musicians create works that can be read as enacting tactics of resistance to that violence. These tactics include vigilantism, nihilism, opacity, and marronage. Incorporating sonic, visual, literary, and discursive methods, I use the theoretical lens of the Black Nightmare Imaginary to do interdisciplinary analyses of the songs, music videos, album covers, and journalistic representations of a set of post-Civil Rights era Black musicians—including Mary J. Blige, Prince, N.W.A, 2pac, and Sister Souljah. This work challenges prevailing attitudes that misunderstand and devalue Black creative works with simplistic binaries of good /bad, positive/negative, political/apolitical. To the contrary, these are complex works that reckon with both the life and death stakes of the violence foundational to Black American life and the irreducibility and irrepressibility of that life to its influence.Item "Pillaged and Robbed so Well": Captains in the Hundred Years War 1350-1380(2024) Ament, Nathaniel; Baron, Sabrina; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Captains were among the most influential military figures of the Hundred Years War. Despite this, there is scant scholarship on captaincy as a position within medieval society. This thesis seeks to rectify this gap in the scholarship by exploring the careers of influential captains serving England and France during the period from 1350-80. Drawing primarily from chronicle sources, this thesis examines the careers of this group of captains chronologically. It examines how their careers progressed and how they interacted with key cultural systems such as territorial lordship, chivalric culture, and the economic mechanisms of war. The overall findings of this paper reveal that these three systems mutually reinforced each other through captaincy by justifying chivalric violence.Item CHRONIC SUFFERING: CHRONIC ILLNESS, DISABILITY, AND VIOLENCE AMONG MEXICAN MIGRANT WOMEN(2022) Guevara, Emilia Mercedes; Getrich, Christina M; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation seeks to better understand how Mexican migrant women who work in the Maryland crab industry make sense of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, and musculoskeletal pain while at the same time living spatially and temporally complicated lives as circular temporary migrant laborers. I explore how immigration and labor policies and practices, constrained and conditional access to resources and care, and exposure to multiple forms of violence structure their chronic illness experiences and entanglements of biological and social processes that intersect. Together, these embodied biological and social processes coalesce into what I describe as problemas crónica-gendered “chronic problems” – and other disruptions that migrant women endure across time and transnational space. I describe how problemas crónicas manifest themselves throughout the lives and migratory careers of Mexican migrant women and how they grapple with obstacles as they seek care, renegotiate their identities, and re/build their lives.Item Dissecting the Dark Figure of Dis/ablist Violence: Intersectional Variations in Reporting Across Dis/ability Types(2023) Castillo, Isabella Elena; Hitchens, Brooklynn; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Individuals with dis/abilities are at a heightened risk for lifelong violent victimization. Although victimized by the same types of crimes as non-dis/abled individuals, a deeper examination reveals dis/abled individuals experience unique circumstances that increase opportunities for victimization and barriers to reporting. Using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2017-2020, the present study seeks to understand how intersecting identities (dis/ability, race, ethnicity, and gender) affect the likelihood of reporting violent victimization to the police across types of dis/ability (hearing, vision, cognitive, and physical). Findings indicate statistically significant associations between Black individuals with cognitive dis/abilities and other or mixed racial/ethnic females with cognitive dis/abilities with reporting outcomes. Results inform policy and practice regarding the critical need for solutions that consider the impact intersecting identities have on reporting violent victimization across dis/ability types.Item Momentary Transmission(2022) Gonzales, Martin; Sham, Foon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The scope of this work seeks to make meaning out of things that cannot be understood. The following writing are momentary transmissions of streams of consciousness, life-long institutional reflections, and musings about this world.Item The Extreme Far-Right, Ideology, And Violence: An Exploration Into The Role Of Multiple Ideological Affiliation On Violent Mobilization(2020) Pendergast, Bailey J.; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite anecdotal instances of far-right extremists exhibiting multiple ideological affiliations, the relationship between extremists who adhere to multiple sub-ideologies and their propensity for violence is unknown. The present study contributes to the understanding of how multiple sub-ideologies impact the likelihood of violence by using differential association theory to test the hypothesis that far-right extremists in the US who adhere to multiple sub-ideologies have a greater propensity for extremist violence than single sub-ideology peers. Using data from 922 individuals who radicalized in the US, logistic regression tests the hypothesis that extremists with multiple ideological affiliations will have a greater propensity for violence and finds no significant positive relationship. Differences in the amount of differential associations may not affect violent outcomes. Moving forward, researchers should expand on and refine these findings to address an emerging issue in extremism and contribute to novel research.Item BIOPHYSIOLOGICAL PREDICTORS OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES, AGGRESSION, AND VIOLENCE(2017) Sawyer, Katherine Michelle; Reed, William L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three essays examining the development of aggressive and violent political attitudes and actions. The first paper examines the relationship between genetic variation, volumetric changes in the ventral diencephalon, and aggressive attitudes towards outgroup members. Results from a mediation analysis demonstrate the role of brain development in the formation of hostile political attitudes. The second paper uses a formal model to explore the matching of potentially politically violent persons with organizations engaged in ongoing armed conflict. The final paper presents and tests a biological model of political violence. Results from a Candidate Gene Analysis demonstrate the inciting role of political repression in persons with proclivities towards aggression and violence.Item MORE THAN JUST ‘MOB VIOLENCE’: AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT VIGILANTE VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNSHIPS(2016) Gross, Mark; Madhavan, Sangeetha; Villarreal, Andres; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Vigilante violence is generally understood as an alternative means of controlling crime and providing security where the state does not. It has been found in nearly all modern societies at one point or another. Currently, in South Africa, vigilantism is common, accounting for roughly 5% of daily homicides. Despite its ubiquity, vigilante violence has largely been ignored by scholars, and in South Africa, vigilante violence tends to be dismissed as “mob violence.” This dissertation draws on extensive fieldwork, multiple qualitative and quantitative data sources, and different theoretical and methodological approaches, to provide a comprehensive analysis of vigilante violence in Gauteng, South Africa. The first paper address critical theoretical issues surrounding the role of weak and failed states in fostering vigilantism. In this analysis, I use large-scale quantitative data from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory 2013 Quality of Life Survey and an independently compiled database of newspaper articles detailing incidents of vigilantism in Gauteng. I employ measures of perceptions of government performance and the provision of state security to test the relationship between perceived state legitimacy and vigilante violence. I find that negative perceptions of government performance are actually associated with decreases in vigilante violence, while negative perceptions of state security are associated with increases. The second paper utilizes the same data sources and uses the well-establish social disorganization ad neighborhood effects literature to examine the relationship between neighborhood cohesion, collective efficacy, and vigilante violence. I find that, in contrast to existing research, higher levels of neighborhood cohesion and collective efficacy actually result in more incidents of vigilante violence. The third paper expands upon the micro-sociological perspective of violence developed by Collins (2008), “forward panic,” the process whereby the tension and fear marking most potentially violent situations is suddenly released, bringing about extraordinary acts of violence. Analysis of in-depth interviews shows that episodes of vigilante violence in townships are often clearly episodes of forward panic. Although the concept of forward panic focuses on individuals, I argue that if the pre-conditions that foster forward panics in individuals are structural, there is the potential for forward panic in entire groups or parts of communities.Item Pirates, Anarchists, and Terrorists: Violence and the Boundaries of Sovereign Authority(2014) Shirk, Mark Alexander; Haufler, Virginia; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines how states combat episodes of violence that pose an ontological threat to the state. Sovereignty is a bundle of practices that draw, maintain, and redraw boundaries around political authority, the state is the polity constructed by these boundaries. The boundaries can be physical such as a border between state or conceptual such as that between public and private. These boundaries create the `conceptual maps that state leaders use to make sense of the world. The threat posed by violent action is constructed by narratives. Revisionist narratives of violence, the focus of this study, are illegible to states using current conceptual maps and therefore cannot be defeated while they remain. States are forced to redraw the boundaries of sovereign authority in the course of combating these threats, resulting in a transformed state. In my three cases - golden age piracy in the 18th century, anarchist `propagandists of the deed' at the turn of the 20th, and al Qaeda - I demonstrate that the state develops creative solutions to concrete crises. For instance, golden age pirates exploited a surfeit of ungoverned land and open markets in the early 18th century Atlantic to attack trade forcing colonial states to bring their Atlantic colonies into the domestic sphere and shift the sea into an open space. Similarly, the rise of the labor movement and the development fingerprint databases and the universal passport system were, in part, responses to the threat of anarchists propounding "propaganda of the deed" at the turn of the 20th century. Finally, counterterror innovations devised to combat al Qaeda, such as targeted killing and bulk data collection, have transformed borders from sites of exclusion designed to keep out undesirables to sites of collection where they are tracked and controlled. Each case demonstrates how states re-inscribe themselves by redrawing conceptual boundaries, such as between in order to make sense of an episode of revisionist and respond effectively.