In this thesis I examine A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft and how it reflects the tension between conformity and rebellion that is an inherent component in the life of its author and therefore is a fundamental element of this treatise. In this paper I discuss how the personal struggles of Mary Wollstonecraft, as a woman living in a patriarchal society, influenced her perspective and moved her to address her concerns for her "fellow creatures." This treatise pushed the boundaries of conventional thinking, but it was also written in traditional terms in an effort to appeal to her contemporary audience. Another aspect of this study is the dichotomy between the public and private sphere that most women of Wollstonecraft's time experienced. This dichotomy is related to the struggle between conformity and rebellion within Wollstonecraft herself, and as Wollstonecraft suggests, is an underlying cause for the wastefulness of women as an important resource within society. Throughout her writing and indeed her life, Wollstonecraft experienced a struggle between the traditional values she grew up with and those she developed in response to her circumstances. This struggle cultivated a tension that became intrinsic to her being and is reflected in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Additionally, this study looks at how Wollstonecraft influenced other female figures of her time-specifically Anna Letitia Barbauld. Although Barbauld differed from Wollstonecraft in her ideas relating to women and their role in society as well as their rights to formal education, she was in fact inspired by the fervor with which Mary Wollstonecraft fought to bring her ideas to light. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the fact that Wollstonecraft concerned herself not only with her career as a writer, but also with the broader implications of such a career for the women of her time. She used the power of her words to open up discussion about women's place within society.

This study introduces the idea that, taken together, the major institutional frameworks of the ultra-Protestant culture of loyalism in the southwestern lowlands of Scotland can be conceived as a civil religion. I argue that loyalist civil religion in lowland Scotland was comprised of a distinct set of institutions including the Orange Order, Glasgow Rangers Football Club, loyalist street gangs and paramilitaries and loyalist flute bands. The elements that informed each of these loyalist groups were not unrelated, but part of a multidimensional and interactive civil religious movement. Each institution appealed to a wide range of viewpoints within the loyalist community but they all rallied around the same general “cause” and participated in the same ritual gatherings. Loyalist civil religion in the urban lowlands was articulated through an understood system of rituals, folklore, symbols and moral values related to the Protestant Irish’s shared experience of historical conflict and victimization at the hands of Roman Catholics. Regular ritual commemorations of past events guided contemporary loyalist agendas and actions. Through the folk collage of symbols, songs and other folk displays at loyalist ritual events, the history and contemporary goals of loyalism were relayed to future generations of potential loyalists. The recurrent celebration of past military heroes, battles and blood sacrifices in the name of the loyalist cause helped to legitimize and sustain loyalist culture in Scotland, even after the civil religion of loyalism developed into a civil religion of a “Lost Cause.” This work argues that loyalist civil religion was not just a formation of an agreed-upon national creed, but functioned to unify a subgroup within a nation driven to articulate its identity in a way contrary to the national status quo. Loyalist civil religion forged not only a banner of collective allegiance, but also a charter for action. Loyalists not only believed they had the right to pursue their “way of life,” but they were united by the belief that they were engaged in a constant battle with the “shadowy” forces of Roman Catholicism whose collective was supposedly engaged in an ongoing quest to undermine the cherished British “civil and religious liberties” secured by William III in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne.

My work began with an exploration of paralysis. Before starting this project, the subject of immobility was already a source of aversion and discomfort to me. At one point in my life I discovered that it was possible for one’s body to ossify and become completely immobile. This disease is called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, it is extremely rare, but still caused me many nightmares as a child. Because being trapped, petrified, or immobile had become a source of distress and obsession during my life, and a few prior projects had explored this concept, I decided to further investigate the topic.

This is how the story goes: In 1964, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, America moved into a “post-racial” era. The passage of the act meant a significant shift in race relations, a shift that no longer defined individual opportunity on the basis of race. In this perfected nation, where a person was no longer discriminated on the basis of physical characteristics such as the color of his or her skin, colorblindness became the dominant ideology. People's success was judged on the basis of merit and hard work rather than racial distinctions. Blacks were welcomed into institutions of government, business, and higher education and were no longer legally banned from equal access to lunch counters, transportation, neighborhoods, schools, etc. Remnants of a centuries long history of black exploitation and subjugation, from slavery to Jim Crow, now lived only in the stubborn hearts of individual racists who were condemned by the rest of American society. Opportunity was open to all, success was attainable by all, and it was only a matter of time before the distinctions between black and white held the same weight as the distinctions between blonde and brunette, short and tall. But decades later, in the 80's and 90's, it became clear that this utopia wasn't so easily achieved. Blacks continued to be disproportionally poor and many continued to live in segregated communities—the innercity ghettos. Making sense of the continual significance of race in a supposedly colorblind nation became a hot topic in politics and in the news media. This thesis explores the mainstream national news media discourse of the 80's and 90's as it grappled with the question: Why did so many blacks continue to live in the “backwaters” of America?

A look at English dandyism during the early nineteenth century and its link to masculine consumerism through the topics of fashion, English caricature and London's developing cityscape.

Reference and internal realism: An inquiry into Putnam's philosophy of language

Bunces Key, a narrow, linear, barrier island on the west-central coast of Florida, was founded in 1961. Its growth and development since that time is well documented by aerial photography. Cores taken from the Key and surrounding areas reveal a stratigraphic succession of facies reflecting rapid vertical aggradation. Sedimentation began on a gently sloping platform through the landward migration of large scale bedforms (sand waves) during fair weather periods. Migration of these bedforms ceased when emergence and lack of continued overwash precluded further movement. Vertical accretion to supratidal levels resulted from the continued onshore transport of sediment and subsequent welding to the previously formed bars. Stratigraphically, the barrier exhibits a "layer-cake" type of stratigraphy, with nearshore sediments overlain by foreshore, backbeach, and dune deposits. The backbarrier generally exhibits muddy lagoon sediments intercalated with washover and channel margin sediments. Fining upward washover sequences reflect the unstable nature of the island. Low pressure systems commonly cause overtopping of the barrier, with the subsequent formation of tidal inlets and washover fans. Aerial photographs document the formation of an initial barrier that was breached twice prior to 1973. A second barrier formed in late 1973 just seaward of the initial island and subsequently grew through littoral drift to a length of 1.8 km. A narrow inlet (30m) formed through the northern end of the island in 1982.

This cultural history study examined Atlanta’s Neighborhood Arts Center (NAC), which existed from 1975 to 1990, as an example of black cultural politics in the South. As a Black Arts Movement (BAM) institution, this regional expression has been missing from academic discussions of the period. The study investigated the multidisciplinary programming that was created to fulfill its motto of “Art for People’s Sake.” The five themes developed from the program research included: 1) the NAC represented the juxtaposition between the individual and the community, local and national; 2) the NAC reached out and extended the arts to the masses, rather than just focusing on the black middle class and white supporters; 3) the NAC was distinctive in space and location; 4) the NAC seemed to provide more opportunities for women artists than traditional BAM organizations; and 5) the NAC had a specific mission to elevate the social and political consciousness of black people. In addition to placing the Neighborhood Arts Center among the regional branches of the BAM family tree, using the programmatic findings, this research analyzed three themes found to be present in the black cultural politics of Atlanta which made for the center’s unique grassroots contributions to the movement. The themes centered on a history of politics, racial issues, and class dynamics. The research offers an alternative to the claim that southern expressions of this movement were generated solely by the historically black colleges and universities of their cities. The study’s findings demonstrate that the Neighborhood Arts Center was a grassroots. multidisciplinary entity for black aesthetics and black cultural nationalism. The findings also suggest that the Neighborhood Arts Center perpetuated the Black Arts Movement through the 1980s. Lastly, the study offers insight on the movement’s transition and legacies.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Colombian government's coordinated national security strategy, developed under the administration of Alvaro Uribe, to enhance security through expanding and strengthening the coercive machinery of its security apparatus, has made Afro-Colombians, paradoxically, less secure? To address this question, the study explores what is meant by security and contrasts traditional understandings of security which are state-centered, with a more expansive and holistic, people-centered theoretical orientation such as human security. In this study, human security is defined as "a condition or state of being characterized by freedom from pervasive threats to people's rights, their safety, or even lives." This study assesses the broad security environment in Colombia, a country ravaged for decades by multiple organized, well-armed and financed armed groups competing for territory, resources, strategic corridors, access to structural power and to a lesser degree political legitimacy. It also examines the role that the United States plays in influencing national and human security in Colombia, with its dominant role in the hemisphere and the world, expressing its national power and wealth through foreign policy initiatives from the "Cold War," the "War on Drugs," and the "War on Terror." The study revealed that while some sectors/spheres of Colombian society have become more secure as reflected in a number of significant improvements in a number of security indicators, the human security of Afro-Colombians is far more difficult to ascertain, and in fact, the findings, extrapolated from the primary research, are paradoxical. Afro-Colombians continued to be disproportionately and systematically dispossessed from their territories and forcibly displaced, terrorized and targeted for violence by all armed actors in the conflict in spite of the unprecedented security initiative orchestrated by the administration of President Alvaro Uribe. Examining their condition requires an analysis which takes into consideration their position within a radicalized socioeconomic hierarchy, geographic distribution, proximity to strategic resources, critical infrastructure and industry and the intersection between private and public forms of discrimination. More specifically, the study demonstrated that Afrocaribeiios, particularly in the Montes de Maria region, were susceptible to various provocative acts of violence propagated by all armed actors and their sense of security is more tenuous than other Afi-o-descendant populations examined. The study suggests that Afro-caribeiios, due to their proximity to the armed conflict and the lack of scholarly inquiry and production of knowledge on the subject require increased scholarly consideration.

Dance pioneer, Alvin Ailey, created a dance legacy when he choreographed Revelations in 1960. By using Revelations as the foundation for this study, this thesis reveals ways in which Ailey uses the human body to communicate expressions of the Black aesthetic. African-American dance has always been viewed as a form of entertainment. The research gathered presents African-American dance as an art form that suggests the cultural beauty of African Americans. This thesis details the life and achievements of Ailey. It explains what influenced Ailey to choreograph Revelations. This research also analyzes the emphasis of the dancing body in relation to African- American experiences. The African Dance theory and ten characteristics of African Dance are utilized to present expressive behaviors that display the Black aesthetic. The expressive behaviors presented are body gestures/movements, music, and costuming. From these cultural expressions and the African Dance theory, the researcher determines what makes Ailey unique in the modem dance tradition. This thesis allows for future research of other African-American choreographers and how their choreographic pieces give insight into the African-American experience.