Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of this study was to discover how international students at Boston University use television. What are their motives when switching on the television set? Do they consciously try to learn verbal skills when viewing television? Do they consciously try to learn the norms and culture of the Americans through watching television? The methodology used for this study was the in-depth interview. Interviews were conducted with thirty international students from different countries enrolled in the Intensive English language program at the Center of English Language and Orientation Programs (CELOP). The data were analyzed qualitatively. Results indicated that the majority of international students like to watch television for the purpose of learning spoken English and the culture of the American society. Findings also indicated that although their motives when switching on television were specifically for entertainment, the learning of English was another articulated reason. There was conscious learning as well as coincidental learning depending on the stated motive of the international students. The data also indicated that international students deliberately use television to learn as much as they can about American culture. From these findings, it was concluded that television has great potential in aiding non-English speaking people (foreigners) to learn verbal skills as well as recognizing aspects of American culture. / 2031-01-01

Over the past few years there has been a clear trend regarding demand for office space in the central business district, CDB. The rent level is far greater there than in any other area, and vacancy is very low compared to other submarkets. People tend to prefer greater office location over salary and the office location works as a status symbol. Over the past few years companies have started to rearrange their offices, both interior wise and location wise. Some larger firms have moved their headquarters and offices from the central to prime suburbs, and many more are following this strategy. This study examines, by comparing different sub markets in Stockholm with similar submarkets in Boston, how the commercial real estate market in Stockholm will develop and what movements to expect in the office market. Are Stockholm’s sub markets following the Boston sub markets footsteps? Stockholm is growing rapidly both economically and population wise. Access to land in the city is limited and the boundaries of the inner city are pushed outwards. To the meet the demand in the inner city a common trend the past few years has been to reconstruct and convert office space to housing. Former industrial premises that earlier where converted to offices are now reconstructed as housing. Another trend has been to exploit and develop new areas outside the city to meet today’s demand. Problems occur when the majority of offices operate within the city, pushing the demand for transportation and increasing the density of 2 commuting. Since the commuting hours are becoming greater the demand for adjacent work places and offices may increase. The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how the trends for office locations in Stockholm may change. In addition to that a comparison to the office market in Boston will be made. The areas that are defined in the study are Solna, Sundbyberg and Stockholm City in Sweden and Cambridge, Seaport and Downtown in Boston, USA. Every office market and sub market is unique in many ways which always needs to be in the back of the head of the reader when looking at this report. Boston and Stockholm are both premier cities when it comes to center of education and being a hub for tech start-ups and financial giants and are both following the general ups and downs of the economy. The conclusion drawn from this study is that each market are following the same trend but varies in initial levels and relative to each other. Regarding the rent level, Solna and Sundbyberg will, unlike Cambridge and Seaport, most likely not exceed the rent level in CBD and also not fall below in vacancy rate. The sub markets in each country differs a lot but Solna and Sundbyberg will most likely follow Cambridge and Seaport in both increasing rent levels and decreasing vacancy rates thanks to continuous increase in popularity - A big partition factor between the two Cities.

Haitians as an ethnic group face many problems while trying to acculturate in Boston. This pilot study was conducted in an attempt to identify the major source of their problems in achieving cultural integration. The data was analyzed via descriptive statistics: frequency distributions and cross-tabulations. The central problem identified was the lack of a transitional vehicle which would make easier the adaption from a monocultural to a bicultural society. Proposal for such a transitional vehicle was made, in addition to a set of guidelines. These were developed to facilitate the task of mental health caregivers dealing with Haitian clients.

Thesis. 1975. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Bibliography: leaves 54-55. / M.Arch.

Many flood risk assessments are based on instrumental records less than a century in length. Sedimentary and historical archives provide the opportunity to extend flood records by several centuries to millennia. In doing so these longer flood records provide opportunities for improving upon current flood risk assessment and gaining additional insight on the various climatic and geomorphic processes that drive changes in flood frequency. Such a reconstruction has not been attempted previously for Boston, MA where extratropical cyclones (ETC) are currently the dominant mechanism of coastal flooding. Here, we present both a historical reconstruction of extreme storm tides to affect Boston Harbor, and an independent geologic assessment of extreme flooding based on flood deposits preserved within the sediments of Bartlett Pond, a back-barrier coastal pond located 60 kilometers south of Boston. The historical reconstruction presented here identifies events of extreme flooding back to 1723, which are temporally consistent with overwash deposits identified from the sedimentary analysis at Bartlett Pond. Bartlett Pond is beyond the influence of significant dredging, landfill and dam projects within Boston Harbor. The consistency between extreme flood occurrences in Boston and Bartlett Pond therefore suggest that these man-made alterations have had a minimal impact on extreme flooding to the harbor. Additional modeling work is necessary however to provide confirmation on this initial finding. While flooding associated with the Blizzard of 1978 appears to be an anomaly in the modern instrumental record, our new historical/sedimentological record identify 6 additional events of similar size since European colonization, suggesting an under-assessment of the risk of these types of extreme events for Boston by as much as 300%. Additionally, the 1000 yr Bartlett Pond sedimentary reconstruction appears to show an increase in overwash frequency over the last 300 – 500 years when compared to the 500 years prior. A similar increase in ETC flooding has been observed in nearby sedimentological archives from the Gulf of Maine and could possibly be explained by variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and/or changes in sea surface temperature.

Thesis advisor: Marilynn S. Johnson / This dissertation explores the labor and collective organization of domestic workers in metropolitan Boston to uncover the new labor activism of the last half century. In 2014, Massachusetts became the fourth state in the U.S. to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. The law, the nation’s most comprehensive at the time, signaled a remarkable triumph for household employees whose collective activism anchored in Boston over four years achieved basic labor protections for tens of thousands. While the tale of this recent success has been captured by journalists and a handful of scholars, my study uncovers a multi-generational history of domestic workers’ fight for dignity and economic justice. I locate the origins of the 2014 victory in the grassroots organizing of pioneering Black, Caribbean, and Latinx women decades earlier. Local domestic workers and their allies sustained three separate waves of collective action during a half century marked by growing economic inequality, a decline in trade unionism, and mounting xenophobia. As I demonstrate, they developed a savvy repertoire of strategies that transformed household employment from a seemingly private, hidden affair into a societal concern requiring government intervention. Ultimately, my dissertation explains the emergence of a powerful and unexpected form of labor organizing--the new labor activism--that is community-based, multi-issue oriented, and propelled by working-class women of color. In directing critical attention to the relatively obscure history of domestic worker organizing, my study joins scholarship that expands analysis beyond the realm of the white male industrial worker to reconsider what constituted work, who comprised organized labor, and how we characterize recent labor history. By examining this particular workers’ movement, I present new insights into the groundswell of labor mobilization that erupted in American cities during the later twentieth century. Historians have accurately cast the period as one of organized labor’s weakness, dormancy, and decline. Even so, by prioritizing community-based campaigns anchored by immigrant and non-white women employed as domestic workers, I demonstrate that they also made it a time of hope and agitation, of rebirth and revival rather than repose. With appreciation for complexity, I gauge their activism not merely in terms of wins and losses, but also in regard to workers’ evolving sense of empowerment alongside their ability to spark larger public policy conversations concerning labor standards, the care economy, and the role of government. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Note: pages 126, 183, and 209a are missing from the original. / Designed in 1870 and opened in 1876, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was encrusted with ornamental terracotta, a material essentially unknown in America at that time. Across the Atlantic the South Kensington Museums in London (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) had grown up following the Great Exhibition of 1851. By 1869 they were housed in buildings which are among the best known examples of terracotta architecture in the world. In both philosophy and structure, the South Kensington Museums were the model for the Boston enterprise, the first great public art museum in America. The mid-nineteenth century re-emergence of terracotta has been an accepted fact for some time. Heretofore most scholarly attention has arisen in connection with its application as cladding to steel frame structures like skyscrapers in the last quarter of the century. Consequently, research on the origins and use of the material is fragmented and inconclusive. This dissertation addresses questions of its technological development, early applications in England at mid-century, and its long-range aesthetic implications which have not been generally recognized by architectural historians. Because of its specific and documented transatlantic connections, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, assumes a central role in the matter of the terracotta revival and stylistic influences from England to America. It would appear that Sturgis and Brigham (1866-1886), architects of the museum, were in a unique position to design and execute a terracotta building in America in 1870 because of the English education and affiliations of John Sturgis (1834-1888), who was able to research and contract the production of the terracotta ornament in Stamford, Lincolnshire from John Marriott Blashfield. With his able young partner, Charles Brigham (1841-1925) running the Boston office during his long absences abroad, the complexities of the construction were carried forward on a transatlantic basis by Sturgis, the prime designer. Much new source material concerning those personalities involved with the early nineteenth century production and use of terra cotta in England is contained in the letters and papers of John Sturgis, the foundation of this work. This study attempts to establish the nineteenth century chronology of the terracotta revival in England prior to 1870. The technological development of the material and its role within the South Kensington Museums is explored in detail. Major terracotta installations in England prior to 1870 are identified and the relationship of the material to museum architecture, a newly emerging form, is discussed. The Boston museum is then assessed in terms of its origins. On a larger, aesthetic base the role of terracotta is reviewed within the framework of the Gothic and Queen Anne Revivals of the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University. PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.

Thesis advisor: Martin Summers / The second wave feminist media, defined as ideological contributions via the written word, played an essential role in the second wave by sharing radical ideologies and bringing women into a feminist consciousness. This study examines the herstory of three groups in Boston at the time: the Second Wave magazine (1971-1983), the Combahee River Collective (1974-1980), and Persephone Press (1976-1983). Each group had different motivations yet remained dedicated to the radical feminist media and various methods of societal upheaval. As a radical feminist magazine, a black feminist organization, and lesbian-feminist publishing house respectively, the women behind the three entities aspired to alter the face of second wave feminism. Each had several commonalities: including a commitment to the feminist media, factionalism and ideological strife, difficulties in balancing beliefs with harsh systemic realities, and a great connection to coalitions and the greater feminism community. The Second Wave, the Combahee River Collective, and Persephone Press may appear conflicting at first glance but shared a great commitment to facing sexist oppression through the written word. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.