No description available.

This dissertation demonstrates how poetry about Appalachia expanded American considerations of democracy, ethnicity, and cultural values. I argue that poetry is profoundly communal in its construction and investigate how the value of poetry changes based upon its transfer through varying networks of production, circulation, and reception. Informed by theories of cultural capital and rhetoric, the chapters trace three books of poetry from their composition and publication to their reception and influence, noting how central political and social institutions and individuals shaped that process. The dissertation establishes how the poets crafted their writing to sway specific interpretive communities attitudes on pluralism. In Hounds on the Mountain (Viking, 1937), James Still sang about the erosion of the quiet earth for the liberal, middleclass readers of The Atlantic. In U. S. 1 (CoviciFriede, 1938), Muriel Rukeyser wrote about the deaths of migrant and African-American miners, the Spanish Civil War, and the threat of fascism for popular-front readers of The New Republic, Poetry, and the New Masses. In Clods of Southern Earth (Boni and Gaer, 1946), Don West catalyzed resistance in an interracial readership of southern (and mountain) sharecroppers and factory workers. In each case, the complex interrelations between history, authors, and readers show their mutually transformative effects on pluralism. Within American pluralism from1900 to 1948, my work reveals the vital relations between established ethnicitiesAfrican-American, Jewish, Anglo, American Indian, and Southernand Appalachia. My account follows the concrete connections of pluralism from Plessy vs. Fergusons judicial theory of racial purity, through a cultural pluralism based on national origins during WWI, to the Harlem Renaissance, and ends with an examination of regional pluralism in the 1930s. Appalachia was then often understood as preserving remnants of a premodern America, and the authors about whom I write used it to authenticate the values of community, which they felt to be endangered by the threats of modern dissociation, industrial exploitation, and fascist culture. Through close readings of poems in the three books, I establish Appalachias role in the discourse of modern American pluralismthe poetics of region and race.

Despite the recognized importance of leadership perception and individual differences in various cultures, our understanding of each of these variables is limited. The influence of fundamental cognitive styles (context dependent vs. independent) in different cultures and individual differences within culture has rarely been discussed. Current leadership perception research typically depends on surveys which cannot capture spontaneous responses that reflect both automatic and controlled processes. To better understand cross-cultural leadership perception, this study recruited two cultural groups (e.g., Americans and East Asians) and employed both qualitative (e.g., picture recognition tasks) and quantitative (Conditional Reasoning Tests) methods to examine the effect of culture and individual differences (power motive) on leadership perception. Findings and implications for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward physical activity and patterns of involvement among Chinese and American children. Participants were children in grades 3 and 8 in Central China (n=170) and in the Midwestern United States (n=100). Data were obtained by administering a revised inventory for children's attitudes toward physical activity (CATPA), a new CATPA inventory appropriate for grade 3, and a physical activity questionnaire. Separate 2 (Country) X 2 (Gender) X 2 (Age) MANOVAS, follow-up ANOVAs and descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the data. Unlike previous findings, this study indicated that Chinese participants have more positive attitudes toward physical activity while American participants reported more involvement in physical activity. Age and gender differences in attitudes toward physical activity were also found with younger children and girls expressing more positive attitudes. Marked gender and nationality differences in both participation patterns andphysical activity preferences were also evident. The results of the present study supported previous findings that attitude is a function of age and gender. / School of Physical Education

The common perception that sound design is a subset of postproduction sound, and that most film sound professionals are more technicians than artists, is an assumption that leads to erroneous conclusions about the nature of film sound as a component of filmmaking. Specific sound designers have been elevated to celebrity status while other film sound professionals remain unknown. Additionally, the computerization of postproduction sound contributes to the misconception that these professionals are workstation operators who merely construct film soundtracks from sound libraries and/or elements designed by the main sound designer. In the 1990s, the initial transition from analogue to digital postproduction sound practices began in motion pictures. The three major American film sound communities—Hollywood, the San Francisco Bay Area, and New York—had developed unique approaches to sound design largely due to cultural, labor, and economic differences between the three cities. The three communities worked from different historical contexts, within different union regulations, and were subject to different economic structures. These differences predisposed the three geographical sound communities to different workflows and attitudes toward sound design. By examining three case studies of award-winning soundtracks from the three regions—Barton Fink (1991), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and The English Patient (1996)—it becomes clear that the three communities, when confronted with the initial technological changes of the 1990s, experienced similar challenges with the inelegant transition from analogue to digital. However, their cultural and structural labor differences governed different results. Rather than define the 1990s as an era of technological determinism—which would be a superficial reading of the era—it is an era best understood as one in which sound professionals became more viable as artists, collaborated in sound design authorship, and influenced this digital transition to better accommodate their needs and desires in their work.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to explore how different distance learning modes and environments affect the design and implementation of a crosscultural, university-level, distance education course. The case chosen was a U.S. -Taiwan collaboration that used H.323 videoconferencing and Web 2.0 technologies. Through participant observation, document analysis and interview, this study investigated the factors that influence the instructor's pedagogical practice with new technologies in relation to the cross-cultural aspects. It also examined the various types of interactions that occurred as consequences of the distance learning modes and the contexts of the course. The findings provided a portrait of factors and relationships that affected the implementation of the curriculum and the enablement of technology affordances. They suggested that the instructor’s personal value and intrinsic motivation, well-supported technology framework, and a long stable international partnership helped sustain her engagement in cross-cultural distance education (CCDE). While the instructor’s high self-efficacy prompted her to idealize technology affordances in the CCDE course, her limited technology literacy hindered the enablement of these affordances and resulted in different outcomes. In addition, difference in the teaching styles between the instructor and her international partner, unbalanced learner preparedness, and the Western valueladen learning environment were also factors that contributed to the gap between the idealization and the realization of the CCDE course. Implications and suggestions for future practice and research were provided in relation to the literature, as well as the contexts of cross-cultural/international distance education. / Access to thesis and accompanying PDF permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of Educational Studies

This thesis takes up the genre of the “Asian horror film remake” as a nexus for the illustration of the intersection between two significant theoretical perspectives that inform contemporary film theory: Lacanian psychoanalysis and Deleuzian transcendental empiricism. It employs concepts such as Lacan’s registers of the Real and Symbolic alongside Deleuze (and Guattari’s) theories on the actual present and the virtual past to interrogate terms such as ‘originality’, ‘authenticity’, ‘repetition’, and ‘difference’ in an attempt to account for the role of genre in the production of meaningful reality, both within the bounds of the text and in cultural life more generally. It first deconstructs the term genre as it has been employed throughout classical, structuralist and post-structuralist genre theory, in order to reveal its ephemeral nature, and to show it to be worthy of investigation in its own right as a central component of language, more than simply a critical tool. It goes on to elaborate the contingency of discourse that constructs verisimilitudinous reality, and explicates these ideas through analysis of the Asian horror remake films. It then turns to Lacan’s division between the registers of the Symbolic and the Real in order to explore the function of the repetition that is visible in generic film in relation to the subject’s experience of a coherent and authentic reality. Finally, it proceeds to engage with Deleuze’s ideas regarding virtuality and asignification and argues, with reference to the Asian horror remake, that it is the perpetual tension between sameness and difference that sustains meaningful life. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermartizburg, 2013.

A model for ‘techno-vernacular’ creative production as an area of practice that investigates the characteristics of this production and its application in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) learning was proposed. This dissertation consists of a study involving four workshops conducted between 2013 and 2014 that sought to examine the impact of the following combined methods a) culturally situated design, which connects vernacular art and crafts with standards-based STEM principles and allows users to simulate and develop their own creations; b) art-based learning, which is effective in stimulating the development of 21st century skills such as creativity, learning, and innovation; and c) educational applications of new technologies on UEG learning in STEAM. Findings show that this combination led to an increase in interest and motivation among UEGs. This study demonstrates the connection between technical literacy, diversity, and culture through TVC taxonomy and a learning ecology for teaching STEAM. This research aims to make a significant contribution to interdisciplinary education by bringing the culturally situated design and arts-based learning communities to STEAM through the learning sciences and to further scientific understanding of UEG interest and motivation as a model to inform future research.

From 1998- 2009, mainland China has been the number one source of immigrants in Canada (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2011). For newcomer families, adjusting to the local school is a major concern, since their children’s education is a crucial factor in families’ immigration decision. In my research, I examined Chinese immigrant parents’ experience with Canadian schooling. The study focuses on four families living in the Greater Toronto area, who have immigrated from mainland China. I employed narrative inquiry to tell the stories of the lived experience of the four families in my study. The data for these stories are mainly drawn from field notes of each of my home visits and my interviews with the family members over a six month period. I found that the challenges and difficulties the immigrant parents face are deeply rooted in the differences between Chinese and Canadian cultures and social systems. The discussion on the features of Chinese culture in its comparison with Western culture provides a reference point for understanding the Chinese immigrant parents’ values and opinions on such matters as schooling, moral education, and parenting practice. Parental involvement in schools is different between China and Canada, and the parents, and school teachers and administrators have different understanding on this issue. What’s more, the language barrier impeded the parents’ involvement in their children’s school life. The acculturation gap between the parents and their children is another major reason for miscommunication over such issues as extracurricular activities, choice of university major, and future career. The less heard voice of immigrant parents will open new venues for the understanding of cross-cultural experiences of immigrant students. I find that instead of mainly using the traditional Chinese practice and Chinese educational values in approaching their children’s education, it is important for Chinese immigrant parents to make efforts to familiarize themselves with the ideas and values that their children are exposed to in the new environment.