This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between Black Americans and Palestinians. I trace the historical relationship between Black Americans and Israel/Palestine in order to show how Black Americans move from large, overwhelming support for Israel to solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian people. This thesis tracks the relationship between Black Americans and Jews (both domestically and abroad), Black leaders who opposed the state of Israel prior to 1967, the large shift in Black American support for Palestine that occurs after the Six Day War of 1967, the relationship between Black Americans and Arab Americans, and the current day Ferguson to Palestine movement.

Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, an influential eighteenth-century moral and political philosopher, as well as a professor of ethics at the University of Edinburgh from 1764 to 1785. There has been a wealth of scholarship on Ferguson in which central themes include his role as a political theorist, sociologist, moral philosopher, and as an Enlightenment thinker. One of the most frequent topics addressed by scholars is his relationship to ancient philosophy, particularly Stoicism. The ease with which scholars identify Ferguson as a Stoic, however, is problematic because of the significant differences between Ferguson‟s ideas and those of the „schools‟ of classical antiquity, especially Stoicism. Some scholars interpret Ferguson‟s philosophy as a derivative, unsystematic „patchwork‟ because he drew on various ancient sources, but, it is argued, did not adhere to any particular system. The aim of my thesis is to suggest an alternative interpretation of Ferguson‟s relationship to ancient philosophy, particularly to Stoicism, by placing Ferguson in the context of the intellectual history of the eighteenth century. The first section of this thesis is an examination of Ferguson‟s response to the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, modern eclecticism and the experimental method to demonstrate how Ferguson‟s approach to and engagement with ancient philosophy is informed by these intellectual contexts. The second section is a close analysis of the role that ancient schools play in his discussion of the history of philosophy as well as the didactic purpose found in his lectures and published works thereby determining the function of ancient thought in his philosophy. The third section is a re-examination of Ferguson‟s concept of Stoicism and his engagement with Stoic ethics in his moral philosophy re-interpreting his relationship to the ancient school. With a combination of a new understanding of Ferguson‟s methodology and new assessment of his engagement with ancient thought, a new interpretation of Ferguson‟s moral philosophy demonstrates his unique contribution to eighteenth-century thought.

The Ferguson effect is a recent hypothesis that suggests police officers have been influenced by negative media coverage of police conduct. The problem this study addressed is how policing continues to deal with perception, civil liability, and accountability issues related to police misconduct when interacting with Latino and African-American communities. The research was conducted to examine influence the Ferguson effect may have had on the culture and perceptions of police officers in local police departments. With a phenomenological qualitative approach, the research data were collected from interviews with 7 police officers across 3 police departments. The theoretical background of Merton's theory of unintended consequences offered insights into how law enforcement functions and the kinds of policies that affect police-civilian relations. Data was analyzed with NVivo 12 data analysis software. Four predominant themes emerged: (1) commitment to service, (2) police officers' perception of the media, (3) impact of the Ferguson Effect, and (4) attitudes toward civil liability. The research indicates that the officers shared a strong commitment to service as well as being satisfied overall with the police department where they work. In addition, the participants acknowledged the Ferguson effect but did not believe it prevented them from performing their sworn duties. With this research study, the police officers' voices can be added to the national debate regarding the Ferguson effect and their perception of its impact on their culture in local police departments, community engagement with minority citizens, and civil liability.

This thesis attacks the neglected and unresolved historiographical problem connecting Adam Ferguson’s work, in particular, his Essay on the History of Civil Society, to his early life experience. During the 1960s and 1970s, the issue of Ferguson’s Highland background first came to the fore. A knowledge of Gaelic marked Ferguson out from his colleagues, denoting his status as a Highlander. Michael Kugler’s 1994 study examined how Ferguson and his contemporaries constructed an idealised representation of Highland society. My investigation takes a novel approach by concentrating on matters relating to the concrete reality of the locale, language and vestigial shame-honour culture. These were imbibed by Ferguson during his childhood and early adult life. During these phases, Ferguson became conversant in the Gaelic language which acted as a conduit for the mores, history and legends of Highland communities. The elements of the shame-honour culture, the neural pathways generated by Gaelic, and Highland orality, all left their mark on him. Evidence of these component influences can be identified in his Essay, correspondence and other works. An analysis of Ferguson’s correspondence confirms his native-like control of the Gaelic sound system, indicating fluency from a young age. Ferguson experienced a traditional, communal way of life in transition. During his lifetime, there was an increasing drive to modernise the rural parts of Scotland. His insider-knowledge of two cultures, together with his familiarity of two naturally acquired grammatical systems, provided him with some unique intuitive perceptions. Ferguson’s works and his success as a university lecturer testify to his assimilation and integration into mainstream Scotto-British eighteenth-century intellectual culture. Nevertheless, his writing bears some hallmarks of alternating cultural loyalties and the occasional affirmation of his first culture. This thesis provides a new dimension to the understanding of Ferguson’s early enculturation, by inviting fresh explication of important passages of his writing. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," Fredric Jameson describes the disappearance, within postmodernism, of an objective framework for mapping the social totality. In order to illustrate this concept, Jameson draws upon the ideas of urban planner Kevin Lynch as formulated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. For Lynch, the design of the postwar alienated city results in varying and fragmentary "cognitive maps" used by its inhabitants to negotiate urban space, a problem that can be rectified by "good" urban planning, which aims to create mappable public space through the implementation of external orientation markers. Utilizing this framework, this thesis suggests the existence of an aesthetic countertendency, within postwar literature, to Jameson's vision that is exemplified in William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch and Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. These novels integrally deploy alienated urban environments as settings; however, rather than suggesting structural public spaces as solutions, they offer an alternative, opposite stratagem: the externalization of the intimate onto the public sphere through the integration of pornography. By using the sexual to map character space, they suggest an alternative to Michel Foucault's discursive formulation of sexuality, one that resonates with more recent theoretical work by Leo Bersani and Michael Warner. In order to examine the role of pornography within these works, this thesis integrates Frances Ferguson's account of the pornographic from her study, Pornography, the Theory, which looses pornography from prior "interpretive" models and recasts it as a distinct regime of representation that stresses objectivity and concretization, particularly in relation to the abstract notion of the "social body." While Delany's Dhalgren offers an image- based deployment of the pornographic experience, in which characters' viewing of the pornographic / sexual leads to full cognition and visual perception, Burroughs's Naked Lunch presents a more physical model, wherein subjective sexual experience (particularly in the rendering of the "mosaic orgasm") ultimately affords the subject with panoptic capabilities.

Vox Machina, for soprano, chamber ensemble, real-time digital signal processing and digital sounds, deals with the historical relationship between humanity and machines. The text uses excerpts drawn from a variety of sources, all in the public domain, as well as material written especially for the piece by the composer. The instrumental ensemble consists of 8 performers: flute, b-flat clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello, guitar and percussion. A conductor is required, as well as a technician to control a mixing board and the performance of computer-generated sections of music. Digital sounds may be performed directly from computer, or may be played from DAT cassette.

From colonies to nation, this work identifies and emphasizes the influence of interdependent communal relationships on the ascent of the charter school movement. These ideals were made manifest in colonial social covenants that were then compromised by the conformist republican mandate of the common school. These ideals were recovered incrementally as education was affected by broader historical forces, most notably the implementation of court-sanctioned racial apartheid during the Plessy era, the reaction to the underwhelming impact of Brown, and, beginning in the 1980s, the rise of legislation that prepared the way for charter schools. Moreover, this work challenges the assumption that charter schools have proven popular with American citizens due solely to promises of superior academic results. Alternatively, this work suggests that charter schools have prospered because they have challenged the state monopoly in K-12 education, and have thus returned balance to the dynamic between the individual and the state. Finally, this work troubles the idea that charter schools are balkanizing American education, suggesting that the right of citizens to form charter schools, in an effort to sustain unique communities, justifies and is in fact endorsed by the American metanarrative. Research on American charter schools lacks a coherent historical framework. This work provides the charter school movement with an historical narrative that argues for the movement’s legitimacy based on its consistency with the American Republic’s founding philosophy. / Graduate / 0323 / 0337 / 0520 / smg32@duke.edu

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Languages, College of Arts. Includes bibliographical references.

As livestreaming has become more ubiquitous in recent years with its expansion over social media platforms, and as mainstream media outlets begin to take advantage of the medium, it is important to recognize that the technology has important roots in the hands of marginalized communities. Specifically, livestreaming has historically been an outlet used by activists in protest settings in order to counter the narratives of mainstream media. This paper seeks to evaluate the counternarrative potential of livestreaming by looking into footage from both the 2012 student protests in Montreal and the 2014 protests in Ferguson in direct comparison to traditional broadcast coverage from these events. Ultimately, I argue that while there are dangers that inherently accompany the use of livestreaming, it nonetheless has the potential to be a powerful and practical tool in the hands of protesters.

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