<p>This thesis investigates the creation of California&rsquo;s Free County Library System during the Progressive Era. Previous histories of the topic have conveyed a partial picture of those involved in organizing county libraries, focusing on leaders at the state level, such as James L. Gillis and Harriet Eddy. Using Santa Cruz County as a case study, this thesis examines the overall process of organizing a county library system at the local level. Primary source materials consulted include correspondence and publications from the California State Library, newspaper accounts from the time period, California Library Association meeting minutes, <i>News Notes of California Libraries </i>, and local records from Santa Cruz County. This study discusses the Progressive Era&rsquo;s influence on California county library organizing in general and Santa Cruz County libraries in particular. It also considers how the Progressive Movement affected the rising power of women&rsquo;s groups and their invaluable work organizing public libraries. In addition, the thesis explores the early development of reading rooms and libraries in Santa Cruz County and the creation of the area&rsquo;s first county library system. The thesis pays particular attention to the early history of the Watsonville Public Library and its adamant stance against joining the Santa Cruz County library system. Based on comparative histories of the two library systems, the thesis concludes with an analysis of the positive and negative characteristics of a countywide library system versus an independent city library. </p>

<p> The United States national strategy for Countering Violent Extremism is broadly written and currently does not provide the framework necessary to combat homegrown violent extremism and the foreign fighter phenomenon. The threat of foreign terrorist organizations targeting the United States through a 9/11-style attack has become overshadowed by the threat of homegrown violent extremists and lone-wolf attacks. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a comprehensive insight into how intervention is used within the context of a counter-terrorism preventative strategy. How can intervention be used to disengage radicalizing individuals whose expression of extremist ideology involves committing violent acts? Furthermore, it is anticipated that the most appropriate methods for applying such an intervention program, in the pre-criminal space, can be most successful through interagency collaboration and a Whole Community approach. Such a system leverages partnerships between local, state, and federal government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and community-driven initiatives. This paper analyzes specific case studies of socio-political landscapes, individuals who have radicalized to violent extremism, and intervention programs from Denmark, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The results of the analysis provide recommendations for implementing a nation-wide intervention program in the United States. </p>

<p>This thesis argues that it is productive to consider playthings, playmates, playgrounds, and play practices as constituting a set with shared design characteristics. </p><p> Before turning to the case studies that lead to the principles of play design, we must first address two foundational methodological points: </p><p> First, in order to analyze something as play, we must be able to speak constructively about play itself, which is a bewildering subject. In chapter 1, <i>Play</i>, we review the literature on play, reconciling multiple perspectives and definitions, and distill seven play characteristics that underpin the thesis. </p><p> Second, in order to analyze software, we must have methods for doing so. Chapter 2, <i>Software</i>, advances an analytical framework for this purpose. This is a methodological contribution to the nascent field of software studies, which seeks to interpret the semi-visible infrastructure of computing that mediates modern life, from our bodies and our most intimate relationships to our public and political lives. To link software to play, I introduce an additional analytical framework for considering software as a resource for play. </p><p> Will Wright created <i>SimCity</i> to amuse himself and learn about cities. To build it, he appropriated from multiple traditions in which computers are used as tools for modeling and thinking about the world as a complex system, most notably system dynamics and cellular automata. Wright&rsquo;s make believe play was scaffolded by these software practices, which offered inspiration and guidance, as well as abstract computational primitives for world building. Chapters 3&ndash;5 trace the historical contexts and origins of <i>SimCity</i>&rsquo;s many design influences, from system dynamics (chapter 3) and cellular automata (chapter 4)&mdash;two very different ways of seeing, thinking about, and computationally representing the world&mdash;to <i> Pinball Construction Set</i> and <i>Raid on Bungling Bay</i> (chapter 5). </p><p> Taking up the evolution of software in this way allows us to see how it is formed, what it is made of, and how ideas are embedded within and perpetuated by it. Deconstruction also helps us to understand software as a medium of dynamic representation, a scaffold for thought, an aesthetic experience, and its appeal as a resource for play. </p><p> In Chapter 5, <i>SimBusiness</i>, I give a historical account of <i>SimCity</i>&rsquo;s creation and the social circumstances that shaped its design, and sketch the history of Maxis, the company that marshaled and published <i>SimCity</i>. The trajectory of Maxis offers a parable about play and creativity. We see in Maxis&rsquo;s formation and unraveling the inescapable tension between play and capitalism, and between intrinsic and extrinsic play&mdash;the private autotelic play that innovates and creates, and the public play of player-consumers that pays the bills. </p><p> Chapter 6, <i>SimCity</i>, completes the <i>SimCity</i> case study by considering it as play artifact and experience. Using extensive diagrams that translate and map its code, I perform a close reading of <i> SimCity</i>, explaining how it conjures the illusion of a miniature living city, and how this living world scaffolds play. </p><p> Two non-digital examples round out the play design case studies. In chapter 7, <i>City Building Education</i>, we look at Doreen Nelson&rsquo;s practice of building and role playing model cities with children in classrooms. Nelson&rsquo;s simulation is an excellent counterpoint to Wright&rsquo;s, and their comparison elucidates many play design principles. Chapter 8, <i> Adventure Playground</i>, looks at an unusual playground in which children build with junk, and play with risks and materials, like wood, paint, and nails, that are typically withheld from them. In addition to illuminating principles of play design, the adventure playground tradition reveals play&rsquo;s &ldquo;refructifying&rdquo; (Sutton-Smith 1999) capacity to sweep up everything, even the detritus of civilization, and creatively reimagine it. Conceived amidst the darkness of World War II, adventure playgrounds illustrate how life transcends ruin through play&mdash;an important lesson for the 21st century&rsquo;s unfolding challenges. </p><p> In chapter 9, <i>Play Design</i>, I articulate play design principles drawn from the case studies. The principles are analytical, enabling us to see how play is scaffolded, as well as generative, prescribing design strategies for scaffolding play. This analytical-generative pairing enables us to deconstruct the design of a plaything, and transfer these design techniques to a new project&mdash;a technique that should be of interest to the educators, marketers, and designers of all stripes who have often envied the deep focus, enthusiasm, and pleasure afforded by make believe caves, dungeons, cities, and computationally animated living worlds. Play design is also deeply relevant to new embodiments of computation on the horizon, such as augmented reality and tangible dynamic media. Play is profoundly appropriative, and good play designs teach us how to robustly accommodate unpredictable environments and activities. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

I argue for the importance of 3 marginalized works by women anthropologists: Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston; Return to Laughter by Laura Bohannan; and Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist by Hortense Powdermaker. It is not generally recognized that these works prefigured recent experimental anthropology and provided innovative possibilities for the discipline. Their marginalization was the result of many factors: I focus mainly on the refusal of anthropology (until very recently) to give due credit to its non-scientific side, and the consistent devaluation of women's work within anthropology. I analyze and compare the texts, concentrating on narrative style, use of dialogue, use of authoritative voice, treatment of racism, the author's view of herself and her text, and the text's placement in or between the genres of autobiography, anthropology and fiction. I conclude the anthropological canon should be redefined to include works such as these.

No description available.

<p> The use of nuclear technologies has left an indelible mark on American society. The environmental, political, economic, and social costs of creating, producing, and utilizing technologies such as nuclear weapons and nuclear energy have left a legacy of radioactive waste. To date, there is no comprehensive path for disposing of the different kinds of waste produced by the nuclear industry, including spent nuclear fuel that is now held on site at nuclear power plants. The question of how to deal with nuclear waste has plagued the nuclear industry, governmental agencies, and the concerned public for most of the nuclear era.</p><p> There is one permanent geologic repository in the U.S., called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), located in the salt beds outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Presently, WIPP is only allowed to hold low-level transuranic waste produced by military installations during the Cold War. This project looks at the ways that federal attention has turned to this remote site in the Chihuahuan Desert as a potential solution for storing high-level nuclear waste as well. Using ethnographies, archival research, and the ideas expressed at numerous public meeting held in the region, this project shows how nuclear communities are framed in discourses surrounding nuclear waste through the concept of nuclearism, which posits that nuclear technologies are wholly beneficial to society. Specifically, this project examines how concepts involving the immutability of nature and science interact to form problematic assumptions regarding the behavior of the environment in relation to nuclear waste. Furthermore, conversations that focus solely on the production of "sound science" ignore the political and social consequences of creating and moving nuclear waste across the country, ensnaring more communities into the web of potential nuclear consequences. Nuclear issues also intersect different scales, troubling the idea of local consent, the idea of a homogenous public, and whether nuclear technologies can be tools of democracy. The events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011 underscored the delicate balance of technology and nature, and showed the inherent vulnerabilities of complex technological systems. By connecting the complex natures of the desert, salt, radiation, and time together with questions of political representation, this project looks at how the nuclear future is being shaped in the desert of New Mexico.</p>

<p> This thesis examines the life and career of Kate Foley, home teacher of the blind with the California State Library from 1914&ndash;1940. The purpose of this investigation is to determine how Foley, who was disabled, built a successful career with the state library despite facing significant discrimination and prejudice. Using a wide variety of primary source material, including letters, library publications, conference proceedings, newspaper articles, and census data, this biography evaluates Foley&rsquo;s pioneering role as well as the challenges she faced. Home teaching provided a new vocational opportunity for blind women, whose professional choices were extremely limited. Despite her unique career, the extensive contributions she made, and the fact that she was lauded upon her death as a pioneer and asset to the State of California, Foley&rsquo;s life has been largely ignored in the historical literature. This biography remedies the omission, drawing upon the history of library services, the history of disability, women&rsquo;s history, the history of Progressive Era California, and the history of state and federal welfare systems to provide context for her life and achievements. Chapters include discussions of the cause of Foley&rsquo;s blindness, her education at the California School for the Blind, her volunteer teaching work, her career with the California State Library, the early organized blind movement, and the development of social services for blind individuals.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines two radically different political projects in Argentina as moments in a dynamic of revolution and counterrevolution. The short-lived, progressive Peronist government of 1973 sought to construct a more egalitarian and democratic society, addressing social inequalities while fomenting political mobilization. In response, the last and most violent military dictatorship (1976&ndash;1983) aimed at suppressing social antagonisms and the perceived excesses of mass democracy. In each case, education was a means to form citizens suitable to a specific conception of society. Therefore, each political project can be understood with special clarity through an examination of civic education and pedagogic reforms. The progressive Peronist government encouraged students to participate in exploring and addressing social inequalities to bring about social justice. The dictatorship was counterrevolutionary insofar as it put forth an ideological project without precedent in previous military regimes that aimed not simply at preserving the status quo ante but at founding a new society. In order to do so, it sought to eradicate &ldquo;subversion&rdquo; and to form spiritually minded, obedient, and individualistic citizens through a broad schooling reform. Based on both archival research and oral history, this dissertation sheds light on the political uses of education, on the Cold War dynamic of revolution and counterrevolution in Latin America, and on the centrality of social antagonisms for our understanding of authoritarianism. </p>

No description available.

The Liber Uricrisiarum of Wellcome MS 225 is a fifteenth-century treatise on uroscopy, the science of diagnosing illness by examining a patient's urine. The manuscript is previously unpublished; furthermore, the dissertation provides scholars with the first major text in Middle English on the subject. Uroscopy was ancient and was widely used: for nearly sixteen centuries it was the principal means of diagnosis. Moreover, in Middle Eastern and Western civilizations, uroscopy was synonymous with and emblematic of the medical profession According to the manuscript itself, the Liber Uricrisiarum is a translation, nearly 'word for worde,' of the treatise De Urinis by Isaac Judaeus, a Hebrew physician of the late ninth and early tenth centuries. The Liber Uricrisiarum is in fact not simply a translation but an elaboration of Isaac's text. There is, for example, a long digression on the planets and on astrology, as well as discussions of the humors, digestion, circulation, anatomy, and reproduction, making the Liber Uricrisiarum a relatively compact compendium of medieval medicine The existence of this text and others like it in Middle English demonstrates the emergence of vernacular texts, generally translations from Latin or Greek, in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. These vernacular texts made medical and scientific knowledge available to the lay medical practitioner, the leche (healer) who was not educated at a university as was the physician and who therefore knew little Latin or Greek. Accordingly, Wellcome MS 225 does not discuss the philosophy of diagnosis, suggesting a text made for medical practitioners rather than medical theoreticians The introduction accompanying the edited text places the manuscript in its historical context and also discusses, among other subjects, sources and analogues, scribal hands, the dialect in which the manuscript was written, and editorial principles. Textual notes describe individual features of the manuscript in detail, and explanatory notes identify medical terminology and Latin words, as well as Middle English vocabulary The manuscript has been ascribed to Henry Daniel, a Dominican friar who flourished around 1379. But the ascription, though plausible, remains doubtful / acase@tulane.edu