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The aim of this study is to contribute to the research about the role of rituals in the construction of social identity of women in Newar society. By studying the Kumari tradition, I explore how religious traditions play a role in maintaining social values and gender roles. Following this, I analyze how this role contributes to the continuation of the practice in the face of calls for its abolition in recent years. Of central importance is the controversy surrounding the Kumari tradition fueled by criticism from the UN and western media alleging that the religious practice of Kumari worship is a violation of children’s rights. This study also discusses changes in the Kumari tradition between 1996-2008, resulting in greater acknowledgement of the child’s social needs, both during and after her rule. The issue of the ‘anomalous’ position of former Kumari and how Nepalese society attempts to deal with it is also brought to light.

This thesis explores gender, disability and literature in the Global South through an examination of the writings of two physically disabled contemporary women writers from Nepal, BIshnu Kumari Waiwa and Jhamak Ghimire. I show how these renowned contemporary writers challenge stigmas of the disabled body by deconstructiong the "ideology of ability" through their poetry, fiction, and autobiographical narratives. Religious and cultural values disable women's autonomy in general, and create even greater disadvantages for women who are physically disabled. Challenging these cultural stigmas, Waiwa and Ghimire celebrate sexuality and disability as sources of creativity, agency, and identity in narratives that deconstruct cultural or social models of sexuality, motherhood, and beauty. In this thesis feminist disability and feminist theory guide an analysis of Waiwa and Ghimire's writing to advance our understanding of gender, culture, disability and literature in the Global South. / by Tulasi Acharya. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

In the quest for a high fidelity numerical scheme for CFD it is necessary to satisfy demands on accuracy, conservation, positivity and upwinding. Recently the requirement of rotational invariance has been added to this list. In the present work we are mainly interested in upwinding and rotational invariance of Least Squares Kinetic Upwind Method (LSKUM). The standard LSKUM achieves upwinding by stencil division along co-ordinate axes which is referred to as co-ordinate splitting method. This leads to symmetry breaking and rotational invariance is lost. Thus the numerical solution becomes co-ordinate frame dependent. To overcome this undesirable feature of existing numerical schemes, a new algorithm called KUMARI (Kinetic Upwind Method Avec Rotational Invariance, 'Avec' in French means 'with') has been developed. The interesting mathematical relation between directional derivative, Fourier series and divergence operator has been used effectively to achieve upwinding as well as rotational invariance and hence making the scheme truly or genuinely multidimensional upwind scheme. The KUMARI has been applied to the test case of standard 2D shock reflection problem, flow past airfoils, then to 2D blast wave problem and lastly to 2D Riemann problem (Lax's 3rd test case). The results show that either KUMARI is comparable to or in some cases better than the usual LSKUM.

Thesis advisors: Kevin Kopelson, Priya Kumar. Includes bibliographic references (p. 182-188).