Justice Thurgood Marshall proposed a three-pronged postulate in his dissent in1972 in the Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238) Supreme Court case. The American public is generally uninformed when it comes to the death penalty, and given information a "great mass of citizens" would be against it, unless their underlying beliefs were rootedin retribution (Furman v. Georgia, p. 363). These statements subsequently came to be known as the Marshall Hypothesis, and were deemed testable by researchers. This study examines the influence on death penalty opinion as a consequence of participating in a college class on the death penalty. Students in the class, who were either criminology majors or minors, were asked to take part in a questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward capital punishment at the beginning and at the end of the semester.Over the course of the class, students took part in a pre and post-test designed to measure their knowledge of the death penalty. This study correlated the amount of knowledge gained by each student with their respective death penalty attitudes. Results indicated that many in the class had little knowledge of the practice, application, and corollary effects of capital punishment. Those students who made the greatest amount of knowledge gains also reported a reduction in support for capital punishment. The acceptance of death penalty truths was not found to be related to a reduction in death penalty support. Further analysis, however, showed that those students who accepted these death penalty “truths” were also able to disregard death penalty “myths.” The present study concludes that support for the death penalty is directly reduced through increased knowledge gain, and indirectly reduced through truth acceptance as a function of death penalty “myth” abandonment.

To encounter and digest the oeuvre of H. Marshall McLuhan on his own terms, this study deploys a strategy not dissimilar to that of Poe’s sailor who survived his descent into the maelstrom by studying the action of the vortex and catching hold of a recurring form. Here, McLuhan’s career-spanning concern with “communication” may be seen as just such a recurrence — his concern with communication is evident at every turn of his effort to update the Great English Vortex of 1914 and develop a second vortex in mid-century America. Having taken hold of this central concern, this study uses the procedure he developed to expose the “theory of communication” of any figure in the arts and sciences, and applies it to McLuhan himself. In this process of folding McLuhan in on himself, five loosely chronological chapters are used to reveal the four historical “phases” of his career, and to show that McLuhan cannot properly be understood apart from: 1. The great tradition of Ciceronian humanism and the Ciceronian ideal —the doctus orator — a figure in whom eloquence and wisdom coalesce. 2. The programme of the figures frequently referred to as the Men of 1914: James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. In the final analysis, McLuhan is shown as having updated and transformed both — the Ciceronian ideal and the programme of the Men of 1914 — to become something of a singularity in the midst of what he saw as an Electric Renaissance: a paramodern (neither modernist nor post-modernist) doctus orator.

<p>This study examinates technology's traumatic impact on the male subject in The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard. In my analysis I show how the protagonist uses a fetischistic strategy in order to make sense of the trauma that technology embeds. Paradoxically it proves to be the agent of his trauma, but also functions as his shield. The machine is thus in a position of the hinge, the point in a structural system that both enables and deconstruct the system. In the same position we find the woman. She is the very epicentre of the novel and the violence directed towards her is part of a complex problem that I adress. The woman is divided into pieces and fetischized by the male gaze to serve as a solution for his trauma.</p><p>Hal Foster's notion ”the double logic of prosthesis” constitutes a theoretical base. The model shows how a fetischistic strategy is applied by avant-garde artists to solve the technological trauma that they experience. Both content and composition of The Atrocity Exhibition are inspired by avant-garde practices, I have therefore compared the text with Foster's theory on how the avant-garde problematized the interaction between man and machine. Marshall McLuhan's belief that the human body and technology are inseparable in the era of electronics further helps me to study technology's effect on perception.</p>

I denna empiriska studie undersöker vi den reala växelkursens och reala BNP:s påverkan på Sveriges bilaterala handelsbalans med 11 länder mellan år 1995-2011. Med en felkorrigeringsmodell i ARDL-format testar vi för långsiktig kointegration. Därefter estimeras den reala växelkursens och reala BNP:s påverkan på den bilaterala handelsbalansen. Vi finner endast stöd för J-kurvsfenomenet och uppfyllt Marshall-Lerner villkor i 2 av 11 handelsförbindelser. Istället observerar vi ett starkare samband mellan real BNP och handelsbalansen. Vi finner inte något belägg för att en stark svensk krona försämrar Sveriges handelsbalans på sikt.

In an era of dawning anthropogenic climate change, people of atoll nations face grievous threats to their future. Rising sea levels, warming oceans, and changing weather patterns conspire with economic isolation, rapidly growing populations, and the loss of traditional livelihoods to perpetuate conditions of dependence and wardship which threaten the very existence of their island homes. This project examines an atoll nation of the equatorial Pacific, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the outward appearance of pristine tropical paradise belies a tragic history of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing at the hands of the US military. While the islands have been consistently framed in rhetoric which stresses vulnerability, smallness and unsustainability, this project contests the limited scope of the regimes of power in Oceania by considering how the independent, grassroots actions of local groups of islanders have achieved surprising and dramatic results in defiance of the policies and planners at the top. In developing a design proposal for the contemporary condition, this thesis examines the persistent ways in which the islands and people are framed by outsiders. This project engages with the social, political and natural history of the atolls: common tropes are challenged by the actions and agency of a people who have dealt with imperialist outsiders in sophisticated and conscious ways. It explores the traditional cultural practices which enabled the ancestors of the Marshallese people to flourish, and suggests that it is at the level of actions by ordinary people that the most fertile potentials lie, and are in fact already being played out. What forms of urbanism might be appropriate in this environment? How can islanders effectively manage their landscape and engage with the natural processes - as their ancestors once did to a remarkable degree? By pairing traditional techniques with modern technologies, a proposal is synthesized which could empower the contemporary Marshallese to transform their landscape and develop sustainable livelihoods in this extreme and dynamic environmental condition: to build a future which offers the best aspects of both traditional and contemporary ways of life.

From 1972 until 1989, the artist trio General Idea produced FILE Megazine. The first eight issues of FILE, published from 1972 – 1975, are the focus of this thesis. They stand apart from the later issues because their covers hijacked the look and iconic logo of Life magazine. The red rectangle with white block letters attracted the attention of Time Inc. and resulted in a lawsuit. Rather than fight the corporate giant, General Idea changed their logo after the autumn 1975 issue. FILE, like many artists’ magazines, is typically discussed in idealistic language that privileges the subversive or democratic intentions of the publication while neglecting its significance as a device for the promotion of community and collaboration. I argue that General Idea envisioned FILE as a utopian project intended to produce the world they sought to live in. Authors frequently employ FILE as a tool to discuss General Idea’s work, focusing on it as a mirror or archive of a larger project and emphasizing FILE’s humorous, bawdy, and irreverent aspects. In this thesis, I situate FILE in terms of its historical, art historical, and theoretical frameworks. I pay particular attention to General Idea’s early involvement in the mail art network, FILE’s relationship to 1960s and 1970s artists’ magazines and magazine art, the contemporaneous social and political climate in Canada, and General Idea’s investigation and employment of theoretical frameworks culled from Marshall McLuhan’s text The Medium is the Message and Roland Barthes’ book Mythologies. / text

The purpose of this biographical study was to determine what influence Vice President Thomas R. Marshall (1854-1925) had on the events and personalities of the Wilson era. An only child and the son of a country doctor, Marshall distinguished himself early as an exceptional student and country lawyer. His political heritage was that of the Democratic party, strong in his northeastern Indiana county but weak in the larger Congressional district. An early defeat for public office (1880) convinced Marshall that he could do more for the party as a worker on the local, district, and state levels with his oratory and his legal acumen. Despite his lack of ambition to hold public office, Marshall in 1908 found himself his party's compromise candidate for governor of Indiana. Elected essentially on a platform that supported local option at the expense of prohibition, the upstate Hoosier lawyer became the head of his state for a four-year term (1909-1913), expanding the progressive or melioristic programs of his Republican predecessors.Midway through his incumbency Thomas Marshall had achieved national reputation as one of the most popular and successful Democratic governors, and supporters began to advance his cause as a Presidential nominee at the 1912 Baltimore Convention. The more active campaigning of the Woodrow Wilson forces achieved the nomination of their candidate, and the political machinations of Indiana's Thomas Taggart succeeded in placing Marshall as a running-mate with Wilson on the Democratic ticket, eventually achieving his election as Vice President.With the frugality of a Scotsman Marshall and his wife, Lois, entered smoothly into Washington society, occasionally entertaining but more often being invited as guests to state functions and private parties. As Vice President (1913-1921) Marshall proved to be an utterly loyal supporter of the Democratic administration and a capable and well-liked presiding officer of the Senate.Correspondence between Wilson and Marshall reveals the President's use as well as his appreciation of the Vice President. More often than not Marshall was a solid party asset on the campaign trail, journeying throughout the country every two years on behalf of the Democratic Congressional candidates. During the war years he was one of the active speakers at Liberty Loan drives, stimulating a patriotic and pecuniary response from the people. He provided distinctive introductory remarks for the allied war missions when they visited the United States Senate, and on occasion represented Wilson as his official emissary before foreign diplomats and monarchs.The last two dozen months in office were the most disappointing to him and the most challenging to his reputation. He was tempted by certain men to usurp the Presidency during Wilson's incapacitating illness and by others to manipulate the Senate debating procedure during discussion of the League of Nations Covenant. He refused to be a party to the former, and though a believer in the Covenant he was powerless to prevent its defeat by the Republican majority whose rights on the Senate floor he steadfastly protected.Noteworthy about Marshall were his unpretentiousness, his natural gift of humor, his exceptional speaking ability, and his occasional self-derogation. His reputation has been overshadowed by the President's personality and by other prominent persons and events of the time. Some written criticisms by administration officials, preserved and transmitted by historians, have obscured his role and personality. Thomas R. Marshall unquestionably had superior talents and did in fact use them in meaningful but unostentatious ways as President of the Senate and as servant of the President and of his country.

In an era of dawning anthropogenic climate change, people of atoll nations face grievous threats to their future. Rising sea levels, warming oceans, and changing weather patterns conspire with economic isolation, rapidly growing populations, and the loss of traditional livelihoods to perpetuate conditions of dependence and wardship which threaten the very existence of their island homes. This project examines an atoll nation of the equatorial Pacific, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the outward appearance of pristine tropical paradise belies a tragic history of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing at the hands of the US military. While the islands have been consistently framed in rhetoric which stresses vulnerability, smallness and unsustainability, this project contests the limited scope of the regimes of power in Oceania by considering how the independent, grassroots actions of local groups of islanders have achieved surprising and dramatic results in defiance of the policies and planners at the top. In developing a design proposal for the contemporary condition, this thesis examines the persistent ways in which the islands and people are framed by outsiders. This project engages with the social, political and natural history of the atolls: common tropes are challenged by the actions and agency of a people who have dealt with imperialist outsiders in sophisticated and conscious ways. It explores the traditional cultural practices which enabled the ancestors of the Marshallese people to flourish, and suggests that it is at the level of actions by ordinary people that the most fertile potentials lie, and are in fact already being played out. What forms of urbanism might be appropriate in this environment? How can islanders effectively manage their landscape and engage with the natural processes - as their ancestors once did to a remarkable degree? By pairing traditional techniques with modern technologies, a proposal is synthesized which could empower the contemporary Marshallese to transform their landscape and develop sustainable livelihoods in this extreme and dynamic environmental condition: to build a future which offers the best aspects of both traditional and contemporary ways of life.

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University--San Marcos, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-93). Also available on microfilm.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.