Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa))--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2010. / Thesis Advisor(s): Looney, Robert. Second Reader: Kadhim, Abbas. "June 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 9, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Qatar, United Arab Emirates, UAE, Branch Campus, Higher Education, Arabian Gulf. Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-121). Also available in print.

Over the past two millennia, dominant Western narratives of the Persian Wars have established a problematic East-West binary in which Greece is represented as a defender of democracy whose improbable victory over the Persians laid the foundation for the development of Western civilization and the Persians are represented as a power hungry, totalitarian “Other” determined to subjugate all whom they encounter. Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300, and its subsequent film adaptations, 300, and 300: Rise of an Empire (collectively referred to as the 300 franchise) have reinforced and contributed new problematic elements to the dominant Persian War narratives with contemporary visual representations of key historical figures, locations, and events as they pertain to the conflict. In this thesis I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of the 300 franchise to identify and explain its problematic visual representational tactics for both the Greeks and Persians. Next, I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of a non-Western Persian Wars counter-narrative, Ramin Abhari’s Xerxes Speaks. Throughout my analysis of Xerxes Speaks I identify instances in which the counter-narrative addresses 300’s problematic representations of the East as “Other.” I conclude by discussing the importance of critiquing visual representations in order to continue to disrupt dominant Western Persian War narratives and subsequently try to establish a currently marginalized Persian perspective on the Persian Wars.

Name matching plays a vital and crucial role in many applications. They are for example used in information retrieval or deduplication systems to do comparisons among names to match them together or to find the names that refer to identical objects, persons, or companies. Since names in each application are subject to variations and errors that are unavoidable in any system and because of the importance of name matching, so far many algorithms have been developed to handle matching of names. These algorithms consider the name variations that may happen because of spelling, pattern or phonetic modifications. However most existing methods were developed for use with the English language and so cover the characteristics of this language. Up to now no specific one has been designed and implemented for the Persian language. The purpose of this thesis is to present a name matching algorithm for Persian. In this project, after consideration of all major algorithms in this area, we selected one of the basic methods for name matching that we then expanded to make it work particularly well for Persian names. This proposed algorithm, called Persian Edit Distance Algorithm or shortly PEDA, was built based on the characteristics of the Persian language and it compares Persian names with each other on three levels: phonetic similarity, character form similarity and keyboard distance, in order to give more accurate results for Persian names. The algorithm gets Persian names as its input and determines their similarity as a percentage in the output. In this thesis three series of experiments have been accomplished in order to evaluate the proposed algorithm. The f-measure average shows a value of 0.86 for the first series and a value of 0.80 for the second series results. The first series of experiments have been repeated with Levenshtein as well, and have 33.9% false negatives on average while PEDA has a false negative average of 6.4%. The third series of experiments shows that PEDA works well for one edit, two edits and three edits with true positive average values of 99%, 81%, and 69% respectively.

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Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the nature of an optional consonant deletion process, through an articulatory and acoustic study of word-final consonant clusters in Persian. Persian word-final coronal stops are optionally deleted when they are preceded by obstruents or the homorganic nasal /n/. For example, the final clusters in the words /næft/ “oil”, /suχt/ “burnt” and /qæsd/ “intention” are optionally simplified in fast/casual speech, resulting in: [næf], [suχ], and [qæs]. What is not clear from this traditional description is whether the coronal stop is truly deleted, or if a coronal gesture is produced, but not heard, because it is obscured by the adjacent consonants. According to Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b, 1992, 2001), the articulatory gestures of the deleted segments can still exist even if the segments are not heard. In this dissertation, ultrasound imaging was used to determine whether coronal consonant deletion in Persian is categorical or gradient, and the acoustic consequences of cluster simplification were investigated through duration and spectral measures. This phonetic study enables an account for the optional nature of the cluster simplification process. A general phonological account is provided for the simplification of coda clusters with rising sonority, and the acoustic and articulatory investigation focuses on the simplification of clusters with coronal stops. Ten Persian-speaking graduate students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, five male and five female, aged 25-38 participated in the articulatory and acoustic study. Audio and real time ultrasound video recordings were made while subjects had a guided conversation with a native speaker of Persian. 662 tokens of word-final coronal clusters were auditorily classified into unsimplified and simplified according to whether they contained an audible [t]. Singleton coda consonants and singleton /t/s were also captured as controls. The end of the constriction plateau of C1 and beginning of constriction plateau of C3 were used to define a time interval in which to measure the coronal gesture as the vertical distance between the tongue blade and the palate. Smoothing Splines ANOVA was used in a novel way to compare tongue blade height over time across the three conditions. The articulatory results of this study showed that the gestures of the deleted segments are often still present. More specifically, the findings showed that of the clusters that sounded simplified, some truly had no [t] gesture, some had gestural overlap, and some had reduced gestures. In order to explain the optional nature of the simplification process, it is argued that the simplified tokens are the result of two independent mechanisms. Inevitable mechanical and physiological effects generate gesturally reduced and overlapped tokens whereas planned language-specific behaviors driven by phonological rules or abstract cognitive representations result in no [t]-gesture output. The findings of this study support the main arguments presented in Articulatory Phonology regarding the underlying reasons for sound patterns and sound change. The results of this study are further used to examine different sound change models. It is argued that the simplified tokens with totally deleted [t] gesture could be the result of speakers changing their representations based on other people’s gestural overlap. This would be instances of the Choice and Chance categories in Blevins’ (2004) CCC sound change model. The acoustic results did not find any major cues which could distinguish simplified tokens from controls. It is argued that articulatory data should form an integral part of phonetic studies.

In this thesis I attempt to show that there is no apparent good reason why one ought to embrace the sceptic’s claim that international relations lies beyond the pale of moral inquiry. The state, in the sceptic’s view, grounds its foreign policy in the national interest and not in morality. To assert otherwise is to mistake the fundamental essence of international relations--a claim resting on the assumption that “morality” and “interest” are either antithetical or epistemologically distinct objects of study. On reflection, however, one must have--at the very least--some kind of conceptual understanding about the idea “the national interest” before such a claim can be sustained. Although much has been said by many authors about the kinds of substantive policies which, in their respective views, actually serve the national interest-- e.g., policies which contribute to the maintenance or enhancement of national power--the idea of “the national interest” itself has attracted very little conceptual scrutiny. In this study, then, I attempt to shift the focus away from a concentration on the standards for determining whether this or that policy actually serves the national interest to a concentration on the idea of the national interest itself. Before this logically prior task is completed--an immense task for which my contribution can be interpreted as only a small one--there is no reason to embrace the notion that “morality” and “interest” are either antithetical or categorically distinct. This is particularly true if, through such an analysis, “the national interest” proves to be a categorically moral idea--viz., if it proves to be a proper object of study for students of moral and political philosophy. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

abstract: Most violinists of the Western classical tradition are untrained in the aural skills and left-hand techniques of microtonal intervals. This document surveys the nature of the problem and presents a manual for self-teaching the three-quarter tone step—the equal tempered ‘neutral second’ (N2) a quarter tone between the major and minor second intervals—through the melodic syntax of specific Persian classical music (PCM) modes. While the paper does not teach PCM performance, it does offer a method of melodic functional hearing through a new solmization system designed specifically for PCM. Additionally, the paper guides readers through the PCM repertoire by grouping modes with a shared functional usage of the N2. Combined with the pedagogical research of learning modalities and Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory, these tools provide violinists with a method for achieving the aural accessibility and performance mastery of the N2. This process serves as a future model for learning unfamiliar intervals both within and without the Western classical tradition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

One of the key international policy challenges in the intellectual property (IP) regime is the issue of traditional knowledge (TK) protection. TK has a bearing on debates around biodiversity, food, agriculture, health, expressions of folklore, trade and development, and human rights. In the policy and academic debates around TK protection, a critical gender perspective is often underdeveloped. Guided by feminist legal methodology, an approach founded on women’s experience of exclusion, and using two feminist methods of gender impact assessment and qualitative interviews, the thesis makes a case for mainstreaming gender in TK law and policy. In most Indigenous and local communities around the world, women play a significant role in the generation, transmission, and use of TK. There are different contributions by Indigenous and local women to the TK system, and there is also differential impact of TK misappropriation on these women. Critical evidence to support the importance of gender as an influential factor in TK protection is based on in-depth examination of two case studies, namely Persian handwoven carpets and saffron. My fieldworks in Kashan, “the city of handwoven carpets”, and Khorasan, “the province of saffron” enabled me to examine the role of Iranian local women and their TK in handwoven carpet and saffron production. Iran is the undisputed centre of saffron production, where the tradition dates back over 3,000 years. The superiority of Iranian saffron comes not only from the climatic conditions but also the rich heritage of TK in growing and processing the crop with Iranian local women as the main performers in different stages of saffron production. Persian hand-woven carpet as an icon of Iranian culture, dating back about 2000 years, is another illuminating example of products in which women and their TK play a major role. From carpet weaving workshops to saffron farms, I found one common theme: the invisibility of women’s TK that is taken for granted while it is the very basis of production. Lack of proper attention to women’s TK in these sectors and its potential for women’s empowerment, has led to many local women and most of the younger generation losing their interest in carpet weaving and saffron production, which in the long run can put the TK in danger of becoming forgotten. Moreover, with the rural outmigration due to lack of employment opportunities, the knowledge of the older generations in handwoven carpet and saffron production is often no longer passed on to the younger generation. Therefore, if women’s TK is to remain alive and deliver its potential for empowering Indigenous and local women, which indeed should be among the main objectives of any TK instrument, these women should be incentivized through gender-responsive TK law and policy to continue practising their TK. Building on the fieldwork results, this research reconceptualizes the TK issue as a gender issue to which TK law and policy fora should respond with gender-sensitive instruments, implementation plans, and adequate resources. The objective of the research is to call for and contribute to a policy change in the realm of TK by translating fieldwork insights (as a knowledge-based gender advocacy) into policy recommendations for a gender-responsive alternative approach to TK laws and policy. More specifically, the thesis provides recommendations for gender mainstreaming in both the process of crafting, and the contents of legal modalities for TK protection.

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