Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on February 1, 2010). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Marianne S. Wokeck, Jason M. Kelly, Anita J. Morgan. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-114).

The dissertation explores the imbricated nature of race, gender, and class in the field of insurance within the political economy of the New South. It considers how enterprising black women navigated tensions between New South rhetoric and Jim Crow reality as well as sexism and racism within the industry and among their industry peers. It complicates the narrative of black southern labor history that focuses more on women as agricultural laborers, domestics, and factory workers than as enterprising risk takers who sought to counterbalance personal ambition and self-interest with communal empowerment. Insurance organizations within black-run secret fraternal societies and formal black-owned insurance companies emerged as not only powerful symbols of black business achievement by the early decades of the twentieth century but also the most lucrative business sector of the separate black economy. Negro Captains of Industry, a coterie of successful, influential, self-made men, stood at the forefront; they represented the keystone of black economic, social, and political progress. The term invoked a decidedly masculinist image of “legitimate” leadership of black business. Considering fraternal and formal insurance, gender-inscribed rhetoric, shaped by racism and New South ideology, imagined black men as the ideal protectors and providers; women became the objects of protection rather than agents of economic development, job creation, and financial security. The dissertation explores how women operated creatively within and outside of normative expectations of their role in the insurance business. The dissertation considers the role of state regulation and zealous regulators who often targeted insurance organizations and companies, the primary symbols of black business success; in other ways, regulation dramatically improved profitability and stability. The dissertation identifies three key periods: the Pre-Regulatory Era, 1890s to 1906; the Era of Regulation, 1907-World War I; and the Professionalization of Black Insurance, Post-WWI to the Great Depression. It also considers the barriers to black women’s involvement in professional organizations. By the late 1930s, enterprising women in insurance lost ground as fraternal insurance waned in influence and as the strongest proponents of the black separate economy promoted a vision that embraced women as consumers rather than business owners. / text

There exists, at this time, surprisingly little historiography on how civil liberties were shaped and developed in practice throughout Canadian history. An examination of the 1946 Royal Commission on Espionage offers several insights into the nature of the immediate post-World War Two civil liberties movement. The commission was formed in response to the defection of a Russian cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko, in late 1945. The commission investigated the existence of a Russian-led spy ring that had recruited several Canadian civil servants into disclosing secret information. The commission is unique in Canadian history; dominantly due to the fact that it was empowered under the War Measures Act which granted it enormous powers. Everything from a citizen's right to counsel, habeas corpus, protection from state coercion and the right to a fair trial were circumvented. This work attempts to offer a few answers to some important questions about Canadian civil liberties. What were to consequences of the commission's actions? Does Canadian society accept the need to allow a government to violate individual liberties to protect the integrity of the state? Furthermore, the following article will examine the nature of the civil liberties movement following WWII, including the role of the media and civil liberties' organizations in increasing awareness of the vulnerability of individual rights from state abuse. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the enormous potential in which Parliament could act independently in re-defining Canadians' civil liberties while at the same time demonstrating the central role the Royal Commission on Espionage played in stimulating the post-WWII civil liberties movement. The Royal Commission on Espionage is only one black spot in the history of Canadian civil liberties but there remain many questions to be asked about Canadians' willingness to trust and accept that dictates of the state.

Le contexte particulier du dopage suscite de nombreuses questions à l'égard des obligations et de la responsabilité des médecins. Suivant le Code médical du Mouvement olympique (2005), les médecins doivent respecter les principes de l'éthique médicale et ceux de l'éthique sportive, comme le fairplay. Il arrive parfois que l'éthique sportive entre en conflit avec l'éthique médicale. Les médecins sont alors confrontés à d'importants dilemmes qui peuvent engager leur responsabilité professionnelle et civile. Ces dilemmes se situent notamment au niveau de l'obligation de soins et du secret professionnel. Par exemple, les médecins peuvent-ils prescrire des médicaments pour contrer les effets néfastes du dopage afin de préserver la santé des athlètes ? La question de la recherche sur l'amélioration de la performance est également préoccupante. En raison du caractère clandestin de cette recherche, il y a lieu de se demander si les médecins qui y participent respectent leurs obligations professionnelles. L'analyse des principaux instruments normatifs applicables en l'espèce démontre que les médecins ne doivent pas être placés dans une situation telle qu'ils doivent refuser de suivre des athlètes de crainte d'être accusés de dopage. De plus, le secret professionnel devrait être maintenu lorsqu'un médecin suit un athlète dopé afin de préserver la relation de confiance. Finalement, l'analyse du contexte de la recherche portant sur l'amélioration de la performance révèle que les médecins ne respectent pas toujours leurs obligations. Les médecins fautifs risquent donc d'engager leur responsabilité professionnelle et civile et de faire face à des sanctions sévères. / The particular context of doping raises many questions regarding the obligations and the liability of physicians. According to the Medical Code of the Olympic Movement (2005), physicians must respect the principles of medical ethics as well as those of sport ethics, such as fair play. Sometimes, sport ethics conflicts with medical ethics. Therefore, physicians are confronted with important dilemmas, which could engage their professional and civil liability. These dilemmas concern, in particular, the duty of care and professional secrecy. For example, could physicians prescribe drugs to counter the side effects of doping in order to preserve the health of the athletes? Issues surrounding research on the improvement of performance is also of interest. Because of the often clandestine nature of this research, it should be asked whether physicians who participate respect their professional obligations. An analysis of the principal normative documents applicable demonstrates that physicians should not be placed in a situation where they would refuse to treat athletes because of fear of accusations of doping. Moreover, professional secrecy should be maintained when a physician follows an athlete in order to preserve the relation of trust. Finally, the analysis of the context of the research on the improvement of performance reveals that physicians don't always respect their obligations. These physicians might engage their professional and civil liability and face severe sanctions.

Voting is a fundamental decision making instrument in any consensus-based society. It is employed in various applications from student body elections, reality television shows, shareholder meetings, to national elections. With the motivation of better eciency, scalability, speed, and lower cost, voting is currently shifting from paper-based to the use of electronic medium. This is while aiming to achieve better security, such that voting result reflects true opinions of the voters. Our research focuses on the study of cryptographic voting protocols accommodating a flexible ballot structure as a foundation for building a secure electronic voting system with acceptable voting results. In particular, we search for a solution suitable for the preferential voting system employed in the Australian Federal Election. The outcomes of the research include: improvements and applications of batch proof and verication theorems and techniques, a proposed alternative homomorphic encryption based voting scheme, a proposed Extended Binary Mixing Gate (EBMG) mix-network scheme, a new threshold randomisation technique to achieve receipt-freeness property in voting, and the application of cryptographic voting protocol for preferential voting. The threats and corresponding requirements for a secure secret-ballot voting scheme are rst discussed. There are significant security concerns about the conduct of electronic voting, and it is essential that the voting results re ect the true opinions of the voters - especially in political elections. We examine and extend batch processing proofs and verifications theorems and proposed applications of the theorems useful for voting. Many instances of similar operations can be processed in a single instance using a batch technique based on one of the batch theorems. As the proofs and verications provide formal assurances that the voting process is secure, batch processing offers great efficiency improvements while retaining the security required in a real-world implementation of the protocol. The two main approaches in cryptographic voting protocols, homomorphic encryption based voting and mix-network based voting, are both studied in this research. An alternative homomorphic voting scheme using multiplicative homomorphism property, and a number of novel mix-network schemes are proposed. It is shown that compared to the mix-network approach, homomorphic encryption schemes are not scalable for straight-forward adaptation of preferential systems. One important requirement of secret-ballot voting is receipt-freeness. A randomisation technique to achieve receipt-freeness in voting is examined and applied in an ecient and practical voting scheme employing an optimistic mix-network. A more general technique using threshold randomisation is also proposed. Combination of the primitives, both the homomorphic encryption and mixnetwork approach, yields a hybrid approach producing a secure and ecient secret-ballot voting scheme accommodating a exible ballot structure. The resulting solution oers a promising foundation for secure and practical secret-ballot electronic voting accommodating any type of counting system.

Dans notre recherche, le premier volume inclut une composante linguistique comportant une analyse textométrique du corpus afin de compléter la vision d’ensemble dans une optique statistique servant à élargir le regard porté sur le discours de Jules Verne. En nous appuyant sur les possibilités offertes par les nouvelles technologies, nous avons fait un travail détaillé portant sur presque l’intégralité du corpus Verne.Le deuxième volume vise à explorer l’influence de la Franc-maçonnerie dans l’écriture vernienne. À cet égard, nous pouvons dire que depuis quelques années, de nouvelles tendances dans l’interprétation de ses textes viennent ajouter un ingrédient supplémentaire à l’éventail de recettes nous permettant d’interpréter autrement l’écrivain nantais. La critique littéraire pose ses regards sur un Jules Verne différent et dont l’œuvre est influencée par l’ésotérisme, conception bien éloignée de la vision que la tradition lui avait accordée. Nous trouvons capital de signaler qu’une composante philosophique proche de certaines sociétés secrètes imprègne l’œuvre de Verne au point de mériter une étude plus approfondie. / In this work, a first volume includes a linguistic component involving a textometric analysis of Jules Verne’s writings that provides an overview of his work from a statistical perspective; this analysis has allowed us to enhance our vision of his discourse. Taking advantage of new possibilities offered by recent technologies, we have performed a detailed study of nearly all of the corpus of Verne.The second volume explores the influence of Freemasonry on Verne’s work. This volume relates to new trends that have been explored in recent years, providing an additional element that has permitted a new interpretation of the writer. This body of literary criticism has examined Jules Verne under a different light, viewing his work as being influenced by esotericism, a perspective significantly removed from the traditional conception of his writings. It is important to emphasize that a philosophical component, close to certain secret societies such as Freemasonry, permeates the work of Verne and deserves further study. / En nuestra investigación, el primer volumen incluye un componente lingüístico que contiene básicamente un análisis textométrico del corpus, con el propósito de completar el panorama desde la óptica de la estadística a fin de ampliar la imagen que se tiene sobre el discurso de Verne. Sobre la base de las posibilidades que ofrecen las nuevas tecnologías, hemos hecho un trabajo detallado de casi todo el corpus Verne.El segundo volumen explora la influencia de la Franmasonería en los escritura verniana. A este respecto, podemos decir que en los últimos años, nuevas tendencias en la interpretación de sus textos vienen a agregar un ingrediente complementario al abanico de recetas que nos permiten interpretar de otra manera al autor nacido en Nantes. La crítica literaria pone sus ojos en un Jules Verne diferente, autor cuya obra está influenciada por el esoterismo, reception ésta muy alejada de la visión que la tradición le había dado. Creemos capital señalar que un componente filosófico, cercano de algunas sociedades secretas, impregna la obra de Verne como para merecer un estudio más profundo.

H.P. Blavatsky’s (1831-1891) Theosophy has been defined as central to the history of modern Western spirituality and esotericism, yet to this date no major study has mapped and analysed the major themes of Blavatsky’s writings, how Blavatsky used the concept ‘Theosophy’ or to what extent she was engaged with the intellectual contexts of her time. Thus the purpose of this thesis is to fill this gap. The proposed theoretical framework is based on the centrality of language in the production of intellectual products, such as texts—but contrary to the dominant focus on strategies, rhetoric and power this thesis will focus on the construction of meaning coupled with a set of methodological tools based on contextual analysis, intellectual history and intertextuality. In addition to an overview of Blavatsky research this thesis will map and analyse Blavatsky’s use of the concept ‘Theosophy’ as well as Blavatsky’s primary discourses, identified as: (1) discourse for ancient knowledge, (2) discourse against Christian dogmatism, (3) discourse against the modern natural sciences and materialism, (4) discourse against modern spiritualism, (5) discourse for system and (7) discourse for universal brotherhood. In mapping and analysing Blavatsky’s discourses, it was found that her construction of meaning was significantly interconnected with broader intellectual contexts, such as ‘modern historical consciousness’, ‘critical enlightenment ideas’, studies in religion, studies in mythology, the modern sciences, spiritualism, systemic philosophy, reform movements and practical ethics. It, for example, becomes clear that Blavatsky’s search for an ancient ‘Wisdom Religion’ was actually a part of a common intellectual occupation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that her critique of the Christian dogmas was equally a common intellectual trend. To read Blavatsky’s discourses as the idiosyncratic strategies of an esotericist, isolated from their larger contexts or only engaged with them in order to legitimise minority views would therefore largely fail to account for the result of this thesis: that in historical actuality, they were a part of the larger cultural web of meaning.

« Il faut prendre cela dans un sens ironique » affirmait Bernard-Marie Koltès face à l’incertitude de la réception exprimée dans Der Spiegel : « on ne sait pas vraiment jusqu’à quel point vos sentences philosophiques sont à prendre au sérieux ». Nous proposons d’explorer l’efficacité « séductrice » dont semble emprunte l'écriture koltésienne – notamment à partir de 1977 – si l'on en juge par l'intérêt qu'elle suscite très tôt et continue à susciter, par le fil tendu de l'ironie. Le concept ancien et moderne d’ironie offre à la lecture un outil opérant lorsqu’il s’agit de suivre les lignes de fuite de l’écriture koltésienne. Le concept d’ironie tel que Kierkegaard nous offre de le percevoir se fonde sur la tension insurmontable d’un « ou bien / ou bien » (aut-aut). Tensions entre les contraires, dissonances, sabotages, disparitions, masques, secret gardé par l’écriture, mentions des stratégies du mensonge et des apparences, paradoxes faits d’alliances inextricables entre comique et tragique, violence et sacré, sont autant de procédés d’écriture repérables qui semblent viser la possibilité d’une « vraie » rencontre, bien qu’intenable, entre le monde, l’auteur et son destinataire. Au carrefour de questionnements multiples, d'ordre pragmatique, esthétique, dramaturgique, philosophique, cette recherche littéraire interroge le « pacte » d’écriture d’un auteur avec l’autre, avec le monde, en quête d’un espace « vrai » à partager, dont la vérité tiendrait précisément de son impossible affirmation. Un théâtre qui dit une chose pour en faire entendre une autre. / "We must take this in an ironic sense," said Bernard-Marie Koltès faced to the uncertainty of the reception expressed in Der Spiegel : "one never knows how far your philosophical sentences must be taken seriously." We suggest to explore the "seductive" effectiveness which seems to belong to Koltesian writing - especially from 1977 - judging by the interest it arouses very early and continues to suggest, through the tight wire of irony. The ancient and modern concept of irony offers an operative tool to reading, when it comes to following the lines of escape of Koltesian writing. The concept of irony such as developped by Kierkegaard, is based on the insurmountable tension of a « something /or else" (aut-aut). Tensions between opposites, dissonances, sabotage, disappearance, masks, secret kept by writing, mentions of the strategies of lies and appearances, paradoxes made of inextricable alliances between comic and tragic, violence and sacred, are different ways of writing ; they seem to aim the possibility of a "real" meeting, although inalienable, between the world, the author and his recipient. At the crossroads of multiple pragmatic, aesthetic, dramaturgical, philosophical matters, this literary search questions the "pact" of writing from an author towards everyone, towards the world, looking for a "true" space to be shared and whose truth would precisely be the result of its impossible affirmation. A theater that says something to whisper something else.

The main goal of this diploma thesis is analysis and reconstruction of the information network of major representative of anti-Austrian resistance abroad T. G. Masaryk in the First World War. The analysis and reconstruction will be put in context of contemporary events. Emphasis will be put on foreign and domestic information sources. It will show by which way and by whom was T. G. Masaryk informed about events in Bohemia and Austria-Hungary and what meaning this information had for his activities abroad.

The dissertation in hand is about the theological researches about the mission of the German Mennonite - Brethren - Church in Karaganda I Kasachstan from 1956 to 2000. The existing socialism with its atheistical values affected adversely the lives of the Christians and prevented them from missionary work. In spite of that mission was able to be practised. Experienced preachers and teachers in the church prepared the missionary work by instructing the Christians to be effective witnesses for the Lord. This was achieved by the training of young preachers. regular pronouncements of the Gospel and the work with children and young persons. The Christians retained this method until the middle of the 70ies when the regid laws concerning the missionary work were mitigated. Commited brothers. young persons, preachers and singers visited lonely Christians and churches in remote villages, had personal conversations with unbelievers and organized evangelizations. Members ofthe church were sent out as missionaries to erect parishes and carry out evangelizations / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M.Th.