As a former UC Berkeley undergraduate and a University of Vermont graduate student, this is an educational autobiography of a self-identified Hapa, or mixed-race Asian American, through the lens of race and identity. Exploring what it means to be “white” and “privileged,” and realizing that these concepts--like identity--are fluid, this thesis adopts a dual methodology that includes personal narrative, as well as a meta-critical reflection. This thesis focuses on three memoirs: Bone Black and Wounds of Passion by bell hooks, and Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, each of which explore themes of reclaiming voice and reconstructing identity with regards to race, class, and culture.

Recent evidence suggests that overfishing of large predatory fishes has resulted in substantial population declines and pelagic longline (PLL) fishing is a major contributor. The primary objective of this dissertation is understanding factors that affect the interactions between marine fish PLL fishing. These factors are important to determine vulnerability of bycatch and target species, especially when PLL catch and effort data are used to estimate stock abundance. Chapter 1 reviews 107 publications/reports on this topic. Results indicate that accurate characterization of PLL gear performance requires empirical measurement of horizontal and vertical gear movement; and pop-up satellite tags (PSATs) are best suited for quantifying pelagic fish vertical habitat use if: (i) sampling resolution and data storage are not a function of tracking duration and (ii) substantial monitoring durations are employed. This review documents the current state of knowledge for these factors and guidance for future research. In Chapter 2, hook time-at-depth was monitored for commercial PLL sets targeting swordfish, Xiphias gladius. Temperature-depth recorders (TDRs) were deployed at the hook, systematically along the entire gear length. Results indicated that: (i) hook depth predictions based on catenary geometry drastically overestimated actual fishing depths and (ii) using catenary geometry fails to capture within- and among-set variability, potentially resulting in biased stock assessments. Chapter 3 used temperature-depth data from PSATs on swordfish and blue marlin (Makaira nigricans) and similar data from TDR monitored near-surface and deep PLL fishing to determine the diel probability of these species encountering PLL hooks. Results indicated that blue marlin and swordfish inhabit surface waters at night with similar probability of encountering PLL hooks but may have different vulnerabilities due to temporal separation in feeding with blue marlin preferring daytime and twilight and swordfish preferring nighttime. Therefore, reducing fishing during daylight hours may reduce blue marlin bycatch during PLL targeting swordfish. Chapter 4 alternated non-offset and 10° offset circle hooks during PLL fishing and compared the relative performance on catch rates, percent mortality, and deep hooking percentage. Results indicated that 10° offset circle hooks can reduce fishing efficiency and conservation benefits commonly associated with circle hooks.

What happens when a classroom becomes more than just a site of intellectual growth and evolves into a locus of emotional, social, and spiritual transformation? What happens when a student in such a classroom also occupies the role of teacher and desires to reproduce such a transformative environment for his students? In brief, this thesis answers these questions by offering a narrative and critique of my personal "conscientization" via feminism and elucidates the theory behind, my approaches toward, and the results of my bringing graduate-level feminist theory and pedagogy to a middle school English classroom. I examine how my experiences as a student in both the past and the present have merged to shape my work as a teacher and have set me on the path to becoming a professor, not only in the sense of a college teacher as a profession but as a person who professes, who openly declares the truths of my past as both dehumanizer and dehumanized to help others come to critical consciousness. First, I autobiographically critique my learning and assimilation of The Iliad and The Odyssey in middle school, reflecting upon how these works occupied a major part of my indoctrination into the hyper-masculine, white, patriarchal, upper-class dogma of the culture, as well as bringing a feminist perspective to bear upon these personally influential epics. Next, I examine my studies in the University of South Florida's master's program in English literature and, in particular, my direct and life-changing encounter with feminism in a 2009 course in feminist theory, which facilitated a complete re-visioning of my life and led to a personal renaissance. The final part of this circular path leads me back to my teaching of the same classical texts that so greatly influenced me as a young man, and I explain how my transformative experiences with both feminist theory and pedagogy motivated me to distill their critical approaches into a form and format that I have successfully implemented for my middle-school classroom.

Diss.--Basel. / Ergänzungsband zu Regio Basiliensis. Vita. Bibliography: p. 275-278.

Eve Ensler's goal in writing The Vagina Monologues was to generate a dialogue regarding women's sexuality to counter the silence that pervades the patriarchal culture that they inhabit. To achieve this goal, Ensler constructs two ideologies—one grounded in patriarchy and another supposedly grounded in female agency and dialogue—to reveal the problems within the current ideology in hopes that her audience will adopt her new ideology and resolve the detrimental silence women endure. To evaluate its success, this study utilizes an eclectic approach—comprised of constitutive rhetoric, second persona, third persona, and bell hooks' rhetorical options—to determine if the play's content encourages the dialogue Ensler desires. / Master of Arts

The awareness of marginality, oppression, and hierarchy at an early age directly influences the creation of work specific to my identity as a woman of color. Born and raised on an island in the Pacific Ocean, I was aware of my sense of location and space relative to the world. The vast ocean separating me from the ‘mainland’ created a specific understanding of marginality, of what is “main” and what is “minor,” and how these categorical placements continued from my youth to ongoing perpetuation. The work I create has a subtle and persistent investigation into my identity as a socio-economic and ethnic minority woman. I attempt to translate and address my identity and cultural significance by creating works that bring about question and dialogue dealing with cultural normative values. My work subtly addresses theories of alienation, burden, heritage, and identity. I use materials and/or focus on importance of materiality to imply an inherent meaning through historical root, core, and/or initial function. Often this function has fixed placement in certain cultures and society. Although the work is visually and conceptually dark in nature, the desired feeling includes a very physical response while coexisting within the installation’s environment. Oppositional Gaze is a video based on my personal experience. I approach making from a lived and ongoing experience that is constant. On an ordinary day, I often witness acts of repression, acts of injustice, and absurd occurrences that are either directed at me or observed toward others. I impose inner turmoil upon myself of whether or not I shall respond or absorb what I have witnessed. These experiences have emerged at a time in my life, in a place I considered to be a dislocation of my physical presence in relation to my constant neighbor, with a metaphysical questioning of placement. The video is a visual and auditory whisper that reflects my internalized struggle. These true encounters of questions, statements, and name-calling were specifically chosen to address this reality on a large screen, symbolic to the hovering subjection of prejudices and stereotypes that resonate within me. These encounters are unexpected, yet not surprising when they happen due to the frequency of their occurrence.

Vid design av ett dataspel försöker speldesignern ofta skapa banor och fiender som tvingar spelaren att använda olika strategier för att överleva. För att hitta dessa strategier krävs speltestning. Speltestning är tidskrävande och då också dyrt. Den enklaste metoden för att spara tid är då att använda data hooks i spelet och sedan låta testpersoner spela spelet. Data samlas då in under alla spelsessioner och lagras i loggfiler.Med hjälp av data hooks samlades data in till denna rapport. Spelet som analyserades var ett spel av typen top-down-shooter. Anledning till att detta spel valdes var att spelet är ett exempel från Microsoft där designen är enligt XNAs standard, samt att spelidén är allmänt känd.Är det då möjligt att hitta tydliga strategier i den insamlade datan med hjälp av data mining och fuzzy logic? Det är definitivt möjligt att hitta tydliga strategier. Den insamlade datan från spelsessioner analyserades med hjälp av data mining, fuzzy logic och verktyget G-REX. Det visade sig att det fanns tydliga regler för att särskilja bra spelare från dåliga spelare. Detta visar att det är möjligt att utläsa spelarens strategi samt att jämföra denna mot hur speldesignern tänkt ut när han skapat spelet.Det som är mest intressant från resultatet är att G-REX hittade regler som sa hur en bra spelare skulle spela, och att vissa av dessa regler inte stämde överrens med hur speldesignern tänkt. En sådan regel var att i ett av passen var det bra att förlora hälsa, just därför att då kom det fler fiender och spelaren hann få mer poäng under passet.Vid jämförelse av de olika fuzzifieringstyperna (ramverket mot G-REX) visade sig att testresultatet blev väldigt likt varandra. Det innebär att allt arbete med ramverkets fuzzifiering inte hade behövts. Det innebär även att speldesigners med liten eller ingen kunskap alls om fuzzy logic skulle kunna använda G-REX till att evaluera sina spel och loggfiler med hjälp av data mining och fuzzy logic.

I explore through feminist content analysis how poetry, blogging, political narrative, and music are employed by Black women as a means of personal and political empowerment, healing, activism and feminist practice. I theorize the emergence of a new manifestation Black feminism represented in poetry, blogs, political narrative, and popular music-exploring its ties to the history of Black feminism. I seek to demonstrate how gender conscious Black women create poetry, blogs, political narratives, and music as the catalyst to spark anti-sexist activism in contemporary Black women who may or may not call themselves feminists.

In this study I am concerned with understanding how the emergence of participatory or, broadly understood, existential approaches to education has shifted the nature of the student/lecturer relationship. Historically, the difference was represented through the in loco parentis trope which contains implicit understandings as to the nature of the lecturer's authority and the ethical parameters of the relationship. With the emergence of more participatory approaches this relationship and its constitutive elements have to be re-imagined. In the first chapter I place this enquiry in the contemporary context in which the very identity of the university is changing as a result of massification and the accountability regime. In the second chapter I look at bell hooks' pedagogy as an example of such a participatory approach to education at higher education institutions. I describe her practice as a deconstructive pedagogy that is as powerful as it is because of the operation of a difference constitutive of it. In the third chapter I ask whether representing this difference in terms of the pre-modern master/apprentice offers a useful response to the questions raised by an existential praxis.

Magister Artium - MA / Volgens die Suid-Afrikaanse grondwet het vroueregte na die eerste demokratiese verkiesing in 1994 deel ontstaan. Dié vryhede wat die vrou ontvang het, was egter nie onproblematies nie – Suid-Afrikaanse vroue word steeds uitgelewer aan ’n patriargale samelewing. Die posisie van die swart vrou is veral problematies – swart vroue word nie net gemarginaliseer gebaseer op geslag nie, maar ook steeds as gevolg van ras. Die posisie van swart vroueskrywers in die Afrikaanse letterkunde asook die Nederlandse letterkunde is dan ook ’n aspek wat nog nie genoegsaam ondersoek word nie. Vir die doeleindes van hierdie studie word die werk van twee swart digters, een van Suid- Afrikaanse herkoms (Ronelda S. Kamfer) en een van Nederland (Simone Atangana Bekono), ondersoek. In 2008 word Ronelda S. Kamfer een van die eerste swart vroueskrywers wat ’n volledige Afrikaanse digbundel by ’n hoofstroomuitgewery publiseer. Ten spyte van breë mediadekking van haar werk – wat met verskeie literêre pryse bekroon is – is daar nog betreklik min akademiese studies oor Kamfer gedoen. Simone Atangana Bekono is redelik nuut in die poësiewêreld en geen akademiese studies is nog oor haar werk onderneem nie. Dié studie is dus daarop gemik om die akademiese gapinge te vul deur ’n komparatiewe studie te doen met die aandag gefokus op die digters Ronelda Kamfer en Simone Atangana Bekono. Die swart feminisme word vernaamlik as teoretiese invalshoek gebruik gegewe die twee digters se agtergronde asook die tematiek van hul werk. Kamfer se oeuvre (Noudat slapende honde, grond/Santekraam, Hammie en Chinatown) en Bekono se debuutbundel, Hoe de eerste vonken zichtbaar waren, sal as hoofbronne in hierdie tesis dien. Tesame met die voorafgenoemde sal daar ook verskeie sekondêre bronne en artikels wat swart feminisme, postkolonialisme, die stem van die gemarginaliseerde en ook komparatisme in die letterkunde ondersoek, gebruik word. / South Africa