thesis

In this paper, I ask how members of Japanese society are able to remember naming practices in which some of the traditions are no longer in use. Members of Japanese society perpetuate their collective memory through the utilization of Japanese media to include past and present Japanese name alterations. I explain the reasons behind name alterations, and how knowledge and use of the naming rituals continue through the collective agency of contemporary Japanese media such as anime and manga. Each anime and manga example correlates to past and present naming rituals. Social name alterations occur at birth, genpuku, marriage, and changes in levels of skill. Political alterations occur from hostage exchange or adoption, change in ideologies, occupational change, or the assumption of new roles from a higher-ranking member of society. While members of Japanese society learn naming traditions from daily interactions with other people, media such as anime and manga reinforce expected behavior and customs.

This project examines politicization of the university. Critics have long charged that politics, and specifically identity politics, has infiltrated the classroom via radical professors. Scholars who lament the decline of the western canon claim that a massive wave of new untested works - largely written by women and people of color - have replaced the works of dead white men leaving our students ill-prepared. While most of the scholarship in this area has been written in the area of English literature departments, this project focuses on the field of Hispanic Literature. If identity politics has challenged the canon in the university, it is expected that within identity-based disciplines the infiltration of politics should be substantial. To test the politicization of the university, I examined 38 Hispanic Literature survey courses from a variety of American universities. I found a high degree of consistency among these syllabi and concluded that critics of the university have in many cases overstated their case. However, the results to suggest that changes are taking place in regards to the inclusion of more diverse authors in the curriculum, though not a complete take over as suggest numerous critics.

This project examines politicization of the university. Critics have long charged that politics, and specifically identity politics, has infiltrated the classroom via radical professors. Scholars who lament the decline of the western canon claim that a massive wave of new untested works - largely written by women and people of color - have replaced the works of dead white men leaving our students ill-prepared. While most of the scholarship in this area has been written in the area of English literature departments, this project focuses on the field of Hispanic Literature. If identity politics has challenged the canon in the university, it is expected that within identity-based disciplines the infiltration of politics should be substantial. To test the politicization of the university, I examined 38 Hispanic Literature survey courses from a variety of American universities. I found a high degree of consistency among these syllabi and concluded that critics of the university have at best overstated their case.

The purpose of this paper is to break through the complexity of the NAFTA negotiations in order to reveal some of the contentious issues from three stages of the NAFTA bargaining process: the fast track agreement, the negotiations under President Bush, Sr., and the side payments under President Clinton. Putnam's two-level game theory will help describe how the interests of business, environmental groups, and labor unions influenced the outcome of the NAFTA through their respective win-sets, domestic and international power relations, and side agreements. Extrapolating from Putnam's model and the success in NAFTA bargaining, we can predict that the ongoing Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations are more likely to succeed if international representatives strategize to create favorable conditions for domestic ratification through understanding the domestic constituencies and win-sets of the players.

In 2006, there were over 39 million people with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) worldwide, and 2.9 million HIV-related deaths. Currently, a cocktail of drugs administered via injection (HAART) has some efficacy in treating HIV, but does not eradicate HIV from infected individuals and has long-term side effects. In addition, drug-resistant variants of HIV are emerging. In an effort to help develop orally administered anti-HIV drugs, we examined membrane permeability of four scaffold peptides (synthesized by a researcher at Scripps Florida) into T-cells. One peptide (KE1-72A) entered cells with 100% efficiency; a second (KE1-72B) showed minimal cell penetration. Two other peptides (KE1-72C and KE1-72D), when chemically conjugated to an HIV fusion inhibitor, also showed minimal cell penetration. Further research is needed to determine whether the peptide KE1-72A may potentially be useful in orally delivered anti-HIV drugs.

Rotational Impoundment Management (RIM) is a commonly used method of mosquito control in Florida involving seasonal flooding during mosquito breeding season and allowances for natural tidal variations during summer flooding. My study looks at the effects of this impoundment strategy on the red mangrove, Rhizophora mangle L., recruitment. Primary productivity of mangroves in these impoundments has been found to be similar to that of natural areas, although nutrient levels have been found to differ greatly. R. mangle is a completely viviparous species, and as such, maternal conditions have a strong effect on propagules. My study compares the initial establishment and growth of R. mangle propagules collected from and planted in both impounded and non-impounded sites.

Terror management theory focuses on defenses used to buffer the anxiety caused by the awareness of death. This study attempted to induce an effect opposite to anxiety interpersonal connectedness-using a video clip. This feeling of connectedness was anticipated to decrease the need for the defenses described by terror management theory, and more specifically to lower the need for cultural worldview defense. Participants were assigned to one of two video conditions: the control video condition (K-Web) or the experimental video condition (42-Up). After the video clip was shown, participants judged a list of social transgressions and rated the amount of punishment they felt the transgressor deserved. Individuals with high levels of self-esteem and positive affect were found to be more punitive than their counterparts, but the amount of punishment doled out to the transgressors was lower in the experimental video groups than in the control video groups.

In this thesis, I argue that all bodies are material-semiotic entities, produced by both natural and cultural processes. Western anti-FGM discourse is predicated upon the belief that the body must be kept in its "natural" or "pristine" state, and that any practice which violates the body's natural "perfection" is mutilation. Implied by this discourse is the false notion that Western bodies are given and left unaltered. By drawing comparisons between Western genital practices and non-Western genital practices, I undermine the ideology that erases the working of culture on Western bodies while highlighting the "mutilating" powers exercised on the bodies of Others. Current imperialist hegemony perpetuates the view of African women as passive victims of barbaric tradition in need of rescuing by Western liberated women. We must, instead, work toward theories that account for differences in experience and history, rather than those which posit universal understandings of patriarchy and domination.