21st century

Three original chamber pieces are discussed from numerous points of view. They were composed for string quartet (Escape and String quartet in Four Movements), and string quartet with flute (Forward Motion). Each piece is analyzed in terms of its historical background, compositional techniques, and formal and stylistic techniques. Each piece draws influences from different genres. Escape was influenced by minimalism and jazz and is based on the Locrian scale. Forward Motion is in a modified classical form (Sonata) but draws influences from modern music and employs much dissonance. String quartet in Four Movements combines elements of expressionism, minimalism and jazz. Each piece is discussed in regards to its musical characteristics and historical influences including scales, harmony, rhythmic structure and form.

This study examines the impact of Christian religiosity on attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades in the US. The study used data from the General Social Survey on social safety-net policy preferences and levels of Christian religiosity. Simple cross tabulations, correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the data. Contrary to previous related research, the results of this study indicate that Christian religiosity has a very weak association with opposition to social safety-net policies. At the national level, the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social protection policies was largely mediated by other factors such as race, gender, education, family income, and political ideology. These results indicate that Christian religiosity per se does not independently influence social spending preferences. Instead, these results suggest that social divisions in socioeconomic standing and in political ideology, which in turn are closely related to differences in support for social protection policies, permeate American Christianity. The study also examined the relationship between Christian religiosity and social protection policy preferences among Hispanic and Black Americans separately. Although Hispanics and Blacks are generally more supportive of social spending in comparison to White Americans, Christian religiosity was not found to have a strong independent effect on support for social safety-net policies among these two groups. The study did find, however, a markedly different level of support for social safety-net policies among identifiable Christian groups at the national level and in the Hispanic-American population.

The informal, underground or shadow economy is a significant, growing force throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, contributing to overall output, yet diminishing productivity, congesting public services, and depriving developing nations of potential fiscal revenues. This paper discusses the various definitions and methods of measurement of the informal sector, with the aim of showing the importance of collecting taxes in informal economies. Informal economy participants engage in tax evasion and avoidance of governmental regulations, therefore the implications of excessive tax burdens and onerous bureaucracy are studied, with a focus on their impact on GDP growth. Informal sector enterprises can greatly contribute to the official, recorded GDP measures if they have significant incentives to joining the formal sector. These incentives are presented and must be considered seriously by policymakers concerned with capturing additional tax revenues and improving economic growth in their nations.

The effects that Women's political participation in the Middle East has on political parties and regimes have been investigated by the political science community. However, how women's political participation and changing societal roles affect women's lives has not received adequate attention. This is a comparative historical analysis that investigates how women's societal roles and political participation in Iraq changed from 1968 to the present. It examines how factors such as social conservatism, party ideology, war, sanctions, religion, and international pressure during different periods in Iraq's modern history influenced changes in Iraqi women's roles and participation over time. These changes in societal roles and political participation are used to analyze the restrictions and expansions in Iraqi women's civil rights in areas such as family, work and mobility, political and cultural expression, health and sexual control, and education.

The translation of Geny Vilas-Novas' novel Adeus, Rio Doce emphasizes the importance of promoting a literary exchange between Brazil and the Spanish-speaking world. This study analyses contemporary Brazilian literature and situates the author in the post-modern literary movement, stressing two post-colonial fundamental themes: emigration and feminine literature. Millions of undocumented emigrants from Latin America live nowadays in the United States displaced in the American society and leave suffering family members abandoned in their native countries. One of the roles of Latin- American women writers like Vilas-Novas is to reveal and denounce the subaltern conditions of this emigration movement in the globalization process, under the unusual perspective of those left behind. The linguistic and semantic challenges and difficulties faced during translation are a metaphor for the crossing of linguistic, cultural, social, and historical borders by Latin-Americans in search of better life opportunities.

The rise in popularity of the female sleuth television programs makes it important to explore representations of gender and knowledge. This investigation analyzes interpretations of intuition in the television sleuth genre and relevant paratexts, examines gendered public and private spheres and raises broader questions about gendered knowledge in the series Medium, Crossing Jordan, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Veronica Mars, Monk, The Profiler and True Calling. Rooted in feminist cultural studies, historical and sociological analysis, television and film theory and work on the detective genre, this investigation establishes common frames, or filters, through which the television sleuth genre represents intuition and the gendered experience of knowledge. Women with intuition are depicted as unstable, dangerous and mentally ill. Though framed similarly, intuitive men have more freedom. This study expands on academic research on television representations of gender and knowledge. Societal implications include further understanding of meaning-making in regard to gendered knowing.

Researchers sometimes classify religious organizations as rational actors, arguing that religious organizations attempt to minimize costs and maximize membership. Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde use the rational actor model to explain organized religion's diminished competitiveness and the correlated increase in secularity against governments with high social welfare programs. They conclude that government welfare programs contribute to increased secularity. Survey data indicates that Chile, Cuba, and Uruguay have significantly higher proportions of secularity relative to the rest of the region. This thesis tests the hypothesis that increased secularity in Chile, Cuba, and Uruguay is caused not only by Gill and Lundsgaarde's social welfare hypothesis, but also by the historical presence of far left parties in these nations. The ideologies of longstanding far left parties are often anti-religious and may contribute to increased secularity, suggesting that leftist parties may be a predictor of increased secularity in a country. Welfare, as times passes, becomes a stronger predictor of decreased religious behavior.

The primary objective of this research was to investigate the effects of passive exposure to actual media primes on several measures of attitudes. Participants rated the aesthetic properties of a series of Time magazine covers prior to completing measures of ambivalent sexism, narcissism, system justification, and personality traits. Ambivalent Sexism (AS) includes two positively correlated components, benevolent sexism and hostile sexism. System Justification may be defined as a motivated investment in the status-quo and includes both gender-specific and diffuse forms. Participants exposed to the AS prime scored higher on Ambivalent Sexism, lower on Narcissism, and lower on several facets of the five factor model of personality. Exposure to this condition was unrelated to measures of System Justification. The research is grounded in a feminist theoretical framework and contributes to the limited pool of experimental knowledge concerning the relationship between ambivalent sexism, system justification, narcissism and personality traits.

The recent explosive growth of Protestantism in Latin America has led a number of scholars to predict that the region may be on its way to reaching a significantly higher levels of socioeconomic development and democracy. These are important claims for a region that has struggled with both economic development and democratic consolidation. This thesis argues that Protestantism in Latin America does not follow the classical Weberian pattern of development. Because the majority of Protestant growth in the region is Pentecostal, the causal assumptions of the--culture and development school do not hold. Furthermore, a context of neoliberalism, a significant colonial legacy, and wide income disparities continue to hinder the potential for development. Based on a review of secondary sources and specific data from the case of Guatemala, this thesis argues that while individual Protestants may experience some upward social mobility, the growth of Protestantism has done little to advance the socioeconomic and political development of the region.

The surge in granting equal rights to gays and lesbians in the United States is remarkable. Yet with this surge comes a conflict : the civil rights of gays and lesbians against the rights of religious individuals, predominantly Christians, refusing to tolerate a behavior they think immoral. My thesis focuses on two hypothetical situations : a county clerk refusing to issue a marriage license to an engaged lesbian couple and an inn owner refusing a night's stay to a gay couple. In both cases, the clerk and inn owner refuse service for religious reasons. Normatively, I argue that we must move beyond a framework of toleration to a system of equal respect and understanding of our fellow human beings. Legally, I argue that the rights of religious expression and exercise should not trump the civil rights of gays and lesbians in the public sphere.