Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

When former Confederates and their conservative allies retook power in the South after Reconstruction, they rewrote state constitutions. Lawmakers in the individual states gave their governors different powers based on their state’s experience throughout Reconstruction and Redemption. The Texas Constitution of 1876 created a weak governor, producing a state governed by elected county leaders and court judges. The Florida Constitution of 1885 on the other hand, kept a strong executive but placed it underneath the power of a private organization, the Democratic State Executive Committee – the Democratic Party. The state governments - and governors – redeemers designed in the 1870s and 1880s still governed Texas and Florida well into the twenty first century. Reconstruction directly shaped the size and scope of these modern-day state executives.

Occurring in the context of the Cold War, the 1958 Lebanese Crisis forced U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and top policymakers to balance a multitude of factors when considering an appropriate response to the crisis. While Eisenhower claimed publicly that Operation Blue Bat was an intervention aimed at containing the every looming threat of communism, meeting records of top U.S. policy makers contradict such explanations and offer insight to the President’s true motivations. Eisenhower instead sought to maintain U.S. influence among a coalition of Middle Eastern conservative governments operating in a U.S. led regional military alliance. The crisis forced the President to reconcile his foreign policy objectives with the political and cultural reality of the region and prompted a major foreign policy reassessment in which Eisenhower turned away from top-down international alliance building and instead, worked to address the obvious need to court public opinion in the Arab world.

The link between organizational theory and its application in practice is explored in this research through the lens of Peircian semiotics. An investigation is conducted of how organizations convey their culture through mission and vision statements and the reflection of these statements within New Institutionalism. Through the use of a novel computational model that merges quantitative analysis with traditional qualitative methods, this study evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of institutional theories. The three main schools of New Institutionalism—rational choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism —are examined to determine how well municipal mission and vision statements align with the theories' principles. The analysis interprets organizational communications identifying similarities or differences between theoretical concepts and the expressions of found organizational culture. The findings produced by the analyses offer insights into the relationship between theory and practice. It highlights the challenges in interpreting the intended meanings behind organizational communications, as well as, the practical utility of theoretical models for organizational behavior. This study contributes to the organizational theory library by introducing a new methodological approach to examine and compare institutional theories and the communicative strategies.

This thesis examines the völur, arguing that these mythic figures actually encompass a broader range of Nordic women than are typically considered. They are magically empowered, usually through their association with and proximity to prophecy and divinity, and are thus tasked with ensuring cultural memory is preserved in much the same way the speaker of “The Seeress’s Prophecy” does. The examination follows an analysis of various Giantesses from the second era of the God of War video games series, an adaptation of Angrboda from The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec, and Freydís Eiríksdóttir from Vikings: Valhalla. Each of these women prove to be a völva figure in their own unique ways, and thus carry with them the cultural memory as a form of preservation in the face of apocalypses.

My fascination with the human figure remains a prominent part of my work as a familiar and complex path to formalist traditions. But as I have sought to expand my engagement with representational figuration, I look towards themes of universal emotions and conditions - grief, remembrance, anger, affection and resolve. Within this, I often allude to socio-political content, art historical references or personal experiences. In integrating representational figuration with a contemporary approach, I incorporate techniques of drawing, painting and printmaking into narrative formats while preserving the figure as the protagonist.
I lean into gestural lines, expressive marks and abstract color fields to breathe life into the work and enhance the emotive context. I embrace the intuitive process as I believe it reflects and retains a certain spiritual spontaneity and response.
Recently, I have experienced deep loss. It is the grief associated with this that has informed these pieces. Grief is a process that can be present, historical, anticipatory or prolonged. I have been stricken by a wide range of losses –personal, societal, political and cultural - death of loved ones, risk of severe limitations to civil liberties and bodily autonomy, global wars and violence, xenophobia, brutal attacks on democratic ideals and even the inevitable passage of time have precipitated my personal and visceral grief.

In 2022, there were about 4,276,000 referrals to Child Protective Service (CPS) agencies within the United States in regard to 7,530,000 children (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 2024: xii). Of these allegations there are 558,899 victims of child maltreatment (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 2024: xii). One risk factor for child maltreatment is having a caregiver who has experienced victimization. Although there are many other risk factors for child maltreatment, this research highlights a caregiver having been maltreated and then the type of maltreatment experienced (either physical abuse or sexual abuse) as main areas of study. Results highlight that both physical and sexual abuse are found to increase the risk for other forms of maltreatment, while physical abuse increases the risk for both physical abuse and other forms of maltreatment. This research also continues by examining the type of maltreatment experienced and a child’s likelihood to engage in specific types of deviant behavior (petty, non-violent, and violent delinquency). Results show that physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse increase the risk for petty and non-violent delinquency (partaking in criminal actions). Neglect, emotional abuse, and drug or alcohol abuse increase the risk of having been arrested by age 18.

No group was more physically vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic than older adults. However, differing life histories and structural realities make for widely varying pandemic experiences. Using a life course approach, this study situates the COVID-19 pandemic and use of communication tools into context of older adults’ life experience with disasters and technology. Merging the scholarly fields of disaster sociology and aging studies, the purpose of this research is to find how life course experience and technology use impacted older adults’ perception of, and response to, COVID-19. Accordingly, I ask how does previous disaster experience and technology usage influence older adults’ coping regarding aging and crisis? Using 29 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with older adults, I find that the political economic context in which a person experiences disaster has reverberations decades later. This can trigger a process of cumulative advantage, and that men and women have different access points to that process dependent on that context. Moreover, older adults make crisis-based decisions anchored in their current circumstances, not consciously in response to prior experience. In addition, early experience with technology, especially through work, helps to establish a solid foundation for resilience both in terms of resources and adaptation. I found the participants in this study to be remarkably resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of either earlier disaster experience, opportunities through work and relationships, and their ability to technologically adapt.

Policy formation involves an interplay of decision-making processes that shape all policy process stages. A critical aspect of the design process is selecting policy tools to align with policy goals. The First Step Act (FSA) (2018) aims to reduce recidivism and reform sentencing through a robust policy tool portfolio. However, questions persist about how policy tools are selected. This dissertation evaluates the policy design, tool choices, and collaborative networks associated with these choices. Grounded in the social construction framework and using content analysis and discourse network analysis (DNA), this dissertation examines how policymakers select policy tools to achieve functionality.
Research question one explores the complementarity of the FSA’s policy tool portfolio, and results demonstrate alignment between policy goals and corresponding policy tools. Research question two examines how social constructions of target populations and political affiliations influence policy tool choices; hypothesis one reveals that liberal policymakers align with those with similar political affiliations. Results from hypothesis two indicate liberal policymakers adopt a rehabilitation orientation tool approach, viewing target populations as investments and deserving of support structures. The findings also highlight limited interaction with government agency officials, reflecting a need to incorporate more administrative voices into legislative discourse.

It is the purpose of this thesis to analyze the fresh relevance of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedy Macbeth, as manifested in three contemporary films: Macbeth, directed by Rupert Goold, starring Patrick Stewart (2010); Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel, starring Michael Fassbender (2015); and The Tragedy of Macbeth, directed by Joel Coen, starring Denzel Washington (2021). The thesis examines the unique thematic ideas in each adaptation. The directors have distinct visions. Goold imagines Macbeth as a Stalinesque authoritarian. Kurzel’s Macbeth battles post-traumatic stress disorder. Coen’s older Macbeth is desperate to attain the status he is adamant he has earned, obsessed with the awareness that his time is limited to act. In these adaptations, underlying themes exploring the danger of the authoritarian personality, the heartbreaking futility of misplaced trust, the ravaging effects war may visit on the warrior’s psyche, and the dark places one may be led in the pursuit of ambition are presented to the audience for contemplation.
The analysis draws from contemporary film criticism found in newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals. It is further supported by interviews with the directors and key actors, as well as autobiographical testimony. The elements used in the artistic craft of cinematography are explored. Recognizable references taken from earlier productions used by Joel Coen in his experimentation with Macbeth as a film noir are identified. Research which supports the relevance of the comparison of Macbeth to the historical Stalin is offered. Physicians’ clarification of the condition of PTSD enlightens the understanding of Kurzel’s interpretation.

This thesis analyses the foreign economic policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration toward Venezuela from 1957 to 1963. By examining material from U.S. diplomatic document collections, my research intervenes in the historiography of the Alliance for Progress by demonstrating the failures of U.S. policy in Venezuela during the Latin American Cold War. Although the United States supported the democratic government of Rómulo Betancourt politically, it hamstrung his government economically. The Kennedy administration at first provided loans for economic development to Venezuela, though they quickly eliminated this aid and began prioritizing military assistance as the most efficient way of supporting Betancourt’s government. More importantly, by continually limiting imports of Venezuelan oil into the United States, both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations hurt Venezuela’s economy and caused Betancourt to face a crisis of legitimacy as his capacity to manage the nation’s natural wealth came into question.