Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Educational Research and Evaluation (Education)

The purpose of this non-experimental study was to examine the concerns of preservice teachers in reference to the Amazon Echo, powered by Alexa, as measured by the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) (George, Hall, & Stiegelbauer, 2006). The study participants were preservice teachers at a Midwestern University enrolled in a technology course (n = 124). This researcher utilized a pair of two-way multivariate analysis of variance MANOVA which were conducted to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in means between the dependent variables of the preservice teachers' Stages of Concern (stages 0-6), and the independent variables of gender, projected grade to teach, and teaching geographical area. Results from the SoC Questionnaire are as follows: Preservice teachers would like to receive more information regarding the Amazon Alexa as a tool for teaching in formal and informal settings. The two-way MANOVA models did not reveal conclusive results. Contributing factors for these results may be low statistical power and small effect size which may have affected the overall models results. Implications for preservice teachers' training, suggestions for further research, and the limitations of this study are discussed.

Committee: Greg Kessler Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Alan Wu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gordon Brooks Ph.D. (Committee Member); Danielle Dani Ph.D. (Committee Member); Teresa Franklin Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Software; Educational Technology; Information Technology; Linguistics; Teacher Education; Technology

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2024, Food Science and Technology

In the human gut, there are trillions of microorganisms shaping complex networks, so-called ‘human gut microbiota'. The members of human gut microbiota are linked to each other by metabolic interactions and the functions encoded in their genome, which is called ‘human gut microbiome'. The gut microbiome interacts with humans, the host, in various paths. For example, their metabolites modulate cellular physiology by being attached to surface receptors or involving in epigenetic modifications. In addition, cellular components of gut microorganisms work as a ligand of pattern recognition receptors, which is important in host immunological modulation. Moreover, those kinds of exposures in a proper time window of the human growth stage are crucial in early life development. Hence, gut microbiome affects human health from one's birth to death. There are multiple factors affecting the human gut microbiome, which can be classified into two, internal (e.g., genetic) and external (e.g., environmental, social, behavioral, cultural) factors. Based on the internal attributes of the host, gut microbiota colonizes and changes via interacting with external factors. Among external factors, delivery mode, breastfeeding, antibiotics treatment, lifestyle, and diet have been studied extensively. Yet, the most important factors affecting gut microbiome has been agreeable to be diet in many studies. As an energy source of gut microbiota, foods, administered into large intestine shapes gut microbial composition. Properties of macronutrients and micronutrients in food, such as digestibility and physicochemical characteristics are important in shaping gut microbiome. However, since many people still do not have such profound knowledge of nutrition, their dietary behavior is determined by social factors, including socioeconomic status, demographical, belief and philosophy, culture, or religion. Therefore, the objective of this thesis was examining how such social and environmental (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jiyoung Lee (Advisor); Vanessa Hale (Committee Member); Ahmed Yousef (Committee Member) Subjects: Food Science

Master of Science, Miami University, 2023, Computer Science and Software Engineering

It is a well-established fact that the performance of Machine Translation (MT) techniques largely depends on the quantity and quality of data available. The lack of a large well-curated dataset is especially a challenge for low-resource languages. The Myaamia language, also known as the Miami-Illinois language, is an endangered Native American language, and there are active efforts being made toward its revitalization. As a part of the revitalization process, the recorded texts are currently being manually translated, which might take up to a decade to translate at the current rate, according to some expert assessments. To speed up the translation process, we developed Myaamia Translator, a Neural Machine Translation (NMT) based machine translation approach, which leverages the state-of-the-art transformer architecture to translate text from Myaamia to English. The contributions of this work are two-fold: first, we use a combination of rule-based augmentation and back-translation augmentation to address the data limitation; and second, we train the model using the large dataset to test its effectiveness in translating a religious Myaamia textbook to English.

Committee: Christopher Vendome (Advisor); David Costa (Committee Member); Hakam Alomari (Committee Member); Douglas Troy (Committee Member) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Language; Linguistics; Native American Studies

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Weatherhead School of Management

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) entrepreneurial activity is disrupting both traditional retailers and manufacturers by directly linking consumers with products and services, disintermediating elements of the traditional value chain. We conducted a mixed methods, three-phase study to better understand how supply chain strategy choices influence D2C firms' competitive advantage. In phase one we conducted in-depth interviews with leaders of small to medium sized D2C businesses. One key finding: only a subset of D2C companies are willing to invest in differentiated supply chain capabilities. Many viewed supply chain as a utility function. This informed phase two, a quantitative analysis (scenario-based experiment) of the degree to which logistics quality drives customer satisfaction, finding a strong positive effect. This motivated phase three, a quantitative modeling exercise determining the relationship between distribution network size (number of DCs) and proximity to customers, an indicator of lead time performance. This analysis suggests that most D2C firms, with just one or two DCs are significantly disadvantaged, with deleterious consequences for customer service.

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen Ph.D. (Advisor); Manoj Malhotra Ph.D. (Advisor); Yunmei Wang Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Entrepreneurship; Operations Research

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Food Science and Technology

Traditional sensory and consumer testing practices do not allow for the appropriate capture of holistic product experiences in a controlled environment. In-hall testing is performed in sterile booths purposefully devoid of any context to minimize participant interaction and prevent bias. Panelists utilize a questionnaire for providing opinions on specific attributes after tasting or using a small amount of sample. This experience does not reflect how and where products are used in real-life scenarios and can lead to missing insights and product failure after launch. In-home testing improves ecological validity as the product is used and evaluated in the true environment of use, however, the lack of experimental control brings data quality and reliability into question. In-hall immersive testing has been explored as an alternative to traditional in-hall and in-home testing, reintroducing relevant context to product evaluations. While this helps restore ecological validity and the reliability of results for use in product development, available survey technologies are counterproductive to the environment investigators seek to recreate. In everyday life, people do not use tablets to provide their opinion of a product they just consumed, instead they verbally share their thoughts with those around them. This highlights a need to explore different technologies for administering sensory and consumer questionnaires. Smart-speakers may provide a solution for further improving ecological validity of immersive testing. Technological advancements in smart-speaker operating systems have made it possible for these devices to perform multi-step tasks, allowing for more complex experiences. Programmers have developed platforms to create and deploy surveys on these devices, allowing participants to provide feedback using more of a conversational experience. While smart-speakers could enhance ecological validity in immersive testing, best practices for how to employ the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Simons (Advisor); Luis Rodriguez-Saona (Committee Member); Devin Peterson (Committee Member) Subjects: Food Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home offer users the convenience of hands-free information retrieval by utilizing the power of virtual assistant technology and the extensive cloud resources provided by their platform's service provider. These devices have saturated the market and millions of users worldwide have welcomed them to their homes, placing them on their kitchen counters, bedside tables and living room stands. Characteristics about a smart speaker's encrypted network traffic can be used by an attacker to infer what a user is saying to their smart speaker. In this paper, we propose an encrypted network traffic analysis attack on privacy. This attack uses an ensemble of deep learning models to predict what voice command a user issues to their smart speaker. We introduce a data collection platform which we designed specifically for smart speakers. This smart speaker automated crawler allows an attacker to collect the data needed to train the attack models. An evaluation of the voice command fingerprinting attack presented in this work shows that it can be used to correctly predict over 91% of voice commands issued by a user.

Committee: Boyang Wang Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Gowtham Atluri Ph.D. (Committee Member); Xuetao Wei Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Arts in Spanish, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Tras la nominacion de El abrazo de la serpiente de Ciro Guerra a mejor pelicula extranjera en los premios Oscar en 2016, muchos criticos periodistas colombianos celebraron el filme, a menudo enfatizando el cuidado con el que el director retrato a los pueblos indigenas de la Amazonia. Es cierto que la obra plasma un dialogo muchas veces didactico entre personajes arquetipicos—dos cientificos de Occidente y un chaman indigena—y que Guerra retrata en la diegesis, asi como provoca en el publico, un evento politicamente productivo, lo que el estudioso Boaventura de Sousa Santos denomina una “ruptura epistemica”. Por otro lado, el foco recurrente del filme en el consumo de medicina ritual y vegetal por parte de los visitantes de la Amazonia siembra semillas de fetichismo y exotismo, ademas de fomentar un extractivismo cultural y material. Al articular, visibilizar y valorar lo indigena, la pelicula desafia modos hegemonicos del conocimiento a traves de las representaciones de: a) ontologias relacionales prevalentes en la Amazonia colombiana, b) modos orales y rituales de transmision del conocimiento, y c) concepciones temporales no lineales. Con apoyo de pensadores poscoloniales, posestructuralistas y ecocriticos (i.e. Said, Haraway, Morton), esta tesis elabora sobre como el cine podria revelar lo incompleto de paradigmas hegemonicos del razonamiento. Asimismo, El abrazo sigue una tendencia historica a romantizar y consumir lo indigena (especialmente al otorgar permisos para la participacion en rituales amazonicos los de afuera de la comunidad indigena). Estas tendencias se exploran a traves del pensamiento (tambien) poscolonial, ademas de apoyo antropologo y sociologo (i.e. Pratt, Fotiou, Ulloa). Al fin, esta tesis subraya la urgencia y la importancia de esa ruptura epistemica mencionada anteriormente y reconoce que la forma en que los espectadores interpreten e interioricen la pelicula decidira la calidad del impacto social duradero de la obra.

Committee: Matías Martínez Abeijón Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Hebat-Allah A. El Attar Ph.D. (Committee Member); Stephen Gingerich Ph.D. (Committee Member); Antonio Medina-Rivera Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Philosophy; Epistemology; Film Studies; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies; Motion Pictures; Native Studies

Master of Science, University of Toledo, 2017, Health Education

Background: Organ transplantation became a new hope for those living with end-stage organ disease. However, the number of patients waiting for this procedure greatly exceeds the number of available donors. This separation leads to the death of almost 30 Americans per day who are waiting for this life changing procedure. Although Americans have shown a high level of support for organ donation, a large gap exists between the support and intention to register. As one of the most trusted and accessible healthcare professionals, pharmacist may have an opportunity to provide expanded services and education to the public and patients about organ donation. This study looks to understand what motivates registration as an organ donor and identify perceptions of the public about pharmacist-driven education on the process. Methods: This is a cross-sectional, survey-based, exploratory study. A survey instrument was designed and validated. Following pilot testing, the survey was released electronically using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants were linked to the survey who are U.S. citizens/permanent residents over the age of eighteen. The 88-item, 10-section survey is based on the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) and examines attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived control associated with becoming an organ donor. Three questions also examine their perceptions of pharmacists' role in educating the public about organ donation and whether they feel others would be receptive to this education at the pharmacy. Additional questions examine the impact of media messages, religion, and other common misconceptions of organ donation on the intent to register. A link to Donate Life America is also available electronically to participants who indicate interest in obtaining more information. Results: A total of 523 usable responses were collected out of 551 (95% completion) with 184 (35%) identified as not being registered donors. Non-donors were significantly more likely to hold negative (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sharrel Pinto (Committee Chair); Timothy Jordan (Committee Member); Cindy Puffer (Committee Member) Subjects: Health Care; Health Education

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2017, Biological Sciences

The Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve of Peru is one of the largest protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, yet it has hosted only a few studies of frogs and toads (anurans). The primary goals of my study are: 1) To conduct an inventory of the local anuran species, 2) to quantify richness among habitats, 3) to compare differences in beta diversity across a river versus a continuous landscape, and 4) to compare difference in body size between nocturnal and diurnal individuals. After eight weeks of daytime and nighttime surveys during the dry season, a total of 601 individuals were identified across 28 species and 6 families. Of these 601 individuals, 50% were found on aquatic vegetation, 29% were found in the forest during the nighttime, and 21% were found in the forest during the daytime. Beyond describing the community composition and species richness, I also quantified the overall diversity and found a difference of body size between diurnal and nocturnal anurans. The overall diversity of the region seems to be mostly from local alpha diversity, but beta diversity was slightly higher than expected when considering populations on opposite sides of the river. This might indicate that the wide rivers of this region are weak barriers of dispersal for anurans. Furthermore, a Wilcoxon rank-sum test showed with great significance that there is a difference of body size between diurnal and nocturnal anurans in this region. This might support theories that anuran species are driven apart by interspecific competition and intraguild predation, or that only larger species can tolerate the cooler temperatures during the nighttime. In conclusion, it would help future studies to spend a greater length of time in the region, to be performed during the wet season as well as the dry season, and to collect data more relevant to explaining any underlying forces influencing the community.

Committee: Thomas Rooney Ph.D. (Advisor); Volker Bahn Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lynn Hartzler Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Biology; Conservation; Ecology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, History

This dissertation examines the evolving political, economic, and philosophical conflicts between the Franciscan missionaries based out of the College of Santa Rosa de Ocopa in Peru and the Spanish State between 1709 and 1824. The conflicts facing Ocopa were representative of a major pattern of clerical reform influenced by a new philosophy of regalism, which, inspired by the European Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason over tradition, aimed to centralize political power in the monarchical state. The Ocopa missionaries were not completely subservient agents of the government sent to exploit local labor forces to extract resources for Spain. Rather, they sought to create a spiritual utopia, as they imagined it, using State funds but being free from the Crown’s political agenda. Although Spanish regalists were pious Catholics, they sought to create a more national Church under Crown control, which involved curtailing the autonomy of religious orders like the Franciscans. The resulting tensions allowed Amerindian communities concentrated in the Ocopa missions to resist the missionaries’ cultural, political, and commercial impositions. What occurred in the missions, therefore, was a result of interactions among Franciscan missionaries, Crown officials, and indigenous peoples—each with its own discrete agenda. Untangling these competing agendas will help to reveal the dynamics of Spanish colonial aspirations along this crucial frontier zone in Peru during the Bourbon period (1700-1824).

Committee: Kenneth Andrien (Committee Co-Chair); Stephanie Smith (Committee Chair); Donna Guy (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Latin American History; Latin American Studies; Religious History

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2011, Computer Science and Engineering

There is a clear trend towards using cloud resources in the scientific or the HPC community, with a key attraction of cloud being the elasticity it offers. In executing HPC applications on a cloud environment, it will clearly be desirable to exploit elasticity of cloud environments, and increase or decrease the number of instances an application is executed on during the execution of the application, to meet time and/or cost constraints. Unfortunately, HPC applications have almost always been designed to use a fixed number of resources.This work focuses on the goal of making existing MPI applications elastic for a cloud framework. Considering the limitations of the MPI implementations currently available, we support adaptation by terminating one execution and restarting a new program on a different number of instances. The components of the system include a decision layer which considers time and cost constraints, a framework for modifying MPI programs, and a cloud-based runtime support that can enable redistributing of saved data, and support automated resource allocation and application restart on a different number of nodes. Using two MPI applications, the feasibility of our approach is demonstrated, it is shown that outputting, redistributing, and reading back data can be a reasonable approach for making existing MPI applications elastic. The decision layer with a feedback model is designed to monitor the application by interact with it at regular intervals, and perform scaling with the assistance of resource allocator when necessary. This approach is tested using the same two applications and is used to meet the user demands of maximum specified input time or budget.

Committee: Gagan Agrawal Dr. (Advisor); Christopher Stewart (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Geological Sciences

The wetlands of low-land rivers and lakes are massive in size and in volumetric fluxes, which greatly limits a thorough understanding of their flow dynamics. The complexity of floodwater flows has not been well captured because flood waters move laterally across wetlands and this movement is not bounded like that of typical channel flow. The importance of these issues is exemplified by wetland loss in the Lake Chad Basin, which has been accelerated due primarily to natural and anthropogenic processes. This loss makes an impact on the magnitude of flooding in the basin and threatens the ecosystems. In my research, I study three wetlands: the Amazon, Congo, and Logone wetlands. The three wetlands are different in size and location, but all are associated with rivers. These are representative of riparian tropical, swamp tropical and inland Saharan wetlands, respectively. First, interferometric coherence variations in JERS-1 (Japanese Earth Resources Satellite) L-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data are analyzed at three central Amazon sites. Lake Balbina consists mostly of upland forests and inundated trunks of dead, leafless trees as opposed to Cabaliana and Solimoes-Purus which are dominated by flooded forests. Balbina has higher coherence values than either Cabaliana or Solimoes-Purus likely because the dead, leafless trees support strong double-bounce returns. Flooded and nonflooded wetland coherence varies with the season whereas terre-firme and open water do not have similarly evident seasonal variations. Second, interferometric processing of JERS-1 SAR data from the central portions of both the Amazon and Congo Basins provides centimeter-scale measurements of water level change (δh/δt). Despite being large, low-relief, tropical river systems, the floodplains and wetlands of the Amazon and Congo Basins show markedly different surface water flow hydraulics. Amazon patterns of δh/δt are well defined with clear boundaries whereas the Congo patterns are not well (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Douglas Alsdorf (Advisor); Ralph R. B. von Frese (Committee Member); Kenneth C. Jezek (Committee Member); C. K. Shum (Committee Member) Subjects: Geology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Geography

Work in geography surrounding the concept of security has questioned the meaning of security, evaluated spatial tactics of security, and looked at how security has become almost imperceptively ingrained in our daily lives. This thesis interrogates and extends these prior contributions by examining distinctive environmental security practices with seemingly contradictory intentions for the environment. I show that in the Ecuadorian Amazon, environmentalists and the oil and gas company Repsol YPF are interested in securing different environmental objects: oil, with obvious importance as a commodity, and biodiversity/nature, for the sake of preservation. These objects are held within the same physical environment in Block 16/YNP, and environmentalists and Repsol share the region with Waorani – a group both seek to prevent from obstructing their respective security projects. The result is that both environmentalists and the company secure different objects of the environment, in the same territory, in ways that corroborate nicely. The security practices of these two entities are fundamentally territorial, function by encouraging particular behaviors, and work through narratives about belonging in space. Through these, Waorani are made insecure in their daily lives both physically and unconsciously, and violence against them is taken-for-granted. Although common imaginations about violence, or comparisons with other sites in Ecuador, might have it that Block 16/YNP is a fairly peaceful example of oil company/indigenous relations or Waorani/outsider relations more generally, I argue that we must think more profoundly about what violence is. We must take seriously the violence that is done to Waorani individuals, and more generally seek ways to rectify past and contemporary injustices perpetrated against them and other historically and geographically marginalized populations.

Committee: Mathew Coleman (Advisor); Kendra McSweeney (Advisor); Becky Mansfield (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Anthropology

Research suggests Brazil is undergoing a nutrition transition. However, few studies have examined its occurrence in rural communities in the Amazon. Since the nutrition transition is driven by changes in diet and activity patterns, I compared the dietary intakes of n=54 women collected in 2009, with data on n=23 women in the same communities in 2002. Data were collected over three consecutive days in both 2002 and 2009 using the weighed inventory method. Intakes of energy and all macronutrients were 13-30% lower in 2009. In 2002 mean energy intake was 1805 kcal (32.9g fat, 330g carbohydrates, and 47.6g protein). In 2009 mean energy intake was 1335 kcal (26.4g fat, 232.1g carbohydrates, and 41.9g protein). Energy from fat and protein increased, while energy from carbohydrates decreased. In 2002 local foods provided 65-84% of energy and all macronutrients; in 2009 48% of total energy, 66% of fat, 45% of carbohydrates, 42% of protein came from purchased foods. Manioc products were still the primary source of energy (46.9%) and carbohydrates (65.3%). Local fish was still the primary source of protein (31.4%). The primary source of dietary fat in 2009 was not local fruit, as in 2002, but oil and margarine (23.9%). All local foods except game meat contributed less to the diet in 2009 as intake of purchased foods (beans, rice, baked goods, sugared coffee, oil and margarine, preserved meat, pasta, milk) increased. One factor contributing to the consumption of purchased foods may be receipt of cash from the Bolsa Familia program: all receiving households reported spending part of their benefit on food. This study demonstrates a shift from traditional subsistence toward reliance on income and purchased foods, despite scarce and unreliable opportunities to secure income and purchase food. The population's rural location and historic marginalization creates problems of access at all steps of the process. They have moved in the direction of a nutrition transition by shifting to (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Piperata Dr. (Advisor); Douglas Crews Dr. (Committee Member); Kristen Gremillion Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Physical Anthropology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2007, Interpersonal Communication (Communication)

In spite of advances in all spheres of human life, majority of the world continues to suffer from hunger, poverty, and disease on a daily basis. Facilitating social change to create a more equitable society, though possible, continues to be an uphill struggle. I began this study seeking to understand how issues of health, gender and human rights can be communicated more efficaciously. Further, I sought to enhance our understanding of how poor, isolated, and marginalized community members perceive, experience, and participate in social change efforts. In so doing, I present a case study of Minga Peru, a non-profit community-based, communication for social change organization that promotes social justice, gender equality and human rights in the Peruvian Amazon. Central to Minga's efforts is the entertainment-education based radio program Bienvenida Salud, which is complemented by a network of over 56 peer facilitators. Minga also trains women in income generation skills such as handicraft production and fish and poultry farming. This interpretive study draws upon both feminist and participatory research paradigms. The findings are based on six weeks of fieldwork in Peru, divided between Lima and the Loreto Region. The research design utilizes ethnographic methods including interviews, focus group discussions, audience letters, and participatory sketches and skits, involving a total of 124 participants and 160 hours of observation. I co-construct my analysis with the narratives of the Minga team, including its co-founders, program implementers and peer facilitators, and men, women, and adolescents from riverine communities. The findings resulted in 14 themes clustered around three research questions. Through my findings, I put forth that enabling social change necessitates an alternative approach that privileges community perspectives. Further, social change initiatives benefit from being contextualized and cognizant of the lived realities of the people they are workin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Arvind Singhal (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2005, Botany

The Amazon basin is one of, if not the most, botanically diverse regions of the world. Unfortunately, Amazonian floristic and habitat diversity is relatively poorly known and understood. Indigenous peoples have highly detailed and extensive biological and ecological knowledge of the rain forest and studying these knowledge systems can provide insights into the heterogeneity and diversity of Amazonian forests. The research reported here investigates several aspects of the traditional culturally-based biological and ecological knowledge of the Maijuna Indians of the Peruvian Amazon. An ethnoecological framework is utilized to examine the classification, significance, and use of habitat types recognized by the Maijuna. The objectives of this portion of the dissertation are to: (1) document the habitat classification system of the Maijuna; (2) understand how they use the culturally-based habitat types, and their associated resources, seasonally and temporally; and (3) document the ecological knowledge and management strategies associated with each habitat type. The Maijuna have a complex and extensive habitat classification system identifying more than 70 forest and non-forest habitat types within the Sucusari River basin. The results of this portion of the research provide valuable insights into how indigenous peoples perceive, use, and manage resources and habitat types in Amazonia. An in-depth analysis of the significance of a habitat that the Maijuna call manaco taco is also made. Manaco taco are dominated by the small myrmecophytic tree or shrub Durioa hirsuta (Rubiaceae) and have a very open understory. The Maijuna have well-defined and constructed supernatural beliefs associated with these forests, believing that they are the home of malevolent supernatural beings. Understanding the significance and importance of habitat types to indigenous peoples is critical in discerning how they perceive and interact with these areas. A case study of resource use of a cultura (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: W. Eshbaugh (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Spanish and Portuguese

Gay Chicano authors have been criticized for not forming the same type of strong literary identity and community as their Chicana feminist counterparts, a counterpublic that has given voice not only to themselves as authors, but also to countless readers who see themselves reflected in their texts. One of the strengths of the Chicana feminist movement is that they have not only produced their own works, but have made sense of them as well, creating a female-to-female tradition that was previously lacking. Instead of merely reiterating that gay Chicano authors have not formed this community and common identity, this dissertation instead turns the conversation toward the reader. Specifically, I move from how authors make sense of their texts and form community, to how readers may make sense of texts, and finally, to how readers form community. I limit this conversation to three authors in particular—Alex Espinoza, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Manuel Munoz—whom I label the second generation of gay Chicano writers. In Gonzalez, I combine the cognitive study of empathy and sympathy to examine how he constructs affective planes that pull the reader into feeling for and with the characters that he draws. I also further elaborate on what the real world consequences of this affective union—existing between character and audience—may be. In Munoz, I consider how, through the destabilization of the narrator position, the author constructs storyworlds that first pull the reader in, and then push them out of the narrative in a search for closure. Here, I theorize that he forces the reader to mind read his narrators in order to discern their true intentions. In Espinoza, I explore the typification of Latino/a literature in the marketplace and how it has become tied to magical realism. Here, I posit that Espinoza has created a magic realized novel, one that presents itself as something magical realist, but systemically discredits the notion of magic throughout the work. I use co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ignacio Corona (Advisor); Frederick Aldama (Committee Member); Fernando Unzueta (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Glbt Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Literature; Rhetoric; Web Studies