Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

In March 2015, a jury awarded Marvin Gaye's estate nearly $7.4 million, finding that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed on Gaye's 1977 song, “Got to Give It Up,” with their own 2013 hit, “Blurred Lines.” The highly publicized federal copyright lawsuit has raised concerns about the ramifications of this outcome for the legal protection of music and the future of artistic creativity. The question underlying this case, as in much of federal copyright litigation, involves negotiating the putative similarities and differences between expressive works. Although the court system has developed methods designed to assist triers of fact in such legal analysis, the unpredictable outcomes of these cases illuminate the problematics of this task. Triers of fact may hear testimony from expert witnesses, whose specialized knowledge, skill, and experience is intended to inform the decision-making process. The results of such testimony, however, are not only insistently variable, but they also reflect unsettled debates over how, and by whom, musical identity can best be defined. Given this situation, how should we understand the historical and contemporary role of the musical expert witness in American music copyright litigation? Drawing on research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, the present dissertation examines extant court records and judicial opinions of prominent cases chronologically from their origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to recently-decided lawsuits. In situating the role of the musical expert in the context of the legal similarity inquiry and considering their contributions to it, the study reveals the essential role that experts have historically played. It then recasts contemporary problems with case outcomes as a result of the similarity inquiry itself and looks to expert testimony as one potential area of reform. Such study of musical expertise sheds light on the courtroom as a forum for musical experts, particularly co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Graeme Boone PhD (Advisor); Charles Atkinson PhD (Committee Member); Guy Rub SJD (Committee Member); Mark Rudoff MM (Committee Member) Subjects: Law; Music

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2008, History

This study attempts to fill a gap in the historiography on the formation of American copyright law by exploring the specific historical nature of print culture in the late eighteenth-century which directly influenced copyright's development. Those who campaigned for copyright protection espoused its broad nationalistic implications in the wake of a socially and politically disruptive revolution, and its eventual legislative design recognized a distinct tension between private interests and the public sphere as it embodied the pervasive republican values of the early national period. This examination seeks to clarify how the conceptual architecture of copyright was initially framed in the United States in order to more insightfully and constructively address the question of the continued utility of its function established by historical precedent. The first chapter of this study argues that the earliest calls for copyright legislation in the United States immediately after the Revolution were inextricably intertwined with the efforts to construct a distinctly American national identity. As the dictates of print-capitalism were quickly becoming institutionalized, prominent copyright advocates argued that copyright was necessary both to protect the indigenous American authorial class and their labors from the widespread practice of literary piracy and to encourage others to participate in the craft of authorship. They argued provocatively – and successfully – that copyright laws would indeed serve as declarations of cultural independence from Britain, and would help establish America's cultural parity with the greatest powers in the world. Whereas colonial printmen played the most critical role in shaping American identity throughout the 1760s and 1770s by producing a deluge of literature in opposition to parliamentary imperial policies, I argue that the calls for copyright laws in the post-revolutionary period were an attempt by American intellectual writers to establ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Mancke PhD (Advisor) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Education History; History; Law

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Anthropology

This thesis explores the "life history" of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It chronicles NAGPRA's story beginning with what created the perceived need for such an act, the work and the groups of people that went into its ultimate advent in 1990, the "nitty-gritty" details/language of the policy itself, and its various successes and failures throughout the years. With research conducted through the lens of legal anthropology, this paper focuses on the certain "requirements" (education, class, race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, etc.) that have allowed people(s) to actively participate in the formation/policy-building of NAGPRA, become NAGPRA representatives, and benefit from the policy.The primary focus of this thesis is on the question "What is the legal culture of NAGPRA?" It examines NAGPRA's legal culture by utilizing American sociologists Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey's legal consciousnesses of before, with, and against the law. It then goes on to show that a fourth, new consciousness --beyond the law -- presents itself in the legal culture of NAGPRA. This fourth consciousness is developed in this thesis and necessary to more fully address the spirit of the law -- a key force in building and sustaining the legal culture of NAGPRA.

Committee: Amy Vlassia Margaris (Advisor); Greggor Mattson (Advisor) Subjects: Archaeology; Law; Museum Studies; Museums; Native American Studies; Native Americans; Public Policy

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

Law enforcement is a male-dominated field that has been slow to accept and promote African American women to positions of authority. As of 2016, there were only 3.1% Lieutenants and Sergeants, along with 1.6% Captains or higher that were African American women in the United States (Gomez, 2016). More recently, there has not been much change, as women are reportedly only 12% of the sworn officers and 3% of law enforcement leadership in the United States (Tumulty, 2023). Of that number, only 1% of African American women hold the position of Lieutenant or higher (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [ATF], 2023). There are subtle barriers that women and minorities experience that keep them from moving up in the management hierarchy of law enforcement. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the lived experiences of African American women law enforcement supervisors related to the barriers encountered during their career, especially with promotion, and vital skills necessary for job performance. The study assessed advances, impacts on performance, peer intimidation, sexual harassment, discrimination, and other barriers that African American women face while pursuing top-level positions in law enforcement. The study included interviewing eight African American women law enforcement officers in Georgia, active duty and retired, that have held the positions of Commissioner, Chief, Captain, Lieutenant, Detective, Sergeant, and or Corporal. The following five themes emerged as a representation of their perceptions: (a) “Obstacles”: Operation Stumbling Blocks, (b) “Sabotage”: Monkey Wrench in the Works, (c) “Jealousy”: The Green-Eyed Monster, (d) “Overlooked”: Privy Passover, and (e) “Combative/ Overly Aggressive”: Angry Black Woman Syndrome. This study also has implications for lawmakers, departmental leads, and all level agencies of law enforcement to eliminate barriers, increase diversity, and practice e (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stewart Burns PhD (Committee Chair); Diane Allerdyce PhD (Committee Member); Nadine Wheat PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Gender; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Sociology

Decades of misconduct and crime committed by law enforcement officers throughout the United States have been uncovered by investigative journalism, independent commissions, and ethnographic research. Theoretical studies identify that individual and cultural factors are significantly related to an officer's participation in criminal behavior. There exists a lack of complete understanding of how an officer's community and environment may influence their participation in police crime. The purpose of this dissertation is to advance the field of criminology by expanding the structural level understanding of police crime through a theoretical lens and quantitative approach on a national scale. Drawing from social disorganization theory, five nationwide datasets are merged to construct a longitudinal, panel dataset that describes police crime throughout American counties. Using a structural level theoretical perspective, this project broadly explores how the characteristics of American counties may be associated with the criminal behaviors of police officers. The tenets of social disorganization theory suggest that counties with antecedents of social disorganization (such as characteristics of poverty, transient populations, and low educational attainment) should be associated with higher counts of police crime and general crime. Three research questions are investigated in this dissertation. The first two analytical chapters ask the following research questions: First, do county level variables correlate with counts of police crime? Second, are the correlates of general crime the same for police crime at a structural level? I construct and compare mixed-effects models regressing police crime and general crime onto county level variables. A comparison of these models informs a discussion about the structural similarities and differences between police crime and general crime. These findings inform the final analytical chapter, which explores the potentially interwoven (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John H. Boman IV, Ph.D (Committee Chair); Danielle Kuhl Ph.D (Committee Member); Wendy Manning Ph.D (Committee Member); Thomas J. Mowen Ph.D (Committee Member); Philip Matthew Stinson J.D., Ph.D. (Committee Member); Starr E. Keyes Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

The police have a literary history. By the Book canvasses a broad range American novels that depicted many of the organizational developments and institutional operations of municipal law enforcement in United States cities from the late-nineteenth through the early-twentieth century. I examine the rise of the police procedural as a literary genre in the true-crime fiction of Julian Hawthorne and the detective novels of Anna Katharine Green that promote the investigative processes of the New York Police Department and its specialized crime units. I examine the futurist fiction of J. W. Roberts and Frederick Upham Adams, which pushed back against debates about law enforcement's own future in their explorations of interpersonal crime, criminal enterprise, and riot control in metropolises such as Boston, Chicago, and New York. Finally, I examine social problem novels by Sutton E. Griggs that tackle the Jim Crow police state created in Southern cities like Richmond and Nashville through police abuse and neglect toward black Americans. Ultimately, the story that emerges in By the Book is about competing civic narratives -- of the police as collective protagonist and collective antagonist in American society.

Committee: Elizabeth Hewitt (Advisor); Molly Farrell (Committee Member); Andrea N. Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, English

In “The Bodies Belong to No One,” I contend that the legal concept corpus nullius in bonis, which restricts the property and personhood rights of the dead, has broader implications in the intersections between twentieth and twenty-first century Native American literatures and federal Indian policy. Specifically, I argue that the literal and legislative acts of violence against Indigenous men in the U.S. from 1934 to 2010 intersect with broader geopolitical acts of Indigenous displacement and dispossession. These interconnected processes rely on what I call “settler hermeneutics,” or the literary and policymaking strategies that seek to affirm settler rights to occupation by setting term limits on “authentic” Indigenous manhood and the scripting of Native masculinities into destinies of cultural death and political dispossession. Set between the Osage Oil murders in the 1920s, which became the FBI's first major crimes case, and the Tribal Law and Order Act (2010), my work explores how Native American authors re-construct the literary, political, and legal histories of violence in pursuit of Indigenous forms of justice. Developing “subsurface” methodologies, I argue that Native writers offer strategies for reconnecting the juridical surfaces in contemporary Indian Country to much deeper histories of violence in novels that unsettle the settler narratives of progress and belonging. Specifically, I argue that these Native writers reconstruct a much deeper history of missing and murdered Indigenous men, which intersects with the historical and ongoing violence against Indigenous women and Two Spirit peoples across gendered, geopolitical, and generational lines.

Committee: Chadwick Allen Ph.D. (Advisor); Joe Ponce Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Brian McHale Ph.D. (Committee Member); Debra Moddelmog Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Legal Studies; Native American Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, History

In his sermon at the execution of a convicted man, Puritan minister Samuel Danforth used the term "strange flesh" to describe the man's deeds, which in the present would be recognized as sodomy and bestiality. Danforth and other Puritan leaders took responsibility for the spiritual welfare of all the people in their community; sexual activities that they associated with God's enemies terrified them. Believing that their spiritual “city on a hill” was threatened, these leaders tried to deter such behavior not only through passionate sermons that railed against “strange flesh” but through explicit civil laws that mandated harsh penalties for those who persisted. This project focuses on the language in legal and religious texts used by magistrates in Massachusetts Bay from 1629 to 1699. It makes explicit the links connecting law, sex, and religion in this early period. By reading the religious and legal texts together, and paying close attention to the sodomy and bestiality statutes, I show how spiritual anxiety over “strange flesh”dictated legal policy regarding sexual activity. The Bay Colony leaders enacted specific legal statutes because they feared “God's Judgment”; since some people in the community practiced the biblical “abomination” of “unnatural sex.” My working argument is that the conjunction of religious and legal texts created different groups of “other” within the community that established and reinforced the Puritan “godliness” and their “city on the hill.” Legal statutes, legal commentary, and religious commentary provide the main primary sources for this project. Massachusetts Bay lawmakers consolidated individual legislation against “buggery” and “sodomy” into colonial legal codes in the mid-seventeenth century, and English legal manuals describing “buggery” in great detail circulated in the Atlantic world during this time period. Further, Massachusetts Bay Puritan leaders relied heavily on particular passages in the King James Version of the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ruth Wallis Herndon PhD (Advisor); Renee Heberle PhD (Committee Member); Christine Eisel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History; Law; Legal Studies; Spirituality; Theology

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2013, Leadership and Change

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and understand the dimensions of leadership of those African Americans, who are effective as the chief executive officer (CEO) of a municipal law enforcement agency, and thereby to educate and inform both those aspiring to be police chiefs and those presently serving as police chiefs, particularly African Americans. Four content areas were examined to gain a better understanding of the research question: (1) Police executive leadership literature; (2) African American leadership; (3) The trait theory of leadership; (4) emotional intelligence. Study participants were all African American police chiefs with the expertise and requisite knowledge of municipal police chief leadership. The Delphi method was used, resulting in the emergence of judgments based on anonymous responses during multiple iterations. Consensus for the purpose of this study was defined as exceeding an 80% overall composite score of agreement among the panel of experts. The study results produced 34 consensus dimensions based on each receiving a composite score of 85% or higher. This resulted in the panel of experts identifying 12 competencies, 12 qualities, and 11 attributes of management and leadership for an effective African American municipal police chief. While the study does not claim to identify a set of qualities that will ensure that an African American municipal police chief will be effective in the job, the identified dimensions should enhance the professional development of an aspiring African American municipal police chief. Additionally, the findings of the study support the assumption that African American municipal police chiefs are likely to encounter specific race-based challenges on their leadership journey and, therefore, should plan and prepare to overcome them. The electronic version of this dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd

Committee: Jon Wergin PhD (Committee Chair); Laurien Alexandre PhD (Committee Member); Laura Roberts PhD (Committee Member); Gary Cordner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Management; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Public Administration

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2009, English (Arts and Sciences)

Although strategically disregarded, the U.S. was founded through the extermination and removal of the indigenous people of the land mass now referred to as The United States of America. In this project, I examine aspects of federal Indian law to present an understanding of the U.S./Indian relationship as one of persistent and domestic colonialism. Using the work of scholars in American Indian Studies, postcolonial theory, and transnational studies, I investigate how the work of Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) portrays the consequences of colonialism and neocolonialism. The two primary texts that I use are Alexie's novel “Indian Killer” and his film “The Business of Fancydancing.” One of the major themes throughout this project is American Indian rage, and I explore the strategies and potentials for this rage in Alexie's texts.

Committee: George E. Hartley (Committee Co-Chair); Katarzyna J. Marciniak (Committee Co-Chair); Janis Butler Holm (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Native Americans; Native Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2008, History

Seventeenth-century elite male Marylanders feared women and non-elites usurping elite power. Elite behavior suggesting this fear is visible in nineteen legal proceedings stemming from incidents identified as involving either alleged coerced sex or the supposed killing of a newborn by its single mother in Maryland from 1634-1689. Rape and infanticide cases were chosen for examination because they represent the universe of violent felony gendered crimes of which sex was an integral part. This study employs a microhistorical approach to each incident based on court documents, wills, church records, and transportation records. Seventeenth-century Marylanders espoused various understandings of both crimes. Rape victim testimony emphasized non-consent, force, and penile penetration. When combined with judicial action, this is essentially the definition of rape employed herein. Coerced sex in this dissertation indicates forced sex that failed to result in a rape trial. Justices and juries understood the trials as an opportunity to strengthen the gendered power structure. Generally, the Provincial court dismissed these cases, downgraded the charge, or pardoned the accused. Infanticide in this study is defined as a single woman giving birth in secret to a child later found dead. Infanticide verdicts depended on the presence and class of the patriarch of the woman. Women without patriarchal figures appearing for them were condemned. The findings of this dissertation regarding colonial Maryland have broad implications for considering the following themes in early America. In early Maryland fear of social upheaval motivated a host of legal decisions that while based on English common law took different forms to meet new world concerns. To secure elite male hegemony, Maryland elites were willing to accommodate subordinates with varying degrees of authority and control. Throughout early America colonists questioned the limits and characteristics of patriarchal privileges, the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Schocket Ph.D. (Advisor); Ruth Herndon Ph.D. (Committee Member); Thomas Chibucos Ph.D. (Committee Member); Leigh Ann Wheeler Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History