Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2026, Experimental Psychology (PEX)

In narrative identity theory, people work toward a cohesive, contextualized self by narrating connections between past, present, and anticipated future experiences. This self-defining, narrative process assigns meaning to life events and attempts to explain emotional changes over time. Some common, culturally sanctioned narrative structures, such as redemption sequences (a progression from negative to positive narrated affect), are popular subjects of well-being research. Conversely, contamination sequences--in which narratives begin with relatively positive affect and conclude with negative affect--have less research and mixed support for predicting lower levels of well-being. This project aimed to clarify contamination's relation to well-being by targeting two possible causes for the inconsistent findings. First, previous research inconsistently allowed for neutral affect in its working definition of contamination. Second, contamination only describes affective changes, but narratives' underlying values provide demonstrably essential context for understanding affective changes' relation to well-being. For the first aim, I compared "strong" contamination, in which initial affect is explicitly and exclusively positive, against "weak" contamination, which permits initially neutral or positive affect, in their prominence and performance in predicting well-being. A novel, "bad-to-worse" sequence was also included as an exploratory measure. I predicted each of these three affective sequences to predict poorer scores on the Satisfaction with Life Scale. For the second aim, narratives were independently categorized (as part of previous research) as having either humanistic or materialistic values. Humanistic values, which predict higher levels of well-being, were included alongside the affective-sequence regressors to see if contamination sequences independently explain variability in well-being. Given that humanistic themes appear conducive to well-being, I predicted t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jack Bauer Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Erin O'Mara Kunz Ph.D. (Committee Member); Matthew Montoya Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2026, Spanish

Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, mejor conocido como Bad Bunny, se ha consolidado como uno de los artistas mas influyentes de la decada de 2020. El artista de trap latino ha producido dos canciones que alcanzaron el numero uno en la lista Billboard Top 100, ha recibido seis premios Grammy y ha actuado en uno de los escenarios mas destacados de la cultura estadounidense: el show de medio tiempo del Super Bowl. En esta investigacion se examinan tanto la trayectoria que condujo a dicha performance como la performance misma—realizada casi completamente en espanol—en la que presento numerosas experiencias del presente, como el estado colonial de Puerto Rico y el orgullo nacional del territorio, el valor de la gente comun, el empoderamiento de los grupos marginados y la unidad panamericana. Este estudio aborda tanto este show como la trayectoria de Martinez Ocasio bajo la optica de la performance—tal como ha definido Richard Schechner—para comprender no solo los significados que transmite el show a los espectadores, sino tambien el papel que desempena dentro del entramado performativo de Bad Bunny como activista y artista.

Committee: Carlos Ortiz (Advisor); Russell Simonsen (Committee Member); Kelly Ferguson (Committee Member) Subjects: Hispanic American Studies; Latin American Studies; Performing Arts

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The field of Disability Studies (DS) generally avoids addressing the problem of suffering and disability due to the long history of harmful stereotyping of disability as being a bad state of existence. When suffering is addressed, it tends to be conceptualized and criticized as a consequence of social oppression; and, as such, the experience is devalued. Some DS theorists have attempted to analyze the problem of impairment-derived suffering, but they tend to narrowly focus on experiences of physical pain and avoid the negative psychological effects of lacking physical abilities. The problem of suffering and its value is a central concern for the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Many of his works explore the experience of suffering and the psychological need for suffering to have meaning in a world that no longer offers convincing metaphysical justifications for it. Nietzsche argues that suffering has value and is necessary for human flourishing; and, in opposition to philosophical pessimists like Arthur Schopenhauer, he asserts that suffering must be affirmed. This Nietzschean perspective on suffering has vital implications for conceptualizing and interpreting negative experiences involving disability in general, and blindness specifically. In Part 1, I describe several DS interpretations of suffering, and compare/contrast them with Nietzsche's interpretation. In Part 2, I use these interpretations to analyze experiences of blindness and suffering in memoirs and tragic literature. I ultimately argue that, if blind people are to flourish, we must adopt a Nietzschean interpretation of suffering. This interpretation requires us to affirm the value of suffering in blindness and to reject interpretations, such as social oppression, that devalue suffering.

Committee: Sara Newman (Advisor) Subjects: Literature; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Business Administration

Negotiations between teams are pervasive. Whereas the presence of a team can help to create value and promote win-win outcomes, deals reached by negotiating teams often fall short of reaching their full potential due to competition between teams. Building upon insights from group dynamics and intergroup psychology, the current dissertation seeks to examine how team composition can promote high-quality outcomes in an inter-team negotiation context. Specifically, I examine how a contrast effect created by within-team role differentiation (i.e., the good-cop/bad-cop role differentiation strategy) can influence both how value is created and claimed in the negotiation. Results from three interactive team-on-team negotiation experiments support the expectation that greater value is created (i.e., more joint gain) when one team uses the good-cop/bad-cop strategy. However, results also show that the good-cop/bad-cop team also claims more of the value created as compared to the other team. Together, these results help advance our understanding of how team structure can affect negotiation processes and outcomes when teams negotiate.

Committee: Robert Lount (Advisor); Timothy Judge (Committee Member); Bennett Tepper (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, American Culture Studies

In 2014 Roxane Gay published Bad Feminist, a collection of personal essays written from her position as a Haitian American feminist academic. This work quickly skyrocketed in popularity across both academic and nonacademic audiences. Representative of the increasingly public-facing authoethnographic scholarship of feminist academic women, Gay's work is a product of its time. For this dissertation, I examine Bad Feminist along with two other also wildly popular autoethnographic works produced in the same decade, Tressie McMillan Cotton's Thick: And Other Essays and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. I examine these texts as public-facing, accessible works that communicate their academic feminist authors'; feelings of feminist inadequacy in order to address larger issues of feminist practice and theory. Utilizing Sara Ahmed's theory of becoming feminist, I analyze the "bad feminist moments" expressed in these texts as moments of feminist crisis to identify what causes them and what functions they might serve. Using qualitative methodological triangulation, better known as mixed-methods research, I employ topic modeling and content analysis across all three texts to identify patterns that reveal not only why and how academic feminists might feel like they are bad feminists, but how and why they choose to share the moments in which they feel like bad feminists with others. Fighting to maintain their feminist identities in a world rife with gendered and raced violence, neoliberal ideals of self sufficiency and individual perfection, rapidly evolving technologies, and intersecting historical structures of oppression, these authors utilize moments of feminist imperfection to create space and time to disarticulate and rearticulate their relationships to feminism, their relationships to other people, and their relationships to academia. In this project, I conclude that bad feminist moments might be reactions to the pressures of both historical and contemporary structures of o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sandra Faulkner Ph.D. (Advisor); George Bullerjahn Ph.D. (Other); Susana Peña Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jolie Sheffer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Sociology

Quantitative research on sexuality suggests that sexual satisfaction is important for physical health, mental health, and relationship outcomes, but most of this research fails to capture the subjective ways that sexual satisfaction is perceived and achieved. In this study I employ in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the ways that women and men understand both “good” and “bad” sex. I employ sexual script theory as a framework to explain the ways that sexual expectations and behaviors are patterned in reference to cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic understandings of sex. In the first chapter I explore the role of novelty as a factor in “good” sex and the tensions that exist between the predictable and the unfamiliar. In the second chapter I delve into the role that gender plays in constructing perceptions of sexual satisfaction and the ways that the narratives of men and women converge and differ. Finally, in the third chapter I address the prevalence of sexual violence reported by the women in my sample and explain how this is a product of the gendered norms embedded in cultural-level sexual scripts. Overall, my research suggests that women and men have similar expectations for what makes sex “good,” but dominant norms surrounding sexuality disproportionately place women in subordinate roles, and therefore greater risk of violence, during sex.

Committee: Korie Edwards Dr. (Advisor); Kristi Williams Dr. (Committee Member); Steven Lopez Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Media and Communication

The archetypal protagonist of the modern “Golden Age of Television” is a maladjusted, White male struggling with feelings of marginalization. While this description applies to characters such as Breaking Bad's Walter White, it is also used by political commentators to characterize what is popularly perceived to be the prototypical male supporter of President Donald Trump. When considering the cultural zeitgeist of the angry White man, are there any cultural and rhetorical connections between White, male Trump supporters who exhibit irrational feelings of marginalization and dramas such as Breaking Bad whose protagonists similarly exhibit and are motivated by such feelings? As a theorist and critical scholar of televised rhetoric and discourses, I am interested in analyzing such programming to determine whether these prestige antihero series invited viewers to contribute to the current masculinist movement under Trump and reassert dominance in response to perceived losses to women and minority groups. The specific episodes that will serve as case studies for this research into the relationship between modern prestige television and the cultural zeitgeist of Trump's America will be drawn from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, due to their cultural influence and visibility. My research will demonstrate that these series have operated as textual artifacts that contributed to forming the zeitgeist of the masculinized cultural moment which Trump serves as a figurehead of. Such research is relevant to modern American political and social discourse, thus providing a rich opportunity to expand on preexisting research into televisual influence on masculinity within a fresh context.

Committee: Ellen Gorsevski Ph.D. (Advisor); Swisher Raymond Ph.D. (Other); Hanasono Lisa Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mascaro Tom Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCE), Wright State University, 2017, Computer Engineering

A good distance metric is instrumental on the performance of many tasks including classification and data retrieval. However, designing an optimal distance function is very challenging, especially when the data has high dimensions.Recently, a number of algorithms have been proposed to learn an optimal distance function in a supervised manner, using data with class labels. In this thesis we proposed methods to learn an optimal distance function that can also indicate the importance of attributes. Specifically, we present several ways to define idealized distance functions, two of which involving distance error correction involving KNN classification, and another involving a two-constant defined distance function. Then we use multiple linear regression to produce regression formulas to represent the idealized distance functions. Experiments indicate that distances produced by our approaches have classification accuracy that are fairly comparable to existing methods. Importantly, our methods have added bonus of using weights on attributes to indicate the importance of attributes in the constructed optimal distance functions. Finally, the thesis presents importance of attributes on a number of datasetsfrom the UCI repository.

Committee: Guozhu Dong Ph.D. (Advisor); Keke Chen Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michelle Cheatham Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Education, Health, and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

For the institution and its regional campuses under review, the amount of outstanding student liabilities (i.e., monies owed by the student to the institution for educational-related expenditures not satisfied by the end of the term) grew at an alarming rate between 2000 and 2014, with some of the institution's regional campuses experiencing over a 400% increase in student liabilities between 2011 and 2014. This increase in student liabilities mirrors the trends in the rise of federal student loan borrowing and federal student loan default. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between various student characteristics and student liabilities owed directly to the institution at a multi-campus public university in the Midwest between the years 2011 and 2014. The period under review was selected due to its high increases in student liabilities. This study will further explore how these relationships differ between the university's multiple regional campuses and main campus. The students in the current study are students that have an outstanding liability to the organization of $100 or more, have been turned over to an outside collection agency for collections, and have had their student account balance written-off. The characteristics explored in the current study are many of the same characteristics shown in the current literature to be associated with federal student loan default rates. The characteristics are first generation vs. not a first generation student (i.e., FG vs. NFG), predominant campus location (i.e., main vs. regional campus), class status (i.e., freshmen, sophomore, junior, or senior), sex, underrepresented minorities vs. not an underrepresented minority (i.e., URM vs. NURM), federal Pell grant vs. not a federal Pell grant recipients (i.e., FP vs. NFP), federal student loans vs. not a federal student loan recipients (i.e., FL vs. NFL), private student loan vs. not a private loan recipients, and GPA. To explore the relat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mark Kretovics (Committee Chair); Stephen Thomas (Committee Member); Erica Eckert (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2016, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The following stories contained in this thesis were all written and revised in fiction-writing workshops at Cleveland State University in pursuance of the MA degree. Each story is either autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, and each portrays the protagonist pursuing a romantic goal as he struggles against adverse circumstances. The setting and characters are developed in each story to challenge the protagonist in a myriad of ways and force him to act in pursuance of his goal. The basic situations and results vary somewhat. In “A Dolphin and a Seal,” a young boy attempts to impress an older girl, but the consequence is such that he is forced to retreat back into childhood. In "Blood," he realizes that he is a very different being than his father, and in an effort to connect with a girl about his age, he commits an act of defiance which evidences a step forward toward manhood and a break with his father. In “Bad Butterflies,” the same character, now an adult, is pursued by a too-young student and a too-old and otherwise unacceptable teacher as he attempts to connect with his own love interest. In the end, he recognizes the sheer randomness of it all and learns to appreciate what he does have. I believe that in each case, the conclusion reached is that the events and people which populate our lives are often at odds with our own inner desires and needs, and that regardless of the results of our efforts, we ultimately must create our own sense of meaning. Thus, this collection displays a decidedly existentialist bent. Over the past two years, I have revised each story a number of times in accordance with the suggestions of my instructors and fellow students at Cleveland State University. I believe that now each story works in conjunction with the others in this collection as well as on its own.

Committee: Ahmad Rahman MFA (Committee Chair); Caryl Pagel MFA (Committee Member); Michael Geither MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, English/Literature

Literary studies has historically focused on texts written by Native Americans as reflecting historical aspects of culture and tradition that serve anthropological research. However, recent scholarship in Native studies is pushing for readings that see Native writers past and present as working to build theories of decolonization that will serve purposes of social recognition and political sovereignty amongst other things. This thesis seeks to disrupt conventions of reading Native texts as “histories” or deviations from “oral tradition” that are based on paradigms of Western theory. Instead, this project argues that Native women, by writing memoirs, are building their own theories of sovereignty and decoloniality through literature. Deborah Miranda, Ohlone/Coastanoan-Esselen, writes a collective, or tribal, memoir that works toward a theory of storying and ancestral memory that deconstructs the historical narrative surrounding California Missions and contributes to renewed definitions of sovereignty and ways of belonging to land. Louise Erdrich, Ojibwe, teaches a non-Native audience that knowledge can be made and remembered through continued indigenous lifeways and texts. Both women use memoir as a space in which they can address past grievances of colonialism but also actively contribute to a decolonial future that recognizes and honors indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.

Committee: Andrea Riley-Mukavetz Dr./PhD (Advisor); Kim Coates Dr./PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Ethnic Studies; Language; Literature; Rhetoric

BA, Oberlin College, 1989, English

Flannery O'Connor was not an author who was afraid to take drastic measures, or to be on familiar terms with a deep mystery. She, like the great mathematicians, had points she wanted to connect,. and was willing to tear her fabric to connect them. In her fiction, the disruption she uses to forge her paths has many incarnations. The generating forces of that disruption, and the forces generated by that disruption, can be focused into three immediately identifiable categories: comedy, violence, and the grotesque. In order to better understand O'Connor's fiction and the connections between the taxed analogy of complex numbers, her writing, and her philosophy, these three topics will be dealt with one at a time; though examples from all of her short fiction will be supplied, the discussion will pivot on three stories more or less spanning O'Connor's short-fiction canon: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1952), "Greenleaf" (1956), and "The Lame Shall Enter First" (1962).

Committee: (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Engineering : Electrical Engineering

A staring sensor can be used to obtain sets of images that describe the various features of its intended target. It is its focal plane array (FPA), or the grid of individual sensing elements, that captures the photometric data within the imaging system. In many cases, some of the individual detectors become corrupted, causing the corresponding image pixels to exhibit characteristics different from those of the rest of the image. These defective pixel intensities can be abnormally noisy or completely saturated, having serious consequences on image quality and adversely affecting automated calculations that are performed on the images. This thesis presents the problems associated with defective pixels and discusses how these pixels can be compensated in a remote FPA non-imaging application requiring very strict photometric accuracy. It provides improved alternatives for defective pixel correction and the numerical analysis regarding the algorithms' applicability under various non-imaging circumstances.

Committee: Dr. William Wee (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Chemistry

With the development of higher field magnets and capabilities of spinning samples at greater speeds, high resolution solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) spectra of quadrupolar nuclei resolving multiple spectroscopic sites in a sample are now attainable, where just two decades ago it would not have been possible. With these advances, the field of SSNMR has truly been opened to determination of structure in inorganic materials, which are mainly quadrupolar nuclei. Although, many obstacles to obtaining structural information using SSNMR have been overcome, there are still issues, such as small sample size, poor sensitivity (small gyromagnetic ratios, low natural abundance) and long relaxation times. In this thesis, I will discuss methods of obtaining high resolution spectra of quadrupolar nuclei using a theoretical description of interactions to second-order that may contribute to the NMR spectra of quadrupolar nuclei and provide a method to remove or isolate such interactions. This description is not only useful for describing experiments currently utilized, but lays the groundwork for the development of new experiments. With some experiments and samples, a theoretical approach beyond second-order is required to analyze spectra, an outline to use exact numerical calculations to simulate NMR spectra is also given. To combat the low sensitivity and to decrease experimental time, preparatory enhancement sequences that increase the sensitivity of spectra are necessary. A method to ensure optimum enhancement when utilizing these experiments is given. Using these techniques, I will give insight on the structure of densified amorphous silica. I have measured the two-dimensional 17O dynamic-angle spinning solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum of silica glasses produced from the melt and densified in a multi-anvil device at pressures up to 15 GPa. From (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Philip J. Grandinetti PhD (Advisor); Dr. Christopher P. Jaroniec PhD (Committee Member); Dr. Bern Kohler PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemistry; Geochemistry; Materials Science; Physics

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2011, English

This thesis is a collection of short stories that employ a "classic" narrative arc and explores themes of identity. The characters often feel alienated from others and, whether knowingly or not, seek acceptance from expected, but often unyielding sources. These stories examine how markers of young adulthood and major life transitions in the modern, globalized world can bring into question one's sense of self as these boundaries are arbitrary yet firmly established.

Committee: Margaret Luongo PhD (Committee Chair); Joseph Bates PhD (Committee Member); Tim Melley PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2007, Speech Pathology and Audiology

The purpose of the study was to examine parent perceptions of the interpretive conference where a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was delivered. Eighty-four parents of children with ASD completed a survey that consisted of items related to procedures of the interpretive conference, characteristics and behaviors of the professionals who delivered the diagnosis, and the emotional responses of the parents. Results were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Positive manner of the professional, optimistic discussion of the prognosis, discussion of treatment and support were identified as factors related to parent satisfaction.

Committee: Laura Kelly (Advisor) Subjects: Health Sciences, Speech Pathology

Master of Science (M.S.), University of Dayton, 2010, Electrical Engineering

Spatially varying temporal noise can occur in imaging sensors from nonuniform responsivity of the detectors in the focal plane detector array. Furthermore, some pixels can have extreme responsivities or simply be unresponsive altogether. Such "bad pixels" must be detected and addressed to provide the best possible imagery from a given sensor. Restoration in the presence of bad pixels is a particularly important problem in infrared imaging systems, but it is also an issue with many other camera systems. Bad pixels are traditionally treated by some form of replacement. Rather than performing a simple pixel replacement followed by traditional image restoration, we believe that a superior method of performing restoration in the presence of bad pixels is to perform the restoration and bad pixel replacement jointly. This way, we are able to exploit knowledge of each pixel's characteristics in the restoration process. When a simple pixel replacement method is used, knowledge of which pixel was originally bad is often lost and not exploited in any subsequent image restoration. In this thesis we propose and compare two methods for scene-based bad pixel detection. We also adapt the FIR adaptive Wiener Filter (AWF) to perform image restoration in the presence of bad pixels on other forms of spatially varying noise. The AWF estimates each pixel using a weighted sum of neighboring pixel values. The weights are determined based on spatially varying autocorrelation models which may use specific knowledge of each pixel's noise characteristics. We propose a fast version of the AWF that is able to handle the bad pixels by using pre-computed weights in a table look-up process. We also propose a modified version of the Non-Local Means (NLM) filter that is robust in handling bad pixels, as it provides background noise reduction. We quantitatively and subjectively compare the performance of the AWF and NLM methods along with several other benchmark restoration methods using simulated im (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Russell Hardie PhD (Advisor); Frank Baxley PhD (Committee Member); Eric Balster PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2010, English/Literature

Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short story writer, has written, over the course of her long career, no fewer than seventeen stories that feature an ill mother as the primary or tangential theme in a daughter's narrative. While some critics focus on uncovering autobiographical elements of the stories (Munro's mother endured early-onset Parkinson's disease), and others vaguely complain that Munro is merely re-writing the same story again and again, no critic has investigated the range and depth of affect produced by maternal illness proffered in her stories, a topic that appears to be a major concern of Munro's creative life. This thesis serves to initiate this critical discussion. An analysis of Munro's story, “Spelling,” provides fruitful material for the discussion of the discourse of caretaking. Women are socialized to provide caretaking via the cultural ideal of the good mother; daughters are socialized to be good daughters by caring for their elderly ill mothers. Middle-aged daughter Rose returns home to care for her stepmother Flo. I track Rose's caretakingjourney by first discussing her entrapment in the gendered norms of caretaking. Then, I argue that Rose capitulates to the discourse of sacrificial caretaking by desiring to care for Flo in a full-time capacity. I submit that Rosebegins to reclaim her subjectivity after she arrives home when she realizes she cannot become the perfect caretaker. After Flo moves into the County Home, Rose resists the stereotype of the non-caretaking daughter by deploying certain strategies to justify her role of the non-caretaking daughter. I argue that Rose's focus on combating the stereotype of the non-caretaking daughter overshadows her subjective response to caretaking. Her thoughts and actions, therefore, re-inscribe the polarized norms of the good daughter/bad daughter binary. I conclude that Munro's story illuminates a daughter's affective difficulty in claiming subjectivity when attempting to legitimize her careta (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bill Albertini (Committee Chair); Beth Casey (Committee Member) Subjects: Canadian Literature; English literature; Families and Family Life; Gender; Gerontology; Health; Personal Relationships; Sociology; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2013, Film (Fine Arts)

This thesis deals with the construction of American Indian identity in what I define as Native American cinema. It takes into account issues relating to the representation of American Indians in Hollywood film and television, as well as the idea that Native American cinema functions as a counter cinema in relation to Hollywood. This work examines notions of American Indian identity through the films of Chris Eyre, Sherman Alexie, Kent Mackenzie, Michael Linn, and others.

Committee: Ofer Eliaz Dr. (Committee Chair); Louis Schwartz Dr. (Committee Member); Katherine Jellison Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies