ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
In the last years of the twentieth century, while the narrative of women in other Latin American countries has received critical attention, Bolivian women's narrative has been widely ignored. The fact that the voice of Bolivian women in Latin American feminist discourse is rarely discussed in Latin American criticism is enough to justify the present study. This work focuses on three prominent Bolivian writers: Gaby Vallejos, Giovanna Rivero Santa Cruz, and Erika Bruzonic. The short stories of these three authors are characterized by accentuating certain telluric features revealed in the background of their feminine/feminist narratives. At the same time, based on the American and European feminist literary critique, this work analyzes the feminine/feminist themes mounted in the narrative of these authors. Gaby Vallejos, with a cinematic style, chronicles the life and customs of the "valluno" context, building a mosaic of different voices in dialogue. Her topics revolve around binaries: life-death, and pain and pleasure, voicing condemnation for a patriarchal society. Ericka Bruzonic deals with women and identity, memory and the breaking of lineage as an imposing structure. Her themes are built around the cosmopolitism of "paceña" urban life, and her voice transgresses the binomials established by a patriarchal society. Finally Giovanna Rivero Santa Cruz takes the life and customs of the Santa Cruz and the Guarani culture and her plots weave these elements reaching for myths and taboos, involving the reader into her stories. In this manner, her narrative makes an incursion into the conscious and unconscious realm of the readers questioning their wealth of moral and social values, their notions of heterosexuality, and sexual taboos. The three writers, with different narrative styles yet dialogical, narrate various experiences of women from different regions, social classes, ages, education, and sexual orientations. Our authors give high value to the word and the body embedded in the culture, thereby affirming their woman's voice as Bolivians and their literary presence in the context of Latin American literature.
ContributorsLopez, Norma (Author) / Urioste-Ascorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Community-based development: scaling up the correct use of misoprostol at home births in Afghanistan
Description
Globally, more than 350 000 women die annually from complications during pregnancy and childbirth (UNFPA, 2011). Nearly 99% of these, according to World Health Organization (WHO) trends (2010) occur in the developing world outside of a hospital setting with limited resources including emergency care (WHO, 2012; UNFPA, 2011). The most prevalent cause of death is postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), accounting for 25% of deaths according to WHO statistics (2012). Conditions in Afghanistan are reflective of the scope and magnitude of the problem. In Afghanistan, maternal mortality is thought to be among the highest in the world. The Afghan Mortality Survey (AMS) data implies that one Afghan woman dies about every 2 hours from pregnancy-related causes (AMS, 2010). Lack of empowerment, education and access to health care resources increase a woman's risk of dying during pregnancy (AMS, 2010). This project aims to investigate the prospects of scaling-up the correct use of misoprostol, a prostaglandin E1 analogue, to treat PPH in developing countries where skilled assistance and resources are scant. As there has been little published on the lessons learned from programs already in place, this study is experience-driven, based on the knowledge of industry experts. This study employs a concurrent triangulation approach to synthesize quantitative data obtained from previous studies with qualitative information gathered through the testimonies of key personnel who participated in pilot programs involving misoprostol. There are many obstacles to scaling-up training initiatives in Afghanistan and other low-resource areas. The analysis concludes that the most crucial factors for scaling-up community-based programs include: more studies analyzing lessons learns from community driven approaches; stronger partnerships with community health care workers; overcoming barriers like association with abortion, misuse and product issues; and a heightened global and community awareness of the severity of PPH without treatment. These results have implications for those who actively work in Afghanistan to promote maternal health and other countries that may use Afghanistan's work as a blueprint for reducing maternal mortality through community-based approaches. Keywords: Afghanistan, community-based interventions, community-driven, maternal mortality, MDG5, misoprostol, postpartum hemorrhage, reproduction, scale-up
ContributorsCristy, Candice (Author) / Grossman, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Parmentier, Mary-Jane (Committee member) / Byrd, Denise (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Traditional approaches to modeling microgrids include the behavior of each inverter operating in a particular network configuration and at a particular operating point. Such models quickly become computationally intensive for large systems. Similarly, traditional approaches to control do not use advanced methodologies and suffer from poor performance and limited operating range. In this document a linear model is derived for an inverter connected to the Thevenin equivalent of a microgrid. This model is then compared to a nonlinear simulation model and analyzed using the open and closed loop systems in both the time and frequency domains. The modeling error is quantified with emphasis on its use for controller design purposes. Control design examples are given using a Glover McFarlane controller, gain sched- uled Glover McFarlane controller, and bumpless transfer controller which are compared to the standard droop control approach. These examples serve as a guide to illustrate the use of multi-variable modeling techniques in the context of robust controller design and show that gain scheduled MIMO control techniques can extend the operating range of a microgrid. A hardware implementation is used to compare constant gain droop controllers with Glover McFarlane controllers and shows a clear advantage of the Glover McFarlane approach.
ContributorsSteenis, Joel (Author) / Ayyanar, Raja (Thesis advisor) / Mittelmann, Hans (Committee member) / Tsakalis, Konstantinos (Committee member) / Tylavsky, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation integrates humanities with social science methodologies within a critical framework, seeking to explore the relationship between the neoliberal restructuring and the intersection of gender, class and heteronormativity in contemporary China. In this project, neoliberalism is conceptualized as an art of governance centering on the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality to create market subjects and sustain market competition. Focusing on China's recent socio-economic and cultural upheavals, this dissertation tries to address these questions: 1. How have class inequalities, binaristic gender and heteronormative discourses been employed intersectionally by the Chinese state to facilitate China's social transformation? 2. How has this process been justified and consolidated through the intersection of gender, class, sexuality and race? 3. How do the marginalized groups respond to these material and cultural practices? Building on the discursive analysis of China's televised 60th anniversary ceremony and If You Are the One, a popular Chinese reality show, as well as the data from the interview, focus group and participant observation of more than 100 informants, it is found that the intersection of gender, class and heteronormativity is central to China's neoliberal transition. A group of flexible and cheap laborers have been disarticulated and rearticulated from the population as the voluntary servitude to China's marketization and re-integration with the global economy. New controlling images, such as the bourgeois nucleus family, are created to legitimize this process. However, these disparate material and discursive practices have entailed contradictions and conflicts within the intersectional biopolitical system, and created contingent spaces of ungovernability for the marginalized groups. Building on these discursive analyses and empirical data, I reconceptualize intersectionality as a multi-dimensional-and-directional network to regulate and manage power for social organization and regulation, which grounds the biopolitical basics for the neoliberal economy. Thus I argue that we need to engage with the dynamics between the intersectional biopolitical structure and people's emerging experiences to construct a grounded utopia alternative to the neoliberal dominance for substantive social changes.
ContributorsZhang, Charlie Yi (Author) / Quan, H. L. T. (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Thesis advisor) / Martinez, Jacqueline M. (Committee member) / Lee, Charles T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of my dissertation project is to understand how Same-Gender Loving (SGL) Black Christian men negotiate their sexuality and spirituality in spaces that are not always accepting of SGL people, by examining on how Black SGL men perform their sexual identities within hegemonic institutions that often deny their existence or outwardly seek to exclude them from their communities. I have identified three scripts that Black SGL men often follow within Black religious settings. The first script that SGL people often follow in the church is that of deliverance-- confessing their same-gender desires and maintaining that they have been delivered from those desires The second is "don't ask don't tell" performed by men who many believe and suspect of being SGL; so long as they do not publicly affirm these beliefs they are able to hold a variety of positions in their religious communities.. The last script involves accepting one's same-gender desires and also affirming one's Christian beliefs, proclaiming that the two are not at odds with one another. I examine how these scripts and/or others are performed by and on the bodies of Black SGL males in two distinct sites. The first is the career and music of former gospel star Anthony Charles Williams II (Tonex / B. Slade), who has utilized the three scripts at various times in his career. The next site is that of theatre, where I explore how these scripts have been employed in dramatic texts. By reading Christian Black SGL performance through its theological parameters, I aim to discern the avenues in which Black people in the United States are able to perform same-gender sexual identities in spaces that are constructed as "homophobic," and in so doing combat the narrative of hyper-homophobia in Black communities.
ContributorsChester, Tabitha Jamie Mary (Author) / Anderson, Lisa (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen J (Committee member) / Honegger, Gitta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study was done in collaboration with the Kino Border Initiative. The Kino Border Initiative is a Catholic, bi-national organization run by Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, Jesuit priests and lay people. The organization is dedicated to providing services to recently deported migrants and migrants-in-transit through their soup kitchen, women's shelter and first aid station in Nogales, Sonora. Based on their experiences in the women's shelter, the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist and researcher sought out to further understand migrant women's experiences of gender-based violence prior to migration. Using data collected by the Sisters, it was decided to use an analysis rooted in testimonio, and, in this way, use the women's words as a foundational basis for understanding the migration of women. The analysis is based on 62 testimonies related to women's histories of violence and their migration experiences, and the information from 74 intake questionnaires that were all analyzed retroactively. The analysis of data and testimonios has led to the realization that violence suffered by migrant women is not limited to the journey itself, and that 71% of women report having suffered some sort of violence either prior to or during migration. Often times, the first experiences of violence originated in their homes when they were children and continue to repeat itself throughout their lifetimes in varied forms. Their stories reveal how the decision to migrate is a consequence to the transnational and structural violence that pushes women to seek out ways to survive and provide for their families.
ContributorsConrad, Marla (Author) / Elenes, C. Alejandra (Thesis advisor) / Simmons, William P. (Committee member) / Téllez, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study compares some sites, structures, theories and praxis of transnational feminisms in India and the U.S., simultaneously guided by and interrogating contemporary academic feminist theoretical and methodological trends. The goal is twofold: to understand similarities and differences in feminist praxis of two geo-epistemological spaces; and to interrogate the notion and currency of the "transnational" within feminist knowledge-creation. The phenomenon of transnational feminist knowledge-making is interrogated from a philosophical/theoretical and phenomenological/experiential standpoint. The philosophical inquiry is concentrated on the theoretical texts produced on transnational/global/postcolonial feminisms. This inquiry also focuses on some unpublished, uncirculated archival materials that trace the history of academic feminisms and their transnationalization. The phenomenological side focuses on interview and survey data on transnational feminism, gathered from feminist practitioners working in the U.S. and India, as well as being "transmigrant," or "traveling scholars." Digital/institutional ethnography is used to ground the findings in operational spaces of knowledge-making, including cyberspace. This research shows that the global logic of circulation and visibility organize the flow of knowledge as data, narratives and reports from the global south, which are analyzed, clarified and theorized in the global north. Perhaps responding to many critiques on "speaking of" and "speaking for" the "other," the trend to represent third world women as perpetual victims has given way to newer representations and accounts of resistance, collaboration, and activism. However, this creates a fresh "theory-here-activism-there" model of transnational feminism that preserves unequal feminist division of labor. This comparative and critical study focuses not just on feminist discourses in two countries but also their relationships, suggests some viable models of transnational feminism that can preserve epistemic justice, and aims to contribute to the theoretical corpus of transnational feminism.
ContributorsChakravarty, Debjani (Author) / Kitch, Sally L (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary M (Committee member) / Koblitz, Ann H (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation examines how direct selling organizations compel women to believe that direct selling is, among other things, centered on the needs of women. Drawing upon feminist interdisciplinary methodologies, this dissertation brings together qualitative, archival, and ethnographic materials to analyze direct selling through a technologies of gender framework. I argue that multi-level marketing direct selling companies (like Avon, Tupperware, Mary Kay, etc.) are able to turn belief into profits because they strategically tap into gender ideologies. I show that discursive technologies of gender coalesce with race and class discourses and are put to work by direct selling companies to construct a specific type of direct seller. This dissertation attempts to unpack the complex technologies of gender that direct selling women engage with while constructing their identities as workers and women. I argue that the companies in this study deliberately tap into women's anxieties and desires to blend their perceived gender roles with their need for income. I find that direct selling companies are exceptional at branding their businesses as uniquely suited for women and that this branding hinges upon the construction of a direct sales imaginary. I argue that the direct sales imaginary taps into powerful discourses of race, class, and gender to market the American dream to women who are seeking out a space that is empowering and inclusive. Because the direct selling industry tends to see an increase in profits and recruitment during economic recessions, it is likely that the current economic situation has channeled even more women toward direct sales as a fallback for uncertain economic futures. While some women may be inclined to view direct sales as an attractive employment alternative it is not a realistic means of supporting families during difficult economic times and this study might help some women make more informed decisions. Furthermore, this study brings to light how gender might be used to organize structural relationships between markets, people, and businesses.
ContributorsLamoreaux, Tiffany (Author) / Hibner Koblitz, Ann (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary M (Committee member) / Leong, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The object of this study was a 26 year old residential Photovoltaic (PV) monocrystalline silicon (c-Si) power plant, called Solar One, built by developer John F. Long in Phoenix, Arizona (a hot-dry field condition). The task for Arizona State University Photovoltaic Reliability Laboratory (ASU-PRL) graduate students was to evaluate the power plant through visual inspection, electrical performance, and infrared thermography. The purpose of this evaluation was to measure and understand the extent of degradation to the system along with the identification of the failure modes in this hot-dry climatic condition. This 4000 module bipolar system was originally installed with a 200 kW DC output of PV array (17 degree fixed tilt) and an AC output of 175 kVA. The system was shown to degrade approximately at a rate of 2.3% per year with no apparent potential induced degradation (PID) effect. The power plant is made of two arrays, the north array and the south array. Due to a limited time frame to execute this large project, this work was performed by two masters students (Jonathan Belmont and Kolapo Olakonu) and the test results are presented in two masters theses. This thesis presents the results obtained on the north array and the other thesis presents the results obtained on the south array. The resulting study showed that PV module design, array configuration, vandalism, installation methods and Arizona environmental conditions have had an effect on this system's longevity and reliability. Ultimately, encapsulation browning, higher series resistance (potentially due to solder bond fatigue) and non-cell interconnect ribbon breakages outside the modules were determined to be the primary causes for the power loss.
ContributorsBelmont, Jonathan (Author) / Tamizhmani, Govindasamy (Thesis advisor) / Henderson, Mark (Committee member) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, colleges and universities transformed their thinking of the body as they institutionalized physical education, recreational activities, and especially physical exercise. In this study, I examine the historical discourse on physical exercise and training during this period. I employ the theoretical and methodological practices of Michel Foucault's archeological and genealogical work to write a "history of the present." I challenge the essential narrative of physical fitness on college and university campuses. I also discuss nineteenth century notions of ethics and masculinity as a way of understanding twenty-first century ethics and masculinity. Ultimately, I use the historical discourse to argue that institutionalization of recreation and fitness centers and activities have less to do with health and well-being and more to do with disciplining bodies and controlling individuals.
ContributorsWells, Timothy (Author) / Carlson, David L. (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012