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 1930s, with the rise of Nazism, many artists in Europe had to flee their homelands and sought refuge in the United States. Austrian composer Hanns Eisler who had risen to prominence as a significant composer during the Weimar era was among them. A Jew, an ardent Marxist and composer devoted to musical modernism, he had established himself as a writer of film music and Kampflieder, fighting songs, for the European workers' movement. After two visits of the United States in the mid-1930s, Eisler settled in America where he spent a decade (1938-1948), composed a considerable number of musical works, including important film scores, instrumental music and songs, and, in collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno, penned the influential treatise Composing for the Films. Yet despite his substantial contributions to American culture American scholarship on Eisler has remained sparse, perhaps due to his reputation as the "Karl Marx in Music." In this study I examine Eisler's American exile and argue that Eisler, through his roles as a musician and a teacher, actively sought to enrich American culture. I will present background for his exile years, a detailed overview of his American career as well as analyses and close readings of several of his American works, including three of his American film scores, Pete Roleum and His Cousins (1939), Hangmen Also Die (1943), and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and the String Quartet (1940), Third Piano Sonata (1943), Woodbury Liederbüchlein (1941), and Hollywood Songbook (1942-7). This thesis builds upon unpublished correspondence and documents available only in special collections at the University of Southern California (USC), as well as film scores in archives at USC and the University of California, Los Angeles. It also draws on Eisler studies by such European scholars as Albrecht Betz, Jürgen Schebera, and Horst Weber, as well as on research of film music scholars Sally Bick and Claudia Gorbman. As there is little written on the particulars of Eisler's American years, this thesis presents new facts and new perspectives and aims at a better understanding of the artistic achievements of this composer.
ContributorsBoyd, Caleb (Author) / Feisst, Sabine (Thesis advisor) / Levy, Benjamin (Committee member) / Oldani, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Research examining the long-term impacts of federal interventions under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act on correctional institutions has been scant. The result has been a failure to understand the sustainability of reforms aimed at protecting the civil rights of confined persons. This dissertation examined the long-term reforms at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections following a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice from 2004 to 2007. Interviews were conducted with current and former ADJC employees, juvenile justice advocates across Arizona, and county court representatives to determine how each of these groups perceived the status of the reforms at the ADJC. The findings of the current dissertation suggest that long-term reforms following consent decrees imposed on correctional institutions are possible. At the ADJC, the methods for securing the reform required that the agency reform its culture, implement a Quality Assurance process, revamp the Investigations and Inspections unit at the agency, and consider the perspectives of external agencies. One of the primary reasons why the department has been committed to making these reforms is because of the perceived loss of legitimacy and resources that would occur if they failed to reform. Such a failure for the agency could have potentially resulted in a closure of the agency. However, the increase in punitive and preventive policies used to enforce the reforms may have negative repercussions on the organizational culture in the long term. Policy implications for future CRIPA consent decrees are outlined, limitations are addressed, and suggestions for future research are made.
ContributorsTaylor, Melanie Ann (Author) / Decker, Scott H. (Thesis advisor) / Katz, Charles M. (Committee member) / Fox, Kathleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Knowing that disorder is related to crime, it has become essential for criminologists to understand how and why certain individuals perceive disorder. Using data from the Perceptions of Neighborhood Disorder and Interpersonal Conflict Project, this study uses a fixed photograph of a neighborhood, to assess whether individuals "see" disorder cues. A final sample size of n=815 respondents were asked to indicate if they saw particular disorder cues in the photograph. The results show that certain personal characteristics do predict whether an individual sees disorder. Because of the experimental design, results are a product of the individual's personal characteristics, not of the respondent's neighborhood. These findings suggest that the perception of disorder is not as clear cut as once thought. Future research should explore what about these personal characteristics foster the perception of disorder when it is not present, as well as, how to fight disorder in neighborhoods when perception plays such a substantial role.
ContributorsScott, Christopher (Author) / Wallace, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / Katz, Charles (Committee member) / Ready, Justin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Baseball is the quintessential American game. To understand the country one must also understand the role baseball played in the nation's maturation process. Embedded in baseball's history are (among other things) the stories of America's struggles with issues of race, gender, immigration, organized labor, drug abuse, and rampant consumerism. Over the better part of two centuries, the national pastime both reflected changes to American culture and helped shape them as well. Documenting these changes and packaging them for consumption is the responsibility of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Founded as a tourist attraction promoting largely patriotic values, in recent decades the Baseball Hall of Fame made a concerted effort to transform itself into a respected member of the history museum community--dedicated to displaying American history through the lens of baseball. This dissertation explores the evolution of the Baseball Hall of Fame from celebratory shrine to history museum through an analysis of public history practice within the museum. In particular, this study examines the ways the Hall both reflected and reinforced changes to American values and ideologies through the evolution of public history practice in the museum. The primary focus of this study is the museum's exhibits and analyzing what their content and presentation convey about the social climate during the various stages of the Baseball Hall of Fame's evolution. The principal resources utilized to identify these stages include promotional materials, exhibit reviews, periodicals, and photographic records, as well as interviews with past and present Hall-of-Fame staff. What this research uncovers is the story of an institution in the midst of a slow transition. Throughout the past half century, the Hall of Fame staff struggled with a variety of obstacles to change (including the museum's traditionally conservative roots, the unquestioning devotion Americans display for baseball and its mythology, and the Hall of Fame's idyllic setting in a quaint corner of small-town America) that undermined their efforts to become the type of socially relevant institution many envisioned. Contending with these challenges continues to characterize much of the museum's operations today.
ContributorsMangan, Gregory (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Once perceived as an unimportant occurrence in living organisms, cell degeneration was reconfigured as an important biological phenomenon in development, aging, health, and diseases in the twentieth century. This dissertation tells a twentieth-century history of scientific investigations on cell degeneration, including cell death and aging. By describing four central developments in cell degeneration research with the four major chapters, I trace the emergence of the degenerating cell as a scientific object, describe the generations of a variety of concepts, interpretations and usages associated with cell death and aging, and analyze the transforming influences of the rising cell degeneration research. Particularly, the four chapters show how the changing scientific practices about cellular life in embryology, cell culture, aging research, and molecular biology of Caenorhabditis elegans shaped the interpretations about cell degeneration in the twentieth-century as life-shaping, limit-setting, complex, yet regulated. These events created and consolidated important concepts in life sciences such as programmed cell death, the Hayflick limit, apoptosis, and death genes. These cases also transformed the material and epistemic practices about the end of cellular life subsequently and led to the formations of new research communities. The four cases together show the ways cell degeneration became a shared subject between molecular cell biology, developmental biology, gerontology, oncology, and pathology of degenerative diseases. These practices and perspectives created a special kind of interconnectivity between different fields and led to a level of interdisciplinarity within cell degeneration research by the early 1990s.
ContributorsJiang, Lijing (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Laubichler, Manfred (Thesis advisor) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / White, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT Research on self-control theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) consistently supports its' central proposition that low self-control significantly affects crime. The theory includes other predictions, which have received far less empirical scrutiny. Among these is the argument that self-control is developed early in childhood and that individual differences then persist over time. Gottfredson and Hirschi contend that once established by age ten, self-control remains relatively stable over one's life-course (stability postulate). To determine the empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's "stability postulate," a meta-analysis on existing empirical studies was conducted. Results for this study support the contentions made by Gottfredson and Hirschi, however the inclusion of various moderating variables significantly influenced this relationship. Keywords: self-control, self-control stability, absolute stability, relative stability
ContributorsMeyers, Travis J (Author) / Pratt, Travis (Thesis advisor) / Burt, Callie (Committee member) / Wright, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Museums reflect power relations in society. Centuries of tradition dictate that museum professionals through years of study have more knowledge about the past and culture than the communities they present and serve. As mausoleums of intellect, museums developed cultures that are resistant to relinquishing any authority to the public. The long history of museums as the authority over the past led to the alienation and exclusion of many groups from museums, particular indigenous communities. Since the 1970s, many Native groups across the United States established their own museums in response to the exclusion of their voices in mainstream institutions. As establishments preserving cultural material, tradition, and history, tribal museums are recreating the meaning of "museum," presenting a model of cooperation and inclusion of community members to the museum process unprecedented in other institutions. In a changing world, many scholars and professionals call for a sharing of authority in museum spaces in order to engage the pubic in new ways, yet many cultural institutions s struggle to find a way to negotiate the traditional model of a museum while working with communities. Conversely, the practice of power sharing present in Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tradition shaped a museum culture capable of collaboration with their community. Focusing on the Akwesasne Museum as a case study, this dissertation argues that the ability for a museum to share authority of the past with its community is dependent on the history and framework of the culture of the institution, its recognition of the importance of place to informing the museum, and the use of cultural symbols to encourage collaboration. At its core, this dissertation concerns issues of authority, power, and ownership over the past in museum spaces.
ContributorsHeisinger, Meaghan (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
A void exists in public administration, criminology, and criminal justice research as it relates to the study of power in American policing agencies. This has significant ramifications for academia and practitioners in terms of how they view, address, study, and interpret behaviors/actions in American policing agencies and organizations in general. In brief, mainstream research on power in organizations does not take into account relationships of power that do not act directly, and immediately, on others. By placing its emphasis on an agency centric perspective of power, the mainstream approach to the study of power fails to recognize indirect power relationships that influence discourse, pedagogy, mechanisms of communication, knowledge, and individual behavior/actions. In support of a more holistic inquiry, this study incorporates a Foucauldian perspective of power along with an ethnographical methodology and methods to build a greater understanding of power in policing organizations. This ethnography of an American policing organization illuminates the relationship between the exercise of power and the objectification of the subject through the interplay of relationships of communication, goal oriented activities, and relationships of power. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that sworn officers and civilian employees are objectified distinctly and dissimilarly. In summary, this study argues that the exercise of power in this American policing organization objectifies the civilian employee as a second class citizen.
ContributorsBentley, Paul C (Author) / Catlaw, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Musheno, Michael (Committee member) / Lucio, Joanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Kootenai River landscape of southwestern British Columbia, northwestern Montana and the very northern tip of Idaho helped unify the indigenous Ktunaxa tribe and guided tribal lifestyles for centuries. However, the Ktunaxa bands' intimate connection with the river underwent a radical transformation during the nineteenth century. This study analyzes how the Ktunaxa relationship with the Kootenai River faced challenges presented by a new understanding of the meaning of landscape introduced by outside groups who began to ply the river's waters in the early 1800s. As the decades passed, the establishment of novel boundaries, including the new U.S.-Canadian border and reserve/reservation delineations, forever altered Ktunaxa interaction with the land. The very meaning of the river for the Ktunaxa as a source of subsistence, avenue of transportation and foundation of spiritual identity experienced similar modifications. In a matter of decades, authoritarian lines on foreign maps imposed a concept of landscape far removed from the tribe's relatively fluid and shifting understanding of boundary lines represented by the river at the heart of the Ktunaxa homeland. This thesis draws on early ethnographic work with the Ktunaxa tribe in addition to the journals of early traders and missionaries in the Kootenai region to describe how the Ktunaxa way of life transformed during the nineteenth century. The works of anthropologist Keith Basso and environmental philosopher David Abram are used to develop an understanding of the powerful implications of the separation of the Ktunaxa people from the landscape so essential to tribal identity and lifestyle. Two different understandings of boundaries and the human relationship with the natural world clashed along the Kootenai River in the 1800s, eventually leading to the separation of the valley's indigenous inhabitants from each other and from the land itself. What water had once connected, lines on maps now divided, redefining this extensive landscape and its meaning for the Ktunaxa people. However, throughout decades of dominance of the Western mapmakers' worldview and in spite of the overwhelming influence of this Euro-American approach to the environment, members of the Ktunaxa tribe have been able to maintain much of their traditional culture.
ContributorsColeman, Robert (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
There has been a tremendous amount of innovation in policing over the last 40 years, from community and problem-oriented policing to hot spots and intelligence-led policing. Many of these innovations have been subjected to empirical testing, with mixed results on effectiveness. The latest innovation in policing is the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Smart Policing Initiative (2009). Created in 2009, the SPI provides funding to law enforcement agencies to develop and test evidence-based practices to address crime and disorder. Researchers have not yet tested the impact of the SPI on the funded agencies, particularly with regard to core principles of the Initiative. The most notable of these is the collaboration between law enforcement agencies and their research partners. The current study surveyed SPI agencies and their research partners on key aspects of their Initiative. The current study uses mean score comparisons and qualitative responses to evaluate this partnership to determine the extent of its value and effect. It also seeks to determine the areas of police agency crime analysis and research units that are most in need of enhancement. Findings indicate that the research partners are actively involved in a range of aspects involved in problem solving under the Smart Policing Initiative, and that they have positively influenced police agencies' research and crime analysis functions, and to a lesser extent, have positively impacted police agencies' tactical operations. Additionally, personnel, technology, and training were found to be the main areas of the crime analysis and research units that still need to be enhanced. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for police policy and practice.
ContributorsMartin-Roethele, Chelsie (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Ready, Justin (Committee member) / D'Anna, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013