This way back : essays from Cyprus

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Joanna Eleftheriou
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Greek Cypriot ◽  
Creative Dissertation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This Way Back is a creative dissertation that explores the predicament of the transmigrant, the immigrant who has the capability of returning to the host country, and gets caught in an in-between space, not quite assimilated, and not quite unchanged. Transmigrant subjectivities coincide with globalized financial markets, and with twenty-first century forms of national allegiance. The text calls several binaries into question: Greek/Turk, Greek/Cypriot, Greek/American, gay/straight, male/female, ancient/modern, critical/creative writing, and, through its form, essay collection/memoir. The critical introduction, "Essay, Memoir, or Both? Hunger of Memory and the Problem of Nonfiction Hybrids" addresses this binary, and suggests that reading Hunger of Memory as a memoir animated by essayism makes possible a reconciliation of contradictions that have puzzled Rodriguez scholars in the past. The main, creative component of the dissertation relates stories from the author's life as a New-York-born Greek-speaking citizen of Cyprus: dancing to re-enact a mass suicide by jumping off a school stage onto gym mats, harvesting carobs on her great-grandfather's land, purchasing UNESCO-protected lace, traveling against her father's wishes to the island's occupied north, and pruning cypress trees, geraniums, and jasmine after he grew too weak to lift the shears. Narrating these stories allows her to investigate questions of voluntary and forced migration, nationhood, and war. Political events such as the 1959 guerrilla war against British rule, and the 1974 partition of the island, are conveyed through the stories of Cypriot people--the island's refugees and its returnees, among them the author's late father. Together, the essays are a memorial, one which embodies the links between political and personal loss; the individual and the environment; the living and the dead.

Foundations of Rights Jurisprudence in Israel: Chief Justice Agranat's Legacy

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pnina Lahav
Keyword(s):  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Future ◽  
Mcgill University ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University ◽  
Distinguished Member

“Liberty of the individual is a thing of the past, or the future, in Palestine”, wrote Bernard Joseph, a distinguished member of Israel's “government in the making” in 1948, shortly before Israel was inaugurated as a sovereign state. Joseph's “present” was the dusk of British rule in Palestine. Draconian Defence (Emergency) Regulations suspended conventional liberties ordinary westerners were accustomed to expect and turned Palestine into a police state.Precisely what “liberty of the individual” the esteemed jurist, who held degrees from both McGill University and the University of London, had in mind when he invoked the past of Palestine is not entirely clear. He could not have possibly meant liberty under the Ottoman regime which prevailed until 1918. Ottoman rule in Palestine was authoritarian, feudal and corrupt.

I'm here, I'm listening : short stories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jennifer Julian
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Political ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Creative Dissertation ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I'm Here, I'm Listening is a creative dissertation that makes the case for non-realist speculation as a fundamental tool for creative writers. The collection's twelve short stories push against the boundaries of realism, borrowing from genre conventions found in historic fiction, fabulism, and sci-fi to investigate the uncanny intersection of ecology, technology, and the human experience. The critical introduction, "New Worlds, Green Futures," argues for the political potential in science fiction and speculative writing. It close reads two novels -- Margaret Atwood's Surfacing (1972) and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013) -- and argues that the cathartic instances of time travel in these novels serve to break down the societal limitations of gender, time, environment, and species. The creative component of the dissertation depicts variations on womanhood and loss. The stories' many female protagonists contend with missing parents, siblings, and partners, absences both physical and emotional. Non-realist and speculative genres highlight the estranging experience of mourning. Characters must navigate strange and perilous dystopias, and many face external conflicts typical of a Cold War era sci-fi film--mutant spiders, doorways to other dimensions, sentient plant people, and cyber-ghosts. At the same time, the collection hones in on these women's interior lives, exploring, not only what makes their world strange and surreal, but what sense of beauty can be found and what connections can be forged in the wake of their own personal apocalypses.

Williams, Tennessee (1911–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. D. Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Social Vision ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Washington University

At the height of his powers, in the 1940s and 1950s, Tennessee Williams not only courted the commercial success afforded by Broadway, but also sought to develop his own modernist aesthetic: an approach to all aspects of dramatic staging that strived to capture the truth of experience more faithfully than naturalism alone. He termed this his "plastic theater," embodying as it did the creative malleability normally afforded art and architecture. Born in Columbus, Mississippi, Thomas Lanier Williams attended the University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis before being forced to work briefly in the shoe factory where his father had become a manager during the Depression. This humbling experience helped to shape a social vision—championing the individual against the might of capitalist oppression—and to intensify the romantic appeal of the bohemian artist. In part, it was this appeal that prompted Williams to adopt the name "Tennessee" in 1938.

Retail work lives : precarity and belonging in Queens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Michael S. Sickels
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Multicultural Management ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
The University ◽  
Retail Workers

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation is an ethnographic study of retail work in Queens, New York. Through 10 months of fieldwork and 52 interview with retail workers, I look at how workers find meaning and belonging in precarious jobs. Retail capitalism depends on precarity, or a flexible and disposable workforce. Most retail workers are part-time with low wages and little job security. Though many popular and scholarly works depict corporate retail as a "bad job," retail workers themselves are diverse, competent, and form meaningful relationships. My dissertation examines the effects of precarity on one hand and the "work lives" of retail workers on the other. I find that retail workers use retail brands to construct personal identity, often contradicting the meanings intended by the retailers themselves. I also find that workers value intimacy and friendship at work, often more than they value the work itself. I argue that multicultural identity is particularly important to retail workers in Queens and other super-diverse cities. Retailers attempt to profit from this diversity through multicultural management, but generally fail to create a truly inclusive environment. My dissertation is important for anyone interested in work and labor, particularly low-status service jobs and other precarious work. It is important not to view workers as cogs in a machine, even in the most exploitative and temporary conditions. Precarious workers are active agents in constructing their work lives, though they may not always recognize the social and economic conditions that shape their world. By considering the forms of belonging that matter to workers--identity, intimacy, and inclusivity--we may be able to imagine forms of labor politics that energize a new generation of workers.

Development of a scale for evaluating screening tests for cancer : attributes patients emphasize (escape)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
K. D. Valentine
Keyword(s):  
Factor Structure ◽  
Screening Test ◽  
Discriminant Validity ◽  
Screening Tests ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Convergent And Discriminant Validity ◽  
Cancer Screening Tests ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University ◽  
Negative Attributes

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The public's overenthusiasm for cancer screening tests has the potential to subject many individuals to harms such as overdetection and false positives. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we understand what drives patient preferences for screening in the first place. Then, once these preferences are defined and understood, the information regarding the various positive and negative attributes of options -- as well as the likelihoods associated with these attributes for an individual -- and any other features of the decision could be tailored to the individual. This dissertation proposes and validates a new measure that identifies what features individuals find important when choosing a screening test and how they vary relative to others. Herein, a set of factors regarding screening test attributes was created, and a 5-factor structure was both explored and confirmed. The scale is shown to be reliable and to have convergent and discriminant validity. Further, the structure was not found to replicate in a more diverse population. Instead the more diverse sample has a 6-factor structure. Finally, this individual difference scale was compared with a discrete choice experiment and a threshold technique, finding all of these methods vary and none of them are capable of predicting screening choices.

Parents' perspectives on sex education : nuanced accommodation in a bilaterally constructed world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Audrey K. Madison
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
The Common ◽  
The University ◽  
Abstinence Only

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Research on sex education regularly presents a polarized depiction of debate, which often puts parents on the defensive and condenses their viewpoints into incongruous, dichotomous camps. This study aims to challenge this rhetoric by presenting findings of nuanced parental viewpoints that frequently get over-simplified, and offers alternative explanations to these complex issues. Positioned within the history of American education in general and sex education in particular, it is further possible to see how vestiges of this history affect current school-led sex education and discussions about it. Through the teasing-out of parental opinions, it became clear that, on the most fundamental level, parents seem to agree that children need sex education. Results indicate that parents' own experiences with sex education play a major part in how they think of their role as sex educators with their children. Additionally, most parents express a desire to ensure their children are better informed and prepared than they were. Parents find their role as sex educator to be very important, although differences between fathers and mothers and parents of opposite sex children complicated this role. Acceptance of this role is a common theme, some parents more determined than others to educate their children about sex (but all acknowledging the feeling that they "have to"). Parents' descriptions of their strategies for sex education revealed differences in active versus passive approaches, questions of "how," "when," and "what" often complicating their approaches. Findings also show that parents have varying opinions on school-led sex education, but many are concerned with biases that may be conveyed in school. The notion that parents fall neatly on one side of the debate or the other is played with and challenged through the purposeful application of parental tropes. This practice revealed that parents do not precisely or consistently conform to these dichotomous boundaries. Finally, comparisons of New York, New York and Omaha, Nebraska demonstrate how schools can accommodate and assist parents in sex education by offering more complex options instead of either "opt in" or "opt out." By taking this approach, Omaha Public Schools district may be able to avoid future contentious arguments over sex education, although this remains to be seen. Throughout this paper, alternatives to the current literature are presented as a method of doing away with the common binary of comprehensive sex education versus abstinence only education. By examining parental opinions of sex education at home and at school, new ways of conducting sex education research are presented and justified.

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