Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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“It's like getting a new car without the manual”
This study explored teacher infusion of Indigenous curriculum content through interviews with ten non-Indigenous teachers of social studies and history. The interviews centered on teacher perceptions of preparedness to implement Ontario’s recent TRC curriculum revisions, which include more about the contributions, histories, cultures, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples. A brief analysis of Ontario’s First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework is included, alongside critiques of the Eurocentrism at the heart of education systems. The interviews revealed that many of the teachers were committed to Indigenous education and learning more, but they felt unprepared and lacked resources to teach Indigenous curriculum content with confidence. This study highlighted the critical role of settler teachers in Indigenous education and the importance of teachers undertaking settler unsettling in order to be effective and appropriate in Indigenous curriculum delivery. Individual changes must occur alongside educational system decolonization with a particular focus on teacher preparation. Author Keywords: cognitive imperialism, Indigenous Education, Ontario, settler educator, settler unsettling, TRC curriculum
Ê-NITONAHK MIYO-PIMÂTISIWIN (SEEKING THE GOOD LIFE) THROUGH INDIGENOUS DANCE
This thesis is about the ways in which Indigenous dance serves as a social determinant of Indigenous health and well-being. Utilizing both contemporary and traditional versions of the Medicine Wheel for the framework, analysis and organization of the thesis allows for a holistic perspective which includes the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental aspects. The importance of Indigenous dance for Indigenous health and well-being is confirmed through: existing literature; interviews with Indigenous choreographers, dancers, theatre artists, and performers; Indigenous exponents of the forms; and Indigenous Elders. In order to contextualize current practices of Indigenous dance, the history of Indigenous dance in relation to colonization is presented. The research and experiences of co-researchers show the need for Indigenous dance and culture to be supported as a social determinant of health and well-being. Author Keywords:
the sex killer drives a panel pin into his ear-hole
I have two goals. One, to offer new insights into Vienna Actionism (VA) and their notorious performances, through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of the body without organs (BwO); and two, not simply to provide descriptions of the Vienna Actionists’ performances, but also to write what I am calling a thesis without organs. Documents from the Vienna Actionists, specifically Muehl’s Leda and the Swan (1964), Brus’ Vienna Walk (1965) and Nitsch’s O.M. Theatre (1960-present), become documents without organs; they are documents that do not simply document original performances, but re-perform original performances while acting as performances themselves. Challenging the notion of live performance as fundamentally separate from its documentation (as performance theorist Peggy Phelan argues) through what Philip Auslander calls the document’s performativity and what Christopher Bedford calls a viral ontology of performance, my thesis becomes a performance in and of itself. A thesis without organs. Keywords: performance, performativity, viral ontology of performance, body without organs, rhizome, dirt, metaphor, metonymy, Vienna Actionism, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Peggy Phelan, Philip Auslander, Christopher Bedford, Mary Douglas. Author Keywords: Body without Organs, Performance, Performativity, Vienna Actionism
relationship of policy aims and implementation
Background: Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (MOHLTC) claims people with mental illnesses/addictions need improved care/overuse emergency departments. MOHLTC expects Coordinated Care Planning (CCP, teams of mental/physical health professionals, social workers and informal caregivers) to improve care and lower emergency department returns/healthcare costs. CCPs are directed by policies, Smith’s “problematics,” or Deleuze’s “expressions,” supposedly reflecting “contents”/“everyday worlds.” Research Question: How do Ontario health/allied professionals come together with a person with mental illness/addictions and informal caregiver(s) to address health needs through a CCP? Method: 1) Analyzed CCP policies; generated questions about creation/implementation. 2) Interviewed eight professionals about interpreting/enacting policies. 3) Connected interview data to policies. Findings: Opportunities for fragmentation exist in gaining consent; determining eligibility; persons in care, informal caregivers and professionals’ participation; person-centeredness; “shame-free” environments; health literacy; records of medications. Conclusion: CCP participants need to minimize fragmentations which takes time, space, money; creates contradictions in lowering costs/improving care. Author Keywords: Addiction, Dual Diagnosis, Health Care Policy, Institutional Ethnography, Integrated Health Care, Mental Illness
knight and his horse
This thesis examines the social impact of horses on French elites between 1150 and 1300. Using courtly literature, a veterinary treatise, manuscript illuminations, archeological studies, material artefacts, and account books, it explores the place of horses in elite society—practical and symbolic—and assesses the social costs of elite use and ownership of horses. While horses served practical functions for elites, their use and investment in horses clearly went far beyond practicality, since elites used horses recreationally and sought prestigious horses and highly decorated equipment. Their owners used horses in displays of power, status, and wealth, as well as in displays of conspicuous consumption and the performance of gender roles. The social display associated with horses was integrally tied to the ideology and performance of chivalry. This study examines the broader use of horses by elites to understand their place in the elite culture of the High Middle Ages. Author Keywords: Horses, Knighthood, Medieval France, Military History, Nobility, Social History
Workplace Bullying in Ontario Healthcare Settings
This thesis builds on scholarship that highlights how expected gender roles serve to both normalize and obscure forms of violence and hostility in health care workplaces. An analysis of 25 labour arbitrations involving cases of bullying reveals how gender relations is a factor in these grievances and relevant policies in Ontario health care facilities. Reinforced by underlying expectations around women as nurturing and men as aggressive, responses to bullying are found to reflect and reproduce embedded gendered power inequalities in labour. While bullying in the workplace is often treated in policy discussions as an individual and identity-neutral phenomenon, this research provides evidence to the contrary. As a consequence, we must interrogate existing legislation and policies, asking how we can develop approaches that account for, respond to, and mitigate the causes of bullying rooted in unequal power relations, including gendered ones. Author Keywords: gender, health care, labour arbitration, policy, workplace bullying, workplace harassment
Witches and Bawds as Elderly Women in England, 1680-1730
Many print sources from 1680 to 1730 depicted bawds and witches as figures of transgressive elderly femininity. They were often described as having roughly the same anti-social behaviour, age, and gender. Both witches and bawds were seen as seducing innocents into a life of sin, associating with the devil, and acting lustful and unmotherly. Furthermore, they were connected with Catholicism and were thought to unite sinners against English Protestant society. The physical descriptions of the witch and procuress also bore significant patterns in presenting deformity, disfigurement, smelliness, rottenness, and death, traits generally connected with elderly women. Though historians have recognized the tendency of the witch or bawd to be characterized as an old woman, none have conducted a systematic comparison of the two stereotypes. Such an analysis can offer insight about the social anxieties around aging femininity in this period. Author Keywords: bawd, cheap print, elderly women, old age, witch, witchcraft
Why fish when you could farm? A stable isotope analysis of changing diet and ritual killing in the Virú Valley, Peru
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were performed on individuals from the Virú Valley, Peru to better understand the people and society in this region of early-state development. This analysis also sheds light on the lives of individuals from a ritual killing event at Huaca Santa Clara. Bone collagen stable isotope analysis revealed that all individuals had diets predominantly based on terrestrial resources, while incremental hair segments, skin, tendon, and nails revealed that marine resources made small, non-seasonal contributions to the diet. The prioritization of farming over fishing in the Virú Valley may be indicative of the economic specialization of agricultural and marine subsistence practices by distinct communities and the tendency of state-level societies to monopolize agricultural resources. The isotopic compositions of the individuals from the Huaca Santa Clara ritual killing event showed no evidence of a controlled diet before their death and identified a likely migrant to Virú. Author Keywords: Diet, Early Intermediate Period, Early-State Development, North Coast Peru, Ritual Killing Event, Stable Isotope Analysis
While the Lonely Mingle with Circumstance
Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy focuses on the idea that no human subject exists outside of their relationship to other people. Each of us holds a profound degree of responsibility to and for all others. Since responsibility is fundamental to human (co)existence, it does not impede on freedom but proves that the sovereign individual is a dangerous myth: any philosophical, political or economic system which places us in antagonism is inherently violent and arguably fallacious. Many instances of injustice and violence can be attributed to advances in technological rationality and other forces of modern egoism with historical roots. By forwarding a somewhat politicized interpretation of Totality and Infinity and drawing on Jacques Derrida’s landmark reading of Levinas, this thesis explores the implications of Levinas’ thought for modern politics and the potential of Levinasian ethics as a remedy for both the alienation of the modern subject and the continued justification of oppression. Author Keywords: Ethics, Levinas, Other, Relation, Responsibility, Subjectivity
When He Reigns, It Pours
This thesis examines the symbolic meaning and significance that the elite attached to water in ancient Bagan. Through the use of ethnoarchaeological, epigraphic, archaeological, and iconographic data, this study examines the role of water as part of rituals performed by the royal court and the ways in which the royalty of Bagan, in particular King Kyansittha, negotiated, appropriated and disseminated water symbolism to fulfill his interests. Data indicates that the symbolic and religious meaning of water was intricately attached to Buddhist concepts of fertility, wisdom, creativity, and protective powers. Evidence suggests that the royalty employed different techniques to appropriate and disseminate water ritualization, including the performance of water rituals that were closely attached to kingship, power, and ruler legitimacy, the promotion of an alliance with creatures capable of increasing rains and fertility, and the use of analogies that compared the properties of water with the virtues of the king. Author Keywords: Bagan, Bagan Iconography, Jataka Tales, Royal Rituals, Theravada Buddhism, Water Rituals
Water Management Amongst the Ancient States of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Java, and Belize
This thesis investigates the organization and development of water management systems in a sample of past tropical societies in Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica. A comparative approach is employed to show how water management affected the trajectories of the ancient states of Angkor, Cambodia, Bagan, Myanmar, Sukhothai, Thailand, Central and East Java, and Caracol, Belize. Differing types of water management is demonstrated through the use of the adaptive cycle, a conceptual framework through which a broad range of socio-ecological data can be examined in order to explore shifting levels of resilience over time. To understand why levels of resilience might change over time, entanglement theory, which looks at the relationships between humans and things, is utilized to determine how entangled these societies were with water management. Particular degrees of entanglement and shifting levels of resilience provide the analysis with the means to explore how water management changed over time as these societies rose, grew, and finally collapsed. Author Keywords: Ancient Tropical Societies, Entanglement, Resilience, Socio-Ecological Dynamics, Southeast Asia, Water Management
War and Peace
The relationship between siblings is unique in both its history and duration across the lifespan. Previous relationship researchers have examined siblings in childhood, but few have explored this distinctive relationship in adulthood. In this study, the adult sibling relationship was explored from an attachment perspective to determine the effect of an individual's attachment on conflict and collaboration with siblings. As expected, secure attachment predicted negative associations with conflict and positive associations with collaboration whereas insecure attachment (fearful, preoccupied, and dismissing) predicted opposite patterns. Results were compared to the abundance of literature on romantic relationships and findings from this study provided support for the theory that siblings function as attachment figures in adulthood. Author Keywords: Attachment, Collaboration, Conflict, Relationships, Romantic partners, Siblings

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Format: 2024/03/28