Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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"Changing our community"
Community-based research (CBR) is a method of discovery that can provide pragmatic methods of advocating for and enabling community change. CBR literature and practice has focused on securing educational and job skills training outcomes for students rather than the communities, and community outcomes CBR and partnership frameworks were truly meant to serve. This research evaluates the effectiveness of a research brokering organization, and the community outcomes that can be meaningfully related back to established partnerships and research. A linked contribution and realist evaluation were employed to consider the contributions of U-Links Centre for Community-Based Research to capacity building in Haliburton County, for host organizations, local municipalities and the public. A community survey (n=65), interviews with past project hosts and management committee members (n=26) anecdotal project exploration, internal document review, and participant observation from living in the region and working within the organization, offers qualitative and quantitative data to support this contribution narrative, while also theorizing key factors for developing projects with high contribution potential. Five key factors were found which can act as both contexts and mechanisms of community-based research mobilization: relevance, relationships, resources, rigour and reach. Author Keywords: capacity building, community, community-based research, contribution analysis, evaluations, research impact
"Energetics" of Mycenaean Defense Works
This thesis examines the mobilization of labour required for fortification construction during the Late Helladic (LH) period of the Aegean Bronze Age. It adopts an "energetics" approach to architecture, as a framework for systematically calculating the labour costs of construction, and using such costs to infer relative differences in political power among groups and communities through the implied differences in labour control. Accordingly, construction costs were generated for thirty-six LH fortifications, located across seven distinct regional zones of the Greek mainland and Aegean Sea. These values were then compared and evaluated against what is known of the political geographies for each region, to measure the extent to which the mobilization of labour was a function of regional power in Late Bronze Age Greece. These assessments revealed that a wide range of variation existed among the sampled regions in terms of the strength and nature of this connection, underscoring the diversity in labour relations that developed throughout the Aegean during the LH period. The labour costs were also used to suggest specific systems of recruitment that may have been in place for mobilizing workers, and to argue that fortification construction would not have been particularly burdensome or demanding for certain local populations. Author Keywords: Energetics, Fortifications, Late Bronze Age, Monumental Architecture
"I like big books"
The purpose of this study was to determine whether students at the Royal Military College (RMC) preferred electronic or print texts, their reasoning for this preference, and whether preference was related to student characteristics. Students (N=139) in a core course were provided with both formats. Due to a limited number of e-text users, statistical analyses of most variables were not possible. Instead, qualitative responses were analyzed to gain insight into student preferences. Students reported on the benefits and concerns of using each format. Their discussion of the benefits to the e-text and concerns about the print text were related to the level of convenience of each format. When considering the benefits of print and drawbacks of e-texts, students explained how these features could impact their reading experience. This study provides qualitative support for the continued use of print texts. Although they frequently use various forms of technology in the classroom, students are reluctant to study using electronic devices and feel their reading experience is best with print. Author Keywords: Educational technology, Qualitative, Textbooks, Text preferences
"Learning to Be Mad, In a Dream"
The Beat Generation shaped, and was shaped by, the post-WWII containment culture that arose in 1950s America. This so-called cultural containment reflected the social, political, and economic factors that were unique to the post-WWII period and are often considered concurrent to post-war McCarthyism, which promoted a national ideology of exclusionism that was foremost opposed to the threat of Communism. I propose in my thesis that containment was a major influence in the rhetoric of resistance that is found within the most prominent works of the Generation. My thesis also looks at the how Beat literature shifted from the counterculture to the mainstream and the impact that celebrity had on the Generation. When the Beats achieved literary fame their counterculture represented the forefront of the New Left and was synonymous with succeeding protest cultures of the 1960s. Author Keywords: Beat Generation, Cold War, Containment Culture, McCarthyism, Postmodernism, Second Wave Feminism
"TOUGH BUT NECESSARY"? AN ANALYSIS OF NEOLIBERAL AND ANTI-FEMINIST DISCOURSES USED IN THE ELIMINATION OF THE NEW BRUNSWICK ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN
This study demonstrates that the New Brunswick government rationalized the 2011 elimination of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women (NBACSW) by discursively framing it as a duplication of services and as a non-essential service. The study relies on interviews with women who had been involved with the NBACSW, as well as literature about the use of neoliberal and anti-feminist discourses at the national level. I argue that the two rationalizations offered by the New Brunswick government rely on similar neoliberal and anti-feminist discourses to those used at the national level to eliminate women's institutional machinery and thus diminish women's capacities for advocacy and political representation. I argue that this discursive move positioned the province's largest women's advocacy group as an impediment to the common good of the province and as a threat to "Ordinary New Brunswickers," signalling a negative step for women in the province. Author Keywords: Anti-feminist backlash, Canadian Feminism, Canadian Women's Movements, Discourse Analysis, Neoliberalism, New Brunswick
'This is where the poetry comes out'
Since 1984, poetry slams have emerged as a politicized expressive movement of performing the personal and political through poetry competitions. Slams are also discursively spatialized, often represented as “spaces” that are “safe,” “inclusive,” etc. In this thesis, I investigate how, why, and to what effect the Peterborough Poetry Slam produces, consolidates, and challenges such “resistant spaces.” Drawing on interviews and participant observation, I consider how the slam’s reiterative practices facilitate its space-making by encouraging performances that resist, reimagine, and sometimes inadvertently reify dominant societal norms. I argue that this space-making is imperfect yet productive: though not resistant space in any straightforward or static way, the slam continuously produces possibilities to challenge norms and confront power. This thesis contributes to scholarship on performative space and creative resistance movements. In an era when political resistance to power structures is often silenced, this research offers insights of potential significance to other resistant space-makings. Author Keywords: Nogojiwanong Peterborough, performative space, poetry slam, resistance, space-making, spoken word
(Re)encountering black bears
This thesis explores the perceptions of human-bear interactions in Ontario, suggesting that they have been shaped by narratives that have roots in colonial perceptions of nonhuman animals. Further, I seek to consider how these interactions could unfold differently if we rethought our relationships and responsibilities to these beings, in particular through an embrace of Indigenous-led conservation informed by ideas of animal welfare. The methods used for this research were first empirical, through qualitative data collection via interviews. Second, it was interpretive, through the observation of bear experiences and through the analysis of circulated and conceptual themes of bear information found in media articles. What emerged was an understanding that the mitigation efforts which are used when human-bear interactions occur are deeply influenced by political, social, and cultural factors that cannot be removed from these matters, asserting that a reconceptualization of current conservation frameworks needs to be considered. Author Keywords: Compassionate conservation, Human-bear interactions, Human-wildlife relations, Indigenous conservation, Narrative inquiry, Wildlife conservation
(un)Natural Provocation
My thesis examines anthropomorphism and many avenues in which humans represent nonhumans to evaluate their own lives. Using Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno webseries, a collection of two-minute films starring Rossellini as a multitude of nonhumans with costumes transforming her into nonhuman, I posit that a new form of anthropomorphism -- one that values the nonhuman in all his or her nonhumanity -- is emerging in contemporary media. Rossellini describes the mating, seduction, and maternal instincts of these nonhumans, regularly drawing parallels between nonhuman and human behavior and uncovering crucial intersections in femininity, masculinity, queer theory, and abjection. In more recent films, I see Rossellini performing certain nonhumans to critique particular characteristics of Western human society and incredulously addressing the human viewer as a member of a species that might not be as high in the caste system of living beings as he or she is led to believe. In turning this sense of grotesque Otherness onto the human, I identify Rossellini as engaging in counterabjection, or the reversal of extreme degradation often projected upon nonhuman bodies by humans. Author Keywords: abjection, animal studies, nonhuman, queer studies
AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNERARY OFFERINGS PLACED IN MYCENAEAN CHAMBER TOMBS DURING THE PALATIAL AND POSTPALATIAL PERIODS IN THE AEGEAN
Mortuary remains comprise a large part of the archaeological record for the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean. By the Palatial period, chamber tombs became the most common burial type on the Mycenaean Mainland, with their popularity continuing into the Postpalatial period. In addition, a single chamber tomb could be reused for as many as ten generations, resulting in large collections of burials and offerings. On account of the prolific use and reuse of chamber tombs, they provide an abundance of data for studying the mortuary rituals performed by the Mycenaeans during the Palatial and Postpalatial periods. The purpose of this study is three fold: to test the theory that the Mycenaean palatial systems influenced the types of offerings placed in the chamber tombs; to assess the validity of previously stated claims that the offerings placed in the chamber tombs represent funerary rituals, and if so, what type(s) of rituals?; and to establish whether Mycenaean mortuary archaeology is sufficiently well recorded to support a meaningful analysis of variation in funerary depositional patterning. The results of this study provide insight into the nature of the Mycenaean mortuary rituals for chamber tombs. Author Keywords: Chamber Tombs, Late Helladic, Mortuary rituals, Mycenaean, Palatial period, Postpalatial period
AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT AND REUSE IN JORDAN
This research explores the obstacles Jordan is facing regarding the sustainable treatment and reuse of wastewater in the agricultural sector. It assesses the technical, socio-cultural, and political aspects of decision-making around water and wastewater management in Jordan by focusing on a case study involving wastewater usage in the Jordan Valley. It includes a literature review and interviews with representatives of key stakeholders. While at one level wastewater treatment is a technical process with technological solutions, a nuanced understanding of the non-technical challenges facing the wastewater treatment sector in Jordan is necessary. These challenges are inherently embedded in and contextualized by a series of historical, complex and dynamic political and socio-cultural issues involving stakeholders at local and national levels. Only through an interdisciplinary approach with real stakeholder engagement will meaningful solutions to these challenges be developed and implemented, and at least a portion of Jordan's water needs be meaningfully addressed. Author Keywords: Agriculture, Jordan Valley, Political challenges, Sociocultural challenges, Technical challenges, wastewater management
ARROWS before AGRICULTURE? A FUNCTIONAL STUDY of NATUFIAN and NEOLITHIC GROOVED STONES
Grooved stones first appear in the Southern Levant with the development of the Natufian culture (~15,000 - 12,000 BP). These tools come in a variety of shapes and sizes; however, they share in common the presence of an intentionally manufactured groove. This thesis focuses on a few types of grooved stones, specifically, those which are often considered to be straighteners for arrow-shafts. If this interpretation is correct, then these tools represent the only clear evidence of the bow and arrow prior to the Neolithic (~12,000 - 6,500 BP), which has implications for our understanding of changing hunting strategies in the millennia leading up to the origins of agriculture. Using an experimental and use-wear approach, I analyse a sample of grooved stones from three Natufian and Neolithic sites in Northern Israel, the results of which generally support the arrow-shaft straightener interpretation. Furthermore, by placing grooved stones in their broader technological context, it becomes apparent that they represent progression and diversification of long-range projectile weapons, which likely existed even earlier in time Author Keywords: grooved stones, Natufian, Neolithic, PPNB, use-wear analysis
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND HARVEST INTENSITY ON SOIL ACIDITY AND NUTRIENT POOLS IN PLANTATION FORESTS
The objective of this thesis was to assess the influence of anthropogenic sulphur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition, and harvesting on soil acidity and calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), potassium (K+) and N soil pools in plantation forest soils in Ireland. The response to reductions in anthropogenic S deposition was assessed using temporal trends in soil solution chemistry at two long-term monitoring plots--one on a blanket peat, the other on a peaty podzol. At the peat site, there was little evidence of a response to reductions in throughfall non marine sulphate (nmSO42-) and acidity; soil water acidity was determined by organic acids. In addition, temporal variation in soil water did not respond to that in throughfall. In the podzol, reductions in anthropogenic S and H+ deposition led to a significant improvement in soil water chemistry at 75 cm; pH increased and total aluminum (Altot) concentrations declined. The impact of harvest scenarios on exchangeable Ca2+, Mg2+ and K+ pools was assessed using input-output budgets at 40 sites (30 spruce, 10 pine). Harvest scenarios were stem-only harvest (SOH), stem plus branch harvest (SBH) and stem, branch and needle harvest (whole-tree harvesting; WTH). Average K+ and Mg2+ budgets were positive under these scenarios. However, exchangeable K+ pools were small and due to uncertainty in K+ budgets, could be depleted within one rotation. Average Ca2+ budgets for spruce were balanced under SOH, but negative under SBH and WTH. Nitrogen deposition was high, between 5 and 19 kg N ha-1 yr-1, but was balanced by N removal in SOH. However, N budgets were under SBH and WTH, indicating that these harvesting methods would lead to depletion of soil N over the long-term. Finally, monitoring of N cycling at a spruce plot indicated that N deposition was contributing to large NO3- leaching, and as such the site was N saturated. However, N cycling did not fit the criteria of the N saturation hypothesis; instead leaching was directly related to N deposition and supported the model of kinetic N saturation. Author Keywords: acidic deposition, base cations, input-output budgets, Ireland, nitrogen, whole-tree harvesting

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