Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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Class Struggle, The Communist Party, and the Popular Front in Canada, 1935-1939
This thesis is an attempt to provide a critical history of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) during the Popular Front era, roughly November 1935 to September 1939. This study contains a detailed examination of the various stages of the Popular Front in Canada (the united front, the height of the Popular Front, and the Democratic front), with special attention paid to the CPC’s activities in: the youth movement, the labour movement, the unemployed movement, the peace movement, and the anti-fascist movement. From this I conclude that the implementation of the Popular Front, the transformation of the CPC from a revolutionary party to a bourgeois party, was not a smooth process, but instead was punctuated and resisted by elements within the CPC in what can be considered a process of class struggle internal to the CPC itself. Author Keywords: Canada, communism, Great Depression, labour, Popular Front, socialism
Commonality of Enemies
Carlism and anarchism were revolutionary social movements that acquired significant popular support during the most intensive period of modernization in Spain (mid 19th to mid 20th centuries). It was noted but not well explored by contemporaries and historians that these enemies were similar in their hostility towards modernization and in their intense idealism. This thesis compares the two movements in order to determine the nature of their commonality and what this suggests about ideological enemies. A range of sources were consulted, including scholarship on modern Spain, biographical information on individuals who converted from Carlism to anarchism and contemporary print media. It was concluded that they were produced by the same destabilizing processes of disentailment and industrialization, which drew the working classes towards proposals that would have otherwise seemed implausibly utopian. The thesis further suggests that they were uniquely idealistic, in that they put moral integrity before the success of their cause. Author Keywords: anarchism, Carlism, enemy other, modernization, Modern Spain, social movements
Community Coalescence and Regional Geospatial Trends of Ceramic Decorative Variation in Late Woodland Northern Iroquoia
This case study focuses on geospatial patterns of decorative variation in pottery assemblages from 234 Northern Iroquoian village communities, occupied between ca. 1350–1650 CE. Previous interpretations of these assemblages’ ceramic decorative variability have been based on the assertion that potters from these communities used collar decorative motifs as communicative social signals. However, they did not consider whether these geospatial decorative patterns could simply reflect the outcome of stochastic macroscale social learning processes driven solely by probabilistic information exchange between closer neighboring communities. Cultural transmission, the theoretical framework applied here, is well-suited to address this perspective. Thus, the primary research question of this case study is, “Are the expected outcomes of random copying processes sufficient to explain the range of geospatial ceramic decorative variability observed across Northern Iroquoia?” Random copying processes are the stochastic, probabilistic social learning mechanisms driving the collective decisions of multiple communities, making up one side of the “random-selective copying spectrum.” When the decorative decisions of multiple communities are collectively guided by shared ideas (such as, potentially, symbolic communication structures), they become subsumed under the broad umbrella of “selective copying” processes. The social learning mechanisms involved on both sides have predictable geospatial and structural ranges of ceramic decorative patterning. The goal of this case study was thus to evaluate the range of patterning in Northern Iroquoia, both generally as well as at narrower temporal and spatial scales. Ultimately, region-specific temporal trends in selective copying processes seeming to reflect recently established temporal trajectories of community coalescence were identified. Author Keywords: coalescence, cultural population structure, cultural transmission, isolation by distance, Northern Iroquoia, social signaling
Community and conservation
Faced with the intersecting environmental crises of the 21st century, conservation organizations are searching for practices that produce better, more sustainable outcomes. However, they have often relied on forms of conservation which shore up rather than disrupt settler relationships to land in the form of fortress conservation and assumptions about the human-nature dualism. In this thesis, I examine a local land trust that intends to include community[-based] conservation into its conservation practices. In particular, I explore how the organization’s volunteers understand and construct the relationship between community and conservation, and the ways this might impact operations. Using a community-based research approach, interviews (n=17) were conducted. The findings indicate that the volunteers are demographically homogenous, leading to a homogenous, Western-science informed understanding of community[-based] conservation. This perspective views involvement of community as a direct trade-off with optimal ecological goals. As the volunteers wield uncommon power in organizational governance, difference in opinions toward missions or operations could lead to constraints on the organization. This study contributes to larger academic discourses on environmental volunteers, land trusts, and frames of conservation, and provides tangible recommendations to an organization attempting to include community[-based] conservation in its practices. Author Keywords: community-based conservation, environmental governance, environmental volunteers, frames of conservation, land trusts, power
Community, Complexity, and Collapse
The city-state of Minanha, located in west central Belize, reached its zenith and most culturally complex stage by the Late Classic period, 675-810 AD. Only a century later, its royal court “collapsed”. The Contreras Valley is a small farming community located in a settlement zone south of Minanha. Decades of research at Minanha and the analysis of artifact frequencies from commoner households allow for a better understanding of the intra- and inter-community social practices occurring at the site of Contreras Valley and within the greater Minanha area. An Archaeology of Communities as well as Resilience Theory frameworks are utilized to explore the integrative social, political, and economic strategies of this commoner population. These theories are used to better understand the developmental history of the royal court from the perspective of the peripheral commoners, who sustained a population while the royal court disintegrated. Furthermore, this thesis focuses on the intersection of resilience and communities, and how the Contreras Valley experienced phases of resilience as well as vulnerability throughout its history. The resilience of this group of individuals will generate an increased cognizance of how a community copes with and continues to thrive in a climate of political chaos and instability. Author Keywords: Ancient Maya, Archaeology, Archaeology of Communities, Artifact frequencies, Resilience Theory, Settlement pattern studies
Comparative Studies in Tropical Epicentres in Southeast Asia
From ca. 800-1400 CE, low-density agrarian states dominated Southeast Asia, their authority emanating from their epicentres at places such as Angkor in Cambodia, Bagan in Myanmar, and Sukhothai in Thailand. These epicentres were the setting for numerous structures, activities, and stakeholders that became integral for the perpetuation of the state. These states and their epicentres declined and collapsed around the same time. As part of a larger project (the Socio-ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS Project), the aim of this thesis is to add to our understanding of entanglement, resilience, and collapse in Southeast Asia. Using a relatively new method that combines resilience and entanglement theories, this thesis presents a view of epicentral entanglements and vulnerabilities that eventually contributed to the collapse of these societies. The results indicate that overextended socio-ecological systems and their growing entanglements created a loss of resilience and, when faced with change in these systems, collapse. Author Keywords: Angkor, Bagan, Entanglement Theory, Resilience Theory, Southeast Asia, Sukhothai
Composite Frankenstein
This thesis explores Frankenstein’s popular culture narrative, contrasting recent Frankenstein texts with the content of Mary Shelley’s classic novel and James Whale’s iconic films Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The research investigates how Frankenstein’s legacy of adaptations function intertextually to influence both the production and the consumption of Frankenstein texts, referring to this complicated and contradictory intertextual web as “the Composite Frankenstein.” This thesis present the Composite Frankenstein as a hermeneutic by which to view Frankenstein’s collaborative and cumulative identity in popular culture, drawing on the work of other scholars on adaptation and intertextuality. Sarah Milner investigates the context of the key Frankenstein texts, the novel and the 1931 film; this research’s goal is to destabilize the perception of authorship as an individual’s mode of production and to investigate the various social processes that influence text creation and consumption. Author Keywords: adaptation, authorship, Frankenstein, intertextuality, James Whale, Mary Shelley
Control, Surveillance and Subjective Commodification on Facebook
This thesis is a theoretical study of Facebook's surveillance project. It begins by taking one of the predominant organizational forms of modern surveillance, Foucaultian panopticism, and examining the ways in which its form, along with Foucault's broader model of the disciplinary society, is realized, remixed and extended by Facebook's virtual form. Following this evaluation, the remainder of the thesis proposes a model to augment this panoptical analysis. The first part of this model uses Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of the rhizome to explain the structural design and advantages of Facebook's network, while the second part deploys Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon's concept of "liquid surveillance" as a means to explain how Facebook fosters seductive conditions of self-surveillance. The thesis concludes that older forms of control, new forms of seduction and the utility of advanced technologies are responsible in tandem for the undeniably widespread success of Facebook's surveillance project. Author Keywords: Bauman, Deleuze, Facebook, Foucault, post-panopticism, surveillance
Controlling the Feminine Body in Public
Within this project, I have identified a new pattern of instruction, surrounding women’s bodies and their movement within the public space, present within didactic literature produced during the reign of Charles VI of France (1368-1422). This pattern, present in the texts Le livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry pour l’instruction de ses filles, Le Menagier de Paris, Le livre des trois vertus and Mirroir des dames, sought to shame control women’s physical presentation in public through use of imagery, stories and fear of pride. Using modern gendered body theory presented by Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler to examine the rise of this pattern, this project then concludes it represents an attempt of the social authority to present a passive feminine body in the public space in order to display male power during a time of social instability. Author Keywords: body history, didactic literature, medieval education, medieval France, women, women's bodies
Cooperation and Conflict
This study examines interaction and accommodation between Western Christians and Muslims in the Levant between the Second and Third Crusades, 1145 to 1192, examining three groups: short term crusaders, members of military orders, and permanent settlers. While members of these groups possessed several personal and group identities, most shared a prescriptive religious identity that encouraged a common goal: holy war for the protection of the Holy Land from Muslims, whom they identified as a distinct, enemy `other.' Despite these prescriptive beliefs, when Christians came into contact with Muslims, particularly following longer and more varied contact, most engaged in some convergent accommodation, such as diplomatic accommodation, development of shared languages and gestures, or admiration for chivalric qualities. Those settled in the Levant accepted the existing economic and social structures, assuming the roles of previous elites, adopting certain local customs, sharing sacred spaces, medical knowledge, or even developing personal ties with Muslims. Author Keywords: Accommodation, Christianity, Crusades, Identity, Islam
Creation During Abandonment
This thesis addresses the excavation and analysis of the Hingston Group, a small courtyard group just south of the ceremonial core of the Ancient Maya city of Ka’kabish in North-Central Belize. I use settlement and household archaeological theory to understand the functions, occupation history, and status of this residential group. I also rely on entanglement theory, along with the hypothesizes presented by Palka (2003) and McAnany (1995), to create a possible interpretation for the reasons why we see what we do in the Hingston Group during its main period of occupation. The Hingston Group is composed of three structures and two chultuns (underground storage areas). Research teams excavated both chultuns during prior field seasons and found burials from the Postclassic and Late Formative Periods. This information led to the assumption that the occupation of these structures would correspond to one, or both, of these periods. However, we found that this courtyard group was occupied during a period when the rest of the core of Ka’kabish was abandoned. Along with this, excavators found an ephemeral occupation into the Colonial Period; these two new periods of occupation have expanded our understanding of the chronological history of Ka’kabish. Author Keywords: formative to postclassic, household archaeology, Maya, settlement archaeology
Critical Analysis of the Adoption of Maize in Southern Ontario and its Spatial, Demographic, and Ecological Signatures
This thesis centers on analyzing the spatial, temporal, and ecological patterns associated with the introduction of maize horticulture into Southern Ontario - contextualized against social and demographic models of agricultural transition. Two separate analyses are undertaken: a regional analysis of the spread of maize across the Northeast using linear regression of radiocarbon data and a standard Wave of Advance model; and a local analysis of village locational trends in Southern Ontario using a landscape ecological framework, environmental data and known village sites. Through the integration of these two spatial and temporal scales of analysis, this research finds strong support for both migration and local development. A third model of competition and coalescence is presented to describe the patterning in the data. Author Keywords: Demographic Modeling, Environmental Modeling, Geostastical Analysis, Maize, Ontario Archaeology, Spread of Agriculture

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Graduate student theses produced at Trent University. You may also browse theses and dissertations by year, program, or author.

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