Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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"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
Morphometric and Decorative Variability in Complete and Near-Complete Middle and Late Woodland Vessels from the Frontenac Axis
This thesis examines morphometric variability and decorative variability and complexityat the intervessel and intravessel levels in samples of complete and near-complete Middle and Late Woodland vessels. The purpose of this study is to determine how a better understanding of variability in Middle and LateWoodland period pottery can help interpret fragmentary assemblages and supplement minimum number of vessels estimates (MNV) and estimated vessel equivalents (EVE): two common methods of pottery quantification. This study also permitted the full characterization of the Charleston Lake and South Lake vessels with associated photographs. The results of this study indicate that sherd thickness and design can be used to confidently assign vessel fragments to single vessels, thereby improving minimum number of vessels estimates, and the process of measuring brokenness and completeness for estimated vessel equivalents. Three sherd thickness conversion indexes provide archaeologists with a way to relate non-diagnostic and non-fitting sherds to their original vessels by the measure of sherds in relation to rims or paired portions (eg. Rim and neck, neck and shoulder, body and shoulder, and body and base). With the use of the sherd thickness conversion indexes, an efficient method of MNV estimation is proposed. Author Keywords: estimated vessel equivalents, minimum number of vessels, morphometry, pottery quantification, variability, Woodland Period ceramics
Scientificity of Psychology and the Categorical Paradigm of Mental Illness
There is little research devoted to exploring psychology's historical and discursive development. Psychological knowledge is generally presented as the contributions of individuals, but without context. The social, political, and economic aspects of psychology's development are scarcely discussed, including how the discipline came to be considered a science. This thesis project explored the history of the development of psychology. Specifically, psychology's claim to scientificity via the appropriation of the medical model of disease, and accordingly, the instantiation of the categorical paradigm of mental illness were examined. The discontinuous events that shaped psychology and its hallmark of scientificity were explored, including extensive concept transformations, political agendas, and marketing strategies. These practices were then explored in a practical way using the conception of clinical depression and the role of antidepressants as the first-line treatment for depression in the USA. This exploration revealed psychology's socio-historical contingencies and its agenda of prediction and control. Author Keywords: Categorical Paradigm, Concept Transformations, Historicity, Knowledge Products, Psychology, Scientificity
That '70s Strike Support
This thesis examines three Ontario strikes during the 1970s: the Dare Foods, Ltd. strike in Kitchener, Ontario, 1972-1973; the Puretex Knitting Company strike in Toronto, 1978-1979; and the Inco strike in Sudbury, 1978-1979. These strikes highlight gender issues in the Canadian food production, textile, and mining industries in the 1970s, industries that were all markedly different in size and purpose, yet equally oppressive towards working women for different reasons, largely based on the regional character of each city the strikes took place in. In Kitchener, the women’s movement worked closely with the Dare union local and the left to mobilize against the company and grappled with the difficulties of framing women’s inequality within the labour movement. At Puretex, immigrant women workers were subject to electronic surveillance as a form of worker control, and a left-wing nationalist union needed to look outside of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) for allies in strike action. At Inco, an autonomous women’s group formed separate from the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) but struggled to overcome a negative perception of women’s labour activism in Sudbury. Ultimately, these strikes garnered a wide variety of support from working women and feminist groups, who often built or had pre-existing relationships with Canadian and American trade unions as well as the left-wing milieu of the 1970s. This thesis uses these strikes as case studies to argue that despite the complicated and at times uneven relationship between feminism, labour, and the left in the 1970s, feminist and left-wing strike support was crucial in sustaining rank-and-file militancy throughout the decade and stimulating activist careers for women in the feminist movement, in unions, and on the left. Author Keywords: 1970s, feminism, labour, left-wing, militancy, working-class
Assessing Quality of Life for the Urban Inhabitants of Classical Angkor, Cambodia (c. 802-1432 CE)
This thesis examines the interrelationship of urban planning and population health at the site of Angkor (c. 802-1432 CE), the capital city of the Classical Khmer state, now found within modern-day Cambodia. The inhabitants of Angkor developed a settlement strategy that relied on the dispersal of water management features, rice fields, temples and residential areas, to best utilize the spread-out environmental resources of the surrounding monsoon-forest climate. Thus, the main question to be answered by this thesis is this: did the city-planning practice of dispersed, low-density agrarian urbanism promote resilience against the disease hazards associated with tropical environments? To answer this question, methods involved creating assessing environmental and socio-cultural factors which habituated the urban inhabitants of Angkor’s relationship to disease hazards. The results of this assessment demonstrate that it was not until the last stages of Angkor’s urban development, when non-farming members of the population were concentrated into the “core” area of temples within city, that the city’s inhabitants’ vulnerability to infectious disease increased. As the city took a more compact settlement form, it was not as environmentally compatible as the earlier dispersed pattern. Significantly, archaeological case studies such as this can illustrate the long-term development and end-result of urban planning to deal with disease hazards, both in terms of everyday occurrences, as well as during crisis events, which has important implications for contemporary research on environmental disasters today. Author Keywords: Adaptive Strategies, Mainland Southeast Asia, Pre-industrial Urbanization, Resilience, Tropical Diseases
American Acropolis, American Ruins
Since 1979, photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has taken repeat photographs of American cities in decline, focusing on evolving landscapes of postindustrial decay. Vergara's images subscribe to an aesthetic of ruin while providing a record of America's crumbling ghettos rooted in social documentary concerns. Vergara's work diverges from the ahistorical tendencies of contemporary ruin porn photography: by challenging the photograph's temporal stasis Vergara bears witness to the ongoing reality of disenfranchisement, assembling an archive that takes up the Benjaminian task of doing history in images. Vergara's photographs challenge standard photojournalistic portrayals of violence, particularly the ways in which `violent' African American and Hispanic inner city populations have been erroneously cast as the cause of their own economic misfortune. The Invincible Cities website assists Vergara in drawing attention to forgotten places but also complicates his mandate to engage outside viewers by distancing them from the real-­world environments his photographs portray. Author Keywords: Camilo José Vergara, imagistic history, postindustrial decline, repeat photography, ruin porn, Walter Benjamin
(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
Spirituality, Community and Compassion Matter! Exploring Motivators to Providing Holistic Social and Health Services in Peterborough, Ontario
My research explores potential motivators for social and health service providers to be more holistic and compassionate with those they serve. From previous research focused on spirituality, I identified seven additional concepts: faith, religion, community, culture, compassion, wellness, and wholeness. Using elements of Appreciative Inquiry, data was collected through a focus group and an in-depth, online survey. The participants work with Indigenous, religious, other spiritually motivated, or non-spiritual social or health service organizations in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Prototype concept analysis allowed participants to personally define each concept, and then indicate how much each motivated them. Results indicate, regardless of individual demographics, the definitions and motivations are very personal. The concepts with the most to least motivational impact were community, compassion, spirituality, wellness, wholeness, culture, faith and religion. Participants' voices speak directly through this research. I use their suggestions to make recommendations for improving the systems within which they provide service. Author Keywords: community, compassion, health services, indigenous knowledge, social services, spirituality
Rendering New Insights
The Upper Paleolithic sequence at Vale Boi, Portugal, represents an early example of resource intensification, for which evidence of both diet diversification and intensified utilization of faunal remains has been published. The current research project tests the hypothesis that bone grease rendering was occurring throughout the Upper Paleolithic sequence at Vale Boi. As there are various issues of equifinality which makes the identification of bone grease rendering challenging, data from experimental bone grease rendering studies were utilized. The resulting analysis demonstrated limited evidence in support of a sustained use of bone grease rendering during the Upper Paleolithic sequence. However, evidence suggested that alternate bone processing activities and discard behaviours may have been occurring at the site. This suggests that the dietary behaviours of the foragers at Vale Boi were more varied than previously hypothesized. Author Keywords: Archaeozoology, Bone Grease Rendering, Faunal Analysis, Iberia, Resource Intensification, Upper Paleolithic
Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeological Faunal Remains From the Middle Trent Valley, Ontario
A sample of faunal remains (n=129) from seven archaeological sites located on Pigeon and Rice Lakes, Ontario were sampled and analyzed for the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic composition of bone collagen. These samples date from the Archaic to Late Woodland and include 35 different animal species. The goal of this research was to investigate the isotope ecology of the Middle Trent Valley and characterize the degree to which isotope ratios varied across space and time between different lakes, as wells as variation within and between species. There were no statistically significant differences in the Middle Trent Valley δ13C or δ15N according to space and time. As such, the isotope data for all archaeological sites were combined to construct an isotope food web for the Middle Trent Valley and compared to Katzenberg’s (1989) food web. These isotope data provide some insight into the dynamic interplay between local ecosystems, and anthropogenically modified landscapes in Ontario. Author Keywords: carbon, food web reconstruction, human-animal relations, Middle Trent Valley, nitrogen, Stable isotope ecology
Pervert’s New Statesman
Justice Weekly was a tabloid published in Toronto from 1946 to 1972. The popular narrative is that it was an unremarkable, obscure, and pornographic paper which was co-opted by gay and homophile voices in the 1950s. But why did a magazine best remembered, as Mordecai Richler put it, as “the pervert’s new statesman” publish this material? This thesis argues that Justice Weekly really was primarily about Justice, rather than titillation. The paper explored justice through topics such as juvenile delinquency and spanking, which allowed sexualized material to appear, as well as conversations surrounding gay men, race, criminality, and punishment. While the paper outed gay men and often argued for harsher prison conditions, it also published material from Canada’s earliest gay activists and prisoner presses. Justice Weekly’s focus on equitable justice allowed both sex and advocacy to emerge from its content. Author Keywords: Delinquency, Homosexuality, Jim Egan, Pornography, Pulp, Tabloid
BACKGROUND PRACTICES, AFFORDANCES, AND THE FRAME PROBLEM
This project is a Heideggerian critique of the subject/object metaphysic presupposed in the Representationalist claim that the world is made intelligible solely in virtue of internal states that bear representations. It is comprised of two sections. The first is a critique of the ontological primacy of representational-intentionality/action in which I argue that where Brentano, Husserl, and Searle have erred is not in their model of intentionality/action, but in assigning a priori status to a derivative mode of being. The second is a critique of representation-driven artificial intelligence whereby I argue that belief-fixation and action selection that is context-dependent produces an insurmountable problem that prevents the parsing of context-specifying relevance; the corollary being that the world is not disclosed despite that system having a structurally isomorphic internal constitution to that which is purported by the Representationalist to obtain in human beings. With the issue thus framed, I conclude by arguing that this problem is dissolved within a Heideggerian phenomenological framework. Author Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Heidegger, Phenomenology, Representationalism, Skillful Coping, The Frame Problem

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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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