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INNOVATION ON A BUDGET:THE DEVELOPMENT OF MILITARY TECHNOLOGY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD,1919-1939.
Title
INNOVATION ON A BUDGET:THE DEVELOPMENT OF MILITARY TECHNOLOGY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD,1919-1939.
Creator
Deupree, William, Foster, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis investigates the progress of technological development during the interwar period of 1919 to 1939. The interwar period was a time of slashed military budgets and isolationist policies. However, despite political, financial, and organizational handicaps, each branch of the military made significant progress in the development of military technology, and the air corps and navy achieved significantly better results. The reason these two branches were able succeed was through a...
Show moreThis thesis investigates the progress of technological development during the interwar period of 1919 to 1939. The interwar period was a time of slashed military budgets and isolationist policies. However, despite political, financial, and organizational handicaps, each branch of the military made significant progress in the development of military technology, and the air corps and navy achieved significantly better results. The reason these two branches were able succeed was through a combination of organizational policy and the development of an overarching goal for their respective branch. Within this thesis, I investigated each of the major military branches during the interwar period, specifically the United States Army, Army Air Corps, and Navy. The air corps is considered a separate branch despite being a segment of the army due to its different strategic goal and its growing independence during the interwar period. In my research I found that the army made by far the least technological progress, but did make significant strides in terms of the development of individual components for larger projects. For example, the army developed the M1 rifle and state-of-the-art shock absorbers for tanks. The air corps succeeded in transforming from a small army auxiliary made up of wood-and-fabric biplanes into a largely independent branch of the military made up of all-metal monoplane bombers. The navy developed the aircraft carrier and aircraft to accompany the new ships, in addition to making substantial upgrades to existing ships. These upgrades included strengthening ships against torpedo attacks, making engines more efficient, and adding anti-aircraft guns to the ships' arsenals.
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Date Issued
2011
Identifier
CFE0004036, ucf:49174
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004036
The Heralds of the Dawn: A History of the Motion Picture Industry in the State of Florida, 1908-2019
Title
The Heralds of the Dawn: A History of the Motion Picture Industry in the State of Florida, 1908-2019.
Creator
Morton, David, Foster, Amy, French, Scot, Zhang, Hong, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Often overlooked in its contribution to cinema history, the State of Florida has the distinction of being among just a handful of regions in the United States to have a continuous connection with the American motion picture industry. This relationship in turn has produced iconic entertainment that has shaped the state's image to the outside world, while production spending has served as an important booster for local economies across Florida. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how...
Show moreOften overlooked in its contribution to cinema history, the State of Florida has the distinction of being among just a handful of regions in the United States to have a continuous connection with the American motion picture industry. This relationship in turn has produced iconic entertainment that has shaped the state's image to the outside world, while production spending has served as an important booster for local economies across Florida. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the sometimes cooperative and often contentious dynamics between film and television producers and state politicians have influenced this history of film production in Florida. This can best be understood by examining the ideological divide between the pro-business and anti-corporate factions in Florida's government. Through a series of interconnected case studies that apply place-based analysis, this project demonstrates how the Florida government and communities have historically interacted with the motion picture industry. While Florida never truly became an (")Almost Hollywood(") or (")Hollywood East,(") film producers and state officials were at various times successful in turning the cities of Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami into important centers for film and television production. Yet just as each of these production hubs gained momentum, resistance at the state and local level resulted in the industry's decline and departure. These moments of cooperation and conflict provide important insights into the specific environmental characteristics that inspired filmmakers to come to Florida, as well as the social-political circumstances that eventually pushed them from the state. With a close scrutiny of trade press sources, periodicals, local newspapers, and the personal papers of filmmakers and politicians, this work explains the varied reasons behind the repeated rise, fall, and occasional exodus of the state's motion picture industry. This will be achieved by scrutinizing examples that range from policy decisions made by Florida's government from the turn of the twentieth century on through to the current efforts being made by Florida lawmakers to reinvigorate the state's production industry.
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Date Issued
2019
Identifier
CFE0007505, ucf:52630
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007505
Differing Perspectives: Positive Accounts of the Down to the Countryside Movement
Title
Differing Perspectives: Positive Accounts of the Down to the Countryside Movement.
Creator
Nettina, Michael, Zhang, Hong, Dandrow, Edward, Foster, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Despite the number of narratives regarding the negative outcomes and experiences of the Down to the Countryside Movement during the Cultural Revolution, there is a scarce amount of literature in the West regarding the fringe benefits of the movement. The historiography in the field is limited, with most Western writers only focusing on the unfortunate consequences of the movement, such as violence, rape, limited access to education, and the strain on families affected by the political...
Show moreDespite the number of narratives regarding the negative outcomes and experiences of the Down to the Countryside Movement during the Cultural Revolution, there is a scarce amount of literature in the West regarding the fringe benefits of the movement. The historiography in the field is limited, with most Western writers only focusing on the unfortunate consequences of the movement, such as violence, rape, limited access to education, and the strain on families affected by the political movement. The purpose of this study is to give a voice to the Chinese sent-down youth whose positive thoughts on the Down to the Countryside are often not addressed in the West. This is done by the evaluation of memoirs in the form of books and journal articles. By analyzing these works, one finds that many of the sent-down youth had positive experiences during their time in the countryside. These include but are not limited to developing a strong work ethic, making long-lasting friendships with other sent-down youths as well as with peasants, and, for young women, developing a sense of equality with young men due to their effort in hard, manual labor. This study is significant because it can serve as a framework for future research into the lives and experiences of the sent-down youth.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFE0007230, ucf:52215
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007230
The Comradeship of the Open Road: The Identity and Influence of the Tin Can Tourists of the World on Automobility, Florida, and National Tourism
Title
The Comradeship of the Open Road: The Identity and Influence of the Tin Can Tourists of the World on Automobility, Florida, and National Tourism.
Creator
Burel, David, Foster, Amy, Walker, Ezekiel, Lester, Connie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The identity of the Tin Can Tourists of the World, the first recreation automobile organization, has been poorly defined in the historical discourse, the factors contributing to the 1919 formation of the organization in Tampa, Florida represents a landmark shift in tourism in America towards the automobile.The group's subsequent solidification of a distinct identity gives insight beyond their organization. The thesis defines their identity as well as looks at their impact on American...
Show moreThe identity of the Tin Can Tourists of the World, the first recreation automobile organization, has been poorly defined in the historical discourse, the factors contributing to the 1919 formation of the organization in Tampa, Florida represents a landmark shift in tourism in America towards the automobile.The group's subsequent solidification of a distinct identity gives insight beyond their organization. The thesis defines their identity as well as looks at their impact on American automobility and tourism. The thesis therefore focuses on the previously undefined concept of recreational automobility giving it definition and showing how the group helped to define it.The group's early role in mass use and adaptation of the automobile for recreation represents the first steps in creating a market for recreational vehicles. The imposition of organization on the camping experience by the Tin Can Tourists and their influence on creating special places for the practice of their activities helped define recreational automobility.The footprint left by the Tin Can Tourists helped shape part of America's modern tourist industry. The legacy of their ideas about recreational automobility also suggests influence they had on later groups using recreational vehicles. This thesis examines and clarifies the identity and influence of the Tin Can Tourists of the World as a window on important trends in automobility and tourism.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004306, ucf:49472
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004306
Mass Media and the Evolution of the Environmental Movement: 1960-1979
Title
Mass Media and the Evolution of the Environmental Movement: 1960-1979.
Creator
Anguish, Donald, Foster, Amy, Nair, Deepa, Murphree, Daniel, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis examines how particular forms of mass media spurred and guided the United States environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Its objective is to better understand how mass media contributed to the evolution of the environmental movement. Three particular types of media form the basis of this study: writing (books, newspapers, and magazines), audio-visual material (movies and television), and photographs. These three mediums of communications and their intrinsic effects on the...
Show moreThis thesis examines how particular forms of mass media spurred and guided the United States environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Its objective is to better understand how mass media contributed to the evolution of the environmental movement. Three particular types of media form the basis of this study: writing (books, newspapers, and magazines), audio-visual material (movies and television), and photographs. These three mediums of communications and their intrinsic effects on the human psyche and society as a whole are major contributing factors to a raised environmental consciousness, a lasting legacy of environmentalism, and the promotion of the environmental movement itself.
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Date Issued
2015
Identifier
CFE0005920, ucf:50840
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005920
The Role of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in American China Policy: 1950-1963
Title
The Role of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in American China Policy: 1950-1963.
Creator
Poppino, James, Zhang, Hong, Foster, Amy, Lyons, Amelia, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This study demonstrates that tactical nuclear weapons occupied a central and essential role in US military policy for confronting the Peoples Republic of China between 1950 and 1963. Historians seldom look at tactical nuclear weapons as a separate and distinct component of American foreign policy and generally place these weapons as a subset of a strategic doctrine directed at the Soviet Union. When examined as a separate component of military policy, however, tactical nuclear weapons proved...
Show moreThis study demonstrates that tactical nuclear weapons occupied a central and essential role in US military policy for confronting the Peoples Republic of China between 1950 and 1963. Historians seldom look at tactical nuclear weapons as a separate and distinct component of American foreign policy and generally place these weapons as a subset of a strategic doctrine directed at the Soviet Union. When examined as a separate component of military policy, however, tactical nuclear weapons proved to be indispensable tools for the American leadership to deal with the complex relationship between the United States, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Such weapons allowed each of the three administrations examined in this study (Harry Truman's, Dwight Eisenhower's and John Kennedy's) to commit the United States to defense obligations that would otherwise have been impossible. As these weapons developed from their infancy in the late 1940s through a number of aggressive field deployments in the 1950s, US presidents repeatedly turned to tactical nuclear weapons when considering their military options for confronting China. The role of tactical nuclear weapons strengthened with each passing presidency and with each crisis between China and the United States. From these crises, tactical nuclear weapons evolved from inefficient weapons systems of Korean War policy, to a key element of a defensive military policy to contain China, and, in their final iteration, as an instrument that not only to assured containment, but was also considered as a possible method of depriving China from obtaining its own nuclear weapons.
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Date Issued
2016
Identifier
CFE0006163, ucf:51118
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006163
Conflict and Modernity in New South Florida's Phosphate Mines, 1900-1930
Title
Conflict and Modernity in New South Florida's Phosphate Mines, 1900-1930.
Creator
Orr, Terrell, Cassanello, Robert, Foster, Amy, Dandrow, Edward, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis places Florida's phosphate industry in the context of the New South and the state's fitful emergence into modernity. Historian Paul Ortiz has identified a long trend of (")Florida exceptionalism(") (-) the idea that Florida has been exempt from the conflicts characteristic of the New South. These conflicts are rooted in racial violence and inconsistent industrialization, which resulted in lagging wages, labor struggles, overproduction crises and sporadic capital investment. These...
Show moreThis thesis places Florida's phosphate industry in the context of the New South and the state's fitful emergence into modernity. Historian Paul Ortiz has identified a long trend of (")Florida exceptionalism(") (-) the idea that Florida has been exempt from the conflicts characteristic of the New South. These conflicts are rooted in racial violence and inconsistent industrialization, which resulted in lagging wages, labor struggles, overproduction crises and sporadic capital investment. These Southern trends are likewise rooted in a national narrative of modernization, despite a tendency to consider the New South as in some sense outside of modernity. I argue that Florida has not been exempt from the conflicts characteristic of the New South or of modernity, and that the phosphate industry between 1900 and 1930 strikingly demonstrates these conflicts. Florida phosphate mining was one of the most capitalized and developed industries in Florida during these years; yet it has received essentially no attention from historians working in the relevant historiographies of labor, race, mining technology and political economy. In placing the industry into these contexts, the thesis proceeds analytically rather than narratively, making the argument by examining the industry from three distinct, but interrelated, perspectives, posed at increasing levels of generality: first, examining labor conflict and interracial organization in the industry; second, examining competitive pressures and technological change and third, examining the industry's vertical integration into the national fertilizer market.
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Date Issued
2016
Identifier
CFE0006157, ucf:51126
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006157
"The Best and Worst of All That God and Man Can Do": Paternalistic Perceptions On the Intellectually Disabled at Florida's Sunland Institutions."
Title
"The Best and Worst of All That God and Man Can Do": Paternalistic Perceptions On the Intellectually Disabled at Florida's Sunland Institutions.".
Creator
Dickens, Bethany, Cassanello, Robert, Foster, Amy, Lindsay, Anne, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Historians have studied mental institutions in the mid-20th century; however, few have discussed them within the context of the period's paternalistic social movements and perceptions. Florida's Sunland program provides a lens for studying the parental role the institutions and general public took toward the intellectually disabled. Specifically, administrators saw residents of the Sunland Training Centers and Hospitals as perpetual children, trapped in an (")eternal childhood.(") The...
Show moreHistorians have studied mental institutions in the mid-20th century; however, few have discussed them within the context of the period's paternalistic social movements and perceptions. Florida's Sunland program provides a lens for studying the parental role the institutions and general public took toward the intellectually disabled. Specifically, administrators saw residents of the Sunland Training Centers and Hospitals as perpetual children, trapped in an (")eternal childhood.(") The institution was presented as a family unit, abiding by 1950s ideals of the companionate household. When the Sunlands proved generally unsuccessful, Florida's communities began to supplement their efforts. The social movements of the 1960s inspired community care organizations and other special programs in lieu of institutionalization. Reports of neglect and abuse at the Sunlands contributed to the community's subsequent perception of residents as (")victimized children,(") deprived of a (")normal(") life. Such a view of the intellectually disabled continues to dominate discussions of the Sunlands, community care, and (")normalization.(") This study informs a broad understanding of the past while contributing to these contemporary considerations. Research into the Sunland Training Centers and Hospitals, as well as their surrounding communities, relies on subjective sources. The flagship training center, located in Gainesville, published an internally-circulated newsletter utilized in this work. Detailed studies of Florida's newspapers provide the perspective of Florida's community members, including women's clubs and civil rights activists. Finally, articles and books written on Sunland (")hauntings(") illustrate recent attempts to define and patronize the intellectually disabled. All of these sources point toward a liberal paternalism that dominated discussions of the intellectually disabled in the mid-20th century.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005156, ucf:50707
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005156
Medieval Investments and Population Shifts in Middlesex, Norfolk, and Northumberland Counties
Title
Medieval Investments and Population Shifts in Middlesex, Norfolk, and Northumberland Counties.
Creator
Pelham, Brett, Larson, Peter, Pineda, Yovanna, Foster, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis examines the effect of population losses from outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague on capital investment for labor saving technology in England. The cities in Middlesex and Norfolk advance the economy in their surrounding areas. Northumberland's access to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne did not house as much wealth for Coquetdale and Glendale. However, Edward I's constant investment in the recently acquired Scottish territory provided the area with income from the crown. While the decrease in...
Show moreThis thesis examines the effect of population losses from outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague on capital investment for labor saving technology in England. The cities in Middlesex and Norfolk advance the economy in their surrounding areas. Northumberland's access to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne did not house as much wealth for Coquetdale and Glendale. However, Edward I's constant investment in the recently acquired Scottish territory provided the area with income from the crown. While the decrease in population was catastrophic and presented social turmoil, the surviving population continued to make economic adjustments. The economic adaptations provided relief to a strained population. Trade should have diminished along the same rate as population. Mills, therefore, also should have decreased in a similar manner. However, commerce increased faster than the population in areas of England. As this study has shown, people were extracting loans and maintaining mills in the hundreds and wards. The continued investigations into milling property highlights the interest from local creditors. The number of mills did not decrease at the same rate as the population after the last outbreak of plague. Milling represented an industry of innovation in various areas of England.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006777, ucf:51875
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006777
Hippieland: Bohemian Space and Countercultural Place in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood
Title
Hippieland: Bohemian Space and Countercultural Place in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood.
Creator
Mercer, Kevin, Cassanello, Robert, Murphree, Daniel, Foster, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis examines the birth of the late 1960s counterculture in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Surveying the area through a lens of geographic place and space, this research will look at the historical factors that led to the rise of a counterculture here. To contextualize this development, it is necessary to examine the development of a cosmopolitan neighborhood after World War II that was multicultural and bohemian into something culturally unique. It was within this space...
Show moreThis thesis examines the birth of the late 1960s counterculture in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Surveying the area through a lens of geographic place and space, this research will look at the historical factors that led to the rise of a counterculture here. To contextualize this development, it is necessary to examine the development of a cosmopolitan neighborhood after World War II that was multicultural and bohemian into something culturally unique. It was within this space that a wellspring of drop-out culture evolved from a combination of psychedelic drugs, experimental lifestyles, and anarchistic thought. The contention of countercultural place was fully realized in the lead up to and during the (")Summer of Love(") in 1967. This pinnacle moment was also its demise as the massive influx of young people into the area stressed the area and the idea of a local hippie movement to a breaking point. The final part of this thesis looks at how this experience changed the area, and how the countercultural moved on to become a national movement, while its key practitioners moved their countercultural place making to smaller rural communes, where the lessons of the Haight-Ashbury could be applied. Collectively this work examines how a group of young people developed and changed the meaning of the Haight-Ashbury through the development of countercultural place thus inspiring a national movement that would adjust American society in innumerable ways.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006766, ucf:51837
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006766
For the Good That We Can Do: African Presses, Christian Rhetoric, and White Minority Rule in South Africa, 1899-1924
Title
For the Good That We Can Do: African Presses, Christian Rhetoric, and White Minority Rule in South Africa, 1899-1924.
Creator
Marsh, Ian, Walker, Ezekiel, Dandrow, Edward, Foster, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This research examines Christian rhetoric as a source of resistance to white minority rule in South Africa within African newspapers in the first two decades of the twentieth-century. Many of the African editors and writers for these papers were educated by evangelical protestant missionaries that arrived in South Africa during the nineteenth century. Most prior research on these presses has examined the importance of Christianity, but has not taken into account the evolution of its use over...
Show moreThis research examines Christian rhetoric as a source of resistance to white minority rule in South Africa within African newspapers in the first two decades of the twentieth-century. Many of the African editors and writers for these papers were educated by evangelical protestant missionaries that arrived in South Africa during the nineteenth century. Most prior research on these presses has examined the importance of Christianity, but has not taken into account the evolution of its use over the entirety of the period. Without this emphasis on evolving utilization, the current scholarship lacks a complete understanding of African newspapers and their relationships with Christianity, the African population, and white minority rule. This research shows the importance of this evolution in the larger legacy of African resistance to marginalization in twentieth-century South Africa.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006763, ucf:51849
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006763
"I Play to Beat the Machine": Masculinity and the Video Game Industry in the United States
Title
"I Play to Beat the Machine": Masculinity and the Video Game Industry in the United States.
Creator
McDivitt, Anne, Foster, Amy, Cassanello, Robert, Solonari, Vladimir, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis examines the video game industry within the United States from the first game that was created in 1958 until the shift to Japanese dominance of the industry in 1985, and how white, middle class masculinity was reflected through the sphere of video gaming. The first section examines the projections of white, middle class masculinity in U.S. culture and how that affected the types of video games that the developers created. The second section examines reflections of this masculine...
Show moreThis thesis examines the video game industry within the United States from the first game that was created in 1958 until the shift to Japanese dominance of the industry in 1985, and how white, middle class masculinity was reflected through the sphere of video gaming. The first section examines the projections of white, middle class masculinity in U.S. culture and how that affected the types of video games that the developers created. The second section examines reflections of this masculine culture that surrounded video gaming in the 1970s and 1980s in the developers, gamers, and the media, while demonstrating how the masculine realm of video gaming was constructed. Lastly, a shift occurred after the 1980 release of Pac-Man, which led to a larger number of women gamers and developers, as well as an industry that embraced a broader audience. It concludes with the crash of the video game industry within the United States in 1983, which allowed Japanese video game companies to gain dominance in video gaming worldwide instead of the U.S. companies, such as Atari.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0004889, ucf:49645
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004889
"City of Superb Democracy:" The Emergence of Brooklyn's Cultural Identity During Cinema's Silent Era, 1893-1928.
Title
"City of Superb Democracy:" The Emergence of Brooklyn's Cultural Identity During Cinema's Silent Era, 1893-1928.
Creator
Morton, David, Foster, Amy, French, Scot, Zhang, Hong, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This study discusses how motion picture spectatorship practices in Brooklyn developed separately from that of any other urban center in the United States between 1893 and 1928. Often overshadowed by Manhattan's glamorous cultural districts, Brooklyn's cultural arbiters adopted the motion picture as a means of asserting a sense of independence from the other New York boroughs. This argument is reinforced by focusing on the motion picture's ascendancy as one of the first forms of mass...
Show moreThis study discusses how motion picture spectatorship practices in Brooklyn developed separately from that of any other urban center in the United States between 1893 and 1928. Often overshadowed by Manhattan's glamorous cultural districts, Brooklyn's cultural arbiters adopted the motion picture as a means of asserting a sense of independence from the other New York boroughs. This argument is reinforced by focusing on the motion picture's ascendancy as one of the first forms of mass entertainment to be disseminated throughout New York City in congruence with the Borough of Brooklyn's rapid urbanization. In many significant areas Brooklyn's relationship with the motion picture was largely unique from anywhere else in New York. These differences are best illuminated through several key examples ranging from the manner in which Brooklyn's political and religious authorities enforced film censorship to discussing how the motion picture was exhibited and the way theaters proliferated throughout the borough Lastly this work will address the ways in which members of the Brooklyn community influenced the production practices of the films made at several Brooklyn-based film studios. Ultimately this work sets out to explain how an independent community was able to determine its own form of cultural expression through its relationship with mass entertainment.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005217, ucf:50636
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005217
Devising Strategies, Managing Needs: A Multi-Level Study of Homelessness in Central Florida
Title
Devising Strategies, Managing Needs: A Multi-Level Study of Homelessness in Central Florida.
Creator
Young, Rebecca, Mishtal, Joanna, Matejowsky, Ty, Reyes-Foster, Beatriz, Donley, Amy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The homeless are a marginalized population vulnerable to structural forces and policy decisions, including lack of affordable housing, systemic inequalities, and lack of adequate social safety net. Homelessness is commonly medicalized (linked to individual deviancy and mental illness) by service administrators and policymakers, causing structural causes to be overlooked. A (")vertical slice(") approach is particularly useful to show perspectives and strategies that affect homelessness from...
Show moreThe homeless are a marginalized population vulnerable to structural forces and policy decisions, including lack of affordable housing, systemic inequalities, and lack of adequate social safety net. Homelessness is commonly medicalized (linked to individual deviancy and mental illness) by service administrators and policymakers, causing structural causes to be overlooked. A (")vertical slice(") approach is particularly useful to show perspectives and strategies that affect homelessness from multiple levels.Using ethnographic research methods, this project explores homelessness in Central Florida from three distinct but interrelated angles: (1) the perspective of homeless persons, (2) the perspective of staff members at Hope Helps, a non-profit organization seeking to help the homeless, and (3) the perspective of policymakers. Methods include participant observation at Hope Helps, interviews with people from each group, and policy document analysis. Specifically, I examine how perceptions and discourses of homelessness affect the strategies of these three groups, and ways in which these strategies intersect. Findings demonstrate that while homeless persons view the reasons for their own homelessness as economic, they perceive other people to be homeless for individualized reasons, including the use of medicalization and criminalization. Many perpetuate rhetoric that blames immigrants, minorities, and other poor persons for the lack of assistance services and jobs available. This greatly reduces homeless persons' ability to collectivize, support each other, and protest for change. Staff at Hope Helps also uses individualized discourses, focusing on helping homeless and low-income persons budget resources, rather than working towards systemic change. Policymakers in Orlando, which in 2009 was considered the third (")meanest city(") in the nation due to criminalization measures, are now focusing on a new Housing First approach, though the efficacy of this approach and their motives remain questionable.This research has potential to make politics behind policies affecting the homeless more transparent. It would further identify a common language and interests, which can serve as the bridge between homeless seeking services, and service providers. Thus, results of this research have potential to improve the way services for the homeless are structured, and to inform policy relevant to the homeless in Florida. Further, it contributes to anthropological literature on discourse and neoliberalism, and how discourse can be used to justify particular policy directions.
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Date Issued
2016
Identifier
CFE0006202, ucf:51115
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006202