2015 UMKC Theses - Access Restricted to UMKC
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The items in this collection are theses that are available only to members of the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item Stealing Fire(University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2015) Leyrson, Timothy; Bar-Nadav, HadaraThe poems that make up this collection tend to play with what is one of the oldest concepts to exist, transition. This collection attempts to demonstrate the experiences that generate the pressures required; such as light and dark, quiet and cacophony, and other binaries that co-exist and, in doing so, create something altogether new. To begin the collection are poems that exist primarily in the surface world; stressing direct life experiences that tend to shape emotions into being. In contrast, the poetry comprising the second section is concerned with the experiences determined by choices we make, hovering where the physical and spiritual intersect. The third, and final, section attempts to push boundaries reality even further by retelling some sacred stories, combining others, and re-examining fantasy.Item Assembling the Fragments: A Collection of Essays(University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2015) Bales, Leanna M.; Hodgen, Christie, 1974-Grief and grieving hovers around this essay collection, both the author's grief over losing her mother and also what that loss meant to the other people in her life. An essay about the tragic death of the author's uncle- at age 18 when a drunk driver hit his car leads into a search for how her mother survived losing her brother and what it did to their family. The author's relationship with an ex becomes an exploration of sadness, illness, and what it means to let go. The author writes directly to the priest who helped her mother during her illness, while the author's own doubts toward religion and faith plague her. There are nine essays in total, all dealing with the themes of memory, grieving and hope. The collection ends on memory, both the author's and her little brother's, whose cheerful and perpetually surprising presence gives her optimism.Item There is No Absolution for Us Here: An Anthology of Essays(University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2015) Smith, Elaina G.; Hodgen, Christie, 1974-An anthology of creative nonfiction essays, this collection studies the inner workings of the author at her most vulnerable: whether as a child unaware of her parents’ crumbling marriage or as an adolescent struggling against the fetters of her body and her mind, the author renders these subjects through a lens of honesty, humor and wistfulness. Subjects explored include the author’s struggle with mental illness and anxiety; history of her parents, their marriage and eventual divorce; and her own examination of her feelings toward femininity, gender and the resultant performativity of such constructs. These essays reveal facets of truth and glimmerings of beauty, in the hope that uncovering what we want to keep hidden will ultimately set us free.Item Rubens' vision for the Luxembourg Palace(2015) Newlands, Jennifer Lynn; Dunbar, Burton L. (Burton Lewis); Art and Art HistoryMarie de Medici commissioned a series of twenty-four paintings intended as an allegorical cycle of her life from the artist Peter Paul Rubens in 1622. This thesis proposes that the cycle does not have just one intention or interpretation, but rather is purposely ambiguous. Marie de Medici and Peter Paul Rubens altered the interpretations utilizing numerous subjective icons and installing the life cycle within the controlled environment of Marie de Medici's private residence in the Palais-Luxembourg. The paintings were intentionally obtuse and complex and could be variously interpreted depending upon the viewer's relationship to the Queen.Item Permanent Solution: Contraceptive sterilization policies and practices in the U.S. from 1960-1979(2015) Brueggemann, Cecelia S.; Payne, Lynda Ellen StephensonThis study examines the social and political anxieties regarding poverty and reproduction during the 1960s and 1970s that led to the sterilization of young, African-American women from low-income families. It begins by analyzing the roles of the population control and burgeoning feminist movements that with the support of physicians, successfully lobbied for liberalized contraceptive sterilization policies and laws. At the same time that lawmakers felt pressure to broaden sterilization access, illegitimacy rates steadily increased, which many believed posed an economic threat. Upon examination of public policy regarding family planning, it becomes clear that in the early 1970s federally funded and state-operated clinics intended not only to use sterilization as a method to help reduce poverty through limiting the size of poor women’s families, but also to reduce the number of illegitimate births. After mid-1971 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) both subsidized contraceptive sterilizations for the economically disadvantaged, but failed to establish comprehensive federal guidelines and instead empowered state lawmakers and physicians to determine their own sterilization policies. Subsequently between 1971 and 1973, the rate of sterilization spiked, and was disproportionately high among African-American women. In 1973 when the sterilization of the Relf sisters—two, African-American girls from a low income family—became publicly known, several Federal agencies launched investigations and discovered numerous other cases of young women being coerced into sterilization. Found to be at fault in Relf v. Weinberger, the court ordered the HEW to create sterilizations guidelines, which they released in 1975. In light of ongoing sterilization abuse, just three years later the HEW adopted controversial and more protective guidelines, still in place today. Through analyzing family planning and sterilization policies between 1960 and 1979, this article demonstrates that the reproduction of young, unmarried African-American women was used as political scapegoats to avoid addressing the fundamental sources of poverty. As a result, countless numbers of young, African-American permanently lost their ability to procreate due to circumstances beyond their control.
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