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THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF JODIE BLACKSHAW, JENNIFER JOLLEY, AND ERIKA SVANOE TO THE WIND BAND REPERTOIRE—COMPOSITIONAL STYLE, ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS, AND IMPACT AS UNDERREPRESENTED COMPOSERS
No full textThis document presents biographical sketches, outlines compositional styles, and analyzes a major work written for advanced ensembles by Jodie Blackshaw, Jennifer Jolley, and Erika Svanoe, highlighting their impact in the wind band as underrepresented contemporary composers. The principal focus of this research is to examine each composer and their contributions to the repertoire. A comprehensive biographical portrait is made of each to include formative experiences, educational backgrounds, career trajectories, personal beliefs, and philosophies. Through analysis of their music, this research provides a thorough examination of how each composer’s unique compositional influences manifest in their individual works. The second purpose of this study is to investigate the role of gender biases in music, with special attention given to how women composers have been viewed and treated throughout music’s history. A brief history of women in music is presented to contextualize each composer’s experience within a broader narrative of the marginalization of women in music. The final purpose of this document is to provide musicians, educators, and conductors with a resource for studying each composer's music. A detailed analytical guide—outlining form, harmony, melodic and rhythmic content, orchestration decisions of tone color and timbre, and stylistic choices—is provided for Jodie Blackshaw’s Soulström, Jennifer Jolley’s MARCH!, and Erika Svanoe’s Symphony in Blue and Gold. This work serves to amplify and promote the voices of each composer and to inspire a more inclusive, equitable, and representative future in music
From Bach to Bebop: Exploring the Saxophone in Three Concert Works by William Bolcom
No full textWilliam Bolcom (b. 1938) is an award-winning American composer, pianist, and arrangerwith a massive compositional catalog for solo instruments. A major figure in the revival of ragtime music in the 1970s, Bolcom has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a National Medal of Arts, and a Grammy award for his work. This document examines three of William Bolcom’s concert works for saxophone: Concert Suite, Concerto for Soprano Saxophone, and Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet. Through an analysis of these compositions’ formal structure, harmony, rhythm, and techniques idiomatic to the saxophone, I identify and discuss Bolcom’s unique blend of traditional compositional techniques with stylistic elements of American popular genres such as blues, jazz, ragtime, and dance. This is done by examining Bolcom’s treatment of traditional forms such as the instrumental suite, classical solo concerto, and the Baroque concerto grosso and identifying the ways in which Bolcom honors tradition while also defying expectation using his unique compositional voice. By examining Bolcom’s works for saxophone and how they illustrate his overall compositional style, this study adds to the existing body of research on Bolcom’s works for piano, violin, and other solo instruments. A comprehensive biography that tracks Bolcom’s compositional and stylistic development is also provided. I conclude that Bolcom’s works for saxophone display a masterful fusion of classical and American music traditions that function as a tour of his eclectic compositional styles
ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE SHADOWS: CALIFORNIOS ON THE BORDERLANDS OF EXPERIENCE, 1697-1821
No full textThis dissertation focuses on two subjects. Firstly, I examine the development of the Californio identity under Spanish imperial rule in Baja and Alta California. This occurred through repeated encounters, conflicts, reversals, resistance and negotiation between Native Americans in California and Hispanic colonists, some born in Mexico, “creoles” and some in Europe, “peninsulares.” I argue that this identity was at its essence a borderland identity: specifically, California was not New Spain, and after the coming of the Spanish, it was no longer “Indian country” either. Both Native and Hispanic Californios contributed to the development of Californio identity. This identity was derived from the ambiguous and syncretic nature of the borderlands: when neither Hispanic nor Native Californios fully recognized their land as the ordered home of their society’s worldview. The tumult of frontier life created a borderlands society that informed all members’ identities.Secondly, I offer a method of interpreting life on the frontier and engaging in the conversation of borderlands historiography. What I term “the experiential borderlands” is an approach that emphasizes the individual routines and events unique to those residents of the borderlands society in question. While the attitudes, commands, funding, and social engineering attempts of the metropolitan authorities were critical to the geopolitical advance of empires, it was the individual members living on and fighting over the frontier that gave the borderlands their social character. When the Jesuits, Franciscans, soldiers and rancheros came to the Californias, they did so with the intention of saving souls, taming the wild, and converting the uncivilized. When they encountered the Native tribes and harsh realities of California, their designs were challenged, rebuked, or even thwarted. With their California entrada, the Spaniards conceived of a civilizing mission to create little Spaniards. Instead, their baptism by fire on the experiential borderlands made them Californios
ADDRESSING ANOMALY DETECTION CHALLENGES IN AI-ENABLED MOBILE AND SMART NETWORKS
No full textUbiquitous connectivity, powered by mobile networks and smart digital technologies, istransforming critical sectors such as public health, industrial automation, and smart cities. However, the increasing complexity and interdependence of these connected sys- tems present unprecedented challenges in maintaining performance, security, and reliabil- ity, particularly for mission-critical applications that demand ultra-reliable, low-latency communication. Traditional anomaly detection systems, which rely on reactive fault re- porting, are no longer sufficient, as they often identify issues only after service degradation has occurred. This dissertation addresses these limitations through four novel AI-driven anomaly de- tection frameworks that enable proactive, scalable, and context-aware intelligence by integrating emerging mobile networks, user mobility traces, and secure pervasive connec- tivity facilitated by smart devices. First, a hybridHealth AI framework is introduced as a smartphone-based screening tool that combines on-device acoustic analysis for rapid de- tection with deep learning-based detailed diagnostics in cloud environments, optimizing resource efficiency and ensuring high diagnostic accuracy and fairness, while addressing challenges such as data inconsistencies, label scarcity, and demographic biases. To ad- vance screening beyond the individual level and enable population-scale epidemic hotspot prediction, EpiTrack is proposed as a novel outbreakprediction framework that leverages real-time user mobility traces from mobile networks to enable accurate and proactive public health interventions. This data-driven machine learning model offers unprece- dented forecasting precision, helping prevent outbreaks from escalating into widespread epidemics. In addition, smart-device-based screening tools and mobility-driven analytics rely heavily on continuous mobile network connectivity; any disruption directly undermines real-time anomaly detection and predictive intelligence. To maintain system reliability in antici- pation of such disruptions, we propose a proactive anomaly management framework that models network reliability, predicts faults in advance, optimizes resource allocation, and supports zero-touch automation in 6G and beyond networks. An additional barrier to achieving resilient, autonomous AI-driven systems lies in the vulnerabilities introduced by compromised or untrustworthy data collected through mobile networks and smart dig- ital technologies. To address this challenge, we propose MRIF, a multimodule AI-based security framework that identifies and mitigates data-driven attacks, ensures accurate mobility insights, safeguards optimization processes, and reinforces trust in network in- telligence. By addressing the key challenges of fairness, proactivity, reliability, and security, this dissertation establish a unified, end-to-end ecosystem for AI-driven anomaly detection. Through this convergence of intelligent modeling and real-world integration, the work paves the way for next-generation autonomous systems that are resilient, secure, and significantly impact the public health outcomes worldwide
EXAMINING LINKS BETWEEN NATURE, SOCIETY AND MODES OF SANITATION IN KAMPALA
No full textThis research is motivated by calls for further analysis of the concept of infrastructural heterogeneity by focusing on environment-society relations and urban sanitation. The study aims to determine how communities make use of sanitation technologies to respond to environmental risks and describes the socio-spatial configurations that result from interventions to reduce that risk. To achieve this, the study set three research questions which are answered in the three core chapters of this dissertation. These chapters focus on i) how community practices and narratives around environmental risks are conveyed in relation to sanitation technologies, ii) how community practices and narratives around sanitation technologies align with changing urban environments and iii) what socio-spatial configurations are created by differential provision and access to toilets. By employing a qualitative research approach with methods including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions, the study engaged fifty participants to answer these questions. These methods were used to collect and analyze data on the lived experiences of individuals and groups; the social, cultural, and institutional context within which their experiences are shaped at two study sites in the city. Data was analyzed through Content and Spatial analyses, generating themes and spatial visualization of areas prone to safe and unsafe sanitation. Findings showed major risk factors like water outages, vectors, and odors that impacted respondents’ use of the toilet and their general environment. There were individual and collective actions of adapting to and mitigating risks although some groups of people and particular spaces were more vulnerable to the risks. Analyzing practices and narratives helped to place sanitation infrastructure within layers of power, relationship dynamics and socio-economic status that impact mitigation of risks. The dissertation, therefore, expands the analysis of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations by focusing on how they shape and are shaped by human-environment interactions. It concludes that despite the presence of some modern infrastructure, there remain highly interconnected links between humans, the environment and modes of sanitation in Kampala
"Can’t I have a dream" : race, repression, and resistance in women’s prisons, 1877-1980
No full textThis thesis traces the experiences of incarcerated women from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, focusing on the ways that the prison operated as a microcosm of larger society in the molding of social norms regarding gender, race, and sexuality. It seeks to document a lesser studied aspect of carceral history while focusing on the role the penal system plays in enforcing societal norms. Women convict laborers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were subjected to public opinion that was harshly divided along racial lines, representing Jim Crow ideals of womanhood, especially white womanhood. Into the twentieth century, incarcerated women faced more public scrutiny, particularly as a result of Cold War anxieties surrounding gender and sexuality. In the mid-twentieth century, incarcerated women publicized their experiences through zines and garnered significant public attention as they explored the meanings of gender, race, and incarceration in America. This research explores the ways in which the prison system makes, refashions, and enforces societal norms regarding race, gender, and sexuality. This thesis holds contemporary significance in the conversation regarding the mass incarceration of women, specifically women of color, and the failure of the prison system and society as a whole in accounting for the impact of gender and race on experiences of incarcerated women
Yiddishist in the Mayrev: Yiddish Poetry and Jewish Women in Los Angeles, 1920-1950s
No full text“Yiddishist in the Mayrev: Yiddish Poetry and Jewish Women in Los Angeles 1920-1950s,” examines how Jewish women in the mid-twentieth century made Los Angeles a Yiddish-speaking place, and reshaped American yidishe kultur in the process. These poets employed western environmental motifs in their poetry, including natural landscapes and urban structures, to grapple with changing racial demographics in their L.A. neighborhood, Boyle Heights, the interracial partnerships that emerged particularly between Jewish and Mexican residents there, and the physical urban changes that occurred in the neighborhood during the postwar years. Their commitment to yidishe kultur—an ideology of an autonomous culture that tethered Jewish immigrants together through the Yiddish language and Ashkenazi culture—and their focus on western motifs, symbols, and archetypes created a Yiddish literary style distinctive to the American West. Through analyzing Yiddish poetic works that utilize western themes this thesis demonstrates how these women writers responded to international and domestic events in Los Angeles. This further illustrates how Yiddish culture transformed in the American West but did not disappear after the 1920s, when Jewish immigration from Europe drastically decreased due to the passage of two national origin bills in 1921 and 1924. This analysis also highlights how Jewish women crafted Yiddish culture in the American West. While both Jewish men and women contributed to this place-making process in Los Angeles, I focus on three prolific Jewish women poets who were all part of a communal group of Yiddish writers associated with the Yiddish Cultural Club in Los Angeles, founded in 1926: Shifra Weiss, Brokhe Kudli, and Esther Shumaitcher-Hirschbein. By analyzing these three women’s work the thesis adds new Yiddish source materials into a historical discussion predominantly focused on English source materials and male perspectives. All three of these women emigrated from Europe. Weiss and Kudli made their way through New York City and Shumaitcher moved to New York City from Calgary, Canada in 1918 with her husband Peretz Hirschbein. While these three women moved to Los Angeles at different points in their lives it was California and Los Angeles, not the Yiddishkeit centers of New York and to a lesser degree Chicago that influenced their works and style. This study will illuminate how their poetry reimagined yidishe kultur as a part of the American West and how they navigated international events in the mid-twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, shifting racial demographics in Boyle Heights, and the construction of new urban landscapes to create their own distinct style. This style of western Yiddish writing combines motifs and themes of Jewish experiences and the American West to address the lived experiences of Yiddish culture in the West. I focus in particular on three substantial poems written by these women between 1953 and 1958: Shifra Weiss’ Kalifornie (California, 1953), Brokhe Kudli’s Fri-vayz (Freeways 1958), and Esther Shumaitcher-Hirschbein’s Kalifornye (California 1956). In addition to providing new non-English source materials, analyzing these Jewish women’s poems expands the American Yiddish literary canon, both in terms of gender and geography. Yiddish writing in California falls outside the period between 1890 and the 1920s that historians usually identify as the hightide of yidishe kultur in the United States. Scholars have also tended to focus on male writers as Jewish men assumed authority over Yiddish writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as New York established itself as the hub for the male-centered Yiddish publishing world. It was precisely postwar Los Angeles’s limited number of Yiddish institutions that contributed to the inclusion of Jewish women writers. The L.A. Yiddish Cultural Club with its focus on creating a nonpartisan environment for all writers regardless of political and religious ideologies or gender and its emphasis on local publishing created an environment where women writers could flourish. Through this cultural institution women writers could continue to choose yidishe kultur as a cultural identity, while also reimagining and redefining what it meant. Yiddish cultural productions in the American West indicates that Yiddish did not “die” after the passage of comprehensive immigration restrictions in 1924, the accompanying decline of the Yiddish press, or the suburbanization and acculturation of Jews during the 1940s and 50s. Examining these women and their poetry shows how Yiddish culture did not disappear but was rather transformed as Jewish women travelled to the western United States and recontextualized the culture they carried
Enhanced Radar Detection Based on a Weather-Aware Constant False Alarm Rate Algorithm
No full textThe multifunction phased array radar (MPAR) program was created by organizations including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in an attempt to reduce overall cost by combining the missions of multiple agencies. Required capabilities for this project include detection of both civilian point targets and weather. One benefit of a combined radar for both agencies is the potential to improve detection within a storm. In detection for a point target, the presence of weather is considered clutter. The presence of strong weather clutter limits the abilities of traditional detection algorithms to detect weaker targets, and causes an increase in false alarms. The weather-aware constant false alarm rate (Wx-CFAR) algorithm is proposed as a mitigation path for detection in weather clutter. This algorithm combines the use of traditional constant false alarm rate (CFAR) techniques with additional variables calculated from weather. It uses a decision tree in order to determine if there is clear air or weather clutter. This algorithm is aimed at improving detection within a storm, and lowering the number of false alarms due to increased clutter. The algorithm was demonstrated on single polarization data which was collected using Horus with light precipitation and multiple aircraft present throughout. The results show a decrease in false alarms while maintaining an improved number of detections. The algorithm presented limitations when a point target had a similar radial velocity to the surrounding clutter and when a point target was located along a clutter edge
COULOMB STRESS ANALYSIS OF THE SITES HOSTING THE THREE LARGEST RECORDED EARTHQUAKES IN OKLAHOMA HISTORY: PAWNEE, OK AND PRAGUE, OK
No full textInduced seismicity has been identified as a major concern in areas of hydrocarbon production, subsurface carbon sequestration, and enhanced geothermal systems, among others. Induced earthquakes are now commonly seen in many places around the world, including Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, the frequency of earthquakes with a Mw 3.0+ surged from just 2 per year in 2009 to 579 in 2014, peaking at 903 in 2015 before decreasing to 194 by 2018 and 16 in 2023. Wastewater injection was widely regarded as a significant contributor to this dramatic rise in seismic activity across the state. Most of the seismic activity has been located in the north-central portion of the state. The two sites of interest in this study are in Pawnee County, OK, and near Prague, OK. In both cases, a Coulomb stress analysis is being conducted. Coulomb modeling is used to determine how slip on faults can impact stress changes on surrounding faults, which can help determine where aftershocks patterns should be, how one earthquake impacts another, and the overall stress transfer patterns in these locations.The first area of interest is the region termed the Pawnee Triple Junction (PTJ) in north-central Oklahoma, which consists of the Sooner Lake Fault (SLF), the Stillwater Fault (SWF), and a newly identified fault zone informally named the Northeast Trending Fault Zone (NEFZ). This region was the site of Oklahoma’s largest recorded earthquake—a Mw 5.8 tremor in 2016—along the SLF and there are two main hypotheses for the production of this event that are of interest here. The first hypothesis is that aseismic slip along the NEFZ, resulting from wastewater injection, triggered the rupture along the SLF. The second hypothesis is that slip along the SLF itself triggered the Mw 5.8 rupture along the SLF. These will both be tested and compared to see if either, both, or neither are probable hypotheses. A second site of interest in this study is a series of faults just north of Prague, OK, the Wilzetta Fault System (WFS) and the Meeker-Prague Fault (MPF). These two faults run parallel to one another for a portion of their lengths and have ruptured two mainshocks in the past 14 years. The first occurred on the MPF on November 6, 2011, and was a Mw 5.7 event. The second occurred on the WFS on February 3, 2024, and was a Mw 5.1 event. The 2011 event, similarly to the SLF mainshock, is attributed to wastewater injection as a byproduct of hydrocarbon collection. The 2024 event has had little research done on it, so this thesis is aiming to increase the understanding of this event. To investigate stress interactions in the vicinity of the SLF and Prague, OK sites, a Coulomb stress analysis was conducted with the goal of assessing the stress transfer related to the two hypotheses discussed above as well as for the three mainshocks in these sites. Additionally, for Prague, OK this same analysis was done to assess how much how much stress the 2011 event transferred to 2024 event’s epicentral region and how these two ruptures differentiate from one another with a focus on aftershock pattern differences. We utilized previously collected seismic data from the Oklahoma Geological Survey to better identify fault geometries and complexity. Software such as ArcGIS Pro, Coulomb Modeling Software 3.4 in MATLAB, and Fault Slip Potential 2.0 were used in the study to better understand the interplay of stress and seismicity in the region. The results of the area around the SLF showed the likelihood of the two foreshock hypotheses that are discussed in this thesis. It helped to quantify that slip on the NEFZ and/or SLF could have contributed to the SLF Mw 5.8 rupture in 2016. This was concluded based on Fault Slip Potential 2.0 results showing how much Coulomb stress change was calculated for the SLF to slip and Coulomb Modeling Software 3.4 results showing how much Coulomb stress was added to the hypocenter of the Mw 5.8 rupture along the SLF from each of these foreshocks. Both of these outputs were shown in the form of MPa of stress and by comparing them it was possible to see if these hypotheses were able to cause the mainshock to occur. If the hypothesized foreshock did not produce the same or more added Coulomb stress then it was determined that it was invalid since it would not have caused enough of a stress increase for the fault to slip. If the hypothesized foreshock produced the same or more added Coulomb stress increase then it was determined the hypothesis was valid since the foreshock generated enough Coulomb stress increase for the fault to slip. Comparing the Coulomb stress values for both foreshock hypothesis allowed for the identification of the more probable hypothesis as well. Whichever one added a higher amount of Coulomb stress during the Coulomb modeling portion would be interpreted as the higher probability foreshock since it caused more stress to accumulate at the hypocenter of the mainshock. Additionally, these results helped to assess the time-dependent aftershock distribution along the SLF based on ArcGIS Pro mapping and Coulomb stress change plots from Coulomb Modeling Software 3.4. For Prague, OK these results helped to determine the interplay between the 2011 and 2024 events and how they produced different aftershocks patterns. These findings offer insights into the stress patterns that caused these aftershocks in the locations they did since the areas of increased Coulomb stress are the areas we expect to see aftershocks. In addition to this, these results also helped to better explain the observed aftershock pattern differences in the two sites and how these two events interplayed to some extent. The results from the modelling experiments of the two study sites provided insight into the questions proposed in this thesis. It was able to test the two SLF foreshock hypotheses, construct Coulomb stress change plots to compare to aftershock data for Pawnee and Prague, OK, as well as compare the Mw 5.7 Prague 2011 earthquake with the Mw 5.1 Prague 2024 earthquake. Each of these aspects of this research helped to contribute to the bigger picture of the propagation of these earthquakes in Oklahoma and the role co-seismic Coulomb stress change plays a role in that propagation
PLAYFUL PRACTICES AND PERSONAL REFLECTIONS: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
No full textThis autoethnographic study examines one veteran teacher’s experiences to understand better how her playful personality and use of play in the classroom have continually shaped her identity and influenced the development of children's social-emotional learning, mental health and well-being, and relationships with students and families. Through a hybrid-process of open-ended coding and a priori coding of parent interviews, personal journals and reflections, and parent communications, six themes emerged that provide insight into the possible interconnections between playfulness, professional identity, and student development: teacher identity, playfulness, social-emotional learning, mental health and well-being, relationships, and joy. Together, these themes can offer insight into how playfulness, both as a mindset and a teaching practice, can create space for connection, healing, and joy in education. Implications derived from the findings point to using a playful approach to help children build emotional regulation, empathy, confidence, and resilience while also supporting the teacher’s own growth. While grounded in one teacher’s lived experience, this study offers reflections that could inform how educators, programs, and policies might value playfulness and joy as essential parts of developmentally appropriate learning practices. Keywords: teacher identity, playfulness, social-emotional learning, mental health and well-being, relationships, jo