Essays on Procurement, Scoring Auction, and Quality Manipulation Corruption

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

The Gaze and the Circumvention of Power in Richard Strauss’ Salome

Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” is a musical discourse of the uneven power dynamics between male and female with the idea of the gaze as its central narrative. Under the patriarchal premise of the male gaze, the men emerge as the gazers, while the women are relegated to the role of submissive objectification. This paper examines the way Salome manipulates this patriarchal notion of the gaze for her own gain, voluntarily offering herself as the object of the male gaze. I further postulated that Salome strategically oscillates between the stereotypical image of femme fatale and femme fragile, intentionally succumbing to the masculine-constructed demonization and idealization of female power. Consequently, this paper traces how Strauss’ music realizes those gender portrayals and Salome’s resistance against the male order, reflecting the use of musical analyses as a tool in understanding gender roles and power in operas.

The Forest for the Trees: A Comparative Analysis of Urban Forestry Regimes in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon

This research project examines the development and implementation of municipal-level urban forestry policy in the cities of Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. The research examines the issue-specific context in which both developed, both broadly as an emerging area of scientific research and in the context of each state. Next, through a synthesis of interviews and analysis, it traces the development of each city’s approach and examines both its efficacy and the significant factors that emerged through the course of research as having made a significant impact on overall outcomes.

Commodification of Black Bodies: Convict Leasing and Prison Privatization in the United States of America

The United States is home to a private prison industry, which allows for the detention of human beings to be transformed into a multi-billion dollar industry. This paper traces the parallels between the post-civil war convict leasing system and the current system of prison privatization, which encourages the commodification of black bodies in order to maintain a racial hierarchy. It analyzes the incompatibility of prison privatization with the US Constitution. Private prisons, which hold African American men at a higher rate that state-run prisons, take cost-cutting measures in order to increase profit, which expose prisoners to higher rates of abuse and increased recidivism rates. Private prisons have significant political power to determine crime control legislation, which has led to harsh laws which increase the number of men of color behind bars. This paper provides a three-phase plan for abolishing private prisons and reducing overall incarceration rates in the United States.

Women and the Moral Politics of Dress in Twentieth Century Tehran

This research examines the politicization of women’s clothing under the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republican of Iran from the 1930s-1990s. I distinctively focus on the governments’ use of women’s clothing to define their idea of Iranian nationalism and how their sumptuary policies affected women’s lives. I assess the motives behind the sumptuary laws for each regime, and argue that both governments situated women as symbols of national health and honor, and used them as visualizations for the success of their platforms. Despite different interpretations of morality, my research suggests that both governments created these laws to “purify” their “corrupt” nation, using the same rhetoric. Paradoxically, this led to a sexualized culture that exists today in Tehran. I analyze a wealth of primary sources including women’s magazines, political cartoons, poetry, newspapers, extant clothing, photographs, legislation, autobiographies, speeches, passports, Revolutionary-era books written by Iranian intellectuals, and oral interviews that I conducted.

‘All of this Belongs to Us’: Land, Horses, and Indigenous Resistance on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1900-1950

In the early 1900s, the Yakima Indian Agency welcomed non-Native ranching operations onto Yakama tribal lands, taxing rangelands, and resulting in widespread overgrazing. By the 1920s, agency concern for the welfare of ranchers facilitated a need to gain access to tribal grazing lands sustaining Yakama horses. As a result, agency officials launched systematic assaults on Yakama horse herds, citing horses as culprits of overgrazing and land degradation. However, Yakamas showed little interest in removing their horses, and instead actively opposed settler encroachment on tribal grazing lands. Through analyzing archival sources, conducting interviews, and reviewing scholarly sources, I argue that Yakamas and settlers used horses as a terrain of struggle, whereby they asserted competing claims to Indigenous lands and resources. Examining horses as a tool of resistance provides a useful lens for understanding forms of Native opposition to colonial hegemony, while interrogating problematic tropes settlers utilized to justify divesting Native communities.