Dads, Daughters, And Disney: The Historical Trajectory Of Fairy Tale Fathers And Daughters

In my thesis I use a historical approach to close readings of fairy tale texts and movies to study the evolution of fathers, daughters, and marriage within three landmark tales: ¿Cinderella,¿ ¿Sleeping Beauty,¿ and ¿Snow White.¿ Using the works of Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and Walt Disney and his cohort of animators, I trace the historical trajectory of these three elements, analyzing both the ways they change and develop as history progresses as well as the ways they remain consistent. Through close and comparative readings of primary sources and films, I demonstrate the power structures and familial dynamics evident through the interactions of fathers and daughters. Specifically, I show that through the weakness and ineptitude of fairy tale fathers, fairy tale daughters are able to gain power, authority, and autonomy by using magic and marriage to navigate patriarchal systems. The work I have done is important because it explores how each tale is a product of the story before it and thus that in order for these tales to continue to survive the test of time, we must not only recognize the validity of the academic merit of the Disney stories, but also remember them and others as we forge new paths in the stories we use to teach both children and parents. Specifically, this work is important because it explores the historical trend evident in the evolving relationships between fathers and daughters. This relationship ultimately it reveals the deep underlying need for family within all of us.

Women's Athletics at Mansfield University in Historical Perspective

Mansfield University, founded on January 7, 1857 as Mansfield Classical Seminary, has an overwhelming history of persistence. Along with the institution, the women’s athletic programs also have a strong past. This paper outlines the history of women’s athletics at Mansfield from the establishment of the school in 1857, to the first women’s athletic program starting in 1900, and through the present day. It is organized according to the eras the institution went through and the athletic opportunities given to the women at that time. The focus of each chapter reflects the major accomplishments of both the institution and the women’s athletic programs, events, and issues that transpired during each time period. Research was conducted by reviewing yearbooks, memorandums, and reports in the Mansfield University archives, school newspaper articles, and the university website, along with several other supplemental materials. Personal interviews also accompanied the documentary research to give a first-hand historical viewpoint of several eras. It was concluded that the women at Mansfield University have fought for, and created athletic opportunities for over 100 years. In comparison to other Pennsylvania state universities, women’s athletics at Mansfield are under-funded and on the low end of receiving athletic scholarship monies. The future of women’s athletics at Mansfield is uncertain due to budgetary factors that are unknown at this time.

A Historical-Institutional Study of the Welfare Systems in the United States and Sweden: Net Social Wage Approach

In this study I first look at the historical developments of the welfare systems in Sweden and the United States to understand why these countries have produced two distinct systems over the years. After understanding their historical context I turn to the question of the relationship between the welfare system and economic growth. Policy makers and the mainstream media commonly cite the critique that through government deficit and public debt, welfare systems are a drag on the economy. By calculating the net social wage, the difference in taxes paid and benefits received by workers, I test this hypothesis to see if welfare systems are self-financed by the workers. My findings demonstrate that the net social wage has been negative in the U.S. from 1962 to the early 2000s and in Sweden from 1965 to 2012. This shows that the welfare systems are entirely self-financed by the workers for the full period in Sweden and until the recent financial crisis in the U.S.

A Stable Niche Assumption-Free Test of Ecological Divergence

Understanding the impact of geological events on diversification processes is central to evolutionary ecology. The recent amalgamation between ecological niche models (ENMs) and phylogenetic analyses has been used to estimate historical ranges of modern lineages by projecting current ecological niches of organisms onto paleoclimatic reconstructions. A critical assumption underlying this approach is that niches are stable over time. Using Notophthalmus viridescens (eastern newt), in which four ecologically diverged subspecies are recognized, we introduce an analytical framework free from the niche stability assumption to examine how refugial retreat and subsequent postglacial expansion have affected intraspecific ecological divergence. We found that the current subspecies designation was not congruent with the phylogenetic lineages. Thus, we examined ecological niche overlap between the refugial and modern populations, in both subspecies and lineage, by creating ENMs independently for modern and estimated last glacial maximum (LGM) newt populations, extracting bioclimate variables by randomly generated points, and conducting principal component analyses. Our analyses consistently showed that when tested as a hypothesis, rather than used as an assumption, the niches of N. viridescens lineages have been unstable since the LGM (both subspecies and lineages). There was greater ecological niche differentiation among the subspecies than the modern phylogenetic lineages, suggesting that the subspecies, rather than the phylogenetic lineages, is the unit of the current ecological divergence. The present study found little evidence that the LGM refugial retreat caused the currently observed ecological divergence and suggests that ecological divergence has occurred during postglacial expansion to the current distribution ranges.

Modes of Diversification in Bulgarian Higher Education: Case Studies in four Disciplines

This project was stimulated by the unprecedented speed and scope of changes in Bulgarian higher education since 1989. The rapid growth of the student population and the emergence of a new private sector in higher education led to tightening governmental control and a growing criticism of autonomy and academic freedom. This raised questions about the need for diversification in the field, about the importance of recent innovations in terms of strategic choices for future development and so of how higher education governance could maintain diversity without the system deteriorating. The group first traced the extent of spontaneous processes of innovation at the level of content, of institutions, and the organisation of teaching and learning processes. They then identified the different parties in the struggle for institutionalisation and against diversification, and promising mechanisms for maintaining diversity in higher education. On this basis they outlined a basis for a wide-ranging public discussion of the issue which may serve as a corrective to the mechanisms of state control. Their work included analysis of the legislative framework laid down in the Higher Education Act, which effectively dispenses with the autonomy of universities. They then surveyed the views of both high-level executives in the field and the academics actually involved in the process, as well as of the "consumers" of the educational product, i.e. the students. In considering diversification, they focused on four different types of programmes, including those where diversification is largely limited to content level (e.g. Law), those where it operates mainly on structural levels (e.g. Industrial Management), those where it is often feigned (e.g. Social Work), and those where it is at best formal and sporadic (e.g. Mechanical Engineering). They conclude that the educational system in Bulgaria has considerable internal resources for development. The greatest need is for adequate statutory regulation of academic life which will provide incentives for responsible academic development of higher education institutions and create conditions for the institutionalisation of academic self-organisation and self-control, which will in turn limit the pathological trends in the diversification processes.

Liberal Nationalism: A Historical and Critical Analysis of Conceptions

At the end of the 20th century we live in a pluralist world in which national and ethnic identities play an appreciable role, sometimes provoking serious conflicts. Nationalist values seem to pose a serious challenge to liberal ones, particularly in the post-communist countries. Malinova asked whether liberalism must necessarily be contrasted with nationalism. Although nationalist issues has never been a major concern for liberal thinkers, in many countries they have had to take such issues into consideration and a form of 'liberalism nationalism' has its place in the history of political ideas. Some of the thinkers who tried to develop such an idea were liberals in the strict sense of the word and others were not, but all of them tried to elaborate a concept of nationalism that respected the rights of individuals and precluded discrimination on ethnic grounds. Malinova studied the history of the conceptualisation of nations and nationalism in the writings, of J.S. Mill, J.E.E. Acton, G. Mazzini, V. Soloviev, B. Chicherin, P. Struve, P. Miljoukov and T.G. Masaryk. Although it cannot be said that these theories form a coherent tradition, certain common elements of the different approaches can be identified. Malinova analysed the way that liberal nationalists interpreted the phenomenon of the nation and its rights in different historical contexts, reviewed the structure of their arguments and tried to evaluate this theoretical experience from the perspective of the contemporary debate on the problems of liberal nationalism and multiculturalism and recent debates on 'the national idea' in Russia.

The Ingrian Question as a Historical and Political Phenomenon

The project dealt with the political history of the Finnish-speaking minorities of the Russian northwest, mainly in the 20th century. The first part looks at the development of the national movement of the Ingrian Finns and other related ethnic groups (Izhoras, Votes) from the turn of the century to 1920, when Estonia and Finland signed peace treaties with Soviet Russia and the national rights of the Finnish minority in Russia were to some extent guaranteed. In the second section, on the history of the Ingrians during Soviet and post-Soviet times, areas covered include Ingrian national-cultural autonomy in the 1920s, the activities of Ingrian "ingri" organizations in Finland during the inter-war period, social and national repression and the end of autonomy in the 1930s, the dispersal of the Ingrians during the second world war, their first attempts to return home in the immediate post-war period, trends in the development of the social and cultural life of Ingrians during the last 40 years, and the prospects for their existence as an ethnic unity in the future. The research is based on documentary sources from 15 Russian archives, many of which have not previously been used.

Private Publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg: Historical Background, Present Situation and Trends"

This research was a complex study of the economic and socio-cultural aspects of the development of Russian private publishing in the second half of the19th and early 20th centuries, during the periods of 'war communism' and the New Economic Policy of 1917 to 1930, and during the reform of book publishing in 1986-1999. Conclusions about private book publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg were extrapolated to Russia-wide problems of the development of this field. Svichenskaya sees her main achievement as having identified the economic and legal concepts behind the development of private book publishing over the period in question in the context of state and corporate regulation of publishing. Here the state was the main influence on its development and there was a paradox in the relations between the state authorities and private publishers, in that the latter constantly suffered from repression by the former but at the same time were dependent on state support. The research identified the administrative process of the liquidation of private publishing at the end of the 1920s and showed that its present flourishing is closely linked with the establishment of a preferential mode for the development of this sector. Private publishing now represents around 80% of domestic publishing, in terms both of the number of publishing houses and of the number of volumes published, and so plays the major role in satisfying the demand for books in Russia. Svichenskaya predicts that in the coming years private publishing will see a further concentration of growth and a tendency to monopolies and also the increasing specialisation of the publishing repertoire. She outlines a suggested concept of state management in publishing and ways to optimise this. In the transitional period of adaptation to the market regulation of publishing, these include a continuing degree of state protectionism, the creation of a favourable investment climate, privatisation of the printing companies with the aim of modernising these, and the development of coordinated corporate policies.