New Cryptosystems From CSP-Based Self-Distributive Systems

We propose new cryptosystems based on self-distributive systems that are defined by conjugator searching problems (CSP) in noncommutative groups. Under the newly developed cryptographic assumptions, our basic construction is proven IND-CPA secure in the standard model. Then, we describe two extensions: The first is proven IND-CCA secure in the random oracle model, while the second achieves the IND-CCA security in the standard model. Moreover, our proposal is instantiated with braid groups, and leads to a new braid-based encryption scheme and its security is directly rooted in the intractability assumption of CSP in braid groups

Together, Our Voices Will Strengthen the Weaving: Using Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry to Indigenize Sense of Belonging in Higher Education

Native American students in higher education are often asked to find a sense of belonging in places and spaces that do not reflect their cultures or worldviews. This can lead to isolation and a feeling of having to choose between themselves and their identities as Indigenous peoples. This contributes to poorer mental health, loss of well-being, and decreased academic success. The purpose of this study was to ask seven Native American participants how they defined sense of belonging from their own worldviews. Participants were also asked about spaces and places in higher education that helped or did not help them belong, and how this affected their mental health, well-being, and ability to succeed in the university setting. Using a metaphor of a Cherokee double-walled basket, we drew from our collective stories to define belonging in the following ways: connection, safety, acknowledgment, respect, presence, purpose, and growth. These themes became a model of Indigenized belonging called “Having the Spirit in the Circle”. Two other key themes that affected belonging were gatekeepers and way-makers. Gatekeepers in higher education created barriers to success and way-makers decreased barriers. What we learned together will be used to inform universities about ways they can change current academic success structures to promote belonging that aligns with Indigenous ways of knowing and being and to help Native American students succeed

Use of Flat Interwoven Wooden Strips in Architecture and Construction. Simulation and Optimization Using 3D Digital Models

This research aims to promote the use of natural materials in construction. Its purpose is to rediscover the interlacing of flat wooden strips. Attending to environmental criteria, it focuses on the study of wood from a locally produced tree, the chestnut, in the north of Spain. However, the proposed methodology can be universally replicated with local wood productions anywhere. The interweaving of flat wooden strips is linked to traditional basketry, which is at serious risk of disappearing in many places. A combined method based on the design of interlaced artifacts is proposed. For this purpose, the mechanical characteristics of the specific material tested were analyzed in advance. The elastic limit of the material was obtained, and this allowed simulating and optimizing the maximum curvatures of the flat strips in a 3D digital model. New geometric shapes were designed with new interlacing wefts and were built with the tested material. The digital models used serve as a record of the artifacts built, and can be posted on web platforms so that they can be universally replicated. This will allow for the preservation of this heritage of built artifacts using basketry techniques, enabling the proposed objective to be achieved

Blanket stories and blurring binaries: contemporary Native American art and the discourse of authorship

M.A. in Art History--University of Oklahoma, 2015Includes bibliographical references.This thesis explores the relationship between Native American art and the recent rise in participatory art. In this thesis I question the precedents for the subversion of single authorship and collective creation, how Native American artists assert and articulate indigenous epistemologies through contemporary practices, and what form it takes when Native artists internalize Euro-American artistic practices and blur the influences between indigenous and Western backgrounds. The current discourse on participatory art and social engagement construes it as an unprecedented phenomenon, which fails to take into account intercultural exchange between Western art and art from other cultural traditions. I argue that contemporary participatory art and traditional Native American art share a subversion of the solo artist and invoke contemporary Native participatory artists to demonstrate how the lack of a Great Artist tradition allows for more fluid--authorship in order to destabilize the binary opposition between collective and individual artistic production. This fluid authorship also articulates visual sovereignty for contemporary Native artists who are free to explore more traditional artistic practices. This thesis seeks to locate contemporary Native American art within a broader global contemporary context by investigating how cross-cultural exchange shapes contemporary art

Adult Learning in Nonformal Settings: Cultural Festivals as Spaces for Socially Situated Cognition

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in the role of museums and cultural festivals in adult learning. Once considered the keepers of physical and cultural history, there was only limited concern for if and how adults learned from these settings. The conventional view held that museums provided knowledge, and it was an individual’s prerogative whether or not to seek it out. The past few decades, however, have seen both a resurgence of interest in visiting museums and festivals and a more concerted effort to understand their value in a rapidly evolving society. This study considers visitor experiences at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a free two-week festival held each summer in Washington, D.C. Specific research questions addressed are: (a) what are study participants’ perceptions of their experiences during their festival visit? and (b) what do study participants perceive as outcomes of their visit? Data for this phenomenological study were gathered through in-depth interviews with five participants and researcher observations. Participants were asked to take photographs during their visit and these images were used to stimulate post visit interview recall and discussion. Study participants’ experiences and researcher observations are presented through individual and social themes. Individual themes include the role of sensory perceptions and of participant-specific characteristics and autobiography in visit behavior and meaning-making. Socially-oriented themes include the role of official festival demonstrators, fellow visitors, and the voice of the museum as communicated through interpretive signage. Comparisons are drawn to current museum visit theory with analysis suggesting that the Smithsonian Folklife Festival offers more than museum visits; it provides dynamic and authentic opportunities for cultural contact and socially situated cognition

Never afters : female friendship and collaboration in contemporary re-visioned fairy tales by women

Antagonism among girls and women in fairy tales has been the subject of much critical and popular discussion over recent decades. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the frequent absence of collaborative female relationships in traditional fairy tales and their contemporary retellings. Holding re-visioned fairy tales to be a type of feminist creative praxis, this thesis investigates how mutually beneficial relationships between female characters may be constructed within such narratives. “Never Afters” is a collection of six re-visions, written as sequels to well-known fairy tales from the Western European corpus. Situated within a genre that commonly isolates female characters or foregrounds female antagonism, each re-vision employs one (or more) of five key strategies that are used by contemporary authors to imagine collaborative female relationships within retold fairy tales: inversion, insertion/deletion, expansion, fusion, and extrapolation. The exegesis contextualises my creative work and assesses the strengths and limitations of each strategy by critically examining how they are used in contemporary fairy tales by authors including Emma Donoghue, Theodora Goss, Angela Slatter, Aimee Bender, and Kelly Link. I demonstrate that expansion, fusion, and extrapolation best allow authors to introduce new female characters and fresh feminist perspectives that move away from female exceptionalism and instead foreground female collaboration and friendship as potent sources of narrative power. The exegesis further argues that the cognitive sciences, and schema theories in particular, may offer insights as to why collaborative female relationships have received such scant representation. Using case studies of my own creative praxis, I explore the ways in which female isolation and acrimony are re-inscribed in contemporary work and recommend the adoption of new frameworks through which creative writers may critically and reflexively interrogate their tacit storytelling knowledge.Doctor of Philosoph

Sacagawea and Son: The Visual Construction of America’s Maternal Feminine

Through an analysis of public statues commemorating Sacagawea, I argue that her maternal body has come to symbolize the American frontier and the “birth” of a new nation. Her “willingness” to guide Lewis and Clark on America’s most sacred mission into the wilderness has served to sanctify the “civilized” settlement of the fecund “native” land she represents, as does her giving up of her young son to Clark, a self-sacrificial act in keeping with the mythic construct of the maternal feminine, which in this case enables historical realities concerning race, genocide, appropriation, displacement, slavery, and sexual abuse to be submerged

FOSTERING EARLY LITERACY SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN

The purpose of this scholarly project is to foster early literacy skill development for children within the school system. The materials created are intended to enhance the context and promote learning in a way that is meaningful and developmentally appropriate

Collective healing within queer paradoxes: deconstructing emotional abuse in LGBTQ2SIA* communities to cultivate more accountable and compassionate worlds

Emotional abuses within LGBTQ2SIA* communities are rarely acknowledged as existing or often normalized. Through care and anti-oppression works, transformative justice models such as community and self-accountability have helped carve out ways of addressing harm directly and breaking cycles of violence. The research in this thesis has been through mixed qualitative methodologies including semi-structured interviews and surveys. The participants\u27 along with other authors, artists, activists and scholars’ narratives draws upon the experiences of emotional abuse lived within structural and social surveillance. The settler colonial state sanctioned projects have responded to harm by perpetuating violence upon those most marginalized. Deconstructing emotional abuse demands the abolishment of such structures and a recentering of self and community accountability processes within transformative justice utilizing concepts of critically queering to frame care and anti-oppression work. While this research paper addresses how emotional abuses in LGBTQ2SIA* communities are lived and can be addressed, the reader is also given information on how this research can be made more accessible and transformed into what participants have shared for future and current care work