below the neck, above the knees

My thesis explores the act of violation in the context of trauma and healing through the use of personal narratives and experimental film. My research allows personal storytelling to transform into a larger and more universal theme of generational trauma and dysfunction. Through a feminist lens, I challenge social norms of body autonomy for the sick and abused, capitalism’s social effects on the poor, and passed down maternal lessons from the women who are doing the best that they can with the lives and opportunities that they have been given. This work is created in spite of the labels my mother, the women before her, and I may hold. It is an act of resistance to who and what is allowed to be seen or heard. It is my confession, but it is not my confession alone

The Theory of the Firm, the Theory of Competition and the Transnational Corporation

Coase’s 1937 paper on “The Nature of the Firm” formed the basis of the transaction-cost and internalization theories of transnational enterprises in the 1970s-1990s. These emphasized the problem of firms transferring intangible assets across national borders. Newer theories of the firm adopt resource-based Penrosian, knowledge-based, capabilities and evolutionary perspectives, yet most continue to explain the international firm as a function of transaction-cost economizing. It is argued that Coase’s intention was to present a theory of the firm abstracted from its competitive environment. The application of this approach to a theory of the TNC is flawed because it cannot explain the TNC without reference to competitive conditions. This leaves us with incomplete theories of multinational firms in their competitive environments, because they address transaction-cost problems and solutions to the exclusion of many other competitive considerations that must influence the transnational step in the firm’s evolution. The newer knowledge-based theories of the firm represent progress because they focus on the institutional details of dynamic firm creation of (investment in) the intangible or knowledge-based competitive assets by which firms transform their environments. For international firms, this has global consequences. Most recently, theory has begun to emphasize the advantages and not just the costs of internationalization. Additionally, the necessity to address the juxtaposition of internalization and externalization by global firms provides a context for creating a dynamic explanation of both. The key is to recognize the process of standardization as a part of the process of innovation at the heart of learning-based theories. This can help to explain the hierarchical division of labor both within and between firms

Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet

This dissertation project operates on the belief that the democratic, everyday pursuits of science were at least as significant scientifically, and perhaps even more important culturally, as the elite, highly speculative work done by the gentlemen scientists of the Romantic Age (1790-1830). It focuses upon the literary works, careers, and discourse of Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet, tracing the role that gender played in assigning recognition and authority in the scientific community. Operating in a public sphere that favored the scientific discoveries of male gentlemen scientists, boundary crossing had to occur decisively, but quietly through a method of subversion and containment. Women had to enter the scientific conversation through traditionally unscientific genres and anonymous or apologetic prefaces, which usually conveyed intent to share science with other women. I explore the problem they all faced, in trying to recount science to a broader audience; I document how and why they responded to each other and toward the changing public sphere’s positioning of science. For these reasons, the Romantic Age’s collaboratives of gentlemen scientists significantly influenced how their popularizing contemporaries, specifically women, responded to science and how, as a result, elitism further diversified the pursuit of science.Each author’s presentation of expertise demonstrates the role of popular writings on the sciences in redefining scientific authority. These authors are representative of the two-sided struggle to make science more elite and more popular; and regardless of their allegiance in this struggle, each attempted to make science more accessible. This dissertation explores the tenuous relationship between the professions of authorship and science, highlighting the communication of both scientific discoveries and applications through writing as another facet of scientific practice. Elite gentlemen scientists’ perceptions of others as authors reflect their own self-fashioning of the professional identity of scientific writer, and popularizers of science synthesized scientific information as they learned it themselves, thereby forging a new worldview

The Theory of the Firm, the Theory of Competition and the Transnational Corporation

se’s 1937 paper on “The Nature of the Firm” formed the basis of the transaction-cost and internalization theories of transnational enterprises in the 1970s-1990s. These emphasized the problem of firms transferring intangible assets across national borders. Newer theories of the firm adopt resourcebased Penrosian, knowledge-based, capabilities and evolutionary perspectives, yet most continue to explain the international firm as a function of transaction-cost economizing. It is argued that Coase’s intention was to present a theory of the firm abstracted from its competitive environment. The application of this approach to a theory of the TNC is flawed because it cannot explain the TNC without reference to competitive conditions. This leaves us with incomplete theories of multinational firms in their competitive environments, because they address transactioncost problems and solutions to the exclusion of many other competitive considerations that must influence the transnational step in the firm’s evolution. The newer knowledge-based theories of the firm represent progress because they focus on the institutional details of dynamic firm creation of (investment in) the intangible or knowledge-based competitive assets by which firms transform their environments. For international firms, this has global consequences. Most recently, theory has begun to emphasize the advantages and not just the costs of internationalization. Additionally, the necessity to address the juxtaposition of internalization and externalization by global firms provides a context for creating a dynamic explanation of both. The key is to recognize the process of standardization as a part of the process of innovation at the heart of learningbased theories. This can help to explain the hierarchical division of labor both within and between firms.Transnational Corporation, Theory of the Firm