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    The role of reciprocity in documentary filmmaking
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2022) Larson, Daniel Jon; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Cindy Stillwell
    Filmmakers are often required to navigate conflicts and difficult moral dilemmas with their participants. While some have proposed ethical guidelines to help filmmakers resolve these dilemmas, such normative codes are unable to account for the unique particularities of every situation. I argue Simone de Beauvoir provides a philosophy that is well suited to documentary filmmaking and can help filmmakers analyze the particularities of moral dilemmas too unique to be accounted for by normative guidelines. Beauvoir's philosophy has two primary advantages for documentary filmmakers: 1) it accounts for the sociopolitical context in which the filmmaker and participant exist and, 2) it advocates for an ethic of reciprocity that requires filmmakers to respect the alterity of their participants and foster equitable relationships with them. I apply Beauvoir's philosophy to the ways in which filmmakers build relationships with their participants and use this framework to discuss Michael Apted's 'Up!' series, as well as my own film, 'Middle America'.
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    Resilience, resistance, and redemption: opening ethical museum space for displaced voices in our modern era
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Gwinner, Mackinley Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Molly Todd
    Museums traditionally silenced marginalized voices through their western colonial authority. Because of the passive nature of museum spaces, minority voices, especially the voices of displaced persons or refugees, are actively oppressed and marginalized. Resilience, Resistance, and Redemption uses case studies from the United States and Europe in order to analyze how museums throughout the western world have or have not engaged with displaced voices and their stories. Using theoretical and practical public historical practices this thesis seeks to give the reader insight into how decolonization practices have been and should be implemented in museum spaces. This thesis focuses on ethical and empathetic use of activism and solidarity by museum workers and more specifically curators to decolonize museum spaces and incorporate a more diverse range of voices into these spaces.
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    On life and death: vitality, mortality salience, and worldview defense
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Sanders, Courtney Suzanne; Co-Chairs, Graduate Committee: Jessi L. Smith and Ian Handley
    Human experience is most notably characterized by feeling or being 'alive.' However, according to Terror Management Theory (TMT), humans possess the awareness of their own mortality, and the resulting potential for existential anxiety produced by mortality salience might interact with vitality, or the subjective experience of enthusiasm and aliveness. The construct of vitality includes attributes such as resilience and self-esteem, which is why vitality was predicted to be a more holistic approach to dealing with the potential death anxiety triggered by mortality salience. TMT operates under the notion that anxiety from the realization of one's mortality is managed in part by embracing cultural worldviews, or psychological systems that provide life with meaning. When one fails to employ such a psychological buffer in the face of mortality concerns, this results in an increased defensiveness toward those who threaten or violate cultural worldviews. As such, Study 1 hypothesized that, under mortality salience, those low in a self-report measure of vitality would react more defensively to a moral transgressor than those high in vitality. To test this prediction, 176 individuals completed a self-report measure of vitality and were randomly assigned to provide a written response to two open-ended questions about their own death or to two parallel questions about watching television. Then, following a necessary delay, all participants provided judgments of moral transgressors; previous work shows that reminders of death lead to harsher judgments on this scale. No evidence for buffering was found in the results of Study 1, and findings failed to replicate past TMT research. To better understand vitality as a construct, Study 2 randomly assigned 90 individuals to view photos of either natural, outdoor scenes, or photos of built, outdoor scenes and were subsequently measured on vitality. Results of Study 2 conceptually replicated findings of previous work illustrating that those exposed to photos of nature reported higher levels of vitality than those exposed to photos of built environments. These findings strengthen evidence of the vitalizing effects of nature and supports contact with nature as a potential factor in future studies on vitality. Alternative explanations and implications are discussed.
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    Bitter business and spoken daggers: George Peele's senecanism and the origins of William Shakespeare's ethos of revenge in 'Titus Andronicus'
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Lynch, Jeff Raymond; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Gretchen E. Minton
    For nearly three centuries, scholars and critics have argued that Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's earliest revenge tragedy, lacks for thematic and characterological consistency and dramaturgical merit. Many have suggested that Titus was not written by Shakespeare--or not written by him alone. In 2002, British scholar Brian Vickers presented a comprehensive study of the authorship of the play, concluding that Titus was co-written by Shakespeare and his early modern contemporary George Peele. Critical literary scholarship has not caught up with Vickers's settlement of the authorship question and there exists a lacuna in the analysis of the play, namely, for my purposes, how do the disparately authored scenes reflect sourcing influences and intratextual character development regarding revenge as a literary descendant of classical drama and as an ethical enterprise of moral agents. Shakespeare's subsequent treatments of the ethical dimensions of vengeance, as both a public and private manifestation of the quest for justice and a psychological response to injury, spawn from the complex tropology in Titus--both those he assumed from Peele and those he introduced into the text himself. A study of the moral philosophy espoused in the joint composition of Titus affords the opportunity for a deeper understanding of how early modern playwrights addressed the desire for revenge as a psychological and moral activity and how the jointly composed play launched Shakespeare's subsequent negotiation with the revenge tragedy genre and the ethos of revenge in his later revenge tragedies.
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    A study of extraordinary means in relation to the aged, the critically ill, and the dying
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Professional Schools, 1971) Maiers, Mary Gerals, Sister
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    The effects of anti-price gouging laws in the wake of a hurricane
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2015) Tarrant, Michael Steven; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Randal R. Rucker
    The southeastern coast of the United States is vulnerable to hurricanes and the destruction they cause. Previous literature has explored hurricanes' impacts on growth in coastal counties of the United States, but not the inherently linked effects of anti-price gouging (APG) laws, which prohibit firms from significantly increasing prices during a declared state of emergency. The relationship between APG laws and economic growth following a hurricane is estimated with a fixed effect model and county-level quarterly wage data for the period 1990-2012. Results suggest that hurricane-stricken counties are worse off in the presence of APG laws, with the most pronounced negative effects in the accommodations industry. The deleterious effects of APG laws, however, are short-lived; affected counties appear to rebound once the laws are no longer in effect. As the first paper to empirically examine the economic effects of APG laws, these results counter common political thinking and provide empirical support of standard economic theory regarding price ceilings.
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    Patient-subject agency in sleep disorder documentaries : an analysis of three films
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2014) Narrow, Emily Rebecca; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis Aig
    A patient-subject in a sleep disorder documentary is particularly vulnerable to disenfranchisement and is often unable to govern her own portrayal. This is because the patient-subject of a sleep disorder documentary falls within a unique nexus of controlling power structures and gazes that are rooted in medical sociology, documentary filmmaking ethics, and the sociology of sleep. Relying on past scholarship on medical documentaries in general, I identify three themes that signal disenfranchisement of the patient-subject: when authority of knowledge rests with the doctor and/or the filmmaker, when the doctor is active while the patient-subject is passive, and when the patient-subject is exposed to voyeurism. I then analyze three sleep disorder documentaries for how well they maintain patient-subject agency.
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    What is good and what is right : an investigation of the outcomes of a comprehensive ethics program in municipal government
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2014) Webb, Elizabeth Johnston; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Marilyn Lockhart.
    To build public trust in government through ethical management of citizen resources, leaders of agencies should be intentional in their adoption of a Comprehensive Ethics Program (CEP) and in measuring the impact the program has on the ethical climate, observations of misconduct and reporting of misconduct. The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcomes of a CEP within a municipal government, five years after implementation. This was a mixed methods study where an electronic survey first measured perceptions of ethical climate followed by interviews with ethics administrators and anonymous employees. After five years, the municipal employees rated their environment as somewhat ethical through two measures; an overall ethics score (an average of 35 items from an ethical climate assessment), and a single item rating of the ethical climate by employees. Both measures can be used as a benchmark of organizational ethics health. Observations of misconduct were low in comparison to national statistics and reporting of misconduct was low in comparison to national statistics. Binary logistic regression was conducted on the overall ethics score and observations of misconduct and was statistically significant in distinguishing between employees who observe misconduct from those who do not. One ethics factor, ethical leadership, was also statistically significant in distinguishing between employees who observe misconduct and those who do not. Ethics factors that were not reliable predictors of observations of misconduct included the code of ethics, ethics resources, independent ethics commission, ethical decision-making, and informal ethical norms. Employees also rated the most effective components of the ethics program. Role modeling by peers, role modeling by supervisors, talking about ethics on the job, annual ethics training, the code of ethics, and the ethics handbook were rated as the most effective components. Six interviews with employees deepened the understanding of the quantitative data. Key themes of leadership and concerns about reporting and retaliation emerged through the interviews. CEP outcomes identified in the interviews included enhanced awareness and talking about ethics, seeking advice for ethical dilemmas, cross-departmental conversations, ethics code revisions, ethics resources for employees, and learning from training examples and interactive discussions.
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