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AbstractThe region of Khevsureti in Georgia is the historic home of a group of Kartvelian highlanders known as Khevsurs. As Khevsureti's popularity as a mountain tourist destination has grown, so too has the popularity of an old story that asserts the Khevsurs are the descendants of a lost band of Crusaders. For 200 years, this meme has manifested itself in books about the region, newspaper articles, the work of a few scholars, and now much Internet discussion. The growing collection of cases has created the illusion of an unconsolidated quantity of evidence and many commentators have since taken the story to be a credible theory or actual legend. A systematic deconstruction and analysis of this story shows how this set of details initially formed, grew, and spread based on a few unreliable accounts in circulation beginning in the early 19th century. This article offers a case study of how such memes form and propagate; it provides an additional example of a Western tendency to romanticize and project elements of their own ethnicities into the Caucasus; and it examines this false history in terms of cultural appropriation and the relationship between ethnicity and narrative, adding to the literature on invented histories and pseudoarchaeology. Finally, this careful deconstruction and repudiation will help remove this story from serious discussions of cultural heritage in Khevsureti and show how historical memes and popular examples of pseudoarcheology spread and capture imaginations.

The goal of this thesis is to examine how the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea uses social control to enforce its will over its people. This examination will be based around social control mechanisms used in three separate areas of society. I referred to these three areas of social control as pillars of power. The first pillar of power is control over the economy and distribution of resources. The second pillar is control and influence over culture and the flow of information. The third pillar of power is the monopoly of force, both the ability to use physical violence and legitimize violence. To illustrate these pillars of power this report will rely on already established theories of anthropologists such as F.G. Bailey, Marvin Harris and James C. Scott. This thesis will also rely on content analysis of the written memoirs, testimony and lectures given by North Koreans who have escaped the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. This thesis will also rely on content analysis of North Korean propaganda and media. Through the use of existing theory combined with content analysis of the accounts of everyday North Korean citizens this thesis will demonstrate how the three pillars of power work together to create a platform of power for the regime and what happens when those pillars of power begin to fall. This thesis will also examine the current situation within the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the prospects for reunification with the Republic of Korea. This Thesis will prove that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has relied on control of these three pillars of power and that the regime's current tenuous situation and instability can be traced to its full or partial loss of one or more of these pillars of power.

The 2006 midterm election marked perhaps the first time that the American public held the Bush administration accountable for its controversial actions. Various explanations have been offered for the backlash, ranging from public concern about the war to disgust over sex scandals involving prominent conservatives. In this essay, through analysis of vernacular discourse appearing in letters to the editor from USA Today, I argue that the election results stemmed from Bush's weakening credibility – in respect to the dimensions of honesty, competence, and moderation – which limited the effectiveness of his rhetoric that was so powerful since September 11th.

The Great Recession of 2008-2009 was one of the most devastating financial crises of our history. The extent with which the recession plagued our financial system and affected everyday citizens created an immediate search for answers as to what had happened. Many experts pointed at the 1999 repeal of the Banking Act of 1933 (commonly referred to as Glass-Steagall) as a possible cause of increased risk-taking in the financial system. After the Great Depression, Glass-Steagall was enacted to separate commercial banking from investment banking, the combination being seen as a cause for the worst financial crises in history. With the repeal of this act many argued that with increased international competition and government guarantees on their depositors' money, banks shifted their risk to riskier securitization instruments that would allow them to increase their profits. With this paper I study the leverage data of U.S. commercial banks and a control group of selected foreign banks to attempt to see if the repeal of Glass-Steagall may have had an effect on bank risk-taking. By using different measures of leverage as outcome variables I was able to analyze the risk-taking shift after the repeal. The study finds little apparent effect of the repeal on bank leverage data, although the results do imply that there are many outside factors affecting the results. Although the study provides a lack of consistent results, its overall meaning can add to the debate on the role of regulation in our financial system.

Theories about political campaign communication have been based primarily on an understanding of the two-party system. Consequently, the rhetoric of third party presidential candidates has been seen as ineffective or unimportant because it violates the norms of political discourse. I maintain that this leads to a critical misunderstanding and under-appreciation for third party campaign rhetoric, since scholars too often ignore the situational barriers and perceived strategic constraints that these candidates routinely encounter. In the first two chapters of this project, I identify the purposes of third party campaigns and argue that the rhetorical style of serious minor party candidates is fundamentally different than the style of traditional incumbents and challengers. Functioning as agitators for change, third party presidential candidates use a rhetorical style that is polarizing, populist, rich in markers of authenticity, and aimed at producing public spectacle. In three additional chapters, I argue that the constraints, purposes, and rhetorical style that make third party candidates distinct from their major party counterparts means that even the most significant rhetorical moments of their campaign - the announcement statement, nomination acceptance speech, and concession - will violate the traditional norms of each genre. These differences suggest the existence of norms that are unique to third party discourse. As such, variants for each genre as they pertain to minor party candidates are described in detail, and applied to several case studies.

This descriptive relational study was conducted to determine the knowledge and attitude toward LF and compliance to MDA among households in two rural barangays in Libacao, Aklan. The respondents of this study were taken using a stratified, systematic random sampling technique that included the 187 eligible household heads who received the twodrug combination during the second treatment round (TR) in 2011. Results revealed that most the respondents are "highly" knowledgeable about LF but there are still misconceptions about the cause and transmission of LF. The respondents also have a "favorable" attitude toward LF's disease process and its management. However, only about two thirds are "compliant" to MDA which is below the national coverage. Age, sex, civil status, educational attainment, employment status, poverty status, knowledge about LF and attitude toward the disease are not significantly associated with MDA compliance.