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A View From The Pacific: Archaeological Analysis Of Materials From Nicaragua's Sixteenth Century Spanish Town Of Leon Viejo, Kira Blaisdell-Sloan

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

In 1524 the town of Leon Viejo was founded by Hernandez de Cordova on the Northwestern shore of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. Eighty-six years later it was abandoned, as earthquakes and volcanic activity made the site undesirable. At the present time, Leon Viejo represents the only Pacific coast Spanish occupied sixteenth century colonial townsite for which archaeological data is available. In this thesis I present a historically informed analysis of archaeological materials recovered from eight separate structures located towards the center of this site.

Utilizing The Annales Historical Approach, World Systems Theory, community and household level analysis, I weave together …

Dark Phoenix: The Representation Of Black Woman In Je Suis Martiniquais By Mayotte Capecia And Mon Examen De Blanc By Jacqueline Manicom, Sybil Shevron Jackson

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Black women writers in the French West Indies were conspicuously absent from the literary canon during the negritude movement in the 1940's. Mayotte Capecia was one of the few who managed to write during this time. Capecia was criticized severely for her novel Je suis Martiniquais by Frantz Fanon and accused of betraying her race because of the inter-racial love affair between her heroine and a French soldier. Jacqueline Manicom, her literary descendant who wrote Mon Examen de Blanc in 1972, was ostracized from the medical profession for her political beliefs concerning women's rights.

This dissertation examines images and representation …

Lumières, Spring 1999, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

Friends of the LSU Libraries

The bi-annual newsletters from the Friends of the Library contain information about upcoming and recent events, descriptions of new collections, a list of members, and occasional obituaries, which inform members of the news and needs of the LSU Libraries.

Ernest Renan And The Question Of Race., Jane Victoria Dagon

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Racism in France can be traced back to the 1560's when the nobles claimed to be of a separate race in order to obtain special rights and privileges. Soon after in the seventeenth century, scientists started to classify humans according to physical features. With the increase in travel, the slave trade, the fear of the unknown and the fear of contamination, these factors along with physiognomy and phrenology encouraged "biological racism." During the second half of the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan (1823--1892) denounces biological racism and the existence of the so-called "pure races." He is also the first dramatist to …

Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict, Situational Formality, And Personality As Causes Of Interpersonal Equivocation., Richard Steven Bello

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the causes of a widespread and important communication phenomenon, interpersonal equivocation. Literature is reviewed which shows clearly that a sufficient cause of interpersonal equivocation is situational avoidance-avoidance conflict, but also which suggests the possibility of additional situational (formality of social setting) and trait (self-monitoring) precursors of equivocation. Using a questionnaire technique, participants were asked to imagine themselves in three different interpersonal situations, which were manipulated to vary the level of situational formality. In addition, in each situation, they were asked to respond to a question from their hypothetical conversational partner. These questions were designed to manipulate the …

How Does Undergraduate College Biology Students' Level Of Understanding, In Regard To The Role Of The Seed Plant Root System, Relate To Their Level Of Understanding Of Photosynthesis?, James Gicheha Njeng'ere

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This research study investigated how undergraduate college biology students' level of understanding of the role of the seed plant root system relates to their level of understanding of photosynthesis. This research was conducted with 65 undergraduate non-majors biology who had completed 1 year of biology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. A root probe instrument was developed from some scientifically acceptable propositional statements about the root system, the process of photosynthesis, as well as the holistic nature of the tree. These were derived from research reviews of the science education and the arboriculture …

Powerless Speech: The Effects Of Gender, Gendered Intensifiers, And Attitudes Toward Women On Speaker Credibility., Frances E. Brandau-Brown

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine powerful and powerless speech styles in relation to sex of speaker, sex of respondent, and attitudes toward women. Based on research by Bradac, Mulac, and Thompson (1995) it was proposed that the powerless speech style variable, intensifiers, could be divided into separate masculine and feminine domains. The Attitude Toward Women scale was used to classify respondents as either liberal or traditional. From this classification predictions were made using Expectancy Violation Theory to formulate a priori hypotheses about respondent perceptions of speaker competence, trustworthiness, and masculinity. Multivariate, univariate and post-hoc tests revealed that …

Ideomotor Apraxia And Lesion Location: Analysis Of Error Types, Motor Function, And Task Demands., Brenda Hanna-Pladdy

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Ideomotor apraxia is a disorder of learned skilled movement which typically has been attributed to damage confined predominantly to the frontal and parietal cortical areas within the hemisphere dominant for speech. However, most studies of the anatomical basis of apraxia have relied on case studies or have only approximate lesion localization, and few studies have examined motor performance in relation to lesion location. This study examined the relationship of apraxia severity to lesion location (in both cortical/subcortical dimensions and anterior/posterior dimensions), aphasia, motor performance, and task demands, and identified the existence of subtypes of apraxia with characteristic performance profiles (error …

A Description And Analysis Of The Scholarly Response Paper As An Academic Genre: Determining How Linguistic, Social, And Psychological Variables Affect Its Success/Failure And The Professional Credibility Of Its Author., Lynna Dunn Peneguy

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The study of various documents and genres within professional discourse communities can provide valuable insight into what does or does not constitute successful written communication within such groups. The primary purpose of the current study was to examine scholarly response papers published in five different "English" journals in order to (1) define and describe the scholarly response paper and (2) explore various theories/rules/studies which could be used to gauge its success: in this case, Grice's Maxims, studies of semantic (denotative and evaluative) verb force, Lakoff's Rules of Politeness, and studies of language intensity. Findings showed that the primary purpose of …

Biological Diversity And Cultural Survival: Mopan Maya Traditional Culture And Environmental Change In Southern Belize., Michael Kenneth Steinberg

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation is a study of the causal relationship between the decline of cultural diversity and environmental diversity. My study investigates the larger-scale economic, political, and social factors that result in the rejection of traditional land use strategies and how these changing strategies ultimately lead to an overall decline in environmental diversity in the Mopan Maya landscape in southern Belize. Five Mopan Maya cultural biogeographic case studies are presented, including the management of maize diversity, the species composition and variability of kitchen gardens, swidden-fallow agroforestry practices, traditional bee keeping, and hunting game and habitat preferences. These topics were chosen because …

Input Manipulations, Working Memory, And Word Learning Abilities Of Children., Janice Elisabeth Horohov

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

A storybook task was used to examine the word learning abilities of children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Speech rate, sentence complexity and word type were manipulated within the narrative. A nonword repetition task also was used to examine the relation between working memory and word learning. Fifty-four children participated; a third were classified as SLI and the others served as either age-matched or language-matched controls. For comprehension, a significant main effect for word type was observed with verb scores higher than noun scores. Main effects for group, race, and rate also were observed and these were qualified …

High School Biology Students' Participation In A Year-Long Sequence Of Analogical Activities: The Relationship Of Development Of Analogical Thought To Student Learning And Classroom Interactions., Marcella Wichser Hackney

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This research explored development of analogical thought through high school biology students' participation in a year-long sequence of analogical activities. Analogizing involves: selecting a familiar analog; mapping similarities and differences between the analog and less familiar target; making inferences from the analogy; evaluating validity of the inferences; and ultimately, understanding the biological target (Holyoak & Thagard, 1995). This investigation considered: student development of independence in learning through analogical thought, student learning of biology, the relationship between development of students' analogical thinking and students' learning of biology, and the quality of student interactions in the classroom. This researcher, as teacher participant, …

Hyperdeprivation And Race -Specific Homicide, 1980--1990., Matthew Raleigh Lee

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Research on the nature of the urban underclass suggests that socioeconomic deprivation is multidimensional and involves more than just the personal experience of poverty. When negative characteristics like poverty and unemployment are concentrated geographically, it means that one is not only deprived of personal resources, but also deprived of contact with those who do have resources. Thus, when social disadvantage is concentrated, as it may be in underclass communities, this augments the effect of poverty, creating a situation of hyperdeprivation, by placing beyond reach those segments of mainstream society that are necessary for success. This dissertation extends this line of …

Mechanisms Of First Language Forgetting., Ludmila Isurin

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The present research explored the processes and mechanisms of first language forgetting from linguistic and psychological perspectives. Two studies, one---a case study, another---a controlled experimental study, yielded evidence on L1 loss. The case study involved a 9 year old Russian girl who was adopted by an American family, brought to the US and completely taken out of a Russian-speaking environment. Over the course of one year, changes in L1 morphology, syntax, and vocabulary were investigated using various tasks, e.g. picture description, picture naming, story telling. Data on L1 retention, L2 acquisition, and reaction time were gathered. The results of the …

Folk Housing In Northeastern Mexico: A Key To Culturogeographic Regionalization., Scott Stuart Brown

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Folk housing is one of the elements of material culture which geographers often employ in understanding the cultural aspects of regional studies. As one of the most obvious features of the cultural landscape, folk housing serves as a tool in the determination of culturogeographic regions, the final objective of this study. In this atomistic regional approach, geometry is the principle feature of interest. In other words, the one-dimensional plan type and the three-dimensional form class are the elements of focus in order to distinguish regionality. As opposed to other sub-systems of structural analysis, geometry, especially house from, distinguishes regions of …

Tourism And Place In Treasure Beach, Jamaica: Imagining Paradise And The Alternative., Michael J. Hawkins

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The tourism production system has been generating images of the Jamaican landscape and culture since the mid-nineteenth century. This system consists of those individuals and corporate entities who produce and market the product itself, including travel writers, airlines, advertising agencies, hotel owners and government agencies; and the people, their culture, and elements of the landscape which are commodified as tourist attractions. The tourist gaze has traditionally focused on an idealized Caribbean landscape. Because of a shift in Western patterns of consumption, the focus of the gaze has shifted to emphasize the culture and people who inhabit the landscape. As the …

Parental Participation In A Title I Family Literacy Program: Results From A Mixed -Model Study., Karen Boudreaux

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

A family literacy, Title I program was studied to determine the attitudes and beliefs which affect parental participation in a family literacy program. The theoretical framework of cultural capitol assumed that parents who chose to participate in a family literacy program possess different components in their cultural capitol than parents who choose not to participate. There were 3 Hypotheses and 6 Study Questions which guided this parallel mixed model study with dominant (qualitative)-less dominant (quantitative) design. A Title I Family Literacy Program located in a large, urban, public school system was the study site. The sample size consisted of 40 …

The Search For Senefiance: Contraires Allegories In The "Roman De La Rose", Camilla Rachal Pugh

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

It is the thesis of this dissertation that there exists in the Roman de la Rose a system of contraires allegories which move in a direction opposed to the traditional readings of three facets of the text. They are (1) Amant's assault upon the statue/sanctuary, (2) his relationship with Bel Accueil, and (3) the advice which Genius gives to Amour's barons. In addition, when taken cumulatively, the readings advanced argue for the identification of the Roman de la Rose with the Evangile eternel of Joachim de Fiore. These readings depend upon the reader's recognition of Faus Semblant as a contraire …

Classification Of Text Documents Using A Logical Analysis Approach., Salvador Nieto Sanchez

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The main problem investigated in this dissertation is as follows: Given are two samples of documents each from one of two disjoint collections of documents. The question is how to obtain a set of patterns of text features that make a document in the two samples (and other unclassified documents) to be classified correctly in one and only one document class. A sample of 2,897 documents from the TIPSTER collection was used to investigate this problem. This problem was divided into the following four subproblems. The first subproblem consists of identifying the set keywords to describe the documents' content. Computational …

The Women On/Of The Porch: Performative Space In African-American Women's Fiction., Lajuan Evette Simpson

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Mediating Structures in African-American literature are essential in the formation of identity in the lives of the characters. Contemporary theory has moved into a deeper layer of hermeneutics beyond self/other dichotomies to look at the space between binary opposites. Therefore, modern theorists look at sites of play, of exchange, and of transformation. The porch is such a space. A mediating structure is a space that allows the various characters to develop and define themselves. Because of African-Americans, lack of freedom, it was important for them to find a space in which they were able to move and express their ideas, …

The Performance Of Prekindergarten Children On Representational Tasks Across Levels Of Displacement., Emily Flake Smith

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This investigation was guided by Nelson's (1996) experiential theory and the Situational-Discourse-Semantic (SDS) model of Norris and Hoffman (1993, 1997, in press) which was used to establish predictions regarding the representational difficulty of each of the task conditions. Subjects were 32 four-year-old children enrolled in four prekindergarten programs located within a small city in southern Louisiana and represented both lower and middle SES populations. The tasks required subjects to represent knowledge of the bedtime routine, ranging from personal enactments with props through generation of stories and event scripts for hypothetical situations. Performances were analyzed for content in terms of event …