Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Friendship Of Two Prima Donnas: The Letters Of Adelina Patti To Giulia Valda, Jacquelyn Ancelet

LSU Master's Theses

Of the many prima donnas of the nineteenth century, Adelina Patti (1843–1919) stands out as one of the most successful, with a fifty-year international concertizing career. Biographers across multiple languages have covered her career in great depth, but devote little attention to her close friendships. Herman Klein (in The Reign of Patti [1920]) and John Cone (in Adelina Patti: Queen of Hearts [1993]), for instance, claim that Patti was known by many, but understood by few. One who does seem to have understood her and developed a close relationship with her was Giulia Valda (1850–1925), herself a professional singer, if …

The Anatomy Of Inequality: Medicine, Mourning, And Socioeconomic Status In Victorian England, Molly G. Decker

LSU Master's Theses

"The Anatomy of Inequality: Medicine, Mourning, and Socioeconomic Status in Victorian England," examines the historic relationships between socioeconomic inequality, death, and medical practice during the Victorian period, with specific ttention on London and surrounding areas. I argue that the extreme socioeconomic disparities of the time were deeply intertwined with the practices surrounding death, mourning, and medical care. The first chapter, "The Price of Sorrow," explores the elaborate mourning rituals and displays of status among the wealthy and upper to middle-class Victorians, detailing how these practices were not only expressions of grief but also conspicuous displays of social status and wealth. …

Családi, Joelle Nagy

LSU Master's Theses

Családi (Magyar/Hungarian) adjective: related to the family; related to the home

CSALÁDI is a compendium of paintings and sculpture that narrate and itemize memories, mementos, and feelings from my childhood in relation to the home. It is an autobiographical agglomeration of objects and spaces that I am honoring and remembering through the act of creating. I am effectuating the feminine and maternal instinct of gathering and arranging my memories pertaining to personal history and inherited cultural identity through altar-making. Idiosyncratic items are collected and bound through color association and sensory memory. Constructing interior and exterior spaces of the home in …

Veneers And Vignettes: Staging The Mountain West, Matthew Jones

LSU Master's Theses

Veneer (noun): An attractive appearance that covers or disguises someone or something's true nature or feelings.

Vignette (noun): A small illustration or portrait photograph which fades into its background without a definite border.

This exhibition, Veneers and Vignettes: Staging the Mountain West embodies my pursuits to contextualize my place in the Mountain West, my home. These works seek to understand how the extents of time, circumstance, and people have shaped the contemporary cultures, environment, and implied trajectory of the decades ahead. What legacies have we imprinted upon this place and with what repercussions? I feel uneasy for my home in …

Building The Church Of San Vitale In Ravenna, Italy, Sally S. Morgan

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis uses the evidence concerning the design and building of the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna to reconstruct, as far as it is possible, the sequence of decisions, activities, and methods that led to the construction of the church, made of bricks and mortar, and whose interiors are covered by glorious colored mosaics and marbles. The historiography on the Church of San Vitale begins with the historian Agnellus, who wrote the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis in the 830s to 840s. According to Agnellus and other sources, the Church of San Vitale was founded by Bishop Ecclesius around 525, …

The Oracle Of The Pig's Head, Taylor L. Denton

LSU Master's Theses

The Oracle of the Pig’s Head is a collection of two poems, a short story, and a novel centered around themes of the role of the feminine body in society, monstrosity, disgust, divinity, and human impact on the environment. Inspired by other works of eco-criticism, gothic literature, surrealism, Appalachian folklore, and Greco-Roman mythology, this collection explores how marginalized bodies interact in a world forever altered by climate change.

Denton is primarily interested in how severe climate change has influenced not only human’s overall relationship to the environment, but also how writers are meant to engage with a world riddled with …

Phonic Faces As An Intervention To Improve Decoding Skills Of Children With Persistantly Poor Decoding Abilities, Kayla Therese Martin

LSU Master's Theses

Background: Orthographic rules, phonological awareness, and the ability to process morphemes and phonemes from speech and language begins with verbal speech and the child unknowingly recognizes words from his or her environment as early as the senses can process their surroundings. Some children have difficulty integrating these processes to learn how to read. As Ehri (1979) mentions the importance of establishing mental processes, such as amalgamation and phonological recoding, are essential as a basis for establishing reading fundamentals. Decoding occurs through a complex integration of phonological and orthographic knowledge (Ehri 1992). Early readers typically have well-established amalgams for spoken words …

Effects Of Music Instruction For 3-4-Year-Old Children On Cognitive Development And Spatial Skills, Veronica Perez Espinosa

LSU Master's Theses

The impact of music instruction on child cognitive development has been examined by researchers in many contexts, but not as often in very young children. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of music instruction on the spatial and cognitive skills of preschool children ages 3-4. Participants in the study were 68 three- to four-year-old students who received weekly music instruction at a private school in South Louisiana. Of the 68 participants, and using a quasi-experimental design, 30 students in three intact classes were randomly assigned to receive a movement song treatment and the other 38 …

¡Mujeres Chéveres! – Cool Women!, Hernan A. Gonzales Mejia

LSU Master's Theses

¡MUJERES CHÉVERES! – Cool Women! is a body of work and writing that looks into the history of feminism and analyzes the activism of Colombian women, highlighting their resilience and spirit. Policarpa Salavarrieta, Maria Cano, Madre Laura Montoya, and Adriana Ocampo are a few examples of Colombian women’s contributions to social movements and gender equality. Movements like “Estamos Listas” in Medellín are discussed for their role in advocating for women’s rights and societal change.

As a self-identified feminist male, this body of work, draws from my upbringing among influential women to investigate the societal roles of Colombian women. This …

Coming To America: Exploring The Cross-Cultural Adaptation Of African International Students At A Pwi And Hbcu In The U.S. South, Adwoa F. Baffour

LSU Master's Theses

African international students undergo significant challenges in their cross-cultural adaption in the United States. The cross-cultural adaptation of international students, particularly those from African countries, in a new environment assumes paramount importance due to its direct correlation with their mental and social well-being (Shafaei and Razak, 2016). Furthermore, the mental and social well-being of African international students attending universities in the southern United States has a profound impact on their overall success and overall college experience. This underscores the urgent need for future research to delve deeper into the cross-cultural adaptation experiences of African international students at United States universities, …