Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Power Structures, Michael A. Whitehead

LSU Master's Theses

Power Structures is a series of drawings and prints inspired by my fixation with the intricate utilitarian architecture and dystopian atmosphere of Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor. The architectural forms within this body of work juxtapose components of disparate industrial sites to form ruinous monuments to power and progress. The Power Structures are composites of photographs, technical drawings, and memories I have made in my time studying Cancer Alley. I introduce machined aircraft components, gate valves, and various fasteners into the architectural forms of petrochemical plants as elements of misdirection, blurring the line between reality and memory, fact and fabrication.

Hyear Come De Parade: The History Of The Black Mardi Gras Tradition In Baton Rouge, Kirsten L. Campbell

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of this thesis to emphasize the importance the role of photography in preserving and archiving cultural memories and histories as well as demonstrate the impact of digital archives. Using archival materials such as local newspapers and press photographs, this thesis offers, for the first time, the history of the African American Mardi Gras parading tradition in Baton Rouge between the years 1910 through 1941. This thesis, too, provides an art historical analysis of the visual material that exists of these early African American parades in Baton Rouge, and contextualizes the histories that shaped, influenced, and made these parades …

Taking (Birth) Control: Empowerment Through Contraceptive Education, Meghan Saas

LSU Master's Theses

TAKING (birth) CONTROL is a body of work that educates women on their options for contraceptives, and empowers them to claim their right to choose if—and when—to have a child. Utilizing graphic design and letterpress printing processes, I created a visual system consisting of carefully honed typographic, color, and graphic styles. The bulk of the materials make up an educational toolkit for use at Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, one of only three remaining abortion providers in Louisiana. Delta Clinic was in need of comprehensive and affordable materials for their patients on the subject of contraception. The toolkit consists of …

Scattered Feathers, Dason Sebastian Pettit

LSU Master's Theses

Scattered Feathers is the story of a ghost that lives in the imagination now: the ivory-billed woodpecker. Those that know this bird call it the God Bird or Grail Bird because of its mythic stature. This thesis is also a story about the loss and obsession that can fuel human pursuits. It is a study in observation and subsequent mythmaking, an examination of extinction and preservation. Perhaps most of all it is a chronicle of entropy and the cyclical nature of our existence. The visual work herein examines the mythos of the ivory-billed woodpecker, its once pristine environment and the …

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …

Between-Space: Bungalows And Shadows Of Spanish Town, Anna Carey Aldridge

LSU Master's Theses

In Spanish Town, the fabrics of the patterned streets are cross-stitched with roots of mature trees providing an airy canopy to the neighborhood below. I live in a space on the second floor of a cubed structure situated only a few steps between a small one-way street and a row of unkempt brush imitating a flowerbed. With its relationship to the street, the house seems to stand above the surrounding pitched roofs of one-story rectangles. Behind the house, you will find a light blue-gray staircase ascending to a small porch floor mounted in the trees. There is something warm and …

I'Ay Recours A Vous: An Historical And Discursive Analysis Of The Lettres Circulaires Des Décédées Of The Ursuline Order In Old And New France During The Louisiana French Colonial Period, Jarrette K. Allen

LSU Master's Theses

The Ursulines of New Orleans have been serving their beloved community now for just short of 300 years, ever since they arrived from France in 1727. They brought with them long-standing traditions and values from the Old World and innovated in many ways to adapt to the New. One of these traditions was the sending of circular letters that served as eulogies for their deceased sisters. They maintained this tradition in New Orleans but also developed a unique style, creating a livre des décédées (or “book of the dead”) that contains the biographies of the sisters and memorializes them for …

I Died I Lived : Shaping An Ecological Balance, Shelby Prindaville

LSU Master's Theses

I Died I Lived: Shaping an Ecological Balance is a body of work about our tenuous ecological situation and the power humanity has to preserve or destroy it. Through a broad range of two- and three-dimensional media, my installation transforms the gallery into an environment that demonstrates the enrichment nature delivers and the compensatory responsibility we have to conserve that experience.

Eight Thousand Daughters Woven Into Bayou Birds, Megan Marie Singleton

LSU Master's Theses

Over the course of the last year I have spent nearly every weekend investigating this aquatic landscape by canoe, deciphering the differences between native and invasive flora and fauna. I am interested in ways that art can address the natural world. My thesis exhibition, Eight Thousand Daughters Woven into Bayou Braids, depicts and interprets the Louisiana landscape, exploring the destructive beauty and materiality of invasive aquatic plants.

Trials & Tributaries: Myth And Disaster In Southern Louisiana, Hannah March Campbell Sanders

LSU Master's Theses

Trials and Tributaries examines recent disasters occurring in southern Louisiana, interpreted through the Greek myths The Twelve Labors of Herakles. Mankind’s false sense of control over Louisiana’s resources leaves us vulnerable to nature’s powerful acts of reclamation: hurricanes, floods and the ground sinking beneath our feet. While researching the details and origins of The Twelve Labors, I found a plethora of similarities with local culture, politics and natural disasters. The characters in these narrative prints include hybrid monsters drawn from Greek mythology, which I have then further augmented with various forms of local south Louisiana fauna and contemporary political figures. …

Louisiana's Hope For A Francophone Future: Exploring The Linguistic Phenomena Of Acadiana's French Immersion Schools, Albert Sidney Camp

LSU Master's Theses

Cajun and Creole French are thought of by scholars and lay-people alike as the two varieties of French spoken in Louisiana. While this may have been true to some extent in the past, the linguistic landscape of Louisiana is constantly evolving. As in other parts of the world, globalization, higher education, and an ever expanding media presence are changing the linguistic reality for Louisiana’s French speaking community. The twentieth century has seen a complete shift in the status of the French language in relation to public schools in Louisiana. In the early twentieth century, many children learned French at home …

Acadiana And The Cajun Cultural Landscape: Adaption, [Sic] Accommodation Authenticity, Joseph Jerome Mckernan

LSU Master's Theses

The following points are important for this discussion of Acadiana and the Cajun Cultural Landscape: First, in order to fully understand the Cajun nature and what makes the Cajuns distinct, we must explore their history from the time they arrived on the shores of North America to the present. Without doing this, we cannot truly understand their way of life and where it came from; Second, what and where is Acadiana--the Cajun homeland--and what are its socioeconomic and demographic characteristics; Third, how have folk culture and celebration of heritage mediated Cajun culture; Fourth, why are these traditions manifested in what …

Turn-Taking And Gaze Behavior Among Cajun French And Cajun English Speakers In Avoyelles Parish, Andrew Mandell Riviere

LSU Master's Theses

Languages are the verbal and non-verbal codes of a culture. A culture houses a language(s) and is comprised of the gaze and distance/use of personal sphere. Linguists and anthropologists have long since argued over which takes priority: culture or language. French and Louisiana are synonymous: it is unimaginable to picture Louisiana without French because French constitutes the culture in Louisiana. Since linguists have debated the priority of language or culture, looking at Louisiana within the confines of this debate proves informative.

The language shift forced upon the residents of South Louisiana by the 1921 State Legislature made English the sole …

The Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans: Vestiges Of A Neighborhood, Adam N. Hess

LSU Master's Theses

The Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans: Vestiges of a Neighborhood is a photo-documentary of the remnants of one of America’s most unique and culturally distinct neighborhoods. Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated this neighborhood, it lies in ruin, slowly returning to nature. All that remains of the community that once occupied the Lower Ninth are the dilapidated buildings, the crumbling homes, and the small possessions left behind. For the past three years I have explored the Lower Ninth Ward, discovering the remains of a community rich in tradition, family, and religion. Through the use of black and white photographs and …

To Kill Whites: The 1811 Louisiana Slave Insurrection, Nathan A. Buman

LSU Master's Theses

Before January 1811, slave rebellion weighed heavily on the minds of white Louisianans. The colonial and territorial history of Louisiana challenged leaders with a diverse and complex social environment that required calculated decision-making and a fair hand to navigate. Racial and ethnic divisions forced officials to tread carefully in order to build a prosperous territory while maintaining control over the slave population. Many Louisianans used slave labor to produce indigo, cotton, and sugarcane along the rivers of south Louisiana, primarily between Baton Rouge and the mouth of the Mississippi River. For nearly a century, Louisianans avoided slave upheaval but after …

Postcolonial Writing In Louisiana: Surpassing The Role Of French Traditionalism In Alfred Mercier's L'Habitation Saint-Ybars, Mary Florence Cashell

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores the roles of French patriarchal ideologies of the Enlightenment and exoticism in Alfred Mercier’s novel, L’habitation Saint-Ybars. His novel portrays the antebellum Creole plantation as a hierarchy of strict gender roles similar to those that Enlightenment philosophy espoused. I use the family in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s classic, Paul et Virginie, as one example of such a hierarchy. There are also, however, several instances where Mercier departs from the paternalistic norm. I interpret Mercier’s moving away from this model to be a declaration of a unique Louisianian identity.

Nueva Orleans: Hispanics In New Orleans, The Catholic Church, And Imagining The New Hispanic Community, Katie Judith Berchak

LSU Master's Theses

New Orleans, Louisiana, is a city with a rich Hispanic history which is often overlooked. Likewise, the role the Catholic Church has played in assisting the immigrant groups that have settled in New Orleans in the building of their communities has also often been ignored. The first part of this work will seek to trace the different Hispanic groups that have come to the city, their often unacknowledged legacies, and examine what role the Catholic Church played in their communities and history. During Spanish rule of colonial Louisiana from 1762 to 1803, Spanish colonists and recruits from the Canary Islands …

The Southern Predicament, Todd Hines

LSU Master's Theses

The Southern Predicament is an exhibition that explores aspects of self-awareness and identity in the modern south.

Black Catholicism: Religion And Slavery In Antebellum Louisiana, Lori Renee Pastor

LSU Master's Theses

The practice of Catholicism extended across racial boundaries in colonial Louisiana, and interracial worship continued to characterize the religious experience of Catholics throughout the antebellum period. French and Spanish missionaries baptized natives, settlers, and slaves, and the Catholic Church required Catholic planters to baptize and catechize their slaves. Most slaveholders outside New Orleans, however, were lax in the religious education of slaves. Work holidays did not always correspond to religious holy days, and the number of slave baptisms and confirmations on Catholic plantations often depended on the willingness of the local priest, or the slaves themselves, to attend the parish …

Capturing The Ordinary: Russell Lee In Southeastern Louisiana, Brent Mitchell

LSU Master's Theses

The photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section from 1935-1942 produced a large body of photographic work that now resides in the Library of Congress. These photographs serve as valuable visual resources for depicting an economically deprived section of America's population during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Some of these photographers, like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, are widely recognized for their work, while others remain obscure. Russell Lee falls into the latter category, although he contributed the largest number of captioned photographs to the FSA photographic files. This paper explores Lee's photographic techniques in …

Insiders: Louisiana Journalists Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison, Iris Turner Kelso, Angie Pitts Juban

LSU Master's Theses

Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison and Iris Turner Kelso were three women journalists in Louisiana, active in consecutive time periods from 1891 to 1996. Their work brings up five particular questions. First, Why did these women start working and how did they negotiate public employment? Second, how did they balance the relationship between work and home since they did find employment outside of the home? Third, how did they fit into their contemporary image of women and journalists? Fourth, how did they use written language to portray a particular voice to the reader for a particular purpose? Fifth, did …

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird As Adapted By Christopher Sergel: A Thesis In Directing, Andrew Vastine Stabler

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis describes the directorial process of a production of Christopher Sergels's adaptation of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It follows the process of preproduction through rehearsals. It makes use of the influences of the prior history and the recent educational experience of the director. Throughout it accesses the choices made and concludes with conclusions on the final product.

The New Orleans Press-Radio War And Huey P. Long, 1922-1936, Brian David Collins

LSU Master's Theses

The introduction of radio in America in the 1920s was greeted with much fanfare by the general public and by newspapers and politicians as well. Its popularity soared as radio sets became cheaper and more accessible. Newspapers were eager to boost their circulations by featuring the latest craze; many newspapers even started their own stations as a means of publicity. As the country sank deeper into the Great Depression in the 1930s, the relationship between the country's press and radio worsened. The newspapers felt threatened that radio would take away their advertising revenue in addition to stealing their news dissemination …

Trans-Mississippi Southerners In The Union Army, 1862-1865, Christopher Rein

LSU Master's Theses

Men from throughout the Trans-Mississippi South enlisted in the Union army during the Civil War both in existing northern regiments and in units raised specifically for the purpose of enlisting southerners. The men who joined and fought represented almost every social and ethnic division within the region and contributed substantially to the success of Union arms during the war. Examining a single regiment from each state or territory in the region (except Louisiana, where one white and one black unit were chosen due to segregation) reveals similarities of background, experience and purpose. Louisiana's contributions to the Union army were primarily …