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Contagion, Causality, And Circumspection In A Late-Mamluk Digest Of Natural Philosophy, Joseph Leonardo Vignone

History Faculty Scholarship

Like many men born to scholarly families at the turn of the fifteenth century, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ayyūb al-Qādirī moved from Damascus to Cairo as a young adult to pursue a career in law. Though this legal career soon foundered, Ibn Ayyūb gained a reputation in Cairo for perfectly embodying the pietistic and professional ideals of the Islamic learned elite, or ulama. In this article, I introduce this hitherto unstudied figure of the late Mamluk era with reference to his treatise on a major scholarly debate of his day: the extent to which natures, or the elemental composition of celestial …

Richard H. Shryock’S “Empiricism Versus Rationalism In American Medicine, 1650-1950”: A Commentary, Michael A. Flannery

Libraries Professional Work

Shryock's analysis of medical progress outlines the transition from crude empiricism and dogmatic rationalism to scientific empiricism. This shift, though non-linear, advanced medicine through controlled experiments, fostering breakthroughs like penicillin. Scientific empiricism improved public health and influenced the return to systemic concepts, particularly through genetic medicine and chronic disease research.

The “Mozart Effect”, Joshua Bonillas

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

The “Mozart Effect” is a name given to a supposed increase in cognitive functions due to listening to music before, or during, a task, such as taking a test. The name comes from the media after the original study, done by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky, used Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.

An Intimate Relationship: Medical Theory, The Environment, And Hospitals, Devin Williams

History Theses - Archive

Prior to the full acceptance of bacteriology in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, medicine relied heavily upon the natural environment and cultivating flora from various regions around the world to implement in therapeutics. As a result of various medical theories and practices during the long nineteenth century the hospital became the physical embodiment of such practices and became modified as these medical theories advanced toward an acceptance of bacteriology. Initially serving as a marker for the boundary between the built and natural environments, hospitals also relied heavily upon the natural environment in the treatment of patients and became …

Job Application Letter And Résumé Sample #4, Ruijie Zhao

Employment Materials

This handout provides a sample of a job application letter and résumé to help students construct their own.

Building Nature: A Nature-Based Drama Therapy Method In An Urban Program, Courtney Bennett Mcduffee

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Finding a mental health center that fits the needs of an individual can take time. Some individuals must travel to different states and enter large metropolises to find the specific type of support they need for their mental health journey. This can mean that for extended periods of time, as individuals go through residential treatment, partial hospitalization programs (PHP), and/or intensive outpatient programs (IOP), they can not only find themselves in a completely new community, but also entirely removed from nature. For this reason, my thesis focused on creating a method to reconnect humans ‘trapped’ in an urban setting with …

I'M Going Cycle Every Day, Lauren Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

Many designers and scientists have been able to integrate design and science in their respective fields to create works that effectively inform their audiences of complicated subjects. Each of these individuals can express their creativity and viewpoint of the subject matter in a way that is interesting, visually appealing, and informative. Using the medium of graphic design, I created printed posters that represent the way I view the processes of the human body that are technical, yet also visually appealing.

My thesis exhibition walks my audience through the biological cycles that maintain the human body on an everyday basis from …

Constructing Consciouness: Reverse Engineering The Architecture Of The Mind, Scott K. Clarke

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Early Music Ensemble: Not Far From The Tree, Chapman Early Music Ensemble

Printed Performance Programs (PDF Format)

No abstract provided.

Becoming Stewards Of Attention: A Theological Appeal, Joshua Gorenflo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The widespread compromising of attention currently taking place in our digital age is, at least in part, a theological issue necessitating a theological response, which invites an examination of the human person in relation to God. Familiar within the biblical narrative and throughout Christian tradition, I suggest that when the role of steward functions as the operative paradigm for humans, the claims made upon their lives have profound implications for attending within the digital age. More specifically, the steward’s attention becomes a tangible expression of authority and accountability in representation of God’s image to the rest of creation. In pursuit …

Florence Nightingale, The Colossus: Was She A Feminist?, Susan Hogan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nightingale displayed a particular brand of feminism that reflected the circumstances of her era. The question of women’s involvement in healthcare is addressed through an analysis of Nightingale’s most famous work, Notes on Nursing. What it is, and what it is not (1859/60). Then other key works are scrutinised with reference to ideas about female involvement in healthcare and how she addresses the position of women in general terms. Nightingale’s works, Notes on Hospitals (1859); Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artisans of England (1860); Introductory Notes on Lying-In Institutions (1871) are focussed upon illustrating her …

The Varieties Of Spiritual States Triggered By Sex: A Systematic Review Of The Empirical Literature, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This systematic review integrates the empirical evidence of spiritual experiences triggered by sexual activity, including studies by 10 authors. Despite venerable sexual meditative traditions of embodied spiritual practices, such as Hindu Tantra, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Taoism, empirical studies of sexual spiritual experiences are in their infancy. This review presents the range of sexual altered states experiences identified to date and how they qualify as spiritual experiences phenomenologically and in terms of their lifechanging effects. Seventeen distinct sexual-spiritual states have been identified across authors, with 4 others identified at significant levels in qualitative studies by individual authors. As an emergent area …

"It Will Help Him Wonderfully": Placebo And Meaning Responses In Early Medieval English Medicine, Rebecca Brackmann

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

Many early English medical remedies have been dismissed, even by sympathetic scholars, as “mere placebo,” with the implication that therapeutic benefits to the patient, if any, are thereby insignificant. My article challenges such dismissals of placebo responses in Old English medicine. I draw on current research demonstrating that in certain conditions, a placebo effect, or “meaning response” (to use Daniel Moerman’s term), can have striking success in bringing about healing. I describe contemporary clinical practices shown to enhance patient responses to pharmaceutical treatments both inert and active, and demonstrate that these strategies are also visible in early English medical practice. …

Understanding The Role Of Race In American Medicine, Fariel C. A. Lamountain

Honors Theses

Long running inequity in health care and outcomes in the United States stem from failure to acknowledge the underlying role of the Transatlantic slave trade as it manifests in all facets of American society and commerce. This paper focuses specifically on the American medical system and its foundations to understand the precursors to generational trends in lack of access to healthcare and poor health for Black communities. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to understand the racist cycle of inequity, highlighting the history and origins of racism in American medicine, personal accounts and statistical evidence of inequity, and community and …

Investigating A Frisian Genetic Mutation, Sarah Moss

The Voice

No abstract provided.

Syllabus Development Of A Mindful Exploration Of Contemplative Chanting Course, Edwin Ebinger

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Contemplative chanting has a long history across a broad cross section of the world’s civilizations. However, with the modern American acceptance and expansion of Eastern-based contemplative practices, chanting has not at present firmly established itself. Within this context, further investigation into the physiological and neurological effects of chanting, the various ritualistic traditions and purported transformational effects of chanting, and the role of chanting within the modern American mindfulness movement is warranted. To this end, a syllabus for graduate level study is developed herein based upon a literature review of the existing English-language discourse, the Lesley University Mindfulness Studies program design, …

The Varieties Of Spiritual States Triggered By Sex: A Systematic Review Of The Empirical Literature, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This systematic review integrates the empirical evidence of spiritual experiences triggered by sexual activity, including studies by 10 authors. Despite venerable sexual meditative traditions of embodied spiritual practices, such as Hindu Tantra, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Taoism, empirical studies of sexual spiritual experiences are in their infancy. This review presents the range of sexual altered states experiences identified to date and how they qualify as spiritual experiences phenomenologically and in terms of their lifechanging effects. Seventeen distinct sexual-spiritual states have been identified across authors, with 4 others identified at significant levels in qualitative studies by individual authors. As an emergent area …

Unthinkable Conditions: Affect And Environment In Romanticism And Speculative Fiction, Amelia Z. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unthinkable Conditions bridges two literary periods and two theoretical modes in order to illustrate important parallels between historical periods and the writers who attempted to approach the changing environmental conditions of their respective eras. Each chapter names and theorizes a unique form of feeling which then serves as a framework for eco-affective analysis, drawing from existing studies in the environmental humanities and in studies of affect in order to construct a hybrid theoretical model which more fully accounts for the work of the writer treated in each chapter. The central claim of this dissertation is that vital affective innovations accompany …

Racial And Socioeconomic Disparities Influencing Obesity Amongst Middle-Aged Women, Morgan Woods

Master of Science in Integrative Biology Theses

Many studies have examined the effects of racial and socioeconomic differences on health-related disparities involving obesity but, few have examined the mental and physical well-being intersection. Obesity is a disease that affects many Americans and has become an epidemic affecting the American population. Obesity, especially morbid obesity, is a risk factor for many other obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and more. Using the 2018 Healthcare Avoidance Study, differences were found between two racial groups, Caucasian and African-American women. Race was found as a significant factor for both level of physical activity and ideal body image perception

Positron Emission Tomography From 1930 To 1990: The Epistemology And Process Of Scientific Instrumentation, Rick Shang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a groundbreaking detection system that, among many other applications, enabled neuroscience researchers to detect and image physiological changes in the brain associated with cognitive operations as subjects perform a task. This technology helped researchers learn to explore the physiological basis of human cognition in new ways and was the immediate forerunner of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a technology that continues to dominate the neurosciences. PET was also the founding invention of a new field of cognitive science: human functional neuroimaging. Indeed, some would say that PET encouraged a particular way of understanding the brain …

Positron Emission Tomography From 1930 To 1990: The Epistemology And Process Of Scientific Instrumentation, Rick Shang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a groundbreaking detection system that, among many other applications, enabled neuroscience researchers to detect and image physiological changes in the brain associated with cognitive operations as subjects perform a task. This technology helped researchers learn to explore the physiological basis of human cognition in new ways and was the immediate forerunner of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a technology that continues to dominate the neurosciences. PET was also the founding invention of a new field of cognitive science: human functional neuroimaging. Indeed, some would say that PET encouraged a particular way of understanding the brain …

Who Is A Wise Person? Zhuangzi And Epistemological Discussions Of Wisdom, Shane Ryan, Karyn Lai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay articulates the contribution that the Zhuangzi can make to contemporary epistemological discussions of wisdom. It suggests that wisdom in the Zhuangzi involves, in part, correctly distinguishing the "heavenly" (or the naturally given) from human artifice. It is important for humanity to understand naturally given conditions (e.g., seasons, climate, forces, mortality) to grasp what is within, and what beyond, our initiatives. To enable this, we need to be openly engaged with the world, rather than approach it with rigid convictions about outcomes or goals. We characterize such openness and readiness to engage as an attitude, that of "epistemic humility." …

Vulnerability: Sensation And Subjectivity In The Late Victorian Novel, Michael Shelichach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Vulnerability: Sensation and Subjectivity in the Late Victorian Novel” explores how developments in the science of psychology in the second half of the nineteenth century destabilized the genre of literary realism in Britain. Prominent mid-Victorian psychologists theorized a subject with a highly impressionable brain and nervous system. This new understanding of the mind’s potential vulnerability to external influence impelled contemporary novelists to contemplate the extent to which subjective interiority could be altered by the environment. Through close readings of canonical realist novels like Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone …

Zoomorphic Extended Body, Nicholas Tamas

Masters Theses

My thesis work is built around emerging technologies within the fields of prosthetic and robotics. The end result is a speculative proposal with how to expand the potential modes of use with these emerging technologies to extend and build upon their potential uses.

The “Age Of Rock” Versus The “Rock Of Ages”: Naturalism, Social Darwinism, And Fundamentalism In The Scopes Monkey Trial, Bessie Blackburn

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Greek mythology once predominated the highest forms of culture known to man. Myths of how fire came to be in the hands of humans, or how the peacock got its spotted feathers were beloved cultural tales of origins.[1] With the decline of the ancient cultures, new ones blossomed in their place. However, the question of origin has remained a pertinent, central question of each culture, no matter how modern. The question of origin dictates who a person believes himself to be, where he believes himself to be going, and what he believes himself to be doing. The question of …

Explaining Reproductive Health Disparities: Violence In The “Colorblind” Institution Of Medicine, Chineze Osakwe

Honors Scholar Theses

Medical policies have resulted in violence that has a formal role in regulating the reproductive rights of women of African descent in the United States from the Jim Crow era (circa 1965) to present day (2021), resulting in significantly racialized reproductive health disparities regardless of social or economic influences. This thesis explores why reproductive violence against African-American women persists, regardless of women’s own class and educational background. I have focused on the potential impact of two structural components that I hypothesized contributed to the perpetuation of reproductive violence against Black women and persistent health disparities. The two factors explored in …

Disabled Epistemologies: Failures Of Knowledge And Care In Shakespeares's Merchant Of Venice And Othello, Amie Elisabeth Wambach

Theses and Dissertations

The presence of disabled characters like blind Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice and epileptic Othello are handy physical metaphors for the failures of epistemology that occur in both plays. Disability is often construed as a sort of saboteur of knowledge—disability of all kinds inhibiting the ability to perceive the world as an abled person would. But disability also produces a new, necessary sort of knowledge in order to survive and thrive in an unaccommodating world. A disabled epistemology suggests that knowing is contingent on individual, specific experience of the world. Tied to this issue of disabled epistemology is the …

Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper compares the illuminations in two medieval apocalypses, the Cloisters Apocalypse and Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, to inspect their similar constructions of female sexuality, motherhood, and monstrosity. It first analyzes the monstrosity of female sexual organs found in Hildegard’s portrayal of the Church and the Mother of the Antichrist. The paper then goes on to consider the uncanny slippage between images of birth and death in the Cloisters’s depiction of John and the Woman of Revelation 12. Ultimately, the paper not only explores the monstrosity of female bodies in apocalyptic manuscripts, but also concludes that medieval women’s …

Synthesis, Gari Eberly

Honors Theses

Synthesis is a scientifically-aware collection of poetry that explores how gender relations and race amalgamate to impact the maturation of an individual. Employing both sonnet and computer code, I reflect on my experiences as a mixed-raced girl growing up in central Pennsylvania, my growth through several romantic relationships, and how I currently navigate male-dominated spaces as a woman.

For the past four years, I have sought to bridge the gap between my two academic commitments: poetry and science. Both poetry and science exist as a means to ask and answer questions about the messy interactions that shape personalities and relations …

Because The Nature Of Nature Is Fractal: The Liberatory Potential Of A Fractal Epistemology, Katthe P. Wolf

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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