Digital Commons Network^™

Pots, Pans, And Politics: Feasting In Early Horizon Nepeña, Peru, Kenneth Edward Sutherland

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores Early Horizon (900 – 200 BCE) feasting practices visible through the pottery assemblage at three archaeological complexes in the lower Nepeña Valley, north-central coast of Peru. Ceramic vessels were used for production, transportation, and storage of foods consumed for daily subsistence and during feasting events at the settlement of Caylán, a large town or city interpreted as the primary center of a multi-tiered polity. Secondary settlements at Samanco, a small coastal town, and Huambacho, an elite ceremonial center, indicate the complexity of this polity. Analysis of ceramic rim sherds reveals the types of vessels used at these …

A Narrative Of A Teacher's Perspective Of Over-Age Students Who Are Out-Of-Grade In The Middle School Classroom, Melissa J. Porter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research sought to understand the impact on the middle school classroom environment of over-age students who are out-of-grade. A qualitative study utilizing a narrative lens examined the stories of the lived experiences of the teachers of these students; a social constructivism theoretical approach explored the teaching and best practices in their classrooms. These teachers provided an insight into the complexity of teaching and gave voice to managing a classroom where emotionally and physically mature students often pose a significant challenge to the classroom environment; moreover, their positive influence on the teaching space in which they inhabit also was explored …

The Fooding Of Narrative In Contemporary Women's Transnational Fiction, Stacey Marie Amo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Fooding of Narrative in Contemporary Women’s Transnational Fiction examines how foodstuffs are strategically deployed in recent fiction about migration to the United States. The novels examined, all set in the period following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, depict the experience of resettlement from a diverse set of postcolonial sites: Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, and India. The Fooding of Narrative argues that food is deployed as a structuring trope and acquires narrative significance in articulating the profound sense of identity crisis that frequently accompanies the immigration experience. By focusing on food’s narrative significance in a broad …

A Mixed Methods Analysis Of School- And Student-Level Effects: Mathematics Course Completion And Achievement Beyond Algebra 2 Among Mexican American Female High School Students, Lester Archer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the United States, as the Hispanic population continues to grow, persistently low mathematics achievement among Mexican Americans continues to exist, particularly among girls. Low mathematics achievement places this group in a disadvantaged position. As such, a multistage mixed method study was implemented to investigate possible factors associated with mathematics achievement and the probability of taking mathematics courses beyond Algebra 2 among Mexican American female high school students. The Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) database provided the quantitative sample (n = 710) of respondents who self-identified as Mexican American, female, and had a math IRT score. A parallel sample (n = …

Local Embeddedness Matters: A Study Of Hip-Hop Artists' Interaction With Their Local Community, Castel Vette Sweet

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation study is an exploration of hip hop and rap artists’ embeddedness in local communities, and their interpretation of the connectedness between their work and their communities. I explore the influence of place and space in the identity development of artists, and how artist use those identities to guide their interactions with their local community. I also investigate the significance of artists’ interactions and relationship in the cultivation of social and cultural capital. In contrast to previous scholarship emphasising the negative influence rap and hip-hop artists have on their communities, I utilize in-depth interviews with artists to examine the …

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics Of Victorian Education Reform, Vicki Jean Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics of Victorian Education Reform arose from my observation that, historically speaking, Anglo-American schools have always been “in crisis.” I argue that the crisis of the “failing school” is a rhetorical problem rather than an economic problem as most scholarship suggests. Much like the cultural myth of “the One True Love,” education reform debates tend to position the school as an institution that can rescue the nation from all perceived social ills. Not only is this unrealistic, the patterns of language are inconsistent as ideas about the purpose of school are translated into policy. This causes further …

The White Bicycle: Performance, Installation Art, And Activism In Ghost Bike Memorials, Nicole Marie Costantini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project I examine the performative nature of the ghost bike memorial. Ghost bikes, flat-white painted immobile bicycles created by cycling communities and loved ones of victims, are installed roadside to mark the locations of cycling related deaths. Using critical performance ethnography and critical-cultural analysis as methods, I analyze how the ghost bike performs as an artifact of mourning and inspires co-incident performances of grief, activism, and community building and maintenance. As a memorial object used worldwide to represent cycling culture, the ghost bike acts as a social network link that connects a multitude of diverse cycling communities. I …

Post-Feminism For Children: Feminism ‘Repackaged’ In The Bratz Films, Sarah Anna Becker, Danielle Thomas, Michael R. Cope

Faculty Publications

After their release in 2001, Bratz dolls carved into Barbie’s previously monopolistic share of teen doll sales. Amidst their growing popularity, cultural critics expressed a host of concerns about Bratz dolls, especially over how they sexualize youth, but the line grew to include a host of products like costumes, makeup kits, games, books, clothing, and movies. It also inspired new, similar doll lines from other toy companies. In this article, we situate the Bratz’s popularity in a specific cultural moment tied to the history of modern feminism. We use a content analysis of the Bratz movie series to explore the …

“Ain’T He A Beauty”: Black Queer Aesthetics And Disidentification In American Literature And Film, Rory Tolbert Boothe

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Influence Of The Mississippi River On Pseudo-Nitzschia Spp. Abundance And Toxicity In Louisiana Coastal Waters, Sibel Bargu, Melissa M. Baustian, Nancy N. Rabalais, Ross Del Rio, Benjamin Von Korff, R. Eugene Turner

Faculty Publications

The presence of domoic acid (DA) toxin from multiple species of Pseudo-nitzschia is a concern in the highly productive food webs of the northern 1,* 2,3 2 1 1,4 1 1 2 3 4 Gulf of Mexico. We documented the Pseudo-­nitzschia presence, abundance, blooms, and toxicity over 3 years along a transect ∼100 km west of the Mississippi River Delta on the continental shelf. Pseudo-nitzschia were present throughout the year and occurred in high abundances (>10 cells l ) in the early spring months during high Mississippi River (MSR) flow (∼20,000 m s ) but were most abundant ( …

Does Corticosterone Regulate The Onset Of Breeding In Free-Living Birds?: The Cort-Flexibility Hypothesis And Six Potential Mechanisms For Priming Corticosteroid Function, Christine R. Lattin, Creagh W. Breuner, L. Michael Romero

Faculty Publications

© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc. For many avian species, the decision to initiate breeding is based on information from a variety of environmental cues, including photoperiod, temperature, food availability, and social interactions. There is evidence that the hormone corticosterone may be involved in delaying the onset of breeding in cases where supplemental cues, such as low food availability and inclement weather, indicate that the environment is not suitable. However, not all studies have found the expected relationships between breeding delays and corticosterone titers. In this review, we present the hypothesis that corticosterone physiology mediates flexibility in breeding initiation (the …

Syntheses And Cellular Investigations Of Di-Aspartate And Aspartate-Lysine Chlorin E6 Conjugates, R. G.Waruna Jinadasa, Zehua Zhou, M. Graça H. Vicente, Kevin M. Smith

Faculty Publications

© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016. Chlorin e6 is a tricarboxylic acid degradation product of chlorophyll a. Four chlorin e6 bis(amino acid) conjugates were regioselectively synthesized bearing two aspartate conjugates in the 131,173- and 152,173-positions, or at the 131,152via an ethylene diamine linker. One additional conjugate bearing two different amino acids, lysine at 131via an ethylene diamine linker and an aspartate at 152via a β-alanine linker was also synthesized. The cytotoxicity and uptake of four di(amino acid) chlorin e6 conjugates were investigated in human HEp2 cells, and compared with chlorin e6. The most cytotoxic and most taken up conjugates …

Faculty Senate Newsletter, January 2016, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: A favorite adage among philanthropically minded people holds that “it’s the people who matter,” that other concerns, whether politics or organizational structure or financing, may re-route the road to success or failure but that character and devotion ultimately determine outcomes. The notion that anyone with “heart” may succeed anywhere and under any circumstances may have a sentimental appeal, but even zeal and commitment must work in or against some sort of structure. Paradoxically, Louisiana decision-makers like the idea that clever people, especially youngsters, can break down any barrier even at the same time that they also adore …

Abstract Book: Papers And Posters, Conference Of Latin Americanist Geographers, New Orleans, January 3-5, 2017, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Life And Limb: Perspectives On The American Civil War, Brian Craig Miller

Civil War Book Review

Collecting the Voices of the Living and the Dead

In the summer of 1862, Katherine Prescott Wormeley, while working as a nurse, wrote a letter to her mother, in which she believed that no one could understand the contours of war “until they see this black side of it." Yet, in the last deca....

Eating In The Side Room: Food, Archaeology, And African American Identity, Rachel A. Snell

Civil War Book Review

Diet, Cuisine, and the Creation of African-American Identity

Through the lens of food, Mark S. Warner’s Eating in the Side Room: Food, Archaeology, and African American Identity demonstrates the influence of mass consumer culture on African-American diets and the role played by food....

Control, Care, And Stress: Parenting's Effect On Child Internalizing Symptoms, Maysa Kaskas

LSU Master's Theses

Theoretical models of childhood psychopathology suggest that the parent-child relationship serves an influential role in the development and maintenance of internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression. However, there is a great deal of inconsistency in the research literature on the predictive power of parenting variables such as parental control and parental care. Furthermore, these parenting variables are often poorly defined and inconsistently operationalized across studies, hampering interpretation of results and limiting conclusions on the strength of the effect. Additionally, few studies have examined the role of parenting with careful attention to moderators. In order to investigate these problems, 189 …

Mobile Homes: Class, Space And Race In Idealized Landscapes Of Home, Annemarie Michele Galeucia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the connections between public perceptions and regulation of mobile homes, and how this connection in turn represents and regulates the bodies residing within them. Applying various qualitative methods in participant and media research, I explored the material and social/symbolic aspects of mobile homes in and around East Baton Rouge Parish, LA, as well as media (primarily news) discussing mobile homes across the United States. I sought to explore these in relation to the normative and ideal expressions and image of the American home and its relationship to idealized American landscapes. Dialectics of mobility/rootedness and physical and social …

Glass Ceilings And Bottomless Floors: Black Women's Experiences In Education Reform Leadership, Alicia Danielle Nance

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent social commentary, articles, and research studies are increasingly discussing the ways in which urban education reform, which is overwhelmingly white and female, is failing communities of color in the United States by continuing to reify systems of oppression and inequity. As the faces of urban public school students in the United States become more African American and Latino, the faces of leadership in the U.S.’s urban schools should begin to reflect similar demographic changes. This study, to address the current gap in research literature, critically examines the narratives of Black women educational leaders who serve students in a mid-sized …

(Re)Writing History In Maryse Condé, Femi Euba, And Reinaldo Arenas, Lázara Bolton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This comparative study asserts the centrality of spirituality to literature that explores life in the African Diaspora. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of spirituality both to the authors and to the lives of their characters in the novels Victoire, les saveurs et les mots (2006) by the Guadeloupian author Maryse Condé, Camwood at Crossroads (2007) by Nigerian author Femi Euba, and El color del verano (1991) by Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. A close reading of the three novels shows that they are representative of autohistoría literary works, which represent the spirituality of the writer, as well as the people written …

Necessary Medicine: Rethinking Health Communication At Burning Man, Raquel Irene Polanco

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study turns to the annual Burning Man Festival held in Black Rock City, Nevada as a site of cultural performance where participants negotiate health meanings. I adopt a culture-centered approach to health communication and utilize critical performance ethnography and narrative performativity as methodological and theoretical frameworks to investigate the specific communication practices that bring about health meanings at the festival. Analysis revealed the significance of everyday life practices performed through narrative for understanding how Burning Man participants understand, reinforce, and counter various health meanings with implications for the field of health communication and performance studies.

Synthesis Of Functional Polypeptides And Development Of New Synthetic Strategies Toward Polypeptides, Jinbao Cao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this work is to develop a new synthetic strategy for synthesizing advanced functional polypeptides or polypeptides in general. Polypeptides are amino acids based polymers with appealing properties for different applications. One of the key challenges in polypeptide research is the synthesis of functional polypeptides under mild conditions. We developed a system based on ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of N-thiocarboxyanhydrosulfides (NTAs) to synthesize polypeptides with wide range of molecular weights under mild conditions. Owing to NTAs’ good stability, our system serves as an excellent alternative to the traditional ROP of N-carboxyanhydrides (NCA). In Chapter 1, the fundamental knowledge and …

The Instruction Of Eros: A Content Analysis Of Sex Education Texts, Nicholas Ensley Mitchell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a directed content analysis that employs a memetic framework done in order to determine what discourses are evident in, how diversity is represented in, and how intersectionality is represented in two sex education texts, and to compare the relevant frequencies. Theories from the dominant schools of thought concerning sex education and sexuality are enumerated, compared, and contrasted. A historiography of sex education in the United States is provided to establish context for the sampled texts. A explanation of the content analysis process in general and the methodology specifically used in this study is discussed followed by the …

After Images: Using Augusto Boal's Image Theatre To Balance Artistry, Analysis, And Activism In The Performance Composition Process, Bonny Leah Mcdonald

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I describe several performance experiments in which I applied Brazilian theatre artist Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre method to mobilize a composition process that is artistically exciting, politically relevant, and pedagogically engaging. Over the span of about seven years I used Image Theatre as the bedrock of my artistic practice as a director of social justice themed works for the stage. I show how using Image Theatre as a tool for performance composition can balance artistry (theatrical practice), analysis (cultural studies), and activism (collaborative struggles toward justice). To do so, I review relevant literature on Boal and Image …

Roots, Rock And Public Relations: A Study Of The U.S. Government’S Use Of Music As A Tactic In Its Cultural Diplomacy Efforts, Katherine Sartain

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Motivations For Participation In Knitting Among Young Women, Casey R. Stannard, Eulanda A. Sanders

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Language Processing And The Artificial Mind: Teaching Code Literacy In The Humanities, Jerry Scott Weltman

LSU Master's Theses

Humanities majors often find themselves in jobs where they either manage programmers or work with them in close collaboration. These interactions often pose difficulties because specialists in literature, history, philosophy, and so on are not usually "code literate." They do not understand what tasks computers are best suited to, or how programmers solve problems. Learning code literacy would be a great benefit to humanities majors, but the traditional computer science curriculum is heavily math oriented, and students outside of science and technology majors are often math averse. Yet they are often interested in language, linguistics, and science fiction. This thesis …

Postsouthern Melancholia: Revising The Region In The Twenty-First Century, Matthew Dischinger

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Postsouthern Melancholia offers a new way of conceptualizing the elusive concept of melancholia through contemporary fiction, particularly fiction of or about the American South. Critics have long discussed national literature through the lens of melancholia: an unceasing attachment to a lost object or ideal that a subject or culture internalizes. My project positions melancholia as a literary strategy—one that contemporary southern fiction frequently contests and critiques. I read fiction that has been called “postsouthern,” a term applied to texts that reassess the bedrock concepts of southern literature such as community, storytelling, and sense of place. While much scholarship has focused …

Musicking New Orleans Street Musicians: A Methodology For Writing About Music, Savannah Cadi Rose Ganster

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project argues for the use of performative writing as a methodology for writing about musical performances. An analysis of recent scholarship on music and musical performances written by performance studies scholars supports the use of performative writing in texts that address musical performances. In order to further this methodological claim, this study uses performative writing to document both historical and present day accounts of musical performances of street musicians in New Orleans. Utilizing Foucault’s theories on and Roach’s model of genealogy, Bruner’s notion of reflexive ethnography, and Small’s concept of musicking, I theorize, on a meta-methodological level, that performative …

An Assessment Of Values Concerning Luxury Brand Purchase Intention: A Cross-Culture Comparison, Tagreed Saleh Abalkhail

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the last few decades, the global consumption of luxury brands has rapidly ýincreased. ýThere are many internal and external factors that motivate consumers to buy a ýluxury brand. ýAlthough there is some evidence of the impact of functional, social, and ýindividual values on ýluxury purchase intention, little has been done to compare cultures in ýterms of these values, ýespecially in the Middle East. Thus, the purpose of this research ýwas to compare Western and ýMiddle Eastern culture (individualism and collectivism) ýregarding the consumers’ intention to purchase a luxury brand in terms of ýthree main ývalues (functional, social and individual), …