Digital Commons Network^™

Eight Is Not Enough: A Historical, Cultural, And Philosophical Analysis Of The Flash Mob, Rebecca Walker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In 2003, writer and cultural critic Bill Wasik stunned the world with his newest experiment, the MOB Project, which flooded the streets of New York City with strange performances quickly labeled “flash mobs” by participants and local media. With the goal of understanding the communicative purpose and function of these new performance events, this project analyzes the flash mob through the lenses of performance studies, rhetorical studies, cultural studies, and continental philosophy. Drawing from genealogical research, rhetorical analyses, and critical philosophy, I argue the flash mob is a new form of performance serving as a locus of community, creativity, and …

Birth Matters: Discourses Of Childbirth In Contemporary American Culture, Jennifer Ellis West

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I use a rhetorical-cultural approach to examine the multiple and often-contradictory messages circulating in contemporary American culture about the event of childbirth. Though many feminist scholars have shown how professional obstetrics’ view of physiological birth shapes medical practice and women’s experiences in hospitals, few have asked what the American public is learning about birth outside of the hospital, or why that knowledge might matter. In order to fill that gap, I trace a dominant narrative that positions institutionalized biomedical knowledge and technology as the exclusive producers of health and safety for birthing women and their babies in …

An Aloha State Of Mind: Performing Hawaiian Cultural Identities, Kirsten E. Ogden

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

There are many Hawaiian identities currently in effect. This dissertation explores several representative and contested Hawaiian identities, and how these identities develop through key performances, plays, and other representational practices by Hawaiians and by Locals. Due to its unique situation as one of only two U.S. states formerly with its own government, and as one of only two U.S. states not connected to the main land-mass of the United States, Hawaiian identity is complicated by multiple factors: sanitized historical constructions, sovereignty, intermingling ethnic identities, tourism, and reclaimed cultural practices. Additionally, Hawaiians as a native people hold a unique place in …

The Role Of Ad-36 And Its E4orf-1 Protein In Modulating Glycemic Control, Emily Jane Dhurandhar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Current treatment strategies for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) include a range of anti-diabetic drugs, supplemented by lifestyle modifications to reduce dietary fat intake and body fat. However, for their anti-diabetic action, most drugs recruit insulin signaling pathways, which are already impaired in T2DM. Also, compliance and success in achieving sustained improvements in diet or obesity over the long term is marginal. Therefore, an agent that improves diabetes independent of insulin signaling or lifestyle changes may be highly useful. Human adenovirus Ad36 offers such a model. Ad36 improves glycemic control in chow-fed mice or rats and attenuates diabetes and hepatic …

When The Saints Go Marching In: An Ethnography Of Volunteer Tourism In Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Jennifer Lea Erdely

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This original study examines a new phenomenon in New Orleans tourism. Since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August 2005, droves of individuals and groups have come to New Orleans to help rebuild the city. Through conducting fifty interviews with these individuals from 2008-2009, the author traces the steps of volunteer tourists in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. This study investigates the experiences of volunteer tourists. Additionally, the author immersed herself with volunteer tourism groups to experience volunteering and the groups herself. Through careful inspection of original interviews with volunteer tourists, the author discovers how the volunteer tourists contribute to the city …

The Hegemony Of Language - Literary Writing And The Quest For Subjectivity In The Works Of Michel De Montaigne And Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, Carla Bota Vance

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Starting from the premise that one’s identity is first and foremost construed in language, this dissertation argues that language is the fundamental site of resistance for writers who define themselves through linguistic difference. Recognizing also that language and literary production frequently fall under the control of complex authorities, this thesis examines literature as a site where confrontation is played out aesthetically. Literary writing, in other words, is exposed as a point of intersection between writers whose language draws its sources from a peripheral location and the centers of authority that regulate and dictate what is accepted as artistically and culturally …

In The Ruins Of Zine Pedagogy: A Narrative Study Of Teaching With Zines, Karin H. Degravelles

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study considers the educational significance of zines—small circulation, self-published magazines—by asking how educators who teach with zines encounter and negotiate zine pedagogy. Though the literature on zines and teaching describes many potential benefits, it also describes contradictions and failures, with some researchers even going so far as to claim that “zines do not belong in classrooms” (Guzzetti, Elliott, & Welsch, 2010, p. 71). Through this dissertation, I investigate and complicate these claims by examining the stories and perspectives of teacher/zinesters—educators who teach or have taught with zines in a classroom setting. The project is situated within theories of the …

Modern Myth In Performance: Claiming Identity Through A Reading Of Fantasy Withcraft, Jessica Satterwhite Gray

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I create a Wiccan dramaturgical lens to analyze three key fantasy sites: The Wizard of Oz film and stage adaptations (especially the Broadway musical Wicked), The Chronicles of Narnia film and theatrical adaptations, and the Harry Potter films and paratheatrical adaptations. These three fantasy stories have significant cultural impact and strong images of folkloric witches. My alternative reading shows how a subgroup can appropriate popular images for their own identity formation. I will analyze how signs, themes, and narrative tropes that otherwise seem ancillary or even anti-witch become highlighted and privileged, creating a different but equally legitimate …

Transatlantic Baggage: Expatriate Paris, Modernism, And The Apprenticeship Of Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Blair Bonds

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Transatlantic Baggage: Expatriate Paris, Modernism, and the Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway” argues that Hemingway’s expatriation and apprenticeship in modernist Paris from 1921-1925 provided an important impetus for his explorations in gender alterity. The project focuses on a critical-biographical rethinking of Hemingway’s literary development, integrating previous Hemingway biography and gender studies scholarship with new revelations from the manuscript of the forthcoming first two volumes of the Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway. An updated study of the author’s literary formation is long overdue; Charles Fenton’s The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years (1954), for example, has served for …

Writing William Burroughs, Performing The Archive, John Lebret

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1958 and 1972, author William S. Burroughs undertook a series of radical experiments with alternative compositional modes based on the aleatory form of the Cut-up. Burroughs sold the entirety of his work from the period, assembled into an archive, to a collector in 1972. This study uses performative writing to document a year of archival research in Burroughs' collection, currently housed by The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. Melding Bakhtin's theories of the chronotope and the grotesque body with creative writing and experimental modes of scholarly …

Mothers’ Speech To Infants With And Without Down Syndrome, Christina M. Gary

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Development And Application Of A Pexophagy Sensor In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Jamie Dolezal

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Olaudah Equiano, Autobiography, And Ideas Of Culture, Sarah Brophy

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

In Sickness And In Health: Experiencing Medical Spaces In Mbarara (Uganda), Kara E. Miller

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis is a contribution to cross-cultural studies on health and medicine explored through the material and symbolic facets of health care in a region of Southwest Uganda. Research conducted in the healing spaces of Mbarara reflects traditions in the anthropology of the body and brings a lived perspective to conditions of sickness and wellness. By tracing the biographies of treatment spaces, the medical landscape is evaluated in terms of participants’ perceptions, convictions, and knowledge sets. Phenomenological methodology is employed in this exploration of ill states and curative places, which braids concepts and academic work in the areas of medicine, …

Betties And Broads: A Qualitative Examination Of The Maiden And Whore Archetypes In "The Golden Girls," "Designing Women," And "Sex And The City", Crystal Jackson

LSU Master's Theses

This study examined the maiden and whore characters in “The Golden Girls,” “Designing Women,” and “Sex and the City.” Using a textual analysis and discourse analysis approach, I examined the two characters comparing them to the definitions of archetype and stereotype provided by Jungian theory and feminist film theory. I analyzed ten randomly selected episodes from the second season excluding both the premier and the finale. Three of the research questions were rooted in central ideas found in the shows: outward appearance, language and conversation, and sexual relationships. The last research question determined whether or not the characters were archetypes …

Effect Of Management Awareness Of Safety Climate Concept On Organizational Safety Climate, Christopher Michael Holzner

LSU Master's Theses

Safety research and practice have shifted focus away from accident rates and accident causal information to a more proactive approach that may predict organizational safety trends. This proactive approach involves the concept of an organizational safety culture and the use of surveys to measure organizational safety climate or „snapshot‟ of the organizational safety culture. Surveys were administered to line workers, supervisors, and managers at a modular home manufacturing company before and after safety climate information was presented to supervisors and managers in an attempt to measure the effect of the supervisors‟ and managers‟ increased awareness of the factors that define …

The Influences Of Microbial Diversity On Carbonate Geochemistry Across A Transition From Fresh To Saline Water In The Edwards Aquifer, Texas, Cassie Jo Gray

LSU Master's Theses

Microbially-mediated karstification through the production of metabolic byproducts has been well-documented in cave environments, but less is known about deep karstic settings. This research aimed to distinguish between microbial and geochemical influences on carbonate dissolution in the Edwards Aquifer, a prolific karst aquifer in central Texas, specifically from a transect of six wells across a transition from fresh to saline water in New Braunfels. For the first time, a portion of the aquifer’s bacterial diversity was examined from molecular 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses, which revealed that Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Betaproteobacteria dominated the aquifer, with rare Bacteroidetes, Nitrospirae, and Firmicutes …

Macular Pigment Optical Density During Pregnancy And Its Relationship To The Diet, Alicia Page

LSU Master's Theses

Women, compared to men, are at higher risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. The accumulation of dietary carotenoids, lutein (L) and zeaxanthin (Z) within the macula make up macular pigment and provide important protection to the retina. Macular pigment optical density (MPOD) gives a measure of macula pigment density. MPOD has been shown to be influenced by fruit and vegetable L and Z and docosahexanoic acid (DHA, 22:6n-3), cold water marine fish being the dietary source. A high MPOD may protect against AMD. Intake of DHA by women is low (40-120 mg/d) …

Effects Of Serum Addition To Culture Medium On Gene Expression In Day-7 And Day-14 Bovine Embryos, Jaime Manuel Angulo Campos

LSU Master's Theses

The addition of serum to embryo culture media may alter gene expression and trigger development of Large Offspring Syndrome. The objectives of this study were to determine gene expression levels in embryos cultured in the absence or presence of 5% calf serum and compare these expression patterns to in vivo derived embryos (IVD), and to determine the effects of serum on the length of day-14 embryos. Abattoir derived oocytes were fertilized and cultured in mSOFaa. At 72 hours post-insemination (hpi), embryos were randomly allocated into two treatments: mSOFaa without and with 5% calf serum. Embryos were then cultured to 168 …

Edaphic And Vegetative Controls On Mercury Cycling In Oligohaline Wetlands, Jonathan M. Willis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With the expansion of the human population and associated industries there is a concomitant increase in both resource utilization and the production of waste and deleterious by-products. Mercury is a naturally-occurring toxic metal with a complicated and unique biogeochemical cycle, and is often a contaminant of ecotoxicological concern in unindustrialized aquatic habitats. The research described herein was designed to elucidate multiple aspects regarding the behavior of mercury in oligohaline wetland habitats, particularly with respect to edaphic and vegetative effects, through a monitoring and characterization study as well as a series of manipulative experiments. The observational study, conducted in the wetlands …

Designing Irishness: Ethnicity, Heritage, And Imagined Connection To Place Through Language, Thomas James Sullivan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In North America, those who are descended from "old world" immigrant groups—for example Germans, Greeks, Italians, Poles, and Irish—are thought to be assimilated or acculturated into the mainstream American culture. Since the late 1970s, however, sociologists have observed how a number of white ethnics, particularly those descended from third- and fourth-generation (and beyond) immigrants, continue to maintain a link to an ethnic group. This phenomenon—labeled symbolic or optional ethnicity—is now seen as a latter-stage development in the larger process of assimilation and ethnic-group identification. In this dissertation I show how the meaning of Irish identity has evolved in North America …

Paths Of Most Resistance: Navigating The Culture Industry In William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Delmore Schwartz, And Eudora Welty, Jason Dupuy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how four modernist writers of the 1930s and 1940s—William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Delmore Schwartz, and Eudora Welty—used their works to present ways to resist and navigate what they present as the frequently reductive worldview offered by the culture industry. Faulkner tends to show the culture industry as selling easy answers that focus on the end result, which allows his characters to approach the culture industry with a sense of fatalism. To resist this, Faulkner stresses a step-by-step, complex dialectical understanding of the culture industry, one that shows the fissures in its seemingly straightforward narratives and allows the …

The Power Struggle Between Americans And Creoles In The First Half Of The Nineteenth Century And Its Influence On The Architecture Of New Orleans, Sylvia Starns Mince

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the first half of the nineteenth century the house types of the landscape and the footprint of New Orleans changed dramatically. Many of the changes can be attributed to the influx of the refugees from Saint Domingue and the Americans who immigrated from the North and the East Coast of the United States. Both sets of influxes reflect the impact of these two immigrant groups on the previously existing power structures in economics, politics, and society of the city. While the refugees from Saint Domingue more or less assimilated into the city, and in doing so, achieved power over …

Regional Narratives, Hidden Maps, And Storied Places: Cultural Cartographies Of The Cariri Region, Northeast Brazil, Jorn Seemann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, maps and mappings have gained increasing attention in cultural-geographic studies. However, little has been written about how to employ cartographic products and processes as research methodologies in practice. In this dissertation I present four different qualitative mapping strategies that I label cultural cartographies and that aim to critically investigate the relations between geographical knowledge and representation, society and cartography, culture and maps. A region in Northeast Brazil, the Cariri in the state of Ceará, was selected as the space to test these strategies and to show how maps (both historic and contemporary and in their metaphorical sense) …

The Dialogism Of Self And Other In Contemporary American Drama, Shih-Yi Huang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work is interdisciplinary in orientation and brings together American theatre (and culture) and contemporary ethical philosophy. I am introducing the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas and his theory of Self and Other to an analysis of contemporary American drama—a mode of approach that is new to the discipline of theatre studies. Lévinas’s insights are particularly relevant to the concerns of the 21st century and how we might rethink relationships and values. My work looks at contemporary American plays in terms of nationalism, gender politics, racial dynamics and ecological issues. I contend that these playwrights are attempting to go beyond conventional …

Genetic And Cytological Investigation Of Nucleostemin-1 In Drosophila Melanogaster, Raphyel Ojomo Rosby

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mammalian nucleostemin (NS) is a nucleolar GTP-binding protein implicated in cell cycle progression, stem cell proliferation, and ribosome assembly. Drosophila melanogaster contains a four-member nucleostemin family (NS1-4). Nucleostemin 1 (NS1) is the closest orthologue to human NS; it shares 33% identity and 67% similarity with human NS. We show that NS1 has intrinsic GTPase and ATPase activity, and that it is present within nucleoli of most larval and adult cells. Endogenous NS1 and lightly expressed GFP-NS1 enrich within the nucleolar granular regions as expected, while over-expressed GFP-NS1 localizes throughout the nucleolus and nucleoplasm, and to several transcriptionally active inter-bands of …

"It's Not Just About The Buildings, It's About The People": Architecture Practice, And Preservation In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Bethany W. Rogers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Drawing on the legacy of architectural studies in cultural geography, this dissertation integrates traditional approaches to built environments that take seriously the physical form and presence of buildings with more recent scholarship that employs performance and practice theory to address the embodied, contingent, and ongoing practices through which buildings are endowed with meaning by those who use, inhabit, or identify with them. Using ethnographic and architectural-documentation methods to carefully apprehend the interrelationships between architecture and embodied practices, this dissertation presents a set of ethno-material case studies – four buildings and their community of users that were central to New Orleans’ …

In The Shadow Of The Patriarch: The John J. Crittenden Family In War And Peace, Scott C. Martin

Civil War Book Review

An Examination of Crittenden and Family

Race And Ancestry In Biomedical Research: Exploring The Challenges, Timothy Caulfield, Stephanie M. Fullerton, Sarah E. Ali-Khan, Laura Arbour, Esteban G. Burchard, Richard S. Cooper, Billie Jo Hardy, Simrat Harry, Robyn Hyde-Lay, Jonathan Kahn, Rick Kittles, Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra S.J. Lee, Michael Malinowski, Vardit Ravitsky, Pamela Sankar, Stephen W. Scherer, Béatrice Séguin, Darren Shickle, Guilherme Suarez-Kurtz, Abdallah S. Daar

Faculty Publications

The use of race in biomedical research has, for decades, been a source of social controversy. However, recent events, such as the adoption of racially targeted pharmaceuticals, have raised the profile of the race issue. In addition, we are entering an era in which genomic research is increasingly focused on the nature and extent of human genetic variation, often examined by population, which leads to heightened potential for misunderstandings or misuse of terms concerning genetic variation and race. Here, we draw together the perspectives of participants in a recent interdisciplinary workshop on ancestry and health in medicine in order to …