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The Poetry Professors Eighteenth-Century Spenserianism And Romantic Concepts Of Culture, David H. Radcliffe

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

No abstract provided.

Masked Criticism: The Whore And The Breeches Role As Articulators Of Sexual Economic Theory In The Intrigue Plays Of Aphra Behn., Mary Katherine Politz

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Aphra Behn was an important playwright in the Restoration, second only to John Dryden in the number of plays produced during the period. In some of her early plays based on Spanish intrigue comedies, she uses the roles of whores and cross dressed women to articulate her criticism of the sexual economy within patriarchy. Masks and disguises create confusion in all the plays. Her characters, plots, structure, humor and economic concerns change with each successive play. The first play in the series, The Dutch Lover (1673) is a tale of romance where women are exchanged between men for the benefit …

Suburbianation: Reading Suburban Landscape In Twentieth -Century American Fiction And Film., Robert Andrew Beuka

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

In the years following the end of World War II, a new kind of landscape emerged in the United States, one that would immeasurably alter the way Americans think about place. Critics and commentators greeted the emergence of the environment we know as "suburbia" with a mixed reaction: for some, the suburbs represented the material embodiment of the "American Dream"; for others, architectural and environmental homogeneity marked the new suburbs as an alienating, even dangerous terrain. In the half-century since the onset of mass-suburbanization, the United States---which has, by now, become a primarily suburban nation---has continued to struggle with the …

Hearsay, Testimony And Conference: Citationality In The Works Of Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot And Jacques Derrida., Mary Carla Criner

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation involves an examination of the effects and implications of three modes of citationality: hearsay, testimony and conference. As a term coined by Jacques Derrida, citationality involves the problematization of questions related to borders and limits and to the attempt to re-present the originary event thought to lie beyond the performance of citational acts of bearing witness. In chapter one I situate my project theoretically through an examination of the principles of deconstruction. In particular, Jacques Derrida's work on the metaphysical concepts of presence and speech, in terms of repeatability or iterability, bears heavily on my study. As a …

Rights Of Passage: A Cross -Cultural Study Of Maroon Novels By Black Women., Randi Gray Kristensen

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the use and implications of the trope of marronage, the African-American practice of self-emancipation to forge alternative New World communities, in selected novels by Black women writers of North America and the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. It draws on theories of liminality to posit a theory of liberatory practice that deconstructs hegemonic narratives, both personal and historical. Postmodern approaches are deferred in favor of locating these texts and their concerns as deriving from the epistemological consequences of modernity. Cross-cultural Black women's texts were chosen to illuminate the recognition of shared subjugations across national and linguistic borders, as …

Children's Identity Construction In A Multicultural Setting., Edith Taylor Richardson Powers

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The study of cultural identity has thus far been rather unidimensional, portraying a child as a member of a single cultural group that has a homogeneous culture. Over the past twenty-five years, much of the research on the relationship between culture and education has looked at children's educational processes through the lens of group membership. This study examined six children from different cultures as they constructed their own identities within the multicultural classroom environment over the period of a year. It was designed to examine how individual children take on cultural "ways" that are associated with other cultural groups and …

Tradition, Rhetoric, And Propriety In Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz., Lilian Albertina Contreras-Silva

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The writings of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz serve as her personal proclamation for the right of a woman to write and lead an intellectual life. The study begins by reviewing the Baroque world and its artistic trends. This is done in chapter one so that Sor Juana's artistic production can be better situated in the world at large. In chapter two, the study proceeds to review the professional nature of Sor Juana's writing. By observing the diverse nature of the nun's work, as well as the compensation for much of it, the nature of Sor Juana's motivation for …

A View From The Pacific: Archaeological Analysis Of Materials From Nicaragua's Sixteenth Century Spanish Town Of Leon Viejo, Kira Blaisdell-Sloan

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

In 1524 the town of Leon Viejo was founded by Hernandez de Cordova on the Northwestern shore of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. Eighty-six years later it was abandoned, as earthquakes and volcanic activity made the site undesirable. At the present time, Leon Viejo represents the only Pacific coast Spanish occupied sixteenth century colonial townsite for which archaeological data is available. In this thesis I present a historically informed analysis of archaeological materials recovered from eight separate structures located towards the center of this site.

Utilizing The Annales Historical Approach, World Systems Theory, community and household level analysis, I weave together …

Folk Housing In Northeastern Mexico: A Key To Culturogeographic Regionalization., Scott Stuart Brown

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Folk housing is one of the elements of material culture which geographers often employ in understanding the cultural aspects of regional studies. As one of the most obvious features of the cultural landscape, folk housing serves as a tool in the determination of culturogeographic regions, the final objective of this study. In this atomistic regional approach, geometry is the principle feature of interest. In other words, the one-dimensional plan type and the three-dimensional form class are the elements of focus in order to distinguish regionality. As opposed to other sub-systems of structural analysis, geometry, especially house from, distinguishes regions of …

Ernest Renan And The Question Of Race., Jane Victoria Dagon

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Racism in France can be traced back to the 1560's when the nobles claimed to be of a separate race in order to obtain special rights and privileges. Soon after in the seventeenth century, scientists started to classify humans according to physical features. With the increase in travel, the slave trade, the fear of the unknown and the fear of contamination, these factors along with physiognomy and phrenology encouraged "biological racism." During the second half of the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan (1823--1892) denounces biological racism and the existence of the so-called "pure races." He is also the first dramatist to …

Performing Dracula: A Critical Examination Of A Popular Text In Three Sites Of Performance., Jonathan Matthew Gray

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Dracula is a significant example of a popular phenomenon with a long and ongoing history of productive circulation in Anglo-American culture. While theorists of popular culture often use the term "performance" in their explanations of the popularity and meaningful operations of such phenomena in a culture, they do not always provide concrete definitions of what they mean by performance. This study provides an analysis of the roles performance plays in a specific popular culture phenomenon. Identifying Bram Stoker's Dracula as a nexus for a broader cultural activity, this study examines articulations of Dracula in performances and texts that both precede …

Reawakening Sleeping Beauty: Fairy -Tale Revision And The Mid -Victorian Metaphysical Crisis., Cynthia Lynn Demarcus

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Despite growing scholarly recognition of subversive social and political content in Victorian fairy tales, their significance in relation to the oft-cited Victorian "spiritual crisis" remains largely unexplored. This interdisciplinary study addresses that critical gap by examining three literary revisions of Sleeping Beauty from the early 1860s as pointed efforts to enter the intensified religious debate following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. The three revisions---Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations (1860--61), Christina Rossetti's narrative poem "Goblin Market" (1862) and George MacDonald's fairy-tale "The Light Princess" (1864)---all appropriate the popular Sleeping Beauty narrative to create a vivid and emotionally …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: A Gis Study Of Changes In Cemetery Locations In Southeastern Louisiana From An Archaeological And Geographical Perspective, 1930--1997., Cindy Ann Nance

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Cemeteries in southeastern Louisiana are in varying stages of use---from presently in use and maintained to no longer visible on the surface. The abandonment of traditional cemeteries in southeastern Louisiana illustrates evolving settlement patterns. Earlier settlement patterns were dependent on physiographic and cultural landscape features. As settlement patterns evolve, the preferred locations of cemeteries change. As a recent participant in the nationwide preference for urban-associated Memorial Parks, is Louisiana in the process of abandoning traditional cemetery landscapes? Six factors that contribute to the abandonment of traditional cemeteries from 1930 to 1997 are presented in this study. Evolving communities, demographic shifts, …

Join In The Dance: Didacticism In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Lisa Morales

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The importance of didacticism in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice may sometimes be overlooked in an effort to be entertained by the fairy-tale essence of her work. This is unfortunate since Pride and Prejudice offers a rich critique of eighteenth-century English society, as well as heralds the beginning of a new form of novel writing. This new form of novel writing includes a vision of an autonomous heroine who exercises freedom from patriarchal society and the “marriage market.” Austen’s ironic didacticism in Pride and Prejudice highlights hypocrisy and contradiction, and in so doing, mock social expectations. It is through her …

Methanol Promotes Atmospheric Methane Oxidation By Methanotrophic Cultures And Soils?, J. Benstead, G. M. King, H. G. Williams

Faculty Publications

Two methanotrophic bacteria, Methylobacter albus BG8 and Methylosinus trichosporium OB3b, oxidized atmospheric methane during batch growth on methanol. Methane consumption was rapidly and substantially diminished (95% over 9 days) when washed cell suspensions were incubated without methanol in the presence of atmospheric methane (1.7 ppm). Methanotrophic activity was stimulated after methanol (10 mM) but not methane (1,000 ppm) addition. M. albus BG8 grown in continuous culture for 80 days with methanol retained the ability to oxidize atmospheric methane and oxidized methane in a chemostat air supply. Methane oxidation during growth on methanol was not affected by methane deprivation. Differences in …

Transformation And Transport Of Inorganic Nitrogen In Sediments Of A Southeast Asian Mangrove Forest, Erik Kristensen, Mikael H. Jensen, Gary T. Banta, Kim Hansen, Marianne Holmer, Gary M. King

Faculty Publications

The most important inorganic nitrogen transformations (nitrification, denitrification and N fixation) and DIN fluxes in darkened and inundated sediments were studied during the dry season in the Ao Nam Bor mangrove forest at the island of Phuket, Thailand. Dark fluxes of NH4+ were low (not significantly different from zero) and tended to be directed into the sediment in the area vegetated by the tree Rhizophora apiculata (204 μmol m-2 d-1) and out of the sediment in an adjacent unvegetated area (80 μmol m-2 d-1), NO3- appeared to be taken up by the sediment in both areas, although at rates not …

Book Review Corner

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

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Alginate Lyase In Pseudomonas Syringae Pathovar Phaseolicola., Charlie Mark Ott

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The plant pathogen responsible for halo blight in legumes, Pseudomonas syringae pathovar phaseolicola, produces an alginate exopolysaccharide which prevents desiccation and enhances the "water soaking" effect associated with pathogenesis. These bacteria demonstrated elevated extracellular alginate lyase activity during log growth and stationary phases in batch cultures. An analysis of the substrate specificity indicated enzymatic activity on both acetylated and non-acetylated alginate. The release of the enzyme(s) in log growth phase and the subsequent decrease in production in stationary phase have not been previously reported. Extracellular activity during rapid cell growth was confirmed by continuous culture in both nutrient broth and …

Gaining And Controlling Access To The Arena: Stories Of Ties In A Technological Dispute., Tobias Albert Ten Eyck

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This is a study of the stories told about distribution of resources and structural constraints which operate within newspaper arenas that were experienced by reporters and sources involved in coverage of food irradiation between 1987 and 1996 at two regional newspapers (Louisiana and Florida). Using an unstructured interview instrument, I conducted interviews with 40 sources and 12 newspaper reporters, which I used to construct a framework in which to show how cultural, economic and social capital are used for getting and blocking action in the newspaper arenas. These interviews show that while cultural capital was the most prominent type of …

John Jacob Niles's Settings Of The Early Poetry Of Thomas Merton In "The Niles-Merton Songs", Opp. 171 And 172., Melanie Boney Williams

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

John Jacob Niles (1892-1980) is renowned as a composer and performer of music in the folk style of his native Appalachia. However, his body of work also includes forays into opera, oratorio, symphony, and art song. In fact, Niles's final compositional endeavor was the setting of twenty-two poems by the poet and Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), who resided at Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. The Niles-Merton Songs, Opp. 171-172 were composed between 1967 and 1970. This study focuses on text-music relations in seven settings of poems from Merton's first two poetry publications, Thirty Poems (1944) and A …

Autobiographical Memory In Mild And Moderate Dementia Of The Alzheimer's Type., Judith Parks Levy

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive disease that particularly affects memory with difficulties starting insidiously and gradually progressing. Anterograde amnesia for semantic and episodic types of declarative knowledge becomes the most prominent and disproportionately impaired cognitive symptom. By the middle stages of the disease, this memory loss progresses to severe impairment. The neuropathology of early AD involves the hippocampal complex, which is involved in new learning and storage of recent experiences. As the disease progresses, it involves neocortical areas, which are involved in the storage of more remote memories. Participants, including minimal stage AD, mild stage AD, moderate stage AD, …

Indigenous Rights Movements, Land Conflicts, And Cultural Politics In Taiwan: A Case Study Of Li-Shan., Yi-Fong Chen

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Land rights claims remain the major focus of world indigenous movements. Lands relate to the formation of indigenous identity, religious practices, and the material base for indigenous cultural survival. From a spatial/geographical perspective, this dissertation explores the influences of Taiwan's state policies on indigenous peoples, their cultures, identities, and human-land relationship. The Li-shan area, in central Taiwan, is the focus of the research due to the fact that the most severe land disputes are in this area, as well as longest history of economic interactions among indigenous peoples, the dominant Han people, and the State, in the postwar Taiwan. The …

Subterranean Echoes: Curriculum Theory As Cultural Studies., Toby Allan Daspit

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Cultural studies has emerged in recent decades as a popular realm of academic inquiry (During, 1993). Giroux (1994), while noting the field's increased acceptance, ponders why cultural studies has yet to permeate critical analyses of education and simultaneously questions cultural studies' reticence in considering schools as an important site of cultural production. Edgerton (1996) concurs with Giroux and notes that cultural studies' use in colleges of education is extremely rare. The realm of popular culture, one of the central foci of cultural studies, has especially been marginalized in academic discourses. My project is to explore the implications of curriculum theory …

Family Context And Premarital Sexual Activity In Kinshasa, Zaire., Yanyi Kasongo Djamba

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Studies on sexual behavior in Africa have shown that the proportion of women with premarital sexual experience is high, but the factors associated with premarital sexual behavior have not been clearly identified. This is partly due to the separation between theory and research. This study attempts to fill this gap by constructing a new conceptual framework in which hypotheses of rational adaptation, social disorganization, and patrilineal bias theories can be empirically tested. Based on a life history approach, the present framework emphasizes the role of three dimensions of family background in shaping individual behavior: financial capital, human capital, and social …

Defoe And Cantermir Eighteenth-Century Explorers, West And East, Mihaela Irimia

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

No abstract provided.

Genetics And Functions Of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 (Hsv-1) Glycoprotein K (Gk) In Virus Envelopment And Egress., Sukhanya Jayachandra

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

HSV-1(KOS)$\Delta$gK, a virus lacking the UL53 gene coding for glycoprotein K(gK) was constructed, characterized and compared to the partially deleted gK-null virus HSV-1(F)-gK$\beta$. $\Delta$gK and F-gK$\beta$ viruses produced microscopic plaques on Vero cells at 48 hours post infection. F-gK$\beta$ plaques at 72 hours post infection contained fused cells (syn), while $\Delta$gK plaques resembled wild-type KOS plaques ($syn\sp+$). $\Delta$gK replicated efficiently in exponentially dividing Vero cells whereas F-gK$\beta$ yields were 10 and 1000-fold lower than $\Delta$gK yields in HEp-2 or log-phase Vero cells, respectively. Electron micrographs of $\Delta$gK-infected Vero cells revealed large numbers of capsids in the nuclei of Vero, but …

A Computer Automated, Hydraulically Integrated Serial Turbidostat Algal Reactor (Histar): Mathematical Modeling And Experimental Analysis., Chandra Sekhar Theegala

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually, the Hydraulically Integrated Serial Turbidostat Algal Reactor (HISTAR) has two components: (1) sealed turbidostats for producing a high quality algal inoculum, and (2) a series of unprotected inter-connected continuous flow stirred tank reactors (CFSTRs) for mass producing algae under approximated plug flow conditions. The hydraulic retention time of each individual CFSTR ($\theta\sb{\rm n})$ is set low enough (dilution is set high) that any suspended organisms (both contaminants and desired algae) entering the CFSTR would be washed to the next CFSTR well within their doubling time. However, as the turbidostats are employed to inoculate the first CFSTR on an almost …

Representing Shakespeare's "Brave New World": Latin American Appropriations Of "The Tempest"., Ximena Gallardo

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Representing Shakespeare's "Brave New World" is a descriptive analysis of Latin American appropriations of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. The first part explores the written appropriations by Jose Enrique Rodo, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aime Cesaire and George Lamming. The second part analyzes four major dramatic appropriations of The Tempest: a 1989 production by the Chilean company El Conventillo, a 1994 adaptation by the Chilean company La Bordada, a 1991 version by the Venezuelan company Rajatabla and a 1992 production by the Mexican company Por Amor Al Arte. Representing Shakespeare's "Brave New World" also explores the connection between these …

Urea Production And Turnover Following The Addition Of Amp, Cmp, Rna And A Protein Mixture To A Marine Sediment, Mette S. Therkildsen, Gary M. King, Bente Aa Lomstein

Faculty Publications

The potential of adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP), cytidine 5′-monophosphate (CMP), 16S ribosomal RNA, and a protein (bovine serum albumin) to serve as substrates for bacterial urea production was evaluated in a defaunated, anoxic marine sediment. AMP, CMP and RNA stimulated urea production and urea turnover, but CMP to a lesser degree than AMP and RNA. The increase in urea production and turnover rates took place immediately after AMP, CMP, and RNA were added to the sediment. The rapid response in urea production and turnover rates suggests that the necessary uptake mechanisms and enzymes to utilize the substrates were present constitutively. Addition …

American Literary Environmentalism, 1637-1872., David Mazel

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The American environment is a mythic narrative that has served to mystify the social and economic relationships linking people and place. This study examines the early writing of the environment, from the 1637 Pequot War to the creation of the first national parks in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 1 draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Edward Said to theorize "literary environmentalism" as a knowledge-power formation that functions as a domestic Orientalism. Chapter 2 theorizes the narratological and psychosociological bases of environmental constructions generally before analyzing two colonial texts whose literary environmentalism is paradigmatic: John Underhill's Newes from …