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A Qualitative Study Utilizing Non-Fiction African-American Folktales: Process And Product With Struggling Second, Third, And Fifth Graders In North Louisiana, Gail Guidry Griffin Jan 2014

A Qualitative Study Utilizing Non-Fiction African-American Folktales: Process And Product With Struggling Second, Third, And Fifth Graders In North Louisiana, Gail Guidry Griffin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a qualitative of a study utilizing non-fiction African-American Folktales with struggling readers in second, third, and fifth grades. The study was conducted to explore how teachers, reading/library media specialists, and students utilize a variety of non-fiction folktales in their classrooms and the library media center. From this topic the following research questions were devised. The researcher discovered the challenges that teachers are faced with the implementation of folktales, how is folktales aligned with the (CCSS) Common Core State Standards, what role do heroes play in folktales, and what traits and/or characteristics would students prefer their hero to …

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Symphony No. 1: On The Creation And Chromaticism And Harmony In Henry Purcell's Sacred Music, Joshua Adam Carver Jan 2014

Symphony No. 1: On The Creation And Chromaticism And Harmony In Henry Purcell's Sacred Music, Joshua Adam Carver

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first part of this dissertation is a musical composition for orchestra entitled Symphony No. 1: On the Creation. Each movement depicts one of the first four days of Creation as it is recorded in Genesis 1 of the Bible. The music is programmatic throughout; melodies, textures, colorations, and even forms serve this purpose. The entities and creations involved in the story each appear with a specific motive, mode, and tonal area, similar to Wagner’s leitmotifs. The movements have various forms, which often derive from the literary form of the particular day’s creation account in Genesis. The second part of …

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Never Forget Where You Came From: An Oral History Of The Integration Of A Rural Community, Heather N. Stone Jan 2014

Never Forget Where You Came From: An Oral History Of The Integration Of A Rural Community, Heather N. Stone

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historians have written much, particularly about large urban cities, on the desegregation of the American school system (Anderson 1988; Fairclough 2008; Watkins 2001; Irons 2004). However, little research has been conducted on the role that small communities played in supporting and influencing the development of desegregated school systems, and how African Americans in these communities experienced education. The focus of this research will be on the oral history of a rural community in Louisiana that desegregated schools in the early 1970s. What is unique is that, instead of avoiding desegregation, this community chose to create a unified school district in …

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The Pulpit And The Nation: Clergymen, Political Culture, And The Creation Of An American National Identity, Spencer W. Mcbride Jan 2014

The Pulpit And The Nation: Clergymen, Political Culture, And The Creation Of An American National Identity, Spencer W. Mcbride

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the politicization of clergymen during the American Revolution and explains the direct impact this process had on the development of a national polity and a distinct American national identity in the early republic. Both during and after the Revolution, clergymen utilized providential rhetoric and biblical symbolism to assign greater religious and moral significance to political events. Focusing on the period between 1775 and 1800, this dissertation describes and analyzes the extent to which national political leaders relied on local clergymen when securing independence and thereafter inventing a new nation. Ultimately, it argues that clergymen were essential to …

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Alternative Teacher Certification: The Politics, The Preparation, And The Promise Of A Quality Education, Yasheka Adams Jan 2014

Alternative Teacher Certification: The Politics, The Preparation, And The Promise Of A Quality Education, Yasheka Adams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Alternative routes to teacher certification have increasingly gained popularity since the early 1980s. This increased attention is due to added focus on teacher quality and quantity. By participating in an alternative certification program, candidates are afforded the opportunity to obtain full teacher certification in an abbreviated time period. Completers of alternative certification programs are tasked with the same responsibilities as traditionally certified teachers. A substantial number of adults are making the decision to transition into the dynamic world of teaching. There are numerous debates regarding the efficacy of alternative pathways. There is a growing body of evidence supporting the belief …

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Painful Conversions: Reading And Writing Education Reform In Louisiana, Thomas George Sowders Jan 2014

Painful Conversions: Reading And Writing Education Reform In Louisiana, Thomas George Sowders

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In January 2013, the superintendent of a rural Louisiana school system initiated a plan to increase school choice in his district through the implementation of a new virtual magnet school and the conversion of an existing elementary school into a magnet school. Both plans were set into action in April 2013. This study uses performative writing to document the better part of a year spent engaged in this project as a contracted educational consultant. Melding William Blake’s theories of apocalypse and social metonymy with experimental modes of scholarly production as praxis, I theorize education reform as an interactive performance. By …

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Sense Of Place, Place Attachment, And Rootedness In Four West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana Bars, John Winsor Mcewen Jan 2014

Sense Of Place, Place Attachment, And Rootedness In Four West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana Bars, John Winsor Mcewen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores place and the relationships that people have with place: sense of place, place attachment, and rootedness. These three concepts have each been researched and discussed on their own in journal articles, books, and book chapters, but the terms rarely appear in the same sentence let alone the same research article. In the United States, places of drink are historically linked to community and social interactions, and such establishments often possess a solid core of loyal patrons for whom going to their bar is a natural and routine part of their daily and weekly life. This research brings …

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Queer Emplotment: Lesbian Caretaking In North American Canonical Fiction From 1980 – 2011., Penelope Gay Dane Jan 2014

Queer Emplotment: Lesbian Caretaking In North American Canonical Fiction From 1980 – 2011., Penelope Gay Dane

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation argues that lesbian caretaking in late 20th century and early 21th century North American fiction disrupts normative temporalities while repairing damage protagonists sustain from intra-familial trauma. Aligned with queer studies’ growing interest in representations of time, my project explores this paradox of lesbian representation. How can lesbian characters be both reparative and disruptive? Lesbian characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1980); Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992); and Louise Erdrich’s Shadow Tag (2010) are reparative as they clean up the psychological and physical damage caused male violence, sexual abuse, and neglectful mothers. Yet their caregiving disrupts …

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Interpreting Blackness: A Phenomenological Case Study Of African American Young Adult Literature, Deleon Miriam Wilson Jan 2014

Interpreting Blackness: A Phenomenological Case Study Of African American Young Adult Literature, Deleon Miriam Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Black students formulate representation of African American in African American young adult literature. It also explores the effects of race in reference to how characters are portrayed, publishing industry practices, and how African American literature is taught in the secondary classroom. In this study, I utilized qualitative research methods, specifically, phenomenology to place meaning on any occurrences cited by the participants. Data was collected using an initial interview, and a follow up interview to help clarify data collected from participants. This dissertation argues that race and gender constructs how characters are portrayed in African American young …

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Screening Ted: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Intersections Of Rhetoric, Digital Media, And Pedagogy, Joseph Alan Watson Jan 2014

Screening Ted: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Intersections Of Rhetoric, Digital Media, And Pedagogy, Joseph Alan Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The presence of expertise resonates across our daily lives. Experts are called upon to consult us about which candidate is ideal for office, which type of wood is the best choice for a carpentry project, which scientist has optimal data on the effects of air pollution, which speech teacher is the best one to take for proper credit hours, and more. An expert is typically conceived as an individual who knows more about a given topic and can create stronger identification than an average person. The struggle to achieve expert status is one that is fundamentally tied to power and …

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Touching Plantation Memories : Tourists And Docents At The Museum, Eddie Arnold Modlin Jr Jan 2014

Touching Plantation Memories : Tourists And Docents At The Museum, Eddie Arnold Modlin Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Plantations are one of the long-standing symbols of the U.S. South. Today, almost four hundred former plantation sites are museums. Over the last fifteen years a sustained, critical consideration of how slavery is remembered at these sites has developed in the academic literature. Geographers have argued that remembering slavery at these sites is geographic not only because most of these sites are in the South, but also because the public spatializes memory in certain ways at these historic places. To date, much of the memory literature about plantation museums focuses on the roles of these museums and their staff in …

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Joseph Joachim Raff: A Biographical Sketch And A Conductor's Analysis Of His Sinfonietta, Op. 188, James Fuller Lyon Iv Jan 2014

Joseph Joachim Raff: A Biographical Sketch And A Conductor's Analysis Of His Sinfonietta, Op. 188, James Fuller Lyon Iv

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite its obscurity, Sinfonietta, Op. 188 by Joachim Raff (1822-1882) is an important chamber work for winds and should find its place more frequently on the concert programs of university wind ensembles. In order to test this hypothesis, I investigate Raff’s biography for evidence that might explain its obscurity while leaving the door open to question that status. Furthermore, I investigate the Sinfonietta from a conductor’s perspective and apply a critique of its artistic merit. Several factors explain Raff’s fall from acclaim; none of them relegate his music to permanent obscurity. Based on the composer’s historical significance, analytical results, and …

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Essays On Incentives, Economic Conditions, And Educational Choices, Gregory Brian Upton Jr. Jan 2014

Essays On Incentives, Economic Conditions, And Educational Choices, Gregory Brian Upton Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer two independent studies that each contribute to the literature on the college choices. The first paper examines the impact of Arizona’s merit based scholarship on college enrollment decisions. I find that both enrollment and tuition and fees increased at Arizona’s three large public institutions after the implementation of the AIMS scholarship. Enrollment effects are strongest among black and hispanic students. The second paper examines the impact of the recent 2009 housing crisis on college enrollment decisions. I find that large reductions in housing wealth lead to increases in public school enrollment and decreases in private …

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Exploring The Implementation Of Reading Common Core State Standards In An Elementary School Setting, Lacy Alane Davis Jan 2014

Exploring The Implementation Of Reading Common Core State Standards In An Elementary School Setting, Lacy Alane Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the implementation process of five teachers and two administrators of the Common Core State Standards in Reading. This ethnographic case study investigates one groups’ attitudes and instructional practices. The researcher focused on three questions in order to provide an in-depth analysis of the data collected. These questions include: How do educators implement and develop reading curriculum from the Common Core State Standards? How does the mandated requirements of the CCSS impact the attitudes of reading teachers? How do primary grade teachers approach the CCSS in comparison to upper elementary teachers? The study followed an ethnographic analysis method …

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A Performance Guide To Jake Heggie's From 'The Book Of Nightmares', Kristen Bauer Marchiafava Jan 2014

A Performance Guide To Jake Heggie's From 'The Book Of Nightmares', Kristen Bauer Marchiafava

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The document will examine the four songs of the cycle, From ‘The Book of Nightmares,’ in detail and give suggestions for stylistic interpretation and performance. The written document contains four chapters: Chapter One provides biographical information and a stylistic overview of the composer Jake Heggie. Chapter Two contains biographical information and a stylistic overview for the poet Galway Kinnell. Chapter Three will provide information about the premiere and recording of From ‘The Book of Nightmares,’ as well as biographical information about soprano Lisa Delan, for whom the song cycle was written, and reviews of her recording “The Hours Begin to …

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The Effects Of Concurrent Driving And In-Vehicle Tasks: A Multivariate Statistical Analysis Of Driver Distraction In A High-Fidelity Driving Simulator, Julius A. Codjoe Jan 2014

The Effects Of Concurrent Driving And In-Vehicle Tasks: A Multivariate Statistical Analysis Of Driver Distraction In A High-Fidelity Driving Simulator, Julius A. Codjoe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Distracted driving continues to remain a cause of concern for a number of bodies, including government agencies, traffic safety advocacy groups and law enforcement agencies, because of its traffic safety risks. The driving simulator continues to be popular with researchers in collecting data on performance variables that provide scientific knowledge of the effects of distracted driving. Several of these performance variables can be used to quantify a single distracting effect, resulting in a multivariate dataset. A literature review of related studies revealed that researchers overwhelmingly use univariate (single and multiple) tests to analyze the resulting dataset. Performing multiple univariate tests …

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Thermodynamics Of Dna Binding By Dna Polymerase I And Reca Recombinase From Deinococcus Radiodurans, Jaycob Dalton Warfel Jan 2014

Thermodynamics Of Dna Binding By Dna Polymerase I And Reca Recombinase From Deinococcus Radiodurans, Jaycob Dalton Warfel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Deinococcus radiodurans has a significantly more robust DNA repair response than Escherichia coli, which helps it survive high amounts of oxidative stress. D. radiodurans DNA Polymerase I (DrPolI) and RecA protein (DrRecA) play essential parts in this DNA repair capability. Structural stability studies of the DrPolI large fragment (Klendra) and examination of the DNA binding characteristics of Klendra and RecA are presented herein. In the absence of cofactors DrRecA binds to dsDNA more than 20 fold tighter than EcRecA, and binds ssDNA up to 9 fold tighter. Binding to dsDNA in the absence of cofactor presumably monitors DNA end binding. …

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Thrillology: Affective Intensities And The Everyday-Spectacular In American Literature And Culture, Peter James Pappas Jan 2014

Thrillology: Affective Intensities And The Everyday-Spectacular In American Literature And Culture, Peter James Pappas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Thrillology: Affective Intensities and the Everyday-Spectacular in American Literature and Culture” presents thrill as a powerful thematic component centered on immediate affective gratification informing character development and narrative. This perspective rethinks theme as always having an affective dimension that accompanies its conceptual articulations, with the former, in many cases, being the more important element. Thrilled psycho-emotional states emerge, in their own right, as legitimizations of individuality and cultural autonomy from the perspective of the passional subject. Engaging with a broad spectrum of literary and cultural sources spanning the last hundred years, this project investigates various ways in which the self-fulfilling …

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The Influence Of Selected Factors On The Science Achievement Of Eighth Grade Students In Louisiana, John Dana Gaspard Jan 2014

The Influence Of Selected Factors On The Science Achievement Of Eighth Grade Students In Louisiana, John Dana Gaspard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the influence of selected demographic and academic factors on the science achievement among middle school students in Louisiana. The dependent variable for this study was Science achievement as measured by the Eighth Grade LEAP Test. The independent variables consisted of selected demographic characteristics and student scores on the ELA, Reading, Mathematics, and Social Studies sections of the Eighth Grade LEAP Test and their subtests. The target population of this study was Eighth Grade students in the public schools of Louisiana who were required to successfully complete the LEAP test in order …

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The Visual Novel: Fictional Space And Print After 1900, Michael James Griffin Ii Jan 2014

The Visual Novel: Fictional Space And Print After 1900, Michael James Griffin Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, The Visual Novel: Fictional Space and Print After 1900, examines how and why the novel has assimilated visual mediums—film, art, and the digital—into the genre as a means of adapting to the proliferation of mass media and technology. This project connects a history of the novel (genre) with a history of the book (the genre’s physical form), thereby theorizing and narrating a history of the visual novel. I demonstrate that through fictional space, a critical term used by narratologists and textual studies scholars, visual writing emerges as a hybridized mode of creative composition where we can see most …

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Pragmatics, Prosody, And Social Skills Of School-Age Children With Language-Learning Differences, Janet Lynn Bradshaw Jan 2014

Pragmatics, Prosody, And Social Skills Of School-Age Children With Language-Learning Differences, Janet Lynn Bradshaw

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social skills are an important aspect of child development that continues to have influences in adolescence and adulthood (Hart, Olsen, Robinson, & Mandleco, 1997). Interacting in a social world requires an integration of many abilities that include social skills and emotional understanding of oneself and other persons. Children who have difficulties with interpreting social cues (e.g., identifying basic emotions and responding to cues in speech) have immediate and progressive consequences in both academics and social living. Children with typical language skills are successfully interacting with peers and acknowledging social rules for different environments (e.g., playing at school vs. playing at …

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The Imagined After: Re-Positioning Social Memory Through Twentieth-Century Post-Apocalyptic Literature And Film, Amanda Ashleigh Wicks Jan 2014

The Imagined After: Re-Positioning Social Memory Through Twentieth-Century Post-Apocalyptic Literature And Film, Amanda Ashleigh Wicks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Maurice Halbwachs first proposed a collective approach to memory in the early twentieth century, but the vast majority of subsequent scholarship investigates memory’s social properties from a theoretical point of view. This project instead proposes that memory functions as a social phenomenon in significant and real ways, primarily understood through the social relations that arise within social frameworks, which provide a structure against which people’s memories come together to form important memory-narratives that configure individual and social consciousness. Once people transform memory from individual thought-image into socially structured language, memory takes on social properties. Memory relies upon social frameworks to …

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“Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’S Essayistic Approach To Nothing, Dena Marks Jan 2014

“Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’S Essayistic Approach To Nothing, Dena Marks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, “Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’s Essayistic Approach to Nothing, responds to the dominant strand in Beckett criticism that figures the writer as a philosopher of “nothing” whether of Democritean, existentialist, or deconstructionist voids. In contrast, I argue that Beckett’s literary texts approximate philosophy in their essayistic style, characterized by the incorporation of multiple, contradictory sources in a fragmented form. While philosophical analyses are often designed to demonstrate that the literary texts are the equivalent of philosophical discourse, in the first chapter I argue that they actually serve to re-subordinate literature to philosophy since they depend on the pre-existing philosophical …

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Species Composition And Spatial Ecology Of Amazonian Understory Mixed-Species Flocks In A Fragmented Landscape, Karl Mokross Jan 2014

Species Composition And Spatial Ecology Of Amazonian Understory Mixed-Species Flocks In A Fragmented Landscape, Karl Mokross

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With the ongoing advance of the agricultural frontier in the Amazon basin, it is inevitable that heterogeneous landscapes will play a key role in conservation. These landscapes are mostly composed of patchworks of small forest fragments, secondary forests and roads. Conservation, however must take species interactions into consideration as they play a pivotal part the maintenance of several biological processes in the tropics. One of the most conspicuous interspecific interactions are seen in mixed-species flocks of birds, which in the Amazon, represent one of the best organized systems of bird aggregations. In this research, I assess how flock spatial behavior …

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A Case Study Of Tracie Morris's Project Princess, Tammie Jenkins Jan 2014

A Case Study Of Tracie Morris's Project Princess, Tammie Jenkins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I explore the intertextuality in spoken word poetry using Tracie Morris’s spoken word poem Project Princess (1998) as a case study. My hypothesis is that the intertextuality in spoken word poetry is derived from its genealogical contributions. Using narrative inquiry, I investigate Project Princess as page poetry and oral performance text anchored in the genealogy of spoken word poetry. The following research questions guided this study: How does intertextuality function in Tracie Morris’s spoken word poem Project Princess? What role does the genealogy of spoken word poetry play in understanding the intertextuality in Tracie Morris’s spoken word …

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Body Language: Pain In Victorian Literature, Laura Jane Faulk Jan 2014

Body Language: Pain In Victorian Literature, Laura Jane Faulk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Body Language: Pain in Victorian Literature” argues that Victorian authors use the readable sign system of the body and pain to emphasize their characters’ physical features to the reader. As characters physically manifest emotions or experience violence, their appearances change, and these differences depend on physical descriptions. Marks on the body give it texture and depth, creating a layering that encourages the reader to envision and remember it. Character interactions, particularly when they read others’ somatic signs and experience or cause brutality, further flesh out characters, emphasizing their physical presences in the reader’s mind. The somatic sign system depends upon …

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Analysis And Expressive Performance : Four Selected Works By Chopin, Timothy David Saeed Jan 2014

Analysis And Expressive Performance : Four Selected Works By Chopin, Timothy David Saeed

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine four works by Chopin and address issues of expressive performance derived from principles of the nineteenth-century Swiss theorist, Mathis Lussy (1828-1910). Lussy’s systematic approach into the understanding and organization of the individual phrase in relation with performance practice resembles many recent theories of rhythm and performance methodologies. As have several recent theorists, Lussy sought the causes of expressive performance in the structure of the musical phrase, rather than a performer’s artistic intuition, and identified a tripartite classification of accent. The purpose of this study is to adapt and expand the application of Lussy’s theory of …

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Precarious Positions: Toward A Theory And Analysis Of Rhetorical Vulnerability, David Riche Jan 2014

Precarious Positions: Toward A Theory And Analysis Of Rhetorical Vulnerability, David Riche

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I develop a framework for treating rhetoric as a system for managing vulnerabilities to and through discourse. I contend that, through rhetoric, we are all put into a fundamentally precarious position, an unavoidable state of exposure to material, social, institutional, and rhetorical forces that work to condition us as both agents and audiences. Rhetoric is not simply something we use; it is also something that we respond to, something to which we are continuously exposed, whether we like it or not. There is, in other words, a necessary concern for vulnerability at the heart of rhetorical theory …

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Black And Gifted: Hiding In Plain View, Deanna Lynn Hayes-Wilson Jan 2014

Black And Gifted: Hiding In Plain View, Deanna Lynn Hayes-Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract This dissertation examines representation of African Americans in gifted programs in an urban school district where the creation of gifted programs was enacted as a tool for desegregation. The research is conducted from the perspectives of gifted African American students in an effort to shed some light on whether an achievement gap exists or is the makeup of the program itself a deterrent to the enrollment of African American students. A qualitative study was conducted using personal narratives from students who were enrolled in a self-contained gifted program in the urban school districts. The participants gave personal interviews where …

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Exploring The Impact Of The Common Core State Standards Implementation Through The Eyes Of Teachers', Parents', And Administrators' Beliefs And Attitudes Related To Reading Instruction, Sheryl Coglaiti Jan 2014

Exploring The Impact Of The Common Core State Standards Implementation Through The Eyes Of Teachers', Parents', And Administrators' Beliefs And Attitudes Related To Reading Instruction, Sheryl Coglaiti

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Belief(s) and attitude(s) about education, moreover reading, can shape the way in which we respond to pressures to initiate instructional changes in schools and society. Recently, an enormous reform effort, known as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is underway in the nation. The implementation plays a critical role in how the CCSS will be received. In light of being received, how will they impact teachers’, parents’, and administrators’ belief(s) and/or attitude(s) related to reading? According to research, there is a need to consider teachers’, parents’, and administrators’ belief(s) and/or attitude(s) about reading, which may play a role in the …

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