Digital Commons Network^™

Post Reformation Ecclesiology And Missiology--From The Radicals To Wesley: Moving Out Of The Shadow Of Luther And Calvin, Woodrow W. Whidden

Faculty Publications

Whidden’s essay compares the key theological/ecclesiological factors of the Magisterial Reformation tradition with the Radical and Wesleyan ethos and their respective visions of discipleship, theology, ethics, and mission. He then argues that movements which are Arminian in their soteriology; functional, not institutional, in their ecclesiology; and emphasize discipleship (including strict discipline), sanctification, and Gospel ethics are more likely to have a missional bent.

Searching For The Semantic Boundaries Of The Japanese Colour Term 'Ao', Francis Conlan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Japanese language has a colour term, 'ao' (or 'aoi'), which is usually referred to in bilingual dictionaries as being the equivalent of English 'blue'. Very often, however, it is used to describe things which English speakers would describe as being green. Granny Smith apples are 'ao', so are all Westerners' eyes, regardless of whether they would be described as being 'blue' or 'green' in English. The sky and the sea are prototypically 'ao', but this term is also used to describe lawns, forests, traffic lights and unripe tomatoes. What, then, do Japanese native speakers (henceforth JNS) understand by this …

The Genetic Heritage Of China: A Genomic Study Of Pr China Based On Nine Representative Ethnic Populations, Michael Black

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

During the course of the last decade, genetic data have increasingly complemented linguistic, archaeological and palaeontological evidence in efforts to reconstruct human history. As technology has developed, studies have utilised genomic techniques in tracing the origins and migratory patterns of modem humans. East Asia is a particular hotspot of human migration, _especially Mainland China where a large number of human fossils have been unearthed and more than 20% of the wor1d's population now resides. There are 56 officially recognised ethnic groups (minzu) within the population of PR China which totals 1,300 million. The majority Han population is distributed throughout the …

Constructing Faith Cultures: Catechumenal Evangelism In The Early Church, Early Methodism And Alpha, Tory Baucum

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Scopes Trope, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

In his book, Where Darwin Meets the Bible: Creationists and Evolutionists in America, journalist Larry Witham introduces the reader to the various characters involved in the ongoing controversy over evolution and creationism. His account is subtle and nuanced, and he demonstrates that the controversy is more complicated than many believe. Far from caricatures of godless scientists seeking to discard religion in thedustbin of history and reactionary religious fundamentalists decrying Darwinism as the downfall of mankind, Witham gives us the real stories of real people who dwell in shades far more gray than usually recognized. This book review builds upon Witham's …

A Penny For Their Thoughts: Draft Resistance At The Poston Relocation Center, Eric L. Muller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Physical Function And Health Related Quality Of Life In Culturally Diverse Elders: Evidence Of Environmental Press, Robyn M. Bossier

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this project was to identify group differences in physical function and HRQL between older adults living in different environments, and to compare information from these groups to data from a random sample of elders pulled from the general population. METHODS: Seventy-eight older adults were evaluated for physical function using the continuous-scale physical functional performance test (CS-PFP) and HRQL using the SF-36 v.2. Subjects were 26 predominantly African American participants (LOW group; age 72.2 ± 8.1 years), 26 Caucasian adults (HIGH group; age 77.6 ± 4.8 years), and 26 adults selected from a population-based study (POP group; age …

Vernacular Exposures At The Aillet House: Anthropological Interpretations Of Material Culture And Cultural Change, Kelli Ostrom

LSU Master's Theses

The thesis project developed from preliminary archaeological testing in 1999 at site 16WBR45, the original location of the Aillet House. The results of the testing were informative as they suggested the placement of the house and attested to casual activity on the porch. However, the results certainly did not answer the need for a more discerning interpretation of the historic house museum known as the Aillet House, currently on display at the West Baton Rouge Parish Museum. I collaborated with the museum in 2004 to bring to their current interpretive program anthropological insights gained from archaeological remains, an architectural survey …

Complexifying The Poetic: Toward A Poiesis Of Curriculum, Donna Lynn Trueit

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Inspired by philosopher Richard Rorty’s assertion that we need poetic imagination to move beyond modernity, this pragmatist inquiry seeks to understand the poetic, not as it is rationally defined, but rather as a historically situated discursive practice. In western cultures modernist discursive practices are characterized by rationalist reasoning. Traced to Aristotelian re- interpretations of mimesis (this is that), which structure modernist forms of representation, mimesis operates on a principle of equivalency between the specific and the universal, based on Euclidean, geometric reasoning. Likewise, mimesis underlies poetic representation as an imaginative expression of an objective reality, ideally, a form that moves …

Conceptualizing Describing And Contrasting School Cultures: A Comparative Case Study Of School Improvement Processes, La Tefy Schoen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

What is school culture? How can it be measured, described and contrasted? Is school culture related to school improvement? This dissertation investigates school culture and its relationship to school improvement. The study is organized into three phases and employs a mixed methods approach to study the cultures of three pairs of matched schools over a 15 month period. Phase I consists of a multi-disciplinary literature review across the fields of psychology, sociology, business management, anthropology, and educational administration. This process resulted in the development of a new conceptualization of school culture based on merging complementary theories. As defined here school …

Long-Term Changes And Variability In Northern Hemisphere Circumpolar Vortex, Kalyn Mackenzie Wrona

LSU Master's Theses

Variability in the hemispheric-scale atmospheric circulation can be directly linked to variations in surface environmental features, such as temperature, precipitation, and pollutant transport. One indicator of the behavior of the hemispheric-scale circulation is the circumpolar vortex (CPV). This research utilizes a geographic information system (GIS) approach to determine the variability in the northern hemisphere (NH) CPV. Specifically, the area, shape, and centroid of the December, January, February, April, July, and October NHCPV are analyzed for 1959 – 2001 because these features may provide insight about relationships between hemispheric-scale circulation and global temperature change throughout the year. A “circularity ratio” is …

Dental Evidence For Division Of Labor Among The Prehistoric Ipiutak And Tigara Of Point Hope, Alaska, Felicia Madimenos

LSU Master's Theses

Among archaeological specimens, teeth can provide insight into the behaviors and cultural practices of a population. Inuit specimens are ideal for studying dentition because of the unique way teeth are used as tools. The prehistoric Ipiutak (ca.100 B.C. – A.D. 500) and Tigara (ca. A.D. 900 –1700) of Point Hope, Alaska, represent two environmentally similar, although culturally and temporally different, populations. Based on associated archaeological finds, the Ipiutak do not represent a whaling culture. Instead, they focused on hunting smaller sea mammals and caribou. Conversely, the Tigara represent a typical Inuit whaling culture. Whaling cultures depend on a distinct division …

Cultural Performance Of Roadside Shrines: A Poststructural Postmodern Ethnography, Rebecca Marie Kennerly

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Marking the site of death on the road with a shrine, an increasingly popular cultural practice in the United States, is a deeply personal, private affair, however, because shrines are placed in the public right-of-way, they attract attention and invite participation, comment, and criticism. These sites, the materials that mark them, how people come to build them, the messages that those who build them hope to convey, and the accumulative force these sites bring to bear in various contexts offer unique insights into our complex, fragmented, and often confounding relationships with death, living memory, and selective forgetting. This project takes …

Analysis Of The Talus And Calcaneus Bones From The Poole-Rose Ossuary: A Late Woodland Burial Site In Ontario, Canada, Adrienne Elizabeth Penney

LSU Master's Theses

This study reports on the demography and osteological profile of the Poole-Rose Ossuary. Excavated in 1990 under the direction of Heather McKillop and at the request of the Alderville First Nation, the Poole-Rose Ossuary is a Late Woodland burial site in southern Ontario, Canada. Lack of European artifacts in the burial suggests that this site predates European contact. The Poole-Rose Ossuary is radiocarbon dated to A.D. 1550 ± 50 years. The skeletal remains were commingled. This ossuary likely represents the mass re-burial known as the “Feast of the Dead” or the “Kettle.” For the most part, closely related individuals were …

Trends In Extreme Daily Temperature Events In The South-Central United States, Gregory S. Bohr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Extreme daily temperatures are meteorological events that can have significant impacts on human and natural systems. As natural and anthropogenic climate changes occur, the frequency of extreme events is likely to change. Because extremes do not change linearly with mean temperatures, it is important to directly examine the record of extremes. This dissertation analyzes the temporal pattern of daily extremes over 1948-2001 in the south-central United States, and identifies significant changes in frequency and persistence, as well as relationships between extreme events and atmospheric circulation.

A global warming of approximately 0.6 Centigrade has occurred over the past century, and further …

A Radiographic Study Of The Impact Of Race And Sex On 1st And 2nd Molar Development, Suzanne Price

LSU Master's Theses

The assessment of child development requires standards in order to compare an apparent physiologic age to an actual chronological age. In assessing chronological age of an individual, the use of multiple indicators is ideal and important in determining age at death. For individuals under the age of about 21 years, dental development is the most reliable indicator of age. Research aimed at understanding the variation in tooth formation due to race and sex will help to more accurately determine the age at death of remains of subadult individuals. This project examined the impact of race, sex, and time period on …

An Investigation Of Time Since Injury: A Radiographic Study Of Fracture Healing, Kevin Benjamin Hufnagl

LSU Master's Theses

Working at the junction of medicine and physical anthropology, this research investigates the rate of fracture healing. The ability to assign ages to fractures based on the degree of remodeling could be a valuable tool for identifying skeletal remains. This ability could differentiate between individuals with similar fractures and could also narrow the search of medical records for matches. Multiple radiographic images from 62 individuals were collected from the Baton Rouge Orthopaedic Clinic, including information on sex, ancestry, age of the individual, and age of the fracture. Breaks in the x-rays are categorized into one of six stages, defined on …

Problems Of Modernization In Late Imperial Russia: Maksim M. Kovalevskii On Social And Economic Reform, Evgeny Badredinov

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The problems of social and economic reform were at the center of academic and political activities of Maksim M. Kovalevskii (1851-1916), a prominent Russian historian and sociologist. The comparative study of rural communal institutions led him to conclude that the village commune remained a viable social and economic institution in late imperial Russia. Although he believed firmly in private agriculture, he criticized the Stolypin land reform for attempting to pressure peasants to separate from communes. Kovalevskii argued that in a country dominated by communal traditions the state must not destroy the collective economy by legislative fiat. He urged Russian policy-makers …

Development And Validation Of Child Routines Questionnaire: Preschool, Molly Murphy Wittig

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Experts emphasize routines as a paramount practice in successful child rearing (Fiese, 2002). Only recently, however, has empirical evidence begun to corroborate this theory. While many researchers and clinicians have documented the use of daily child routines in their parenting packages and treatment studies, none has measured the effects of child routines directly. The emergence of The Child Routines Questionnaire offered ample evidence of the importance of child routines in school-age children. Significant findings link a lack of routines to child behavior problems, poor parenting practices, and parental psychopathology (Sytsma et al., 2001; Sytsma-Jordan, Kelley, & Henderson, 2002; Jordan, 2003). …

The King George Island Mounds Site (16lv22): A Late Archaic Mound Complex Along The Lower Amite River, Fiona Helena Vasbinder

LSU Master's Theses

The King George Island Mounds site (16LV22) is one of four conical mound sites located along the lower Amite River in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. Gagliano originally reported the site in 1957 as containing two conical mounds. Initially, it was postulated that the Lower Amite River mounds might date to the Marksville period based on the similarities of shape. Recent research conducted at the site indicates that the site may contain up to five conical mounds that date to the Late Archaic period. Geomorphological, pedological, and archaeological data indicate an initial Archaic occupation. Archaic period artifacts were recovered from excavations above, …

Riding Out The Risks: An Ethnographic Study Of Risk Perceptions In A South Louisiana Bayou Community, Susan Camille Manning

LSU Master's Theses

This ethnographic study explores the risk perceptions of a small unincorporated coastal community in southeastern Louisiana. This community has experienced social and environmental change due to events including tropical storms and hurricanes, erosion, subsidence, oil and gas activities, development, and the impact of global seafood markets. Many global risk perception studies have focused on the perception of risk to human health and property connected with natural and technological disasters, but few have explored the issue of minorities and small at-risk communities. To explore this theoretical and methodological gap, this study uses a variety of qualitative ethnographic methods to examine a …

Local Narratives: An Approach To Participatory Planning In Community Revitalization Projects, Herpreet Kaur Singh

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores what can happen when planners and designers allow local narratives to inspire and inform all stages of community planning and design processes. Specifically, this paper suggests how local narratives can contribute to the ongoing revitalization efforts underway in Old South Baton Rouge, a historically significant, low-income, African-American community in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A personal narrative introduces the subject matter at hand. Thereafter, each chapter is preceded with a narrative interlude to add texture to the ideas presented herein. Chapter two underscores the theoretical and practical relationship between place, memory and development, particularly as this relationship applies to …

Lifting Our Veil Of Ignorance: Culture, Constitutionalism, And Women's Human Rights In Post-September 11 America, Catherine Powell

UC Law Journal

This Article examines cultural arguments made in opposition to the ratification by the United States of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The failure of the United States to ratify CEDAW has been conventionally understood as grounded in concerns that the Convention is incompatible with U.S. constitutionalism- particularly notions of federalism and limited government. However, as this Article demonstrates, opponents of CEDAW who testified during the ratification debate grounded their objections explicitly in terms of culture and traditional gender roles. In particular, CEDAW opponents expressed fear that ratification would disrupt traditional cultural understandings of women's role …

Quests For Conception: Fertility Tourists, Globalization And Feminist Legal Theory, Richard F. Storrow

UC Law Journal

As the cost of in vitro fertilization in the West skyrockets and countries enact laws that drastically curtail access to assisted reproduction, couples are turning more and more frequently to fertility tourism. This Article examines the relationship between restrictive reproductive laws, thought to be expressions of local values, and globalization, the ongoing process of worldwide interconnectedness that makes fertility tourism possible. After a discussion of the meaning and causes of fertility tourism, this Article demonstrates how such tourism dampens organized resistance to laws that restrict the available forms of assisted reproduction and thus how globalization itself plays a part in …

Racial Variations And Social Support And Its Impact On Stress And Depression, Claire Sam

LSU Master's Theses

Evidence suggests that social support can mitigate some of the harmful effects of stress on health. Social support theorists argue that certain social groups have differential access to social support; therefore, certain social groups are at a higher risk of experiencing psychiatric symptoms. Although social networks are beyond the scope of these analyses, it is an important component to consider when examining the uneven distributions of social support between social groups. If racial differences exist in the networks in which individuals are embedded, then part of the differential access to social support could be explained by examining the various compositions …

Models For Ancient Maya Coastal Site Development And Economy: Examination Of Pork And Doughboy Point, Port Honduras, Belize, Kevin Michael Pemberton

LSU Master's Theses

In the summer of 2003 I conducted an archaeological study at Pork and Doughboy Point, Belize, under the direction of Dr. Heather McKillop. The site, situated amidst other ancient Maya coastal settlements of the Port Honduras in southern Belize, has only been tested for offshore deposits in the three decades since it was reported. The current research involved the first reported terrestrial excavations at the site. The goals of this investigation were to recover pottery that could be used to date the ancient Maya occupation and obtain artifacts that would suggest the nature of the site. From artifact analyses I …

Sinker Cypress: Treasures Of A Lost Landscape, Christopher Aubrey Hurst

LSU Master's Theses

Sinker cypress (Taxodium spp.) logs are timbers that were lost during transit from harvest locations in the swamps and mill sites during the industrial cypress harvest from 1880-1930. A small industry has developed, concentrated on the recovery of sinker logs. Most of the persons involved in the recovery of sinker cypress, mill the logs into lumber, and sell the timber directly to consumers or to distributors. A smaller number of pullers retain the logs for personal use. Recovery operations are a costly endeavor and require a significant investment on the part of the harvesters. Most pullers are owner/operators who do …

Kingship, Structures And Access Patterns On The Royal Plaza At The Ancient Maya City Of Altun Ha, Belize: The Construction Of A Maya Gis, Olga A. Yermakhanova

LSU Master's Theses

The GIS of Plaza B represents the application of GIS in the analysis of buildings. The GIS contains information on six structures and recreates the development of the royal residential plaza at the ancient Maya site of Altun Ha, in northern Belize. Altun Ha is a small site with a long history of occupation, rich in architectural and artifactual forms. The major site expansion and development started in the end of the Early Classic (A. D. 400) with the emergence of the institution of kingship at the site. Two adjunct plazas, A and B, formed the largest ceremonial –residential complex …

Liquid Architectures: Marcos Novak's Territory Of Information, Camile A. Silva

LSU Master's Theses

The idea of interactivity between humans and their environment no longer represents the only way of exploring new experiences. Equally passé is the idea that information constitutes the means for this interaction. However, this paper presents that the contemporary idea for interaction has embraced new understandings of the content of experience and the structure of space. New electronic technologies and advanced digital media have separated realities from the realm of the body and transformed experiences into a ubiquitous event. The architectural discourse, that once has been largely a discourse of form and style, has finally overcome those limitations and has …

Mapping The Other Truth In The Shintech Case: Emancipatory Mapping For Environmental Justice In South Louisiana, Charles Allen Flanagan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents an alternative mapping approach which challenges the hegemony of abstract space and instrumental reason propagated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its 1998 study of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) permitting process. The "other truth" is presented through application of concepts from critical theory, critical geography, and the works of Henri Lefebvre to a specific environmental justice struggle in St. James Parish, Louisiana. In 1996 Shintech, Inc. proposed building a polyvinyl chloride facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. The community, concerned about the considerable toxic burden already present in the area, formed a …