American Studies Commons^™

Review Of Paradise Found: Nature In America At The Time Of Discovery. By Steve Nicholls, John Herron

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Covering 500 years in 500 pages, Paradise Found details the amazing abundance of the natural world that greeted the first European arrivals to North America. Such a perspective is not wholly original; pre-Columbian biodiversity has been a popular topic of investigation for two generations of scholars. But as filmmaker, entomologist, and author Steve Nicholls explains, past catalogs of plenty have, if anything, underestimated the bounty of the precontact physical world. Explaining in full detail the transition from ecological complexity to fragile instability makes the narrative of loss all the more powerful. Paradise Found is short on silver linings. This account …

Review Of Immigration And Settlement, 1870-1939. Edited By Gregory P. Marchildon., Hans Werner

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This is the second volume in the History of the Prairie West Series, which focuses on the settlement of the Canadian Prairies by Ukrainian, German, Welsh, Jewish, Dutch, and other immigrants. The collection brings together twenty articles previously published in Prairie Forum grouped according to the themes of the early "opening" of the West, First Nations during the settlement era, patterns of settlement, and ethnic relations. An index greatly aids in finding common themes among the diverse topics. The collection includes articles that made important contributions to settlement history when they first appeared in Prairie Forum, such as the 1997 …

Review Of The Vanishing Face Of Gaia: A Final Warning, By James Lovelock; Foreword By Martin Rees, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock writes a clear narrative about the major impacts humans are having on the tightly coupled biotic/ abiotic system we call the Earth and that Lovelock refers to as Gaia in his many scholarly works. He tells us that this coupled system acts in concert to maintain the Earth's environment at an optimal condition for the organisms that live together here, modifying, for example, the atmosphere so that its composition stays at about 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen (in the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears this would …

Review Of The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide To Seed And Seedling Identification In The Upper Midwest. By Dave Williams., H. L. Hillhouse

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This book will please both practitioners of prairie restoration and more general prairie enthusiasts. It includes 72 grass and forb species, and the focus is clearly on species often found in tallgrass prairie plantings in the upper Midwest. The grasses and forbs are presented separately here, and for each group a morphological key is provided to divide the species into "Key Characteristic Groups." Because these groups are based on morphological similarity, species within a group are often-but not always-closely related.

Short and highly portable, the book covers the most common species in plantings. The only thing that would have delighted …

Review Of Environmental City: People, Place, Politics, And The Meaning Of Modern Austin. By William Scott Swearingen, Jr., Jonathan R. Wynn

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

William Scott Swearingen, lr.'s Environmental City is a social history of how a place like Red Bud Isle and the larger city surrounding it could come to exist. Swearingen opens with the founding of Austin, and takes the reader through the ideals shaping its modern era: the battle between the twin paradigms of "growth" and "green." At its heart, the book tells the story of the success of Austin's green campaign: how "place" was created, fought for, and won. Not all battles were victories, but Swearingen points to key moments, and unpacks the slow process of institutionalizing broad environmental concepts …

Do Invasive Riparian Woody Plants Affect Hydrology And Ecosystem Processes?, Julie Huddle, Tala Awada, Derrel Martin, Xinhua Zhou, Sue Ellen Pegg, Scott Josiah

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

© 2011 Copyright by the Center for Greot Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Review Of The Frontier Newspapers And The Coverage Of The Plains Indian Wars By Hugh J. Reilly, Kyle Carsten Wyatt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As a community of scholars, we need to ask more from books like this. Despite a topic ripe with fruitful and compelling potential, Reilly's approach to newspaper coverage of the Plains Indian Wars lacks rigor, nuance, and engagement with contemporary critical conversations.

Reilly, a communications professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, discusses eight "watershed events," from the Great Sioux Uprising in 1862 to the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1891. Newspapers throughout the United States, indeed the world, reported on these conflicts. The coverage that appeared in national publications, such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune …

Review Of Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective By Christy Stanlake, Julie Pearson-Little Thunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Understanding Native American drama requires a critical perspective often lacking in theater and academia. Christy Stanlake's book helps remedy this problem with a two-fold strategy. First, she identifies four Native-authored discourses generated in part by the study of American Indian fiction and poetry. Then she applies these discourses to readings from nine Native plays, showing how Native philosophies shape Native drama on the page and in performance. Stanlake explains that place, or "platiality," in western theater assumes new dimensions in Native drama, expressing complex relationships among character, language, and landscape. She examines the historical and political aspects of Native storytelling …

Review Of The Color Of The Land: Race, Nation, And The Politics Of Landownership In Oklahoma, 1832-1929 By David A. Chang, Jacob Sherman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Power is often tied to who controls the economic capital, and whoever has it will delineate terms of membership within that society. Oklahoma's and the Great Plains' greatest capital is land. The Color of the Land effectively examines how Creek Nation lands defined membership along racial lines both inside and outside of the tribe. David Chang skillfully pieces together the fluctuation of racial complexities as lands transferred from communal to wealthy private ownership.

Chang notes that Creek lands were primarily communal based upon clan loyalties. Clans had no racial distinctions. Racial definitions developed as Creeks began owning slaves by the …

Review Of Literary Life: A Second Memoir By Larry Mcmurtry, Tom Pilkington

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Literary Life is the second entry of Larry McMurtry's projected trilogy of memoirs. The first, Books (2008), recalls his lifelong avocation as book scout, dealer, and eventually bookstore owner. The yet-to-be-published third, Hollywood, will relate his experiences as a screenwriter. Literary Life takes as its subject McMurtry's career as prolific writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove (1985).

Let it be said right off the bat that this slim volume is a mess, a lazy, sloppy collection of random memories that lacks anything resembling a coherent structure. Though it begins at the beginning-with the young McMurtry reading boys' …

Review Of Patrick Connor's War: The 1865 Powder River Indian Expedition By David E. Wagner, John H. Monnett

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Patrick Connor's War is the late David E. Wagner's second book in the past year dealing with the military operations against Lakotas and Cheyennes in the Powder River country of today's Wyoming and environs in 1865. Like his previous work, Powder River Odyssey, dealing with Nelson Cole's wing of an expensive army offensive operation against the Plains tribes in the wake, some contend, of raids on the Overland Trail avenging the Sand Creek Massacre, the current book relies heavily on campaign records, personal recollections, and diaries of the officers, civilian contractors, and enlisted men involved in the campaign. The …

Rebuilding After Hurricane Katrina: The Big Easy, And The Long Road Home., Jennifer S. Boucher

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The objective of this study is to analyze the influences of demographic patterns, planning politics and funding disbursement processes in rebuilding New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina's storm surge engulfed several neighborhoods of Orleans Parish Louisiana, on August 29th 2005.Immediately following the storm surge, national opinion makers began debating the possibility of shrinking the footprint of New Orleans, as part of the rebuilding process. Although recovery efforts were begun almost immediately, at the five year anniversary of the cataclysmic natural disaster more than a hundred thousand of New Orleanians are still displaced. Utilizing regression analysis as a quantitative measure and qualitative …

From Start To Strike: A Lesson Plan For The Whole Theatre Experience, Kelly Crotty

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Bon Bon Appetit Business Plan, Valerie Schein

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Appeal Of Social Networking, Payal Arora

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Anti-Malarial Activity Exhibited By Florida Mangrove Endophytes, Jacqueline Lee Salm

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

Many organisms around the world including plants, marine organisms, and microbes release chemicals used for things such as pigment or defense against other organisms. These chemicals are known as secondary metabolites and have been found to exhibit promising activity against many infectious diseases and cancer. Natural products chemistry is the study of these secondary metabolites with one of the purposes to discover new small organic molecules for potential pharmaceutical use in the future. With parasitic diseases, such as malaria, prominent throughout the poorest regions of the world, there are great opportunities for discovering anti-malarial drugs from natural products. Approximately 250 …

Ovid, Christians, And Celts In The Epilogue Of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Emily A. Mcdermott

Classics & Religious Studies Faculty Publication Series

CHARLES FRAZIER HAS CAREFULLY SITUATED HIS NOVEL ABOUT AN American Civil War deserter within Greek and Latin classical literary traditions. Since its publication, Cold Mountain has all but universally been hailed as an “odyssey” by readers, critics, and scholars, in recognition of its structure as an adventure-laden homeward journey, with the end goal of reuniting two lovers; it is rich with Homeric allusions (even to the point of quotation) and typologies of both character and scene (Chitwood; McDermott, “Frazier Polymêtis.”; Vandiver). In the first chapter, the author further introduces two fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus (18), a thinker whose …

A Global Assessment Of Large Scale Earthquakes: The Impact Of Mitigation And Preparation Policies On The Loss Of Human Life, Derek Hayward

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

This research examines emergency management mitigation and preparation polices in the hazard area of seismic events. With major earthquakes receiving high profile attention in the media, these events have caused widespread fear, physical damage to buildings and infrastructure and loss of life. This research evaluates the weaknesses that are currently affecting areas where earthquakes remain a constant threat. This study uses cases to provide rich description regarding several events and looks in-depth at six seismic events. Variables are sourced from the United Stated Geological Survey and show the magnitude of the earthquake and the official death and injury count for …

Porous Metal-Organic Materials By Design Using Neutral Organic Ligands, Stephen Burd

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Alice’S Adventures And Bleak House: Authors, Illustrators, And Victorian Professional Networking, Theresa L. Woods

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Symbols Of Good Fortune: An Analysis Of Alpanas As Sacred Images That Represent Auspiciousness, Joseph Heizman

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

African-American Trailblazers: The Sociopolitical Factors Of Success, Tyler B.K. Myers

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Florida’S State Children’S Health Insurance Program (Schip): The Children’S Healthcare Access Initiative’S Florida Kidcare Outreach In Hillsborough County, Alexandra Printz

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Pkcδii In Insulin-Mediated Neurogenesis, Mishka Peart

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

Protein Kinase C delta (PKCδ) is a Serine/Threonine signaling kinase involved in a number of different cellular functions including cell differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis. PKCδ improves learning and memory by preventing neuronal loss and maintaining the synapses. Data from our lab demonstrates that insulin regulates the alternative splicing of PKCδ pre-mRNA and promotes the expression of PKCδII, the splice variant that promotes neuronal survival. PKCδI, another splice variant of PKCδ, causes apoptosis of neurons. Our preliminary data and previous studies demonstrate that intranasal insulin improves cognitive ability in mice. The goal is now to determine the downstream components through which …

The Pronoun Problem: Possible Changes In The Use Of Epicene Pronouns, Morgan Dean, Brittany Norton

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

This study explores the possible bias of gender in the English language and was designed to replicate and extend Noll (1999). We assessed reaction times to lexical decision tasks (i.e., deciding whether a letter string forms a word) following sentences containing supposedly epicene (gender neutral) pronouns "he" and singular "they." We asked whether both feminine and masculine words would be equally accessible following sentences utilizing the epicene "he" and singular "they." Participants ( N=208) were presented with a series of opinion statements and indicated whether they agreed or disagreed. At various points within the sentences, the participants completed the …

“Natural Disaster Plans And How They Need To Be Fixed”, Christopher Poitevien

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

Natural disasters have affected our history, affect our present, and will affect our future. Because of this our world needs to adapt. But disaster plans already established should include certain aspects that would limit the amount of damage inflicted by the disaster and the number of lives that are lost. The problem with the literature is that it does not cover what should be done to decrease the number of lives lost and limit the damage that could occur. The first thing that it needs is disaster epidemiologists. These are scientists that go back into the history of the area …

Marketing Plan For The Law Office Of Gregory T. Varian, Marisa Varian

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Exhibition Of A Rhinoceros: Iconography And Collecting In Eighteenth Century Venice, Alexa Torchynowycz

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the painting titled The Exhibition of a Rhinoceros (1751) by the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi and its context within the art patronage of the Venetian patrician Giovanni Grimani ai Servi. Study of the decline of Venice‟s political power during the eighteenth century, the lineage of rhinoceros imagery begun by the famous Renaissance German artist, Albrecht Dürer, and Italian collecting practices of naturalia influenced by the sixteenth century natural scientist, Ulisse Aldrovandi, were factors in the development of the thesis. Previously, many art historians have interpreted The Exhibition of a Rhinoceros as representing the "spectacle" of Venetian Carnival. …

Terry Pratchett’S Literary Tryst With Shakespeare’S Macbeth: A Postmodernist Reading With A Humanist Guide, Jenna Miller

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Jane Austen: A Study Of Film Adaptations, Megan Graham

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.