Youth traumatized by natural disasters report high levels of posttraumatic stress as well as other types of impairing emotional distress symptoms (e.g., anxiety and depression) for many years post-trauma. Implementing school based screening and treatment programs for these youth eliminates barriers to traditional treatment settings and may provide symptom relief. The current study examines the feasibility of conducting school-based trauma-focused treatment program in the wake of disaster. Idiographic evaluation of the treatment process is incorporated into the treatment evaluation through use of multiple baseline design. Youth reporting at least severe levels of posttraumatic stress on the PTSD-RI were recruited for an expanded assessment and treatment (youth ages 8-13; N=6). Treatment (i.e., the StArT program) consisted of 10-weekly individual sessions during which different cognitive behavioral components were introduced. Youth were assessed at pre-treatment, weekly during treatment, and at post-treatment. Quantitative and qualitative findings relative to youth responses to intervention are presented and discussed in terms of the feasibility of conducting treatment in school settings and in terms of individual difference factors contributing to treatment responses. Findings from this study suggest the feasibility of school based interventions through the aid of school counselors and integration of treatment sessions into the school schedule. Youth responses to the intervention were very positive, point toward the efficacy of a disaster trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy (the StArT program), and help to highlight particularly useful modules in youth.

Comprised of four essays, this collection of creative nonfiction focuses on facets of daily life and culture in Germany. The author recounts her experiences as she and her family assimilate into a foreign culture and adapt to using its language. The first essay tells of the family’s unexpected but rewarding sojourn in Germany after losing everything to Hurricane Katrina. The subsequent essays display a broader range of experiences and cultural observations upon the family’s return to Germany four years later. These include a narrative of the family’s move to a small town in central Germany, an interview with a local asparagus farmer and an account of the author’s children’s efforts to learn German.

This qualitative case study explores the post-Katrina experiences of African Americans in Houston and in New Orleans. When the levees failed, residents from New Orleans were scattered across the country. Houston housed the largest population of displaced low-income African Americans from New Orleans. As the rebuilding process began, housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies in New Orleans changed. These institutional changes employed urban revitalization and poverty removal strategies adapted to disaster recovery. This study differs from previous research by examining these changes with an intersectional approach. It explores how African Americans frame obstacles as they attempt to return to a city with reformed housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies. To do this, I analyze three different cases 1) those that returned to New Orleans, 2) those still displaced in Houston, and 3) those that relocated to Houston after returning to New Orleans for over a year.

This paper aims to explore and discuss the points found in published research articles addressing posttraumatic stress disorder in children following the Bosnian Genocide, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. The articles vary in their emphasis, methods, and conclusions, but all focus in one way or another on how the occurrence of war, terrorism, and natural disaster have resulted in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in youth. Intervention following traumatic events, however, rarely focus on treating mental health needs, and instead, focus on resolving any primary needs of vulnerable populations. The recommended treatment strategies for PTSD in youth require high quality mental health care and great accessibility for victims of trauma. Considering the high prevalence of PTSD in children following traumatic experiences, treatment of PTSD symptoms is necessary to ensure that youth can fully function in their daily lives without a constant reminder of the trauma they experienced.

In placing Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey in conversation with each other, my dissertation analyzes - alongside their poetry and prose - monuments, paintings, television, film, photographs, and performance as connected to understanding the impact of historical legacies on lived experiences within the empire of U.S. America. Toni Morrison's concept of recovering the "unwritten interior life" of the slave experience - a life hidden within slave narratives - assists in understanding the historical poetics of Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey as artists engaged in similar projects of reclamation. For Harjo this entails shedding a light on the weight of Native American histories for the descendants of survivors while contesting the myths that abound within popular culture regarding Native peoples. Trethewey's work intervenes within the public memory of the nation by centering on the inner-lives of African Americans as well as other people of color, stressing their various gendered and racialized experiences. The gaps within the records that each poet illuminates do not constitute a failure of history, per se, but rather emphasize limitations concerning traditional methodologies of history-writing. In order to further expand on this argument, throughout my work I rely upon certain ideas from 20th century ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas regarding our obligations to the past of the Other as well as the potential violence inherent within Western philosophical rhetoric regarding the Other. "Tending to the Past" argues that due to the gaps within the archival records we need multiple ways of approaching our history. The absence within the archives of the "emotional truths" or "interior lives" of historical subjects proves to emphasize the necessity for the poetic interventions of Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey.

This thesis explores the experiences and practices of disaster relief volunteers. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a period of fifty-three days in the summer of 2007 at the post-hurricane Katrina Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. Through innovative practices and a commitment to the principle of “solidarity not charity” volunteers produce not just material aid, but an ideology of social justice. This thesis is also an exercise in engaged scholarship in that the author directly participated in the disaster relief effort as a volunteer.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Forest Products Department. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, December 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 11, 2009). "Department of American Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 142-157).

The two fields of historic preservation and sustainable design include many similar values concerning conservation, yet produce buildings that ultimately look and perform differently. Historic preservation relies on the maintenance of traditional materials to ensure that historic buildings are preserved for future generations. Sustainable design typically works with new construction to create buildings that have little negative impact on the environment. The similarities yet separateness that exist between historic preservation and sustainable design provide a compelling platform to ask how we can combine the two fields within one building project. The combination of these two felds is currently being explored in post-Katrina New Orleans, and I am asking how we can combine historic preservation with aspects of sustainable design to create a sustainable preservation hybrid, or fusion between technological aspects of “green” design with traditional methods of preservation, that will allow historic buildings to maintain their integrity and achieve the values of sustainability. New Orleans provides a great opportunity to examine this question due to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing efforts to rebuild the city. One specific area of New Orleans, the historic district of Holy Cross, plays home to two key organizations involved in the rebuilding: the Preservation Resource Center, which preserves the existing historic housing stock, and Global Green, which builds new, sustainable design projects. These two organizations work right down the street from one another, yet have yet to combine their building methods or work together on a shared project. This relationship between Global Green/sustainable design and the Preservation Resource Center/historic preservation provides a good opportunity to examine how elements of new sustainable design can be combined with the traditional methods of preservation in order to achieve a sustainable preservation hybrid. I examine the creation of a sustainable preservation hybrid by conducting a literature review, interviews and site visits, and energy modeling. The literature review reveals that preservationists and architects involved with sustainable design like the idea of creating a hybrid, but still lack a thorough understanding of each other’s tacit values. The interviews reveal how the organizations working in Holy Cross also embrace the idea of a sustainable preservation hybrid, yet remain somewhat lost as to how to actually create such a building. The energy modeling then demonstrates which combination of “green” materials from sustainable design and “traditional” materials from historic preservation combine to create a building that achieves both the values of sustainable design and historic preservation. Whether or not we can combine preservation and sustainable design to make a hybrid poses an original and relevant question in the context of post-Katrina New Orleans and elsewhere. Since we are currently facing an energy crisis, the conclusions as to how we can combine these two fields prove how a single, historic building can simultaneously conserve both environmental and historic resources. / text

This dissertation accesses memory and archival studies for inclusion in the discipline of rhetoric and composition in order to study "collective invention" (Bisecker, 125) practices as they occur in memory places, such as that of the archive. I theorize a pedagogy and memory practice for writing studies classrooms and communities by providing an autoethnographic case study across three levels of composition and rhetoric classes and community archives including the Writing After Katrina Archive Project and the Arizona Memory Project, where I explore the links between memory, place, and the process of rhetorical invention. In doing so, I hope to examine the agentive potential for students, emerging scholars, and community partners to reflect on various acts of composing, such as composing ideas, composing writing, and composing knowledge through the study of memory places and the creation of archives. Using the space of the archive as a pedagogical tool, my project seeks to redefine the space and place of the "archive" from that of a dusty space reserved for scholars, to that of a potentially generative location where critical dialogue is organically produced around the acts of what I term, rhetorical (re)invention. Rhetorical (re)invention, like the production of memory, is a social process of meaning of making that can be extrapolated from local resources. In doing so, this project continues the important work of scholars in both memory studies and rhetoric and composition studies in redefining the archive, reframing invention, and positing a pedagogical framework for teaching college writing and rhetorical studies.