In this study, I examine the pilot year of an alternative learning environment in which I, as a practitioner, explored the possibilities for transforming learning for a small class of Grade 11 and 12 students. Drawing on a pedagogy of care, a constructivist model of learning and a student-centered approach to learning, the students and I negotiated new curriculum, combining regular classroom courses with courses constructed by their own learning interests. In this case study, a rhizomatic analysis of student and practitioner data, collected both during and after students’ graduation from high school, showed that students were highly engaged with learning when guided by their personal interests. In the study, I also found, however, that students struggled to fully embrace the potential of their own interests, held back by the ambiguity of self study and the clear metrics of the regular school system to which they were accustomed. As practitioner, I struggled to meet the demands of the prescribed curriculum and those of the curriculum that constantly evolved and changed according to students’ interests. The study also speaks to the tensions in defining the role of a teacher in this alternative learning environment. In conclusion, I suggest we seek to make possible an alternative high school learning environment that more closely resembles free schooling (i.e., learn what you want, where and when you want) within a public school that would, combined with a traditional course of study, meet the provincial criteria for graduation accreditation.

In this study, I examine the pilot year of an alternative learning environment in which I, as a practitioner, explored the possibilities for transforming learning for a small class of Grade 11 and 12 students. Drawing on a pedagogy of care, a constructivist model of learning and a student-centered approach to learning, the students and I negotiated new curriculum, combining regular classroom courses with courses constructed by their own learning interests. In this case study, a rhizomatic analysis of student and practitioner data, collected both during and after students’ graduation from high school, showed that students were highly engaged with learning when guided by their personal interests. In the study, I also found, however, that students struggled to fully embrace the potential of their own interests, held back by the ambiguity of self study and the clear metrics of the regular school system to which they were accustomed. As practitioner, I struggled to meet the demands of the prescribed curriculum and those of the curriculum that constantly evolved and changed according to students’ interests. The study also speaks to the tensions in defining the role of a teacher in this alternative learning environment. In conclusion, I suggest we seek to make possible an alternative high school learning environment that more closely resembles free schooling (i.e., learn what you want, where and when you want) within a public school that would, combined with a traditional course of study, meet the provincial criteria for graduation accreditation.

Uncertainty is a documentary film about belief systems that human animals use to navigate the unknown and assign meaning to experiences. It acknowledges that we exist amidst the parameters of our own perceptual constructs. Our frameworks for navigation often range in degrees of openness to the unknown and to outside scrutiny. I set out to explore these concepts through interactions with different individuals and social groups, each with their unique templates. I hoped to produce a stimulating film that engaged diverse audiences through diverse content. Structural and stylistic considerations are paramount to my theoretical and post-production reflections on Uncertainty. Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) theory of rhizomes provides a good reference in terms of the cross-fertilisation of ideas, decentralised structure and different states of connection that I hoped to provoke through the film. New documentary theory highlights a trend towards greater interaction between filmmaker, audience and subject (Bruzzi, 2000). This signals a growing understanding that striving for objectivity in documentary is redundant. Although it is a welcome development, discussion could be broadened in relation to filmmaker presence and interactivity, to include style and structure as modes of primary interaction for the filmmaker with the audience and subject. This exegesis approaches expanding the parameters for interaction to examples, such as Uncertainty, where the filmmaker is neither present in image or voice. Texts that offer constellations of ideas, like a rhizome, provide an alternative to those following a more linear progression or centralised argument. Promoting greater connectivity and multiplicity in documentary is congruous with the current developments in communications and technologies.

Herbicide treatments were tested on mature stands of Miscanthus in 2013 and 2014 in Winston and Oktibbeha counties Mississippi. Twenty-one different herbicide treatments and two application timings, summer and fall, were evaluated. Glyphosate at 4,500 g ae ha-1 applied in the summer provided the best Miscanthus control at each location. Control with fall applications of glyphosate varied between locations. Two greenhouse studies were conducted in 2014 and 2015 at Mississippi State, MS to evaluate the effects of mowing on seedling Miscanthus, as well as the time period between seed germination and rhizome initiation. Rhizomes were visible on seedling plants 15 or 13 weeks after germination in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Removal of the Miscanthus terminal reduced the number of rhizomes produced compared to plants with intact terminals. However, terminal removal increased the number of shoots produced compared to plants with intact terminal.

BACKGROUND:Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and turmeric (Curcuma longa) accumulate important pharmacologically active metabolites at high levels in their rhizomes. Despite their importance, relatively little is known regarding gene expression in the rhizomes of ginger and turmeric.RESULTS:In order to identify rhizome-enriched genes and genes encoding specialized metabolism enzymes and pathway regulators, we evaluated an assembled collection of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from eight different ginger and turmeric tissues. Comparisons to publicly available sorghum rhizome ESTs revealed a total of 777 gene transcripts expressed in ginger/turmeric and sorghum rhizomes but apparently absent from other tissues. The list of rhizome-specific transcripts was enriched for genes associated with regulation of tissue growth, development, and transcription. In particular, transcripts for ethylene response factors and AUX/IAA proteins appeared to accumulate in patterns mirroring results from previous studies regarding rhizome growth responses to exogenous applications of auxin and ethylene. Thus, these genes may play important roles in defining rhizome growth and development. Additional associations were made for ginger and turmeric rhizome-enriched MADS box transcription factors, their putative rhizome-enriched homologs in sorghum, and rhizomatous QTLs in rice. Additionally, analysis of both primary and specialized metabolism genes indicates that ginger and turmeric rhizomes are primarily devoted to the utilization of leaf supplied sucrose for the production and/or storage of specialized metabolites associated with the phenylpropanoid pathway and putative type III polyketide synthase gene products. This finding reinforces earlier hypotheses predicting roles of this enzyme class in the production of curcuminoids and gingerols.CONCLUSION:A significant set of genes were found to be exclusively or preferentially expressed in the rhizome of ginger and turmeric. Specific transcription factors and other regulatory genes were found that were common to the two species and that are excellent candidates for involvement in rhizome growth, differentiation and development. Large classes of enzymes involved in specialized metabolism were also found to have apparent tissue-specific expression, suggesting that gene expression itself may play an important role in regulating metabolite production in these plants.

With the rise of First Nations owned and created television content at the turn of the century, came a demand to see an accurate representation of Aboriginality that could look at Aboriginals as both here and modern. From 2003-2006, the first Aboriginal made and produced television series entitled Moccasin Flats, I argue, used modern day hip-hop discourse to both engage and dissect a host of complex issues facing modern day urban Aboriginal society. This research project mobilizes multiple methodologies; including: 1.) Eco’s code and sign function semiotic analysis, which operates to identify various hip-hop codes in the text; 2.)Hall’s method of articulation to look at how meaning is fixed in the discourse surrounding the show; and finally 3) Deleuze’s rhizomic approach to identity to see how the shows main characters are constructed in a way to highlight the paradoxical and undercut certain flirtations with essentialization. This three-tiered methodological process paints a picture of a new complex use of discourse to accentuate different facets of aboriginality that had previously been the sole product of dominant hegemonic institutions which relied on racist stereotypes. By dissecting how identity is formed on Moccasin Flats, I will show how aboriginal filmmakers construct a self-reflexive space where the character is perpetually in the process of ‘becoming’ and identity is always a site of negotiation.

Thesis advisor: Kevin Newmark / This thesis focuses on flora as metaphors and representations of identity in Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle (1972), Xavier Orville’s Délice et le fromager (1977), and Maryse Condé’s Pays mêlé (1985). Within the context of the declining agricultural industry of the seventies and the eighties, these authors represent a new generation of writers from Guadeloupe and Martinique who add their own ambivalent landscape’s visions to those of Aimé Césaire’s Negritude and Édouard Glissant’s Creolization. As flora’s metaphors, trees and rhizomes reveal important aspects of the colonial world. Although the tree is a metaphor to unearth aspects of identity, does it have its own limitations in this colonial world? The theoretical basis for questioning the tree is rooted in Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Édouard Glissant's rhizome theories. Chapter one, “Le spectre du paysage tourmenté dans Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle”, considers the connections of the tormented landscape with the various identities of characters. These identities use flora and characteristics of some trees and plants as rhetorical constructions to highlight different perspectives of the colonial world: race and rebellion and resilience. Chapter two, “Le fromager dans le monde putrescible” in Délice et le fromager, undertakes to understand the meaning of the tree as the narrator. The identity and the nature of the possessed ceiba tree, as the narrator, reveal a corrupted colonial world. As a witness to the main character’s family and the colonial world, this tree provides a unique perspective on the destruction of the family structure and on the corruption of the colonial world. Chapter three, “La thématique du retour à travers l’espace généalogique de Pays mêlé” examines how Maryse Condé’s Pays mêlé challenges the concept of a typical family tree. The family structure through adultery and illegitimacy shows that the fragmented Surena’s genealogy appears to be constructed like a rhizome with multiple wandering links. In this chapter, we will study the questions of origin often revisited within this genealogy and we will analyze the different factors that destabilize and marginalize characters throughout several generations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.

This paper argues against the charges of puerility in the films of Kevin Smith. I analyze Mallrats (1995), Clerks II (2006) and Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008). To illustrate my contention, I offer close readings of the director's films, particularly the protagonists' bodily/linguistic performances. My efforts will vindicate my assertion that through these specialized performances, through the forceful assertion of their marginal identities, the films' protagonists encroach upon, and finally appropriate, historically dominant spaces. As a result, the spaces they appropriate acquire a new, characteristic hybridity. Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia provides a framework for delineating the dominant and liminal spaces within Smith's cinematic/real worlds. Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the 'carnivalesque' helps to elucidate the vagaries of the films' bodily and scriptural performances, while both Kevin Hetherington's concept of utopics and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's notion of the rhizome attempt to marry Bakhtin and Foucault. through the notion of appropriation of public space through performance to ultimately achieve a utopian, pluralistic ethos.

This critical inquiry in curriculum studies uses poststructuralist and Deleuzian rhizomatic approaches alongside an original 'picturing' methodology. The author genealogically maps historical and contemporary curriculum theorising to deconstruct curriculum 'development' and foreground currere (curriculum reconceptualising). In performing Deleuzian philosophy, his proposed c u r a reimagines curriculum via currere to envision generatively living-learning

With the rise of First Nations owned and created television content at the turn of the century, came a demand to see an accurate representation of Aboriginality that could look at Aboriginals as both here and modern. From 2003-2006, the first Aboriginal made and produced television series entitled Moccasin Flats, I argue, used modern day hip-hop discourse to both engage and dissect a host of complex issues facing modern day urban Aboriginal society. This research project mobilizes multiple methodologies; including: 1.) Eco’s code and sign function semiotic analysis, which operates to identify various hip-hop codes in the text; 2.)Hall’s method of articulation to look at how meaning is fixed in the discourse surrounding the show; and finally 3) Deleuze’s rhizomic approach to identity to see how the shows main characters are constructed in a way to highlight the paradoxical and undercut certain flirtations with essentialization. This three-tiered methodological process paints a picture of a new complex use of discourse to accentuate different facets of aboriginality that had previously been the sole product of dominant hegemonic institutions which relied on racist stereotypes. By dissecting how identity is formed on Moccasin Flats, I will show how aboriginal filmmakers construct a self-reflexive space where the character is perpetually in the process of ‘becoming’ and identity is always a site of negotiation.