Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

This dissertation examines certain dimensions of jazz rhetoric, performance, and organizational activity that occurred during the period of the Black Arts movement, the thrust of which corresponded to the larger goals and modes of expression of that phenomenon. The first chapter interrogates definitions of the Black Arts movement, and contextualizes the emergence of black consciousness themes arising in jazz in the 1960s and 1970s by considering the history of racial appeals and identity assertions in the music prior to this period. The second chapter documents the musical activities of the Black Arts era, identifying major tropes and analyzing and historicizing specific modes of carrying this Afrocentric message. The third chapter examines the rise of a generation of African American jazz critics, who sought to define the meaning of the music, and its relationship to black communities and the social and political movements engendering fundamental changes in the perception and practice of race in America. The fourth chapter engages the theme of African American community sponsorship of jazz. The relationship of jazz, and especially experimental jazz, to black communities has been considered largely a nil one. Focusing on the Black Experience in Sound concert series of The East, this chapter challenges the notion and presents evidence that many African Americans were quite invested in the music and its use as a nation-building tool. The conclusion briefly addresses organizational manifestations of self-determination in jazz, and makes an argument for a more expansive view of the Black Arts movement in assessing its achievements and lasting masterworks.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder which affects thousands of Black Americans. SCD is found predominantly in people of African descent. The disease is characterized by repeated and unpredictable painful episodes capable of disabling its victims. People with this disease need to make adjustments in order to cope with this life-long chronically disabling illness. No studies have examined self-efficacy, uncertainty, and self-management in adult clients with SCD. A cross-sectional, descriptive correlational study was conducted to examine the relationships among self-efficacy, uncertainty, and self-management in adults with SCD. A convenience sample of eighty-five subjects from three institutions completed the study. Data were collected using the Mishel Uncertainty in Illness Scale (MUIS), Appraisal of Self-Care Agency (ASA) Scale, and two subscales of the Self-Efficacy in Cancer Management Scale. Data were likewise obtained on demographic characteristics, frequency of crises, pain intensity associated with crises, and use of home remedies and their effectiveness. Descriptive statistics were used to describe characteristics of the sample. Pearson Product Moment Correlations and Regression analyses were used to examine three hypotheses and one research question. The mean age of the sample was 32 years (SD = 9) with a range from 19 to 54. Subjects tended to be single, unemployed, and on disability. The study also revealed that a majority (58%) of subjects had a college education. Results indicated a significant low negative correlation between self-care and uncertainty ($r = {-}.24,\ p < .05$) and a significant low positive correlation between self-care and self-efficacy ($r = .25,\ p < .05$). Stepwise regression analyses were performed between uncertainty, self-efficacy, and self-management as the dependent variables with several demographic variables as independent variables. Education accounted for 16% of variability in uncertainty; effectiveness of home remedies accounted for 19% of variability in self-efficacy; and use of home remedies accounted for 14% of variability in self-management. Limitations of the study, contributions to nursing science, and recommendations for further research are presented.

Born January 8, 1809, George Luther Stearns was from an old New England family. His father's death forced him to enter the business world at an early age. He rose from a clerk to a linseed oil manufacturer for the shipbuilders of his native Medford, Massachusetts. Later, the lead pipe factory he started solidified his wealth and standing in the manufacturing community. A conservative businessman, Stearns kept half his earnings in gold. From the Compromise of 1850 on, Stearns became increasingly active in antislavery efforts and involved with the Concord literati, including Emerson and Alcott. With slowness of speech, Stearns preferred working behind the scenes, allowing his money to speak for him. Although he did not join radical antislavery groups and other reform movements, in the cause of Kansas, he used his managerial skills effectively, eventually becoming chairman of the Massachusetts State Kansas Aid Committee. About this time, Stearns met John Brown, became involved with his commitment to free blacks in America, and emerged as chief financial backer for Brown's Harper's Ferry plan. After this episode, Stearns helped organize the Emancipation League and recruited the 54th and 55th Massachusetts. His success led Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to ask him to recruit blacks for the Union armies. As Assistant Adjutant-General for the Recruitment of Colored Troops, Major Stearns was most productive in Nashville, Tennessee, where he met Andrew Johnson. Sympathetic to the plight of "Contraband," Stearns also organized hospitals and schools, stopped impressment, and organized Unionists into a lobby for the emancipation of slaves in their state. Sensitive and quick-tempered, Stearns ran afoul of Stanton and resigned. He then channeled his energy into a civil rights movement and organized the Impartial Suffrage Association. After the Civil War, Stearns continued his efforts on behalf of blacks, sending out pamphlets and publishing a paper, The Right Way, to advance the cause. Finally his strength gave way, and Stearns, who suffered from bronchial problems, died of pneumonia in New York in April 1867.

There have been several studies of the Black English (BE) copula. The majority of BE copula studies, however, have focused on production patterns within older child, adolescent and adult speech. Few have concentrated on the copula production patterns of younger BE child speakers, particularly preschool-aged speakers. This has resulted in a general lack of information about the developing grammar of BE child speech. The purpose of the present study is to provide an in-depth analysis of copula production within early BE child speech using a variable rule analysis framework. Thirty 30-minute spontaneous conversational samples from ten 3 to 5 year old BE child subjects were examined for the presence of the following six copula variants: the standard agreeing copula, zero copula, standard non-agreeing copula, go copula, ain't and invariant be. The primary purpose of the analysis procedure was to determine the relative ranking of targeted linguistic constraints with respect to nonstandard copula use. All variants were therefore coded according to the following information: utterance context (i.e., declarative, wh-questions, etc.), type of variant (i.e., standard agreeing, zero copula, etc.), preceding linguistic context (i.e., pronoun, noun phrase, etc.), adjective following linguistic context (i.e., adjective, noun phrase, etc.), person/number context (i.e., third person singular, second person singular, etc.) semantic context (i.e., nomination, attribution, etc.), speech act context (i.e., comment, report/inform, etc.), and discourse function context (i.e., response, initiation, etc.). Nonstandard copula production patterns were then identified for five major utterance types: non-negative declarative, negative declarative, wh-questions, yes/no questions, and embedded clauses. Results revealed similar profiles of zero copula use within the preceding subject, following predicate and person/number environments of non-negative declaratives as has been noted for older speakers in other investigations of the BE copula. In addition, results revealed additional findings relative to zero copula use within negative declaratives, questions and embedded clauses; invariant be, go copula, nonstandard agreeing copula and ain't use across all utterance types; and pragmatic constraints on copula production. The clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed with regard to existing theories of developing BE child grammar, adult BE grammar, and speech/language assessment for the BE child speaker.

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Current methods for assessing African American English (AAE) speaking children's semantic knowledge are seriously flawed. Many AAE-speaking children who do not have language disorders perform poorly on standardized vocabulary tests. However, there is no reason to believe that all of these AAE-speaking children are deficient in their ability to learn a rich and functional vocabulary. Existing vocabulary tests often are culturally biased because lexical items are selected and normed on middle-class Euro-American children. This results in an inherent bias against linguistically and culturally diverse populations. Some African American children have less exposure to the lexical items selected for use on standardized tests than Euro-American middle-class children. These cultural and language differences become exacerbated when these children enter school. Frequently, AAE-speaking children are referred to the school speech-language pathologist (SLP) for language testing. However, the SLP is often ill-equipped to provide an unbiased evaluation due to reasons previously mentioned. The problem for the SLP is to determine what areas of semantics to test and what methods should be utilized in this assessment. This study investigated the processing-dependent measure of fast mapping as an alternative method of assessing semantic knowledge in children. AAE and Standard American English (SAE) speaking children between the ages of four and six were presented with two comprehension tasks involving real verbs and the fast mapping of novel verbs in four different argument structures (intransitive, transitive, transfer, and complement). These tasks were developed to evaluate how children use syntactic bootstrapping to help fix the meaning of new verbs. The participants' performance on the alternative assessment measure was compared to their performance on a commonly used psychometric vocabulary test. Although significant differences were found between AAE- and SAE-speakers in the transitive argument structure for real verbs and transfer argument structure for both real and novel verbs, overall results indicated that both groups were able to fast map novel verbs. A performance gap between AAE and SAE participants on the psychometric vocabulary test was noted in this study. These results suggest the feasibility of fast mapping as a method to reduce test bias in semantic assessment.

No description available.