Bunces Key, a narrow, linear, barrier island on the west-central coast of Florida, was founded in 1961. Its growth and development since that time is well documented by aerial photography. Cores taken from the Key and surrounding areas reveal a stratigraphic succession of facies reflecting rapid vertical aggradation. Sedimentation began on a gently sloping platform through the landward migration of large scale bedforms (sand waves) during fair weather periods. Migration of these bedforms ceased when emergence and lack of continued overwash precluded further movement. Vertical accretion to supratidal levels resulted from the continued onshore transport of sediment and subsequent welding to the previously formed bars. Stratigraphically, the barrier exhibits a "layer-cake" type of stratigraphy, with nearshore sediments overlain by foreshore, backbeach, and dune deposits. The backbarrier generally exhibits muddy lagoon sediments intercalated with washover and channel margin sediments. Fining upward washover sequences reflect the unstable nature of the island. Low pressure systems commonly cause overtopping of the barrier, with the subsequent formation of tidal inlets and washover fans. Aerial photographs document the formation of an initial barrier that was breached twice prior to 1973. A second barrier formed in late 1973 just seaward of the initial island and subsequently grew through littoral drift to a length of 1.8 km. A narrow inlet (30m) formed through the northern end of the island in 1982.

<p> African Americans are underrepresented in senior leadership positions of the Federal Government. As of 2009, African Americans occupied less than seven percent of senior pay level positions (EOEC, 2009). Kohli, Gans, and Hairston (2011) projected that African American representation in senior leadership positions will remain stagnant over the next decade. Thirteen GS-13 to GS-15 federal government managers participated in this qualitative phenomenological study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the lived experiences of federal government managers. Moustakas&rsquo; modified van Kaam method and NVivo10 software was used to analyze transcribed participant interviews. The results from the study indicate the need for mentoring relationships and agency-sponsored training programs to prepare African Americans for senior leadership positions. Based on lived experiences, participants indicated that effective communication was essential for obtaining and sustaining senior leadership positions. Findings from the study also indicate that mobility is a major concern for African Americans who aspire to achieve senior leadership status. Federal government leaders in general schedule leadership positions are the major hiring candidate pool for senior leadership positions (EOEC, 2009). Information from this study may assist African Americans in advancing to federal senior leadership positions.</p>

<p> Despite decades of Chaco-style great house research, the impetus for their construction and the extent to which their communities directly interacted across the northern Southwest remain poorly understood. A key question is whether great houses represent an articulated system centered at Chaco Canyon or whether they are a regional conceptualization of communal activities enacted on a local scale. The amount of documented great house variability suggests that local social and environmental contexts played an important role in the construction and use of these structures. </p><p> I present a case study of three late Pueblo II (A.D. 1050-1130) communities in the southern Cibola sub-region, located on the southern extent of the Pueblo culture area, to evaluate the role of great houses within their local and broader social contexts. I argue great houses in this area were constructed as costly signaling displays directed by local leaders to gain community prestige and access to non-local resources. I draw on survey, architectural, ceramic, faunal, and compositional data from each community to identify links between these great houses and others across the northern Southwest, examine the nature of great house use within the context of each associated community, and evaluate patterns of interaction with local and more distant communities. I then expand this analysis to evaluate evidence for costly signaling activities between great house communities from across the Chacoan sphere. </p><p> The results suggest that southern Cibola great houses were locally constructed using elements from the traditional Chaco architectural canon, and utilized remodeling events to increase their architectural link to Chaco Canyon. These great houses hosted community-integrating activities that incorporated ceramics from both the Pueblo and Mogollon ancestral traditions, possibly in an effort to socially integrate a multi-ethnic population. No evidence was identified to support the historically dominant model that southern Cibola great houses were built and controlled by Chaco Canyon populations. Based on this analysis, a costly signaling model better accounts for the construction of southern Cibola great houses than others posed for a Chaco regional system. This inference is supported at other great houses across the Chaco sphere, given the available macro-regional great house data.</p>

This dissertation explores the interplay of popular music and racial thought in the 1960s, and asks how, when, and why rock and roll music "became white." By Jimi Hendrix's death in 1970 the idea of a black man playing electric lead guitar was considered literally remarkable in ways it had not been for Chuck Berry only ten years earlier: employing an interdisciplinary combination of archival research, musical analysis, and critical race theory, this project explains how this happened, and in doing so tells two stories simultaneously. The first is of audience and discourse, and the processes through which a music born of interracialism came to understand whiteness as its most basic stakes of authenticity. This is a story of the deeply ideological underpinnings of genre formation, and the ways that the visual imagination of race is strangely and powerfully elided with the audible imagination of sound. The second story is of music's own resistance to such elisions, and examines a transatlantic community of artists including Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and others to fashion an interracial counter-history of Sixties music, one that rejects hermetic ideals of racial authenticity while revealing the pernicious effects of these ideologies on musical discourse. Ultimately, this dissertation provides a new way into the topic of race and popular music--long dominated by essentialist claims of cultural ownership on one hand, and a romantic "colorblindness" on the other--by demonstrating that racial thought is both a producer and product of expressive culture. Rarely has this been truer than in the 1960s, when both popular music and racial ideology underwent explosive transformations that were never entirely separate from each other. Rock and roll music, I argue, did not become white as a result of the music that people made, but rather as a result of discursive forces that surrounded, celebrated, and too often drowned out the music that people heard.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the fact that the Shrine of the Black Madonna creates an Afrocentric personality in its members. The essential questions of this study are the following: (1) How does the Shrine of the Black Madonna create Afrocentric personalities in its members? (2) How will members of the Shrine, using communal economics, self knowledge, and an African orientation, reflect the collective identity of the African saying, "I am because we are, because we are, therefore I Am." This study is significant because the study is based on the premise that Afrocentric organizations will produce Afrocentric personalities that are capable of eradicating most of the problems facing African people in America. The liberation of African people is recorded as the most sacred objective of the Shrine. The Shrine is concerned with building a Black Nation. The study investigates the practical aspect of Afrocentric institutions which makes this exploration significant. A mixed method methodology was used to analyze gathered data from the participant observer method, quantitative study, and qualitative study methods. This study is based on the premises that the Shrine of the Black Madonna produces Afrocentric personalities through the KUA (small) group method and the practice of the Nguzo Saba method. There are programs and institutions the Shrine uses to create Africans that believe they are building a nation. As a participant in the activities of the Shrine, the researcher observed that the Shrine is an Afrocentric institution. The following institutions were observed (1) History Class, (2) Museum, (3) Worship Service, and (4) Beulah Land Farm. The qualitative findings of the study found that the Shrine of Black Madonna has Afrocentric members using elite interviews. The quantitative study used the African selfconsciousness scale test in the measurement of the Shrine members; the researcher found that they have Afrocentric personalities. The Shrine of the Black Madonna definitely produces members with an Afrocentric personality. The transformation of members occurs during the KUA group sessions. The use of Afrocentric symbols and activities reinforces the members' new worldview. The researcher recommends that other scholars study other organizations that create an African centered program such as the Nation of Islam, US Organization, and the Hebrew Israelite group.

This study examines the portraiture of moral depravity in the African novel with specific reference to Ben Okri, and defines the authorial challenge that Okri poses to his readers. The study also explores the narrative differences between The Landscapes Within and Dangerous Love; the latter is an elaboration and revision of the former. Working under the assumption that a filiation exists in the tradition of African realism, the study undertook a comparative analysis, which includes the works of Wole Soyinka and Ayi Kwei Armah, as well as Okri. Soyinka’s and Armab’s works are used as barometers to measure changes and departures in Olcri’s depiction of post-independence life in urban Africa. The conclusions drawn from this study suggest that Okri revises the representation of moral depravity in the African novel through various techniques, which include his unique use of Yoruba creation myths and actual events such as the Biafran War. Okri’s ability to simultaneously explore individual and national consciousness through his young protagonists further defines his position in the tradition of African realism.

This study was an investigation of seven selected rhythm and blues black protest songs, from 1964 to 1975, and their relationship to black empowerment during the era of the Black Power Movement. The songs were analyzed using content analysis and revealed three expected themes of self/black identity, racial equity and self-determination. A fourth theme, social change, evolved during the study. The study focused on the political, cultural and economic ramifications, especially of black music, as a form of protest against a system that proved to be one of inequality, and prejudicial segregation in every aspect of the black life. The rhythm and Blues black protest songs were seen as efforts to empower the black community to take responsibility for its own survival. Of the seven artists who participated in the Black Power Movement, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke were the most prolific musical contributors to the protest movement of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in its efforts to deal with segregation. The four musicians wrote and performed music that was geared specially for transformations in social justice and to engage the American society, both black and white people, in substantial and lasting social change. The music of the other artists was instrumental in bringing Rhythm and Blues into a revolution. The musical revolutionaries were James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder. The analysis, however, did not reveal whether or not the rhythm and blues black protest songs contributed to or led to black empowerment during the Civil Rights Black Power era.