This study examines Emerson's influence on Melville's works from Mardi through The Confidence-Man. Each work demonstrates Melville's deep concern and keen interest in Emerson's optimistic idealism and transcendentalism and documents his changing attitude toward key Emersonian concepts. Melville questions and interprets Emerson's ideas of self-reliance and subjectivity and explores in detail Emerson's way of seeing nature and the world. Since Emerson's epistemology and ontology are epitomized in the images of "eye" and "star," Melville utilizes these images to express his response to and interpretation of Emerson. In this process he suggests the ways in which both men were geniuses of their times and possessed "a correspondent coloring." As generations of critics have noticed, Emerson's influence on Melville's work is prominent and pervasive, but it is also, at times implicit and ambiguous. In my reading of the novels, I explore the way in which Melville at once acknowledges Emerson's influence and calls a number of his crucial concepts into question. Central here are Emerson's theories of seeing and reading, problems of perception and interpretation. Though Melville agrees with Emerson's idea of the world as "an open book" or a text, he is suspicious of reading that book, for, as Melville understands it, nature is indecipherable or inscrutable. As a creative reader and a creative writer, Melville devotes his career to an attempt to write the great American work that Emerson had called for in the "American Scholar." Each of the novels I examine embodies Melville's careful and close reading and critical interpretation of Emerson and his works. Since Melville recognized Emerson as an "uncommon man" and a "great man," he was attracted to his ideas and his works. However, as his career developed, he became more and more aware of what he had called Emerson's "gaping flaw," and that flaw for Melville involved Emerson's influence on the current literary culture as well as Emerson's ideas as such. By the time of The Confidence-Man he had lost his faith in Emerson and the literary world he had come to represent.

<p> Ancestor reverence, in this study, is considered to consist of reflecting on and honoring the women and men who came before us in our bloodlines, including those friends and chosen family who were part of our intellectual or spiritual lineages. Many traditions include beliefs that our consciousness continues after death, and some traditions hold that ancestors may influence the events of the living or intercede with the gods on the living's behalf. In many traditions ancestors are honored through altar building, rituals, and trance journeys. Rituals performed for the ancestors create strong familial and community bonds. This thesis work is important because it expanded the opportunities for me to understand my family dynamics and to develop relationships with my deceased foremothers and forefathers. I learned about myself in understanding my families' past and felt stronger connections to my lineage and progeny. The literature revealed that genealogy research is a form of ancestor reverence; especially in Western cultures that no longer have formalized ancestor reverence rituals and practices. Through genealogy research, I learned the names and stories of my ancestors and ancestresses and, in combination with that research, on a pilgrimage to my ancestral homeland, I explored my matriline using an archaeomythological and feminist lens that combined archaeology, anthropology, mythology, folklore, genetics, ecology, and history to search for the evidence of what women did throughout herstory. I gathered the stories focused on how women worked, lived and contributed to society throughout history, because the stories of my ancestresses, like the accomplishments of most women from 1500-1900, were often omitted from written history. A sacred journey can catapult the participant into greater and faster spiritual growth; this was true for me in that I may not have gained this wisdom otherwise. In this paper I explored the idea that ancestors were revered through multiple methods, including pilgrimage and creative writing. While altar building, rituals, trance journeys, and genealogy were most often recorded in written form in regards to ancestor reverence, they are not the only methods that can provide experience and impact to the descendant who honors their ancestors. I have tried to prove this assertion through academic research: I used a heuristic approach to carefully examine my personal experiences with each of these forms of ancestor reverence and an arts-based approach through creative writing to pen short works about my ancestors.</p>

Studying rhetoric in non-Western contexts is complicated by rhetoric's sedimented cultural history in the West. Analysis of different approaches in anthropology and the discipline of rhetoric itself show that a multi-pronged approach is necessary to study rhetoric, including analysis of texts in context, consideration of the rhetorical competence of speakers, and careful attention to the power dynamics in a given situation. Using the collection and analysis of Aymara texts as an example of this new approach, this dissertation argues that considering rhetoric as a phenomenon of language use that occurs across genres when competent speakers attempt to achieve social or personal ends through language best helps to capture texts that will yield fruitful rhetorical analyses. It is argued further that the methodology developed in the ethnography of speaking for the analysis of communicative events addresses many of the shortcomings in working with texts in languages other than one's own.

Umberto Eco’s novels are complex texts that work, that can be read and thus interpreted on several levels, including but not limited to the literary, semiotic, linguistic, philosophic, and historical. Notwithstanding the postmodern ideology of the irrelevance of the author (in terms of identity and intentionality) to a text’s interpretation, Eco’s novels offer another level of reading and interpreting that includes the author’s own personal reading experiences. In this way, the author arguably becomes an integral part of the text and is directly involved in the interpretive process. This dissertation is a reconsideration of the figure of the postmodern author whose authority in a text’s interpretation has been challenged by theories of structuralism, post-structuralism, and intertextuality. It undertakes this rethinking by considering the role of the author as reader--and thus as writer in the process of rereading and rewriting. This study also investigates the postmodern theory of intertextuality (i.e., the notion that all texts are [re]iterations of other texts) from the point of view of the author’s own reading experiences (since inevitably, consciously or unconsciously, what the author reads becomes an intertext). Thus, through a combination of the author’s own reading and writing experiences, presented and perceived intertextually and intratextually throughout the text itself, and a series of fictionalized versions of personal experiences, not only is the reader able to gain insight into the author’s motives, intentions and personality, but the author is also able to retain or regain some of the authority over the text he or she creates.

The theory of conditioned fear responses proposed by Watson (cited by Young, 29) has been rendered untenable by recent empirical observation. The experience of "uncanniness" has been stressed by English (5) as being an important feature of fear responses where no conditioning was possible. [...]

Different models of cerebral organization in vision bave been proposed by Lashley (24), Kohler and Wallach (18), and Hebb (ll). Proper evaluation of these theories is hindered by inadequate or inconsistent data pertaining to the locus and extent of the cerebral areas necesaary for normal visual functions, the degree of specialization within these regions, and the types of disturbance produced by their removal. [...]

A recent study by Lansdell (20) demonstrated rather conclusively that deficit in performance on a 'closed-field' test of rat intelligence was very closely associated with degeneration in the lateral geniculate nucleus, the most reliable indication of loss in the primary visual system. [...]

This thesis analyses legal institutions which appear to be developing in a similar way and reveals the significance of historical, legal and cultural backgrounds. ADR processes are perceived and developed as international and necessarily standardized, or simply as culturally neutral institutions. However, this analysis shows that alternative conflict resolution methods remain culturally embedded. This analysis is based on the role of the judge in ADR in France and B.C. The comparative method seemed appropriate to conduct the analysis as it facilitates a focus on cultural influences which reveals differences in the definition of the judge's role in ADR in both jurisdictions. The first chapter examines comparative law - its nature and objectives, as well as the potential pitfalls. Courts have been chosen as the institutions on which to base our research of the cultural element in ADR because they appear to be culturally embedded. The second chapter attempts to trace historical evolution and political factors which shaped the judicial institution in both jurisdictions. The role of the judge in proceedings is analyzed with particular emphasis on the process of judging. The professional education of judges in both jurisdictions is also examined. To frame the analysis two of the roles of judges which have often been used in the literature are used, namely the role of dispute settlement and the role of policy maker. A third chapter outlines the similar development of ADR in France and B.C. and explores the reasons behind this. Finally, a comparison of the intervention by the judge in enforcing settlement agreements, enforcing arbitration agreements and conducting court mediation is made. The analysis relies on the definition of judges' role as defined by the legislator, and the interpretation of that definition by the courts. It is concluded that, while no absolute pattern of the influence of cultural and historical background on the shaping of the role of the judge in ADR can be identified, this influence exists nonetheless. The similarities between, and the perceived unification of ADR institutions are therefore superficial, as ADR is molded through institutions such as judges, influenced at the same time by the cultural identity of the jurisdictions in which they operate.

<p> This thesis examines concepts of control, alternation, and deletion (CTRL, ALT, DELETE) through the poetic process. By examining some of the specific poems presented here, one can see the effects of literary and social critics including Michel Foucault, Hart Crane, and Adrienne Rich on my poetry. Thematically, structurally, and linguistically, the poems in this thesis address contemporary concerns and ask the reader to face the challenges of postmillennial life with creativity, empathy, and humor.</p>

This dissertation is about shifts in narrative conventions. During the nineteenth century, at the height of industrial capitalism, certain rhetorical conventions were established in migration discourse, which were borrowed from neoclassical economics. Europeans who emigrated to the colonies sought a better life, the prospect of land, and better opportunities. Others who faced religious or political persecution experienced immigration as a condition of exile. In both cases, however, the migrants' reasons for coming and going were borrowed from neoclassical economics. More recently, the rhetoric of 'intentionality' and 'place' can be seen as shifting in stories told by international labor migrants. As the demands of temporary work contracts rapidly change, the where, when, and why of international migration becomes problematic in comparison with the rhetoric of neoclassical liberalism. This dissertation argues that the economics of flexibility and the flexible organization of work hinders the production of future-oriented narratives that inscribe economic rationalism, planning, and individual intention. 'Broken storylines' are examined in three sites: the stories told by temporary labor migrants, the planning structures of multinational corporations (managing the international transfer of employees), and the policies designed by state immigration bureaus (designing visa programs for the entry of skilled laborers). In each case, rational technologies are shown to be short-lasting and/or ineffective. Research was conducted among temporary labor migrants living in Australia and the United States between 2001 and 2005. The theoretical framework for the thesis is borrowed from Max Weber's comparative sociology of economic actions, which stresses the importance of state regulatory mechanisms to the predictability of economic behavior and the construction of substantive rationality. Following the deregulation of state regimes in the 1970s and the 1980s, I argue that a lack of economic stability hampers the production of new ideological narratives by economic institutions. Notably, a deconstructionist approach is adopted whereby historical narratives are viewed as inherently unstable. Tools of analysis are borrowed from literary criticism. The project contributes to the theorization of the relationship between historical narratives and the operations of state market capitalism. It also argues against the claims being made about the rise of a new transnational capitalist class.