Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Tim Harris.

<p> This dissertation examines the importance of geography, performance, and microscopy in the construction of theories of human difference in Europe in the eighteenth century, with a particular focus on "fringe groups" such as albinos with black parents and individuals with complexion disorders. It joins a growing discussion in history, the history of science and medicine, and critical racial theory about the social and philosophic bases of early-modern human taxonomic schemas. Collectively, the fields analyzed in this study share a common conceptual root in their dependence on transferable physical processes&mdash;techniques&mdash;as much as on the intellectual frameworks investing those gestures with meaning. The necessarily embodied processes of exploration, spectatorship, and microscopic visual analysis produced discrete ways of seeing human difference which influenced the conclusions that natural philosophers reached through those embodied experiences. Marginal groups of individuals with unexpected or "abnormal" complexions drew a disproportionate amount of attention in the eighteenth century, because they were not easily identifiable with pre-existing conceptions of human difference and consequently provided a strong impetus to reconsider those epistemic categories. Overwhelmingly, the perspectives of eighteenth-century natural philosophers were profoundly non-racial in nature; instead, they drew upon ideas as varied as monstrosity, morality, self-analysis, dramatic tragedy, entertainment, and imagination to position experiences of unexpected human diversity in a distinctly valuative and sensational understanding of human difference. Through the interrogation of new and underutilized sources, this dissertation argues for an enrichment of our understanding of the "history of race" by taking into account the diversity of the physical techniques that were used by eighteenth century thinkers to arrive at ideas about human difference, while simultaneously demonstrating the centrality of hitherto understudied groups&mdash;such as albinos with black parents&mdash;in the formulation of systems of human difference. </p>

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<p> Abstract databases are essential for literature reviews, and in turn for the scientific process. Research into user interface designs and their impact on scientific article discovery is limited. The following study details the process of building a new abstract database and explores several user interface design elements that should be tested in the future. </p><p> The initial goal of this study was to test the feasibility of building a new abstract database. Using Crossref metadata, we concluded that the cost to produce parsing code for the entire data set proved prohibitive for a volunteer team. The legal, production, and design elements necessary to build a new abstract database are discussed in detail. This study should serve as a baseline for future abstract database testing.</p><p>

<p> Jeffery K. Tulis authored a book entitled <i>The Rhetorical Presidency</i>, in which he argues the role of the United States chief executive now centers on his, or her, ability to speak over Congress and directly to the public. A modern or contemporary president&rsquo;s ability to accomplish roles typically associated with the executive office is principally dependent on his/her implicit role: to appeal to public opinion. Presidential power comes from how effectively the chief executive can employ rhetorical discourse to affect change from the audience. This is an interesting concept for consideration, especially as it relates to contemporary President John F. Kennedy. In a 2013 <i> Gallup</i> poll, Americans rated Kennedy as the most outstanding, above average president in the contemporary era&mdash;the inception of which came around the turn of the 20<i>th</i> century. The primary inquiry, &ldquo;why is this so,&rdquo; can be answered through an examination into Kennedy&rsquo;s rhetorical discourse, specifically his foreign crisis speeches. This thesis&rsquo; primary analysis centers on Kennedy&rsquo;s address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 20, 1961 following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion on Cuba. Utilizing a unique analytic framework provided from the theoretical understandings of Lloyd F. Bitzer&rsquo;s <i> rhetorical situation</i> and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson&rsquo;s <i>rhetorical hybrids</i> model, with supplement aide from scholars such as Bonnie Dow and Denise Bostdorff, the aim is to provide value to the subject of rhetorical communication by researching, studying and analyzing an area of interest that has not received much to any scholarly emphasis in the past.</p><p>

The topic of my thesis is “The campaigns of the Norman dukes of southern Italy to Byzantium, in the years between 1071 and 1108 A.D.” As the title suggests, I am examining all the main campaigns conducted by the Normans against Byzantine provinces, in the period from the fall of Bari, the Byzantine capital of Apulia and the seat of the Byzantine governor (catepano) of Italy in 1071, to the Treaty of Devol that marked the end of Bohemond of Taranto’s Illyrian campaign in 1108. My thesis, however, aims to focus specifically on the military aspects of these confrontations, an area which for this period has been surprisingly neglected in the existing secondary literature. My intention is to give answers to a series of questions, of which only some of them are presented here: what was the Norman method of raising their armies and what was the connection of this particular system to that in Normandy and France in the same period (similarities, differences, if any)? Have the Normans been willing to adapt to the Mediterranean reality of warfare, meaning the adaptation of siege engines and the creation of a transport and fighting fleet? What was the composition of their armies, not only in numbers but also in the analogy of cavalry, infantry and supplementary units? While in the field of battle, what were the fighting tactics used by the Normans against the Byzantines and were they superior to their eastern opponents? However, as my study is in essence comparative, I will further compare the Norman and Byzantine military institutions, analyse the clash of these two different military cultures and distinguish any signs of adaptations in their practice of warfare. Also, I will attempt to set this enquiry in the light of new approaches to medieval military history visible in recent historiography by asking if any side had been familiar to the ideas of Vegetian strategy, and if so, whether we characterise any of these strategies as Vegetian?

This thesis examines the evidence for the involvement in warfare of clerks and religious in England between the beginning of the tenth century and the end of the twelfth. It focuses on bishops and abbots, whose military activities were recorded more frequently than lesser clergy, though these too are considered where appropriate. From the era of Christian conversion until long after the close of the middle ages, clergy were involved in the prosecution of warfare. In this period, they built fortresses and organised communities of warriors in time of peace and war. Some were slain in battle, while others were given promotion or lands for their martial exploits. A series of canonical pronouncements aimed to forbid or restrict the involvement of Christian clergy in organised bloodshed, and some writers branded militant clergy as corrupted by the lure of earthly power or even as having surrendered their sacerdotal status. This study therefore approaches the military practices of clergy alongside the legal and narrative treatments, and treats the latter as reactions to, not the background of, the former. This requires consideration of a wide range of narrative, diplomatic and legal source material. A broad approach shows that clerics’ military activities cannot be separated from their spiritual powers, that canonical treatment was more fragmented and less influential than has been assumed, and that the condemnations of some authors existed alongside others’ praise for clerics’ valour, loyalty, or commitment to defending their flocks. In consequence, the extended study of clerical participation in warfare is shown to have significant consequences for our conception of the bounds of military history, the construction of the licit and the illicit, and the nature of clerical identity itself.

This thesis examines the historical geography of Scottish natural history societies active during the period 1831-1900. It argues that the work of the societies described and constituted an important set of relations between science and Scottish civil society that has not been investigated hitherto. The institutional practices of natural history, including fieldwork and display, involved encounters between scientific and cultural expectations which were played out in relation to different audiences and in a variety of sites and spaces. A central concern of Scottish associational naturalists was to transpose science into the language of civic pride and progress. At the same time, members of these societies were anxious to maintain epistemic credibility in relation to a scientific culture itself in flux. The task of appealing both to a local public and to a scientific constituency took different forms in different civic and scientific contexts. The thesis attempts to detail this historical geography with reference to the societies' activities of display, fieldwork, publishing and collective scientific endeavour. The work is based on assessment of primary sources, published and unpublished, and a variety of secondary material. The thesis is organised to reflect the features central to the past geographies of Scottish natural history as associational civic science. The first substantive section (Section II, Chapters 2-5) analyses the efforts of society members to persuade local publics of the relevance and the benefits of associational natural history. Fieldwork involved a series of situated negotiations and affiliations between the language and practices of leisure, aesthetic taste, moral improvement and science. Through public events and built spaces natural history was promoted as an expression of civic culture and as a set of practices capable of transforming urban society. At an individual level, supporters of civic science championed an image of the naturalist as public servant and votary of nature, an image that linked scientific conduct to civic identity. The second substantive section (Section III, Chapters 6-7) examines the influence of the meaning and methods of later-nineteenth-century science on the organisation and activities of Scottish natural history societies. Initiatives to standardise the work of local scientific societies are considered alongside the efforts of individual members to secure a scientific reputation. In addition, the changing relations between the research activities of the societies and the emergence and consolidation of scientific disciplines are investigated alongside the maintenance of an inter-disciplinary ethos. In Chapter 7, engagement with evolutionary ideas is examined, uncovering the ways in which Darwinism was deployed to reinforce, and also to modify, an inductivist view of science and to argue for the continuing relevance of associational natural history to local civil society. In conclusion, the thesis reveals the historical geography of nineteenth-century Scottish natural history to be a dynamic narrative of intellectual and institutional activity conducted in different social and scientific spaces, and it suggests that these practices of local science were an important constituent of civic society and, in part, of national natural knowledge in nineteenth-century Scotland.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-02, Section: A, page: 0545. Adviser: Carolyn Calloway-Thomas. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 13, 2007)."