In his first term as president, George W. Bush was confronted with one of the worst national attacks in United States history: the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001. Through the devastation, however, President Bush triumphed in unifying and guiding this nation during what would become the height of his rhetorical leadership. Following his reelection in 2004, President Bush faced one of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history: Category 4 Hurricane Katrina. In its aftermath, Katrina became known as "one of the worst mishandled disasters ever." Utilizing Kenneth Burke's pentad, this study analyzes the president's rhetorical response and the primetime network news coverage following each crisis in an attempt to determine how President Bush could fare so well in one instance, consoling and leading the American people, while falling short in his second major crisis during his term as president. / Master of Arts

Depending on their nature and severity, disasters can create large volumes of debris and waste. Waste volumes from a single event can be the equivalent of many times the annual waste generation rate of the affected community. These volumes can overwhelm existing solid waste management facilities and personnel. Mismanagement of disaster waste can affect both the response and long term recovery of a disaster affected area. Previous research into disaster waste management has been either context specific or event specific, making it difficult to transfer lessons from one disaster event to another. The aim of this research is to develop a systems understanding of disaster waste management and in turn develop context- and disaster-transferrable decision-making guidance for emergency and waste managers. To research this complex and multi-disciplinary problem, a multi-hazard, multi-context, multi-case study approach was adopted. The research focussed on five major disaster events: 2011 Christchurch earthquake, 2009 Victorian Bushfires, 2009 Samoan tsunami, 2009 L’Aquila earthquake and 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The first stage of the analysis involved the development of a set of ‘disaster & disaster waste’ impact indicators. The indicators demonstrate a method by which disaster managers, planners and researchers can simplify the very large spectra of possible disaster impacts, into some key decision-drivers which will likely influence post-disaster management requirements. The second stage of the research was to develop a set of criteria to represent the desirable environmental, economic, social and recovery effects of a successful disaster waste management system. These criteria were used to assess the effectiveness of the disaster waste management approaches for the case studies. The third stage of the research was the cross-case analysis. Six main elements of disaster waste management systems were identified and analysed. These were: strategic management, funding mechanisms, operational management, environmental and human health risk management, and legislation and regulation. Within each of these system elements, key decision-making guidance (linked to the ‘disaster & disaster waste’ indicators) and management principles were developed. The ‘disaster & disaster waste’ impact indicators, the effects assessment criteria and management principles have all been developed so that they can be practically applied to disaster waste management planning and response in the future.

Using the literary device of a fictional interview between the artist and a sympathetic intellectual, I explore concepts relating to subjectivity, pedagogy, memory, “Southernness,” whiteness, the deceptive nature of images, social justice, and 20th century art as they relate to a contemporary artistic practice.

This thesis examines the rhetorical and visual manifestations of race as they figured in the months prior to and within the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election discourses, and examines how the Nagin campaign tapped into a strategy that capitalized upon pre-existing racial tensions exacerbated by Katrina in order to win re-election. Much of the research for this thesis emerged from the making of a documentary film that examines the intersection between race and politics within this same election, and draws upon primary source video interviews conducted between February - May, 2006, and secondary source media and communications materials to posit that race rendered all political response to Katrina impotent, and that the reductive discourse of a racialized campaign was founded upon traditional, outmoded, and predictable interpretations of racial differences facilitated by socioeconomic hierarchies that both provided a structure for and allowed the psychological framework for such a strategy to work.

On July 4th, 2007, a small group of housing activists set up a tent city encampment in a plaza adjacent to New Orleans City Hall. The action resulted in the creation of Homeless Pride, a small group of politicized Plaza residents. Six months later, hundreds of homeless people were moved from the park, and it was fenced off. Using archival videos, interviews, and news media, this thesis analyzes the opportunities and constraints that activists, service providers, and local officials faced in light of two intersecting and overlapping contexts. The first context is the immediate crisis of the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina, and the second is the longer-term national political-economic context of “neoliberal urbanism”. Because of dire short-term circumstances, Homeless Pride articulated a message of homelessness as a “crisis” even though they had larger structural goals and vision. In light of recent “Occupy” movements, this case study addresses crucial questions for organizers and policymakers attempting to combat poverty and wealth inequality.

Tropical cyclones (TCs) often change intensity as they move over mesoscale oceanic features, as a function of the oceanic mixed layer (OML) thermal response (cooling) to the storm's wind stress. For example, observational evidence indicates that TCs in the Gulf of Mexico rapidly weaken over cyclonic cold core eddies (CCEs) where the cooling response is enhanced, and they rapidly intensify over anticyclonic warm features such as the Loop Current (LC) and Warm Core Eddies (WCEs) where OML cooling is reduced. Understanding this contrasting thermal response has important implications for oceanic feedback to TCs' intensity in forecasting models. Based on numerical experimentation and data acquired during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this dissertation delineates the contrasting velocity and thermal response to TCs in mesoscale oceanic eddies. Observational evidence and model results indicate that, during the forced stage, the wind-driven horizontal current divergence under the storm's eye is affected by the underlying geostrophic circulation. Upwelling (downwelling) regimes develop when the wind stress vector is with (against) the geostrophic OML velocity vector. During the relaxation stage, background geostrophic circulations modulate vertical dispersion of OML near-inertial energy. The near-inertial velocity response is subsequently shifted toward more sub-inertial frequencies inside WCEs, where rapid vertical dispersion prevents accumulation of kinetic energy in the OML that reduces vertical shears and layer cooling. By contrast, near-inertial oscillations are vertically trapped in OMLs inside CCEs that increases vertical shears and entrainment. Estimates of downward vertical radiation of near-inertial wave energies were significantly stronger in the LC bulge (12.1X10 super -2 W m super -2) compared to that in CCEs (1.8X10 super -2 W m super -2). The rotational and translation properties of the geostrophic eddies have an important impact on the internal wave wake produced by TCs. More near-inertial kinetic energy is horizontally trapped in more rapidly rotating eddies. This response enhances vertical shear development and mixing. Moreover, the upper ocean temperature anomaly and near-inertial oscillations induced by TCs are transported by the westward-propagating geostrophic eddies. From a broader perspective, coupled models must capture oceanic features to reproduce the differentiated TC-induced OML cooling to improve intensity forecasting.

In this dissertation project, I examine the experiences of displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors in the context of post-disaster housing policies and practices. This research is based on two years of in-depth interviews with Katrina survivors who were displaced to Austin, Texas. I analyze these interviews to understand the raced, classed, and gendered implications of post-disaster housing policies and to consider what these implications reveal about the relationship between social policies, housing, and social inequality more broadly. This project is informed by an intersectional understanding of social stratification systems and inequalities and a critical analysis of neoliberal social policy. First, I outline the gender, family, and class ideologies embedded in government-run post-Katrina housing policies and practices, and show how they specifically disadvantaged people who did not conform to them. I identify temporal domination as a specific aspect of class oppression evident in respondents’ experiences with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) rental assistance programs. Next, I specifically examine respondents’ experiences settling into their new neighborhoods and searching for jobs. I found that many black survivors ended up in segregated remote areas of the city, far from jobs and public transportation. Their job searching experiences suggest that employers used racist stereotypes about Latino workers to coerce them to work for low wages. This reveals the complex and interrelated racial dynamics of low-wage urban housing and labor markets. Finally, I explore how survivors got by in the face of such difficult and in some cases dire circumstances. One primary way survivors coped with the uncertainty caused by their displacement was relying on their social networks. While women tended to depend on adult child - parent and other familial relationships, men tended to distance themselves from the potential support of their mothers and other relatives. Respondents also constructed fictive kin relationships to provide support to others, sometimes for the explicit purpose of ensuring one or both members of the relationship had access to stable housing. This reveals how both gender and family relationships can shape disaster recovery and everyday experiences of poverty. Overall, this project contributes to the study of race/class/gender inequality, social policy, housing, and disaster recovery. / text

Natural disasters are increasing in both number and severity, causing the number of people being displaced by disaster to rise as well. Hurricane Katrina provides a particularly poignant example of the human impact of disaster, and of inadequate disaster response, especially where housing is concerned. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans exposed a gap in the approach to housing survivors of natural disasters, especially at the interim housing level. The FEMA trailer - which was only intended to house survivors temporarily but, in many cases, became a long term housing solution, - provided shelter for survivors, but did not account for their psychological well-being. The loss of one’s home can be a traumatic experience, as people identify their sense of self with their home. Therefore, it is crucial to reinstate this sense of home, and in turn provide continuity to the sense of self, early on in the recovery process. Rebuilding after a natural disaster is a long process. Because of this, disaster housing needs to be able to evoke a sense of home and ownership so that inhabitants can connect with their environment and reinstate their daily routines. This helps them to rebuild their lives. The proposed project attempts to do this by allowing for flexibility and choice in both the design and daily use of the house. The house transitions from temporary to permanent housing, allowing for a dialogue between inhabitant and environment to begin early on in the recovery process, and to persist. The design is informed by theories on place making, elements of home, dwelling, as well as loss and the grieving process.

Natural disasters are increasing in both number and severity, causing the number of people being displaced by disaster to rise as well. Hurricane Katrina provides a particularly poignant example of the human impact of disaster, and of inadequate disaster response, especially where housing is concerned. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans exposed a gap in the approach to housing survivors of natural disasters, especially at the interim housing level. The FEMA trailer - which was only intended to house survivors temporarily but, in many cases, became a long term housing solution, - provided shelter for survivors, but did not account for their psychological well-being. The loss of one’s home can be a traumatic experience, as people identify their sense of self with their home. Therefore, it is crucial to reinstate this sense of home, and in turn provide continuity to the sense of self, early on in the recovery process. Rebuilding after a natural disaster is a long process. Because of this, disaster housing needs to be able to evoke a sense of home and ownership so that inhabitants can connect with their environment and reinstate their daily routines. This helps them to rebuild their lives. The proposed project attempts to do this by allowing for flexibility and choice in both the design and daily use of the house. The house transitions from temporary to permanent housing, allowing for a dialogue between inhabitant and environment to begin early on in the recovery process, and to persist. The design is informed by theories on place making, elements of home, dwelling, as well as loss and the grieving process.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, voodoo is omnipresent. There is voodoo in a more religious sense, that is generally more secretive, and there is a highly visible side to voodoo, that is shown in the many references to voodoo in a commercial or political sense throughout the city.Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation demonstrates that the criteria that define the boundaries of what is voodoo are debated by the practitioners and the authenticity of certain events or practices is often internally contested. To include all these debates, the broader concept of ‘voodooscape’ is introduced in this dissertation.The concept of voodooscape is a useful tool for the analysis of voodoo in New Orleans, because it includes these debates and the large domain where negotiations on voodoo take place. This dissertation contains ethnographic descriptions of these negotiations, with a focus on the ways in which the ‘voodooscape’ embodies memories of the history of slavery and the ways of coping with these memories. The voodooscape both mobilizes these memories and how to cope with these memories at the same time. In a similar way, the voodooscape mobilizes the memories of more recent events, of which hurricane Katrina and the current violence that caused the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement are the most important ones in New Orleans. The theoretical contribution of this work lies in the introduction of the concept of voodooscape, that allows a nuanced analysis and understanding of voodoo, through which several socially relevant dimensions are displayed and connected, namely: race, politics, music, art, heritage, tourism and commerce. / À la Nouvelle-Orléans, en Louisiane, le Vaudou est omniprésent. On y trouve le Vaudou dans sa signification religieuse, qui est généralement plutôt secrète, et son visage plus visible, qui s'illustre à travers la ville dans les nombreuses références aux incarnations commerciales ou politiques du Vaudou. À l'appui d'une enquête ethnographique, cette thèse démontre que les critères qui définissent les frontières de ce qui relève du Vaudou sont débattues par ses différents praticiens, de même qu'ils débattent fréquemment entre eux de l'authenticité de certaines pratiques ou événements. Pour rendre compte de tous ces débats, on a introduit le concept plus large de « Vaudousphère » [voodooscape]. Le concept de Vaudousphère est utile à l'analyse du Vaudou à la Nouvelle-Orléans en ce qu'il incorpore ces débats et les nombreux espaces où prennent place ces négociations sur le Vaudou. Cette thèse inclut des descriptions ethnographiques de ces négociations, en se focalisant sur la manière dont la « Vaudousphère » incarne la mémoire collective de l'histoire de l'esclavage et les stratégies d’accommodation avec cette mémoire. De même, la Vaudousphère mobilise les souvenirs d'événements plus récents, dont les plus importants à la Nouvelle-Orléans sont l'ouragan Katrina et la violence contemporaine qui a conduit à l'émergence du mouvement «Black Lives Matter». L'apport théorique de ce travail repose sur l'introduction du concept de Vaudousphère qui permet de conduire une analyse nuancée et compréhensive du Vadou, et à travers lequel plusieurs dimensions sociales pertinentes sont mises en évidence et en connexion, telles que: la race, la politique, la musique, l'art, l'héritage, le tourisme et le commerce. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished