This project studies the various ways in which representations of space have been used to gender Manuela Sáenz Aispuru in literary, epistolary, and cinematic texts. I approach this study with an understanding of gender as a social space delineated by the subject's relationship to other individuals, entities, and ideas, and made intelligible through each individual's experience of physical and mental spaces. My framework draws from feminist, queer, and geographical theories, including those of Teresa de Lauretis, Judith Halberstam, Elizabeth Grosz, Gillian Rose, and Henri Lefèbvre. By reading representations of Sáenz through a lens of space, I respond to the growing interest in this historical figure and to the call made by scholars such as Nela Martínez, María Cifuentes, and Sarah Chambers to study the complexities of Sáenz's identity and historical significance. In the first part of this project, I analyze the ways in which three of Sáenz's male contemporaries-Jean Baptiste Boussingault, Ricardo Palma, and Simón Bolívar-represent her and her transgressions of gender norms in their memoirs, essays, and letters, respectively. I find that Boussingault and Palma portray Sáenz as an unnatural and perverse individual because she handles her body space in ways contrary to hegemonic femininity. However, Bolívar, as her lover and as General-in-chief of the Colombian Army, writes from a compromised positionality, from which he negotiates with Sáenz the limits to her transgressions into the masculine spheres of politics and military participation. In the second part, I examine Sáenz's personal letters and diaries, studying her self-representation in light of her ability to appropriate, manipulate, and navigate physical and mental spaces that have been culturally codified as either masculine or feminine. I find that by linking these manipulations of gendered spaces to the political, ideological, and geographical space of revolutionary Spanish America, she establishes for herself both a coherent identity and a sense of agency. Finally, I analyze Diego Rísquez's 2002 film Manuela Sáenz, Libertadora del Libertador, analyzing how the film depicts Manuela's appearance and movement within gendered spaces in order to construct her as a symbol of freedom, of rebellion, and of women's rights. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2005. / June 14, 2005. / Independence, Spanish America, Women, Manuela Sáenz, Space, Representation, Gender / Includes bibliographical references. / Santa Arias, Professor Directing Dissertation; Barney Warf, Outside Committee Member; Brenda Cappuccio, Committee Member; Roberto Fernández, Committee Member.

Recent population-based statistics indicate that approximately two-thirds of African American students demonstrate poor reading achievement in the later elementary grades. The academic achievement gap between African American children and their mainstream culture peers is present at school entry and continues to widen over time. Clearly, the development of effective, early interventions to prevent and reduce the number of African American children exhibiting reading difficulties is warranted. This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of language instruction designed to increase the dialect sensitivity and familiarity with specific contrastive grammatical structures of Standard American English (SAE). The intervention used structural priming (Leonard et al., 2000, 2002) embedded into book reading activities to introduce specific SAE morphosyntatic constructions to African American English (AAE) speaking preschool children from low-income environments. The language instruction was intentionally designed to be independent of direct adult intervention and was presented under headphones in an automated listening center format. Seven typically developing children who were high density AAE speakers served as participants. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used to determine if embedded structural primes and subsequent morphosyntactic practice were related to changes in children's production and use of targeted SAE grammatical constructions. Specifically, Wh- questions, negation, third person singular, and regular past tense verb forms were targeted. Morphosyntactic production changes were observed and replicated within and across for two grammatical constructions for each of the seven participants during both weekly probes and weekly story retellings. Growth in production of the targeted SAE structures was also apparent when comparing children's pre- and post-intervention performance on the Rice-Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment. Embedding an interactive morphosyntactic intervention employing structural priming into book reading activities independent of direct adult mediation resulted in gains in dialect sensitivity and familiarity with SAE for children who speak AAE from low-income environments and who are at-risk for later reading difficulties. / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Communication Disorders in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2007. / June 27, 2007. / African American English, Standard American English, Morphosyntax / Includes bibliographical references. / Howard Goldstein, Professor Directing Dissertation; Carol M. Connor, Outside Committee Member; Kathryn Bojczyk, Committee Member; Lisa Scott, Committee Member; Shurita Thomas-Tate, Committee Member.

The four essays in this exam portfolio are representations of my research interests and expertise in Composition and Rhetoric following the exam portfolio structure. The first essay is a revision of two essays I wrote during fall 2001 about Robert Zoellner's 1969 talk-write theory. I argue that Zoellner's ideas lay the foundation for social constructionist theory and have similarities with process pedagogy. Many of Zoellner's critics dismissed talk-write because of its behaviorist base, but I believe that the problems with writing pedagogy Zoellner brought to the forefront are the same problems writing teachers and theorists struggle with today. The second essay is a bibliographic essay in which I review the recent literature on online writing labs (OWLs). I use the bibliographic essay to inform the third essay, which is an original essay written for this portfolio that offers tips for writing center directors who are interested in setting up an OWL, but are apprehensive. I point out the benefits of reaching students online, as well as the challenges of OWL set-up, maintenance, theory, and practice. The fourth essay is my teaching philosophy. I explain that my teaching philosophy is continually evolving, and with each semester, new experiences influence my growth and teaching identity. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2003. / April 1, 2003. / Composition and Rhetoric, Talk-Write Theory, Process Pedagogy / Includes bibliographical references. / Wendy Bishop, Professor Directing Thesis; Deborah Coxwell-Teague, Committee Member; Dennis Moore, Committee Member.

Instruction in English, once highly formal and disciplinary, has become much more functional and practical. Emphasis on error counts and the correction of errors is gradually giving away to a constructive program for the establishment of correct language habits at the offset. The psychology of learning has become more practical; the objective of instruction more typical of life. These important trends are the results of significant contributions of research. / Typescript. / "December, 1949." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts under Plan II." / Advisor: Mode L. Stone, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-31).

"A Florida legislator, speaking about the apparent neglect of the 'Three R's', recently said, 'If one-third of the efforts being expanded in getting more appropriations for schools was used to see that children get these basic skills, the remaining two-thirds of the effort would be far more productive.' This statement is typical of many challenges to educators to further improve that part of the instructional program considered by a large segment of the general public to be the prime responsibility of the schools. This paper is part of one teacher's attempt to answer that challenge, whether it comes from spokesmen of the general public or from an inner desire to do a better job. The effort of the writer is directed specifically to a study of current suggestions and recommendations in the technique of skill development most applicable to the language arts program of a fifth grade in a Florida school. The limitation suggested is dictated by the fact that it was in quite a specific situation that the concern originally arose"--Introduction. / "August, 1955." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: W. Edwards, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-27).

As a discipline, composition today inadequately understands the ways digital technologies intersect with economic concerns and the effects of that intersection on the teaching of writing. Digital technologies produce and call attention to economic inequalities via the very same means by which they increase economic productivity---by substituting capital-intensive processes for labor-intensive processes---but composition has largely failed to address those inequalities in economic terms. Instead, composition's pedagogies have reduced economy to culture and student social class to pedagogical exigency. This dissertation offers a categorical analysis of the one way in which composition does explicitly address economic issues: by constructing them as class. However, even in its various engagements with class, composition's theoretical constructions of class habitually posit the remediation of inequality as a cultural rather than economic concern. The work of Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu, and J. K. Gibson-Graham offers the foundations for an alternative theory of class that maintains a useful focus on economic concerns while not denying the cultural. After constructing this theory, this dissertation applies it to the composition classroom in order to examine the economic nature and value of student work, particularly in terms of the production and digital reproduction of student writing. The dissertation's final portion connects recent scholarship on the value of affect and immaterial labor to the ideas of legal scholar Lawrence Lessig and the open source movement today often associated with digital technologies of reproduction in order to posit an alternative theory of value for student writing, and the implications of such a theory for composition pedagogy in general.

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The present study was designed to examine and explore Dawson’s empahses on four strands in language learning for teachers and students of the United States of America. This study sought to find and isolate those major emphases made by Dawson in the language arts strands of oral language, reading, written composition, and grammar.

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