There's no doubt that the emergence of public report cards and governmental requirements for transparency in healthcare are forcing healthcare providers to work vigorously to improve quality and decrease costs. The results of these report cards and rankings are of interest to consumers - who wouldn't want to know whether or not the healthcare provider you're intrusting your life to is the best. The lengths to which consumers will go to proactively seek this information is another topic within itself; however, if the information is handed to them through strategic marketing and advertising efforts, could the marketing of quality rating information by individual providers be powerful enough to achieve the ultimate marketing objective: positively shift market share? A convenience study uses consumer research conducted by individual healthcare organizations across the U.S. to determine if the use of ratings or awards in marketing messages influences consumers' perceptions or preferences of the provider. The findings of this study indicate that advertising ratings or awards can positively impact both benchmarks, but more so perception than preference in terms of the organization overall. However, when considering specific service lines, data indicates marketing of ratings can have a more significant impact on both perception and preference equally. This study revealed the lack of measurement and dedication to ROI by the majority of healthcare marketers.

This study will cover the history from 1946 to 1952 of a state hospital located in Helmuth, New York, known as Gowanda State Homeopathic Hospital (GSH). It describes the community, physical campus and the surrounding area where it is located. The experience of treating military personnel suffering from combat-related mental illness during the 1940s led many psychiatrists to emphasize the social dimensions of mental disorder and to hypothesize that mentally ill civilians and veterans may best be treated outside of traditional mental institutions in their hometowns. This theory was implemented with the discovery of psychotropic drugs in the mid 1950s. By the early 1950s about 100,000 patients were housed in these asylums in New York State alone. Since the 1600s, Seneca Indians occupied this region in western New York State. Farmers, tanners, fur trappers, and blacksmiths came to found the village of Collins in 1821. In 1894 the state of New York took back the title to 500 acres to construct a state hospital as a refuge for the "insane." About 100 buildings were erected. The GSH was completed because doctors thought that mental illness was the result of environmental factors and that disease, which was preventable, could become more serious without intervention. These beliefs gave rise to the Mental Hygiene Movement. The concept of mental hospitals also meant an escape from the larger society to farm animals, grow victory vegetable gardens, make wicker furniture and various folk arts and to return to a previous period that was totally agrarian. From 1946 to 1952 the census showed that a 4,000-bed capacity was filled at Gowanda. The doctors were Americans and immigrants with and without licenses to work in state hospitals. Several were from Germany and were themselves casualties of the war. The neighboring farmers, villagers, and Seneca were hired to work with patients as staff or orderlies. Therapy consisted of talk therapy, hydrotherapy, occupational therapy and other timely and available treatments for the mentally ill. All patients able of body and mind worked various jobs to support the whole community.

Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, transcended his mythical personae through the band's songs, his poems, and works about him. Morrison's cult continues today, through pilgrimages to his grave (a major tourist attraction in Paris), Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), videos on YouTube.com, rediscoveries of already released recordings, and new discoveries of unreleased recordings, lost films, and unpublished manuscripts of Morrison's poetry. Fans, filmmakers, photographers, the music industry, writers, and members of The Doors have cultivated him into their icon, hierophant, and God. But does myth construction about Morrison possess any goals, continuity, or direction? The music was essential to Morrison's creative development and image, so why do so few published works about Morrison examine the songs themselves? Writings in Rolling Stone and by those affiliated with the magazine dominate literature about Jim Morrison and The Doors. Many of these writings are essential to scholarship about The Doors; however, some merely aim to perpetuate myths about Jim Morrison. Other writings deserve attention since they offer fascinating perspectives about Morrison and possess discernable directions; therefore, the scope of this study focuses on The Los Angeles Free Press, Down Beat, and The Miami Herald. It explores Morrison's use of voice, words, and music, and discusses original and new contexts. As metacritique, this study examines how writers singled out and focused on Morrison and shows how limits of interpretation (from the perspectives of authenticity, representation, perception, and reception) are related to Morrison's aesthetics and involvement in 1960s counterculture. These writings illustrate how the Doors and Morrison himself created not only worlds out of their compositions, performances, and recordings; more specifically, they created interplay with the counterculture and musical material culture. The treatment of songs and poems here leads to exciting avenues for analyzing The Doors' songs.

The primary purpose of this research was to dissect the state of Louisianas comprehensive curriculum and make suggestions for enhancement to a document that is intended to set basic standards for education in all public schools throughout the state. While the Louisiana State Department of Education acknowledged a real need for such a document, the one it originally produced fell short of many educators expectations. In taking into consideration the diversity of the states students and their heritages, the researcher makes suggestions for enriching the English language arts (ELA) curriculum for secondary students by incorporating a wider variety of multicultural, multiethnic, and womens literature and writing along with folkloristic teachings. The researcher began her process by consulting several educational authors and texts, namely selected articles by Ogbu and Understanding by Design by McTighe and Wiggins, before embarking on personal interviews during which she conversed with a curriculum writer as well as experienced and respected educators in the Baton Rouge community. Dividing the findings into three categories, the researcher analyzed Louisiana State Universitys Laboratory Schools curriculum to serve as a model for advancement of the states public schools curriculum and then delved into the states curriculum to explore what material is being covered in the document. This research is followed by a chapter analyzing the construction of the current comprehensive curriculum and the disconnect that exists between the states intended implementation and what is really happening in many schools. Finally, the researcher presents suggestions for diversifying the material and literature being taught by including cultural teachings from a variety of sources designed to envelope students from all ethnicities in the hopes of producing well-rounded and educated world citizens. Suggestions include utilizing the Louisiana Folklife Program and its website to implement a folklore unit within the ELA curriculum allowing students to use a kinesthetic approach to exploring their own and other cultures and working through various resources to discover literature of often times curriculum-neglected cultures, such as Cuban, Cajun and Acadian, Zimbabwean, and Nigerian, as well as womens writings.

My goal for this thesis was to adequately illustrate the effect war can have on art and artists. I chose to single out one particular artist who lived and worked during a time of war and explore his life and work. My choice of artist was not random: I chose an individual who was particularly concerned about his external environment, and was active in the political and social issues of the time. My subject is Mark Rothko, a Russian-Jewish artist who immigrated from Russia as a boy and spent his life in the hotspot of artistic inspiration, New York City. Rothko was sensitive to socio-political matters and his involvement with politics affected his work. In order to fully comprehend the artist and his creations, I did a thorough investigation into the artists life; studying his influences, exploring his philosophies, and examining his works. It is difficult to trace the evolution of the style and themes Rothko employed at certain stages in his life because the artist rarely dated his paintings. Only years later, when he made an inventory of his work, did he date them, but without records and entirely relying on his memory. Even so, I was able to assess his work and came to the conclusion that Rothko was heavily influenced by the war going on around him, as well as the aftermath of the First World War and the instability of the Great Depression. From this research, I can deduce that Mark Rothko was a product of his war-torn environment, of which his work was a true reflection.

Crowley, Nara Maria Ersilia, B.A., The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2001. Master of Arts in Liberal Arts, Spring Commencement 2010 Major: Liberal Arts The Expansion of the St. Joseph Altar in South Louisiana Thesis directed by Professor Mary Jill Brody Page in thesis,113. Words in abstract, 146 ABSTRACT According to folklore, the Catholic St. Joseph Altar tradition dates back to the Fifteenth century droughts in Sicily. The famine that ensued resulted in prayers to the patron saint of protection, St. Joseph. Two legends evolved from the cessation of the drought - one of thanks for ending the famine, the other for protecting one vital source of nutrition, the fava bean. Two parables influenced the development of permanent traditions known today as the St. Joseph Altar. The two ideals remain intact one of gratitude, the other of petition. The Italian Sicilian diaspora of the mid-nineteenth century sprinkled the St. Joseph Altar tradition globally. Sparsely scattered throughout the United States and internationally, South Louisiana offers more celebrations of the St. Joseph Altar than in all of North America. This comparative study explores the impetus that perpetuates and inflates the St. Joseph Altar celebration in South Louisiana.

The following points are important for this discussion of Acadiana and the Cajun Cultural Landscape: First, in order to fully understand the Cajun nature and what makes the Cajuns distinct, we must explore their history from the time they arrived on the shores of North America to the present. Without doing this, we cannot truly understand their way of life and where it came from; Second, what and where is Acadiana--the Cajun homeland--and what are its socioeconomic and demographic characteristics; Third, how have folk culture and celebration of heritage mediated Cajun culture; Fourth, why are these traditions manifested in what are primarily familial and customary rituals with a special importance given to a large number of local festivals; Fifth, what is the viability of Cajun culture and Acadiana as a cultural sub-region.

Many years after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates revealed several formerly classified details regarding the Carter Administrations pre-invasion aid to the Mujahideen resistance fighters. Unwittingly, these separate yet interconnected disclosures from Brzezinski and Gates gave the appearance that the White House had intentionally lured the USSR into an insurgent-infested trap in Afghanistan designed to give Moscow its own Vietnam War. Brzezinski, being in a much higher position within the administration than Gates and coming forth with the most provocative revelations, was subsequently accused by many of essentially instigating a war all by himself. But although Brzezinski had hoped that the Soviets would get bogged down in a Vietnamese quagmire in Afghanistan if they decided to intervene, he did not attempt to lure the Russians into a trap. The covert aid to the Mujahideen was carried out to trap Moscow only if it continued to act aggressively in the Third World. In addition to Brzezinskis need to limit the Soviet Unions capability to project strength in the Third World, he admitted to this author that he had other strategic and personal reasons for aiding the Mujahideen. Months before President Carter signed the covert aid directive on July 3, 1979, Brzezinski had begun to receive quite explicit information from CIA assets in his native Poland that the situation there was on the verge of an explosion. These developments prompted him to turn his thoughts toward both crises simultaneously, with the ultimate goal to develop a strategy that would protect his homeland at all costs. In the final analysis, Brzezinski was correct in his assessment that aiding the Mujahideen and turning up the heat on the Soviets in Afghanistan would later prevent the Kremlin from sending its troops into Poland in order to squelch the burgeoning labor movement known as Solidarity.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759- 1797) wrote both A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman within a matter of weeks. Why she wants to write the second book about rights continued from the preceding one? I would try to probe into the correlations between these two works. In her argument for women¡¦s rights (even all human being¡¦s rights), Wollstonecraft contested the gendered construction of reason and virtue in political theory. I situate the pioneering feminist as a canonical thinker alongside Locke and Rousseau. Yet, although I admit that Wollstonecraft¡¦s works have been largely been overlooked by mainstream political theorists, in this paper my analysis will offer little explanation as to why Wollstonecraft has been marginalized within the conversation of political thought. To explain why Wollstonecraft¡¦s works has not been included in the canon I pose the question of how this revolutionary woman was authorized to write about political rights. In addition to her perspectives of politics, she also challenged the idea of contemporary patriarchy to fight for women¡¦s citizenship. Therefore, Complex conversations between past and present are involved in any attempt to read Wollstonecraft¡¦s texts or to find the problems of traditional liberal feminism. My study makes no pretension to offer answers to pressing problems. It does, however, provide insights into how present concerns make us resonant to themes in Wollstonecraft¡¦s writing, such as her dealing with the politics of gender difference, her awareness of sexuality and romance, her passionate wrestling with reason, and the relevance of her version of the Enlightenment humanist project to women¡¦s citizenship today. On a more somber note, her proposition makes clear how much exclusion and subjugation of women has taken place within Western feminist tradition from Wollstonecraft onwards and how attentive we need to be to decolonizing the thinking in our own heads while we dream of liberating wider theory.

Texte abrégé de: Thesis--University of Calcutta, 1977. / Bibliogr. p. 247-156.