In this thesis, I argue that Mark undergirds his high view of Jesus by characterizing him as an autonomous miracle-worker. In chapter one, I provide a history of literature regarding miracles, Mark, and the identity of Jesus. In chapter two, I demonstrate that the inclusion of deferment in miracle-narratives ranging from the Old Testament to Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, is nearly ubiquitous. That is, human miracle-workers that appear in narratives do not act autonomously: rather, they show clear and explicit dependence on God to perform their miracles. In chapter three, I demonstrate that deferment is not only an essential charactersitic of miracles in narratives, but also in non-narrative texts from Qumran to the great many extant magical materials. In chapter four, I show that Jesus’ miracle-working in Mark, unlike the miracle-working surveyed in chapters two and three, is autonoumous. Additionally, I suggest that Mark uses this autonomous miracle-working, at crucial places in the gospel, to illustrate his high view of Jesus. In chapter five I draw a distinction between Mark’s characterization of Jesus and other miracle-workers he depicts in the narrative. In this final chapter, I argue that Jesus’ autonomous miracle-working is not an idiosyncratic feature of Mark’s writing style, but integral to his characterization of Jesus. Mark portrays other miracle-workers in the Gospel as dependent on either God or Jesus to perform miracles which further supports his high view of Jesus.

Esta pesquisa, vinculada à concessão da bolsa CNPq e intitulada \"Modelos e Explicações: a apropriação de entidades científicas e o uso que os alunos fazem delas\", assume a importância dos modelos tanto na ciência quanto no ensino, destaca que a produção de explicações se dá por meio dos modelos e propõe investigar a relação entre a construção de modelos na ciência e no ensino de ciências por meio das entidades. Enquanto representações eficazes do mundo físico, os modelos científicos precisam passar pela transposição didática para constituírem-se como objetos de ensino. Deste modo este trabalho tem também como objetivo compreender quais aspectos da construção de modelos na ciência pode/deve ser transposto para o contexto escolar. Avançaremos em relação à ideia de que uma adequada definição de modelo, tanto na ciência quanto em seu ensino, se relaciona com a necessidade de explicar e permite uma descrição satisfatória dos procedimentos empregados por pessoas em busca de uma explicação de um sistema físico. Assim, a esta pesquisa, são adicionadas duas questões importantes à investigação: como os alunos usam os modelos da ciência para a produção de explicações e como as entidades presentes no mundo cotidiano e no mundo da ciência participam da construção dessas explicações? Esta investigação encontra apoio no filósofo Mario Bunge (1974; 1985) e justifica discussão sobre modelos e modelagem em sua perspectiva pelo fato dele considerar que o papel fundamental da ciência é a construção de modelos e seu principal objetivo é produzir explicações para os fatos reais. O processo de construção de modelos e explicações pressupõe que as explicações produzidas pela ciência pertençam a um cenário pré-definido, no qual cada entidade desempenhe papéis que atendam as expectativas e exigências delimitadas pelo contexto. Sendo assim, continua por procurar uma aproximação entre a ideia de entidades e de objetos-modelo definido por Bunge. Para isso, são apresentadas duas estratégias metodológicas que se concentram em elaborar, implementar e analisar atividades de ensino-aprendizagem sobre duas entidades físicas escolhidas: carga e campo. / This research, linked to the granting of the CNPQ scholarship and entitled \"Models and explanations: the appropriation of scientific entities and students\' use of it\", assumes the importance of models in both science and education, highlights that the production of explanations is given by models and proposes to investigate the relationship between the construction of models in science and science education through entities. While effective representations of the physical world, the scientific models need to pass the didactics transposition in order to constitute itselves as teaching objects. Thereby this research has also as a target to comprehend which aspects of models\' construction in science may/must be transposed to the educational context. We will proceed the idea that a suitable model definition, both in science as in its teaching, is related with the need to explain and permits a satisfactory description of the procedures applied by people searching an explanation of a physical system. Therefore, to this research, we add two important questions to the investigation: how do students use the models of science in producing explanations and how do the entities present in the everyday world and in the world of science participate in the construction of these explanations? This investigation is supported by the philosopher Mario Bunge (1974; 1985) and justifies the discussion of models and modeling in his perspective by the fact that he considers that the fundamental role of science is the construction of models and its main objective is to produce explanations to real facts. The process of construction of models and explanations presuppose that explanations produced by science belong to a predefined scenario, in which each entity perform roles that attend the expectation and the demands delimited by its context. Therefore, it continues to look for an approximation between the idea of entities and model-objects defined by Bunge. To do so, we present two methodological strategies that concentrates in elaborate, implement and analyze activities of teaching-learning about two Physical entities chosen: charge and field.

archives@tulane.edu / This dissertation presents the results of a tripartite exploration of English use by Latinxs in post-Katrina New Orleans, defined here as an ethnolinguistic repertoire that I call New Orleans Latinx English (NOLAE). The project considers how contemporary English use differs from that found in a pre-Katrina sample, how social network geometry influences linguistic performance, and how the localized discursive articulation of the Latinx community shapes the sociolinguistic context. I find that while vowel realization patterns provide no evidence of large-scale deviation across the pre-and-post Katrina samples, there are four vowels which exhibit statistically significant divergence. In each of these cases, the post-Katrina sample is more variable. I also illustrate that the geometry of the local Latinx social network, defined in terms of neighborhood affiliations, has a statistically significant impact on the realization of linguistic variables. Finally, I demonstrate that Spanish and Spanish-influenced English are discursively constructed as marked linguistic performance, leading local Latinxs to aspire to ‘standard’ English performance in public spaces. Differential experiences of this pressure is posited to underlie much of the linguistic variation observed in NOLAE, both across the pre-and-post-Katrina samples and within the contemporary sample. / 1 / Thomas D Lewis

Through a post-colonial narrative turn, scholars created space for alternative illness narratives to be performed; narratives that reflected the fragmented and unpredictable ways of ailing bodies, and allowed for multiple and diverse identities to be constructed. However, even with this post-colonial turn, illness narratives in U.S. culture often depict situations in which individuals overcome their illnesses, and death is somehow avoided (Langellier & Peterson, 2004), which present potential constraints for what narratives individuals at the end-of-life (EOL) are able to tell and what identities they are able to construct. Using post-colonial narrative theory (Frank, 1995) as a framework, I engaged in a thematic narrative analysis of 16 hospice patient narratives, to understand whether narratives and identity constructions are constrained for dying individuals as they attempt to make sense of the end-of-life. Patients constructed the five identities of the experienced individual, the believer, the ailing individual, the good dier, and the individual who is still living, through several themes. Ideals of both post-colonialism and modernism were present in identity constructions, suggesting some acceptance of alternative narratives for individuals at the EOL. However, notably a new type of colonization emerged as patients' identity constructions and themes reflected elements of ars moriendi or the good death (Faust, 2008). Specifically, it appears that end-of-life narratives must reflect that the individual nearing the end-of-life is doing so in a culturally acceptable way which involves acceptance, sacrificial or selfless qualities, dying gladly, and dying not alone. This nuanced type of colonization suggests that specific illness situations might present unique narrative colonization. I end by offering practical implications for health care providers and family. Specifically, these findings might inform traditional practitioners and encourage them to broaden the clinical definition of the good death, with an understanding that elements such as esteem and emotional support or empowerment might be paramount for some patients' good deaths. Additionally, these findings offer awareness to family members regarding cultural expectations of the good death, so that they might consider whether they are adding pressure to their loved ones to achieve such a death.

This dissertation problematizes the ways in which the experiences of the survivors of the "comfort system," the Japanese military's Asia Pacific War/World War II system of sexual slavery, have been articulated and narrativized, with particular attention to texts by and about the Filipino comfort system survivors, or "Lolas." The juridical contexts in which the former comfort women have so frequently been asked to speak of their experiences have resulted in a paradigmatic comfort women narrative, one that is inherently problematic, despite having proven expedient and politically useful in the short term for generating public interest and support for the cause. This juridical unconscious, whose influence extends to extrajudicial contexts, has reduced the survivors' stories to spectacles of broken, violated bodies, and the survivors themselves to figures of eternal victimhood--representations that ultimately replicate the sexist, racist, and imperialist attitudes that led to the institutionalization of sexual violence during that war. I argue, however, that the comfort women's stories resist total containment; outside the paradigm of redress these narratives are rich sites of knowledge and remembrance whose meanings extend beyond the pursuit of reparations and the promise of closure. This is evident in the texts I examine here, texts by and about Filipinas, whose specific experiences of military sexual enslavement have often been overlooked in international public discourses on the comfort women issue. In the autobiographies Comfort Woman: Slave of Destiny, by Maria Rosa Henson, and The Hidden Battle of Leyte: The Picture Diary of a Girl Taken by the Japanese Military, by Remedios Felias, the survivors/authors flesh out the familial, cultural, and political contexts that inflected their sexual enslavement during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Both authors also employ multiple languages, including the visual, as they chip away at the limitations of the paradigmatic narrative, re-membering their traumatic pasts and reconstructing socially legitimate identities. In the aftermath of a different kind of wartime sexual violence, the Lolas of Women of Mapanique: Untold Crimes of War, by Nena Gajudo, Gina Alunan, and Susan Macabuag, adopt and adapt the rhetoric of the comfort women redress movement in order to make their own voices heard. In so doing, they reveal difficult truths about the limits of our ability to comprehend and act upon sexual violence against men during wartime. Finally, I discuss three poems: Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo's "Balada ni Lola Amonita" ("The Ballad of Lola Amonita"), Joi Barrios' "Inasawa ng Hapon" ("Taken to Wife"), and Bino A. Realuyo's "Pantoum: Comfort Woman." I find that by drawing upon the signs, symbols, and rituals of precolonial indigenous and religious Filipino culture, and by superimposing the metaphorical landscape of memory onto the literal landscape of the archipelago, these poems can offer what the paradigmatic comfort women cannot. The opportunity to break out of our voyeuristic consumption of trauma and share cultural space with the victims and survivors, and the chance to see the Lolas' collective experience as an indelible part the nation's past, present, and future.

The prevalence of event clusters in autobiographical memory was examined with an event-cueing task in two parallel experiments. Event clusters are theoretical memory structures that bind specific personal events in narrative-like configurations. Prior research has shown that young adults report fewer event clusters when cued with childhood events than high school events (Brown, 2005). Experiment 1 tested whether the reduced prevalence of event clusters in childhood is due to forgetting. Experiment 2 used the same event cueing task with 4th grade children. Keeping event age constant, children reported a comparable amount of event clusters to adults recalling childhood events. Childrens relational judgments between event pairs differed from adults and may have inflated their responses. Together, these findings suggest that event clusters are consequences of other cognitive processes implicated in the development of autobiographical memory.

Although serious illness is often associated with aging in contemporary society, increasing numbers of young adults are being diagnosed with a variety of serious illnesses. In order to learn more about what it is like to be seriously ill during young adulthood, I completed a qualitative study with ten young women who had recently been affected by a life-threatening or chronic illness. The research was informed by a theoretical approach based on social constructionist and phenomenological principles that recognize that physiological processes such as illness are socially mediated and given meaning within a certain socio-cultural context. Thus,the life course and its corresponding stages are not universal or biologically determined, but rather are social constructions based on socio-cultural factors and the meanings given to certain biological events. This research involved participants between the ages of 20 and 37 from around Saskatchewan who had been affected by a serious illness within the previous three years. The methodological approach that I utilized was interpretive and drew upon phenomenological, feminist, and participatory visual approaches to qualitative research. The young women participated in phenomenological interviews and a photovoice project that explored their lived experiences of serious illness and the specific issues that they faced because of illness. I analyzed the data thematically, incorporating phenomenological concepts of embodiment, temporality, and relationality. Although the interview and photographic data highlighted a range of experiences, the data highlighted several similarities among participants. Foremost, the data revealed that serious illness was highly disruptive for the young women; specifically, participants were required to negotiate disruptions to their sense of embodiment, everyday lives, expectations for the future, and social relationships. Ultimately, serious illness brought about embodied and social experiences that conflicted with how participants had previously envisioned young adulthood and their life course. As such, their experiences of illness had profound implications for their self identity and brought about a complex process of trying to make sense of illness. Based on these findings, I conclude that the young women experienced and made sense of illness within the context of socio-cultural expectations related to age and the life course, as well as gender. I also identify the implications of this research for health care and support services aimed at this population.

During the Second World War, more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians were interned to various locations throughout Canada. While more than 60 years have passed since these events, there remains limited research on the impact that this event had on this group of people. Using McCubbin and Patterson’s (1983) Double ABCX model of family stress and adaptation as a framework, this study used historical narratives of 69 Japanese Canadians to gain insight into a) how Japanese Canadians coped with the challenges associated with their internment, and b) what resources they used during this same time period. The analysis of the coping strategies was done using a modified version of existing measures of coping strategies (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986; Suedfeld, Krell, Wiebe, & Steel, 1997), and the analysis of resources was done using an adjusted version of Rettig’s (1995) and Tucker and Rice’s (1985) resource classification list. There were no statistically significant differences between Japanese Canadian men and women in their coping strategy use, but that there were differences between the Issei (first generation) and Nisei (second generation). The Issei used Self Control, Positive Reappraisal, and Denail more than the Nisei, while the Nisei used Seeking Social Support more than the Issei. A strong relationship between coping and resources was found; a relationship that has often been assumed, but never tested. The findings from this study also provided additional support for the usefulness of using both narratives and the Double ABCX model in research.

The aim of this study is to fill the gap in mathematics education research concerning the relationship between identity and positioning in mathematical collaboration in groups. This study elaborates on the relationship between how pupils see themselves as math students in sixth grade, how they show their identities as math students, in contrast to how they position themselves reflexively in group collaboration while engaging in mathematical problem solving. The theoretical concepts linked to this study are discourse, identity and positioning. Discourse is used to describe and form the setting and context of the study. Identity is seen as a transient and elusive concept formed by the students own perceptions of self through narratives. The reflexive form of positioning, where the students choose to position themselves in discourse, is derived from acts and speech in group collaboration. This form of positioning is then used as comparison to the narratives of identity to explore the relationship between these two concepts. Data has been collected through participative observation and dialogue, and discourse analysis is partially used to identify the relationship. The results may have implications for future structuring and planning of mathematics education in our classrooms, and the findings provide a narrowing of the gap in mathematics education research within this area. The findings also open up new questions concerning the social constructions of identity among children. Finally, the findings related to the need of reflexive positioning among children in their early teens, and how educators can benefit from this need, are other aspects worth further research.

The proposed method enables us to identify cultural standards, i.e. the underlying norms of thinking, sensing, perceiving, judging, and acting that the vast majority of individuals in a given culture is considering as normal for themselves and others. Norms of behaviour can be different across societies even if the underlying values are the same and can cause critical incidents to emerge. A sequence of methodological steps allows systematically dealing with sampling, interviewer, interpretation, construct, and culture bias in cross-cultural qualitative research based on narrative interviews.(author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut