In restaurants, dance halls, and travel brochures around the world, the word “Cajun” brings to mind a plethora of significations related to flavorful foods, exotic language, and geographical affiliation with South Louisiana— but what exactly is “Cajun” anyway? How has “Cajun” emerged as a community, culture, and identity? Who are the Cajuns today? This thesis rereads “Cajun history” in the larger context of Créole Louisiana, tracing issues of class, language, colonization, racialization, and modernization from Colonial Louisiana through 2020. This is accomplished with the aid of literary analyses, including authors such as Cable, Chopin, de la Houssaye, and Arceneaux, films such as Louisiana Story, and folk stereotype humor in the form of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes. The thesis introduces postcolonial theoretical frameworks of mimicry, fixity, hybridity and créolization as methods for understanding the oft-forgotten historical relationality of identities, cultures, and languages in Southern Louisiana. In the 1970s Caribbean writers such as Édouard Glissant put forward the unfinished and unpredictable creativity of the historical, geographical, and anthropological space of Creole society and culture from the Antillean point of view. In a similar move, my introduction of the theory of creolization to Louisiana history seeks to wrestle back the power of Acadie or even France as the fundamental matrix of non-Anglophone culture, history, and identity in Louisiana. Instead, the complex perspective of Creolité threatens the stability of these origin myths, revitalizing our concept of history, culture, and identity in the localized touchstone of South Louisiana, while understanding that this localized perspective is always already an ongoing production at the borders of culture(s) in contact. Ultimately, I argue that Southern Louisiana since colonization has consistently been a site of créolization, destabilizing claims of Acadianness as the sole figurehead for francophone or franco-créolophone identity in the region. / Graduate / 2021-09-19

Piñon and juniper tree species have species-specific climatic requirements, resulting in unique distributions and differential responses to climate change. Piñons and junipers co-dominate the arid woodlands of North America as groups with widespread hybridization. Two piñons, Pinus edulis; P. monophylla, and four junipers, Juniperus deppeana var. deppeana; J. monosperma; J. occidentalis; J. osteosperma, are endemic to the midlatitude interior west and form three groups of hybridizing sister species, P. edulis-P. monophylla; J. deppeana var. deppeana-J. monosperma; J. occidentalis-J. osteosperma. Recent droughts have caused widespread mortality among piñons, but have had less impact on junipers and indicate shifts in co-occurrence have already begun in response to global climate change. Within these groups hybridization likely plays an important role in such distribution changes. The central objective of this thesis is to forecast the distributions of piñons and junipers endemic to the US under modeled climate change for the 21st century. Species distribution models are built with an emphasis placed on aligning the life cycle dynamics of the species within the temporal and spatial resolution of predictor variables, and within the modeling technique. Two concerns surrounding species distribution modeling are addressed. First, concerns regarding the extent to which species are at equilibrium with the current climate are addressed by incorporating dispersal into the model building process. Second, concerns regarding the potential role of hybridization between closely related species are addressed by building distribution models for each of the three sister species groups as well as the six component species. Species distribution models exhibited individualistic responses to modeled climate change. Modeled areal loss was greater than gain for all species, which is reflected in changes of co-occurrence. Piñon-juniper richness is forecast to increase in the northern Colorado Plateau, eastern Great Basin, and Rocky Mountains. The sister-species models forecast greater areal gain, and less areal loss, along hybridization zones for P. edulis-P. monophylla and for J. occidentalis-J. osteosperma, but forecast greater areal loss along the periphery of the component species distributions. The sister-species model for J. deppeana var. deppeana-J. monosperma forecasts overall greater areal loss than the component species. In general, forecast changes in latitude and elevation are about one third of the changes inferred, from the fossil record, to have occurred following the transition to the current interglacial ~10,000 years ago.

In order to analyze the bacterial community of river otter scat (fecal material) at the class level, river otter scat samples were collected from Grizzly Island Wildlife Area (Solano County, CA) and the Cosumnes River Preserve (Sacramento County, CA). DNA was isolated from each sample with the MOBIO PowerSoil™ DNA Isolation Kit and 16S rRNA gene sequences were amplified from each sample. After digestion with Mspl, TRFLPs were analyzed in an ABI Prism™ 310 Genetic Analyzetin triplicate and data peak information from each electropherogram was uploaded into the Phylogenetic Assignment Tool (PAT). Species belonging to the Class Bacilli were the most abundant followed by unclassified species. Two road killed river otters were necropsied to recover brain and blood tissue. DNA was isolated using the Qiagen Tissue DNeasy Kit. Samples from both otters were amplified with a singe tube nested PCR primer set for the detection of the ITS 1 region of Toxoplasma gondii. Scat samples used in the T-RFLP analysis were also tested for the presence ofT. gondii using the same nested primer set. Neither the river otter tissue samples nor any of the scat samples used in this analysis showed evidence of infeGtion with T. gondii.

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This study extends outshopping knowledge from North America to Europe. Outshoppers and non-outshoppers in a Finnish town are compared in terms of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, importance of shopping area choice attributes, perceptions of the local trading area, and purchase localities of products. Implications are drawn and comparisons of results are made to general findings from North America.

This study was conducted to determine if visualized goal achievement can help enhance East Asian Chinese students‟ motivation in learning and elevate their confidence in reaching their goals thus improving their performance. The goal achievement was visualized on a goal achievement progress chart that was self-created and self-managed by the East Asian Chinese students and the goal creating was under the supervision of their instructor. In this study, literature reviews on the theories, previous research studies in the perspectives of East Asian students‟ motivation in learning, goal setting on motivation, self-determination, self-efficacy, and expectancy theories are conducted to provide theoretical ground and legitimate evidence for this particular research. The researcher conducted an experiment in which students were given a learning task and required to set their own learning goals for that learning task under the supervision of their instructors. In this specific experiment, a total of 106 students from a university that was funded by American Educators in a central province in China agreed to participate in stages one, and two of the study, but some students withdrew from this research and some did not participate in both research stages therefore their data were take out from the data to make research result more consistent. Therefore eventually 72 students were considered eligible to go through the whole process of turning in the questionnaires and participating in the performance test. In this particular goal setting research study, the students were given the freedom of setting their own learning pace iii and managing their own progress on a visualized progress chart. The progress chart was visualized as a climbing/progressing line, which goes from bottom to top (see appendix C) once students achieved their learning goals. At the same time, the instructor provided feedback concerning the students‟ progress. Although some of the research results displayed no statistical significance for motivation and self-confidence during the pre and post session of the research, there is a positive correlation among motivation, self-confidence, and performance outcome. One research result did corroborate the previous research study that goal setting strategy would improve learning outcome.

<p>  </p> <p>This dissertation is an examination of rural Hoosiers, and in particular to what extent they accepted outside assistance against a backdrop of disruption brought about by mechanization, depression, and in some cases dislocation in the first half of the twentieth century. The "farm experts" from Purdue University, and "government men" from federal agencies came to assist rural Hoosiers cope with the “Farm Problem,” joining a succession of outsiders who came to help. Those who came to the rescue confronted a particular quality of character influenced by environmental elements, migration patterns, and received world views. The study uses a range of sources. A wealth of secondary scholarship was written shortly after the end of rural New Deal programs during World War II. Purdue Experiment Station research publications, Purdue Extension annual reports, county Extension agents’ reports, farm journals, newspaper reporting and editorials, congressional records, records and promotional materials of the Resettlement Administration and its successor the Farm Security Administration, and personal correspondence all give voice to actors and observers at the time. This study contributes to our understanding of rural New Deal initiatives in the Midwest as witnessed through an Indiana lens. The inquiry reveals the uneven and sometimes incoherent nature of “progress” as promoted by agents of change. Try as they might, rural Hoosiers could not resist or control forces of change in the face of worldwide crisis of economic disruption, ideological confrontation, and military aggression.</p>

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