The inclusion of critical literacy is becoming more prevalent in our curricula, however, while the value of using trauma literature in the English Language Arts classroom has been established, the explicit use of sexual assault narratives sometimes seems too risky or intimidating for educators. This case study research utilizes social constructivism, feminist, gender studies, and queer studies, trauma theory, and reader response theory as lenses for analysis. Further, a narrative methodological framework was employed to explore how reading trauma literature can influence the writing practices, specifically the digitally written responses, of grade ten adolescents. As well, the study examined the usefulness of digital writing platforms and social media as vehicles to use while incorporating such critical literacies into the classroom. The research was carried out in one western Canadian high school and across two grade ten academic English Language Arts classes. Data was collected from 25 student participants for the primary portion of the classroom study and four of those participants also participated in the focus group discussion. The findings suggest that engaging with trauma literature is certainly a valuable form of critical literacy, particularly sexual assault narratives. Students’ responses indicated that they responded angrily and aggressively to the texts presented, they voiced a need to be heard through the use of repetition, they identified the significance of mental health issues, they made personal connections with the literature as well as intertextual connections between other stories, and created significant and telling silences. Perhaps most importantly, this study found that we must continue to work towards finding best practices for teaching these texts because doing so may lead to challenging rape culture and fostering a sense of empowerment, agency, and resiliency in our learners. These qualities were particularly demonstrated through the students’ personal, critical, and creative written responses using digital literacy practices. / Graduate / 0727 Curriculum and Instruction, 0279 Language and Literature, and 0533 Secondary / amberjanellemoore@gmail.com

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), 64% of primate species are declining in the wild and 49% face a significant risk of extinction. This crisis is largely the result of human activity, including logging, ranching, and hunting. In this study I examine the impacts of the anthropogenic habitat disturbances associated with cattle ranching on a primate community. Research was conducted at the preeminent site for the study of rain forest fragmentation, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Manaus, Brazil. I surveyed 8 line transects totaling 13 km that sampled: 1) secondary forest on abandoned cattle pasture,2) selectively logged primary forest, and 3) undisturbed primary forest. Specifically, I tested for edge effects, niche partitioning, and interhabitat differences in population density. Primate presence in edge habitats was negatively related to the amount of fruit consumed, a relationship that was also apparent in the densities of individual species. Four species were more abundant in edge habitats: Alouatta macconnelli (folivore-frugivore), Chiropotes chiropotes (seed predator), Saguinus midas (generalist), and Sapajus apella (generalist); one was less abundant: Ateles paniscus (frugivore); and the last showed no edge-related pattern: Pithecia chrysocephala (seed predator). Niche partitioning was evident in diet and macrohabitat use. In addition, in primary forest there was partitioning along several microhabitat variables. In secondary forest, however, microhabitat partitioning was absent, possibly due to habitat constraints or low encounter rates. Body size was positively related to use of vertical strata in both habitats, hence a combination of body size and competition may drive vertical niche partitioning. Primate characteristics were not related to their presence in selectively logged or undisturbed primary forest, though body size was inversely related to presence in secondary forest. Only the two generalists (Saguinus and Sapajus) heavily utilized secondary forest. The two largest species, Ateles (frugivore) and Alouatta (folivore-frugivore), showed an equal preference for all primary forest (logged and undisturbed) over secondary forest. Chiropotes (seed predator) also preferred undisturbed primary forest while Pithecia (seed predator) was relatively uniformly distributed. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

For two hundred years the history of the Battle of New Orleans has suffered from the neglected state of the historiography on the War of 1812 and the static state of the Battle's orthodox narrative. This dissertation identifies and deconstructs the central themes of the Battle's orthodox narrative. It reveals how these long standing presumptions surfaced through the Battle's public commemoration in the nineteenth century and have fostered misleading perceptions about Louisiana’s involvement in the war, the defense preparations undertaken in New Orleans prior to Andrew Jackson's arrival, and the so-called unity that was achieved through the victory. By incorporating the actions and experiences of women and the enslaved into the Battle's history, this dissertation exposes the traditional marginalization of these groups in accounts of the Battle and its subsequent memorialization. It shows that the absence of women and the enslaved in the cultivation of the Battle's public memory was a deliberate measure taken by white slaveholding elites to preserve racial and social divisions that were blurred by the Battle's symbolic message of the power of unity. The actions of a third group, free men of color, are examined to illustrate how critical they were to the victory and how dangerous the memory of their service was to white slaveholding elites, especially in the 1850s. These new perspectives on the Battle and its public commemoration challenge the unchanging nature of the Battle's history and indicate that there is far more to the Battle's story than has ever been told. / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation analyzes the wills left behind by African-born ex-slaves in nineteenth-century Salvador in order to shed light on the lives that they led in the Bahian capital upon their arrival as slaves from Africa, and upon the re-acquisition of their freedom through the alforria system. The material assets and the slave ownership of libertos are studied in depth, as well as their religiosity, and the larger world and networks within which they operated in their Brazilian lives, with a specific eye towards African agency and processes of community formation. The qualitative and in-depth study of post-mortem testaments and inventories as meaningful texts in their own right provides the opportunity to decipher the individual voices of freed Africans, as well as to acquire insight into their Bahian worlds. The relationships, affective ties, and kinship networks of libertos, as well as their efforts to exercise agency and deliberation over their own lives, and the lives of others to whom they were connected, also become evident in the process. The testaments also make it possible to acquire a deeper understanding of African cosmologies in Brazil, through the ways in which libertos understood the passage from the worldly life to the afterlife, the meanings they gave to death, to funerals and other last rites. Understandings of justice, legality, and honor also come to the forefront, while the complex context of nineteenth century Bahia (and Brazil in general) constitutes the constant backdrop against which all these discussions acquire meaning. Understanding the lives, belief systems, and connections of African libertos also has important repercussions for understanding the experiences of Africans and their descendants in slave societies all over the Atlantic World. Insights deriving from the in-depth analysis of libertos’ wills have important implications for furthering our knowledge with regards to the Atlantic slave trade, slave ownership, and enslavement, as well as processes of identity and community formation, retention, adaptation, and resistance in the African Diaspora as a whole. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu