While poetry has historically been connected with rhetoric, few rhetoricians have studied contemporary poetry. Jeffery Walker suggests that this is because contemporary poetry, unlike classical poetry, no longer addresses all socio-economic levels of society but has become insular and self-referential (329). He criticizes that poetry no longer cuts vertically across one culture's hierarchy. I agree that poetry no longer addresses all segments of society, but I argue that this doesn't mean poetry is no longer rhetorical. Contemporary poetry now operates horizontally to unite the cultural elite of many national and ethnic groups by appealing to their identity as poetry readers. Using the identification theories of Kenneth Burke and Naomi Marin, the rhetoric in contemporary poetry becomes more apparent. As an example of how contemporary poetry creates identification among the literary elite, I examine the work of Aleš Debeljak—a former Yugoslavian Slovene poet who must define his national identity while appealing to a transnational community of poetry readers. Debeljak's poetry demonstrates the sophisticated work poetry does to create identify and identification.

An edited transcription of the 1879 to 1887 diaries of Mary Lois Walker Morris (1835-1919). Mary Lois, a plural wife in 19th century Utah, went in and out of hiding between 1885 and 1887 to protect her husband Elias Morris from prosecution for illegal cohabitation. Her daily diaries culminate with the court trial of her husband for illegal cohabitation in September 1887. At the trial, she testified falsely, stating that she had been separated from her husband since the beginning of 1883, when in fact the couple did not separate until May of 1885. As a result, her husband was acquitted. Mary Lois and her husband Elias Morris, a prominent builder and businessman, were in a levirate marriage. Mary Lois had married Elias's brother John in 1852 and came across the plains to Salt Lake City with him. In 1855, when John lay dying, Mary Lois promised him that she would marry his brother Elias and raise up children that would belong to John in the hereafter. John's brother Elias agreed and took Mary Lois as a plural wife in 1856. Together, they had eight children, including LDS apostle George Q. Morris and Nephi Morris, a member of the Utah state legislature. Mary Lois's diaries contain detailed information about her own and her children's church meeting attendance, her time as the president of the Salt Lake 15th Ward Primary Association, her work as a milliner, her attitude toward polygamy and her interactions with her husband and children. Her diaries also give evidence of a rich cultural life that included attendance at many plays and concerts and contain conversations and interaction with many LDS people in Salt Lake City at the time. She records information about courtship patterns, housecleaning, leisure activities, reading material and other aspects of daily life in 19th century Utah. In addition, Mary Lois gives political commentary on the anti-polygamy conflict occurring around her and records her own experience in hiding during the raid.

The omission of boredom from 1950s cultural and literary discourse is somewhat glaring, especially considering the frequency with which terms such as banality, conformity, and uniformity appear in scholarly and popular representations of the era. Such evocations of social and personal malaise derive from postwar sociological and theoretical critiques that rather uncritically dismiss mass culture as hostile to expressions of individuality. For Frankfurt school theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Henri Lefebvre, and Herbert Marcuse, the capitulation of individuals to a contented (and thoroughly dull) status quo is symptomatic of the disappearance of culturally distinct localities into a standardized national space, the parameters of which are determined by commodity culture. I argue that a closer inspection of filmic, literary, and archival texts from the era reveals the limitations of such macro geographies; texts often acknowledge such mass cultural rhetoric while at the same time offering a more nuanced and optimistic appraisal of the potential for meaningful engagement with the marketplace. Texts such as Norman Foster’s Woman on the Run, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” attribute postwar boredom to passive, diversionary consumption habits that mediate and inhibit the consumer’s ability to find fulfillment within local environments. By scrutinizing setting, characterization, narration, and other formal concerns within the context of boredom theory and Michael de Certeau’s spatial phenomenology, it becomes clear that these texts encourage a mode of spatial and cultural literacy capable of revealing opportunities for meaningful engagement within local environments that remain vital.

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A life prediction method is developed for spot-welds subject to fatigue loading. Stress intensity factors are used with the Walker equation to develop two crack growth approaches to the problem. The predictions fit data for lap joint configurations well, but not so for peel joint geometries. / Master of Science

Since the East Texas area has many minerals in the categories which yield semiprecious stones of commercial value--jasper, wood agate, wood opal, and silicified stone, the author undertook this study to determine: (1) the extent which these minerals could be utilized as sources for gems; (2) the equipment necessary for cutting and polishing the stones; and (3) the techniques for finishing the gems.

The main purpose of this study is to determine some of the effects that the school laws passed by the Fifty-First Legislature will have upon the schools of Walker County.