This dissertation engages a number of currents of environmental criticism and rhetoric in an analysis of the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of the southeastern United States. I examine conceptions of genitive relationships with the environment as portrayed in the work of diverse writers, primarily William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Southern literature is rarely addressed in ecocritical studies, and to date no work offers an intensive and focused examination of the rhetoric employed in conceptions of environmental ownership. However, southern literature and culture provides fertile ground to trace the creation, development, and communication of environmental values because of its history of agrarianism, slavery, and a literary tradition committed to a sense of place. I argue that the concerns of the two main distinctive threads of environmental literary scholarship - ecopoetics and environmentalism of the poor - neatly overlap in the literature of the South. I employ rhetorical theory and phenomenology to argue that southern authors call into question traditional forms of writing about nature - such as pastoral, the sublime, and wilderness narratives - to reinvent and revitalize those forms in order to develop and communicate modes of reciprocal ownership of natural and cultural environments. These writers not only imagine models of personal and communal coexistence with the environment, but also provide new ways of thinking about environmental justice. The intersection of individual and social relationships with history and nature in Southern literature provides new models for thinking about environmental relationships and how they are communicated. I argue that expressions of environmental ownership and belonging suggest how individuals and groups can better understand their distance and proximity to their environments, which may result in new valuations of personal and social environmental relationships.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 359-369).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 410-441).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Audrey Goodman, committee chair; Thomas L. McHaney, Elizabeth West, committee members. Electronic text (253 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May15, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (243-253).

Este trabalho é dedicado à análise de duas obras ficcionais, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, de Zora Neale Hurston, e “Light in August”, de William Faulkner. O ponto de partida da análise é a ideia que identidades são construídas de acordo com injunções discursivas específicas, que variam de contexto para contexto. Para tanto, foram analisados os dois personagens principais dos textos, Janie Crawford, uma mulher negra, e Joe Christmas, um homem cuja identidade racial é desconhecida. A comparação entre os dois se baseou na forma como ambas as identidades são construídas nos romances, em relação ao seu acesso à língua e a possibilidade de articulação dentro dela, e ao contexto no qual estão inseridos. / This research is dedicated to the analysis of two fictional works, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston and Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner. The starting point of the analysis is the idea that identities are constructed according to specific discursive injunctions, which vary from context to context. The study is focused on the main characters of both novels, Janie Crawford, a black woman, and Joe Christmas, a man whose racial identity is unknown. The comparison between the two characters is based on how their identities are constructed in the novels in relation to their access to language and their possibility of articulating within it, and the context in which they are inserted.

My diploma thesis deals with classical dancing in our country, I have tried to map different influences and the development of classical dancing since the coming of Augustin Bergr. I focused on variol styles and of course on persons who brought all the changes. Textbooks and manuals of dancing have also been dealt with.

Este trabalho é dedicado à análise de duas obras ficcionais, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, de Zora Neale Hurston, e “Light in August”, de William Faulkner. O ponto de partida da análise é a ideia que identidades são construídas de acordo com injunções discursivas específicas, que variam de contexto para contexto. Para tanto, foram analisados os dois personagens principais dos textos, Janie Crawford, uma mulher negra, e Joe Christmas, um homem cuja identidade racial é desconhecida. A comparação entre os dois se baseou na forma como ambas as identidades são construídas nos romances, em relação ao seu acesso à língua e a possibilidade de articulação dentro dela, e ao contexto no qual estão inseridos. / This research is dedicated to the analysis of two fictional works, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston and Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner. The starting point of the analysis is the idea that identities are constructed according to specific discursive injunctions, which vary from context to context. The study is focused on the main characters of both novels, Janie Crawford, a black woman, and Joe Christmas, a man whose racial identity is unknown. The comparison between the two characters is based on how their identities are constructed in the novels in relation to their access to language and their possibility of articulating within it, and the context in which they are inserted.

Este trabalho é dedicado à análise de duas obras ficcionais, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, de Zora Neale Hurston, e “Light in August”, de William Faulkner. O ponto de partida da análise é a ideia que identidades são construídas de acordo com injunções discursivas específicas, que variam de contexto para contexto. Para tanto, foram analisados os dois personagens principais dos textos, Janie Crawford, uma mulher negra, e Joe Christmas, um homem cuja identidade racial é desconhecida. A comparação entre os dois se baseou na forma como ambas as identidades são construídas nos romances, em relação ao seu acesso à língua e a possibilidade de articulação dentro dela, e ao contexto no qual estão inseridos. / This research is dedicated to the analysis of two fictional works, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston and Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner. The starting point of the analysis is the idea that identities are constructed according to specific discursive injunctions, which vary from context to context. The study is focused on the main characters of both novels, Janie Crawford, a black woman, and Joe Christmas, a man whose racial identity is unknown. The comparison between the two characters is based on how their identities are constructed in the novels in relation to their access to language and their possibility of articulating within it, and the context in which they are inserted.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has proven to be an invaluable tool for the modern chemist, despite being a relatively insensitive spectroscopic technique. However, it is precisely this insensitivity that limits characterization of low-receptivity nuclides, which make up the bulk of transition metal nuclides, in particular. In this work, high-fields were used to collect the first 61Ni solid-state NMR (SSNMR) spectra of diamagnetic nickel compounds, specifically, bis(1,5-cyclooctadiene)nickel(0) (Ni(cod)2), tetrakis(triphenylphosphite)nickel(0) (Ni[P(OPh)3]4), and tetrakis(triphenylphosphine)nickel(0) (Ni(PPh3)4). This was complemented by NMR study of the co-ordinated ligands and 61Ni density functional theory (DFT) computations. 61Ni SSNMR spectra of Ni(cod)2 were used to determine its isotropic chemical shift (δiso = 965 ± 10 ppm), span (Ω = 1700 ± 50 ppm), skew (κ = -0.15 ± 0.05), quadrupolar coupling constant (CQ = 2.0 ± 0.3 MHz), quadrupolar asymmetry parameter (η = 0.5 ± 0.2), and the relative orientation of the chemical shift and EFG tensors. Solution study of Ni(cod)2 saturated in C6D6 yielded a narrow 61Ni signal, and the temperature dependence of δiso(61Ni) was assessed (δiso being 936.5 ppm at 295 K). The solution is proposed as a secondary chemical shift reference for 61Ni NMR in lieu of the extremely toxic Ni(CO)4 primary reference. For Ni[P(OPh)3]4, 61Ni SSNMR was used to infer the presence of two distinct crystallographic sites and establish ranges for δ¬iso in the solid state, as well as an upper bound for CQ (3.5 MHz for both sites). For Ni(PPh3)4, fitting provided a δiso value of 515 ± 10 ppm, Ω of 50 ± 50 ppm, κ of 0.5 ± 0.5, CQ of 0.05 ± 0.01 MHz, and η of 0.0 ± 0.2. Ni(cod)2 was chosen for study as it is a ubiquitous source of nickel(0), used for both further synthesis of nickel(0) compounds and directly as a catalyst. The study of Ni[P(OPh)3]4 and Ni(PPh3)4 demonstrated the utility of 61Ni SSNMR given the lack of a previously reported crystal structure for both and the transient nature of Ni(PPh3)4 in solution. The work begins in Chapter 1 by introducing the interactions fundamental to NMR spectroscopy, before moving on to briefly review the field of transition metal nuclide NMR, the chemistry of nickel (with an emphasis on homogeneous catalysis with nickel(0)), and the literature with respect to nickel NMR up to this point. In Chapter 2, the theory and practice of NMR are explained, including solid-state NMR, as well as the basic principles of density functional theory NMR computations. The specific experimental and computational methods of this work are also introduced. Lastly, in Chapter 3 the results are discussed in the context of the concepts presented and literature reviewed, and highlight the use of 61Ni NMR as a means to gain novel information about the chemistry of the compounds studied.

“Sites of Inscription” argues that creative works allow us to trace black epistemologies of space and time in the United States. Reading works of literature and art from the 19th century to the present, I trace how black people have creatively mis-used, reimagined, and transformed the spatial technologies of the plantation and its geographic afterlife. My project specifically asks how the “literary” in black literary geographies reveals and preserves black spatial praxes in ways that exceed the capacities of dominant modes of Western spatial representation such as conventional maps, blueprints or land surveys. Each chapter considers literary form in particular to be intimately related to the production and representation of space by black people—both as ways of expressing the experience of living under spatial technologies of racialized management, enclosure and exploitation, and as ways of expressing resistance to these technologies and the underwriting epistemologies they reproduce. Employing a palimpsestic practice of reading, I gather texts written across periods but which cohere around a single spatial formation that stages the tensions of (post)plantation geographies—fences, city blocks, apartments, and rooftops. Reading works by W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and Zora Neale Hurston, I consider the relationship between writing and enclosure in the South during and immediately after slavery. Moving North and into the 20th century, I consider representations of the city block in work by Romare Bearden, Tonya Foster, and Langston Hughes. The art of apartment living in Chicago is explored through readings of Kerry James Marshall and Gwendolyn Brooks. I conclude on the rooftop, where Claude Brown, Piri Thomas, and Faith Ringgold document its creative re-production. All four chapters explore the impact of these radical acts of counter-planning, and efforts to represent them, on literary form and genre—concluding that formal experimentations are precisely what allow literature and visual art to archive these fugitive and fleeting engagements with space.