This creative project presents architectural and design principles of the landscape features define as Hispanic gardens, which were built by the Spanish conquistadors of the island of La Hispaniola since 1492 up to the seventeenth century in La Ciudad Colonial of Santo Domingo, today capital of the Dominican Republic. This study researches the urban and architectural characteristics of the Colonial City of Santo Domingo as well as the main elements that define the Spanish gardens and also some of the current strategies and techniques for garden restoration. Those aspects are a background and support to the identification of these Hispanic gardens and to the proposed guidelines for the rehabilitation of these historic areas. To fulfill a further purpose of promoting an integral restoration* of the Colonial City of Santo Domingo, the goals of the project relate to the areas of landscape and architecture, and to the social and educational contexts. Therefore, the recommended guidelines for the rehabilitation of the historic Hispanicgardens of La Ciudad Colonial of Santo Domingo are a preliminary step toward a different approach of the preservation of this cultural landscape.Integral restoration, to this project, it is understood as a plan of preservation, which valorizes all the aspects concerning to architecture, landscape, and the urban and social patterns related to La Ciudad Colonial of Santo Domingo. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) initiated a series of nine human dimensions of global change pilot projects in 1991, to better understand how physical, biological, and social scientists must interact in order to address problems of importance to decision -makers. There is also a need to develop methodologies for merging data sets which differ on spatial and temporal scales, and indeed, to ascertain whether or not data are generally available to address specific, highly complex earth and social science. Because there has been virtually no research on the use of remotely sensed data in the social sciences of global change, this is a component of each pilot project. Pilot projects need to show how the results would be transferred to decision makers. All these elements of the pilots are to be used to inform the design of the CIESIN Data and Research Center. One of the CIESIN human dimensions of global change pilot projects is situated on the north coast of the Dominican Republic in Buen Hombre.

The Dominican Order gradually evolved rules governing contact between a Dominican pastor and a woman penitent. In the context of these rules, the care given to Catherine of Siena as reported by Raymund of Capua and as confirmed in the letters of Catherine herself can only be termed irregular. The paper attempts to identify the principles underlying and legitimating pastoral irregularity.

This study examines the life and scholarship of a French Dominican friar, Serge de Beaurecueil (1917 - 2005). His life time investigation of the mystical dimensions of Islam centered around the life and corpus attributed to the 11th century Hanbalī Sūfī shaykh‘Abdullāh Ansārī of Herāt (1006 - 1089). The thrust of our argument is that this erudite and mystical conversation with the work of the Pīr of Herāt is a methodology and a theology of dialogue with the religious other. This mystical and prophetic journey combines the Ashramic spirituality of Jules Monchanin and Henry Le Saux in India, a masterdisciple relations, the ethical demands of interfaith dialogue, and finally testifies to the hidden and abiding presence of God among the downtrodden of Kabul. Also, de Beaurecueil’s life ascertains the rich and varied heritage of Dominican spirituality and lays bare the conundrums of interfaith encounter. The introduction sets the stage for the friar’s mystical and prophetic life among Muslims. The first two chapters are biographical. They scrutinize the formation period and professional life of both de Beaurecueil and AnSārī. The following two chapters describe de Beaurecueil intellectual and spiritual growth. His erudition on the corpus of AnSārī and his praxis mystica fit perfectly the Dominican tradition of search for Truth (Veritas) and contemplata aliis tradere. The last chapter attempts to couch in a philosophical language a mystical encounter. Even though de Beaurecueil’s praxis mystica is both attractive and intimidating, his life is a bold testimony to the demanding complexities and rich opportunities of Christian-Muslim mystical encounter.

We report a new chameleon-like Anolis species from Hispaniola that is ecomorphologically similar to congeners found only on Cuba. Lizards from both clades possess short limbs and a short tail and utilize relatively narrow perches, leading us to recognize a novel example of ecomorphological matching among islands in the well-known Greater Antillean anole radiation. This discovery supports the hypothesis that the assembly of island faunas can be substantially deterministic and highlights the continued potential for basic discovery to reveal new insights in well-studied groups. Restricted to a threatened band of midelevation transitional forest near the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, this new species appears to be highly endangered.

This thesis presents and analyses a corpus of some seventy manuscripts which can be identified at the Dominican monastery of Saint-Louis de Poissy between its foundation in 1304 and its dissolution in 1792. The majority were owned by the nuns and most are illuminated; a small number come from the library of the friars resident at the house. By means of a parallel assessment of surviving documentation the manuscripts are considered throughout in the context of the needs of a well-endowed royal foundation intended for noble women, and in terms of monastic and Dominican history and changing requirements. The fate of the volumes is traced form the time of their production through successive alterations and refurbishments (or damage) in order to assess how the nuns acquired their handwritten books, kept them relevant both textually and artistically, or disposed of them when no longer wanted.

This thesis presents and analyses a corpus of some seventy manuscripts which can be identified at the Dominican monastery of Saint-Louis de Poissy between its foundation in 1304 and its dissolution in 1792. The majority were owned by the nuns and most are illuminated; a small number come from the library of the friars resident at the house. By means of a parallel assessment of surviving documentation the manuscripts are considered throughout in the context of the needs of a well-endowed royal foundation intended for noble women, and in terms of monastic and Dominican history and changing requirements. The fate of the volumes is traced form the time of their production through successive alterations and refurbishments (or damage) in order to assess how the nuns acquired their handwritten books, kept them relevant both textually and artistically, or disposed of them when no longer wanted.

In the Dominican Republic, the memory of the Haitian conquest and annexation of the nation from 1822 until independence on February 27, 1844, along with the solidification of the anti-Haitian nationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and 30s, have fueled deep-seated animosity toward Haitians. Many Dominicans continue to hold strong anti-Haitian attitudes, and negative views of blackness pervade much of Dominican popular discourse, as well as ideas of beauty and social propriety. Lamentably, these negative attitudes toward Haitianness, which has become synonymous with blackness and vice versa, have spread far beyond informal conversations in private households, permeating the political realm as well. Anti-Haitian attitudes have long guided government action and unofficial policy in the spheres of immigration, citizenship, and labor. Though the Dominican Constitution, prior to a 2010 reform, explicitly granted citizenship to all persons born on Dominican soil, persons of Haitian descent were routinely denied the right to citizenship, as well as the right to any forms of government-issued identification. As a result, even those born in the Dominican Republic endure the looming threat of being deported to a nation that, in some cases, they have never known. Though the common occurrence of such grave injustice is well-known within the nation, most Dominicans are apathetic. The minority of Dominicans who oppose such immoral treatment are overpowered by the vociferous anti-Haitian majority who argue that those who fail to sympathize with their views are not only un-Dominican but anti-Dominican as well. With the majority of Dominicans holding such strong, vehemently-defended views on Haitian immigration, the minority opposition is often overlooked. In this study, I will analyze information obtained from field observation and interviews with Haitian sugar cane cutters and Dominican intellectuals, as well as citizenship and immigration legislation, to provide readers with a more comprehensive view of the political, economic, and socio-cultural impact of racism and anti-Haitianism. As part of my analysis, I will examine the motivations behind and causes of contradictory citizenship and immigration policy and discriminatory interpretations of the law as it applies to Haitian-descended persons. Through this thesis, I aim to construct a new, more complex analysis of anti-Haitianism and racism to generate a more thorough understanding of contradictory Dominican immigration and citizenship policy and its impact within the Haitian-Dominican community.

"'They Will Invent What They Need to Survive': Narrating Trauma in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction" analyzes novels by Octavia Butler, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and Julia Alvarez through the lens of contemporary theories of trauma, tracing the ways in which survivors struggle to construct narratives that contain and make sense of their experiences. Many of the major theorists of trauma studies emphasize the impossibility of re-capturing traumatic events through creating narratives even while recognizing that the survivor's need to tell her story persists. In my project, however, I explore the ways in which the Kindred, Stigmata, Paradise, The Joy Luck Club, Sula, The Temple of My Familiar, and In the Time of the Butterflies extend theories that insist too readily on the survivor's inability to accurately or completely re-member by depicting characters who, despite difficulty, present narrative accounts of their painful memories. In my own readings of the texts, I emphasize that the complexities highlighted by these texts ultimately foster our deeper understanding of the traumatized subject and her attempts to empower herself through testimony.

The present study was designed to contribute to the application of human security principles in vulnerable populations, using the Bateyes (sugar mill camps) from the Dominican Republic (DR) as a case study. Following the Robin Hood principle of using resources allocated for the identification and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as a base from which to build infrastructure for other health and human security needs, this project sought to reduce inequalities and promote equal rights in a vulnerable population living in isolated rural areas of the DR. The impact of a human security model versus non-intervention (standard of care) was examined longitudinally in relationship to the outcomes (prevention of morbid events such as HIV, tuberculosis, diarrhea, dengue, malaria, and model impact on breastfeeding and vaccines rates). The project was implemented in three phases: baseline assessments, implementation of a human security model over a six month period, and evaluation of the interventions at six and twelve months after the initiation of the intervention. Qualitative evaluation methods were used to complement quantitative assessments. An economic analysis was also conducted to evaluate the costs of the intervention and potential sources of economic benefits. Overall, at baseline, the owners of the houses from Batey A (Case) were more likely to respond incorrectly than the residents of Batey B (Control) questions about knowledge, attitudes and practices, for the most prevalent infectious diseases of the southwestern area of the Dominican Republic. To control for baseline differences between the study groups, a Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) score system was created. The KAP score system showed that the people living in Batey A had a higher percentage of right answers than residents of Batey B, six months after the intervention. These findings, however, were not observed at the 12 month follow-up visit, suggesting that future studies using the human security intervention model may need to be maintained for more than 6 months, to promote sustainability. Economic analysis revealed that the total cost-savings of the Program to the Ministry of Health and society overall to be 252,399USD. In addition, at the follow-up visits, morbidity and mortality rates of the study population were lower than the rates reported in a recent Demographic Health Survey conducted in the Southwestern Bateyes of the DR. The qualitative interviews allowed for the identification of community perceptions of the model, as well as the necessity for an interdisciplinary approach, including structural interventions (i.e. water pump, construction of latrines, etc) and monitoring community security-related issues through household monthly visits. The use of HIV resources demonstrated that the money allocated for HIV prevention could be utilized, not only to reduce the burden of disease, but also to invest in health systems and services. Applied to other settings, the design and outcomes of this study could have a beneficial impact on refugee and undocumented populations in other countries under the impact of the structural violence observed in the Bateyes of the DR.