Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D--Londres--Université de Londres. Titre de soutenance : Broken heads and bloated tales, Quixotic fictions of the USA, 1792-1815, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 245-276.

Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen species represents an additional nutrient source to natural environments, and can alter the nitrogen cycle by increasing nutrient levels beyond the requirements of organisms. In Tampa Bay, atmospheric deposition of dissolved inorganic nitrogen species (DIN) has been found to be the second largest nitrogen source, but little is known about dissolved organic nitrogen species (DON). The research goal was to improve the dry and wet deposition estimates by inclusion of the DON contribution. In the atmospheric chemistry field a standard method to measure DON in atmospheric samples has not been agreed upon. This research proposes the use of the ultraviolet (UV)-photolysis method and presents the optimal settings for its application on atmospheric samples. Using a factorial design scheme, experiments on surrogate nitrogen compounds, typically found in the atmosphere, indicated that DON can be xviii measured with no biases if optimal settings are fixed to be solution pH 2 with a 24-hr irradiance period. DIN species (NH4 +, NO2 -, NO3 -) and DON concentrations were determined in fine (PM2.5) and coarse particles (PM10-2.5) as well as in rainwater samples collected at Tampa Bay. The estimates of wet deposition fluxes for NH4 +, NO3 - and DON were 1.40, 3.18 and 0.34 kg-N ha-1yr-1, respectively. Hourly-measured gas concentrations and 24-hr integrated PM10 concentrations were used in conjunction with a below-cloud scavenging model to explain DIN and DON concentration in rainwater samples. Scavenging of aerosol-phase DON contributed only 0.9 ± 0.2% to rainwater DON concentrations, and therefore gas scavenging should be responsible for 99%. These results confirmed the existence of negative biases in the dry and wet deposition fluxes over Tampa Bay. There is increasing interest in simulating wet deposition fluxes, and the proposed below-cloud scavenging model offers a new computational approach to the problem. It integrates the typical gas and particle collection functions and the concept of the deposition-weighted average concentrations. The model uses mass balance to describe the time-dependent cumulative contribution of all droplets in the rain spectrum to the rainwater concentration, giving predictions closer to experimental values and better estimations than those reported in the literature for similar cases.

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Criticism surrounding the children of the Gladney family in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise remains a contested issue. I argue the children and their social environment reflect Lee Edelman’s analysis of the Child figure and its bolstering of reproductive futurism. The Child figure upholds a heteronormative social order that precludes equal rights and social viability for non-normative family structures and those opposed to an inherently conservative ideology. I find the continually evolving family structure elicits new dynamics among its members, offering greater social independence for all, which institutes a stronger familial bond and ensures a greater chance for its vitality. The Gladney family share such a dynamic; this is observed through the specific roles its members perform and the relations among them. Furthermore, I contend the Gladney family represent a model for maintaining group vitality, which is first required for organized political action against our inequitable social order.

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First functioning as image based text and then as a widely illustrated book, the impact of the literary figure Don Quixote outgrew his textual limits to gain near-universal recognition as a cultural icon. Compared to the relatively small number of readers who have actually read both extensive volumes of Cervantes´ novel, an overwhelming percentage of people worldwide can identify an image of Don Quixote, especially if he is paired with his squire, Sancho Panza, and know something about the basic premise of the story. The problem that drives this paper is to determine how this Spanish 17^(th) century literary character was able to gain near-univeral iconic recognizability. The methods used to research this phenomenon were to examine the character´s literary beginnings and iconization through translation and adaptation, film, textual and popular iconography, as well commercial, nationalist, revolutionary and institutional appropriations and determine what factors made him so useful for appropriation. The research concludes that the literary figure of Don Quixote has proven to be exceptionally receptive to readers´ appropriative requirements due to his paradoxical nature. The Quixote’s “cuerdo loco” or “wise fool” inherits paradoxy from Erasmus of Rotterdam’s In Praise of Folly. It is Don Quixote´s paradoxy that allows readers and viewers to choose the aspects of the protagonist that they find most useful. Some of that difference in interpretation has been diachronic, starting with a burlesque view of Don Quixote as the insane hidalgo, later developing a romantic interpretation of the protagonist as a noble knight. Much of that difference has been geographical, with Spanish appropriators tending to reflect Don Quixote as a heroic reflection of national character, and many outside of Spain choosing to use the knight as a symbol of impracticality and failure. Ultimately, Don Quixote´s long lasting influence has been due to his ability to embody the best of the human spirit; the desire to fashion oneself into a more noble identity and achieve greater deeds than one´s cultural environment would normally allow.

“Slowly Rushing Absent Mind” explores themes of origin and nature through poems about family history and the natural world. This collection explains poetry through poetry by using different forms—the ghazal, the prose poem, the sonnet and the lyric, to convey an awareness of a deeper consciousness. These poems seek to fill the space in the air above your shoulder at which the retail clerk stares as he hands you your change and wishes you good day. “The world we know,” Foucault explains, “is a profusion of entangled events;” these poems are meant to hint at a true beginning, one at which only the most exhaustive of genealogical research could possibly arrive, yet one that is intrinsic in the details of everyday life. / University of New Brunswick, Theses, Master of Arts

Spectacles of justice preoccupy contemporary American culture. Legal culture---including the Watergate trials, the Lewinsky scandal, and OJ Simpson's trial for alleged murder---assumes a central place in the American imaginary. Configurations of the law are not limited to media reportage and televised docudramas. Nor are arbitrations confined to law faculties and the spaces of formal courts. Working through depictions of due process in different ways and in different zones, contemporary American writers point up the prevalence of legality in everyday life. Whether on college campuses, in TV studios and suburban homes, or at theatres and racetracks, justice mediates interpersonal relations. Personal narratives proliferate as modes of self-justification. Everyone has a right to represent her side of a story. As interpretations of reality, however, none of these stories can claim absolute justness. No one has a monopoly on the law or victimhood. / This dissertation inspects how Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo, and Jane Smiley present the inconsistencies of the law. These American novelists emplot global escapes into their work as a means to inform notions of liberty and jurisprudence. For these writers, freedom requires the recognition of contradictory---and unanticipated---narratives. "Justice Theory" emerges where media, gambling, performance, and suburban studies intersect with ethics, globalism, and narratology. In Franzen's novel The Corrections and essay collection How to Be Alone, self-validation requires the appreciation of the stories of others. In DeLillo's later works, particularly the plays The Day Room and Valparaiso, justice materializes in terms of isolation and the will to alter personal stories. For Smiley, as construed in her long novels The Greenlanders and Horse Heaven, dynamic responsive actions attend risky, unpredictable encounters in competitive milieus like the racetrack. These authors reveal that executions of justice and the perpetration of injustice involve varied consequences. The law is not only about punishment and recompense. Rather, legality directs the consequences of its applications toward the ideal of justice, which evolves alongside the subjects that it serves and the stories that they relate.