Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in Engineering)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-242).

This thesis re-engages the work of the distinguished literary critic, Geoffrey H. Hartman as a means of interpreting postmodern literature. Contemporary literary criticism has acknowledged the value of Hartman’s work in thinking about contemporary culture but, until now, there have not been any attempts to apply his interpretative methods to the reading of postmodern fiction. By identifying some of Hartman’s main concerns and drawing on his revisions of his theory, this thesis offers a case study of a selection of postmodern texts, which are characteristic of the challenges that postmodern literature presents. The postmodern literary text becomes challenging for literary interpretation through its extreme experimentation and by textually transgressing traditional forms of narration. The postmodern text’s incorporation of images, its attention and use of assonance, and its itinerate, indiscriminate assemblage of diverse creative expressions complicates the interpretive task. I aim to show how Hartman’s critical contribution can inform the reading of the postmodern text but also, how the consideration of the postmodern highlights the significance of Hartman’s theoretical work. I begin by developing the complexities that the consideration of postmodern literature and Hartman’s critique present and relate the authors and texts that become the focus of this investigation in the chapters that follow. Chapter 2 considers the relationship of the postmodern text to its use of illustrations and images and explores what this relationship manifests for the nature of the postmodern. Chapter 3 draws on Hartman’s understanding of literary interpretation as the listening for different meanings of the word, with particular attention to the typographical manifestations of the dissemination of meaning in the creation of the postmodern novel. Chapter 4 examines the implications of the postmodern rejection of iii modernist concerns, in literary interpretation and postmodern theory and the effects of the postmodern condition on the development of identity and historical consciousness. Chapter 5 focuses more closely on the problems of narrative orientation and direction that develop through typographical experimentation and relates these concerns to the challenge of following Hartman’s intellectual progressions in his critical contributions. The final chapter of this thesis explores the nature and role of the contemporary critical essay in the postmodern condition and the future of literature.

No description available.

Asymmetric moral luck is the position of denying some types of moral luck, typically resultant moral luck, while accepting others. Robert Hartman’s Parallelism argument is meant to reject asymmetric moral luck and show that if circumstantial moral luck exists then we have good analogical evidence for the existence of resultant moral luck. Eduardo Rivera-López and Anna Nyman object against this argument. Rivera-López takes issue with the rejection of asymmetric moral luck in general while Nyman focuses on the parallelism argument in particular. In this paper, i will argue that while Nyman manages to show that the paralellism argument fails to give analogical evidence for resultant moral luck, both asymmetric moral luck and its rejection are still viable options owing to the fact that both positions appeal to fundamental intuitions. As such, substantive progress is hard to make out.

Missed appointments by patients are a major problem for health care professionals. To combat this issue, some optometrists use a pre-appointing system in which patients are scheduled for an annual exam a year after their initial visit. Prior to that subsequent appointment, clinic staff often try to contact the patient to confirm the appointment. This study examined baseline levels of appointment keeping, analyzed existing processes for pre-appointing patients, and introduced a revised process package to improve appointment keeping at an eye care clinic. This package included training, mailed postcard reminders and two phone call reminders. Results indicate appointment keeping by pre-appointed patients increased over baseline. The intervention was also shown to be cost-beneficial.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Martin Kavka, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Religion. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 7, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Mild psychological effects, such as sleep-deprivation, on an oppressed and tortured human being can be characterized as “normal”. However, Shame by Salman Rushdie uses magical realist style to describe the psychological effects of shame in a patriarchal society which is based on capitalistic class values. This essay will focus on the Marxist feminist reading of the novel with a psychoanalytical perspective which is going to help analyse the effects of the oppressed female characters, Bilquis Hyder, Sufiya Zinobia and Rani Harappa.  The essay focuses on different incidents in the lives of these characters with the help of critics such as Aijaz Ahmad and Timothy Brennan. Both have written critically about Rushdie. This essay will discuss the different aspects of Marxism, feminism as well as psychoanalysis and connecting them to the novel, which would give the answers as to what shame can do to a person’s psyche. The Beauty and the Beast fairy-tale gets a different perception in this story, as Sufiya Zinobia is both the characters in one.

Internalizing carbon value for forest landowners has the potential to increase carbon supply in forest and mitigate CO2 in the atmosphere. In this study, we developed a modified Hartman model to investigate how payments of carbon offsets impact the optimal management of hardwood forests in Kentucky under condition of catastrophic events. Different carbon markets were modeled and several sensitivity analyses were performed to examine varied management strategies to achieve maximized financial return or highest environmental benefits. Furthermore, another model was developed to incorporate the impact of risk aversion to price uncertainty using E-V model. We were able to identify the most favorable scenarios for landowners and society in the face of price variability and catastrophic risk.