This thesis is a social history of disease and mortality in the American Deep South before the Civil War. Yellow fever attacked the region at epidemic levels every two or three years between 1800 and 1860, killing about eight percent of the urban population, and as many as 20 or 30 percent of recent migrants from Europe. With little epidemiological understanding of mosquito-borne viruses-and almost no public health infrastructure to ameliorate disease-the only real protection from this scourge was to "get acclimated": fall sick with, and survive, yellow fever. About half of all people would die in the acclimating process. By placing the Deep South within an Atlantic disease diaspora uncontained by continental boundaries, the project shifts the fault-lines of the Southern past from North-South political conflicts onto similarly formative but overlooked ecological processes in the Greater Caribbean. Yellow fever and mass mortality are largely absent from the recent historiography on the cotton kingdom and "slave racial capitalism." But as well as being a “slave society,” this thesis suggests the Deep South was also a "disease society": Deep Southerners discussed yellow fever obsessively, worked according to its seasonal schedule, and judged others based on their perceived vulnerability to the disease. Yellow fever, and immunity to it, profoundly shaped the asymmetrical hierarchies of Deep Southern society, with acclimated "immunocapitalist" creoles on top, and unacclimated "foreigners" below. Slavers and their allies argued only intellectually-inferior but naturally-resistant black people could perform the arduous labour of sugar and cotton cultivation in the Deep South, as whites too frequently died. This became the region's chief argument for permanent racial slavery. However, almost every slave revolt in Louisiana coincided with a particularly bad epidemic, suggesting slaves found disease politically intriguing and understood that yellow fever left white society chaotic and vulnerable to attack.

abstract: Cuisines are becoming increasingly significant in a tourist's experience and as such looking into different cuisines and their effects on the tourist's destination provides strong indicators of the outlook for the destination. Metropolitan areas within the United States have a history of being known for specific food items as well as types of cuisines. This study explores the Metropolitan area of New Orleans and the cuisine specific to this region: the Creole cuisine. A mixed methods approach was used to identify the Creole cuisine within the New Orleans area as both a regional cuisine and as a culturally significant cuisine, within the context of the United States of America. Once established, and through the help of the local New Orleans' Convention and Visitors Bureau, an online questionnaire was distributed to individuals that had shown an interest in visiting the New Orleans area. The questionnaire identified the characteristics of the Creole cuisine and the respondents' most recent trip to New Orleans. The Brief Sensation Seeking Scale, adjusted for cuisine tourism, provided a categorical separation of the respondents into three groupings: "Foodies", "Semi-foodies", and "Non-foodies". Two important findings emerge from this study, the cultural significant cuisine segmentation model and the foodie scale. These two findings allow for an in depth look at characteristics of regional cuisines and food tourists, while providing a way to predict food characteristics of both destination and individual. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Community Resources and Development 2010

abstract: Though some scholars have written about place and history, few have pursued the use of place theory in length in relation to the connections between race, religion, and national identity. Using the writings in the United States and Louisiana in the years surrounding the Louisiana Purchase, I explore place-making and othering processes. U.S. leaders influenced by the Second Great Awakening viewed New Orleans as un-American in its religion and seemingly ambiguous race relations. New Orleanian Catholics viewed the U.S. as an aggressively Protestant place that threatened the stability of the Catholic Church in the Louisiana Territory. Both Americans and New Orleanians constructed the place identities of the other in relation to events in Europe and the Caribbean, demonstrating that places are constructed in relation to one another. In order to elucidate these dynamics, I draw on place theory, literary analysis, and historical anthropology in analyzing the letters of W.C.C. Claiborne, the first U.S. governor of the Louisiana Territory, in conjunction with sermons of prominent Protestant ministers Samuel Hopkins and Jedidiah Morse, a letter written by Ursuline nun Sister Marie Therese de St. Xavior Farjon to Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington Cable's Reconstruction era novel The Grandissimes. All of these parties used the notion of place to create social fact that was bound up with debates about race and anti-Catholic sentiments. Furthermore, their treatments of place demonstrate concerns for creating, or resisting absorption by, a New Republic that was white and Protestant. Place theory proves useful in clarifying how Americans and New Orleanians viewed the Louisiana Purchase as well as the legacy of those ideas. It demonstrates the ways in which the U.S. defined itself in contradistinction to religious others. Limitations arise, however, depending on the types of sources historians use. While official government letters reveal much when put into the context of the trends in American religion at the turn of the nineteenth century, they are not as clearly illuminating as journals and novels. In these genres, authors provide richer detail from which historians can try to reconstruct senses of place. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Religious Studies 2011

Esta pesquisa examina o significado e o papel que as comunidades rurais do interior do município de Orleans assumiram na região Sul de Santa Catarina tendo em vista a penetração e expansão dos sistemas de produção integrada, especialmente de frangos. Resgata os conceitos de região, território e lugar para analisar os processos de formação territorial e a importância da técnica para o estabelecimento das relações do homem com o seu meio. As comunidades são tomadas como lugares, caracterizados neste trabalho em dois momentos históricos: o início de sua formação, época dos primeiros imigrantes e o tempo atual, após as transformações sofridas pela penetração da fumicultura, da suinocultura e da avicultura integrada. O objetivo é revelar um novo lugar, seja pelo papel que exercem estas comunidades nas atuais redes de produção e comércio, seja pelas novas relações que seus moradores estabelecem com o meio. / This research examines the meaning and the role that rural communities of the countryside of the town of Orleans took in the South Region of Santa Catarina, focusing on the penetration and expansion of the systems of integrated production, especially concerning chicken. It brings back the concepts of region, territory and place to analyze the processes of territorial formation and the importance of the technique for the establishment of the relationship among men and its environment. The communities are taken as places, characterized in this paper in two historical moments: the beginning of its formation, time of the first immigrants and nowadays, after the transformation occurred through the penetration of the tobacco culture, the pig-raising and the integrated aviculture. The aim of this paper is to reveal a new place, either for the role this communities play in the current production nets and commerce or for its new relations that the inhabitants establish with the environment.

Esta pesquisa examina o significado e o papel que as comunidades rurais do interior do município de Orleans assumiram na região Sul de Santa Catarina tendo em vista a penetração e expansão dos sistemas de produção integrada, especialmente de frangos. Resgata os conceitos de região, território e lugar para analisar os processos de formação territorial e a importância da técnica para o estabelecimento das relações do homem com o seu meio. As comunidades são tomadas como lugares, caracterizados neste trabalho em dois momentos históricos: o início de sua formação, época dos primeiros imigrantes e o tempo atual, após as transformações sofridas pela penetração da fumicultura, da suinocultura e da avicultura integrada. O objetivo é revelar um novo lugar, seja pelo papel que exercem estas comunidades nas atuais redes de produção e comércio, seja pelas novas relações que seus moradores estabelecem com o meio. / This research examines the meaning and the role that rural communities of the countryside of the town of Orleans took in the South Region of Santa Catarina, focusing on the penetration and expansion of the systems of integrated production, especially concerning chicken. It brings back the concepts of region, territory and place to analyze the processes of territorial formation and the importance of the technique for the establishment of the relationship among men and its environment. The communities are taken as places, characterized in this paper in two historical moments: the beginning of its formation, time of the first immigrants and nowadays, after the transformation occurred through the penetration of the tobacco culture, the pig-raising and the integrated aviculture. The aim of this paper is to reveal a new place, either for the role this communities play in the current production nets and commerce or for its new relations that the inhabitants establish with the environment.

Esta pesquisa examina o significado e o papel que as comunidades rurais do interior do município de Orleans assumiram na região Sul de Santa Catarina tendo em vista a penetração e expansão dos sistemas de produção integrada, especialmente de frangos. Resgata os conceitos de região, território e lugar para analisar os processos de formação territorial e a importância da técnica para o estabelecimento das relações do homem com o seu meio. As comunidades são tomadas como lugares, caracterizados neste trabalho em dois momentos históricos: o início de sua formação, época dos primeiros imigrantes e o tempo atual, após as transformações sofridas pela penetração da fumicultura, da suinocultura e da avicultura integrada. O objetivo é revelar um novo lugar, seja pelo papel que exercem estas comunidades nas atuais redes de produção e comércio, seja pelas novas relações que seus moradores estabelecem com o meio. / This research examines the meaning and the role that rural communities of the countryside of the town of Orleans took in the South Region of Santa Catarina, focusing on the penetration and expansion of the systems of integrated production, especially concerning chicken. It brings back the concepts of region, territory and place to analyze the processes of territorial formation and the importance of the technique for the establishment of the relationship among men and its environment. The communities are taken as places, characterized in this paper in two historical moments: the beginning of its formation, time of the first immigrants and nowadays, after the transformation occurred through the penetration of the tobacco culture, the pig-raising and the integrated aviculture. The aim of this paper is to reveal a new place, either for the role this communities play in the current production nets and commerce or for its new relations that the inhabitants establish with the environment.

La Nouvelle Orléans fut fondée en 1718 sur un sol qui est désormais connu pour être instable. En 1719, peu après sa construction initiale, la ville fut inondée. Le premier ouragan qui détruisit la ville date de 1722. D’autres tempêtes dévastatrices suivirent et imposèrent la reconstruction de cette ville naissante. Les colons français qui ont construit La Nouvelle Orléans n’avaient aucune expérience du climat de la Louisiane ni des tempêtes et inondations répétitives. Les dégâts liés aux catastrophes naturelles furent si fréquents que les premières décennies de l’histoire de la ville se résument au difficile travail de reconstruction. L’assistant de l’ingénieur de la ville, Adrien de Pauger, fut le premier à proposer un système de jetées qui aurait pu résoudre le problème de la formation des bancs de sable. Mais ses plans n’ont pas été mis en œuvre. Reconstruire une ville que les français venaient juste de fonder présenta un défi dès le début. Le déficit démographique engendra l’envoi de criminels et autres indésirables venant de France. Ces derniers finirent par jouer un rôle crucial dans la construction, puis la reconstruction de la ville. Ce projet examine les défis que les premiers Néo-Orléanais ont dû affronter, et leur adaptation nécessaire a un environnement inhospitalier. Malgré les nombreuses craintes que les habitants quittent leur ville afin de se réfugier dans des terres plus élevées, ou bien de retourner en France, ces derniers ont su montrer leur résilience et leur attachement a cette ville, de la même manière que cela s’est produit après l’ouragan Katrina en 2005. D’autres villes environnantes, comme La Balise, ont connu un sort différent. La Balise disparut après de nombreux ouragans alors que la capitale de la Louisiane de l’époque fût constamment reconstruite. Cette thèse traite des premières années de chaos et de destruction de La Nouvelle Orléans. Par ailleurs elle montre comment la ville a survécu aux nombreux ouragans, incendies et autres catastrophes, avant d’évoluer du statut d’une commune fragile à celui d’une ville robuste. / New Orleans, Louisiana, formerly La Nouvelle Orléans, was founded in 1718 on what is known today to be unstable land. Shortly after its initial construction, a flood in 1719 devastated the city. Several other strong storms quickly followed and forced reconstruction upon the nascent Crescent City. The French colonists who built La Nouvelle Orléans had no experience with either Louisiana’s climate or repetitive tropical storms and flooding. Damage from disasters occurred so frequently that the difficult work of reconstruction characterized the city’s first few decades. Assistant City Engineer Adrien de Pauger was the very first person to plan for a jetty system for the city. La Nouvelle Orléans could have benefited from solving its sandbars issues had this venture been conducted the way Pauger had envisaged. Rebuilding for a city that the French had just recently built presented a challenge from the start. The lack of population of the area generated the sending of criminals and other unwanted individuals from the mother country. These ended up taking an active part in the construction and reconstruction process. This research examines the early challenges confronting New Orleanians and their necessary adaptation to an inhospitable environment. Despite concerns that residents would leave their city to seek safer living conditions on higher land or move back to the home country as some did, early New Orleanians displayed a resilience similar to that found in the aftermath of Katrina. Other local settlements, such as La Balise, had a different fate and disappeared as a result of recurring hurricanes whereas the then capital of Louisiana always rebuilt after each disaster. The study will discuss the city’s early years of chaos and destruction, and how La Nouvelle Orléans struggled to overcome hurricanes, fires, and disease, before evolving from a fragile settlement to a stronger city.

The Suffering South offers a cultural history of a yellow fever epidemic that swept through the Mississippi Valley in 1878. It argues that the yellow fever narratives created during this epidemic constituted a discursive attempt by Southerners to renegotiate Southern identity and social hierarchy following the Civil War and Reconstruction. White Southerners, in particular, used the epidemic as an occasion to foster a return to a more traditional foundation of white supremacy and patriarchy as the basis for Southern identity and belonging. The narratives written by these Southerners, in which they described their experiences with yellow fever and the effects of its epidemic ravages, thereby illustrate an explicit attempt to culturally redeem the South following the successful political Redemption of the region. Using themes and stock characterizations of heroes and villains that would have been readily familiar to a generation of Southerners who had lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction, these narratives presented the idealized Southerner as white and male. In turn, they castigated non-native outsiders, racial and ethnic minorities, and women who went outside of the prescribed social norms of their race, class, or gender. These narratives also acted to justify the racial disparity in the distribution of the relief generated by the national humanitarian response to the epidemic’s incredible scope and severity. In doing so, Democratic Redeemers directed money, medical attention, and rations away from African American communities in the South as evidence of their belief that these Southerners did not deserve equal access to aid as a right of citizenship. Finally, the memory of the epidemic continues to rely on these traditional primary sources which present the experience of yellow fever in 1878 through the written memories of white Southerners. The efforts to solidify the patriarchal, white-supremacist basis for Southern identity and belonging implicit in these sources continues to effect the historical narrative presented in commemorations and official histories. Yellow fever can be understood, then, not only as a physiological disease, but as a cultural construction encompassing a set of ideas that helped to maintain hierarchies of belonging and identity in the South. This dissertation thus follows in the steps of historians who have studied epidemics and other natural disasters to illuminate social and cultural hierarchies of power. It likewise examines how relief and public health efforts reinforced those hierarchies in the epidemic’s immediate aftermath and builds on the work of memory scholars to illustrate how the collective memory of the event continues to either reinforce or challenge those hierarchies over time.

In this paper, I will catalog and describe my process involved in the creation of my thesis film If Not Now. In the main body of the paper I will cover the topics of Writing, Casting, Directing, Production Design, Cinematography, Editing, and Sound, as well as Technology and Workflow. Special emphasis will be placed on Writing, Directing, Editing, and Sound. The Analysis section will discuss the overall effectiveness of my goals to communicate a story about self-identity and community, as well as the film's artistic merit and quality.

This paper thoroughly examines the production of the thesis film Copper Kingdom. From writing, directing, production design, editing, to cinematography, sound, and workflow, each aspect of the creation of Copper Kingdom is carefully detailed, with insights regarding the decisions made throughout the filmmaking process.