Thesis (M.M.)--Conservatory of Music. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2006. / For chorus and wind ensemble. "A thesis in music composition." Madeleine L'Engle, poet ; Paul Rudy, advisor Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed Nov. 12, 2007. Online version of the print edition.

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1981. / For chamber choir, 2 pianos, 2 percussion, and organ. English text by Michael Davidson. Vita.

My dissertation argues that changes in the structures and orientations of religious thought, changes commonly understood as secularization, have provided the intellectual underpinnings for the modern exploitation and ongoing destruction of the non-human world, which extend to the underwriting the devaluing and dehumanization of marginalized groups such as Native Americans. My work makes visible the secular assumptions of ecocriticism, which tends to blame Christianity for environmental problems. It also unwittingly relies on state-legitimating constructions of religion, simplistic religious-secular binaries, and outdated, false narratives of secularization. I theorize an ecocriticism “with/out the secular” to analyze secularity in both “secular” and “religious” settings, using the category of “religious orientation,” a tacit, pre-theoretical commitment that directs ultimate trust, structures meaning as it coheres in everyday life, and shapes ontological, epistemological, ethical, and other theories. I examine how certain nineteenth-century authors, including Henry Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Pequot minister William Apess, resisted this secularization within contemporaneous American culture and Christianity because of its epistemic devaluing of the natural world. Each of these authors has been read as an exemplar of secularization, but such interpretations reveal more about the secular commitments of literary critics than about the authors and their contexts. I show instead how modern religious constructions do not necessarily correlate with the deeper religious orientation of an author or the secularity or non-secularity of his or her arguments. Dickinson’s poetry and Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers challenge dogmatic conceptions of heaven and Sabbath that are structured dualistically so as to devalue everyday earthly life. Yet they do so in non-dualistic ways that accord with a biblically rooted religious orientation of creation-fall-redemption-consummation. Their struggles against the church were against the church’s acceptance of dominant secularist ideologies that are ultimately at odds with Christianity and sustainable lifeways. Similarly, William Apess’ environmental justice work as a Native Christian against institutions dominated by white nationalist ideology demonstrate the how dualistic structures of secularity legitimate racism in conjunction with an anthropocentric that devalue the natural world.

Abstract Conspicuous morphological features such as rings, ringlenses, lenses, barlenses, and spiral arms are observed in many nearby disk galaxies. These features are believed to form due to the so-called secular evolution after the galaxies were formed, which means that their disks evolve in a more passive fashion and in longer timescales, compared to their formation processes. This slow evolution of disks is due to the effect of non-axisymmetric potentials, among which, a bar potential is perhaps the most effective of all. Strong rotating bars redistribute angular momentum and material through the disks of galaxies very effciently, and produce resonances. At these resonances the material is trapped and starts forming stars, creating beautiful rings. However, rings are not the only structure observed in disk galaxies. There are also spiral arms that, might or might not be created by bars. Other type of structures are lenses, which in images appear as flat light distributions with sharp edges, and ringlenses, whose appearance is intermediate between those of rings and lenses. Also, there are barlenses, which are conspicuous lens-like structures embedded in bars, and have been suggested to be the more face-on counterparts of Boxy/Peanut/X-shaped bulges. The study of the physical properties of all these structures provides a tool to investigate the mechanisms that create them and hence, to determine which are the processes that drive the slow evolution of galaxies. In this thesis I study the morphological structures using mainly data from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S⁴G), by means of their sizes, orientations, shapes and colors. The S⁴G contains images of ~ 2500 nearby galaxies of all Hubble types at 3.6 and 4.5 μm, allowing a dust free view of the old stellar population which is subject of the secular evolution. Among the results presented in this thesis and the respective companion papers are the following. A catalog that contains the sizes, ellipticities and position angles of the morphological features in the S⁴G was created. This catalog also includes the measurements of the pitch angles of spiral arms. There is a corroboration of previous results showing that different types of morphological features appear in galaxies with different Hubble stages and bar families, and a confirmation of the resonant nature of rings but also of a high fraction of lenses and ringlenses. There is also an observation indicating that low mass galaxies lack nuclear structures such as nuclear rings due to the lack of inner Lindblad resonances caused by their low central mass concentrations. Observational evidence is presented indicating that a fraction of inner lenses in unbarred galaxies might be former barlenses of which the "thin bar" has probably dissolved or it is too faint to be detected. The sizes of barlenses show a tight linear correlation with those of bars, being the size of the barlens typically half the size of the bar. The study of the optical colors of barlenses reveals their similarity with bars, giving observational evidence that their stellar populations are similar, and distinguishes them from disks and nuclear regions. The orientations of barlenses with respect to that of bars and disks reveal that barlenses are vertically thick structures. All these results support the idea that barlenses are the vertically thick inner parts of bars and hence relate them observationally to Boxy/Peanut/X-shaped bulges. These results and others are published in a series of original papers in which I have collaborated and that are appended at the end of this work.

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Since Jasmine's Secret contains elements of cantata and follows a dramatic story or program, the work may be classified as a narrative or dramatic story or program, the work may be classified as a narrative or dramatic cantata employing five solo voices, narrator and orchestra. This work attempts a revival of these two genres as a combined entity due to the decreased popularity of both cantata and programmatic music in the 20th century.

Most people experience Sweden as a secular country, which could cause problems for Christian adolescents at school. The secular society has become the new normal for many people which results in Christian adolescents often having to defend themselves and their beliefs at school when questioned by their non-Christian peers. We interviewed seven people who wanted to share their experiences from their adolescence. The purpose of the study is to examine how Christian adolescents experience attendance at a non-religious school in a secular country. The theoretical framework from which the analysis is drawn upon is the theory of Socialisation Process by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and the concept of Stigma by Erving Goffman. The results demonstrate there is vulnerability in being a Christian at school in a secular country. Some participants reported that they might be less active in the church during their adolescence. They also reported an unwillingness to discuss their faith with non-Christians when questioned. Several of the respondents describe a qualitative difference between the friends who shared their beliefs and the friends who didn´t. To a large extent the friendship between those who have shared beliefs remains to this day.

Thesis advisor: Thomas H. Groome / Thesis advisor: John J. Makransky / The premise of this dissertation is that Buddhism must inculturate to meet the context of contemporary North America. Given the widespread interest in the application of Buddhist-derived ideas and practices in a host of secular settings, the capacity for teachers to engage with new ideas and disciplines will be crucial to the tradition's continued relevance. Because there is a high demand for and interest in Buddhist-derived programming in secular spaces, the number of individuals and organizations striving to meet this demand is mushrooming. This trend, coupled with a dearth of professional training programs and accreditation processes means that not only are there an eclectic array of approaches being used to teach meditation, but there is also minimal discourse engaging the crucial question of what constitutes effective pedagogy or adequate training processes for teachers. Chapter 1 establishes the need for the inculturation of Buddhism. This imperative for adaptation raises fundamental questions regarding how to best evaluate the authenticity of changes to traditional teaching methods. In Chapters 2 and 3, the Buddhist doctrine of skillful means is explored with an eye toward distilling guiding principles for analyzing this process of adaptation of teachings to meet a variety of cultural and personal perspectives. Drawing from Mahayana and pre-Mahayana sutras, traditions of commentary, and contemporary hermeneutics, a set of priorities based on the perspective of the Buddhist tradition is proposed. In Chapter 4, it is established that finding points of relevance to particular cultural concerns such as physical and mental health issues has been a vital component of existing efforts toward secularized meditation programs to date. This chapter concludes by drawing out of such present practices additional guiding principles to advance the process of pedagogical inculturation. Despite the widespread interest in applying meditation to a variety of settings, the pedagogy and philosophy of education behind the various approaches remains largely under-theorized. To fill this need, Chapter 5 establishes a set of guiding principles for pedagogical adaptation, drawing from the tradition's own self-understanding as well as from the insights of Western education as discussed in the prior 4 chapters. Finally, Chapter 6 offers an example of inculturated pedagogy at work. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

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