Graduate School

"Alone in the front" : isolation and community in the hero's life in Beowulf.

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

"Alone in the front" : isolation and community in the hero's life in Beowulf. Ziehe, Mary E. This project seeks to clarify the paradox suggested by 'ana on orde' (“alone in the front”) and to show how it plays out on both the narratorial and verbal levels of Beowulf. Ultimately, I suggest reading Beowulf using the two sides of this paradox (held in tension with each other) as an interpretive lens. My approach focuses on linguistic and literary analysis of the words 'ana' and 'ord.' I first provide background material on topics of Beowulf scholarship relating to my analysis. Then, I trace the uses of 'ana' and 'ord' in Beowulf’s “pre-battle speeches.” Third, I analyze their use throughout Beowulf. Finally, I look at how they and their cognates are used in the poetry of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German in order to see how the Beowulf poet uses the phrase ana on orde in comparison to other literature in his larger literary and cultural milieu.

Fire disturbance effects on regional carbon cycling in a sub-humid woodland.

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Fire disturbance effects on regional carbon cycling in a sub-humid woodland. Yao, Jian, 1984- Fire disturbance affects many ecosystem processes, especially carbon (C) cycling. In addition, fire is routinely used as a management tool in wildland ecosystems. In this study, I measured the fire-affected C storage, vegetation composition, habitat suitability for an endangered bird species (golden-cheeked warble), and charcoal content in juniperoak woodlands with documented past surface fires within Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. Using this information, I modified a process-based model of ecosystem biogeochemical cycling (Biome-BGC) to simulate the effects of different fire types, the production and loss of fire-derived charcoal, and the charcoal effects on soil water availability. From my field measurements, I found significantly different total aboveground biomass C with average values of 5.25, 6.86, and 9.18 kg m-2 for 60 plots with known fire histories that categorized into the recent (<40 year), old (>=40 year), and no fire group, respectively. These data also showed that higher oak recruitment was associated with fires that occurred in years with low summer precipitation. I concluded that fire may have a dual effect on habitat suitability with catastrophic wildfire damaging potential habitat and significantly reducing regional C storage, and moderate intensity fires in dense young juniper stands promoting tree species diversity. From the laboratory analysis of soils derived from these same plots, I estimated that the regional average soil charcoal concentration to be 1.40 g C kg-1 soil (20.8 g C kg-1 SOC) based on the methods of 13C nuclear magnetic resonance and mid-infrared spectroscopy, with fire-affected sites having significantly higher soil charcoal concentrations than the non-fire sites. I calculated the regional annual soil charcoal loss rate to be 4.7%, potentially due to soilerosion on steep slopes. Finally, the modified Biome-BGC model was able to reasonably simulate fire-affected C and charcoal storage changes. The model also indicated that the effects of fire on the ecosystem properties (vegetation C, leaf area index, and net ecosystem exchange) were closely associated with the severity of fire. The fire-derived charcoal did not appear to have significant effects on the simulated ecosystem properties. My results provided detailed ecological information regarding fire-affected processes in these woodland ecosystems.

Measurement of the single top quark cross section in the lepton plus jets final state in proton-antiproton collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV using the CDF II detector.

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Measurement of the single top quark cross section in the lepton plus jets final state in proton-antiproton collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV using the CDF II detector. Wu, Zhenbin, 1984- We present a measurement of the single top quark cross section in the lepton plus jets final state using an integrated luminosity corresponding to 7.5/fb of collision data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The single top candidate events are identified by the signature of a charged lepton, large missing transverse energy, and two or three jets with at least one of them identified as originating from a bottom quark. A new Monte Carlo generator powheg is used to model the single top quark production processes, which include s-channel, t-channel, and Wt-channel. A neural network multivariate method is exploited to discriminate the single top quark signal from the comparatively large backgrounds. We measure a single top production cross section of 3.04+0.57−0.53 (stat. + syst.) pb assuming mtop = 172.5 GeV/c^2. In addition, we extract the CKM matrix element value |Vtb| = 0.96 ± 0.09 (stat. + syst.) ± 0.05 (theory) and set a lower limit of |Vtb| > 0.78 at the 95% credibility level.

Art and artistry in Katherine Anne Porter : iconographic figures and festive patterns.

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Art and artistry in Katherine Anne Porter : iconographic figures and festive patterns. Werner, Karen Svendsen. Exploring how art influences the works of Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), this study examines the way Porter’s fictional narrative patterns adapt and arrange images from paintings, folk art, and prints. In her structural response to artistic issues prevalent during the Modernist Period, Porter runs her literary versions of iconographic figures through festive patterns to depict the changes individuals experience when significant cultural shifts envelop them. Besides employing grotesque images to portray suffering, Porter evokes the life-death-rebirth cycle of festive patterns, also called folk carnival humor by Mikhail Bakhtin, to convey hope for people and the continuation of their culture during times of turmoil. Medieval, renaissance, and modernist artwork provides Porter with images and structural approaches. Reflecting the traits of typology and the subjects of medieval iconography, Porter’s characters function by fulfilling past figures such as Eve and by anticipating literary figures in the future. As part of the development of her literary figures in Noon Wine, Porter blends influences from the Agrarians with her appreciation of renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel to emphasize the relationship between her characters and the landscape. Porter’s associations with modernist Mexican artists and her knowledge of the successors to Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death shape her interpretation of the arts and her portrayal of death in stories such as “María Concepción.” Through Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, Porter develops an understanding of Franz Boas’s theories, which contribute to her sense of folk culture, foster within her a sense of the chronological connectedness of time, and lead her to treat artwork as archeological artifacts. These multi-layered dimensions of Porter’s images also reflect her interest in the allusive modernist paintings of Henri Matisse and the literary theory of T.S. Eliot. Her engagement with modernist debates over the merits of the city appears in “The Cracked Looking-Glass,” a story positing Porter’s agrarian challenge to James Joyce’s urban-centered approach to art and writing.