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Zanmi Kafe: Coffee Agroecology and Ant Diversity in Haiti
Get PDFZanmi Kafe is a coffee-based agroforestry reforestation project in the Central Plateau of Haiti, that aims to promote the adoption of more sustainable agroecosystems in order to improve livelihoods and foster community development. Coffee provides a livelihood for many small farmers throughout the tropics, however due to the high demand for coffee, many small coffee farms are undergoing agricultural intensification to increase coffee yields. Many studies have investigated the effects of the transformation of coffee agroecosystems from shaded to unshaded systems on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Sun coffee systems have been correlated with a decrease in biodiversity and ecosystem services while shade coffee systems support higher biodiversity and ecosystem services. Some coffee agroecosystems in the Central Plateau of Haiti are undergoing transformation from disturbed, unshaded to less disturbed, shaded systems. In this study we examined the ant fauna present on 15 farms in order to monitor future changes in the conditions of the agroecosystems. We also examined the coffee pests/diseases present to determine if there was an association between ant diversity and abundance and the presence of coffee pests/disease. We collected 21 species of ants from 17 genera and Solenopsis geminata was the dominant species on all the farms. We recorded the presence of coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix), the coffee leaf miner (Leucoptera coffeella), and the green coffee scale (Coccus viridis) on the coffee seedlings. There was no statistically significant difference between the ant diversity and the abundance of Solenopsis geminata and the presence of coffee pests on the farms. However, a few trends were observed and future monitoring of the ant fauna and pests is critical in maintaining the health and production of the coffee trees.Deborah McGrath, Professor of Biology (Thesis advisor)
Rick and Willie Sommer (sponsors
We did it Wrong - The Unexpected Success of Southside Abbey
No full textThis thesis project details the founding and first three years of ministry at Southside Abbey – a nontraditional worshipping community in the Episcopal tradition and a new church start in the Diocese of East Tennessee. This project exists so that others might learn from the mistakes of Southside Abbey but also come to see the ways in which such mistakes have led to unimagined successes. Chapter 1 explores the contexts in which Southside Abbey's founding took place – the world, the Episcopal Church, and the Southside neighborhoods of Chattanooga, Tennessee – including the ways each of these contexts necessitated a worshipping community such as Southside Abbey.
Chapter 2 details the community and corporate life of Southside Abbey. A timeline outlines the developments of the community in its attempts to be emergent in ethos while institutional in affiliation. At times, this juxtaposition led to conflicting expectations. Especially through the use of community organizing tactics, Southside Abbey discerned with members of Southside neighborhoods of Chattanooga the felt needs of the broader community. In short, Southside Abbey's success is intertwined with the poor who make up the worshipping community.
Chapter 3 presents the theological underpinnings of this work in an applied, pastoral, or practical setting. On large theological issues, the Creed is a sufficient statement of faith. Lex Orandi is reinterpreted in broadly inclusive ways. Missiology, Ecclesiology, and Stewardship are viewed through the theological lens of Southside Abbey. Missiology is shaped by those who are a part of the community, namely the poor. In so doing, “outreach” ministry becomes more like ministry of the community, as distinctions of insider and outsider dissolve. Ecclesiology is similarly tied to the community. As a church without a dedicated building, Southside Abbey is easily able to see church as assembly. Stewardship with a community of the poor and working poor is broadened to understand stewardship of one's being, one's time, and creation.
Chapter 4 provides examples of Southside Abbey's practice, especially the ancient church practices of hospitality, liturgy, and formation. Hospitality is paramount to the work of Southside Abbey. As those who have been wounded by the church find that this is a safe space, their inclusion allows for a richness of sharing and expression. Liturgy is the “people's work,” tied to context, in the elements that are shared but also in holy conversation that honors the thoughts, opinions, and experiences of those present. Formation is richly liturgical, but accessible. In Chapters 3 and 4, historical precedent comes from Richard Hooker and the Oxford Movement, champions of institutional churches in un-institutional ways.
The project's conclusion points to Southside Abbey as an authentic Anglican worshipping community, in being locally adapted to the community's context. As the worshipping has gracefully received the poor who the Holy Spirit has brought to Southside Abbey, the community has shifted from seeing numbers as indicators of success to Southside Abbey, o relationship-based ministry. As success is redefined, walls break down and dichotomies coalesce around sacred story. Emergent and institutional, high and low, liberal and conservative are engaged in ministry of, by, for, and with the poor, and the biblical stories take on flesh. While these successes might not have been what the diocesan or other institutional church bodies may have had in mind, they are nevertheless successes that showcase the richness of those not often found doing ministry in the church. In this regard, this project serves not as a cautionary tale, but as a guide for doing similar work in other contexts
My Old Kentucky Home: A Maze in Grace
Get PDFAbstract onlyMy Old Kentucky Home: A Maze in Grace is a lengthy, whimsical circular definition of the life of the narrator who is constantly referred to as the old man upstairs. It is a story of the old man upstairs, a semi-paralyzed, broken man living in a secret apartment above his bar called My Old Kentucky Home, who shares the journey of how he has found redemption with the purpose of his own life by observing others below him finding theirs. It is also a story that is the grand culmination of a variety of ideas, personal creative notes, and literary concepts I was exposed to and inspired by during the course of my tenure in the School of Letters. Whether it was the fictional biographical narrative style of Machado de Assis’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas in Forms of Fiction, the camaraderie and adventurous Arthurian motifs in The Romance of Arthur, the importance of and usage of time in Workshop in Fiction Writing, or the general topic of literary evaluation and breaking down what makes a story a good one in The Contemporary Short Story, this book pays homage to all of that and is a collage of the best that I’ve read, written, learned, and experienced at Sewanee.
The narration moves between three periods of time. First, the narrator tells the entire story directly to the reader in real time, over the course of a single afternoon visit. The reader has been invited into the narrator’s secret world, literally in his living space and figuratively in his world of characters and personal history, to which nobody has previously had access. Second, the narrator begins the first part of every chapter by recounting his entire life’s journey, all the way from before birth to very personal present-day circumstances. From his birth parents, adoptive dad, childhood friends, higher education, road trips, finding love, finding family, losing love and family in a horrific tragedy, and then building himself back up with the help of friends, the old man upstairs doesn’t leave out many of the highlights and lowlights in between. Third, the second half of each chapter is the narrator sharing short stories about his favorite employees and patrons celebrating Kentucky-themed holidays, because of the bar namesake, even though every bar scene takes place in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina. Through the variety of Kentucky festivities, which include UK Basketball, March Madness, and The Kentucky Derby to name a few, the old man upstairs weaves specific tales of certain characters revealing personal stories and lessons that systematically embody how, over the course of the most recent year that has passed, he has experienced both personal growth and closure with his deepest mistakes and triumphs.
As Leo Tolstoy once said, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” Not stating this novel is great literature as of yet, My Old Kentucky Home: A Maze in Grace provides both. Within the overall conversation shared between the narrator and the reader, each chapter serves as a symbolic reflection of the narrator sharing pieces of going on an epic journey and also how a stranger named Charlie came to town and helped change the old man upstairs and everyone around him into better versions of themselves. And whether it is the narrator, Charlie, any of the rest from a long list of characters, or the reader, My Old Kentucky Home: A Maze in Grace explores the broken worlds found in each person and place involved and shows a path to discover wholeness again by the end
Critique of Penal Substitution Atonement Theory and Its Influence on the American Death Penalty
Get PDFThis thesis examines Christian atonement theology and how it relates to the American
prison system, especially the death penalty. In particular, it explores the ways that penal substitution
theory has influenced the development of the American prison system. It also focuses on the ways
that penal substitution theory has been influenced by secular penal theory and legal philosophy.
My thesis is that the Christian approach to the American prison system and the death
penalty in particular should be driven by an atonement theology derived primarily from narrative
Christus Victor theory rather than penal substitution theory. Based upon scripture and theologians
from the early through the contemporary church, I explore the implications of this atonement
theology on the Christian response to the American system of mass incarceration, especially with
regards to the practice of death penalty.
This thesis shows that the satisfaction family of atonement theories is deeply flawed, and, to
some extent, the moral influence family of atonement theories is flawed as well. As a basis for my
argument, I do an in-depth study of the Suffering Servant and messiahship traditions. I then show
that the New Testament writers primarily looked to these two traditions to understand their
experience with Jesus Christ and then to witness to his atoning life, death, and resurrection. These
two traditions and how they are appropriated by the New Testament writers form the basis of my
critique of satisfaction and moral influence theories of the atonement in favor of narrative Christus
Victor.
This thesis argues that, especially since Anselm proposed his satisfaction theory, atonement
theories have powerfully shaped individual, communal, and societal responses to wrongdoing. I
show that the satisfaction and moral influence theories of atonement developed at the same time
that western legal and penal philosophies and practices were developing. These legal and penal
philosophies and atonement theories have had a great impact upon each other and, at times, have
even been dependent upon each other. I show that penal substitution theory has provided the
ideological justification for the development of the retributivist policies of the American prison
system. I argue in favor of a restorative and nonviolent response to wrongdoing based upon the
ancient Christian sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist, and Reconciliation and the narrative Christus
Victor theology embodied in these practices.
A primary goal of this thesis is for it to be a resource to pastors, in both parish and prison
settings, as they reflect on preaching the cross in American society. It will do so by showing both
that the penal substitution theology, which has underpinned the death penalty and the American
system of mass incarceration, is unhealthy and deeply flawed and that retributivist penal philosophy
has influenced what has become the dominant atonement theology of the western church. A better
approach is urgently needed, and to find it Christians need look no further than the writings of the
New Testament and sacramental practices of the church. This thesis endeavors to do just that.Dr. Rob McSwai
"Worthy of th'heroic dead": Gratitude, Memory, and Local Action in a Grieving Britain
Get PDFRemembrance both haunts and supports a community. A form of preservation, the process of remembrance requires both collaboration and clear objectives: more specifically, what emotions should future generations inherit? In a postwar society, gruesome experience and painful bereavement converged in commemorative actions. As Pericles observed, “grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known,as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.” In the years immediately following the First World War, the British people actively searched for ways they could collectively mark the transition from life that had “been long accustomed” to a new life framed by loss. Britain entered into a period of transition; a kind of culture of commemoration emerged following the Armistice. On all levels grief was personal. How a community, whether a rural hamlet or an urban enclave, should commemorate the tragedy required a combination of civic responsibility and personal mourning. The nation was searching for a way to translate their grief to bereavement and their bereavement to commemoration.
Yet if one visits the small village of South Elmham, St. Michael ( Suffolk), a conspicuous abnormality may be shortly realized. Unlike most localities in Great Britain, with the exception of the fifty others that share the same good fortune as South
Elmham, St. Michael, there is no public war memorial. No Cross or obelisk connects the residents to the bereavement born out of the Great War. What was “long accustomed” was not lost in communities like South Elmham, St. Michael, but simply translated. As a“thankful village,” a community where all enlisted men returned home from the War, the absence of immediate grief and the presence of thanksgiving manifested itself with a simple roll of honor in the parish church.4 At once an aberration and a normality, this
thankful commemorative gesture constitutes yet another level of commemoration missing from the narratives about the War’s memorialization. How did those fifty one communities that did not immediately mourn compare in their memorialization to those communities that did mourn? How does an understanding of thankful village memorialization contribute to or challenge the historiography surrounding Great War commemoration? The way in which the nation’s communities processed modern
warfare, articulated its significance, and determined its commemoration was affected by the sheer breadth of mourning. A process involving “individual acts” that are “socially determined,” the commemorative process began with local communities looking for a method by which the tragedy would be appropriately memorialized in response to the needs of the locality.
Historians have tended to study either the process of mourning and commemoration on a national scale or on a localized scale. How commemoration was produced by specific bereavement and how the memorials contributed to nationalistic goals have been crucial components of the historiography. Studies of Armistice Day, the War Graves Commission, and the development of the Cenotaph have each contributed to or been complicated by Britain’s road toward healing. It is logical, then, that this project proceed within the context of the larger historiographical debates surrounding not only commemoration, but the postwar social analysis required to comprehend the seemingly inexorable grief. Ultimately this study is about memorialization rather than the effects of historical memory. It will contribute to the historiography in a new way by addressing the thankful villages. Scholars have approached British memorials to the War’s fallen as expressions of heroic and patriotic language; however, others have emphasized the centrality of local action to the development of the early memorials. The thankful villages’ commemorative forms, developing without immediate grief, mediate this debate: they demonstrated how a community could maintain highly localized commemorative forms, while also illuminating the significant need to participate in a national process of grief.Dr. Charles Perr
“ Our Anglo-Saxon Blood”: How Belief in Anglo-Saxon Racial Supremacy Connected Men at the University of the South Architecturally and Ideologically to the Larger Nation from 1886-1912
Get PDFIn August 1890, the Board of Trustees for the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee met for their annual deliberations. When the Board left Sewanee several days later, they had accepted both the resignation of the Vice-Chancellor, the Rev. Telfair Hodgson, and the first long term architectural plan for the University since before the Civil War. The events were entirely related. A young trustee and architect named Silas McBee came to the meetings bearing a new plan for the university: a grand quadrangle built in the latest collegiate architectural style. This style, collegiate Gothic, was only four years old and existed entirely in the North. Silas McBee wanted to bring it South to his alma mater.
After McBee and his partner, A.M.Mc. Nixon, an architect from Atlanta, Georgia, presented their plan, a debate broke out over more than just what The University of the South should look like, but what vision the leaders of the small university should follow. A small group led by George R. Fairbanks from Florida saw the new plans as a betrayal of the founder’s vision for a university with colleges for every discipline covering their land on the Cumberland Plateau. The rest saw the $20,000 and beautiful plan that Silas McBee had brought with him, and sided with the new plan.
Seeing the act as a betrayal of his own vision for the University, Vice-Chancelor Hodgson went to his office during the lunch break and drafted a letter of resignation, which he left for the Board when they returned for their afternoon session. To these men, architecture meant more than just appearances; it was a crucial part of the educational mission of the University of the South. As the-turn-of-the-century approached, a new way of viewing architecture made its way from Victorian England stressing that architecture created the morals of a society, rather than the conventional view that architecture reflected the values of that society.
Architecture, then, was as much about the morals of the men designing and building churches and schools throughout the turn-of-the-century as it was about aesthetics. At Sewanee, architecture revealed a belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority rooted in antimodernism. This same impulse influenced how these men viewed the wider nation, and the South’s role in the modern world, connecting them to larger national discussions about race in the national and international context.
Others have not seen the connection between Sewanee and the wider nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In Sewanee Sesquicentennial History, Samuel R. Williamson Jr., a former Vice Chancellor of the University, identified a martial spirit at Sewanee, but saw it as separate from the Lost Cause until 1910. Williamson thought it was simply Southern nationalism. He identified a measure of racial respect as well as charity through the Episcopal Church. The racial respect Williamson observe, however, was more likely a result of the small number of blacks and the paternalism that the Sewanee leaders displayed towards African-Americans, rather than Sewanee actually being a bastion of racial good will in the South.Dr. Woody Registe
Lifted Hands, Broken Chains: Exploring the Liberating Theological Praxis of Absalom Jones and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, 1794-1808
Get PDFVast resources in theological scholarship have been dedicated to the evolution of the African American religious experience. Likewise, extensive scholarship has been devoted to understanding the work of Absalom Jones, the first African American priest of the Episcopal Church; however, there has been scant mention of where the two fields of study overlap, particularly in locating Jones within the broader spectrum of that religious expression. This void of scholarship presents an opportunity to engage Absalom Jones as the practitioner of an Afrocentric liberating theologian. The purpose of this thesis is to explore that gap and examine the ways in which Absalom Jones engaged Christian theological praxis as a liberating space; engaged Christian scripture through a systematized Afrocentric, or black, hermeneutic lens; and framed the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first African American church in the Episcopal Church, as a safe place for the expression and development of black culture. This study begins by analyzing African traditional religions before tracing the development of the Absalom Jones prior to 1792. In 1792, the black membership of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where Jones served as a lay minister, departed after being refused equal access to the worshiping community and space they helped build. This revolutionary action envisaged a larger protest and boycott of the dominant school of theology which, up to that point, refused to grant black people the dialogue and access necessary to be
incorporated into the larger Christian narrative and to help shape that narrative. The departing members would go on to found the Free African Society which would become St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church. Absalom Jones, who would serve as the first priest of this church and the first black Episcopal priest, framed the ethos of this community by incorporating a myriad of religious and cultural influences including aspects of Slave Religion developed in the Invisible Institution of the African American heritage, Quakerism, Episcopalianism, and strands of Methodism. The end result was the creation of sacred space where the black community of Philadelphia was granted permission to show up in their full presence and power to encounter a God who was present in the same way. This meeting place between God and the gathered community challenged the dominant narrative of theological thought in that scripture was read through and Afrocentric interpretive lens that brought the concerns of the black community to the forefront. This analysis of Jones’s work engages primary historical resources; second historical sources; and contemporary sociological, and liturgical analysis.Professor James Turrell; Professor Nicholas Beasle
El arte de la traduccion: un analisis de la traduccion de Cien anos de soledad y el traductor bajo la superficie
Get PDFCoon's Labyrinth Cave Biological Survey
No full textCaves present a challenge for researchers interested in quantifying biodiversity. Cave fauna are mostly small and inconspicuous, occupying habitats that are difficult and sometimes impossible for humans to access. Additionally, the sensitivity of cave obligate organisms to disturbance of physical habitat, for example, increased sediment content in streams due to foot traffic, raises concern for the conservation of cave fauna during sampling attempts. In an effort to quantify and better understand the fauna of a Pennington Formation cave on the Domain of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, we systematically surveyed four selected cave passages in February and April for two consecutive years (2014-2015) and produced a map showing the cave’s morphology, including hydrologic sources, springs, and areas of biologic interest.Dr. Kirk Zigle