Stop and Smell the Romans: Odor in Roman Literature.

In this dissertation, I examine the role of smell in Latin literature. Looking specifically at Roman comedy, epic, and epigram, I demonstrate both how smells function as literary devices and how these texts reveal particularly Roman ways of thinking about the power and meaning of scents. My first chapter treats the connection between odor and identity, illustrated in the comedies of Plautus (late 3rd-early 2nd century BC). Like masks and costume, smell provides information about character and role and is an important element of comic role-play and identity-switching. Interestingly, however, characters who use smell to improve or alter themselves frequently fail; instead they draw attention to the disparity between their true identity and the role they are trying to assume. In Chapter 2, I examine how Latin epic, which chronicles both heroic quests and civil discord, links disgust at foul odors to anxieties about death by emphasizing odor’s ability to cross boundaries and spread contagion. These qualities suggest the threat of death, the shame of dying unheroically, the distinction between plague and war death, and the injustice suffered by the unburied. Moreover, olfactory signs of civil strife recall the lingering stain of civil war in the Roman collective memory, as well as the impossibility of determining a single guilty party in civil war. In my third chapter, Martial’s Epigrams (1st century AD) combine an interest in olfactory identity and contagion. While Martial highlights the scents of his literary subjects, these odors simultaneously pose a threat to the poet’s persona, whose exposure to an array of questionable scents threatens his bodily integrity and poetic and moral authority. Additionally, I suggest that odor mirrors qualities of Martial’s poems themselves: short-lived but enduring, insignificant but powerful, truthful (so Martial claims) yet frequently open to (mis)interpretation. Through his poems about smell, Martial teaches his audience not only how to read his epigrams, but even how to become critics themselves. As a literary study which accounts for the cultural significance of smell, this dissertation highlights the importance of odors in literature while simultaneously shedding light on Roman ideas about disgust, contagion, identity, and the body.PhDClassical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116729/1/ktallen_1.pd

Sit Tibi Terra Levis

I never really knew my father’s father. He left behind only old cassette tapes, stories, and glimpses of memory from before he got sick. He had a rare genetic disease that killed him slowly, piece by piece, neuron by neuron. I remember playing hide and seek with him behind the cascading fabric roses in our living room, and I remember him rocking in his armchair, gently humming a song I didn’t recognize. I remember the smell of the hospital room where he died. I was 12. He was 67. Did my father have the same disease? Would he die just like his father- would I die just like him? I can’t remember the color of his eyes or the way he hugged me, the sound of his voice or how he laughed. Slowly, piece by piece, neuron by neuron, he disappears from my mind. Would I die just like him? Whenever my sister and I drove past a graveyard, we held our breath. I don’t know who taught us this game, but we played every time we sat together watching the world through glass and parallax. Small churchyards and cemeteries required only a few seconds without breath, but sometimes the graves went on seemingly forever, covering the rolling hills with names remembered and forgotten. Sometimes we had to hold our breath for minutes that stretched on for eternities. I could feel my heart pushing against my skin, calling out for air. We sat in the backseat silence, breathless as the dead outside the window, with hearts pounding urgent. Sometimes I walk through the woods in Starlight. The telephone birds warble in the leaves overhead, rustling as the wind gently breathes through the branches. Cicada song drowns the train whistles that echo up through the valley. Sometimes I sit by a stump with miles of roots buried under the mushroom laced moss: once it stretched above the clouds, now it rests below the earth. Sometimes surrounding trees share their water with the stump, but not enough to help its branches grow back. Is it dead or alive? Is it alive or dead? There was a hole in the ceiling of my grandmother’s old house. We were not allowed to climb up: too dangerous, my grandmother would say. But once, we felt brave, and pulled the small white string that revealed the pathway up to the attic. We tiptoed across wooden beams that split seas of mothballs and dust; we hid in racks of old coats and evening gowns. Amid the stacks of cardboard, we found a small shoebox filled with ghosts. The people on the countless decaying pages stared at us as we admired them. They were alive then, staring at the camera, laughing, smiling, full of dreams, full of heartache. Like us. But now they are dead. They are empty and motionless somewhere below moonwort and forget-me-nots. Like we will be. But still they stare at us, immortal in paper and silver and gelatin. The photographic prints in this book were processed like our bodies are processed after death. I brushed some with oil just as the ancient Greeks would’ve anointed their dead. Some, echoing the traditions of ancient Babylonians, I soaked in honey. For others, I simulated modern American practice of chemical embalming by washing the prints with soap before processing them with different combinations of photographic chemistry. Some of these are incompletely fixed, meaning they will continue to decompose and degrade over time. Others were soaked in fixer for days, leaving stains on the print as if it had been aging slowly for years. Including inscriptions from ancient Roman tombstones

Winning margins in British Thoroughbred Racehorses

In human sporting events the difference between finishing first and second is often less than 1%. For each sporting discipline it is important to know how large an enhancement of performance needs to be before it makes a difference to the medal winning prospects of that athlete. In contrast to the known winning margins in many human sporting disciplines, the winning margins in horse racing are unknown. The winning margins for group 1, 2 and 3 flat and national hunt races over a 5 year period were calculated. For flat races 3 categories were included: (1) flat races of 6 furlongs; (2) 1 mile; or (3) 1 mile 4 furlongs1. For national hunt 2 categories were included: (1) hurdle races over 2 miles; or (2) chase races over 3 miles. Race times from a total of 416 races were included (275 flat races and 141 national hunt races). Overall the percentage difference between first place and second place was only 0.32%, the difference between coming first and third was 0.75% and between first and fourth was 1.15%. Overall, the winning margins between first place and second place were closer for flat races than for national hunt races. When a 1% improvement was applied to the fourth placed horse this would result in the winning time in 76% of flat races and 50% of national hunt races. This study shows the very small margins between winning and placing in horseracing. These results are similar to those of elite human sporting disciplines. This suggests that training strategies and veterinary interventions that result in a small percentage improvement in performance may translate to a meaningful difference in terms of winning/placing. </jats:p

Trauma in Latinx Communities in the United States as Seen Through Literature

Multifaceted trauma is a common aspect of the minority experience in the United States, and Latinx are no exception. They experience discrimination, racism, poverty, and a convergence of cultures that leave them with an ambivalent sense of identity. The premise of this research is to show how historical traumas provoke in the main characters a desire to escape their plight through seeking education, expressing themselves through writing, and distancing themselves from their heritage. This study utilizes Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1983), Ernesto Quiñónez’s Chango’s Fire (2004) and Taína (2019), Érika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (2017), and Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home (2018). These narratives highlight many of the traumas experienced by Latinx living in the United States and their reactions to these traumas, which force them to confront the realities that their communities face. In this process, their identities are transformed, and they must choose a new role to play in their communities. In doing so, they learn to embrace their cultural heritage, finding belonging and peace in their identities as Americans and as Latinx. These narratives provide to the reader positive examples of resilience, inspire hope for healing, and instill a desire to uplift their communities.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2021/1067/thumbnail.jp

Toward a Sociocultural Learning Theory Framework to Designing Online learning Communities in Citizen Science

How can sociocultural learning theory inform design principles for citizen science online learning communities to inspire local environmental action? The purpose of this article is to identify themes in sociocultural learning theory that could inform the use and development of highly collaborative online learning communities that utilize community informatics tools for citizen science to enable on-the-ground environmental actions. Applying previously established socio-cultural theories provides an opportunity to build on what’s already known about how people learn and collaborate. Finally, this article explains how communities of practice theory, knowledge building theory, and place-based education theory can be woven together to create the basis for development of a conceptual framework

Teacher development and multiliteracies pedagogy: Challenges and opportunities for postsecondary language programs

Over the past two decades, postsecondary language programs have experienced a paradigm shift away from communicative approaches toward more text-based curricula and the development of students’ multiple literacies. Numerous curricular and course-level models exist, and empirical research has documented the feasibility, linguistic outcomes, and perceptions of multiliteracies approaches. Yet few studies have investigated how postsecondary language teachers learn about and implement multiliteracies pedagogy and limited professional development resources exist to support teachers in this endeavor. To respond to these gaps and to recent calls for increased research into multiliteracies pedagogy and language teacher development, this article has three aims. First, we summarize current knowledge about postsecondary language teachers’ understandings and implementation of the multiliteracies framework, beginning with the 2011 AAUSC volume and continuing to the present. Next, we identify gaps and unanswered questions in this scholarship and suggest directions for future research. Finally, we discuss professional development needs for language teachers and program directors implementing multiliteracies approaches in postsecondary language programs and suggest tools and practices that might facilitate this work

Using Q-Sort Methodology to test the Non-hierarchical Online Learning Community (NHOLC) Framework

The Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Community (NHOLC) conceptual framework was designed to leverage the understanding of sociocultural learning theory and community informatics to inform design principles for citizen science online learning communities that inspire online collaboration and local environmental action. The study presented here applies the NHOLC framework, using a Q-Sort methodology, to three online learning communities for citizens that were successful in fostering online collaboration and environmental actions. The findings of this paper provide tangible design principles that can be used to develop or revise online learning communities for citizen science instead of re-inventing the wheel for each newly emerging project

Visual Narrative: A Technique to Enhance Secondary Students' Contribution to the Development of Inclusive, Socially Just School Environments - Lessons from a Box of Crayons

This paper reports on a project that involved Australian secondary school students working as participatory researchers in collaboration with a researcher and two teachers. Research methodology using visual narrative techniques provided the students with a conceptual lens to view their school community. The examples of visual narrative shared in this presentation depict problems, contradictions of exclusion and celebrations of inclusion in the lived world of the students. Photographs combined with narratives represent students' view of their social, cultural and political environment. This project illustrates how the insights of students can help break down assumptions, values and meanings that block progress to achieving more socially just schools