21st Century Revival- BA/BS Senior Show

Growing up in Kentucky, I had no choice but to acknowledge that I was smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, where culture is in many ways defined by Christianity and there is a church on every corner. These deep southern and Christian roots have defined who I am and how I view the world, inspiring me to examine the roles these two factors play in my life as well as the lives of others through my art. 21st Century Revival takes a dive into this specific culture, questioning how southern Christianity has impacted the lives of those who have come into contact with it in both positive and negative ways. These pieces envelop a positive sense of community, inspired by communal activities like quilting or sitting together at church, while still addressing the negative ostracization that can come from being a part of this culture, much like being “stoned” for being who you are. The space created in this body of work is one of contemplation and remedy; challenging Christian culture to acknowledge the power it has over the south as well as allowing those who have experienced religious trauma to feel validated, seen, and to potentially heal from the hurt. Tying into these ideas, my work often includes a blend of religious iconography and quilt patterns, taking inspiration from both Biblical stories and the quilts my family had growing up, which are very much a part of Kentucky culture. My art combines expressive oil painting with mixed media elements, be it sculpture or fabric. I often use photoshop and collage elements in order to combine my realistic figures with a layered and abstracted environment. This surrealistic approach, together with the blend of naturalistic color and the bright, saturated color in the quilt elements, creates a heightened emotional zone. The installation itself references structures found in places of worship, inviting the viewer to sit down on a surface that has the capacity to either instill peacefulness or cause confrontation and discomfort while reflecting on the painted imagery. I am drawn to the works of Kehinde Wiley, especially his Stained Glass series. Though his work isn’t about Christianity specifically, it still uses the detailed and ornate style of traditional religious paintings while still incorporating modern people and elements of design; a perfect visual conversation between old and new, figurative and abstract. The story quilts of Faith Ringgold also serve as a source of inspiration. The abstracted figures encapsulated in a quilted border maintain a patch-work aesthetic, playing with color, pattern, and flatness while telling difficult stories. I often combine the painterly qualities of Kehinde Wiley and the flattened, fabric-like elements of Faith Ringgold in order to create an other-wordly environment for my figures and stories to live in. I also play a unique role in this story of southern-Christain culture, where I am still exploring who I am and where I stand on such matters. To be a Christian while advocating for reform and recognition toys with the very core of my identity, pushing against the structure of the very thing I have devoted my life to while still loving it wholeheartedly.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art499/1060/thumbnail.jp

1st Place: Co-Production: A Scientific Approach to the Humanities

This is Kirsten Moore\u27s submission essay, annotated bibliography, and annotated wishlist for the 2010-2011 John and Margaret Class Student Book Collection Contest, which won first place

Kirsten Moore Art 399 Portfolio

My work questions our perceptions of space and time. I am interested in the way my personal experiences and choices are both shaped by time and are constantly changing. This ranges from broader struggles with health and identity to everyday decisions about fashion or conversations with friends. Our perceptions of our individual lives change over time, and past versions of ourselves can intermix and influence our present selves. There is nothing more intriguing to me than blending multiple dimensions by overlapping realistic figures with a two-dimensional pattern and allowing them to merge into a single landscape. This transports the viewer into a different version of reality and allows them to be open to new ideas or ways of thinking. I also incorporate non-naturalistic colors, which can change the meaning of a piece, allowing there to be questions about whether the piece is set in the same reality as ours or not. Recently, I have been drawn to my personal perfection of Christianity and how I, along with fellow Christians and non-Christians, view it. I challenge what the world and other Christians define as “Christian” or “Christ-like.” I find unique and often challenging ways to introduce the God I share my heart and soul with, while also still taking into consideration the views of others. Through this exploration of the world\u27s view of Christ and Christianity is a fairly new one, I know that these paintings encourage people to view a religion that I hold very near and dear to my heart in a new light; one that may challenge the preconceived notions God and the Church for both Christians and non-Christians alike. My artwork often takes into consideration my interests, experiences, and emotions, such as my PTSD, insomnia, childhood memories, religion, and individual choices about fashion or sexuality. When looking at my pieces, we can see a common visual theme of using patterns. In my piece “CHANGES,” there is a pattern of repeating exclamation points on one part of the diptych and repeating question marks on the other half. Within my pieces “Fashion: In Squares,” “Tip Toe,” and “Checkmate”, you can see a repeating pattern of black and white squares, reminiscent of a chessboard. There is also a pattern of stylistic, minimalist eyes in my “Insomnia” works, spreading across painting, ceramics, and digital media. Finally, you can see the pattern in my “Sisters” piece, with X’s and O’s filling the background, reminiscent of a tic-tac-toe game. All of these patterns, the same repeated images, are meant to show patterns in life--simple, repeated cycles, and habits we form over time. These patterns and habits can change our worldview, how we simply see and interact with others, time, and even ourselves. These cyclical patterns merge with our perceptions of reality, fading in and out of memory, overlapping our conscious and subconscious, creating a new mind space. I am drawn to artists who make us question reality in some way. Ideas imagined by renowned surrealists intrigue me, much like Devan Shimoyama and his use of blending two dimensions of reality or consciousness. Though he isn’t a traditional surrealist, the way he uses patterns to flatten out the design of his figures and their environment creates such a surrealist atmosphere; an atmosphere where reality and other planes of dimensions merge into one space. Dawn Mellor creates a very similar space of diverting from a pure sense of reality by placing bold, eccentric patterns over the faces of her figures, distorting their features and their place in that world. This manipulation allows you to question why they are in that space, if they are the only ones like that, or if everyone shares that similar style and look. This mimics the color choice of my “Nonchalant” and “Sisters” piece, making you wonder if they are the only ones with such color in the realm they exist in. Yayoi Kusama’s use of repetitive circles in two-toned environments influences how I decide to implement color and pattern. For Kusama, the repetition of consistent circles playing throughout each of her pieces provokes me to dive deeper into the realm of repetition throughout my pieces. This allows for the same pattern to be seen throughout each of my pieces that carries the same concept, like the stylistic eyes in my insomnia-related work. I want my work to open new ways of thinking for my viewers, either about their own life or the lives of others. For my religious pieces, though these atmospheres do not directly mimic the style of this artist, I look to Chris Woods as a role model in the arch of modern Christian art. The way he puts Christ in very modern and public social settings is fascinating, and it makes you wonder what His role is in this earth today versus when He was alive and how relevant, close or distanced we are to Christ as a society today. I hope to make room for more content from our internal conversations with ourselves to make their way into our daily external conversations with others. Hopefully, in this way, my work can open a gateway to a new and more open reality.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art399/1111/thumbnail.jp

What\u27s Sex Got to Do with It? Challenges for Incorporating Sexuality into Family Planning Programs

In February 1996, IPPF/WHR and the Population Council’s Ebert Program on Critical Issues in Reproductive Health jointly hosted a meeting on the challenge of incorporating sexuality into family planning. This report was compiled after organizers concluded that the ideas and strategies presented during the meeting merited wider recognition and debate within the family planning field. The meeting examined five myths that have prevented family planning and reproductive health services from dealing directly with issues of sexuality and gender. The report draws principally on the discussions from the meeting as well as on the perspectives of the organizers. The authors hope that this report will encourage others in the field to think about how to offer family planning and reproductive health services in ways that promote individuals’ ability to identify and meet their sexual health needs and in ways that enhance equality between intimate partners. By dealing more openly with issues such as pleasure and power, family planning and reproductive health programs will better serve their current clients and attract many new ones

Lummi Youth Riparian Education Program

Lummi Youth Riparian Education Program, an Honors project by Kirsten Moore. It is a series of educational activities to be performed at Marietta Slough in order to fulfill the educational component of the grant written by Lummi Natural Resources. As defined by the grant, Lummi Youth includes students grades 3-12. The following lesson plans are aligned to the Washington State Learning Standards for grades 3, 4-5, and 6-8, with the intention of involving students grades 9-12 in leadership/mentor roles. The lesson plans are similar from grade level to grade level, primarily varying in topics and depth of discussion. My hope for this program is that it becomes sustainable so that students may monitor water quality and health of the riparian area from year to year, noting changes and delving into a deeper level of understanding of the role the riparian area holds in creating healthy habitat for salmon and thus drawing the connection between the health of the natural environment and that of their own culture

Compassion Fatigue among Nurse Leaders

The current state of healthcare with its multifaceted demands related to patient care outcomes and the challenges of managing personnel creates a complex work environment for the nurse leader. Striving to meet the competing needs of the organization, employees, patients and families on a daily basis can result in work related traumatic stress and cause burnout. This places an individual at risk for compassion fatigue (CF). The concept of CF has primarily been studied among direct patient care providers and has not been explored among individuals at the leadership level. The goal of this DNP project was to determine if nurses in leadership positions are at risk for or are experiencing CF. For this study, CF was defined as a state in which a nurse leader experiences an inability to maintain a desired level of compassionate energy, due to frequent and regular exposure to prolonged, emotionally and psychologically challenging managerial circumstances in the workplace (adapted from Andreotta, 2013). A mixed methods approach was utilized to gather demographic data and describe the nurse leader’s level of compassion satisfaction (CS), risk for burnout, and secondary traumatic stress as measured by the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Version 5. The use of open ended questions allowed for the identification of factors in the workplace that are modifiable and can be used to develop a CF prevention program for nurse leaders. Thirty-three nurse leaders from two academic medical centers responded to the research survey which revealed an average to high level of CS, coupled with low to average level of burnout and WRTS among the nurse leaders as measured by the ProQOL V5. CS mean score was 54.55 (SD = 3.94), burnout mean score was 43.11 (SD = 4.04), and WRTS mean score was 41.73 (SD = 3.81). The qualitative data provided insight on the source of CF in the work environment which included employee, patient, and organizational stressors. Potential solutions for mitigation and prevention identified by the nurse leaders included personal and organizational solutions such as enhancing coping skills, developing resiliency skills and increasing organizational support. This study identified the presence of risk factors for the development of CF fatigue among nurse leaders and elements in the work environment that can be modified to prevent this condition. These finding may be used to create a satisfactory Professional Quality of Life for the nurse leader which impacts their role effectiveness and supports the delivery of quality patient care.D.N.P., Nursing Practice -- Drexel University, 201

An analysis of representations for protein structure prediction

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-279).by Barbara K. Moore Bryant.Ph.D

Nothing but Nets: The History of Insecticide-Treated Nets in Africa, 1980s-Present

Insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) have become a main pillar of global malaria control in the twenty-first century, distributed by the millions annually across Africa and the global South. Understood as ‘evidence-based,’ biomedical tools and one of the most cost-effective global health interventions, ITNs are a main target for health and development aid. This dissertation tracks the history of ITNs since 1980 to see how and why the technology became the centerpiece of malaria control efforts in Africa. Doing so, it reveals how conditions of resource scarcity and the politics of structural adjustment shaped the construction of ITNs as biomedical objects, the translation of experimental findings into evidence-based malaria control policy, and the implementation of evidence-based policy in practice. The identity of ITNs as biomedical tools was by no means obvious or pre-determined, nor did that identity alone lead to the tool’s widespread adoption as an evidence-based intervention for malaria control in Africa. By following the biography of ITNs through the initial production of scientific knowledge, the consolidation of ITNs as universally applicable biomedical tools, the incorporation of ITNs into malaria control policy, and the implementation of ITN policy in public health practice, this study examines the relationship between local contingencies of knowledge and technology, and the formulation and mobilization of supposedly ‘universal’ scientific knowledge in global health. In tracking these biographical ‘moments’ both on a transnational scale and in Kenya, this study also elucidates the impact African, and specifically Kenyan, populations and landscapes have had on the production and application of ITNs as biomedical, evidence-based technologies. In this case, Africans were not marginal or passive in the making of evidence-based global health; rather, they were centrally involved in the endeavor, actively reshaping and redefining ITNs to address biological and economic vulnerabilities during and following structural adjustment

Family planning and reproductive health: Briefing sheets for a gender analysis

This series of briefing sheets, developed by the Population Council, represents a starting point for the application of gender to the family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) arena. The information covers five key areas of RH: gender-based abuse, FP and gender issues among adolescents, sexuality and FP, men’s and women’s social and economic responsibilities for childrearing, and the complicated nexus between gender and FP/RH. In so doing, it provides a strong foundation for gender training. This concept was first developed to fulfill a need for gender training within the regional Operations Research/Technical Assistance Projects. To date, two such workshops have been funded by USAID. These activities not only reflect a clear commitment by USAID to the inclusion of gender in all aspects of programmatic planning and implementation but also to the empowerment of women in every phase of the development process. This tool will help guide program planners and policymakers toward making gender equity in FP and RH programs a reality for both women and men

Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning

“Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning” is divided into three main parts. The first includes approaches that program staff, activists, and researchers are taking to understand people’s experiences of sexuality. The second explores the explicit and implicit links among health-seeking behavior, contraceptive practice, reproductive health, and sexuality. The chapters in part three focus on activities that challenge entrenched attitudes and behavior about sexuality that have real and potentially harmful effects on women’s and men’s reproductive health. The book features program and research work in all regions of the world with women, men, girls, and boys. The chapters are written by authors from over a dozen countries, with over half the contributions coming from developing countries. Collectively, these chapters represent an exploration of the relationship of sexuality to reproductive health, contraceptive practice, and overall well-being. For all their variety of place, approach, and focus, a number of common themes emerge