The Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century: Courting the Public, c.1668-1813

This thesis examines the office of poet laureate, and the wider cultural role of the court by whom the laureate was employed, in the long eighteenth century. This was the period in which the laureateship first came into being (1668), developed from an honorific into a functionary office with a settled position at court (c.1689-1715), and was bestowed upon Robert Southey (1813), whose selection precipitated a further transformation of the office and therefore marks the endpoint of this study. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis examines the institutional changes in the office, the mechanics of each laureate’s appointment, the reputation and public reception of the office, and the works produced by the laureates both before and after their appointments. It demonstrates that the office was hugely prominent, relevant, and respectable throughout the period, and argues that it crowned and encapsulated some of the most vital trends in eighteenth-century culture. The analysis is framed within the question of whether (as tends to be postulated in scholarship on the long eighteenth century) this period witnessed the rise of a commercial, middle-class public at the expense of the court’s previously central role in society and culture. In this postulation, the long eighteenth century was the period in which British society underwent various modernizing developments, becoming more commercial, more defined by middle-class activities, and more conscious of a British national identity; while ‘literature’ was first created as a concept and an institution, and literary production moved away from the court into the marketplace. While this thesis pays great attention to these developments, it argues that they did not occur so much at the expense of the court, but rather in close and fruitful interaction with it. The court retained an active but evolving role in literary production, cultural and commercial affairs more widely, issues of national identity, and the activities and interests of a middle-class public; it thus remained central to British society and culture. The laureateship, standing at the dynamic interface of court and public, is the definitive exemplar of this state of affairs

EXPLORING SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY-BASED MOTIVATIONAL PROFILES FOR EXERCISE PARTICIPATION AMONG U. S. LINE DANCERS

EXPLORING SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY-BASED MOTIVATIONAL PROFILES FOR EXERCISE PARTICIPATION AMONG U. S. LINE DANCER

Berry v. State, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 96 (Dec. 24, 2015)

The issue before the Court was an appeal from a district court order dismissing a post-conviction petition for writ of habeas corpus. The Court reversed and remanded holding that the district court improperly discounted the declarations in support of the appellant’s petition, which included a confession of another suspect, whom the petitioner implicated as the real perpetrator at trial. The Court held that these declarations were sufficient to merit discovery, and an evidentiary hearing on Petitioner Berry’s gateway actual innocence claim

State v. Merlino, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 65 (Sept. 10, 2015)

The issue before the Court was whether selling stolen property through a retractable sliding tray on a pawn shop’s drive-through window satisfied the element of unlawful entry of a building as defined in the burglary statute. The Court held that when the outer boundary of a building is not self-evident from the shape and contours of the structure itself, courts must apply California’s “reasonable belief” test which legally defines the outer boundary to include, “any element that encloses an area into which a reasonable person would believe that a member of the general public could not pass without authorization.

Review: Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Adjacent Waters by H. Dickson Hoese and Richard H. Moore

H. Dickson Hoese and Richard H. Moore, Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and adjacent waters. XV + 327 pp., 513 color plates. ISBN 0-89096-027-5, Texas A&M University Press, College Station Texas, 1977. $12.50

Physical and Biological Observations of the Northern Rim of the de Soto Canyon made from a Research Submersible

During June 1978, the research submersible DIAPHUS completed 27 dives in the north central Gulf of Mexico. Fourteen of these were concentrated on and around the high relief, northern ledge or rim of the De Soto Canyon, located at depths of 50-60 m, and approximately 25 km S of Navarre, Florida. The ledge is composed of limestone outcroppings. The invertebrate fauna is characterized as two principle assemblages, one associated with a sand-shell-coraline-algae slope and the other with a limestone block ledge. The ichthyofauna is dominated by deep water reef species, thirty of which are identified and their habitat and abundance described

Observations on Fishes Previously Unrecorded or Rarely Encountered in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico

Twenty-one species of marine fishes previously unrecorded or rarely encountered in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico were taken by trawl, dredge, spear or hand capture or observed by SCUBA or research submersible. Biological data are added to the knowledge of all these forms, and several species are shown to have permanent populations in the region