When Two Become One: Sacramental Woes And Theological Anxiety In Medieval Representations Of Marriage

This dissertation traces the long, winding, and problematic road along which marriage became a sacrament of the Church. In so doing, it identifies several key problems with marriage’s ability to fulfill the sacramental criteria laid out in Peter Lombard’s Sentences: that a sacrament must signify a specific form of divine grace, and that it must directly bring about the grace that it signifies. While, on the basis of Ephesians 5, theologians had no problem identifying the symbolic power of marriage with the spiritual union of Christ and the Church, they never fully succeeded in locating a form of effective grace, placing immense stress upon marriage’s status as a signifier. As a result, theologians and canonists found themselves unable to deal with several social aspects of marriage that threatened this symbolic capacity, namely concubinage and the remarriage of widows and widowers. For, just as concubinage possessed the dangerous ability to signify the one-to-one unity of Christ and the Church (and the pressure for exact symbolic conformity prevented theologians from imposing a formal marriage ceremony distinguishing the two), second marriages threatened to off-set the sacrament’s precarious numeric balance, wherein Christ and his heavenly bride are forever joined as two unique but entirely unified entities. This dissertation also contends that awareness of these problems was embedded in the larger medieval discourse about matrimony, and can be detected in literary depictions of marriage, marriage-making, and quasi-marital situations. It thus explores attitudes towards marriage in several prevalent literary genres, with an eye towards how each genre handles the sacramental problems outlined above. While the these literary treatments are all perceptibly impacted by the lacunae within sacramental discourse, they each display this impact in specific ways, depending upon social context and wider generic features and customs. In highlighting this discursive interplay, this dissertation finally seeks to illuminate the sense in which what we think of as “marriage” is a highly constructed conceptual entity, the result of much conversation, contention, and invention

Mashing up Visual Languages and Web Mash-ups

Research on web mashups and visual languages share an interest in human-centered computing. Both research communities are concerned with supporting programming by everyday, technically inexpert users. Visual programming environments have been a focus for both communities, and we believe that there is much to be gained by further discussion between these research communities. In this paper we explore some connections between web mashups and visual languages, and try to identify what each might be able to learn from the other. Our goal is to establish a framework for a dialog between the communities, and to promote the exchange of ideas and our respective understandings of humancentered computing.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Re-evaluating the effect of wind on recruitment in Gulf of Maine Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) using an environmentally-explicit stock recruitment model

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Fisheries Oceanography 24 (2015): 90-105, doi:10.1111/fog.12095.A previous study documented a correlation between Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) recruitment in the Gulf of Maine and an annual index of the north component of May winds. This correlation was supported by modeling studies that indicated unusually strong recruitment of Gulf of Maine Atlantic Cod results from high retention of spring-spawned larvae in years when winds were predominately out of the north, which favor downwelling. We re-evaluated this relationship using updated recruitment estimates and found that the correlation decreased between recruitment and wind. The original relationship was largely driven by two recruitment estimates, one of which (2005 year class) was highly uncertain because it was near the terminal year of the assessment. With additional data, the updated assessment estimated lower recruitment for the 2005 year class, which consequently lowered the correlation between recruitment and wind. We then investigated whether an environmentally-explicit stock recruit function that incorporated an annual wind index was supported by either the original or updated assessment output. Although incorporation of the annual wind index produced a better fitting model, the uncertainty in the estimated parameters and the implied unexploited conditions were not appropriate for providing management advice. These results suggest the need for caution in the development of environmentally-explicit stock recruitment relationships, in particular when basing relationships and hypotheses on recruitment estimates from the terminal years of stock assessment models. More broadly, this study highlights a number of sources of uncertainty that should be considered when analyses are performed on the output of stock assessment models.We also thank the NMFS Fisheries and the Environment program which funded the initial work of Churchill et al. (2011) (FATE Project 08-02) and funded Hare (FATE Project 10-08) to examine environmentally-explicit stock 487 recruitment models

Shared Governance in an Adult Education Doctoral Program: “Self-Directed Learning meets Democratic Process” – A Delicate Balance of Intent, Implementation, and Impact

This symposium explores the governance component offered within a doctoral program in which students were given the opportunity to engage in collective decision-making through democratic process. Panelists, most of whom were research participants for the dissertation upon which this exploration is based, represent cohort groups from 1996 through 2007