Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, History of Art

In a 1960 article entitled “Younger American Painters,” William Rubin accused Rauschenberg's Combines of rendering the “inherently biographical style of Abstract Expressionism… even more personal, more particular, and sometimes almost embarrassingly private.” Rubin's choice of the word “embarrassingly” is telling; the Combines are not just private, but embarrassingly so; that is, the problem the Combines present is that they are not private when good sense/taste tells us they should be. This spilling over of the supposed-to-be-private into the embarrassingly deviant public has been read as an insistence on the work of art as both in its environment and in communication with it, as a valorization of the femininity associated with the interior/personal and relatedly, as a refusal of heteronormative subjectivity as dictated in the Cold War era. This paper suggests another reading—not as an alternative, but as a supplement to these: a reading of Rauschenberg's Combines through the lens of disability theory. If Rauschenberg's Combines are debased (and there seems to be some agreement that they are), and if one's experience of them is bodily (and this experience seems if not universal, then nearly so), then their association with the debased/abject body demands inquiry. Made up of disparate parts that insist upon their discrete, adjunctive identities and former lives, the Combines might be best understood as Frankensteins—disabled bodies that refuse to comply and in so doing inscribe new ways of being (corporeally) in the world.

Committee: Lisa Florman (Advisor); Erica Levin (Committee Member); J.T. Richardson Eisenhauer (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art History; Ethics; Fine Arts; Minority and Ethnic Groups

MFA, Kent State University, 2021, College of the Arts / School of Art

This paper has been drafted as a written report following the installation of my thesis exhibit, the Romantic Caribbean. Both this paper and thesis exhibit focus on the topics of tourism and trade. The research conducted through the paper and the exhibit is strongly influenced by my cultural background as a Caribbean native who grew up watching the influences of tourism and trade on my home island, Grand Cayman. With the research, I am exploring the origin of commonplace representations of a Caribbean tourist destination. These representations include the use of black or mixed-race people as performers and entertainers, and the representation of promiscuous behaviour (often provoked by males) within tropical beach resorts. I will also explore the use of found objects as a way to illustrate the circulation of international trade, and I will see if found objects from various locations can be assembled together to create keepsake items that can represent a fantasized Caribbean tourist destination. This paper will outline and analyze various components from the installation of my thesis exhibit and share the specifics of the conceptual framework of the artworks and images made for the project. The artworks are assemblage sculptures, wall-based graphics, an audio track and digital media in the form of prints and video projection. The conclusion reached in this paper shares how my thesis exhibit can be seen as an attempt to revise the problematic representations of a Caribbean tourist destination. This attempt is necessary for the continued development of Caribbean cultural identity through the ownership and hybridization of western influences from the tourist industry and international trade.

Committee: Eli Kessler MFA (Advisor); Isabel Farnsworth MFA (Committee Member); Davin Ebanks MFA (Committee Member); Joseph Underwood PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

In his book Difference and Repetition, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze distinguishes between two theories of repetition, one associated with the `Platonic' theory and the other with the `Nietzschean' theory. Repetition in the `Platonic' theory, via the criterion of accuracy, can be identified as a repetition of homogeneity, using pre-established similitude or identity to repeat the Same, while repetition in the `Nietzschean' theory, via the criterion of authenticity, is aligned with the virtual rather than real, producing simulacra or phantasms as a repetition of heterogeneity. It is argued in this dissertation that the distinction that Deleuze forms between modes of repetition has a vital role in his innovative approaches to the Nietzschean's notion of `eternal return' as a differential ontology, offering numerous insights into work on issues of homogeneity and heterogeneity in a design process. Deleuze challenges the assumed capture within a conventional perspective by using German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of the `eternal return.' This dissertation aims to question the conventional praxis of architecture and urban design formalisms through the impulse of `becoming' and `non- representational' thinking of Deleuze. The research attempts to conceptualize the relationship between history and the occurrence of new social contexts and to locate varying forms of active and temporal engagements with the material formations of cultural environments and historical sites. This dissertation explores the possibility of using history as a dynamic, intensive force in an architectural and urban design thinking process as a mean to escape the historicism and representational image functionary towards a re-engineered creative historical/architectural dialogue. The dissertation will conceptually analyze the difference between mimicking historical styles in a decontextualized manner and repeating them with difference using the theory of Difference and Repe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Adrian Parr Ph.D. M.A. (Committee Chair); Laura Jenkins Ph.D. (Committee Member); Patrick Snadon Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

This dissertation critically analyzes the relationship between the state and the asylum-seeker through bordering mechanisms, with particular focus on confinement at the border. It argues that in contravention of international humanitarian law, Western signatory states manage refugees through punitive forms of enforcement. These countries enact bordering techniques that “thicken” the border, making it more difficult for people fleeing violence to reach a safe territory. These bordering mechanisms amount to a form of state-sanctioned violence that endangers the lives of refugees during the journey and, through confinement, harms them on arrival. Moreover, individual states enact bordering mechanisms that extend beyond their territories and result in buffer zones that sometimes overlap, forming a transnational sovereign assemblage that works to prevent displaced populations seeking asylum from exiting the Global South. This formation makes it necessary to look beyond individual regimes and think of borders transnationally, something I do by exploring the cases of Australia, the European Union, and the United States to identify a global refugee regime of deterrence, punishment, and confinement. My dissertation combines a novel approach to understanding borders with an analysis of bordering mechanisms at the U.S.-Mexico border. Using a transnational feminist lens, I explore how U.S. intervention in countries of the Northern Triangle creates racialized and gendered subjects that merge with existing stereotypes that criminalize brown migrants. The material consequences of this discourse can be seen at the southern border, where Central American women who seek asylum are punished. I theorize what happens at the border as a combination of sovereign and disciplinary punishment that serves also as a form of governing populations by deterring further arrivals. This methodology unveils how racist narratives of “deviant” motherhood precede these women and shape their receptio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mytheli Sreenivas (Advisor); Inés Valdez (Advisor); Jenny Suchland (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Womens Studies

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Immigration is accompanied by a specific set of issues pertaining to the cultural identity of the migrant individuals in question as they interface with their new surroundings and its respective culture. Although largely social in nature,connections between the built environment and how these people adapt to their new surroundings can be uncovered and utilized in the design process. This exploration operates under the assertion that architecture born from a study of various pre and post-migratory rituals and practices can enrich and inform our current design knowledge, especially in the context of projected rapid urbanization due to increased migrant flows. Using the concepts of deterritorialization, reterritorialization, and appropriation we can explore how uprooted sociocultural traditions have reinserted themselves into a new geographic fabric creating a hybrid milieu that constitutes the migrant experience. In an attempt to enhance this and create culturally responsive design for groups such as West Indian Immigrants in New York, an architectural tool kit of decentralized urban interventions is employed to construct this new identity from physical fragments of urban phenomena – an architectural assemblage. Sited in Flatbush, a West-Indian enclave in Brooklyn, New York this project explores ways in which designers can interface with issues of identity to create more nuanced experiences through design. Through the lens of an adaptive-reuse, mixed-used development based on West-Indian cultural practice we see how design can be abstract, yet specific enough to accommodate a particular way of life and dull the homogenizing forces of globalization on the built environment.

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

From prompts to share, update, and retweet, social media platforms increasingly insist that creating widespread circulation is the operative goal for networked writing. In response, researchers from multiple disciplines have investigated digital circulation through a number of lenses (e.g., affect theory, transnational feminism, political economy, public sphere theory, and more). In rhetoric and writing studies, scholars have argued that writing for circulation—i.e., envisioning how one's writing may gain speed, distance, and momentum—should be a prime concern for teachers and researchers of writing (e.g., Gries, 2015; Ridolfo & DeVoss, 2009; Porter, 2009; Sheridan, Ridolfo, & Michel, 2012). Such work has suggested that circulation is a consequence of rhetorical delivery and, as such, is distinctly about futurity. While a focus on writing for circulation has been productive, I argue that that writing in circulation can be equally productive. Challenging the tendency to position circulation as an exclusive concern for delivery, this project argues that circulation is not just as an end goal for rhetorical activity but also as a viable inventional resource for writers with diverse rhetorical goals. To make this case, I construct a methodology of assemblage to retell stories of tactical rhetorics. Grounded in the cultural notion of metis (an adaptable, embodied, and wily intelligence), the framework of tactical rhetorics seeks to describe embodied practices that pull materials out of circulation, reconfigure them, and redeploy them for new, often political effects. Blending historical inquiry with case-based methods, I assemble an array of stories that include practices of critical imitation, collage, tactical media, remix, digital hijacks, and protest bots. In retelling these stories, I show how tactical approaches are inventive in their attempts to solve problems, effect change, or call out injustice. In the process, my project pushes toward a critical circul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Porter (Advisor); Heidi McKee (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Michele Simmons (Committee Member); James Coyle (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Intellectual Property; Multimedia Communications; Rhetoric

MFA, Kent State University, 2015, College of the Arts / School of Art

Skeleton Woman: Embracing the Unknown Allows for Surprises was a temporary installation that explored a chaotic, whimsical and intuitive visual language. The theme Skeleton Woman, refers to an allegory about the Life/Death/Life cycle and the transformation of fear into love. I used assemblage, mural painting and drawing to explore issues of beauty and non beauty as well as the presence and acceptance of dysfunction. The chaotic display of objects, drawings, lines and textures gave way to an underlying, rhythmic order. I intended to express personal struggle and transcendence through my own visual and material sensibilities and I allowed the viewer to completely immersed in that process.

Committee: Gianna Committo (Advisor); Darice Polo (Committee Member); Martin Ball (Committee Member); Janice Lessman-Moss (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

BA, Oberlin College, 1963, Geology

Precambrian microfossils discovered in nonferruginous charts of the lower "algal" members of the Gunflint formation of southern Ontario are of great interest in the evolutionary scheme of primitive life. The environment of deposition of the deposit, and the indigenous and biogenic nature of the microfossil assemblage are considered. A discussion of the small but diversified assemblage, including twelve micro-forms, seven of which have not previously been reported, is presented.

Committee: Anthony Gordon (Advisor); James Powell (Advisor) Subjects: Geology

MFA, Kent State University, 2013, College of the Arts / School of Art

What Lies Within or Beneath is a reference to the nature of memory; how it is absorbed into the places one inhabits, and then recalled through signifiers. My work is both an exploration of these signifiers, which create a metaphorical representation of a dwelling, and a dialogue about the construction of a painting. Because of this, the process I utilize must reflect the individuality of each dwelling, and my understanding that drawing, painting, and three-dimensional collage are all equally important constructed components. In my thesis work, I combine various materials to construct visual metaphors of specific dwelling places.

Committee: Darice Polo M.F.A. (Advisor) Subjects: Ancient History; Architectural; Fine Arts

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The process of designing with scrap materials presents opportunities for improvisation and play, something that has become lost in contemporary building culture. There are obvious benefits to standardized building products, but there is a lack of material engagement in the process. A marked benefit of recycling scraps is that as a strategy for design it increases the engagement of the designer with these materials, because they must be dealt with on their own terms. The kinds of material scraps that have no steward and that are so problematic because of their awkward state of in-between-ness are the most compelling, because they are rife with potential and there is nothing to lose, and so much to gain, in taking them in and allowing their strange beauty to lead the way. A material palette based upon beautifully problematic scraps must therefore also include the inordinate number of vacant buildings that litter the urban fabric. The re-imagining of these scraps will form the basis of an architectural design process developed from a kinesthetic and dialogical engagement with these materials. A process of designing that exalts idiosyncrasies and simple processes of fabrication will be used to show off the unexpected agility and vitality of materials that were once considered trash. The result is an architecture that has grown out of a dialogical process and is therefore more grounded, and more accessible to the user.

Committee: George Bible MCiv.Eng (Committee Chair); Aarati Kanekar PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2006, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Art History

The work of John Chamberlain (b. 1927) was a unique manifestation of sculpture that occurred during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Seen in a continuum beginning with Abstract Expressionist Painting, building to Chamberlain's assemblages, and ending with Happenings, the artists of this period were striving to make an art of the everyday, and Chamberlain's work was representative as such. The idea of the everyday is that it is in constant change and that objects we encounter on a daily basis deliver signs of their placement in the social hierarchy, according to sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Chamberlain's assemblages are constructed from automobile detritus, and therefore have associations with the automobile and everything that automobiles represent. Along with an in-depth discussion of the social, political, and economic conditions of possibility surrounding the creation of Chamberlain's work, this thesis will also offer the first comprehensive assessment of critical response to Chamberlain's early work.

Committee: Kimberly Paice (Advisor) Subjects:

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Arts and Sciences : Geology

To better understand the processes that produce time-averaged fossil assemblages, paleontologists have long investigated the formation of subfossil assemblages on modern seafloors. Generally, it has been demonstrated that these assemblages faithfully reflect the living assemblages and benthic environments from which they were derived. Nevertheless, they may typically contain skeletal material that is hundreds to thousands of years old, and few researchers have considered how subfossil assemblages change over time in response to environmental transitions that alter life assemblages. In this investigation, I evaluate the degree of temporal stability among subfossil molluscan assemblages over a span of some two decades in Smuggler's Cove, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. A transect sampled initially by Miller in 1979-1980 was reestablished approximately and resampled during 2002. The transect paralleled a gradient of decreasing seagrass cover and increasing bioturbation by the decapod crustacean Callianassa. Subfossil molluscan samples and benthic vegetation counts were taken at 30 m lateral intervals for direct comparison with data from Miller's study. Results demonstrate that, after 22 years, species richness and composition of subfossil molluscan communities continue to reflect the fundamental environmental gradient, characterized by a transition from herbivorous gastropods and lucinid bivalves in seagrass beds to actively burrowing bivalves and predatory gastropods in bioturbated zones containing less seagrass. However, the abundance of key taxa changed significantly along the transect during the intervening period; these differences can be recognized in both the subfossil and living assemblages. Most notably, there was a significant decline throughout the study area of the previously ubiquitous grazing gastropod, Cerithium litteratum, and an increase in the abundance of another grazing gastropod, Tricolia affinis. These results indicate that subfossil assemblages are (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Arnold I. Miller (Advisor) Subjects: Paleoecology; Paleontology

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2011, English (as a Second Language)

In recent ESL research, there has been a move away from grammar-based approaches for teaching students and more focus on content. Victor Yngve (1996) has stated such findings in Hard Science Linguistics, arguing that language is not a physical, real world property. What is real world are assemblages of people and their environment linked together. However, many language classrooms still adopt the grammar-based approach to learning. The problem is that while they may turn in grammatically polished classroom papers it is still possible to leave the classroom setting without being able to communicate with speakers of the target language. In response to the communication vs. language conflict, a study has been done that applies each of these teaching methods into slideshows for English as a Second Language (ESL) purposes. The study intended to show that context through communicating—as opposed to grammar lessons through language—is what a student needs when encountering a different language. The two slideshows for this study tested students' memory of the material, in this case a story that takes place between a server and a customer inside a restaurant. The subjects consisted of Second Language Learners (SLLs) and Foreign Language Learners (FLLs) from a university. The test consisted of multiple choice questions that tested subjects' knowledge of the content of the lesson they had witnessed (only one of two lessons was selected for each session). The test was created to determine the communicative effectiveness of that particular lesson. It is hoped that the lessons demonstrate a clear contrast between instruction using language and instruction focused on people communicating, and that this will encourage the growth of communication among teachers and students in ESL classrooms.

Committee: Dr. Douglas Coleman PhD (Committee Chair); Dr. Berhane Teclehaimanot PhD (Committee Member); Dr. Dwayne DeMedio EdD (Committee Member) Subjects: English As A Second Language

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, Art

Over the past few years my practice has been focused on and informed by images from warzones throughout the world. As an American civilian, I have come of age with an awareness of my tacit participation in warfare that I never witness first hand. Rather than as an event, war operates on the periphery, a vague affect diffused into the everyday. I wish to implicate myself as a participant as well as a spectator, an artist engaged in violence. The following paper is broken into to main sections. The first examines the experience of viewing the images of the dead on the battlefield, and the relationship between the viewer and the image referent that develops from that encounter. The second half examines a selection of my own artworks. A close examination of these works serves as a way to expand and reexamine the concepts contained in the first half. In conclusion I summarize my practice as an effort in “turning towards” the war victim.

Committee: Laura Lisbon (Advisor); Michael Mercil (Committee Member); George Rush (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Art Education

This dissertation examines the idea that the identity of Indian artist educators and consequently Indian art education is an assemblage of socio-cultural and ideological experience and influence, and of disciplinary transgressions into pedagogical borderlands. The primary source for the concept of assemblage as employed in this study is the writing of Deleuze and Guattari. I identify and analyze three assemblages of identity, namely: a) postcolonial self-consciousness, b) disciplinary organization, and c) social organization, to consider how art education might be approached ‘other'wise in theory and practice. This analysis is based on narratives of learning, teaching and ideology that emerge in engaging composite voices of urban Indian art educators on their practice, with articulations of policy and curriculum voices. I employ a conceptual framework of ontological hybridity that folds Indian Vedanta philosophy onto concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, such as assemblage, rhizome, and space. I do so in context of developments in curriculum and pedagogy in art education on disciplinary and social levels. I place my dissertation within the discourse of postcolonial globalization theory, exploring the concept of ambivalence in relation to identity. I employ a methodology located in the borderlands of narrative inquiry and grounded theory.

Committee: Kevin Tavin PhD (Advisor); Sydney Walker PhD (Committee Member); Christine Ballengee-Morris PhD (Committee Member); Deborah Smith-Shank PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Education Philosophy; Multicultural Education; Pedagogy; South Asian Studies; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

In an expanding technological ecology, the spaces of learning in art education require a new appraisal of the role that visual technologies serve to learners. Through intersections of actor-network theory and theories of visuality from visual culture studies, this research focuses on developing a social ontology to investigate the role that the visual technology Photoshop plays in collaborating with users within a human-technological hybrid. In a role reversal, for this research I become the instrument of research and Photoshop becomes the focus of a non-human ethnographic inquiry that utilizes an ontological framework to consider how technology performs with us and not on us. This symmetry between human and non-humans in a social ontology generates the complexity of Photoshop in a heterogeneous network formation of agencies, through more than its instrumentality, by seeing it working with me in the production of digital visual culture.

Committee: Kevin Tavin (Committee Chair); Sydney Walker (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer (Committee Member); Robert Sweeny (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Comparative Studies

The disciplinary technology of pacification works as a tool, embedded within the logistical assemblage of liberalism, which works to maintain lines of force necessary for reproducing liberalism's conditions for existence. Chapter One develops this conceptual framework, situating my approach in relation to Foucaultian scholarship on biopolitics and war. The proceeding chapters are an exploration of two different cases that demonstrate radically different contexts in which the pacification-assemblage-force assemblage is mobilized. In Chapter Two, I consider smart bombs as a disciplinary technology of pacification within the assemblage of ‘virtuous war', tracing effects of the affective force of the bombs. And Chapter Three is a criticism of the current national anti-war strategy and concludes with a brief suggestion on a new paradigm – affectivism – that recenters a politics of resistance on deploying minor knowledge to produce new potentialities. Each one of the three elements of the triad, the disciplinary technology of pacification, the form of the concrete assemblage, and schematically mapping the topography of lines of force, are crucial components to the political analytics.

Committee: Eugene W. Holland (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Geography; Philosophy; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Natural Resources

Stream organisms have a complex relationship with the habitats they occupy, and their relationships can vary greatly across spatial, temporal, or taxonomic scales. Anthropogenic modification of ecosystems generally causes alteration to the temporal regime of natural variation and disturbance. The effects of timber harvesting on stream systems have been studied extensively in the Pacific Northwest and Northeast of the United States, and indicate long-term deleterious effects. These disturbances resulted in increase in sediment, discharge, temperature, and decrease in dissolved oxygen levels. Although stream ecosystems are a product of historic geologic and climatologic attributes, large-scale human disturbances can change the landscape. Over the past 200 years the forestlands of the southeastern Gulf Coastal Plain ecoregion of the United States has experienced extensive pressure primarily from timber harvesting. In spite of the known deleterious effects of timber harvesting on lotic systems, this region has not received much attention. In this study, macroinvertebrates and fish were used to quantify the effects of timber harvesting, and its major byproduct, road crossing, in headwater streams in westcentral Louisiana. The comparative study of macroinvertebrate assemblages during the pre-, during-, and post- timber harvest years did not show any significant difference. Neither was there a significant different in macroinvertebrate assemblage between the reference stream and streams with varying levels of timber harvest activities. Although no significant difference was detected in macroinvertebrate taxa at the annual scale, a significant seasonal difference was detected. Similarly, scaling down from stream level to mesohabitat level, significant difference was detected at smaller scale. This is suggestive of assemblages responding to smaller temporal and spatial scales structured to the biogeographic history. The effects of road crossings on fish movement were signifi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lance Williams (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2011, Film Scholarship (Fine Arts)

This thesis examines the roles of gay black men in three HBO programs: Six Feet Under, The Wire, and True Blood. Whereas such characters have always been stereotyped and ridiculed in the past, HBO has made strides forward thanks to its commitment to being on the cutting edge of narrative television. Drawing on Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages, the thesis argues that Omar Little of The Wire, and to a lesser extent Lafayette Reynolds of True Blood, add new dimensions of representation by presenting their queerness as an assemblage of diverse factors, rather than an intersection of discrete categories. Keith Charles of Six Feet Under is presented as a counterexample - a positive representation, but safer and less groundbreaking than those who came after.

Committee: Louis-Georges Schwartz PhD (Advisor); Ofer Eliaz PhD (Committee Member); Gary Holcomb PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American Studies; Black Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Performing Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2010, Botany

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi form mutualistic symbioses with woody trees and shrubs allowing for an increase in water and nutrient uptake. The absence of these microbes may contribute to seedling mortality and the arrested succession observed in barren landscapes and grasslands in Ohio. The central objective of this dissertation was to develop planting methodologies to accelerate succession by woody tree establishment; specifically by maximizing the effectiveness of ECM root colonization. American chestnut and chestnut hybrids were used to describe host response to root colonization in both abandoned and reclaimed mine sites in central Ohio. A set of experiments was designed to test the influence existing vegetation, site selection, soil modification, and the addition of ECM inoculum may have on seedling establishment in former mine sites. I investigated the influence existing vegetation had on germination and survival of chestnut in an abandoned mine site. Three areas were assessed: center, areas that had monoculture plantings of Pinus virginiana, and forest edges. Small monoculture plantings of pines had a greater facultative effect on the germination and survival of deciduous hardwood seedlings than did the forest edge; presumably by alleviating negative density-dependent factors. Importantly, pine and chestnut shared ECM symbionts. This provided an ECM propagule source to chestnut and resulted in an increase in seedling biomass, which may have contributed to the increase in survival after two years. In reclaimed mines, heavy equipment and the use of exotic species as cover crops have resulted in severely compacted soils with aggressive herbaceous canopies. I evaluated surface soil treatments, which included deep ripping and traditional plow and disking, as ways to remediate these mine lands in arrested succession. These methods were very successful in alleviating compaction and disturbing the aggressive herbaceous canopy, thereby promoting chestnut seedling e (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Carolyn Keiffer Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nicholas Money (Committee Co-Chair); David Gorchov (Committee Member); Richard Moore (Committee Member); Thomas Crist (Committee Member) Subjects: Botany