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The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between Christian and humanistic themes within the four large frescoes that Raphael painted in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace. Through this examination I plan to demonstrate how the interrelation of these two seemingly contradictory themes was critical for the political aims and papal identity of the patron, Pope Julius II. I will argue that Julius commissioned the decoration of the stanza as a means of asserting his papal authority and presenting an identification of himself as the new Julius Caesar who ushered in a new Roman Golden Age. I will discuss the composition and iconography of the frescoes, the life of Pope Julius II, and Roman humanism in the Early Modern Period, in an attempt to prove that the representation and collaboration of the themes of humanism and Christianity were essential to Julius’s political strategies and identity-formation.

Nursing is a profession that involves caring for people from all different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, races, and religions. The world is full of unique individuals. One unifying factor for all people is that everyone has needs. In nursing, most of the care needs are physical and psychosocial needs. However, each person has spiritual needs. Nurses are expected to provide holistic care to their patients; thus the spiritual matters cannot be divorced from the physical and psychosocial ones. Since patients do need spiritual care, nurses have a unique opportunity to minister to these individuals. Nurses are also placed in a position that allows them to minister to the family and friends of their patients. Currently, some concerns focus on how nurses should care for spiritual needs. There have also been some suggestions made toward improving spiritual care. This thesis will explore why nursing should be a ministry and how to minister best to patients.

GILLESPIE, JESSICA L. “Loved to Stayed On Like It Once Was†: Southern Appalachian People’s Responses to Socio-Economic Change—The New Deal, the War on Poverty, and the Rise of Tourism. (Under the direction of Dr. Craig Thompson Friend.)   Over the course of the twentieth century, southern Appalachian residents have been defined and described primarily by outside observers: travel writers, benevolent workers, politicians, government bureaucrats, and historians. While these onlookers have filled volumes with accounts of mountain residents, their accounts are often stereotypical: the mountaineer as backward, isolated, fatalistic, acquiescent, atomistic, or poverty-stricken. In all of these portrayals, outsiders defined Appalachia as a region needing to change and fall into line with mainstream America. In order to achieve such change, major efforts to develop Appalachia began in the earliest decades of the twentieth century, comprised of both governmental programs and partnerships between government and private interests.   Government and private developers seldom considered residents’ thoughts or opinions and adopted the pervasive cultural stereotypes as fact, designing projects with such ideas of locals in mind. Historians, too, have often repeated these time-worn stereotypes or overlooked local sentiment on such widespread development efforts. Local residents have often been portrayed as passively adapting to events that affected their lives and as reticent to create or shape their own futures. Southern Appalachian residents, however, did in fact possess and voice strong feelings on social and economic development programs. This thesis concentrates on the rich variety of local residents’ responses to two New Deal programs—the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority—as well as President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and the tourism industry that developed over the past two centuries and continues to play a major role in southern Appalachian economics. Such development efforts reshaped the region, affecting individual lives, communities, and the mountain landscape itself.   Locals responded differently to each development effort, based on such variables as individual economic circumstances, social class, location, and occupation. They also voiced their reactions in a myriad of ways. In all instances, locals retained and defined their own identities and ideals through their reactions, openly declaring what was important to them: land and community. In their responses to the New Deal, War on Poverty, and the mountain tourism industry, southern Appalachian residents refuted pervasive stereotypes of the mountaineer while defending their own cultural values. Such engagement demonstrates how mountain residents actively preserved their traditions while shaping their own futures.