New Releases by Melissa Jo

I censused for red-headed woodpeckers and measured habitat characteristics on 100 golf courses in central and northern Ohio from May-August 2002 and 2003. I also located 49 nests and measured surrounding habitat characteristics (i.e., nest patch) and monitored 16 of these nests to determine nesting success on golf courses. Red-headed woodpeckers were detected on 26% of golf courses and were positively associated with large (49 cm diameter at breast height) mast trees (e.g., Quercus spp.), snags (= 16 cm dbh and = 2 m tall), and dead limbs (= 30 cm dbh) at both the golf course and nest patch scale. Sixty-seven percent of nests were located in dead limbs of living trees, suggesting that snags are not the only nesting substrates used by red-headed woodpeckers. Landscape context was important, with 33% of golf courses in rural areas having red-headed woodpeckers, versus only 16% of courses located in urban areas (i.e., within town or city limits). No significant associations were identified between the number of red-headed woodpeckers and European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) or house sparrows (Passer domesticus) from the surveys. Twelve of 16 golf course nests (75%) monitored over two years successfully fledged young, and this success rate was comparable to birds nesting off courses (n= 11, 73% success).

This study documents how Isabella Andreini used her profession, her writings, and her social associations to create and present an image that reconciled her public persona as an actress and author with the culturally accepted, private image of woman. Further, this study shows that Isabella Andreini adopted numerous strategies, both on-stage and off, to construct an image that transcended gender, and which gave her professional and social mobility. I have argued that Isabella also constructed this image in such a way that would ensure her survival beyond her own time. Her actions on both the personal and societal levels revealed that she acted deliberately and calculatedly in all aspects of her life to achieve her goals. Using the traditional methodologies of historiography this study looks at Isabella''s performances, her writings, and her personal relationships to show how gender is constructed, consciously and unconsciously, as a strategy for survival within a given culture. I examine the conditions that caused, or allowed the creation of a representation of woman as a public figure, and the ways in which she could and could not manipulate that representation. This study is concerned with representation, with the relation between the image Isabella created and what--in the world of cinquecento Italy--the image represented. At issue here is how Isabella both resisted and reinforced cultural constructions and how she represented her revisions of those constructions in the image she created--in how she reimagined herself.