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The Black Baptist Denomination Of South Carolina: A Social Capital Analysis, Sheila Snoddy Dec 2014

The Black Baptist Denomination Of South Carolina: A Social Capital Analysis, Sheila Snoddy

All Dissertations

The question of the Black church's relevancy, power, and influence has been at the forefront of theological and social debates since the Civil Rights era. The continuation of these debates in the 21st century has postulated that today's Black church has become less theologically grounded and less vision-driven in initiatives and movements and is becoming ineffective advocates in addressing the social ills and challenges that cripple the upward mobility of individuals and communities. This study attempts to support the hypothesis that the Black church still possesses the relevancy, power, and influence as a vital and progressive community institution for positive …


Sustenance, Brenton Pafford Dec 2014

Sustenance, Brenton Pafford

All Theses

Utilizing the ceramic process I create objects that facilitate experiences in the domestic space. Developing sculptural elements that evoke memory traces, and in heightening the everyday to an aesthetic, I place value on the overlooked, under-thought items that sustain existence. 'It is the realm of these submerged memory-traces that creative art moves, bringing them into the orbit of everyday life and making them available to the experience of others by formalizing and projecting them onto elements of the familiar world which can receive and transmit them.' - Rawson The objects I created for this exhibition are rooted in memory traces, …


Invisible Labor And The Preservation Of Dignity, Laken Bridges Dec 2014

Invisible Labor And The Preservation Of Dignity, Laken Bridges

All Theses

My art seeks to question the social value of labor. Throughout history, labor hierarchies influenced by social class and economic stigmas have informed how laborers are viewed in the United States. Physical jobs such as menial and domestic work are a common form of invisible labor that experience debasement and stereotyping. In my art, I use labor-based and ordinary objects as a metaphor for the worker, linking the value or disposability of the object to the societal value of labor. This critique of labor is enhanced by the manipulation of text, by the formal tools of scale and perspective, and …


Jean-Luc Godard And Francois Truffaut: The Influence Of Hollywood, Modernization And Radical Politics On Their Films And Friendship, Caroline Glenn Dec 2014

Jean-Luc Godard And Francois Truffaut: The Influence Of Hollywood, Modernization And Radical Politics On Their Films And Friendship, Caroline Glenn

All Theses

During the late 1950's the French film industry's hard-won financial stability during the Occupation and liberation years had all but disappeared. Combined with the dwindling, unpredictable nature of French audiences, the multi-star, literary adaptation dramas French studios produced were no longer reliable. In response to these dilemmas a transformation took place in French cinema. Known as the nouvelle vague (or French New Wave), the movement was largely, but not completely, a reaction to France's declining film industry. The nation as a whole was undergoing significant change and growth during the 1950s. From the Algerian conflict, the Fourth Republic's collapse and …


What Adds Up To Being: The Work Of Tanna Burchinal, Tanna L. Burchinal Dec 2014

What Adds Up To Being: The Work Of Tanna Burchinal, Tanna L. Burchinal

All Theses

My practice takes form around embodied experience. I affect signifiers of the human body within the ordered grid, the scientific text, and the logic of the machine, to highlight the interdependencies of physical bodies and those social constructs that produce and influence identity. We are a part of these constructs that both extend and limit; we are enacting and interacting with them. I do not aim to eradicate these structures of power (without them, our identities are in chaos). Instead, I point out the pitfalls of these constructs that are perceived as unchanging, by making interaction and experience integral to …


Popular American News Media Explained Through Visual Arts: Using Drawing As A Tool For Humorous And Obligatory Cultural Critique, Joel Murray Dec 2014

Popular American News Media Explained Through Visual Arts: Using Drawing As A Tool For Humorous And Obligatory Cultural Critique, Joel Murray

All Theses

Through my drawings, I focus on jostling the passive American viewer out of her/his complacent acceptance of the images delivered by popular media outlets. Using humor as a multi-functional tool, I combine and reinterpret recognizable media artifacts to comment on the content that makes up American culture. This body of work is a cultural critique, pitting the ridiculous and superficial entertainment we (Americans) so easily ingest against current and crucial moments in time (i.e: political protests, violence, death, etc). Often times, the current media landscape is saturated with fast-cycling images and stories that do not promote careful contemplation. Instead, these …


Liminal, Nina Kawar Dec 2014

Liminal, Nina Kawar

All Theses

Throughout life everyone experiences both physical and psychological pains and adversities. In time, the body, mind and spirit are capable of healing. It is within this liminal space between infliction and renewal that the self endures an elusive process that is part of the human condition. Within my installation I have constructed a metaphor for the physical and psychological stages of healing through form, materials, color and process. The spatial environment evokes the literal and metaphorical notion of restoration through a visual, olfactory and physical experience. As the viewer navigates the space, it is the fragmentation and suggestion of form …


Getting Sandy: Creating Collapsing Sand Effects For An Ode To Love, Pisut Wisessing Aug 2014

Getting Sandy: Creating Collapsing Sand Effects For An Ode To Love, Pisut Wisessing

All Theses

This thesis presents an artistic approach of creating collapsing sand effects in Brown Bag Films' animated short, An Ode To Love, directed by Matthew Darragh. A combination of rigid body simulation and fluid simulation tools, which are available in Houdini 3D animation software version 13, was used to successfully complete the task. A detailed design and implementation process to achieve the effects is documented in this work.


Silver Hair On The Silver Screen: Adaptations Of Jane Austen's Older Women, Hilary Richards Aug 2014

Silver Hair On The Silver Screen: Adaptations Of Jane Austen's Older Women, Hilary Richards

All Theses

Three adaptations of Jane Austen novels were produced between 1995 and 1999. These late 90s films represented a set of romantic comedies created in the style of heritage cinema. In adapting Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park, filmmakers reshaped the older women supporting characters in order to better fit the generic conventions of romantic comedies. Romantic comedies of the 1990s relied on a narrow view of the marriage plot whereby the focus in wholly on the courtship process of a predominately affluent, white, heterosexual couple. By excising the roles of the older women, Mrs. Jennings, Miss Bates, and Mrs. …


Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies And Words, Patricia Fancher Aug 2014

Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies And Words, Patricia Fancher

All Dissertations

This Dissertation analyzes the life and writing of inventor and scientist Alan Turing in order to identify and theorize chiasmic relations between bodies and texts. Chiasmic rhetoric, as I develop throughout the Dissertation, is the dynamic processes between materials and discourses that interact to construct powerful rhetorical effect, shape bodies, and also compose new knowledges. My research here extends our knowledge of the rhetoric of science by demonstrating the ways that Alan Turing's embodied experiences shape his rhetoric. Turing is an unusual figure for research on bodily rhetoric and embodied knowledge. He is often associated with disembodied knowledge and as …


'There Is A School We Love In Dixie Land': The History Of Greenville High, Boyd Johnson Aug 2014

'There Is A School We Love In Dixie Land': The History Of Greenville High, Boyd Johnson

All Theses

The history of Greenville High School began in the Progressive Era and was built largely upon the progressive education ideas of that period. The entire history reflects much of the same philosophical underpinnings that brought about the genesis of the school. The ideals of the progressives and especially those of John Dewey, one of the premier progressives, are evident in the community activities, the sports program, the academic curricula, outstanding alumni and faculty, and the struggle for desegregation at GHS. Through an examination of yearbooks, syllabi, newspapers, the Wall of Fame at Greenville High School, and textbooks used at the …


Acoustic Scattering And Radiation Response Of Circular Hexagonal And Auxetic Honeycomb Shell Structures, Vaibhav Iyer Aug 2014

Acoustic Scattering And Radiation Response Of Circular Hexagonal And Auxetic Honeycomb Shell Structures, Vaibhav Iyer

All Theses

Sandwich panels with honeycomb cores are used in many engineering applications because of their high strength to weight ratio, vibration isolation and sound transmission loss characteristics. Previous studies indicate that such sandwich structures with auxetic honeycomb cores (negative in-plane Poisson's ratio) can have a higher sound transmission loss compared to a regular hexagonal honeycomb core structure. In this study, sound scattering and acoustic radiation characteristics of sandwich structures with hexagonal and auxetic cores arranged in a circular pattern interacting with exterior acoustic domains of both air and water have been investigated using finite element analysis. A novel in-plane honeycomb geometry …


Efficient Control Of Assets In A Modern Production Pipeline, Timothy Curtis May 2014

Efficient Control Of Assets In A Modern Production Pipeline, Timothy Curtis

All Theses

Managing large collections of assets created in today's CG productions is no easy task. This thesis examines basic production hierarchies and identifies problems that arise without proper workflow and asset control. The possibility of hundreds of assets being created in several workflows each week creates the potential for extraordinary time waste and user error without a system to track and manage the files being produced. It is becoming increasingly necessary to utilize methods during production that enforce naming and storage standards to prevent catastrophic data loss. This thesis presents an implementation of a customized database used to track all of …


A Memento Of Complexity: The Rhetorics Of Memory, Ambience, And Emergence, Glen Southergill May 2014

A Memento Of Complexity: The Rhetorics Of Memory, Ambience, And Emergence, Glen Southergill

All Dissertations

Drawing from complexity theory, this dissertation develops a schema of rhetorical memory that exhibits extended characteristics. Scholars traditionally conceptualize memory, the fourth canon in classical rhetoric, as place (loci) or image (phantasm). However, memory rhetoric resists the traditional loci-phantasm framework and instead emerges from enmeshments of interiority, collectivity, and technology. Emergence considers the dynamics of fundamental parts that generate complex systems and offers a methodological lens to theorizing memory. The resulting construct informs everyday life, which includes interfacing with pervasive computing or sensing familiarity. Further, congruently with a neurological turn that contradicts simplification, this dissertation resituates rhetorical memory as generative …


After Thirty Years: The Falklands War Of 1982, Katelyn Tietzen May 2014

After Thirty Years: The Falklands War Of 1982, Katelyn Tietzen

All Theses

By law, the British government seals all cabinet and other important government documents until after thirty years passes. In 2012, the 'thirty-year rule' expired for all documents pertaining to the Falklands War of 1982. There is already an enormous amount of material written about the war but these released documents provide new insight. Lasting only one hundred days, the war was kicked off when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, or known in Argentina as las Malvinas, on 2 April 1982. Located in the very South Atlantic and four hundred miles east of Argentina, the British launched their largest naval task …


Night's End, Michael Whiteside May 2014

Night's End, Michael Whiteside

All Theses

The following work has two chapters; the first is a short story entitled 'Night's End,' and the second is a short essay entitled 'The Dilemma of Evil in Donald Ray Pollock's 'Dynamite Hole.'' 'Night's End' is loosely based on a true story. To respect the parties involved, I will not mention their names. The events are fictional, and deal with people's potential for corrosive, immoral action. The story depicts an evening in the life of Jennie Weston, a woman whose husband has cheated on her and left home. Her daughter, Becky, runs away soon thereafter to live with her boyfriend, …


Lanyer's Virtual Community: The Defense Of Female Community In Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Megan Roberts May 2014

Lanyer's Virtual Community: The Defense Of Female Community In Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Megan Roberts

All Theses

This thesis discusses how Aemilia Lanyer's poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum represents a virtual space that allows for female community among women who share similar ideals. The three main areas of investigation are the dedications that serve as a structural community for her dedicatees, Christ and his disciples' community breaking down, and Eve's thwarted community in Eden. Christ is a feminized figure in Lanyer's poem who gives women a representative in the Bible, and his interactions with his disciples are something that scholars of Lanyer's work have not discussed. Lanyer's section on Eve is often dissected for its protofeminist, or …


Meshpotato: A C++/Python Api For Production Volumetric Rendering, Kevin Coley May 2014

Meshpotato: A C++/Python Api For Production Volumetric Rendering, Kevin Coley

All Theses

MeshPotato is a production volume rendering API written in C++. Its purpose is to simplify the creation of high quality volumetric effects such as fire, smoke, clouds and explosions. MeshPotato has been designed to be extensible and flexible for quick changes. Python bindings have been implemented with this library to allow for tools that are scripted and integrated within popular 3D modeling applications such as Maya and Houdini. The design of MeshPotato is discussed along with its plugin system, volume rendering API and some results from using the tool.


An Automated Build System For Articulated Characters, James Sledge May 2014

An Automated Build System For Articulated Characters, James Sledge

All Theses

Rigging is the process of designing and implementing the manipulation architecture for an animated three-dimensional character. Rigs that give the animator the most control tend to be the most difficult to set up and maintain. Due to the linear nature of some elements of rigging, the more complicated a rig, the more time-intensive--and therefore more expensive--to achieve a high quality rig. A solution to complex rig iterability is to automate as much of the process as possible. The topic of this thesis is a framework for modular rigging automation, with a focus on quick and efficient rig iteration. A rigger …


'Meaning Strides Through These Poems': Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets And The Poetics Of Sociability, Joshua Martin May 2014

'Meaning Strides Through These Poems': Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets And The Poetics Of Sociability, Joshua Martin

All Theses

In the field of modern/postmodern poetry studies, the Second Generation New York School of poets has been, and continues to be, an undervalued aesthetic movement. Following the now famous First Generation New York School - a literary and artistic coterie containing the likes of Ashbery, O'Hara, and Pollock - the poets of the Second Generation lived, worked, and often died in New York's Lower East Side and, in the process, emulated and altered the aesthetic of the First Generation. This thesis attempts to contextualize the achievements of the Second Generation New York School by focusing on the movement's de facto …


Without Words, Adrienne Lichliter May 2014

Without Words, Adrienne Lichliter

All Theses

My work seeks to question culture's occupation with the direct and conclusive, stirring the viewer away from immediate understanding in order to better grasp the pervasive vitality of the obscure. The thesis outlines the presence of the unclear in our lives and our lack of consideration of its importance due to an occupation with productivity. This argument is made with a body of non-objective artwork that presents visual and spatial ambiguities. By occupying paradoxes and indeterminate focal points, the art resists recognition and conclusion both formally and intellectually. The paper also discusses the importance of printmaking and restraint, requiring one …


Through Crimson Tides: Tarawa's Effect On Military Tactics And Public Perception Of War, Josh Hudak May 2014

Through Crimson Tides: Tarawa's Effect On Military Tactics And Public Perception Of War, Josh Hudak

All Theses

This study is on the battle of Tarawa, and how the battle altered military doctrine in amphibious warfare tactics and public perception of war. Tarawa was the first battle of its kind being the first amphibious assault against a fortified objective utilizing joint land, sea, and aerial attacks. It was also the first battle that was filmed from its beginning to its end and shown uncensored to the American public. This study will examine the historiography of the Battle for Tarawa, an overview of the fighting, and the aftermath of the battle. It will also examine the public's reaction to …


South Carolina Press Opinions Toward The Spanish-American War And Territorial Annexation Of 1898, Maria Cinquemani May 2014

South Carolina Press Opinions Toward The Spanish-American War And Territorial Annexation Of 1898, Maria Cinquemani

All Theses

Historians have contested the origins and aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898 for over a century. Whether in pursuit of political, economic, or humanitarian goals, the nation entered the war with Spain enthusiastically and emerged victorious, with several new annexed territories in its possession. One of the most important factors to the success of the war was the overwhelming public support, driven largely by the popular press and the famous 'yellow journalists' of the time. Despite being a brief war, historians have praised it as the event that united the North and South following the tensions of the Civil …


The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass May 2014

The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass

All Theses

Browning's fascination with the senses and the mind as determiners of reality floods his work. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,' in particular, offers a more complicated, sincere exploration of this topic that had become central to Victorian debate. As Browning acknowledges repeatedly through his poetry, the debate between sensory data (empiricism) and supersensory belief (idealism) could not be understood in clear-cut categories. In much of his poetry, however, he grounds these questions in deceptively simple discussions of mesmerism or the Victorian philosophy of the mind. Although those two topics may seem disparate to twenty-first century readers, Victorian belief …


Volumetric Cloud Rendering: An Animation Of Clouds, Zhaoxin Ye May 2014

Volumetric Cloud Rendering: An Animation Of Clouds, Zhaoxin Ye

All Theses

This paper demonstrates a production workflow for a volumetric-rendering-based short animation about clouds. The animation is based on the concept of a giant fish swimming in the sky from Zhuangzi's philosophical story. The algorithm and implementation for the modeling and rendering of clouds are also presented. A renderer was developed that uses the OpenVDB library for data storage, fast retrieving and grid manipulation. A user-friendly pipeline was also developed for cloud modeling and rendering, which used Python and XML for adjusting rendering parameters. The pipeline includes Maya to build the rough cloud model and Houdini to calculate the interior light …


Long-Term Multi-Dimensional Interactive Time-Lapse Photography Using Microsoft Kinect, Daniel Mccoy May 2014

Long-Term Multi-Dimensional Interactive Time-Lapse Photography Using Microsoft Kinect, Daniel Mccoy

All Theses

In this thesis, a method is presented for the capture and interactive presentation of long-term multi-dimensional time-lapse photography. Time-lapse capture is commonly used for the observation based study of relatively long term phenomena such as plant growth and weather patterns. In terms of filmic devices, the visual time compression effect is complementary to slow motion and is nearly as prevalent. In this project, commonly available camera and computer equipment is used to capture images autonomously with minimal system supervision. A set of images is established, using long term, short interval continuous capture at a fixed position. Results are presented demonstrating …


A Modernism Against Maestros: Horacio Quiroga And The Transnational Automaton, Jacqueline Fetzer May 2014

A Modernism Against Maestros: Horacio Quiroga And The Transnational Automaton, Jacqueline Fetzer

All Theses

In this paper I will explore the possibility that Horacio Quiroga's regional treatment of modernist themes is more than a creole adaptation or mimicry of the European maestros, instead placing Quiroga in dialogue with an international framework of contemporary texts that explore conflicting attitudes towards modernity through dark portrayals of science and technology. I focus on Quiroga's 1910 novella El hombre artificial (The Artificial Man), a text with an amalgamation of themes and plot devices that have caused the work itself to be dismissed for being of 'poor quality.' Yet these themes and formal features integrally connect Quiroga's novella to …


White Noise And Newer Media: The Prophetic Impact Of Jack's Avatars, Caleb Milligan May 2014

White Noise And Newer Media: The Prophetic Impact Of Jack's Avatars, Caleb Milligan

All Theses

In this paper, I analyze Don DeLillo's White Noise through a contemporary techno-literate approach that utilizes Internet and game studies to better understand its protagonist, Jack Gladney, and to reevaluate the novel's critical legacy. Jack is not a modernist living in a postmodern world, as critics like Tom LeClair, John Duvall, and Leonard Wilcox have claimed for the many years since the publication of this novel. Lacking the authentic consistency for such a title, he is instead a postmodern human simulacrum sampling different character types to avoid his lack of discernable self. In each role he plays, however, he is …


The Impact Of The American Invasion Of Grenada On Anglo-American Relations And The Deployment Of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces In Britain, Timothy Anglea May 2014

The Impact Of The American Invasion Of Grenada On Anglo-American Relations And The Deployment Of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces In Britain, Timothy Anglea

All Theses

This thesis studies the impact the American invasion of Grenada in 1983 had on Anglo-American relations and the deployment of cruise missiles in Britain. Anglo-American nuclear relations were dependent on a strong level of trust between the two governments. The deception employed by President Reagan's government in concealing American intentions concerning Grenada from the British government broke that trust. The American invasion also furthered doubts held by the general British population concerning the placement of American owned and operated cruise missiles on British soil. The deployment of Intermediate-Range Nuclear forces in Britain and Western Europe was crucial to Prime Minister …


Representations Of Rebellion: Slavery In Jamaica, 1823-1831, Paul Brown May 2014

Representations Of Rebellion: Slavery In Jamaica, 1823-1831, Paul Brown

All Theses

This thesis examines slavery in Jamaica between 1824 and 1831, primarily through the lens of rebellion and rebellious conspiracy. This study is largely based on legal documents, namely the criminal trials of slaves produced after the discovery of conspiracy plots to rebel in 1824 and the outbreak of a large-scale slave insurrection in 1831. While previous historians have provided rich analyses of the origins and causes of slave rebellions, this study attempts to disentangle the various representations and ideas of rebellion among slaves and slaveholders in Jamaica, and their larger implications for slavery in the British West Indies. I suggest …