Digital Commons Network^™

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

Online Social Breast-Working: Representations Of Breast Milk Sharing In The 21st Century, Cari L. Rotstein

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the controversial subject of online breast milk sharing through the lens of Social Positioning Theory and interpretative repertoire analysis. I examine medical statements, Facebook wall posts on the Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global group and selected Canadian provincial groups, as well as a selection of Canadian print news media coverage pertaining to milk sharing to discover how this practice is discussed. I argue that the medical literature discusses milk sharing as unsafe, informal, and a generally unacceptable means of obtaining breast milk, whereas the HM4HB group members discuss it as a safe, intimate experience between donor …

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

Religious Rebels: The Religious Views And Motivations Of Confederate Generals, Robert H. Croskery

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

During the American Civil War, widely held Christian values and doctrines affected Confederate generals’ understanding and conduct of the war. This study examines the extent and the manner of religion’s influence on the war effort and the minds and lives of Confederate generals. Letters, diaries, and memoirs are used in addition to war reports and secondary sources to understand the range and complexity of this topic. Based on the supposition that each person’s religion is a unique relationship between a human being and his or her Creator, this study analyses the uniqueness of the generals’ religious beliefs using biographical details. …

The Morning After A General Election: The Vice-Regal Perspective, Peter Neary

History Publications

Everywhere in Canada, election night now produces a television extravaganza, with the commentariat out in full force. The next day newspapers chime in with their reporting, as the country wakes up to further analysis of what has happened and what the future might bring. From the vice-regal perspective, however, the path to be followed after every election is always clear and always the same: the conventions of responsible government must be respected and politics eschewed. The vice-regal representative is the protector of the Constitution and not a political actor: the job is to follow convention, stay away from party strife, …

Toward A Dialogical Hermeneutic Of A Hindu-Christian: A Socio-Scientific Study Of Nepali Immigrants In Toronto, Surya Prasad Acharya

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In search of a hermeneutic that is dialogical, transcending one’s own realm of understanding to give enough space to the other, the theory of dialogical self provides a framework which is not only able to engage mutually incompatible traditions but inculcates a whole new insight into considering that the other is not completely external to the self. One of the most significant features of theory of dialogical self is that it is devised in the conviction that insight into the workings of the human self requires cross-fertilization between different fields. The thesis therefore employs social-psychology, religious studies, inter-cultural studies, theology …

Narrativity In Postmodern Music: A Study Of Selected Works Of Alfred Schnittke, Karen K. Ching

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The validity of music narratives has engendered much debate and research. This dissertation traces the development of narratology from its pre-structuralist phase to the post-structuralist phase where the discipline went through a narrative turn and blossomed into a broad-spectrum expansion that takes the form of interdisciplinary narratological studies such as music narratology. By adopting the viewpoints of postmodern philosophers and psychologists such as Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Ihab Hassan, Jean-François Lyotard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Carl Jung, we develop a cognitive narratological theory for postmodern music that is veracious both epistemologically and philosophically.

We then analyze formally and contextually four concertos by …

Ruining Representation In The Novels Of China Miéville: A Deleuzian Analysis Of Assemblages In Railsea, The Scar, And Embassytown, Kristen Shaw

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This work explores the social and political potentialities of body-assemblages in China Miéville‘s novels Railsea, The Scar and Embassytown. Using the theories of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari, my analysis focuses on the manner in which assemblages within these texts resist unification and reification under representational frameworks and forge new identities based on an ethical appreciation of difference, fluidity, and creative self-actualization. Whereas representational schemas privilege supposedly ahistorical, transcendent, and cognitive-based iterations of identity divorced from material contingencies, the assemblages at work in Railsea, The Scar, and Embassytown instead focus on embodied-knowledge and fluid, emergent notions …

Out Of Order: Thinking Through Robin Collyer, Discontent And Affirmation (1973-1985), Kevin A. Rodgers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation takes up a particular problematic between formal aesthetic content and discontent (political and aesthetic). This is done in two ways: directly through examining the work of Robin Collyer from 1973-1985 and the writings of Philip Monk, and indirectly through my own practice. While Part One is a written thesis, Part Two documents elements of my material practice developed over the course of my PhD studies: it is the research and working material culminating in the exhibition OUT OF ORDER. The period of time that I write about (1973-1985) and the location (Toronto) is one where thinking, …

Olympism, Ethics And The Rio 2016 Olympic Games Preparations: An Ethical Analysis, Dana Poeta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Olympism is the underlying philosophy of the modern Olympic Games. It provides the ethical foundation of the Olympic Movement. This thesis defends the maintenance of human rights as essential for the achievement of Olympism. The problem investigated and evaluated in this thesis is the preparation for the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. A critical analysis and account of the ethical demeanor in regard to the actualization of Olympism is provided. By comparing relevant current issues with past Olympic Games, the recurring problems in achieving Olympism are identified. The conclusion emphasizing the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) responsibility for ensuring that Olympism, …

Playing With The Other: The Stories Of Mu Xin And Vladimir Nabokov, Meng Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis studies the play of the Other in Vladimir Nabokov’s short story collection The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov and Mu Xin’s short story collection An Empty Room. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory on the genealogy of morality provides a framework for the research. This thesis explores the two writer’s representation of the other time, the other space, and the self as another, and extends the analysis in the thematic contexts of exile and memory. Examining how Nabokov and Mu Xin cope with “differences” arising in human existence, this thesis argues that such differences are fundamental to their artistic creation. By …

New York Beat: Collaborative Video And Filmmaking In The Lower East Side And The South Bronx From 1977-1984, Andrew G. Hicks

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the media, artists and creative practices that emerged in the New York City downtown art scene in the Lower East Side and the uptown hip-hop scene in the South Bronx during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I focus on independent public access television, video and under-researched ‘No Wave’ filmmakers Charlie Ahearn, Glenn O’Brien, Edo Bertoglio and others. I discuss how these disenfranchised, low-budget artists sought not to collapse their differences, but to explore the points of connection that engendered a form of artistic hybridity that negated both homogeneity and order. I argue that the narratives, aesthetics …

Outside Influences: Great War Experiences Along The Canada-U.S. Border, Brandon R. Dimmel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation provides a history of three border regions along the Canada-U.S. international boundary during the First World War era (1914-1918), including Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan; St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and Calais, Maine; and White Rock, British Columbia, and Blaine, Washington. It examines the development of cross-border economies and border-crossing cultures in these communities before this period and reveals how the war–and specifically U.S. neutrality–affected such transnational relationships. Furthermore, it investigates local reactions to wartime legislation designed to better monitor the cross-border movement of enemy aliens, undesirable immigrant groups, enlisted men, and, following the introduction of the Military Service …

Communicating Crimes: Covering Gangs In Contemporary Canadian Journalism, Chris Richardson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this integrated-article dissertation, I examine representations of gangs in Canadian journalism, focusing primarily on contemporary newspaper reporting. While the term “gang” often refers to violent groups of young urban males, it can also signify outlaw bikers, organized crime, terrorist cells, non-criminal social groups, and a wide array of other collectives. I build on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to probe this ambiguity, seeking to provide context and critical assessments that will improve crime reporting and its reception. In the course of my work, I examine how popular films like West Side Story inform journalists’ descriptions of gangs. Though reporters have …

Explanation In Science, James A. Overton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Scientific explanation is an important goal of scientific practise. Philosophers have proposed a striking diversity of seemingly incompatible accounts of explanation, from deductive-nomological to statistical relevance, unification, pragmatic, causal-mechanical, mechanistic, causal intervention, asymptotic, and model-based accounts. In this dissertation I apply two novel methods to reexamine our evidence about scientific explanation in practise and thereby address the fragmentation of philosophical accounts.

I start by collecting a data set of 781 articles from one year of the journal Science. Using automated text mining techniques I measure the frequency and distribution of several groups of philosophically interesting words, such as "explain", …

Thomas Hobbes On Punishment, Arthur L. Yates

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation constitutes a challenge to the orthodox interpretation of Thomas Hobbes’s theory of punishment. The tradition understands Hobbes to reject the view that subjects authorize the sovereign to punish them for transgressing the law. Instead, the tradition understands Hobbes to identify the right to punish with the sovereign’s right of war, a natural right that only the sovereign retains upon the institution of a Commonwealth. On the traditional account, the right to punish is not an essential attribute of sovereignty; rather, the right to inflict punishment belongs, not to the office of sovereignty, but to the natural person who …

The Sacramental Theology Of John Owen And John Calvin, David Van Eyk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis compares the theology of the Lord's Supper in the Reformed theologians John Owen (1616-1683) and John Calvin (1509-1564), and addresses the differences discerned between the two. The argument is that the Federal theology which undergirded Owen's theology led him to develop a problematic theology. Owen's theology of the Lord's Supper focuses attention on the atonement and on covenant obligations, whereas John Calvin, who was not encumbered by the assumptions of Federal theology, draws attention instead in his theology of the Lord's Supper to the believer's union with Christ, and to its soteriological implications. The thesis concludes that those …

Watching The Games: Critical Media Literacy And Students’ Abilities To Identify And Critique The Politics Of Sports, Raúl J. Feliciano Ortiz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Sport can be the source of fitter, healthier and better lifestyles. However, sport can also be a vehicle for the reproduction of problematic notions of gender, race, nationality, industry, et cetera. If people who consume and participate in sport are unequipped to identify and question these issues, they will continue reproducing these conceptions uncritically. As a proponent of Critical Media Literacy (CML), through this dissertation I encourage educators to teach students the skills and knowledge to recognize and critically assess these and other problematic discourses in sports media. In this dissertation, I set out to discover if adolescents possess …

Frontiers, Borders, Boundaries: Cross-Cultural Encounters In The New York City Reception Of La Fanciulla Del West, Kathryn Marie Fenton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation maps the responses to the world premiere of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West (10 December 1910, Metropolitan Opera House, New York City). It seeks to arrive at a deeper understanding of the opera’s ambivalent reception in the New York City musical press. From the vantage point of national musical identity, it analyzes the argumentation of the reviews and articles in the New York City newspapers from 1905-1911 and determines the themes and patterns that connect them. It then places the critical commentary into the larger contexts of both the New York City opera field of 1910 and the …

Hearing Women’S Voices: Understanding Women's Stories Of Violence From The Perspective Of Strength, Kayla M. Janes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to understand women's experiences of violence from the perspective of strength. Women who had experienced woman abuse participated, identifying common themes that emerged relating to their strengths and resilience that helped them survive their traumatic experiences, as well as their posttraumatic growth. Interviews were conducted with women who were involved in an adult education program for women who had experienced woman abuse. All of the women in this study were suffering distress and mental health concerns related to their experiences of violence; however all of them showed resilience and posttraumatic growth in areas of …

Charles Ives And Musical Borrowing, Allison C. Luff

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2 Concord Mass., 1840–1860 (1921) is considered by many scholars to be a transcendental work as it is dedicated to the four main transcendental scholars—Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott (and his family), and Thoreau—who resided in Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet Ives’s writings reveal the Sonata to have been a much more personal narrative in which the transcendental scholars serve the greater purpose of illustrating values, morals, and characteristics Ives found desirable in his own culture. Through an interrogation of the musical borrowings in the Concord Sonata and their multiple layers of extramusical association, I …

The Social Constract And Music Education: The Emergence Of Political Authority, Cathy Benedict

Music Education Publications

Social contract theory has been used to explain the origin, emergence and justification of governing authorities and as a way of “understanding the political relationships in which people already find themselves, including their obligation to obey the sovereign” (Newey, 2008, p. 133). It has also been used as a “nonliteral image [that is] useful in suggesting directions for social change”(Keeley, 1985, p. 241). Through the lens of social contract theory this article uncovers a series of questions that speak directly to music education in both the U.S. and Brazil. What is the nature of the relationship music educators have to …

Gender And Genre In Athletic Epigrams: The Case Of Kyniska (Ceg 820), Peter Miller

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

No abstract provided.

Tuning Into The Future: Informal Learning And Music Education, Ruth Wright, Carol Beynon, B. A. Younker, V. Meredith, Jennifer Hutchison, Leslie Linton

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

When adolescents are engaged in learning, research has shown a decrease in alcohol and drug use, higher retention rates and fewer failures throughout high school, lower rates of depression as well as lower rates of anti-social and criminal behaviours. Attention to student engagement with a priority on 21st century learning skills requires the examination of various pedagogies, including using informal learning practices as the foundation for instruction with adolescents in schools.

This pilot project targets Grade 7 to 10 students in two school settings where adolescent engagement is a priority; it examines the viability of implementing informal learning practices within …

The Invisible Genocide: An Analysis Of Abc, Cbs, And Nbc Television News Coverage Of The 1994 Genocide In Rwanda., Daniel C. Harvey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Previous scholarly studies of the relationship between the media and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda focus on the international newspaper coverage of the genocide, the use of print and radio hate propaganda by genocide perpetrators, and the international community’s refusal to jam RTLM’s hate radio broadcasts. Working at the intersection of genocide studies and media studies, this thesis contributes to the existing scholarly discourse by analyzing the daily content of the genocide on ABC, CBS, and NBC television news broadcasts between April 6, 1994 and July 18, 1994. I conclude that the American networks often used stereotypes that erroneously suggested …

Hazardous Experiments: The Elusive Prefaces Of William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth And Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jeffrey W. Miles

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study analyzes the prefaces of four Romantic-period writers: William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Historically, the preface can be traced back to the insinuatio of classical rhetoric, the purpose of which is to evade audience hostility for writers presenting a bad case. Given the repressive political and cultural atmosphere of the Romantic period, writers like Godwin, Hays, Wordsworth, and Shelley, idealists who seek to disseminate radical ideas in an era of state censorship, must devise a strategy to convey their messages without attracting attention to their subversiveness. Thus, all four writers continually preface their works …

Mmasculinities: Spectacular Narratives Of Masculinity In Mixed Martial Arts, Stephen L. Swain

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation uses the work of Guy Debord to examine the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. More specifically, it examines spectacular narratives surrounding the main event of UFC 114, which featured Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson facing ‘Suga’ Rashad Evans. Drawing upon not only the event itself, but also the season of The Ultimate Fighter during which the two combatants coached opposing teams, this study looks at how masculinity is performed and presented, and how those spectacular presentations of masculinity are then used as a means of selling commodities.

Drawing upon the work of Guy Debord, this dissertation examines Mixed Martial Arts …

From Tawa'if To Wife? Making Sense Of Bollywood's Courtesan Genre, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Introduction:

Although constituting what might be described as only a thimbleful of water in the ocean that is Hindi cinema, the courtesan or tawa'if film is a distinctive Indian genre, one that has no real equivalent in the Western film industry. With Indian and diaspora audiences generally, it has also enjoyed a broad popularity, its music and dance sequences being among the most valued in Hindi film, their specificities often lovingly remembered and reconstructed by fans. Were you, for example, to start singing "Dil Cheez Kya Hai" or "Yeh Kya Hua" especially to a group of north Indians over the …

"Free As In Speech, But Not Free As In Beer": The Performativity Of The U.S. National Standards, Cathy Benedict

Music Education Publications

This article considers the U.S. National Standards for Music Education through the lenses of Austin, Searle, Butler and Foucault in order to examine the single point of control and sovereignty of governing organizations and to situate the U.S. National Standards as speech acts; that is, written performatives that essentially describe and enact particular sets of responses. I extend those ways performativity has normally been considered and suggest that the standards not only function as speech acts but as an icon whose continual referencing creates ongoing acts that constitute a process in which what they suggest and their enactment are united. …

Review Of John Charles, Allies At Odds: The Andean Church And Its Indigenous Agents, 1583–1671, Jason Dyck

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.