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Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban
Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the tension and conflict between conceptions of the natural law and the ideal of radical autonomy in the work of the antebellum American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. This tension and conflict was brought to the fore by the modernization of American society in the antebellum period. Modernization is here understood as the social process through which increasing recognition is given to individual autonomy, elevating the individual self, as the creator of meaning and value, above the standard provided by nature, including human nature, according to which one ought to live. This …
Uncovering The Domesticated Spectator: Film Exhibition And Spectatorship In The Home, 1920-1950, Patrick Brame
Uncovering The Domesticated Spectator: Film Exhibition And Spectatorship In The Home, 1920-1950, Patrick Brame
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation builds on recent historical scholarship that adds complexity to apparatus theory from the 1970s by examining the experience of film exhibition and spectatorship in the American home from 1920 to 1950. While the screen, projector, and content of home exhibition influenced the spectator’s experience, so too did the domestic environment: blurring private and public spaces loaded with sociocultural tensions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Through my investigation of amateur filmmaking magazines, primarily Movie Makers, Home Movies, industry journals such as The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, and more widely read magazines like Popular Mechanics, …
Off The Press: Exploring Reproducible War Art, Emily Rose Hankins
Off The Press: Exploring Reproducible War Art, Emily Rose Hankins
Theses and Dissertations
Aspects of modernity, such as the news cycle and ever-changing technologies, have played large roles in the construction of the history of wars through the power of reproducible war art imagery as seen in various public spheres and contexts. These include engravings and photographs of the war in news publications, propaganda posters promoting patriotism, protest posters pleading for peace, and prints and books made by artists for display in galleries. The inundation of these images become ubiquitous with the conflict, and the artists who have a hand in creating these images also have the power to construct and reconstruct histories, …
Fast Glass: Modernity, Technology, And The Cinematic Lens, Allain Daigle
Fast Glass: Modernity, Technology, And The Cinematic Lens, Allain Daigle
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation tells a cultural history of how lenses became cinema lenses. While lenses are essential for film production, we know very little about the early history of cinema lenses. Rather than just focusing on which lenses were used on certain movies, I historicize how lens production became an industry. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, lens production shifted from an artisanal craft to a commercial industry. By looking at how companies created lenses for film production and projection, I expand early film history to account for the creative work of opticians, engineers, advertisers, and distributors. In more specifically focusing …