Digital Commons Network^™

Patristic Precedent And Vernacular Innovation: The Practice And Theory Of Anglo-Saxon Translation, Andrew Timothy Eichel

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation investigates Anglo-Saxon translation and interpretation during the reign of King Alfred of Wessex in the ninth century, and the Benedictine Reform of the tenth and eleventh centuries. These two periods represent a time of renaissance in Anglo-Saxon England, when circumstance and ambition allowed for a number of impressive reformation enterprises, including increased dedication to education of both clerical orders and the laity, which therefore augmented the output of writing motivated by scholarly curiosity, ecclesiastical inquiry, and political strategizing. At these formative stages, translation emerged as perhaps the most critical task for the vernacular writers. The Latinate prestige culture …

Can You Be Bicultural Without Being Bilingual? The Case Of Filipino Americans, Reiamari P Guevarra

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Iconography: At The Intersection Of Historical & Personal, Alyssa Mcconnell Johnson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Sketches, Impressions And Confessions: Literature As Experiment In The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Ragsdale Lallier

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for the existence and critical relevance of a program of experimental literature in the long nineteenth century, developed in the aesthetics of German Romanticism and adapted in a set of texts by Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. My introduction positions this argument in context of larger debates concerning form, theory and literary capacity, provides points of connection between these authors, and outlines the most prominent features of experimental literature. In the first chapter, I present an unorthodox reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, accompanied by a brief account of the literary-critical …

Old English Manuscripts In The Early Age Of Print: Matthew Parker And His Scribes, Robert Scott Bevill

Doctoral Dissertations

Covering the first dedicated program in the study of and publication of Anglo-Saxon texts, my dissertation examines the sixteenth-century origins of medieval studies as an academic discipline. By placing recent scholarship on media, materiality, cognition, and intellectual history in conversation with traditional paleographical methods on medieval and renaissance manuscript culture, I argue for a new way of understanding how early modern scholars studied and presented the medieval past. I take as my focus a corpus of emulative Anglo-Saxon manuscript transcriptions produced under Elizabethan Archbishop Matthew Parker. Equal parts facsimile and edition, these transcriptions are a unique example of early modern …

Mozarab Readers Of The Bible, From The Córdoban Martyrs To The Glossa Ordinaria, Geoffrey Kyle Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer four case studies in how medieval Iberia’s Arabic-speaking Christians (Mozarabs) appropriated Latin, Arabic, and Islamic culture. I have focused upon the Mozarabs’ reading of the Bible: (1) how they translated it from Latin to Arabic, (2) how they thought about the Last Days, (3) how they read it with a foremost interest in the meaning of individual words and phrases, and (4) how they employed biblical commentaries to understand scripture better. As the reader will see, the Mozarabs’ translations of the Bible into Arabic and the Latin manuscripts which they annotated in that language have …

The History Of The Horn And How It Applies To The Modern Hornist, Joseph Alexander Meinweiser

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Crisis Of Friendship: Calculation And Betrayal In Shakespeare’S The Merchant Of Venice And Othello, The Moor Of Venice, Kristi Rene Sexton

Masters Theses

The idea that friendship is an illusory connection that may only exist in philosophers’ writings was a subject of interest for many of the early modern writers. Writers like Thomas Elyot, Thomas Churchyard, and Michel de Montaigne attempted to uphold idealized traditions of friendship; conversely, Shakespeare, along with writers such as Francis Bacon, presented early modern perceptions of idealized friendship only to confront and challenge the precepts. In The Merchant of Venice and Othello, the Moor of Venice, Shakespeare expresses a sometimes cynical yet realistic approach toward idealized friendship. He exposes the problem of upholding the idealized early modern …

Moral Margins: Ethics And Economics In American Northern Literature, 1837-1900, John Adam Stromski

Doctoral Dissertations

“Moral Margins: Slavery and Capitalism in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900,” focuses on the intersections of slavery, capitalism, and literature, building on recent historical scholarship on the myriad ways slavery impacted the growth of American capitalism. Nowhere is this relationship more prominent than in the nineteenth century, when slavery experienced its highest levels of economic and political influence. Scholars of capitalism and American slavery have tended to focus on the South, the obvious locus of slavery, but little attention is paid to the North, where this relationship is more veiled. I argue that Northern literature shows the ethical complexities of slavery-based …

Nepantla As Her Place In The Middle: Multilingualism And Multiculturalism In The Writings Of Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Nicole Lynn Gomez

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I analyze a selection of Sor Juana’s works in the context of bilingual and bicultural studies. I infer that the author’s language acquisition and cultural sensitivity were interrelated, both affecting the other and influencing her writing. I argue that her bilingualism correlated with her cultural sensitivity and sympathy towards marginalized groups. In her works, the author employs a variety of strategies to denounce discrimination and repression as well as rhetoric that promotes tolerance of other cultures and resistance to oppression. I explore these strategies in her texts and apply relevant theory in order to fully analyze their …

Experiencing Defeat, Remembering Victory: The Army Of Tennessee In War And Memory, 1861-1930, Robert Lamar Glaze

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Civil War in the South by examining white Southerners’ perceptions of the Army of Tennessee from 1861 to 1930. While scholarship on the war’s memory is immense and growing, little of this literature examines the memory of the Confederacy's war effort in the western theater—the area of operations military historians now deem central to the war's outcome. This project rectifies that oversight by examining white Southerners’ memory of the Army of Tennessee in the post-war decades. Unlike Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy’s primary western field army suffered a near …

Re-Mapping The Space Of The Sacred In The Nowell Codex, Teresa Marie Hooper

Doctoral Dissertations

The most recent codicological studies of London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, part 2, also known as the Nowell Codex or Beowulf-Manuscript, have looked to its many depictions of monsters as an explanation for why it was compiled. Nicholas Howe, however, proposed that the Nowell Codex functioned as a “book of elsewhere,” treating the five texts as a “gathering” particularly invested in a reappraisal of the cultural implications of geography. This dissertation describes the three prose texts of the Nowell Codex as one such “gathering” which explores alternative ideas of spiritual geography, specifically in regards to the religious …

God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture During The Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860, Keith Dwayne Lyon

Doctoral Dissertations

In reference to the early national and antebellum eras, the term "camp meeting" signifies a rural Protestant revival held over several days and nights, wherein participants utilized temporary living accommodations--typically wagons or tents--and prepared food on the grounds in order to attend multiple outdoor services. Eventually dominated by Methodists and Cumberland Presbyterians, camp meetings routinely attracted several thousand people, thus creating temporary communities larger than most permanent ones in many regions. Considering the scarcity of such sizeable, collective events in the country’s rural areas during this period, the assemblies inevitably generated an exciting array of social opportunities and served as …

Virtue, Evidence, And Epistemic Justification, Alexander Steven Hallam

Doctoral Dissertations

Evidence is a central concept in epistemology and more narrowly, theories of epistemic justification. Evidence is commonly thought to be what justifies our beliefs. On this view, a belief is justified for a person if that belief fits that person’s total body of evidence. But it is also commonly thought that evidence isn’t the only thing that justifies a belief. Some epistemologists even think that evidence isn’t what justifies a belief at all. Virtue epistemologists give epistemic or intellectual virtues an important and fundamental role in theories of epistemic justification. On such views, for a belief to be epistemically justified, …

Repenser Une Double Altérité: Expérience Commune Et Trajectoires Plurielles De La Femme Étrangère En France Métropolitaine (Xviiie-Xxe Siècle), Joanna Merkel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the figure of double alterity represented by foreign women living in metropolitan France, from the 18^th to the 20^th century. I argue that although these varied figures offer different trajectories, possess diverse origins, and have been described or described themselves through a variety of literary genres and non-literary genres; they share a common experience revealing unicity. My objectives are, first, to establish the outlines of this shared experience through the analysis of general trends and micro-events; and second, to explore what this analysis has to teach us about French society, past and present. The texts …

Nothing Stranger, Helen Mary Stead

Doctoral Dissertations

“Nothing Stranger” is a collection of dystopian short stories concerned with themes of motherhood and violence submitted for consideration as a creative dissertation at the University of Tennessee.

This City Is A Clock, Daniel D. Wallace

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes a novel, This City is a Clock, and a critical introduction, “Technologies of the Novel.”

This City is a Clock charts the construction of Edinburgh’s New Town and the development of the Scottish Enlightenment. The protagonist is a boy when the novel begins and has grown to old age by the final pages. As a child, he is put to work by the architects of the new town when they discover that he has unusual mathematical gifts. To them, his strange talent seems an emblem of the new rational order they are hoping to create. And …

Viewing The Foundations: Italian Institutions And Mafia Through Short Stories And Film, Xylina Marshall

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Ashes In Bethel: Bearings Of Second Millennium Bce Ugaritic Mythology Upon First Millennium Bce Israelite Religion, Taylor Thomas

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Troubles At Coal Creek: Rhetorics Of Writing, Research, And The Archive, Sumner Stevenson Brown

Masters Theses

Digging through the past can uncover painful truths. As such, historiography that does not acknowledge negotiated spaces, cultural erasures, and flexible frameworks may fall short. It may limit both breadth and depth of the past, thereby (re)producing erasures, whereas a reflexive theoretical framework delivers not only depth and breadth, but it also adds texture and dimension to historical writing and research processes. It is for these purposes that the value of alternative methodologies is not situated at the margins of the rhetorical canons. Instead, it is embedded in the very core of the canons, defined as an element that works …

Erich Korngold's Discursive Practices: Musical Values In The Salon Community From Vienna To Hollywood, Bonnie Lynn Finn

Masters Theses

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Viennese musician of the early twentieth century, composed western art music and film scores. Some scholars suggest his musical values and success in film music related entirely to his experiences composing operas. Indeed, Korngold’s adherence to tonality and his reputation as a European high art composer contributed to his success both in Vienna and Hollywood. However, much research has failed to address his time spent arranging and composing operettas. Few scholars have discussed that his lifelong style, including his operas, also reflected the Viennese light and popular music of his youth. Korngold’s background in Viennese music …

Mädchen Und Girls: Gender In Serie, Lisa Jasmin Merkel

Masters Theses

Gender topics are an often discussed theme in both the English as well as in the German speaking world. Academic research in the discipline of media studies is addressing gender questions in film, TV series and media in general. In recent years gender media studies grew in a number of directions. This thesis discusses how women, specifically their negotiations of conventional gender roles in romantic relationships and in the work place are depicted in contemporary American and German TV series and what it means for societal development. It discusses the German telenovela Verliebt in Berlin (SAT.1, 2005-2007) which was adapted …

Rethinking L'Exception Culturelle In French Music Then And Now: Language, Memory, And Political Order, Melanie Ann Lafoy

Masters Theses

Through this thesis, entitled “Rethinking l'exception culturelle in French Music then and now: Language, Memory, and Political Order,” I explore the concept of exception culturelle as it relates to music in France. I break down this concept by situating current French music trends within a historical landscape, highlighting certain moments of tension between music, politics, and language that appear in the decades after the Dreyfus Affair (1894), which I consider to be a turning point in the way French music is and was perceived inside and outside French national borders. I also examine the years after the second World …

Poor Metaphors: How Language Makes, And How Analyzing Popular Stereotypes Can Challenge, Social Attitudes That Question The Value Of The Economically Oppressed In A Democratic Society, Jacob Patrick Sharbel

Masters Theses

This rhetorical project analyzes the historical and contemporary prevalence of some of the popular metaphors that have come to characterize recipients of government assistance programs such as food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. By synthesizing the metaphor theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson with the sociological concepts of doxa, habitus, and heretical discourse posited by Pierre Bourdieu, this project not only spotlights these negative metaphors but also offers ways of disrupting their tacit influence over people’s perceptions, which otherwise are in danger of reproducing themselves. The metaphors discussed seek to reduce the poor on …

A Proposal For The Inclusion Of Jazz Theory Topics In The Undergraduate Music Theory Curriculum, Alexis Joy Smerdon

Masters Theses

The demands of the twenty-first century require musicians to be more stylistically versatile since there are more opportunities for performance when musicians are familiar with not only classical but also jazz and popular music. Understanding the theory behind jazz and pop styles will help prepare the musicians for these opportunities. Since all music students take music theory, it is in the students’ best interest for teachers of theory to include jazz theory topics in the classical music theory curriculum. The purpose of this thesis is to propose the inclusion of jazz theory topics in the undergraduate music theory curriculum. To …

The Brush Is Mightier Than The Bayonet: The Role Of Cooperation With The Art And Media Communities Of Japan During The American Occupation, William B. Carpenter

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Identité, Genre, Et Proto-Nationalisme Chez Christine De Pizan Et Alain Chartier, Matthew Lee Blair

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Parables Of Love: Reading The Romances Of Chrétien De Troyes Through Bernard Of Clairvaux, Carrie D. Pagels

Doctoral Dissertations

In three romances Yvain, Lancelot, and Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes utilizes the intimate relationships of his courtly knights and their lady loves to explore and present the Christian ideology of Bernard of Clairvaux as expressed by his four degrees of love in the treatise, On Loving God. Previous scholarly works have only examined the Christian ideology and symbolism in Chrétien's romances as isolated occurrences specific to a single text. In contrast, I argue Chrétien's romances form a progression mirroring the Bernardian steps (or degrees) man must make in order to draw closer to and deepen his relationship …

Gothic Naturalism And American Women Writers, Stephanie Ann Metz

Doctoral Dissertations

Traditionally, naturalism and the Gothic have been seen as genres that have little to do with one another. However, Frank Norris, one of the practitioners and theoreticians of canonical naturalism, argued that the roots of naturalism lie not in realism (as is often argued) but in romanticism. This project seeks to explore Norris’s claim by positing a new genre—Gothic naturalism. Gothic naturalism is a hybrid genre that combines the Gothic’s haunting nature and representations of the abject, grotesque, and uncanny with canonical naturalism’s interrogation of making choices and the forces of chance, determinism, and heredity. Although naturalism is traditionally seen …

La Censura Católica Literaria Durante La Posguerra Española: Traspasando Las Fronteras De La Ideología Franquista., Ángela Pérez Del Puerto

Doctoral Dissertations

My research studies the literary censorship carried out by the Catholic Action Association through the Secretary of Bibliographic Orientation (SBO) in Spain during the 1940s. This secular institution paralleled, and in certain moments questioned, some Francoist values by judging and banning publications that had previously passed the official censorship. In particular, the censorship of the SBO focused, on the one hand, on Modernist Spanish authors who were accused of preaching strong anti-religious ideas and, on the other hand, on new texts published in that period that failed to reproduce the Catholic discourse. Through the analysis of this censorship activity, my …