Digital Commons Network^™

Robert Burns’ Poetic Style Through His Poetry, Songs, And Correspondence, Abigail Druckenmiller

Senior Theses

This thesis explores connections and contradictions within the songs, correspondence, and poems of Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns. A selection of works from each of these categories is presented to compare the ways Burns writes verse, lyrics, and letters. Through this thesis, I analyzed his work looking at subject matter, use of the Scots dialect, structure, and poetic devices in order to offer holistic commentary on Burns’ style in a way that includes his letters more heavily than most other Burns scholarship. Overall, I thought Burns remained a consistent man of conviction and societal criticism throughout my findings, as well as …

International Conflict, Political Leaders, And Accountability, William Thomas Christiansen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role that an individual leader’s background (e.g. what they did before gaining power) plays in public evaluations of their performance managing international conflicts. I propose a novel theory arguing domestic audience members (e.g. the citizens of a leader’s state paying attention to international conflicts) heuristically analyze the competence of a leader by examining their professional and educational background. Once audience members determine whether a leader is competent, they use these judgments to inform whether a given leader deserves blame or credit for the outcome of a given conflict. I find support for this theory by fielding …

The Youngest, Trezlen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poems that considers life in a southern Black family, memory, nostalgia, dysfunction, race and gender, and generational trauma. These poems are influenced by poetry, fiction, music, popular culture, and scholarship, each providing a different perspective on life and language to talk about that which can sometimes be unspeakable.

A recurring character in this collection is the girlchild, reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s character in “Barbie Doll.” The girlchild here is the figure of the woman or girl who experiences trauma, and what some consider to be unspeakable.

These poems are also an exploration and disruption …

Approaches To Teaching Music Reading To Piano Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Rachel Elizabeth Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to collect information about teaching music reading to piano students with Autism Spectrum Disorder and to determine best teaching practices that may be implemented into existing curricula. The study involved interviewing six professionals who are nationally recognized for successfully teaching piano to students with ASD and analyzing the interviews to learn their procedures for teaching music reading to this population.

The interviews contain information concerning the backgrounds of the individuals being interviewed, the demographic backgrounds of students being taught, and the pedagogical process, instructional materials and technology used for teaching music reading in lessons. …

Non-Empirical Modelling And Theorizing: Scientific Progress In Particle Physics, Cristin Cain Chall

Theses and Dissertations

Particle physics (and other fundamental physics research, including searches for a theory of quantum gravity) faces a problem when it comes to acquiring experimental evidence. Many theories and models make predictions that cannot be tested with current, or even prospective technology. Yet these fields continue to develop, with new models and theories regularly being introduced, scrutinized, changed, and discarded. My project aims at examining the way theories and models are constructed, adapted, and assessed in fields that lack the empirical evidence that usually grounds such tasks. I will focus on two prominent examples: string theory and attempts to explain electroweak …

Anti-Sabbatarianism In Antebellum America: The Christian Quarrel Over The Sanctity Of Sunday, Kathryn Kaslow

Theses and Dissertations

In the first half of the 1800s, American Christians posed fundamental questions about the role of faith in daily life by debating blue laws, which restricted Sunday travel, mail delivery, and recreational activities on the basis of the Fourth Commandment. Historians have largely focused on how pro-blue law Christians, or Sabbatarians, answered these questions. They also present anti-Sabbatarian concerns as socially, economically, or politically motivated, largely ignoring religion. However, an examination of religious periodicals, convention reports, correspondence, and petitions shows that many anti-Sabbatarians did indeed frame their arguments in theological terms. Case studies from various faith traditions over four decades …

Backcountry Robbers, River Pirates, And Brawling Boatmen: Transnational Banditry In Antebellum U.S. Frontier Literature, Samuel M. Lackey

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that in the midst of an uncertain but formative period of continental expansion, a revolutionary brand of popular crime fiction appeared and flourished in the pages of cheap periodicals and paperback novels. It consisted of conventional adventure romances and pulpy proto-dime novels that focused on frontier violence and backwoods criminals. Often popular in their day but quickly forgotten, these texts have been given short shrift by scholars and critics due to their shoddiness or ostensibly minor role in literary history. I contend that this obscure brand of crime fiction in fact has much to offer in the …

The Popular Education Question In Antebellum South Carolina, 1800-1860, Brian A. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reviews the struggle for popular education in Antebellum South Carolina. It contends that the failure of popular education in South Carolina was not a foregone conclusion nor was it mistake by school administration or state leaders, but instead, the failure to provide education for the white majority was the result of an intended goal. This project concludes that South Carolina remained without a system of public schools for the majority of citizens because those who opposed general education firmly believed popular education held the seeds of revolution while ignorance the better tool to perpetuate the status quo.

Chapter …

Emotion Regulation And Life Satisfaction Of Early Adolescents In The Face Of Stressful Life Events, Zi Jia Ng

Theses and Dissertations

In line with calls to define mental health as more than the mere absence of psychopathology, and based on the restorative model of well-being (Lent, 2004), this dissertation sought to elucidate the relationship between stressful life events and life satisfaction by exploring the mediating role of emotion regulation. Using a full Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach, this dissertation first determined the factor structure of the measurement model then evaluated the path analysis of the structural model. The first study examined the factor analytic structure and measurement invariance of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS). Results supported the one-factor …

The Silenced: An Artistic Analysis Of Memory And Conflict, Kittridge Janvrin

Senior Theses

The ability to tell stories has always been one I considered most valuable. Histories have been passed down across generations, tales of war and independence, of crimes and justice. Storytelling is not unique to one particular culture or people, instead traversing divides both geographic and societal. This permeation of words, of voices that convey histories both real and imagined is the driving force behind my thesis. The culmination of my research, which is outlined in the following reflection, is an original short play. While based on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the play speaks to the power behind every story …

Navigating Culture, Politics, And Economics In A Global World, Haley Garcia

Senior Theses

This rise of international business has paved the way for the creation of the Multinational corporation (MNC). While MNCs must be primarily concerned with day to day operations and transactions across borders, there are many factors to consider in addition to business. Each MNC must decide how to navigate the global marketplace, finding a niche within cultural, political, and economic realities that change depending on the market being entered. By considering and understanding these factors, MNCs will be able to successfully enter and compete in global markets integrating the economies of the world into one.

Speaking Of Qualia: Examining A Craft Beer Microcommunity's Membership Identity Through Speech, Anna Hamer

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines a locally owned craft beer store in South Carolina, where craft beer connoisseurs and enthusiasts come together to elevate their beer drinking experience. Many members of this microcommunity use ‘beer talk’, a technical register of speech (Agha 2007; Manning 2008; Silverstein 2006, 2016), to point to, or index, a part of their beer connoisseur identity. The ‘beer talk’ register used to describe craft beer is enacted at various scales of speech (Carr and Lempert 2016), ranging from Cicerone Certification and mobile applications, to online forums, beer festivals, beer magazines, brewery visits, and face-to-face interaction. The CofP model …

An Evaluation Of Scenic Design, William Baxter Engle Iii

Theses and Dissertations

“…Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster… Strangely enough, it all turns out well… I don’t know. It’s a mystery” -Tom Stoppard

I embraced this quote a long while ago in a moment of disgust and defeat while working through a flawed process of making theatre. Everything takes too long to complete, nothing works right the first time if ever at all, and ultimately the entire process is a maddening mess. It seems to me that the study and practice of the trade can work …

A Critical Analysis Of The Effects Of Language Policy, Curriculum, And Assessment On Arabic L1 Student Performance In An Esl 1 Classroom, Juliane Bilotta

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a preliminary analysis into looking at the ways in which Arabicspeaking ESL students are inadvertently marginalized by state standardization, curriculum, and dominant forms of classroom interactions in a NJ recovery program. Specifically, this analysis addresses the absence of orthographic training and a reliance on teacher-fronted, textbook based classroom exercises as a problematic structure that limits opportunities for Arabic-speaking students to participate successfully in an ESL 1 classroom. This data was collected during six-weeks of preliminary research during the summer of 2016 in a Jersey City, NJ ESL classroom. Using transcriptions of recorded data from lessons that typify …

Narrating The (Im)Migrant Experience: 21st Century African Fiction In The Age Of Globalization, Bernard Ayo Oniwe

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the fiction of 21st century African writers as a product of engagement with the forces of globalization and the related notions of cosmopolitanism and the fact of South to North migration. Analyzing migrant experiences in the writings of Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail (2007), Chika Unigwe’s The Black Street Sisters (2009), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2011) and Teju Cole’s Open City (2013), I argue that third-generation African writers, while building on the works of previous generations, take a global turn, and in the process, push the borders of African literature beyond the continent. 21st century African fiction, I …

Changing The Conversation: Diversity At Living History Museums, Sarah M. Lerch

Theses and Dissertations

"Changing the Conversation: Diversity at Living History Museums" explores the lack of diversity among costumed historians at living history sites. Using Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts as a case study, this paper traces the history of diversity among costumed staff and the interpretation at the site. I suggest solutions and ideas for interpretative planning to increase the representation of minority perspectives into the historical narrative of the site and include more ethnic and racial diversity among the employed costumed staff.

The Civil, Silent, And Savage In Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Alexander J. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I argue that the political situation between Britons and Saxons within Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant further articulates Ishiguro’s ongoing critique of Western humanism’s logic of labelling the Other. I also argue for a definition of the figure of the buried giant broadly speaking as the Other par excellence, as an entity of pure alterity, and as a Lèvinasian “infinite other.” As The Buried Giant demonstrates, Ishiguro continues to write against the politics of humanism that have flourished in Western art, science, and political philosophy since the Enlightenment. Though Ishiguro sets The Buried Giant loosely in the …

Framing The Spaces Unseen In Mason & Dixon, Gregory W. Deinert

Theses and Dissertations

The treatment of the Conestoga Massacre and the (dis)placement of the subaltern in Mason & Dixon are of utmost importance to the novel’s narrative arc. The relative paucity of indigenous voices in Mason & Dixon is important in at least two seemingly contradictory ways: the author simultaneously avoids appropriation, and performs, as it were, the erasure at the heart of the colonial paradigm. Mason & Dixon’s multiple allusions to native peoples never quite amount to an indigenous presence; indeed, they seem only to rehearse a particular ideological outlook in which colonial racial aggression cannot be acknowledged, or perhaps even seen. …

A Comparison Of Irish Flute And Classical Flute Training, Allison Marjorie Layton

Senior Theses

For my Senior Thesis Project, I learned to play the traditional Irish flute while I was in Ireland for a semester. I initially thought that there would be no better time or place to learn a new instrument than if I was surrounded by its culture for four months. I went in to the project already knowing how to play the classical silver flute, but knew that the traditional Irish flute was different. I found that the biggest differences were between the instruments themselves and how the two final performance goals of each affected the training in almost every step …

Proslavery Thinking In Antebellum South Carolina: Higher Education, Transatlantic Encounters, And The Life Of The Mind, Jamie Diane Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Eminent antebellum intellectuals Thomas Cooper, James Henley Thornwell, William Campbell Preston, and Francis Lieber, not only shaped their sociocultural milieu as published authors, compelling speakers, and powerful politicians, but also created a greenhouse environment of proslavery instruction at South Carolina College (SCC), today the University of South Carolina. As professors and presidents of the state’s landmark institution of learning, they produced some of the South’s most radical proslavery thinkers during the forty crucial years preceding the Civil War. SCC alumni, fresh from the four professors’ hothouse, became seminal figures in fomenting secession, fighting the Civil War, and firing Southerners’ frenzy …

Samuel Barber’S Settings Of James Joyce’S Chamber Music: A Proposal For A Posthumous Song Cycle, Michael Pierre Laroche

Theses and Dissertations

Samuel Barber’s Opus 10 songs are some of his most well-known vocal works. These settings from Chamber Music by James Joyce were published in 1939, but posthumous research by biographer Barbara Heyman and a complete vocal recordings project by Thomas Hampson, Cheryl Studer, and John Browning led to the discovery and recording of ten additional songs, including three more Joyce settings. Schirmer published these Ten Early Songs around the same time as the Deutsche Grammophon. Research has shown the dates of composition to be within days of the published Opus 10 songs, but no other information on these songs exists …

Unmarked Boxes: A Solo Show, Nicole Dietze

Theses and Dissertations

Unmarked Boxes is an original solo show, written during the fall of 2015 and performed on December 2, 3 and 4, 2015 at the Center for Performance Experiment, 718 Devine Street, Columbia, SC, along with seven other solo shows in the showcase, Light Through a Pinhole. Examining American perspectives on grief and dying, Unmarked Boxes tells the story of a young American woman who struggles to plan and perform a sky burial in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Still Bridges, Anna Barry

Theses and Dissertations

This memoir-in-essays tells the story of four generations of a family living in one place, Pittsburgh, as they navigate the rise, peak, collapse, and disappearance of the steel industry. In terms of the manuscript’s “situation,” the family must navigate the complex economic, ethnic, environmental, and social struggles that are inherit when living in a place for over one hundred years. The manuscript argues that family and place are so intimately connected that the two entities cannot be separated. Pittsburgh becomes part of the narrator’s family, a kind of gene that is embedded in all of its residents, and the family …

Frank Martin's Arranged Works For Flute: Sonata Da Chiesa And Deuxieme Ballade, Jessica Dixon Leeth

Theses and Dissertations

The Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) wrote three major works for flute—Ballade for flute and piano, Sonata da Chiesa for flute and organ, and Deuxième Ballade for flute and piano. Of these, both the Sonata da Chiesa and Deuxième Ballade were arrangements of two of his previously written works, Sonata da Chiesa for viola d’amore and organ and Ballade for saxophone and piano (or string orchestra, piano, and percussion), respectively. Martin wrote both works in their original versions in 1938, a time in his career when he realized his true individual style, embracing the chromaticism of twelve-tone serialism while maintaining …

Exploring Racial Literacy In Middle Level Teacher Preparation: A Case Study, Deborah H. Mcmurtrie

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, approximately 82% of teachers are white and middle-class, yet their students are strikingly diverse and becoming more so. The mismatch between teachers’ and students’ racial backgrounds is important because teachers who have limited experience with students of color may misinterpret their students’ unfamiliar behaviors and make stereotyped assumptions from a deficit perspective. It is well documented that U.S. schools systematically marginalize and fail many children of color. Disparities in funding, access, and achievement in education are intimately tied to race. Everyday practices in schools perpetuate inequities, but the actual processes can be hard to see. If …

And Have Not Mercy, I Am Waiting: Conscious Inaction As Postcolonial Resistance In Patrick Kavanagh's "The Great Hunger" And Derek Walcott's "The Fortunate Traveller", Christopher Lowell Stuck

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines Patrick Kavanagh’s “The Great Hunger” and Derek Walcott’s “The Fortunate Traveller” as sites of postcolonial resistance. As presented in these poems, the main characters are caught between the memories of the colonial and anti-colonial pasts and the faltering promises of postcolonial independence. Instead of choosing between being defined solely by the past or accepting an independence under contrived terms, or attempting to reconcile the two, Walcott’s and Kavanagh’s poems propose conscious inaction in order to resist the apparent inevitability of the choice. Written at similar moments in their respective postcolonial regions, placing these two poems together for …

Lists In A Lighthouse, James Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

In this document one will find the play, Lists in a Lighthouse, and a description of the process it took to write it. It’s significance lie in the eyes of the reader. It could range from: the greatest play written in the English speaking world to simply words on a page. Like this Abstract so are the contents in this manuscript, abstract. One cannot quantify or qualify its importance. That is impossible. It is merely a dialogue. A dialogue between the play and its reader, the play and its actors, and the play and its audience. It is a process, …

Public Intellectuals: Styles, Publics, And Possibilities, Matthew David Kay

Theses and Dissertations

The status of the public intellectual is debated continuously in the United States, but what is not up for debate or theoretical examination is how public intellectual practice is mediated between style and publics. To that end, this study examines three public intellectual figures: Saul Alinsky, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Reich. Each examination analyzes and describes particular public intellectual styles — performances of culture — which trace three dominant public intellectual practices. These styles contain, invite, and deploy certain publics to engage with the public intellectual and vice versa. First, the study is a theoretical engagement with public intellectual practice …

A Global Joyce: Early Sightings Of Cosmopolitan Ethics In Ulysses, Matthew Zeller

Theses and Dissertations

'Ulysses is like a great net let down upon the life of a microcosmic city-state, Dublin, wherein lie captured all sorts and conditions of men and minds,' wrote Stuart Gilbert, the famous literary scholar whose landmark 1930 book-length investigation into Joyce's magnum opus cemented his legacy as one of the first Joyceans. In saying so, Gilbert quietly proposes an early reading of Joyce's global ethics long before the study of humanities had developed the post-colonial focus necessary to more fully grasp the cosmopolitan ethics asserted in Ulysses. Gilbert was not alone. Because of his self-imposed exile and thematic insistence on …

Conrad Susa's Discovery And Praises: A Conductor's Guide To Performance Considerations, Keith Harry Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Conrad Susa (b. 1935) is an American composer who has contributed over thirty choral works that are of high quality incorporating texts written by well-known literary figures. His choral works are usually spiritual in nature though not strictly liturgical. Discovery and Praises is a presently unpublished cantata in four movements for mixed chorus, solos for two sopranos, an alto, a tenor, and a baritone. The accompaniment is scored for organ, harp, percussion, flute and handbells. Susa chose to set ancient poetry by Caedmon, Wipo of Burgundy, John Donne, and St. Patrick. Although the piece was composed in 1966 and revised …