Digital Commons Network^™

William Morris And The Society For The Protection Of Ancient Buildings: Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Historic Preservation In Europe, Andrea Yount

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

“Imagined Communities” In Showcases: The Nationality Rooms Program At The University Of Pittsburgh (1926-1945), Lucia Curta

Dissertations

From the inception of the program in 1926, the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh were viewed as apolitical in their iconography. Their purpose was primarily didactic. Designed as classrooms meant for lectures and seminars, they were however ad-hoc museums for the display of symbols of national identity. In many ways, they constitute an excellent illustration in terms of the decorative arts of Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities."

The identity referent of the symbolism attached to the decorative arrangements of these rooms was not that of the ethnic communities in Pittsburgh, for whom the rooms were supposedly designed …

Inroads Toward Contemporary Latina Literature: Poetry And Criticism, Adela Josefina Najarro

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Another Person's Skin: Imagining Race In The Works Of Crane, Dunbar, Cather And Stevens, Lisa M. Durose

Dissertations

This study is interested in the motivations behind certain authors' attempts to, in the words of Willa Cather, "enter into another person's skin"~in the desires compelling writers to cross, transgress, or perhaps transcend those barriers that have historically divided people in the world: barriers of color, class, and gender. In particular it seeks to examine the works of four early twentieth century writers who undertake what these days is considered risky: transracial and transethnic crossings. By relying on biographical, cultural, and historical sources, I explore the strategies American writers Stephen Crane (1871-1900), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872- 1906), Willa Cather (1873-1947), …

The Song Of Lies: A Collection Of Poems, James Scannell Mccormick

Dissertations

This creative dissertation is a book-length manuscript of poems. What holds up, what holds together, the collection is, fundamentally, a narrow examination of the interrelationship between the poetic speakers' physical and psychological landscapes, that is, how various psychological states (love, grief, fear) shape a speaker's perceptions of, and reactions to, the world. This psychological anatomizing and taxonomizing takes place in four stages, arranged as parts in the manuscript.

The first part, with its emphasis on the contrast between the "objective" (real or external) and the "subjective" (perceived or internal) worlds, establishes the speakers' essential inability to reconcile what they see …