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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Unveiling Iolanta: Blindness In Nineteenth-Century Opera, Nafset Chenib
Unveiling Iolanta: Blindness In Nineteenth-Century Opera, Nafset Chenib
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation explores the main tropes of representing and narrating blindness in nineteenth-century opera and fictional literature with a particular emphasis on Tchaikovsky’s 1892 one-act opera Iolanta, with its blind protagonist. Examination of the production history of Iolanta reveals that misrepresentations and misconceptions ingrained within Tchaikovsky's libretto and music have governed directorial choices, consequently giving rise to a homogeneous, predominantly unfavorable portrayal of blindness on the stage. I suggest an approach to the opera that is more consonant with the lived experience of blindness.
Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein
Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“I have never been able to blind myself” to the cruelty of a world that “destroys its own young in passing…out of not noticing or caring about the destruction,” Audre Lorde tells us in her 1980 “mythobiography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. This quality, Lorde says, “according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.” In rejecting psychological self-possession as a sign of wellness, this passage also rejects it as one of sovereignty’s conditions. At the time of Lorde’s writing, this version of sovereignty already dominated the landscape of therapeutic culture in the United States, …
Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish
Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I …
Female Autistic Perspectives: Limits In Diagnosis And Understanding, Alexandra Helmers
Female Autistic Perspectives: Limits In Diagnosis And Understanding, Alexandra Helmers
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder has increased dramatically within the last two decades, with males being diagnosed, on average, four to five times more than females. Although researchers in the medical community have searched for a biological explanation for this discrepancy, no definitive cause has been found. I argue that our understanding of autism is primarily a social and cultural construction, in addition to a diagnosable medical disorder. The gender disparity in diagnosis reflects cultural narratives surrounding social interaction and the widespread belief in two distinct gender roles. Furthermore, narratives surrounding the topic of autism tend to unintentionally highlight …