Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Bloomberg Way: Development Politics, Urban Ideology, And Class Transformation In Contemporary New York City, Julian Brash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the links between a development project, a particular urban ideology, and processes of class transformation in contemporary New York City. The city's postindustrial transformation, especially since the 1970s fiscal crisis, has created a newly dominant corporate elite consisting of executives and high-level professionals. This ruling class alliance has begun to supersede the city's older, real estate-centered traditional growth coalition, as emblematized by the political rise of billionaire ex-CEO Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, along with other ex-corporate executives in his administration, implemented a private-sector inspired corporate, technocratic, and antipolitical approach to governance in general and urban and economic …

Henry James’S "The Ambassadors": Anatomy Of Silence, Marie Leone Meyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of silence in Henry James's novel The Ambassadors. James uses silence rich in meaning to portray the protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether's unfolding consciousness. James creates different types of silences that reflect a shift from the spoken or written word to alternate symbol systems. James's novel perches on the threshold of modernity, as his work reflects the ideas of a line of thinkers extending back from James and his brother, William, to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sampson Reed, and Emanuel Swedenborg. At the same time, the novel draws on the contemporary ideas of Charles Darwin, prefigures …

Urban Fervor: Los Angeles Literature And Alternative Religion, Christine M. Daley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using alternative religion and other dynamics within the spiritual life of Los Angeles opens up the city's literary canon; employing religion as a critical lens illuminates the conjunction of history, literature, and urban growth that characterizes Los Angeles culture. This is especially relevant in a setting where, according to a 1941 guide to the city, "the multiplicity and diversity of faiths that flourish in the aptly named City of Angels probably cannot be duplicated in any other city on earth." It is apparent, however, that the specific social phenomena of abundant sects in this urban space can provide keys to …

"Feathered Glory": A Poet In Flight From Medieval Ireland To The Twentieth Century, Denell Marie Downum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feathered Glory explores the relevance of the medieval Irish character Suibhne, usually anglicized as Sweeney, to twentieth-century writers. Suibhne is the protagonist of the twelfth-century text Buile Suibhne, in which he is depicted as a minor king who goes mad on the field of battle, abandons his kingdom and his role in society, and flies like a bird into the woods, where he becomes a poet of exceptional power and beauty. This tale languished in obscurity for many centuries, but following J. G. O'Keeffe's publication of a scholarly edition and English translation of Buile Suibhne in 1913, Suibhne has …

Larry Rivers And Frank O'Hara: Reframing Male Sexualities, Dong-Yeon Koh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1970, Sam Hunter complained that the distinctive persona of proto-Pop artist Larry Rivers had overshadowed his artistic achievement. "Too often he has been taken as an engaging public performer", wrote Hunter, claiming that some critics "make the mistake of confusing his irrepressible exhibitionism with an imagined artistic flaw of fitful or unsteady inspiration". 1 This dissertation presents an alternative proposition regarding the relationship between Rivers' artistic persona and art: that an examination of Rivers' numerous activities inside and outside the artistic arena, such as poetry, jazz, and media, is indeed useful for understanding his work. Particularly, Rivers' involvement with …

Visible Effects: Narrative Spectacle And Affective Response In The Late Eighteenth-Century Novel, Tanya Radford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eighteenth-century visual culture and literature reflect a struggle between two models of vision and understanding: on one side, an Enlightenment vision dedicated to disembodied objectivity and technical precision; on the other, a sentimental or expressive vision that produces irrational or emotional insight. If the disembodied eye can be seen as an emblem of reason and the goal of the Enlightenment approach to scientific knowledge, the spectatorial and incarnate eye represents an alternative and equally significant emblem of the period's visuality. This dissertation focuses on novels from the late Eighteenth century in which the spectatorial and incarnate eye is the dominant …

An Opera In Aid Of The Reading Of History, B. Mcevoy Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis consists of six chapters and a frontispiece/CD recording of a song cycle, Blue Orpheus: Hymns and Lullabies, written and performed by the author. This arrangement responds to currents within queer theory, which view questions concerning its historical and philosophical origins as diversions from its ability to determine present conditions, by reframing these "presentist" (and its close relative, "performative") orientations in terms of "place" and the corresponding laws and freedoms that originate from its cultivation—in politics, the art of memory, and systems theory and design. Generally speaking, to each concept of place I devote two chapters.

Chapter one …