Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Labor Of Livingness: Oral Histories Of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women, Robin Mcginty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anchored in the political subjectivity of formerly incarcerated Black women, “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” is a project situated at the intersections of Black geographies and Black Feminist thought that considers a re/imagination of the ‘living prison’ experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women. I offer the term “a labor of livingness” as the liberatory articulation and everyday practices of resistance to the prison as a site of ‘living death’ that is reflective of the carceral experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated Black women. Attentive to the prison as a repository of epistemological knowledge production, …

Audiovisual Afterlives: The Soundtrack Of Liberal Nostalgia, Max W. Kaplan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following the 2016 American Presidential election, celebrity endorsements proved to be a more narrow gauge of public opinion than ever. The symbolic alignment with popular musicians, which had long abetted the Democratic Party’s standing with youth and particular identity groups, seemed only to reaffirm the party’s establishment status, drawing disavowal in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment on both the left and right. ‘Retromania,’ a term first coined by Simon Reynolds in 2010, can be tracked conceptually from the nostalgic inclinations of twenty-first century popular culture to the ideological sphere, where nostalgic, essentialized constructions of community, identity, and progress have coalesced …

Heritage Repair: Revisiting Familial And Collective Histories In Filiation Narratives By Dalila Kerchouche, Colombe Schneck And Martine Storti, Rebecca R. Raitses

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a critical reading of three French narratives: Dalila Kerchouche’s Mon père, ce harki (2003), Colombe Schneck’s Les guerres de mon père (2018), and Martine Storti’s L’arrivée de mon père en France (2008). These works combine representations of familial history with the explorations of personal and collective traumas or repression. The study addresses the following dimensions of the texts: 1) The catalyst of intergenerational silence behind these and many other similar works; 2) The textual interplay between storytelling and material evidence; 3) The ways in which the authors combine narratives of familial hardships on one hand, and of …

Debt-Driven Settlerism: Small Farmers And Bankers In The Trans-Appalachian South, 1800–1820, Phil Agee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how indebted small farmers contributed to the territorial expansion of the United States into Native lands of the trans-Appalachian South during the formative decades of the US republic. Taking on debt to purchase land and pay for the operating costs of farming, small farmers, the vast majority of whom were white, faced insolvency, land forfeiture, imprisonment, precarity, and poverty. In their struggles to manage debt, they operated under a creditor-friendly regime rooted in monetary and credit innovations of the colonial period. Indebtedness repeatedly compelled many small farmers to reenter the cycle of migration and settlement, serving as …

Tell Me A Story: The Normative Power Of Storytelling, Zoe Cunliffe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Few would dispute that stories are powerful: they have the capacity to inform, to persuade, and to engage our imaginations and sympathies. However, the contemporary philosophical literature on stories focuses exclusively on the functions of narrative stories, and in particular on the role that novels can serve in cultivating our moral and political competencies. I argue that this narrow focus is theoretically pernicious in two ways. First, it leads to an unfortunate myopia regarding the value of non-narrative storytelling practices. Second, it results in analysis that is disproportionately likely to exclude forms of storytelling that originate in marginalized groups. My …

7 Preludes For "Music Can Sleep" For Pierrot Ensemble, Matthew Sandahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The material was culled from sketches for four distinct abandoned projects, one of which was titled ‘Music can sleep.’ Eventually I became less interested in seeing a particular idea to fruition and more concerned with selecting and arranging from an archive of unfinished fragments. The principle criteria for selection included psychological potency and the music’s capacity to convey the mood of the moment in which they were written.

i. fragment for maria 9/7/20
ii. curtain 5/31/20
iii. premonition / toy no. 1 11/1/19
iv. dream 11/6/19
v. punchline 8/11/21
vi. song / toy no. 2 5/21/20
vii. sprite 5/12/20

Eating People Is Might: Power And The Representation Of Anthropophagy In Antiquity, Christopher Weimer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For several decades, scholars have read cannibalism in ancient texts as an ethnographic and rhetorical strategy to marginalize, minimize, demonize, or otherwise denigrate ‘the Other.’ It is seen as a characteristic of the wild, the savage, the uncivilized, and the bestial, something one attributes only to other people. This project challenges that assertion. In situating the many varied references to eating people in ancient Greek, Near Eastern, and Roman literature within their historical and generic contexts, I provide an alternative reading of the purpose of these accusations and stories. I argue that consumption of another is a statement of power, …

Historical Ecology Of Norse Greenland: Zooarchaeology And Climate Change Responses, Konrad Smiarowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis invokes Historical Ecology approach to better understand human impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the creation of cultural landscapes and seascapes in Norse Greenland. It also investigates climate impacts on human economic strategies, as they vary substantially by island and region in the North Atlantic but were especially important in arctic Greenland.

The analysis centers on the animal bone data and uses both existing and newly generated zooarchaeological collections to contribute to the study of Norse Greenland and its place in human ecodynamics research. The newly analyzed archaeofauna shows that the culturally Nordic European settlers used to …

Émigrés As Aneks: Polish Intellectuals Between East And West, 1968–1989, Lukasz Chelminski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work focuses on Aneks (1973-1989), a publication that a small group of post-1968 émigrés, mostly Polish Jews, created in exile. Conceptualized as an “annex” to intellectual life in Poland, the publication was founded to help Polish intellectuals look beyond the country to better understand national problems. At the core of the enterprise were the Smolar brothers, who were in a unique position to offer such help: soon after their forced emigration due to rising antisemitism in communist Poland, Aleksander began to study with the great French liberal, Raymond Aron, and Eugeniusz began a career at the Polish section of …

Clarinet And Shadow, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Clarinet and Shadow is a musical composition for clarinet and electronics. In the piece, live electronics pitch shift the sound of the clarinet to create harmonies and add the sound of an artificial instrument. The electronics are the clarinet's shadow: unreal, always there, and tied to its movement.

“The Theory Is Not Yet Music”: An Analysis Of Pierre Schaeffer’S Etude Aux Allures, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout his career, Pierre Schaeffer composed several sound works to test and inspire his evolving musical theories. By composing with edited sound recordings, rather than traditional musical instruments, he hoped to discover new ways of creating musical structures based on sound parameters other than pitch. This study is an analysis of Schaeffer’s sound work Etude aux allures. This Etude examines the musical potential of the sound parameter allure, which is Schaeffer’s term for the pulsed modulation of pitch, volume, or other sound parameters. Without the existence of a standardized analytical methodology, the Etude is viewed from several perspectives. First, a …

From Perfect Victims To Collateral Damage: How Nigerian Women Are Implicated In And Impacted By Contemporary French Anti-Trafficking Policies And Discourse, Oladunni Patricia Oduyemi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although the Nordic Model has been embraced by the international anti-trafficking movement, recent studies, and closer examinations of France’s approach to the issue of sex trafficking reveal a strong anti-migrant and anti-sex work bias. In this thesis, I use studies of the impacts of France’s 2016 anti-trafficking bill on migrant sex workers, feminist critiques of neo-abolitionism and the Nordic Model, and examples of France’s hypocritical anti-migrant position, to explore how Nigerian women are harmed by the contemporary French fight against sex trafficking. The pervasive influence of anti-sex work radical feminism on anti-trafficking protocols which define the sex industry as analogous …

An Analysis Of György Kurtág’S Officium Breve In Memoriam Andræ Szervánszky For String Quartet Op. 28, Matthew S. Sandahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides a movement-by-movement analysis of György Kurtág’s third string quartet, Officium breve in memoriam Andræ Szervánszky op. 28. While the work is widely celebrated for its wealth of extra-musical associations and allusions, this analysis is primarily oriented towards the music’s internal relationships, with the contention being that such an approach can help clarify and refine the role that reference and allusion plays in the piece. A close reading is given for each of the work’s fifteen movements.

Facing The Fringe, Laura Gradowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fringe theories are a broad set of alternative views that mainstream scientists deny. Case studies from the past two centuries demonstrate that fringe theorists have sometimes been marginalized to the detriment of scientific advancements. While it is accepted that once in a blue moon comes a diamond in the rough, there are far more cases of fringe theories becoming mainstream than has been traditionally acknowledged. Indeed, fringe theories become mainstream with such regularity that our epistemic intolerance towards them is in need of urgent reexamination. With the recognition that tolerance is an epistemic virtue, we can view debates about theory …

Voice, Arabness, And The Vocal Talent Competition Arab Idol, Insia Malik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the most popular entertainment programs on Arabic television in the 2010s through to its most recent season in 2017, Arab Idol (Mahbub al-‘Arab) was an offshoot of the Idols television franchise that launched globally in the early 2000s. This dissertation is a study of how Arabness was voiced quite literally on Arab Idol, through rhetoric and production—but primarily through the music. A show in which an Arabness is implicit in the nomenclature, Arab Idol catered to an Arab audience and thereby featured music that might speak to this audience. What distinguished the offshoot from its …

May The Word 'Shout' Be No More! Silence And The Hellenistic Voice, Noah Davies-Mason

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Operation Lone Star: The Spectacle Of Immigration Federalism, Danielle Puretz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 to respond to the “crisis” at the United States/Mexico border. While in the US immigration is usually thought of as a federal responsibility, different states have worked to expand their capacity to welcome or exclude immigrants. Operation Lone Star is an example of how one state is working to restrict immigration to the US and build notoriety for its republican governor. Drawing on press releases, executive orders, news articles, opinion pieces, and other sources I highlight the performative politics within this initiative. Operation Lone Star is an example of …

Destination Icaic: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Documentary Film And The Image Of The Cuban 1960s, Gabriel Arce-Riocabo Rollins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the interaction between foreign intellectuals and ICAIC (Instituto cubano de artes e industrias cinematográficas) in shaping the image of Cuba in the 1960s. I make the case that the idea of Revolution was a product of cosmopolitan intellectual engagement and that in this process documentary film was a privileged medium. By tracing the development of normative stories of commitment, cosmopolitanism, and aesthetic experimentation embodied both in written texts and travel essay films, I argue that such circulation destabilizes fixed ideas of Cuban, Revolutionary or Intellectual. The archive of Danish filmmaker and ICAIC collaborator Theodor Christensen as well …

Necessity, Essence And Analyticity: Toward An Analytic Essentialist Account Of Necessity, Dongwoo Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some truths could not have failed to hold. Such are called metaphysically necessary truths. As Michael Dummett once aptly formulated, the philosophical problem about necessity is twofold: what makes necessary truths necessarily true and how do we recognize them as such? This dissertation aims to address these questions by developing and defending a novel account of necessity, which has the following three main theses: (1) the necessity of a statement about an entity is established as a consequence of a general principle implying that if the entity is a certain way then it is necessarily that way and the fact …

A Queens Community Teacher Storytelling Project: A Qualitative Research Study Of Five Local Afro-Caribbean And Latina Public School Teachers And Community Teachers In New York City, José Alfredo Menjivar Ortéz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation thesis examines the lived experiences, life stories, and storytelling of five Afro-Caribbean and Latina people, who are all local from the borough of Queens, alumni of New York City’s public schools, and since then, became their local public school teachers, classroom practitioners, and local community teachers. We refer to this specific and unique population of teachers as alumni-community teachers and to these and other similar stories as teacher life stories.

This qualitative research and study were conducted through a series of writing workshops and semi-structured interviews. The study’s main examination is preoccupied to understand how local teachers make …

A Repository Of Books By Women From The Arab World Translated To English, Nadia El Mouldi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The translation of women writers from the Arab world in the West contributes to the harmful and inaccurate stereotyping of women from the region in the Global North as oppressed and silenced. In this paper, I describe the rationale and building process for “The repository of books by women from the Arab world translated to English”, a digital project built to counter this flattened image of women from the Arab world by shedding light on the books translated so far and exposing the patterns in the choice and translation of books from Arabic to English. I start by discussing the …

The International Academy Of Language And Culture: The Global (Pre)K-12 Charter School Network, Dree-El Simmons

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The International Academy of Language and Culture (IALC) is a charter school based on the original concept of charter schools by Ray Budde and Albert Shanker, as an academic environment dedicated and designed to improving the educational outcomes for its students through innovative pedagogy. Committed to American (and global) education reform, the IALC incorporates elements from higher education into the early childhood and adolescent settings. We accomplish this by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach in our language and culture-based program.

The IALC is a multilingual, full-immersion program. Food Studies (including culinary arts), the Arts, the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Martial Arts …

Jews In Film And Fiction, Amy W. Kratka

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Alternative Historic Photographic Processes, Maria Politarhos

Open Educational Resources

Processes explored and samples of previous classes

Pinhole Cameras

Cyanotype printing

Vandyke Brown printing

Hand-applied silver emulsion

Instant film transfers and lifts

Palladium printing

The Second-Person Point Of View In Three Contemporary Latino Short Stories, Rocio L. Uchofen

Student Theses

ABSTRACT

The Second-Person Point of View in Three Contemporary Latino Short Stories

By

Rocio L. Uchofen

Advisor: Professor Alyson Bardsley

The “you” discourse is dynamic, it generates an interaction, it implies a dialogue between narrator and reader. The investigations about the use of the second person in the narrative discourse generally go beyond English language frontiers, the discussion has not finished and narratological investigations have more texts to analyze as fiction in second-person narration is not an unusual occurrence in contemporary literature. The analysis of three short stories written by Latino writers Daniel Alarcon, Junot Diaz and Sandra Cisneros intends …

Broken Poet, Martin Cloutier

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Spa203. ¿Qué Hacemos Con La Lengua? Lenguaje, Diversidad Y Derechos Humanos, Juan Jesús Payán

Open Educational Resources

Descripción del curso

SPA203 - (For native or near-native speakers.) The grammatical structure of today's standard Spanish. Intensive practice in reading, speaking, and elementary composition.

En SPA203 vamos a explorar la relación entre el lenguaje y la diversidad en el marco de los derechos humanos fundamentales. El título del curso, “¿qué hacemos con la lengua?”, nos pregunta dos cosas: qué tipo de prejuicios perpetuamos por medio del lenguaje y cómo hacer para que la lengua albergue de manera efectiva la diversidad de nuestra sociedad. En un contexto actual, sorprendente estancado en la indiferencia, la ignorancia, el prejuicio y estigmatización de …

The Worst Horror Of All: Greene’S Political And Salvific Imagination In Brighton Rock, James C. Mcguire

Theses and Dissertations

An evaluation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock as it apprehends the Catholic novel as form. With ample assistance from Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Robert Hugh Benson's The Lord of the World, and select works of Fredric Jameson—most notably The Political Unconscious—this analysis seeks to clarify the politico-spiritual "horizon" evident in Greene's first "Catholic novel." By reviewing the novel through the lens of both Catholic theology and modern historical dialectic material criticism, this evaluation reclaims Graham Greene's early political radicalism that critics identify better in his later, less-religious texts. Discovered most clearly in the ending …

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

Futurist Art And Touch: Dinamismo Plastico, Tattilismo, Polimaterismo, Molly J. Everett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the Futurist engagement with touch, primarily through the artwork and writing of four Italian artists: Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944), Benedetta (Cappa) Marinetti (1897–1977), and Enrico Prampolini (1894–1956). Informed by childhood education, art theory and aesthetics, and perceptual psychology, these Futurists embraced tactility as a vehicle for avant-garde invention.