Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Pre-Service Music Teachers' Perspectives Of Experiences In An Informal Music Learning Group, Veronica Jane Sharpe

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Pre-service music teachers’ undergraduate preparation is often geared towards formal music making (i.e., large conductor-led ensembles). However, recent research suggests that many school-aged students are making music in informal settings (e.g. garage bands) outside of school. Despite a recent influx of research in informal music learning, there is little information on pre-service music teacher’s opinions towards and preparedness in incorporating informal music making into the classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how pre-service music teachers’ informal music learning experiences shaped their perspectives on the importance of informal music learning and its role in the classroom. For this …

Retaliation With Restraint: Destruction Of Private Property In The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Jeannie Cummings Harding

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Second Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1864 created new challenges for commanders, soldiers, and civilians on both sides. Pressure on General Grant and President Lincoln to end the war quickly precipitated an increase in the use and severity of hard war policies in the South. Meanwhile, Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early worked against his foe, implementing hard war in southern Pennsylvania in a desperate attempt to maintain his supply base in the Shenandoah Valley. Soldiers and civilians found themselves caught in the middle of an increasing cycle of destruction that they seemed to find equally demoralizing. Three towns suffered significant …

The Inclusive Art Classroom: Time And Strategies, Margaret Harrison Vaughan Miller

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Art teachers are required to teach inclusive art classes that provide instruction for general education students and their mentally disabled peers. This study reveals the amount of time an art teacher needs to prepare for and teach the exceptional education students in an inclusive art classroom during school, at school after hours, and at home. Successful teaching strategies are identified. The following recommendations should be taken into consideration: educational institutions should require that preservice teachers take classes on exceptional education, and school districts should provide inservice workshops on teaching inclusive classes to general education teachers, including art teachers.

Artistic Influence, Stylistic Irony, And Musical Reference In Dmitri Shostakovich’S Cello Concerto No. 1, Ryan Michael Hoffman

Dissertations, 2014-2019

This paper examines Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, opus 107, as an exemplary work of the composer. In order to attempt a holistic understanding of the piece, I approached it in several ways. First, I examined the influence of several composers, including Saint-Saëns, Prokofiev, and especially Mahler. Mahler’s influence is most significant in the juxtaposition of incongruous elements, often to ironic effect. My second major topic of interest is in harmonic processes particular to Shostakovich. His use of harmony is unique in the way it successfully avoids traditional tonal processes while remaining accessible and engaging to the listener. My …

“This Is A Cause Worth Dying For:” Sarah And Angelina Grimké And The Development Of A Political Identity, Erin K. Gillett

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Growing up in a slave-holding family in South Carolina, sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké had first hand experience of the horrors and evils of the institution of slavery. Due to a religious conversion and a strong internal moral code, both sisters chose to leave their southern home and move to Philadelphia. Once in the North, the sisters became actively engaged in the abolition movement, and served as itinerant antislavery lecturers around the New England states. As their fame grew, so did opposition against their presence in the public sphere—an arena that was traditionally male dominated. Despite harsh criticisms against their …

Kaczynski Is To Walden As A Predator Drone Is To Batman., Evan Fitzgerald

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

I can see an image of Darth Vader making graphs that describe the Singularity with his left hand while tightly rendering Odysseus gouging out the eye of Polyphemus with his right hand. At the same time Vader is reciting philosophy and critical theory in both English and binary code through a speaker in a mask that filters his true voice. The written portion of my thesis provides perspective into my artistic practice while elaborating on the ideas behind the two-dimensional allegorical panel paintings from my thesis exhibition, Kaczynski is to Walden as a Predator Drone is to Batman. I use …

Robert Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 1 In F-Sharp Minor, Op. 11–Style And Structure, Stephanie Abigail Emberley

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Robert Schumann's music reflects the complexity of his life and psyche. Even Schumann himself acknowledged the challenges this presented to anyone attempting to understand his music, and the Piano Sonata no. 1 in F-sharp minor, op. 11 is an example of the complex inter-relationship between Schumann's music and life. This document will have a three-fold approach to discussing Schumann's Sonata. I will outline the literary characteristics of German Romantic authors, discuss how Schumann musically interprets these characteristics while reflecting other composers, and show how these techniques help add extra-musical significance to op. 11, particularly in connection with Clara.

Robert Schumann's …

Citizens Of The Empire: A Molding Of Victorian Childhood Identity, Christopher B. Gallagher

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Victorian Era in Great Britain was a time period of dramatic change. The Industrial Revolution was altering the social and economic fabric of society. Socially, Victorians were confronted with new theories that challenged their religious beliefs. The British Isles were progressing steadily in creating a national identity. Finally, the existence of the British Empire made imperialism a factor that cannot be ignored. Yet, many historians have pointed out that the history of the British metropole itself is often disconnected from the political and cultural history of the Empire. It is within this conversation that this project seeks to find …

Where Feet Are As Light As Feathers (A World Of Things), Katie Zickefoose

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Where feet are as light as feathers (a world of things) is a combination of 2D work including painting, drawing, and prints, in conjunction with a written monograph that supports and gives insight into the work. Through a series of short stories, both fictional and nonfictional, fleeting thoughts, as well as research in critical theory and art history, I make connections between my art, my process, and my own earthly living.

A Stylistic Analysis And Performance Guide To Selected Compositions Of Dave Douglas For The Tiny Bell Trio, Taylor Roy Barnett

Dissertations, 2014-2019

The purpose of this research document is to aid the trumpeter in the preparation and performance of selected compositions by Dave Douglas for the Tiny Bell Trio. This document consists of (1) stylistic analysis, which addresses Douglas’ adaptation of Balkan folk forms in his original compositions and (2) a performance guide, which includes edited scores and trumpet parts, transcriptions and analyses of Douglas’ improvisations, discussions of performance practices of the Tiny Bell Trio, and suggestions for solving the technical challenges presented by each piece. The information contained in this document is drawn from Douglas’ original manuscripts and composition sketchbooks, recorded …

"We Long For A Home": American Discourses On Jewishness After The Second World War (1945-49), Samantha M. Bryant

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

In 1939, the United States government denied the entry of German Jewish refugees traveling aboard the MS St. Louis into the country. Less than ten years later, President Harry S. Truman declared his support for the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine, legitimizing his position based on war atrocities, genocide, and Jews’ right to self-determination. This project poses questions that seek to understand how U.S. foreign policy-shifts impacted American culture and postwar discourses on Jewishness in the age of Jim Crow between the years 1945 and 1949. This study illustrates the geopolitical forces impacting domestic social and political culture …

Formulaic Women?: The Disparity Between The 12th Century Reality Of Noblewomen In England And The 12th Century Chronicles' Depiction Of English Noblewomen, Kimberly Wharton

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis seeks to examine the degree to which 12th century chronicles do or do not accurately represent the position of 12th century noblewomen in England. Since the chroniclers partly based their women on what had been written before, the extent to which the 12th century chronicles follow the two borrowed motifs of women as intellectuals and warriors from their sources will also be discussed. The works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Newburgh represent the 12th century chronicles. This thesis will also look at the chroniclers’ Latin sources, specifically Bede, Virgil, and Ovid. …

Limited War, Limited Enthusiasm: Sexuality, Disillusionment, Survival, And The Changing Landscape Of War Culture In Korean War-Era Comic Books And Soldier Iconography, Joshua K. Akers

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis investigates how Korean War-era comic books and soldier-produced iconography between 1950 and 1953 reflected the conflict and helped construct ideal soldier masculinities. Differentiating between romantic, soldier-produced, and realist imagery, this thesis argues that comic books—traditionally treated as low-brow children’s literature—articulated diverse and sophisticated discussions about the nature of warfare and its impact on manhood. Soldiers and artists reflected a war that came on the heels of World War II, and the disillusionment expressed in these sources reflected a broader cultural conflict between representing World War II sentimentalism and the new, limited war in Korea. This struggle resulted in …

Visual Art Assessment For Middle School Students, Kathryn Batlle

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This research study was designed by a middle school art teacher to fulfill the new teacher evaluation requirements in Virginia. The study was implemented in a sixth grade art classroom of sixteen students in the 2012 fall semester. This research study investigated the use of an authentic assessment tool to document student growth in a middle school art classroom. This performance assessment tool, evaluating student artwork, used detailed criterion-referenced rubrics to score student achievement in units focused on drawing and painting. The design included a pre- and post-instruction artwork that was assessed with the created rubrics. Student artwork was organized …

"Rooted Deeply In Our Past": A Landscape History Of Brunswick, Maryland, Alyssa R. Fisher

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis is a case study in landscape history which investigates how landscapes in conjunction with historic maps and records can be used and read as documents of history. Through analysis of features in the landscape of Brunswick, Maryland in addition to research of land deeds, maps, historic images, newspapers, and other records, Brunswick’s development and settlement can be traced with reference to broader national ideas and issues throughout history. Brunswick’s landscape shows three distinct stages of development that began near the Potomac River and spread north up into the steep hills that surrounds the river’s floodplain. The first stage …

Giant Ants And Killer Children: Fear And Popular Culture In 1950s America, Kathleen Elizabeth Ford

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This public history thesis consists of three main sections that combine to form a complete plan for a museum exhibit on 1950s American fears as seen through the lens of popular culture. In American popular memory, postwar America often emerges as a somewhat simplistic time in which every citizen was mired in conservatism and concerned only for communist spies and nuclear devastation. Though these were very real fears for the majority of the population, their fears also went much deeper than this. Through the museum exhibit medium, this thesis explores fears of loneliness, humanity’s capacity for evil, and societal collapse …

The Wrong Track: Errors In American Tank Development In World War Ii, Jacob Fox

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

American main battle tanks in the European Theater of World War II were technologically inferior to their German counterparts. Crews in the M4 Sherman tank thus suffered extreme casualties in the fight to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi Germany. This thesis contends that the U.S. Army had another tank available by the fall of 1944 that could have saved the lives of many American soldiers and might have also ended the war sooner than May 1945. The existing historiography fails to consider much of the records from the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department about the development of this more advanced tank: …

Lost Cause Campuses: Confederate Memory And Lost Cause Rituals At The University Of Mississippi And University Of Virginia, Jeffery Hardin Hobson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

From the 1890s to the 1940s, students at southern college campuses, like most white southerners, participated in the Lost Cause movement. But these young men and women custom fitted the imagery, rhetoric, symbols, and ideals associated with the movement to better fit their campuses. These students, then, were actively participating in their own, indigenous, personalized Lost Cause rituals.

Confederate memory, and Old South mythologies permeated student publications. The pictures and stories that littered the pages of yearbooks, newspapers, and magazines took elements from the Lost Cause and customized them to reflect their own indigenous campus culture. At the University of …

For Dixie Children: Teaching Students What It Meant To Be Confederate Americans Through Their Textbooks, Nathan Richard Samuel Ryalls

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Education in the 19th century relied heavily on school texts in order to teach American children the moral and civic responsibilities they must possess in order to become productive members of the American republic. After declaring secession, Confederate cultural nationalists took up the cause of educating the school children in the Confederate States of America in the moral and civic responsibilities determined important to the preservation of their new nation. Southerners had felt disenfranchised by the northern press and believed their children learning from these schoolbooks became weakened in their southern identity. Though some southerners were espousing the need for …

A Culture Of Anatomy: The Public Writings Of American Anatomists, 1800-1870, Mary Patricia Schwanz

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examines the public writings of several American anatomists who wrote between the years 1800 and 1870. Anatomists and the public clashed over the proper place of anatomical knowledge and research in American society. Anatomists had to prove that their field of inquiry was both worthwhile and morally acceptable. In their attempts to do so, anatomists formed a distinct subculture separate from that of practicing physicians, as well as influenced the debate over anatomy's place within the medical field. Examining the public writings of American anatomists during this period provides insight into the ways in which this debate was …

Failure Of Imagination: Gender Integration And Negotiated Identities At The United States Air Force Academy, Amelia Frances Underwood

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Public Law-106, which authorized the admittance of women into the five federal service academies, was historically significant as it reversed the previous male-only policy at the nation’s premier military leadership institutions. Its 1975 passage reflected the groundwork established by military women as well as two decades of feminist activism in America. The entrance of women at the service academies clearly challenged the existing norms for women’s roles in the military and arguably in American society as well; furthermore, an analysis of primary source documents and oral histories provides insight into how men and women at the Air Force Academy confronted …

Pedagogical Use Of Cinematic Imagery In Augusta Read Thomas's Piano Etudes, Luis Bernardo Gonzalez

Dissertations, 2014-2019

This document is a study of Augusta Read Thomas’s piano études from the point of view of mood and atmosphere. These expressive aspects of Thomas’s piano pieces spring out from both the descriptive titles and from the suggestive piano writing. The music analysis of Thomas’s piano études utilizes cinema art as a means to elaborate on musical imagery, based on the cinema’s potential to convey mood and atmosphere. The crossroads between Thomas’s piano études and cinema art affords to create a pedagogical tool as a means for expressive and convincing performances of Thomas’s pieces.