Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Smashed, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

What do you get when you toss together nine jugglers, 80 apples, and four crockery sets? “Smashed,” a tea party you’ll never forget, created by Gandini Juggling, the thinking person’s jugglers. Nine well-dressed, perfectly respectable young people take the stage and, under the guise of a quaint afternoon tea, engage in the dark art of juggling. Inspired by the work of Pina Bausch, the Gandinis display a virtuosic blend of skills, precision, and theatricality that leaves the audience breathless, while the performers remain as cool as cucumber sandwiches. Created in 1992 by renowned juggler Sean Gandini and champion gymnast Kati …

Cut The Sky, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

Is it a rock concert? Modern dance? A plea for environmental action and the rights of Indigenous peoples? Cut the Sky by Marrugeku, Australia’s preeminent dance theater ensemble of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, is all three. As soul singer Ngaire belts out tunes ranging from Nick Cave to Buffalo Springfield Australian “post-soul” music, Marrugeku’s “incredibly expressive and visceral” dancers (The Guardian) form a band of climate change refugees struggling to survive another extreme weather event. Moving backward and forward in time, Cut the Sky meditates on humanity’s frailty in the face of its own actions.

Field, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times calls choreographer Liz Gerring’s mind, “warmly modernist: scientific but also passionately and infectiously in love with movement.” Gerring returns to the Kasser with “field,” the third in a trilogy of works created in collaboration with composer Michael J. Schumacher and designer Robert Wierzel, all commissioned and produced by Peak Performances. In Field, Gerring and her team conceive a place in which the elements — movement, sound, and light — combine to envelope and engage the audience, and where her magnificent dancers test their the physical limits.

Thank You For Coming : Attendance And Play, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

Faye Driscoll is an award-winning choreographer and director whose work has been described as “creative, awkward, hilarious, goofy, surprising, rowdy, randy, chaotic, and sweet.” (Berkshire Eagle) Thank You for Coming is her playful, moving, mind-boggling trilogy about “how we are all wrapped up in each other, whether we like it or not.” In October, see the first two parts of the trilogy; then come back in April for the world premiere of the trilogy’s final installation.

The National Anthems : Music Of Lang, Shaw And Hearne, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

Where does patriotism end and nationalism begin? Are there universal values that transcend national borders? The Crossing, hailed as an “ardently angelic” chamber choir by The Los Angeles Times, considers these difficult questions with works by three powerhouse composers: Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ted Hearne. The strings players of ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) magnify the impact of this stirring and timely concert.

All Beethoven : Celebrating The Shanghai Quartet’S 35th Anniversary, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

Renowned for its passionate musicality, impressive technique, and distinctive blend of styles, the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The “utterly sublime” (The New York Times) ensemble returns for two enchanting engagements. The Shanghai Quartet is the quartet-in-residence at Montclair State University’s Cali School of Music.

Hatuey : Memory Of Fire, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2018-2019 Borders and Boundaries

HATUEY: Memory of Fire is a soaring Cuban-Yiddish opera, a love story set in a Havana nightclub in 1931. Oscar, a young Jewish writer who escaped the pogroms in the Ukraine to make a new home in Cuba, falls in love with Tinima, a beautiful singer and passionate revolutionary of Taino descent. As Oscar pens an epic poem about Cuba’s legendary 16th century freedom fighter, Hatuey, Tinima draws him into her fight against the corrupt Machado regime. This vibrant fusion of Afro-Cuban and Yiddish music and culture is also a powerful celebration of freedom performed in English, Yiddish, and Spanish …

The Differences Of Musical Self-Expression And The Interrelationships Within Group Music Improvisation Between Japan And The United States, Rieko Eguchi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Individualism and collectivism are described in various domains, and those are often referred to describe people’s cultural characteristics. Those characteristics are also deeply related to how to perceive ‘self’ in a cultural context. As a presupposition, America is often regarded as an individualistic society, and Japan is often regarded as a collectivistic society. From a music therapy perspective, sound reflects our inner world. Based on these concepts, this study was designed to investigate if there were any culturally-related characteristics in the sound of group music improvisation in America and Japan, and any connectedness regarding self-expression and interrelationship.

The purpose of …

Making Narrative Theory Teachable : Experiments And Overlaps In Lost, Arrested Development, And A Visit From The Goon Squad, Kristen Lynn Zosche

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The goal of this thesis is to identify a theoretical approach for teaching narrative theory with television as a strategy. I argue that television serves as an accessible introduction to narrative theory and that following the template in study prepares students to transfer their new understanding of popular television narratives to the reading of complex novels. This thesis asks whether the critical acclaim attached to American television shows of the New Golden Age should push us to reconsider the place of television within the context of English studies as a pedagogical tool. It addresses the current relationship between television and …

The Most Valiant In Defense Of His Country: Andrew Jackson's Bequest And The Politics Of Courage, 1819–1857, Robert E. Cray

Department of History Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On June 8, 1845, Andrew Jackson, former president, military hero, and Democratic Party icon died at his Hermitage estate outside Nashville, Tennessee. Word of Jackson's death spread rapidly across the nation. Democratic newspapers eulogized him as a champion of the common man, while Whig journals adopted a more temperate tone—partisan divisions and political memories still cast a long shadow. Cities and towns held funeral observances to commemorate the General's passing. Jackson's last will and testament, his final message to his countrymen as it were, commanded notice too: Bequests to family and friends included the "elegant" swords awarded Jackson for his …

Using A Model To Design Activity-Based Educational Experiences To Improve Cultural Competency Among Graduate Students, Yeon Bai, Kathleen D. Bauer

Department of Nutrition and Food Studies Scholarship and Creative Works

To improve the cultural competency of 34 students participating in graduate nutrition counseling classes, the Campinha-Bacote Model of Cultural Competence in the Delivery of Health Care Services was used to design, implement, and evaluate counseling classes. Each assignment and activity addressed one or more of the five constructs of the model, i.e., knowledge, skill, desire, encounters, and awareness. A repeated measure ANOVA evaluated pre- and post-test cultural competence scores (Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence among Healthcare Professionals). The overall cultural competence score significantly improved (p < 0.001) from “culturally aware” (68.7 at pre-test) to “culturally competent” (78.7 at post-test). Students significantly improved (p < 0.001) in four constructs of the model including awareness, knowledge, skill, and encounter. Factor analysis indicated that course activities accounted for 83.2% and course assignments accounted for 74.6% of the total variance of cultural competence. An activity-based counseling course encouraging self-evaluation and reflection and addressing Model constructs significantly improved the cultural competence of students. As class activities and assignments aligned well with the Campinha-Bacote Model constructs, the findings of this study can help guide health educators to design effective cultural competence training and education programs.

2017-2018 Season Brochure, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2017-2018 Women Innovators in the Performing Arts

No abstract provided.

Spinning, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2017-2018 Women Innovators in the Performing Arts

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe (“Anthracite Fields,” 2015) and “cello goddess” (The New Yorker) Maya Beiser honor the essential labor of spinning thread. “Spinning” celebrates the work once performed by hand by women. Music has long been a vital part of the craft — both as a propelling force and as a distraction. To pay homage to the human dignity of this work, Wolfe and Beiser create a sonic universe for three cellos and voice performed by Beiser with Melody Giron and Lavena Johanson featuring multimedia projections imagined by the innovative artist Laurie Olinder. In Beiser’s words, “I found in …

Music Therapists’ Experience With Resistance In An Inpatient Psychiatric Setting, Mark E. Ackerman

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This phenomenological research study examined music therapists’ experiences with resistance as it occurred with patients in the context of inpatient psychiatric care in the New York City area.While there are many definitions of resistance in the previously published literature on the subject, participants were asked to recount their experiences of resistance without reference to a specific definition: their responses are based on an individual interpretation of the phenomenon.

While there are notable studies on music therapy and resistance, there have been few studies on resistance in the context of inpatient psychiatric care. The following research questions were addressed in this …

“‘Bold Words Vouched With A Deed So Bold’ : Latent Orientalism And Narrative In John Milton’S Paradise Lost”, Carolyn Noury

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This essay explores, in sequence, the event of Eve’s dream, Raphael’s visit to Eden, and Satan’s temptation as presented in Milton’s Paradise Lost. To aid an interpretation of Raphael’s visit to Eden, in terms other than failure, is Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism. Said’s theoretical cruxes of “latent orientalism” and “narrative” propel an analytical reconfiguration of the events stated above. As Said’s claims work to question analyses of Raphael’s visit, present in scholarly discourse, Milton’s text works to reveal the analytical possibilities of Said’s work in ways that are otherwise absent from the discourse. By examining these moments in Milton’s …

Flawed To Start : The Inconsequence Of Action In The Novels Of Brian O’Nolan, Christopher M. Mitchell

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Brian O’Nolan’s novels At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, and The Third Policeman present worlds where character actions are largely inconsequential. This discussion will focus on reflexive metanarrative elements, criticism of the Irish revivalist movements and authorship and creation as a means to survive these worlds. O’Nolan’s novels will be shown to be largely optimistic in their confrontation of nihilistic concerns. Much of his writing is comedic and playful even when dealing with serious topics. Repetition through both language and story structure are key components of the futility O’Nolan constructs for his characters and readers. This thesis examines the interplay between …

Community Music Therapy And El Sistema : Addressing The Empowerment Needs Of Marginalized Individuals And Their Communities, Virginia Carolina Eulacio-Guevara

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Music is an accessible tool for positive change within people and societies, even in places facing socioeconomic marginalization due to poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to resources. Social capital has to do with the resources and networks available within society, which may help confront issues faced by individuals and communities. Community Music Therapy (CoMT) and the music education movement known as El Sistema both utilize music—understood as social capital—to address social justice. The purpose of this study was to comparatively examine the ways in which CoMT and El Sistema programs may address the empowerment needs of individuals and communities …

“The Unwelcome Truth” : Arthur Miller’S The Crucible As Satirical Political Allegory, Deanna Marie Mattia

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that while Arthur Miller’s 1952 play The Crucible is often cited as a political allegory of the McCarthy era, analyzing various instances of irony and how language itself becomes almost criminal shows the play can also be interpreted as satire. This thesis begins with a detailed analysis of Puritan life and religion to show how Spectral Evidence and an inherent fear of the Devil become the driving forces of the Salem Trials. From there, an examination of the political climate that inspires Miller to do a close-reading of human behavior shows how …

Queens Of Failing Nations In Classical Tragedy, Katie L. Toledano

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will compare the role that queens in failing nations, motivated by revenge, play as tragic heroes in Classical tragedy. Focusing on the classical tragedies of Euripides’ Medea and Hekabe to Seneca’s Medea and Trojan Women, this thesis compares the roles that these queens play as tragic heroes in both the Greek and Roman renditions. As politically significant characters and tragic heroes, Medea and Hecuba both operate as both poison and cure, representing nations and houses that are failing, on the basis of their identity and their actions. I have focused on how Euripides and Seneca offer queens and …

Trajectories Of The Postcolony In The Color Purple, Kim Silva-Martinez

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Achille Mbembe’s theory from On the Postcolony uses structuralism to define Africa in terms of its differences: that is, what the continent lacks, or what is absent when compared to Europe. Mbembe, however, introduces a new definition of Africa to refute Western culture’s dependence on social constructs of race that enforce Eurocentric power to marginalize individuals as “other.” An analysis of stereotypes in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple pairs well with Mbembe’s theories, because Walker’s character portrayals in the sections devoted to Africa serve to complicate these constructs of race, and introduce fetishism, objectification, and postcolonialism as well. Instead of …

Simplicity And Sustainability: Pointers From Ethics And Science, Mehrdad Massoudi, Ashwin Vaidya

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this paper, we explore the notion of simplicity. We use definitions of simplicity proposed by philosophers, scientists, and economists. In an age when the rapidly growing human population faces an equally rapidly declining energy/material resources, there is an urgent need to consider various notions of simplicity, collective and individual, which we believe to be a sensible path to restore our planet to a reasonable state of health. Following the logic of mathematicians and physicists, we suggest that simplicity can be related to sustainability. Our efforts must therefore not be spent so much in pursuit of growth but in achieving …

The Influence Of Religion On The Criminal Behavior Of Emerging Adults, Christopher Salvatore, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Recent generations of young adults are experiencing a new life course stage: emerging adulthood. During this ‘new’ stage of the life course, traditional social bonds and turning points may not be present, may be delayed, or may not operate in the same manner as they have for prior generations. One such bond, religion, is examined here. Focusing on the United States, emerging adulthood is investigated as a distinct stage of the life course. The criminality of emerging adults is presented, a theoretical examination of the relationship between religion and crime is provided, the role of religion in emerging adults’ lives …

Esta Breve Tragedia De La Carne, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2017-2018 Women Innovators in the Performing Arts

With Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh), Peak Performances introduces audiences to the singular work of the confrontational Spanish writer, director and performance artist Angélica Liddell. All the major European festivals – d’Avignon and d’Automne in France, Vie in Italy, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland – embrace Liddell with the adoration usually reserved for Romeo Castellucci and Robert Wilson. Esta Breve Tragedia epitomizes her willingness to put herself and her performers through intense physical challenges to explore politics and the human condition. Here she immerses herself in Emily Dickinson, who spent much of her life …

M Stabat Mater, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2017-2018 Women Innovators in the Performing Arts

“M”is the most common sound in the word for “mother” in languages all over the world. In this stunning tribute to motherhood, contemporary dance, set to baroque music, probes its joys and sorrows. While pregnant with her third child, emerging Israeli choreographer Inbal Oshman found inspiration in Pergolesi’s version of Stabat Mater, the 13th-century hymn about Mary’s vigil at the foot of the cross. Oshman’s dance explores the vulnerability and tenderness required of mothers, and the strength and ferocity that come with the territory. She borrows from the mythological mothers of history, including the Mary of Christianity, the dark and …

Leonora And Alejandro : La Maga Y El Maestro, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2017-2018 Women Innovators in the Performing Arts

In 2016, Stacy Klein and her Double Edge Theatre dazzled Peak audiences with their acclaimed, kaleidoscopic The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century). They return in 2018 with the world premiere of Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, a fantasia on the relationship between two remarkable artists: the Mexican painter, writer and feminist Leonora Carrington and the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Drawing on the music, dance and magic realism of Latin American culture, Double Edge’s new project promises to be challenging, provocative and beautiful.

Findings Of An Effect Of Gender, But Not Handedness, On Self-Reported Motion Sickness Propensity, Ruth E. Propper, Frederick Bonato, Leanna Ward, Kenneth Sumner

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Discrepant input from vestibular and visual systems may be involved in motion sickness; individual differences in the organization of these systems may, therefore, give rise to individual differences in propensity to motion sickness. Non-right-handedness has been associated with altered cortical lateralization of vestibular function, such that non-right-handedness is associated with left hemisphere, and right-handedness with right hemisphere, lateralized, vestibular system. Interestingly, magnocellular visual processing, responsible for motion detection and ostensibly involved in motion sickness, has been shown to be decreased in non-right-handers. It is not known if the anomalous organization of the vestibular or magnocellular systems in non-right-handers might alter …

History In 140 Characters: Twitter To Support Reading Comprehension And Argumentation In Digital-Humanities Pedagogy, Kalani Craig

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

Click-bait headlines that tackle the modern phenomenon of social media often rail against the stultifying effects of too much Twitter. At the same time, productive educational use of Twitter in the classroom is a particularly germane area of study for digital humanists, who consider Twitter a central piece of their community-building practices. This case-study analysis addresses the use of microblogging by using activity theory to understand how social media can be harnessed to help students quickly appropriate the norms of professional historians in a discipline they often encounter as passive listeners in a large lecture course. Students reimagined Prokopios’ biography …

Entering The Digital Commons: Using Affinity Spaces To Foster Authentic Digital Writing In Online And Traditional Writing Courses, Jeffrey Bergin

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

Despite the fact that the field of rhetoric and composition has been closely allied to the digital humanities for many years, instructors in these disciplines often remain on their own in terms of adopting, implementing, and evaluating digital technologies. While theoretical scholarship in digital rhetoric is advancing, instructional practices lag behind. Surveying 72 doctoral-granting rhetoric and composition programs, researchers found innovation in the implementation of new media comes primarily from solitary instructors (Anderson and McKee, 74). This article presents several ways in which writing instructors can leverage digital spaces to improve their pedagogies. In particular, the article focuses on digital …

Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai

Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …

Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai

Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …