Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Public Interest In Razón Pública: A Data-Driven Network Analysis, Emilio Calderon Reyes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is a case study based on a network analysis of the magazine Razón Pública. This project took an inductive, data-driven approach to public interest in the context of a specific digital network. The main objectives were to characterize the magazine’s authors and subscribers, identify its prevalent news topics, and validate to what extent subscribers agree that the resulting topics are of public interest or not. In order to achieve these objectives, a mixed methodology was used; it consisted of combining Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques -keyword network, n-grams analysis, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling-, qualitative …

Prufrock: A Monodrama For Baritone And Electronics, Daniel Gardner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Prufrock is a musical dramatization of T.S. Eliot’s, The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock for solo baritone and electronics; a full performance of the work should take approximately forty (40) minutes.

The work uses text from both Eliot’s original publication and a section removed from the text called Prufrock’s Pervigilium—first published in Christopher Ricks’s Inventions of the March Hare—and superimposes a narrative onto Eliot’s monologue of a man whose internal experience differs wildly from reality. As such Prufrock emphasizes the psychodramatic elements of the original text, reflecting them through the use of “auditory illusions” (particularly those described …

No Space To Sing: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Experiences Of Classical Singers With Primary Muscle Tension Dysphonia, Elizabeth Lepock

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study was designed as a qualitative narrative inquiry study into the experiences of classical singers with Primary Muscle Tension Dysphonia (PMTD). PMTD is defined as Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) without organic or neurological factors. In the population of professional voice users, PMTD is typically associated with occupational/behavioural causes.

A review of the literature shows that occupational disorders are associated with stigma in the classical music community, that research on PMTD in the demographic of singers is sparse and often broadly defined, and that PMTD is not well-represented in the vocal pedagogy literature. Additionally, PMTD may present differently in classical …

The Simultaneous Book: Women's Writing In Contemporary Art, Maryse Lariviere

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Novels written by women authors who don’t adhere to the classification “visual artist” are nonetheless gaining momentum in today's contemporary art world. Yet works by authors such as Chris Kraus or Catherine Millet are often not recognized as artist’s novels because their authors are not or/and do not consider themselves to be visual artists. I contend that we can usefully situate their work within the genre of the artist’s novel by addressing how they invent artistic postures and artistic alter-egos within the autofictional worlds of their texts. My dissertation The Simultaneous Book proposes to open up the definition of the …

Forward And Up: An Exploration Of Implementations Of The Alexander Technique In Post-Secondary Music Institutions, Mei Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Music performance is a psychophysical affair. Like athletes, musicians need to be physically, mentally, and emotionally fit in order to meet the demands and challenges of training and performing. For over half a century, post-secondary music institutions have been utilizing the Alexander Technique to address young musicians’ psychophysical coordination and playing-related challenges. This unique mind-body method teaches individuals how to move efficiently and carry out activities with freedom and ease by recognizing and changing counterproductive habits. It has noted beneficial effects on posture and coordination, pain relief, and stress management, and its relevance to music performance studies is endorsed by …

Narratives Of Canadian Identity At The Ultimate Fighting Championship, Jared V. Walters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the use of representations and symbols of Canadian identity within the event coverage produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship Corporation, in the context of its two key events, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Fight Night, produced in Canada. To establish the historical context in which the sport developed in Canada, a narrative historiography of the political and legal struggles that led to the legalization and increasing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts, and the UFCC’s version of the sport, in particular. This first major part of the dissertation is contained in Study 1. The …

Love, Sex, And The Noose: The Emotions Of Sodomy In 18th-Century England, Frances H.I. Henry

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

At the end of the 19^th century, it was believed that men who desired other men were 'despicable, degraded, depraved, vicious, and incapable of humane and generous sentiments'. This dissertation examines how the emotional reactions of and towards sodomites in England between 1691 and 1828 shaped this perception. It considers six sets of paired emotions: lust and disgust, love and hatred, hope and fear, gratitude and anger, joy and sadness, and pride and shame. It examines how changes in law, gender norms, in religious and philosophical thought, the rise of sentimentalism, evangelism, nationalism and the middle-class shaped these emotional …

Critiquing The New Autonomy Of Immaterial Labour: An Analysis Of Work In The Artificial Intelligence Industry, James Steinhoff

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Karl Marx theorized capitalism as a relation between labour, capital and machines. For Marx, capital, the process of self-augmenting value appropriated from human labour, is inherently driven by competition to replace labour in production with machines. Marx goes as far as to describe machines as capital’s “most powerful weapon” for suppressing working class revolt. Marx, however, could not have predicted the computing machines – such as artificial intelligence – which now form the basis for an increasingly cybernetic capital. Since Marx’s time, many Marxist thinkers have sought to apply or update his approach to the cybernetic era. The influential post-operaismo …

Marges Et Marginalités Dans Le Roman Québécois Pour Adolescents (2003–2018) : Quand L’Adulte Dicte La Déviance, Karine Beaudoin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cette thèse interroge les représentations de la marginalité dans un corpus de romans québécois pour adolescents publiés entre les années 2003 et 2018. L’invention d’une littérature conçue pour les 12 à 18 ans repose sur une préoccupation du sur-mesure. Si les récits destinés à ce groupe de lecteurs se rapprochent dans leur écriture, leur richesse sémantique et leur originalité esthétique de ceux pour adultes, ils conservent en revanche de la littérature pour enfants cet attachement à une visée didactique et morale, attachement fondé sur un double idéal d’innocence et de transmission. La thématique de la marginalité, en raison de l’étroitesse …

The Amphibian, Melioristic Agenda For Dividuals: Tropological Oscillations Versus Tropological Settlements, Donatas Sinkunas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Some people often identify themselves too strongly with one particular belief system. Others, throughout their lives, travel from one belief system to another without necessarily weaving their experiences and gained bodies of knowledge in a complementary manner. This thesis discusses different frequencies and principles of this sort of settlements or oscillations. I argue that it is impossible to believe in perfectly purist ideologies that would not deviate from their putative, pre-established, holistic inner order. Through multiple literary, cinematic, and philosophical examples it is shown that people are of dividual (not individual) nature. That is to say, potentially we contain multiple …

Modes Of Argumentation In Aristotle's Natural Science, Adam W. Woodcox

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Through a detailed analysis of the various modes of argumentation employed by Aristotle throughout his natural scientific works, I aim to contribute to the growing scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s theory of science and his actual scientific practice. I challenge the standard reading of Aristotle as a methodological empiricist and show that he permits a variety of non-empirical arguments to support controversial theses in properly scientific contexts. Specifically, I examine his use of logical (logikôs) argumentation in the discussion of mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8, rational (kata ton logon) argumentation in his discussion of cardiocentrism throughout …

The Grand Experiment: Jerome Dwight Davis And The Young Men’S Christian Association’S War Prisoner Aid Sports Programing For German Pows In Canadian Camps During World War Two, Courtney Hope Van Waas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Jerome Davis, head of the Young Men’s Christian Association War Prisoner Aid program, was a devout Congregationalist dedicated to providing for the basic sport and recreation endeavours of German Prisoners of War interned in Canadian POW camps during the Second World War. Having worked with German Prisoners of War in Russia during the First World War, Davis firmly believed that WWII Allies the world over needed to change their generally antagonistic point of view towards German POWs, indeed, a point of view that required “moral revisionism.” Davis believed that the vilification and demeaning status of German POWs was not only …

A Groundwork For A Logic Of Objects, David Winters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The history of philosophy is rich with theories about objects; theories of object kinds, their nature, the status of their existence, etc. In recent years philosophical logicians have attempted to formalize some of these theories, yielding many fruitful results. My thesis intends to add to this tradition in philosophical logic by developing a second-order logical system that may serve as a groundwork for a multitude of theories of objects (e.g. concrete and abstract objects, impossible objects, fictional objects, and others). Through the addition of what we may call sortal quantifiers (i.e. quantifiers that bind individual variables ranging over objects of …

"It's Obvious Who Plays An Instrument And Who Doesn't": Using Doxa And Illusio To Explore Inequities In English School Music Education, Alison Butler

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and illusio in English secondary school music education, using data collection from a comparative case study undertaken at two contrasting schools in a rural county, Stonefarm High School and Friars Hall School. Data were gathered over five months in 2018, using lesson observations, student focus groups and teacher interviews. Three classes were invited to participate at each school.

The data were analysed using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice (1977), especially the field mechanisms of doxa and illusio. Doxa, the unwritten rules of a field, and illusio, belief in the game being played in the …

Imaginaire De La Fin, Icônes, Esthétique. (Ir)Représenter La Post-Apocalypse Dans La Bande Dessinée Et Le Cinéma Du Génocide Tutsi., Alain Agnessan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cette étude sur la bande dessinée et le cinéma du génocide tutsi s’écarte de l’analyse désormais canonique des politiques mémorielles et pratiques testimoniales pour en investir le parti pris post-apocalyptique . Elle s’agence en deux volets, ou, plutôt, en deux lieux de regard. Envisageant l’imaginaire de la fin qui s’est constitué autour du génocide tutsi, le premier volet de l’étude s’attelle à décrire une scène « cross-traumatic » ou transtraumatique, appelée génoscape, sur laquelle la pensée, les images et les discours critiques lient le destin éthique, esthétique et épistémique du génocide tutsi à celui de la Shoah. Cette démarche …

Death Of The Clinic: Trans-Informing The Clinical Gaze To Counter Epistemic Violence, Diana E. Kuhl

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This case study research (Patton, 2002, 2014; Flyvberg, 2006) has grown out of an awareness of deep resistance from the psy disciplines to trans-informed epistemologies as a source of legitimate knowledge (Tosh, 2015, 2016; Winters, 2008). It focuses on examining how the closure of The Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) for Children and Youth at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, signaled a paradigm shift from the ‘treatment model’ to the ‘affirmative model’ with respect to clinical approaches for supporting trans and gender diverse children and youth. As such the case study involved tracing the …

Moloch's Children: Monstrous Techno-Capitalism In North American Popular Fiction, Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Deriving from the Latin monere (to warn), monsters are at their very core warnings against the horrors that lurk in the shadows of our present and the mists of our future – in this case, the horrors of techno-capitalism (i.e., the conjunction of scientific modes of research and capitalist modes of production). This thesis reveals the ideological mechanisms that animate “techno-capitalist” monster narratives through close readings of 7 novels and 3 films from Canada and the United States in both English and French and released between 1979 and 2016. All texts are linked by shared themes, narrative tropes, and a …

In Search Of Psychiatric Kinds: Natural Kinds And Natural Classification In Psychiatry, Nicholas Slothouber

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years both philosophers and scientists have asked whether or not our current kinds of mental disorder—e.g., schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder—are natural kinds; and, moreover, whether or not the search for natural kinds of mental disorder is a realistic desideratum for psychiatry. In this dissertation I clarify the sense in which a kind can be said to be “natural” or “real” and argue that, despite a few notable exceptions, kinds of mental disorder cannot be considered natural kinds. Furthermore, I contend that psychopathological phenomena do not cluster together into kinds in the way that paradigmatic natural kinds (e.g., chemical …

An Environmental History Of Oil Development In Southwestern Ontario, 1858-1885, Robert Armstrong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores how the local population of Enniskillen, (including the towns of Oil Springs and Petrolia) Southwestern Ontario, reacted to the environmental consequences of oil development between 1858 and 1885. The inception of Canadian’s oil industry in 1858 subsequently resulted in the contamination of the river systems, the pollution of the air, and the creation of new hazards in the region. The pollution led to water scarcity, the odour of oil permeating the air, and the threat of oil fires. In order to continue living in the oil region, the local population adapted, either by normalizing the new conditions …

Hegel Avec Kleist: On Marriage, Colby A. Chubbs

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates Hegel’s account of marriage in his Philosophy of Right as an ontological impasse which bears witness to a splitting and deadlock within his broader conception of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). As such, it is our aim to situate an opacity within the Hegelian self-conscious subject, as opposed to the subject attaining an inner self-awareness and transparently reflexive agency and, to this end, we put Hegel into conversation with his contemporary, Heinrich von Kleist. From this standpoint, we show in the first chapter how the thinker against whom Hegel formulates his account of marriage is Immanuel Kant …

Creative Collaborations: The Songs/Poems Of Canadian Artists Leslie Uyeda And Lorna Crozier, Jennifer Cyr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Composer Leslie Uyeda and poet Lorna Crozier inspire, create, and collaborate in real time. Uyeda and Crozier have an exceptional creative collaboration as they have collaborated on 9 song cycles in the past 12 years and the subject matter of much of their art can be seen as cultural reflections and critiques. This is evident in the song cycle The First Woman which speaks of the silencing of women’s voices through the tales of Lilith and Eve in the garden of Eden and the rape of Dinah, Jacob's daughter. To successfully collaborate on 9 song cycles is a feat in …

Excavating Feminist Phenomenology: Lived-Experiences And Wellbeing Of Indigenous Students At Western University, Eva Lynn Cupchik

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission underscores the need to incorporate narrative accounts of Indigenous students’ experiences as part of wide-scale de-colonizing efforts. This dissertation asks; how do Indigenous students experience their identities at Western University? What is at stake for phenomenology, feminist methods, and Indigenous theory, in the post Truth and Reconciliation era?

There is a gap between theories centering on reflective cognition in philosophy and the embodiment of land, prevalent across Indigenous cultures. However, phenomenology can provide a method to facilitate dialogues with discourses outside Eurocentric domains that empathize with marginalized communities’ struggles, through an understanding of location-based knowledge. …

No Coward Plays Hockey, Rachael Bishop

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined the landscape of women’s hockey in Canada, and focused on the national women’s hockey team, and how the treatment of female hockey players in the Canadian media, and in the eyes of the Canadian public, differs from the treatment of male hockey players. This thesis drew on three different research methods: an ethical/philosophical analysis, a media analysis and a narrative analysis.

The ethical analysis took a philosophical approach and discussed the different rules in men’s and women’s hockey. The ethical analysis also discussed other issues in hockey such as paternalism versus free will, and gender segregation in …

The Weak Survival Of French Rhetoric, Jonathan Doering

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the 1960s, Roland Barthes sparked a renewed interest in a monumental, ancient, and largely forgotten institution: the literary-pedagogic-social “empire” of rhetoric, an empire that often commanded French letters, culture, and education until its baffling decline and alleged “death” in the final decades of the nineteenth century. This dissertation argues, however, that rhetoric did not actually die in France. Instead, through a process of “weak survival,” an enduring institution of rhetoric shaped postwar French thought. Through a pedagogic reading of the rhetorical longue durée, I approach a series of political-religious-social quarrels rather than an assemblage of rhetorical theories. These …

A Deleuzean Poststructural Deconstruction, Adam Nadir Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project seeks to reconceive a poststructural form of deconstructive criticism as a Deleuzean deconstructive commentary. I first explore the way Derrida’s concept of différance is confined to a deconstructive criticism which solely traces it in order to critique metaphysical concepts. As an alternative to the confined use of différance in deconstructive criticism, I develop a deconstructive commentary which deconstructs the primacy of a commentated text. Instead of using différance solely to trace the limitations of philosophical concepts (Hegelian in particular), it can serve as a plane of immanence that track a multitude of differently configured philosophical concepts in their …

Musical Ekphrasis In Concert: Case Study Of Alexey Khevelev’S Chagall Vitraux, Natalia Skomorokhova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Piano cycle Chagall Vitraux by Russian composer Alexey Khevelev was written in 1994, inspired by Mark Chagall’s stained-glass masterpiece Jerusalem Windows (1962). Khevelev’s work consists of twelve movements, each named after one of the twelve windows by Chagall, and could be analyzed as an ekphrastic composition. The term musical ekphrasis was introduced in the musicological discourse around two decades ago to describe compositions based on works from the sister arts. The aesthetic category of ekphrasis has existed for centuries and has its roots in Plato’s discussion of the Ideal Form and its consequent representations. As a musical phenomenon the concept …

Sanaugavut: Art From Kinngait, Nakasuk Alariaq

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

“Sanaugavut: Art from Kinngait” explores 20^th century Inuit art from an Inuk’s perspective to highlight the work Inuit participants contributed to in the development of commercialized art production in the North. The author Nakasuk Alariaq is from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) and is the first Inuk graduate student at Western University to be offered space within the university’s formal settings to curate an Inuit art exhibition. This exhibition and thesis go hand in hand and are therefore very important to advocates of Indigenous self-representation in academia and in galleries. The exhibition “Sanaugavut: Art from Kinngait” was …

The Impact Of Expanded, Multimodal Applications During A German Lied Performance, Adam Domenico Iannetta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explored the impact of adaptive methods and modalities in Art Song performance in connecting with adult audiences (aged 18 and older) as explored through a live performance of German Lieder. In addition, this study sought to contribute a qualitative experimental study of in-situ audience perception to an emerging field of practice and research regarding the innovative practices in Art Song performance (e.g. Art Song Theatre). The study was derived from a 2012 informal experiment by Professor Rena Sharon, a leading advocate of expanded Art Song performance practice and pedagogy. Specifically, a single English Art Song was performed in …

Collaborative Listening And Cultural Difference In Contemporary Art, Santiago Ulises Unda Lara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research represented in this thesis has a relationship with my sustained interest in the subject of cultural difference that typified my earlier artistic practice. During my Ph.D. studies in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, I have advanced new perspectives on this problematic by elaborating on the potentialities of listening in dialogic and collaborative artistic practice. It comprises the discussion about the projects and activities developed within my doctoral studies, according to two main and related purposes. The first is the examination of hegemonic practices of production of meaning regarding cultural difference with a backdrop of the social, …

Han And Dada: Early Expressions Of New Affliction, Maxwell Hyett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis studies affliction as it appears in the proto-avant-garde art movement of Dada. I analyse affliction through the theoretical frameworks of the ‘neuronal’ and ‘immunological,’ as presented by cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society. By applying Han’s theories to Dada, I challenge Han’s argument that our affliction underwent a shift at the end of the Cold War: No longer produced by negativity (the immunological), affliction is now produced by excess positivity (the neuronal). Such excess blocks our access to and erodes the existence of ‘somewhere else,’ causing a crisis in the arts, which I argue should …