Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Critique Of Charles Peirce's Account Of The Necessary Conditions For The Possibility Of Experience, Daniel Edward Kruidenier

Theses and Dissertations

Herein is investigated the effort to establish the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience begun by Immanuel Kant and carried further by Charles Peirce. I focus my attention on Peirce's development of a Kantian strategy for discovering and proving such conditions. The conclusion that I argue for is that such an effort requires the use of a rational intuitive faculty. Both Kant and even more vociferously Peirce overtly reject the existence of such a faculty, yet, I argue, it is difficult to make sense of certain crucial discoveries in its absence.

An Investigation Of Selected Collegiate Voice Teachers' Descriptions Of Repertoire Selection Practices., David Stephenson

Theses and Dissertations

Repertoire is a critical component of the instructional process at all levels of music education, and more insight into music educators' repertoire selection practices is a need, especially in the case of the collegiate voice studio. A particular void in this topic is the lack of pre-service instructional training including repertoire assignment strategies for prospective and novice voice teachers. The investigator studied these topics using two data collection phases: 1) collecting descriptive data from vocal recital programs in three universities from the southern United States; and, 2) conducting interviews with five experienced voice teachers recruited from the aforementioned institutions. The …

The Wind Chamber Works Of Ernst Toch: A History And Comparative Analysis, C. Nicole Gross

Theses and Dissertations

Ernst Toch (1887-1964) is one of the forgotten composers of the twentieth century. Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill were contemporaries, while Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Erich Kleiber championed his early works. Toch lamented his lack of notoriety to Nicolas Slonimsky two years prior to his death. Forgotten or underappreciated were his numerous compositions of art music written in the decades prior to his immigration to the United States and in the final years of his career; remembered only were his lighter works and American film music.

Toch composed one work for military band: Spiel für Blasorchester, Op. 39 (1926), …

The Development Of The Femme Fatale On Stage As Seen In The Works Of Jesse Lynch Williams And Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hillary Elizabeth Macarthur

Theses and Dissertations

The Femme Fatale in the United States developed from certain characteristics represented by the New Woman movement of the 1920's. Jesse Lynch Williams and Edna St. Vincent Millay capture the identifying factors of what a Femme Fatale is and should be. This paper will explore the differences and similarities in the images of the Femme Fatale and New Woman, and discuss how those differences are related to origins of the image of the New Woman.

The Indian Removal Debate And The Rise Of Partisan Identity In The Age Of Jackson, Benjamin Greene

Theses and Dissertations

The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 coincided with the rise of the nation's "second party system." The divide which emerged between Jacksonian Democrats and their opposition party, the Whigs, is generally accepted as marking the origin of an American political culture defined by a partisan divide. Political historians of the period have often focused on the key divisive issues: South Carolina's nullification agitation, the Bank Crisis, and working class identity politics have been most often featured in this scholarship. The Indian Removal Debate has generally been examined as ancillary to these partisan developments, an after-effect for …

The Meaning And Purpose Of Quotation And Stylistic Reference In Hans Werner Henze's Requiem: Nine Sacred Concertos For Piano Solo, Trumpet Concertante, And Large Chamber Orchestra (1990-92), Daniel C. Pappas

Theses and Dissertations

Quotation and stylistic reference are important communicative devices in the musical language of Hans Werner Henze that serve as a means of expression in his multilayered approach to composition. This study examines the central role that quotation and reference play in Hans Werner Henze's Requiem: Nine Sacred Concertos for piano solo, trumpet concertante, and large chamber orchestra (1990-92). While some studies have identified selected references, their primary focus has been on the work's pitch organization and formal plan. This study instead considers Henze's unique approach to quotation and reference. In addition to interviews with the composer, Henze's own writings are …

For Their Mutual Benefit: Public Support And Private Development Of Historic Buildings In Columbia, South Carolina, Angi Fuller Wildt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on successful rehabilitations of historic buildings in Columbia, South Carolina. All were undertaken between 1976 and 2013 by private developers in conjunction with public support. The cases presented are located in four downtown districts known as the Vista, the Main Street Corridor, the Granby and Olympia Mill Villages, and Innovista. The rehabilitations differed due to variables unique to their locations in each of these areas as well as conditions in the years that they took place. Public support included financial incentives and guidelines offered by federal, state, regional, and local governments and professional guidance provided by the …

"Heritage To Horizons": The History Of The 1977 International Women's Year Conference In South Carolina, Caitlin Marie Mans

Theses and Dissertations

In 1977, 800 South Carolinians came together in the state's capital of Columbia for a meeting called 'South Carolina Woman: Heritage to Horizons.' It was one of fifty-six state and territorial meetings held as part of the United States' celebration of International Women's Year (IWY.) These meetings culminated in the National Women's Conference held later that year in Houston, Texas. IWY was a federally-funded initiative to enable American women to discuss their concerns and make recommendations for national policy. It was an outgrowth of a United Nations program to advance the status of women worldwide by encouraging each nation to …

Recuperando La Memoria De La Guerra Civil Española En Luna Lunera Y La Higuera, Whitney Anne Waites

Theses and Dissertations

Desde el comienzo de la Guerra Civil española en 1936 hasta la Transición a

democracia en los años 1980, España ha sufrido un proceso de "historical and social amnesia" (Cardus i Ros 18). Como resultado surgió una cultura de silencio: no había que hablar de la Guerra Civil española o los años de miedo y de violencia durante la dictadura. Con eso, hoy en día, varios autores españoles intentan combatir dicha amnesia y la cultura del silencio en la forma de la novel de la memoria. Esta investigación analizará como dos novelas de la memoria, Luna Lunera y La higuera, …

Female Character Development In Select Works By Lope De Vega, María De Zayas, And Calderón De La Barca, Adrianne Woods

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of three works of the Spanish Golden Age:Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocañaby Lope de Vega,La traición en la amistadby María de Zayas, andLa vida es sueñoby Calderón de la Barca. The focus of this work is on the main female protagonists: Casilda, Fenisa, and Rosaura, respectively. Applying feminist and visualization theories, the thesis examines these women in regards to how they conform to and subvert prevailing stereotypes of the time. The characters are analyzed based on personality, as illustrated through the choices they make; their roles in the microcosm of the play in contrast …

Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, And Diaspora, 1970s-1990s, Tiffany Nicole Florvil

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation, "Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, and Diaspora, 1970s-1990s," explores the birth of the Afro-German movement, including its two organizations: The Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, ISD) and Afro-German Women (Afro-deutsche Frauen, ADEFRA) in West and then reunified Germany. In it, I uncover the efforts of Black Germans to organize a diasporic and literary movement to confront discriminatory discourses and practices that simultaneously ignored them and positioned them as "Others" in postwar German society. Through their diverse literature and coordinated events, Black Germans enacted membership in the African diaspora, articulating and claiming an identity that supported a …

Red, Yellow, Blue, Lauren Elizabeth Eyler

Theses and Dissertations

Red, Yellow, Blue is a hybrid, metafictional novel/autobiography. The work explores the life of Ellis, Lotte, Diana John-John and Lauren as they wander through a variety of circumstances, which center on loss and grief. As the novel develops, the author loses control over her intentionality; the character's she claims to know fuse together, leaving the reader to wonder if Lauren is synonymous with Ellis or if Diana is actually Lotte disguised by a signifier. Red, Yellow, Blue questions the author's as well as the reader's ability to understand the transformation that occurs in an individual during long periods of grief …

Fertility, Contraception, And Abortion And The Partnership Of Henry Miller And Anaïs Nin, Kathryn Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

During their creative and sexual relationship, Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller together shaped their identities as artists. When they met, both were married and had tried writing before, but their partnership pushed them into a new kind of life in which writing took precedence. During this process, they described their relationship as literarily fertile; a few years later, Nin actually became pregnant with Miller's child and decided to have an abortion. In Nin's diary, metaphor and reality overlap as she anxiously makes sense of her decision that is informed by her belief that an artist cannot be a mother. In …

Public Intellectuals: Styles, Publics, And Possibilities, Matthew David Kay

Theses and Dissertations

The status of the public intellectual is debated continuously in the United States, but what is not up for debate or theoretical examination is how public intellectual practice is mediated between style and publics. To that end, this study examines three public intellectual figures: Saul Alinsky, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Reich. Each examination analyzes and describes particular public intellectual styles — performances of culture — which trace three dominant public intellectual practices. These styles contain, invite, and deploy certain publics to engage with the public intellectual and vice versa. First, the study is a theoretical engagement with public intellectual practice …

Going Into The Word-Hoard: The Writing Process, Language, And Its Implications In The Poetry Of Medbh Mcguckian And Paul Muldoon, Elizabeth Peele

Theses and Dissertations

As two prominent figures of Northern Irish poetry, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon are often discussed as being "difficult" and "oblique." However, I argue that this categorization of their poetry is too simplistic and overlooks the dissimilarities in their writing process and view of language, and ultimately, in their poetry itself. By going back to the fundamentals of their works, I claim that the basis for this dissimilarity is, in fact, a differing view of the founding blocks of poetic language. McGuckian sees syntax as being the important factor while Muldoon focuses on the individual lexical meaning of words. These …

The Symphonious Saxophone: A History Of The Large Saxophone Ensemble With A Quantitative Analysis Of Its Original Literature, Andrew Justin Allen

Theses and Dissertations

The history of the saxophone ensemble is little understood, even by many of those who lead and participate in the modern iterations of such groups. The aim of this study is to remedy this lack of information and to provide saxophonists with the tools to further explore an important part of the instrument's repertoire. This document will offer a comprehensive history of the genre, from its beginnings in the 1840's, to the near present; and numerical data will be presented on the original works for larger ensembles of saxophones, touching on both instrumentation and the concentration of the production of …

An Essay On Musical Narrative Theory And Its Role In Interpretation, With Analyses Of Works For Saxophone By Alfred Desenclos And John Harbison, Ian Macdonald Jeffress

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the field of semiotics has increasingly been applied to musicology, with particular attention paid to the area of narrative theory. This study will provide an introduction to the essential concepts of semiotics and narrative theory, the development of a methodology of narrative analysis with examples from the saxophone repertoire, and the application of that analytical approach to Alfred Desenclos' Prélude, Cadence, et Finale and John Harbison's San Antonio. The goal of this study will be the demonstration of narrative theory's applicability to a variety of styles pertinent to the concert saxophone repertoire. It is hoped that this …

Building Morale In A Soldier Town: Home Front Women And The Gi In Columbia, South Carolina, 1941-1945, Jessica Kathleen Childress

Theses and Dissertations

As the United States mobilized for war in 1941, cities and towns across America, especially those closest to military bases, were faced with an unprecedented influx of soldiers, airmen, and sailors. To cope with these waves of servicemen in their off-duty hours, particularly to provide for wholesome entertainment and lessen the emotional weight of wartime, Columbia, South Carolina solicited participation in morale-building programs from its residents. Community leaders recognized their responsibility for funding programs and providing buildings to meet the soldiers' recreational needs, but they relied on women's organizations and female students to build morale through meaningful social interactions with …

Identity Crisis And The Emergence Of The Picaresque In Literature From Early Modern Spain And Twentieth Century Argentina, Mary Johnson Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

The picaresque genre and character appeared in what is considered the first modern novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, which was published anonymously in 1554, when Spain was on the cusp of a slow transition out of feudalism. The pícaro has continued to appear in literature across regions and epochs. This thesis looks at the socio-ideological factors that give birth to picaresque identity and behavior, as well as the verisimilitude of fiction in relation to reality. The first part of this study is dedicated to the Spanish picaresque tradition and focuses on the universal qualities of the literary figure and genre, as …

The Artist's Gauntlet: A Singers' Physiological Responses To The Stimuli Of Rehearsing And Performing, John H. Pritchard

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship of a subject's heart rate variability, respiration rate and other vital statistics to rehearsing and performing as a singer. Among the events used for data collection were individual lessons of undergraduates and a lecture-recital presented by a graduate student. Findings indicate a general upward trend in HRV and an increase in range of HR%MAX among subjects while singing, along with a general decrease of respiration rate.

Forgotten Russian Piano Music: The Sonatas Of Anatoly Aleksandrov, Irina Pevzner

Theses and Dissertations

This historical and analytical study focuses on the piano sonatas of Anatoly Aleksandrov (1888-1982), the longest-living Russian and Soviet composer-pianist of the twentieth century. The fourteen piano sonatas, written between 1922 and 1971, reflect not only the composer's evolution of style, but also reveal the vast array of influences which characterize the music of the twentieth century. Chromaticism that results from stretched harmonic sequences, strong melodic lyricism that threads these epic compositions, rich writing for piano, and hints of Russian folklore all contribute to the composer's original style, which synthesizes Aleksandrov's four main figures of influence, namely Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Medtner, …

Selling The Country’S Secrets: Willa Cather’S Eco(Self)Criticism In My Antonia And The Professor’S House, Elizabeth Nicole Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

This study considers Willa Cather's ecological consciousness as a writer of place, particularly in My Antonia and The Professor's House. In these two works, Cather's narrative distance provides her with the room to investigate the relationship between humans and their environments. Jim Burden, Godfrey St. Peter, and Tom Outland all exploit their environments to greater or lesser extents based on their way of seeing the world, which Cather draws attention to through her careful characterization and narrative distance. In each narrative, Cather forces readers to recognize the environmental consequences of egocentric vision, and the way such vision can be sustained …

The Rhetorical Event Of Modern Southern Humor: "A Requisite Element In Discourse", David Allen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical nature and dynamics of Southern humor in the second half of the twentieth century by analyzing, from a distinctly rhetorical perspective, a selection of popular Southern humor texts. It seeks to understand how Southern humor happens--its methods and techniques--and it also seeks to understand, as much as possible, the implications of these events for the various interlocutors and participants involved. By investigating the stylistic, storytelling, and linguistic techniques of Southern humor, while relying on the scholarship of writers in a variety of academic disciplines, I hope to answer the following research question: how does Southern …

The Finer Things, Jasmine Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

It is through the grotesque that Flannery O'Conner's characters achieve grace, and often the only hope for self-actualization rests in death and malformation. This is perhaps her greatest irony. The protagonists of The Finer Things, however, never self-actualize: they simply act without understanding or questioning why. This is because they are rarely confronted with the grotesque; instead they actively seek it for themselves. The grotesque isn't revelatory, but rather, it satisfies romantic ideals and desires, or is pursued in effort to escape aggressive bureaucracies that typify Kafka's short stories. This characterizes the ironic aesthetic of The Finer Things. Working in …

The Seeded Underground, Shannon Renee' Blake

Theses and Dissertations

The Seeded Underground explores the grave intricacies of identity and emptiness. Using the haptic experience as a focus, this work subverts plot in lieu of the individual experience in the seemingly mundane seconds of waking life. By questioning the physical as well as the mental, The Seeded Underground tunnels down into the dark and voided corners of the individual, makes meaning of their sordid lives and opens wide the darkness surrounding the world and nature.

Chamber Music In Alternative Venues In The 21st Century U.S.: Investigating The Effect Of New Venues On Concert Culture, Programming And The Business Of Classical Music, Sarah May Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates chamber music performances outside of traditional concert venues in the 21st-century U.S. The literature review traces the use of non-traditional venues throughout history from Bach's coffee house concerts to the gallery and loft concerts, which first emerged in the 1950s and 60s. The literature review will also look at the business of classical music established in the 20th century.

The study explores whether new venues have changed the landscape of classical music by interviewing players and concert promoters who present concerts in non-traditional venues as well as owners of popular music venues, which host classical music. Using …

Rewriting The Human: Death Anxiety And Posthuman Vision In Literature Since 1945, John Allen Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

ISS_para>The technology-driven years following the close of World War II provided a new lens through which the human subject could be rethought and, theoretically, improved: no longer did physical and mental shortcomings have to limit the capacity of the individual. The atomic bomb and Colossus computer, though destructive forces, pushed scientists and philosophers to consider new models of the human, including flesh/machine amalgamation and reinscription as downloadable, digital information. While these posthuman constructions promised to distance the human from its material shortcomings, especially its vulnerability to bodily decay and death, they encountered significant resistance in the twentieth century.

By …

Into A Wild New Yonder: The United States Air Force And The Origins Of Its Information Age, Robert Howard Lass

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force is an organization operationally focused on gathering, processing, and utilizing vast quantities of information, so much so that it added "cyberspace" to its core missions of air and space in 2005. Service leaders have argued that a USAF information revolution - its entrance into the "Information Age" - began as early as the first computers in the 1940s or as late as the proliferation of networks in the 1990s. Upon close inspection, however, it becomes clear that such assertions overlook decades of information operations and management, and overemphasize the concept of a single information age. …

The Flying University, Catherine Friesen

Theses and Dissertations

The Flying University is solo theater performance framed as an academic lecture about Marie Curie and her discovery of radium, delivered to a group of women who have gathered in secret to further their education. As the lecture proceeds, the professor brings in her own research based on a study of Esther Horsch (1905-1991) who lived on a farm in central Illinois. She introduces data from Esther's journals, personal memories, and dreams about Esther's life. The professor's investigation of radium plays at the intersections of magical and mundane, decay and the transformation of life, and the place of ambition in …

The Music Of James Reese Europe For Vernon And Irene Castle, Ralph G. Barrett

Theses and Dissertations

James Reese Europe (1881-1919) was one of the leading African American musicians of the first two decades of the twentieth century. He was renowned as a conductor of theater and dance orchestras, a composer of syncopated dance music and popular song, and an advocate for improved opportunities and remuneration for African American professional musicians in New York. From late 1913 until mid-1915, Europe was musical director for the popular exhibition dance team of Vernon (1887-1918) and Irene (1893-1969) Castle. During their brief career, the Castle's were instrumental in changing the sordid image of social dancing during America's 'dance craze' of …