Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Searching For Consensus: Shared Decision Making And Clinical Ethics, Meghan Estell Bungo

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is the search for consensus in the context of clinical ethics—physician-patient interactions, ethics consultations, and ethics committee meetings focused on a particular patient’s care. I argue that consensus, when achieved through a process of shared deliberation that I outline, is the hallmark of the morally correct decision.

While philosophers have generally denigrated consensus as a guide to morally correct decisions, hospital ethics committees and President’s Councils charged with making recommendations about how to resolve moral conflicts in the clinical setting have clearly valued and aimed at the achievement of consensus. Assuming this search for consensus …

From Shell To Center: Gaston Bachelard And The Transformation Of Domestic Space In The Nineteenth-Century French Novel, Emily Pace

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation will look at the house-occupant relationship in four major French novels of the long nineteenth century: Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (1835), Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856), Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867), and Proust’s “Combray,” from Du côté de chez Swann (1913). Each of these novels relies heavily on the use and description of interior and domestic space, and the manner in which the characters in each novel inhabit and relate to this space is a reflection of the specific and evolving cultural landscape of the moment when these works were composed, I argue, as well as of the particular obsessions …

The Latin Readers Of Algazel, 1150-1600, Anthony H. Minnema

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Arabic works found an audience in medieval Europe and became a part of the Latin canon of philosophy. It focuses on a Latin translation of an Arabic philosophical work, Maqasid al-falasifa, by the Muslim theologian al-Ghazali, known as Algazel in Latin. This work became popular because it served as a primer for Arab philosophy and helped Latins understand a tradition that had built upon Greek scholarship for centuries. To find the translation’s audience, this project looks at two sets of evidence. It studies the works of Latin scholars who drew from Algazel’s arguments and illustrates …

Poesía E Historicidad En Ernesto Cardenal Y Roberto Fernández Retamar, Alberto David Rivera Vaca

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the meta-poetic and historicist thought in Ernesto Cardenal and Roberto Fernández Retamar’s poetry. The concept these poets have poetry is closely related to the historical moment of their times. They ponder about poetry and its function, poetic thought that is nourished by a historical consciousness. This close relationship between poetry and history inevitably includes sensitivity to the social situation in their respective countries and in Latin America. These poets seek to understand the concrete reality thus coming closer to the truth of things. The study shows that these poets, based on history and poetic thought, assume their …

Rawls, Religion And The Ethics Of Citizenship: Toward A Liberal Reconciliation, Jeffrey Michael Cervantez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the conflict between religion and Rawls’s liberalism. Often Rawls’s critics contend that the idea of public reason is hostile to religion or unfriendly to citizens of faith. I argue that this concern is misguided. A careful analysis of Rawls’s work demonstrates that he is far more welcoming to religion than is sometimes claimed. To defend this thesis I put forward what I take to be the best interpretation of Rawls’s idea of public reason, one that I think is immune to most of the standard objections.

Nevertheless, there are some lingering challenges to public reason that need …

Wouldn't Future People Like To Know? A Compensation-Based Approach To Global Climate Change, Trevor Grant Hedberg

Masters Theses

Anthropogenic global climate change (GCC), understood as changes to the Earth’s climate system resulting from greenhouse gas emissions caused by human beings, has emerged as one of the most pressing environmental problems in human history. Proposed responses to climate change typically focus on either mitigation or adaptation. Mitigation refers to the process of lessening the effects of GCC, most often by reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases. Adaptation refers to the process of helping those who will be adversely affected by GCC adapt to the environmental changes to avoid being harmed. There is, however, a third approach to the issue …

Exodus Concerto For Guitar And Chamber Orchestra, Spencer Joel Kappelman

Masters Theses

Exodus is a four-movement composition for solo guitar accompanied by a chamber orchestra. This piece is composed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Music with a concentration in Music Composition from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Exodus was composed during the 2010-2012 academic years.
This paper provides a narrative analysis of Exodus in terms of its musical content, and relationships to other composers of the last century. Similarities to these composers refer to form, orchestration, melody, harmony, rhythm, and meter.

Who Supports Labor? The Intersection Of Race And Skill In Union Campaigns, Zachary Joseph Mckenney

Masters Theses

In the past half century, there has been an unprecedented decline in labor union membership, organizing ability, political effectiveness and strike activity in the United States. As a result, the ability of labor unions to influence the debate on labor standards and social reforms has experienced a significant decline. Using a mixed method approach, this research explores differences in attitudes and orientations towards labor unions across racial groups in the United States as well as organizational strategies and capacities of a labor union in a right-to-work state. Although African Americans and Latinos have been discriminated against at the hands of …

Saints And Savages: American Religion And The Construction Of Victory Culture, Jacob Tyler Hayes

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

La Résistance Dans La Poésie Des Années Noires : L’Engagement Politique D’Aragon, De Desnos Et D’Éluard Pendant L’Occupation Allemande, Megan Dyer

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

I See London, I See France, Molly C. Kessler

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Just War And Human Rights: Fighting With Right Intention, Todd Allan Burkhardt

Doctoral Dissertations

Under the nonideal conditions of our world, war is sometimes morally permissible, perhaps even required. Just war theory aims to make sense of this. It does so, on my view, by allowing war only if pursued with ‘right intention.’ In order permissibly to go to war, a state must not only have a just cause and limit its war-making activity to that necessary to vindicate the just cause, both required in order to engage in war with ‘right intention,’ but it must also seek to vindicate its just cause in a manner likely to yield a ‘just and lasting peace.’ …

Be A Man, Comrade! Construction Of The ‘Socialist Male Personality’ In The Gdr Youth Literature Of The 1950s And 1960s., Joanna Broda-Schunck

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the main goals of the East German government was the education of its population towards Socialism, and the creation of the new type of human – the Neue Mensch. The belief in the possibility of molding the next generation was particularly strong in the first decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), – in the 1950s and the 1960s. At the same time, the leaders of the regime presented the new Socialist state as the rightful heir to the German cultural and historical traditions. Both claims were aimed at strengthening the legitimacy of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED …

From Prodigy To Pathology: "Monstrosity" In The British Novel From 1850 To 1930, Terri Beth Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I explore cultural representations of aberrant embodiment, society’s monsters, to assess the sociopolitical implications of corporeal deviance. I contend that imaginative literature participates in the re/construction of monstrous bodies as an element of a larger social process of individuation and communal boundary-making, the defining of self and community through exclusionary practices embedded in the body. By situating Victorian and Modernist British novels in dialog with one another, I chart a trajectory in cultural understandings of embodied deviance that moves “from prodigy to pathology.” The change occurs, I argue, because the rise of modern medical practices ultimately constitutes …

"Fare Well To All Radicals": Redeeming Tennessee, 1869-1870, William Edward Hardy

Doctoral Dissertations

On February 10, 1869, Tennessee Governor William G. “Parson” Brownlow tendered his resignation as he prepared to take his seat in the United States Senate, to which his Radical allies in the General Assembly had elected him in the aftermath of the 1867 state election. On resigning, Brownlow expressed full confidence in DeWitt C. Senter, the man who would succeed him. Stunningly, six months later Brownlow’s Radical party verged on collapse after its Conservative rivals captured control of the General Assembly in the August 1869 state election. The new legislature speedily repealed many of the enactments of the five years …

To The Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830, Kyle Massey Stephens

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a history of Indian removal as a political issue from the War of 1812 to the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Its central argument is that federal removal policy emerged and evolved due to a precise and largely unforeseen sequence of events. Drawing on Indian treaties, journals of negotiations, minutes of cabinet meetings, Congressional debates, personal memoirs, and a variety of other sources, the dissertation charts and elucidates the evolution of United States Indian policy from a diplomatic to a domestic concern. One of the central themes of the dissertation is how most white …

Codeswitching In Bildungsroman: A 21st Century Comparative Study, Julie Ann Deyrup

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how the literary voice of Hispanics in the United States is forming through the mixing, or codeswitching, of the Spanish and English languages in the genre Bildungsroman of the Twenty-First Century. It discusses the theoretical framework in written codeswitching and analyzes the application of these studies in most recent Spanish-English texts of the biographical genre Bildungsroman: Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo.

The research presented here looks in detail at the various methods and applications of written codeswitching in a literary text and how the successful and prevalent …

Mina Loy And The Electric Body, Debra Elizabeth Cardell

Masters Theses

Abstract Mina Loy, modernist poet and artist, experimented with theories of feminism and class within her own artwork. This creates a complex point of interpretation for the reader because of overlap and contradiction. The concept of ekphrasis, when manipulated for Loy’s context, opens possibilities of understanding Loy’s many contradictions. Since the body and material world play a central role in Loy’s art, ekphrasis is a lens through which we can begin to see the relationship between Loy’s art and writing along with her feminism.

Sisters, Objects Of Desire, Or Barbarians: German Nurses In The First World War, Jennifer Sue Montgomery

Masters Theses

This is a study of German nurses during the First World War that examines the differing perceptions and representations of them that appeared during the war, focusing on those of British and American nurses and German soldiers that were at odds with the ideal image of nurses. I trace British and American nurses’ opinions using nursing and medical journals and investigate the complex relationship between German nurses and soldiers using soldiers’ newspapers as a main source base. I argue that representations and perceptions of German nurses that contrasted with the ideal image of a nurse are crucial to understanding the …

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …

Reading Parenthood And The Pregnant Body In Shakespeare’S A Midsummer Night’S Dream And Titus Andronicus, Martha Elaine Goddard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

"You're In The Right Place At The Right Time": Double Consciousness, Cultural Memory, And Cultural Representation In College Gospel Choirs, Emmanuel Joshua Stokes

Masters Theses

Gospel music exists within a rich cultural and historical space—at one level, it is part of an important Black musical tradition and at another, it is part of mainstream American history. College gospel choirs, then, mediate the divide of being part of the Black diasporic, religious music aesthetic while co-existing in the academic setting within a largely White-European western art music arena. Moreover, they provide space for students to commune socially, express faith, and gain cultural knowledge. I argue that through the theoretical lenses of double consciousness, cultural memory, and cultural representation, one can clearly understand the position of gospel …

Brundibár: Confronting The Misrepresentation Of Resistance In Theresienstadt, Anna Catherine Greer

Masters Theses

Brundibár, a children’s opera written by Czech composer Hans Krása (1899-1944), routinely appears in Holocaust musical scholarship as a depiction of “thriving” Jewish cultural activity during the Holocaust. First performed clandestinely in a Prague orphanage in 1942, the work was ultimately co-opted by Nazi authorities in Theresienstadt. Under the jurisdiction of the Freizeitgestaltung (Leisure Time Activities), the opera came under control of the camp administration and became part of several propaganda schemes, including the 1944 Nazi propaganda film, Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews). In preparation for the International Red …

Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, And The Epistemology Of Religious Trust, John David Mcclellan

Doctoral Dissertations

I argue that the philosophical discussion over William Rowe’s evidential argument from evil needs to take a closer look at the epistemology of religious trust—i.e., the rationality of the theist’s resilient confidence in God’s goodness in the face of inscrutable evils. This would constitute a significant change of emphasis in the current literature away from “skeptical theism,” the in vogue response to Rowe’s argument among theistic philosophers today. I argue that the skeptical theist approach is inadequate for two reasons. First, in trying to defeat even the atheist’s grounds for accepting Rowe’s argument, skeptical theists seem to seriously underestimate the …

The Development Of The Turbojet Engine In Britain And Germany As A Lens For Future Developments, Ethan Zachariah Cansler

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Remixing Identity: Language Re-Imagined And Voices In Flux In France’S Beur Fiction, Mary Carnes

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Annie Oakley, Gender, And Guns: The "Champion Rifle Shot" And Gender Performance, 1860-1926, Sarah Russell

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Middle Ground Between Good And Evil: The Role Of Young Adult Literature In Modern Understandings Of German History, Bonnie Kristin Mary Jendrek

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Crisis Of Legitimacy: Honorius, Galla Placidia, And The Struggles For Control Of The Western Roman Empire, 405-425 C.E., Thomas Christopher Lawrence

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a new analytical narrative of the years from 405 to 425 C.E., a period which extends from the final phase of the general Stilicho’s control over the administration of the emperor Honorius, to the imperial accession of Honorius’ young nephew, the emperor Valentinian III, under the regency of his mother, Galla Placidia. The narrative places the many historical problems of this period, especially the rise of a whole series of usurpers and the influx of non-Roman, “barbarian” groups into the western empire, in the weakness of the western administration under the emperor Honorius. The imperial response to …

Time Travel, Hannah F. Cook

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is the culmination of a program of study designed to both prepare me as a literary historian and develop my skills and understanding of the genre as a poet. To that end, the critical introduction focuses on the contemporary lyric sequence, while the collection of poetry is composed of several lyric sequences carefully ordered to expound the literary themes of time and memory.