Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Gradus Ad Parnassum: A Reader's Edition And Commentary, Sara Miller Schulte

Masters Theses

The seminal eighteenth-century counterpoint treatise Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux exists in Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and a host of other languages in its entirely, but in English only the second book of two has been translated, and even that is available only in a collection of partial translations. While a complete English translation is well beyond the scope of this project, toward that end, this research makes a case for its completion and provides a modernized edition and commentary of the as-yet-untranslated first book.

Expanding Composition Pedagogies: A New Rhetoric From Social Media, Ashley Evans

Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, the field of rhetoric and composition has valued long-form essay writing, which requires students to engage patiently and at length with revision. In contrast, students today spend much time outside of school producing fast-paced and short posts for social media. This dissertation argues that students’ social media interactions provide them nuanced, dialogic, and complex rhetorical understandings about writing—but that students need help developing discursive processes to support transfer of their social media knowledge to other writing contexts, including long-form academic writing. Drawing from two semesters of in-class study, I construct for first-year composition classrooms a pedagogy that embraces and …

"Already Writers": A Case Study In Assessment And Visual Rhetoric Connections In Digital Multimodal Composition, Fawn Elise Canady

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

English language arts must respond to shifts in literacy practices that reflect changes in ‘college and career ready’ that are more than technologically mediated, but also emphasize creative and social skills. The case study in this dissertation is a small part of a larger, ongoing formative experiment in digital multimodal composition (DMC). A formative experiment is a methodological approach that favors a collaborative, iterative research process that is centered on an instructional goal in authentic classroom settings (Reinking & Bradley, 2008). The intention of the larger research study was to support students’ learning through DMC. This dissertation explored one of …

Schooled: Hiphop Composition At The Predominantly White University, Tessa Rose Brown

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation asks what hiphop is doing in predominantly white higher-educational contexts, specifically in composition classrooms. Using ethnographic, autoethnographic, and historical methods, it finds that hiphop’s work in composition classrooms at PWIs is contradictory. This mixed-methods investigation suggests that the contradictory relation of white fans, students, and institutions to hiphop is shaped on the one hand by white listeners’ increasing identification with the historical struggles of African Americans under capitalism, and on the other hand, by disidentification or abjectification of African Americans in an effort to “win” the zero-sum game of capitalism. This contradiction results in a paradoxical situation where …

Curricular Analysis Of The University Of Arkansas Composition I Pilot Course: Engl 1013, Community Ethnography, Morgan Lindsay Scholz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes a new first-year writing course that is under consideration for implementation as the standard Composition I course at the University of Arkansas. The course utilizes an ethnographic approach to teaching critical writing skills to students. This thesis presents evaluation through a metacognitive lens and explores the course through a case study approach. This thesis also examines the expectations and concluding reflections of three stakeholder groups: students, instructors, and administrators.

Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening Up Possibilities For Chronic Pain In Disability Rhetoric And Rhetoric And Composition, Hilary Selznick

Theses and Dissertations

In the dissertation “Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening up Possibilities for Chronic Pain in Disability Rhetoric and Rhetoric and Composition,” Hilary Selznick argues that pain is rhetorical, accessible, and communicable to those without the lived experience of chronic pain. Additionally, she argues for the necessity of considering chronic pain as a disability and not merely as a symptom of a disability. In order to make these arguments possible, Selznick crafts a political-relational-rhetorical methodology that challenges restrictive models of disability and theoretical and commonplace assumptions that pain is resistant to language. Specifically, Selznick’s methodology, which combines disability scholar and activist Alison …

Literacy And Labor: Archives, Networks, And Histories In Working-Class Communities, Jessica Michelle Pauszek

Dissertations - ALL

Literacy and Labor: Archives, Networks, and Histories in Working-Class Communities explores the significance of The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP), a network of writing groups that existed between 1976-2007 and self-published thousands of texts focused on working-class life, immigrant experience, and educational development. The FWWCP emerged in London and eventually spread throughout the United Kingdom and, then, transnationally. Circulating close to one million chapbooks, this network represents years of social history, testimony, and cultural conditions described through the voices of working-class people. I begin by unpacking the historical and social conditions of the FWWCP’s tenure and explain …

Spirits' Dance: Sunrise Overture, Jeonghun Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The subtitle of Spirits’ Dance is Sunrise Overture. This overture is composed with five different themes of spirits’ dances: Light, Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The piece starts with the wind breeze in the darkness, mimicked by woodwinds and brass blowing their instruments without producing a tone. When the Sun rises the piece quietly begins. The beginning and ending express the sunrise and the sunset with the Light spirits’ dance. Air spirits softly introduce Water spirits. Mischievous Earth spirits pop up and carry a practical joke after the beautiful water sprits’ dance. Marching of Fire spirits brings dryness to the …

Barfield, Kazik, Nazaykinskaya, And Beyond: A Discussion Of The Commission Process Regarding Trombone Literature, S. Kyle Moore

Honors Theses

There has historically been limited repertoire for trombonists to perform outside of orchestral writing—so limited that the first trombone solo recital was performed by Davis Shuman in 1947. The trombone has been present in the musical community since the mid-fifteenth century, yet it has only recently emerged as a unique, virtuosic instrument. Due to its delayed emergence and limited repertoire, the need to advance the instrument and its musical literature has led to the commission process between artists and composers: Interested parties approach composers with the prospect of writing music for compensation. In this manner, the composer is compensated for …

A Praxis Redefined, Christina A. Slick

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

“A Praxis Redefined” submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Arts in the field of English with a specialization, in English Teaching, exemplifies a portion of the substantial research and analysis that reflects theoretical conversations in reading, visual rhetoric, linguistics, grammar, and composition that most influence my practices as an English scholar and educator. Furthermore, the analytical narrative included in this portfolio shows how participation in a variety of challenging pedagogical conversations have changed me from a theoretical outlander to theoretical compromiser. All the …

Antoinette, An Opera In One Act, Colin Mcmahon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Antoinette is a chamber opera in one act. It is a dramatization of the events leading to the execution of Marie Antoinette and is 30 minutes in length. The narrative of the opera was developed together with Vancouver based poet Ray Hsu, who wrote the libretto. Antoinette is intended to address modern societal issues through musical drama. These issues represent the biographical reality of the characters but are intended to resonate with modern audiences. Themes will include overconsumption, the dangers of so-called “Strong-man Politics”, mortality, and feminism. Antoinette is written for five principle vocalists (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass) accompanied …

Literary Pedagogies At Umsl: Combining Case Study With Personal Narrative, Elizabeth Miller

Theses

Through traditional scholarship and an analysis of survey data collected from undergraduate literature students at the university, I investigate the ways in which pedagogies of composition and disability studies can be incorporated into the teaching of literature. Historically, literary scholarship has not focused on issues of pedagogy to the degree that other divisions within English Studies have done, and it is therefore necessary to determine what gaps exist, if any, and how they might be bridged. For example, composition pedagogies often emphasize active, student-based teaching paradigms that are rooted in students’ personal experiences and the kind of writing that interests …

Final Ma Portfolio, Mary O'Hara

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains four essays primarily focused upon composition and rhetoric.

The Bended Tree, Graeme Shields

Masters Theses

The Bended Tree is a multi-movement, 40-minute cantata for chorus, organ, piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, violin, and percussion. It explores timbral, textural, and harmonic development within loosely a symmetrical form divided in the center by 30 seconds of silence. The text for the cantata stems from a series of Lutheran hymns and Biblical passages, set to original music.

In the interest of facilitating flexibility for performances, the movements are written so that they can be performed individually, in any subset, or in the piece’s entirety. The instrumentation is also variable: the core ensemble is comprised of chorus, piano, and …

Feminist Pedagogies In The Creative Writing Classroom: Possibilities And Reflections, Angela Lagrotteria

ETD Archive

As a first-time student in a creative writing course and a long-time instructor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, I see possible paths that instructors in both fields could take in order to integrate creative writing and feminist pedagogy in ways that might increase students’ desire to write and to share their writing while at the same time helping students undertake feminist analyses. In the creative nonfiction writing class I took with Professor Lardner in the fall of 2015, I saw how many students (myself included) were writing about transformative personal experiences, but in this class, we never discussed these …

Multimodal Pedagogies, Processes And Projects: Writing Teachers Know More Than We May Think About Teaching Multimodal Composition, Jessica B. Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

Multimodal writing refers to texts that use more than one communicative mode to convey information. While there is much scholarship that examines the history of alphabetic writing instruction and the alphabetic composing processes of students, little research explores the historical origins of multimodal composition and the processes in which students engage as they compose multimodal texts. This two-part project takes a fresh approach to studying multimodal writing by exploring the multimodal pedagogies of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric and writing teachers, analyzing the role of mental and physical images in modern writers’ composing practices, and investigating contemporary students’ processes for …

On The Same Page: Theory, Practice & The Ela Common Core State Standards, Jessica Lauer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research sought to examine how writing was happening in high schools. States across the country, including Michigan, began implementing the Common Core State Standards in 2010. The standards place a heavy focus on informational texts particularly as a student reaches high school. The standards also suggest that writing should be a shared responsibility among teachers, acknowledging the importance of cross-disciplinary writing skills. Using a grounded theory approach to analyze the semi-structured interviews conducted with eight English teachers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this research revealed a disconnect between theory and practice when it comes to how educational standards …

Everything Is An Experience & A Seat In The Shop: Hair Follicles, Rickey W. Waddell

Senior Projects Spring 2018

As a music major at Bard a part of my requirement to graduate was to produce two forty minute presentations for an audience. At Bard I moderated into the classical music department as a vocalist. During my time here I developed an interest in jazz voice, electronic composition, cello performance, and percussion performance. Since my moderation concert in live performance, I always make attempts to connect ideas from books I’ve read including: evolution, human rights, and world peace.

My first senior project concert “Everything is an Experience” happened on the night of the seventh of December, 2017 in the László …

Ostinato My Ass: Finding A Voice In The 21st Century, Richard Luke Koenig

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Slash: Call And Response Composition In Jazz Music, Miles Taylour Sweeny

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Sketches Of A Life, Alexander D. Morris

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Sketches of a Life is a work for a small chamber ensemble and depicts small sections of an unidentified person's life. It is scored for 13 instruments and runs eight minutes in length. The piece itself is supplementary to this project, which is largely a descriptive and theoretical analysis of the work. The analysis and score are submitted as PDFs. A link to the recording is included in the appendix.

Concerto For Cello And Orchestra And A Comparative Study Of The Pedagogical Methods Of Nadia Boulanger And Dr. Dinos Constantinides, Harold Curtuss Mims

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first part of this dissertation is an original music composition for orchestra entitled, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. In studying the life of pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim (November 15, 1942-), I discovered a recording of his beautiful and gifted wife Jacqueline Mary Du Pré, (January 26, 1945 – October 19, 1987) performing Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85. This experience was the beginning of a love triangle between Elgar, Barenboim, and Du Pré. An attraction to Jacqueline goes deeper than just the music and the cello. Her career was not long due to multiple sclerosis …

The Application Of Konokol To Guitar Improvisation And Composition, Glenn Andrew Rogers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This dissertation is an exploration of the rhythmic concepts used in two South Indian musical theory concepts, solkattu and konokol. Konokol application largely depends on instrument limitations and musical contexts. The principle focus here is on my personal application of konokol to the guitar both through composed and improvised music. A detailed study of konokol was undertaken through private lessons in India and personal experimentation to determine how these concepts could be adapted to Western improvisation, harmony and composition, as well as right--‐hand classical guitar and plectrum techniques. This was done intuitively by exploring guitar techniques and konokol simultaneously. …

Joshua: Symphonic Suite No. 2 And James Aikman, The Violin Concerto, And The Principle Of Limited Economy, Chad Edward Hughes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to present an original work that represents this writer’s perspective as a composer and to examine the work, Violin Concerto No.1, by American composer and educator, James Aikman. The first component of this dissertation is this writer’s composition Joshua: Symphonic Suite No. 2. This work, which portrays the Old Testament Bible story of Joshua, son of Nun, is a neo-tonal ballet, which features the violin extensively. The ballet is divided into four movements, each of which corresponds to a segment of Joshua’s story, including “Joshua and Caleb,” “Rahab and the Spies,” “The River Jordan,” …

Finding Home: Creating A Video Game Soundtrack, Samantha Chase

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this lecture recital was to reflect on the characteristics of video game music, how those characteristics were shaped through technological advancements in the industry, and how to apply them to composition. Due to the limitations of early video game technology and memory space, video game composers were extremely limited. Composers worked through these limitations by composing with limited range and timbres, looping, and extensive use of ostinato. Even though modern day composers are not faced with this challenge, many still rely heavily on these techniques as they have become iconic of video game music. Video game composers …

Anders Åstrand: A Paragon Of The Modern Musical Aesthetic, Matthew Geiger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Swedish musician Anders Åstrand sustains a career as a performing soloist and chamber musician, composer for small and large chamber ensembles, and improviser in a vast variety of styles. His career represents the future within the musical world as it shifts from the orchestras and concert halls to a society more interested social media outlets such as YouTube and Facebook Live. His compositions integrate elements of improvisation in concept and execution.

The primary aim of this study examines the life and career of Anders Åstrand and the correlation of those influences with his compositional aesthetic. The secondary objective connects the …

Blacklight Symphony No. 1, William J. Cook

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This symphony written, rehearsed and premiered by William Cook in Spring of 2016 at the Composer's Showcase. The full score, video of the premiere, and his reflection of the events are all attached.

William Cook worked on Blacklight Symphony No. 1 from 2014 - 2016. Ultimately, it can be said that he tried to impress all, though none feigned to understand him, and he is pleased, upon reflection, that he gave the project his all.