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2016 Annual Report Town Of Swan's Island, Maine, Swan's Island, (Me.).

Maine Town Documents

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Violence Against Architecture: The Lost Cultural Heritage Of Syria And Iraq, Heidi James Fisher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines ancient architecture within Syria and Iraq that has been deliberately destroyed by violence. The act of destroying architecture and monuments in both Syria and Iraq, which is often-historical UNESCO protected, will invariably violate various laws, such as the 1954 Hague Convention or the Rome Statute. Since post-2011 Syria, all of humanity has been shocked by continuous warfare that, in addition to causing untold loss of human life and suffering, has included a series of episodes of violence against architecture, all of which is so egregious that foreign governments and non government organizations are constantly engaged in efforts …

The Fat Female Bodies Of Saturday Night Live: Uncovering The Normative Cultural Power Of A Countercultural Comedy Institution, Katharine Cacace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite its reputation as one of the most countercultural and anti-establishment voices in mainstream television comedy, Saturday Night Live helps produce and reproduces cultural norms. Using weight and gender as a lens, this paper investigates Saturday Night Live’s methods of creating, imitating, and evoking the fat female body in order to limit female agency and police unruly female power. It contends that even the inclusion of nonnormative female bodies—fat bodies, queer bodies, and bodies of color—is merely a reiteration of the techniques of neoliberal multiculturalism for the television audience.

From Rochel To Rose And Mendel To Max: First Name Americanization Patterns Among Twentieth-Century Jewish Immigrants To The United States, Jason H. Greenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There has been a dearth of investigation into the distribution of and the alterations among Jewish given names. Whereas Jewish surnames are a popular topic of study, first names receive far less analysis. Because Jewish immigrants to the United States frequently changed their names, this thesis can serve as a guide to genealogists and other scholars seeking to trace the paths of Jewish immigrants from Europe. Data was drawn from about 1500 naturalization records from Brooklyn in order to determine the correspondences between the given names featured on passenger lists and their Americanized counterparts. More than three-quarters of surveyed immigrants …

Mónica Mayer: Translocality And The Development Of Feminist Art In Contemporary Mexico, Alberto Mckelligan Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on Mónica Mayer (b. Mexico City, 1954), analyzing her work to understand the role played by the artistic and activist exchanges between feminists from Mexico City and Los Angeles in the development of feminist art in Mexico from the 1970s to the present. While scholars and curators are increasingly drawing attention to Mayer’s large body of work, which includes prints, drawings, installations, and public art interventions, the available literature emphasizes her connections to other artists working in her home country, positioning her artistic production within narratives of contemporary Mexican art.[1] In contrast, this dissertation foregrounds Mayer’s …

The Fantastic Manifesto: Monstrosity Of Memory And Epiphany Of Selfhood In The Spirit Of The Beehive (1973), Layla Blodgett Carrillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish culture of storytelling suffered under the nearly forty-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The government-regulated cinema welcomed propaganda and melodrama, and denied the fantastic, the legendary, and the magical. These carefully manipulated histories, which served to romanticize the ideologies of the regime, also served to eulogize the delinquent and the depraved. In the early 1970s, at the heels of the collapse of Franco’s reign, the people of Spain bore witness to a new national cinema. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), the feature debut from Victor Erice, exists at the threshold between a storied history of Spanish dictatorship and …

Queering Addiction, Tararose Macuch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Much has been written about the subject of addiction, but very little has been written from a queer feminist standpoint. Most of the work available concerning addiction is aimed primarily at a clinical audience, those interested in treating people with addictions. Most non-clinical work is aimed predominantly at people who are either suffering from addiction themselves or close to someone dealing with addiction. In pursuing this thesis project, I want to add the queer feminist discourse as well as a disability discourse to the larger public dialogue on the addict’s embodied identity. I am proposing that the addict’s perspective is …

Oncolog, Volume 62, Number 02, February 2017, Jill Deisigne-Russell, Christina Bennett, Laura Russell

OncoLog MD Anderson's Report to Physicians (All issues)

• Fallopian Tube Removal May Reduce Ovarian Cancer Risk: Alternative approach to prophylactic surgery for women with BRCA mutations averts early menopause.
• Highlights from the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: MD Anderson researchers present findings regarding diagnosis, staging, treatment.
• INBRIEF: Locoregional Restaging of Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer with Mammography and Ultrasonography May Help Detect Additional Lesions
• HOUSE CALL: Stem Cell Transplant Terms: Helpful definitions for patients and families
• USEFUL RESOURCES: Algorithms for Managing Treatment-Related Conditions

“The Blood Remember Don’T It?”: The Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure Of Katori Hall’S The Blood Quilt, Artisia Green

Arts & Sciences Articles

The Yorùbá influenced Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure of Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is an example of the enduring philosophical permanence of African aesthetics within the tradition of Black Theatre. Within The Blood Quilt is the manifestation of a Yorùbá traditional divination system and body of orature, the Odù Ifá. Hall acknowledges exploring Yorùbá cultural expressions, yet she refutes any dramaturgical intention to locate the play within the Odù Ifá. Thus, the incarnation of verses of Ifá in the text evidences her belief that a playwright’s consciousness and her work are often phenomenologically informed. This analysis argues that recognizing, understanding, and …

Cozy Mart: Convenient Aesthetics, Eric John Edvalson

Theses and Dissertations

Convenience stores in their various forms are not only commercial outlets of foodstuffs and sundry items but are also experiential in nature; the act of going to a convenience store is a culturally shared experience. In homage to these spaces, Cozy Mart is a public art installation and performance which recreates this shared experience in an idealized form. Based on do-it-yourself culture, appropriation of public space, and artistic traditions of sculpture and printmaking, Cozy Mart invites interaction with art outside of the traditional gallery space and capitalizes on alternative methods of art distribution.

The Short Story And The Photographic: Twentieth-Century Imagetexts In And Of The Americas, Lucienne Muller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the visuality of the short story from an intermedial point of view, that is, with a focus on the relationship between the short story and the photographic visual. This analysis draws from photographic theory and from the writings of photographer and writer Julio Cortazar whose philosophy puts forward the idea of a reader who becomes the inventive co-creator of the fictional work.

Ludic Conceptualism: Art And Play In The Netherlands, 1959 To 1975, Janna Therese Schoenberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, the first extended study on art in the Netherlands in the 1960s and ‘70s, investigates the phenomenon of ludic art, taking its lead from Johan Huizinga’s definition of ‘ludic’ in his seminal Homo Ludens (1938). According to Huizinga, the ludic is characterized by masquerade, freedom, and purposelessness, to which I add my own theoretical contribution—absurdity. I argue that the key instantiation of Huizinga’s ideas is found in the utopian project New Babylon (1959­–74) by Constant Nieuwenhuys. In the 1960s, ludic art was deployed as a strategy of social critique that attacked from an oblique angle, sometimes effectively­, but …

American Civil Associations And The Growth Of American Government: An Appraisal Of Alexis De Tocqueville’S Democracy In America (1835-1840) Applied To Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal And The Post-World War Ii Welfare State, John P. Varacalli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocrat, intellectual, and commentator on American society during the 1830’s, described the United States as a society marked by a general “equality of condition,” that is, by a lack of noticeable social and economic distinctions among the citizenry. For Tocqueville, this characteristic of democracy encouraged the formation of an informal political bloc he termed “the majority” - a group who would often elect demagogues to political offices, since the latter were best able to give voice to majority opinion. Furthermore, de Tocqueville believed that this group was not only …

Imagining Basic Income As An International And Domestic Remedy To Wealth Inequality, Christian A. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Has the success of corporate capitalism undermined the neoliberal ideas it presupposes, leading to the inevitable growth of socialism? While labor unions may lament the export of jobs, the real issue in today’s increasingly administered and mechanized economy is the global loss of jobs. James Ferguson has provided a strong argument that despite the triumphalist narratives of neoliberalism, capitalist development strategies particularly in South Africa have resulted in concentrated wealth, large unemployment, and the growth of transfer payments. More importantly, he shows how traditional critics of capitalism fall short in addressing the issues of a jobless future. For example, Marxists …

Imperial Butterfly, Dagmar Rothschild

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will examine a conceptual album that I composed, an exploration of the interaction between music and language and its effects on human emotions. I will attempt to demonstrate—in this thesis and in my composition—that when music and language come together in specific combinations, a possibility opens up, not simply for the creation of emotion but for something much more profound: personal transformation. This transformation takes place mentally (through language), and physically/molecularly/bodily (through music). It is, in essence, a kind of healing, what I have come to call “sonic nourishment.”

Imperial Butterfly follows one character, a woman (whom I …

William Bolcom’S "Twelve New Etudes" (1988): Theoretical And Interpretative Analysis, Ran Dank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ever since its naissance, composer William Bolcom’s set of Twelve New Etudes has garnered great critical praise, culminating with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Although much has been written about the background surrounding the creation of these pieces and their technical novelty, no formal analysis of this set of etudes has been published.

This dissertation thoroughly examines the various aspects which hold these pieces together. Each etude is analyzed according to a clearly defined set of criteria: dynamics, compositional language, range, texture, articulation and contour, meter and rhythm, and form. In addition, a more detailed analysis is offered, providing …

Thresholds Of Atrocity: Liberal Violence And The Politics Of Moral Vision, Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All political communities set normative limits to the acceptable use of force. A threshold of atrocity indicates the point at which acceptable violence meets the boundaries of the unacceptable. In liberal democratic states such norms are ostensibly set higher. Hence, there is a theoretical threshold to the modern state’s ability to act in ways that violate norms it claims to uphold. Paradoxically, thresholds of atrocity are almost never breached and unconscionable violence occurs regularly. This study seeks to explain the persistence of extreme violence by developing a theory of atrocity grounded in moral vision. Liberal democratic nation-states are able to …

A Performer’S Guide To Joaquín Rodrigo’S Concierto De Estío (1943) In The Context Of The Twentieth-Century Spanish Violin Concerto, Eva León

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides a performer's guide to the Concierto de Estío (1943), a violin concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–1999). It offers an in-depth study of the Concierto by setting the work in its historical, biographical, and musical context, as well as analyzing its form, style, and performance issues, and by considering its technical difficulties and details of interpretation. It provides a general historical background to the evolution of the Spanish violin school during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and also outlines Rodrigo’s contribution to the violin repertoire.

The Concierto de Estío is an important addition to the genre in general, …

A Study Of Nikolai Medtner's Compositional Technique: Form And Narrative In Tales, Oliver H. Markson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation delves into the compositional approach of Russian-born composer Nikolai Medtner. A discussion of Medtner’s own words on composition from his book The Muse and Fashion: Being a Defence of the Foundations of the Art of Music is followed by original analyses of four Tales. Focus is placed on the composer’s philosophy regarding the relationship between form and narrative, in association with his expressed warnings of the dangers behind shifting compositional dominance from pure music to extra-musical narrative. The analyses are followed by a discussion of the vital importance of Medtner’s music and writings for future generations of composers. …

Subversion And Transcendence In The Latin American Modern Travel Novel (1928-1976), Andrea Babsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this dissertation is the role that travel plays in Latin American novels that stem from 1928 to 1976, specifically, Macunaíma, Los pasos perdidos, El reino de este mundo, and Mascaró, el cazador americano. Departing from the fact that this period of time in history was marked by political and cultural change and upheaval, different aspects and interpretations of travel as manifested in the novels of the corpus are explored as a means of subversion and transcendence to hegemonic discourses. Travel is viewed as a means of disruption, particularly of limits and borders, be they geographical, …

Left And Right: Politics And Images Of Motherhood In Weimar Germany, Michelle L. Vangen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art historians and cultural critics have long debated the aesthetic and political implications of the stylistic shift in Germany from pre-war experimentations with abstraction and expressive distortion to more clear-cut figuration in their paintings during the years following World War I. They have questioned whether this shift represents a regressive return to tradition or a new artistic direction and if it should be associated with a reactionary or progressive political stance. This dissertation broadens our understanding of German interwar realism, commonly referred to as Neue Sachlichkeit, by examining representations of mothers, a popular theme in the realist painting of …

"La Dolce Vita" Today: Fashion And Media, Nicola Certo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is a cinematic masterpiece that has inspired nationally and internationally generations of creative people and artists because of the extent of its themes and because of the mastery in the choice of its costumes. The actuality of the director’s criticism towards the decadent society of his years, the originality of his stylistic choices, and his sophisticated taste for beauty and fashion, brought him to influence media and contemporary fashion then and now. There are numerous examples of television commercials that Fellini directs and produces for purely commercial purposes. They are all critique of his society, …

The Technocratic Politics Of The Common Core State Standards In History, Kate Duguid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper shows that the explicit aims of the American educational standards for public schools, the Common Core State Standards to teach history to create “college and career ready” students, marks a shift from preparing students for political participation to preparing them for market participation. I trace the intellectual and pedagogical origins of the Common Core’s pretense of technocratic apolitical values back through the previous two major American curricular reform efforts. In the first section I discuss the origins and development of the National History Standards and show how Cold War anxiety prompted a shift in evaluating students as potential …

Tandem 2.0: Image And Text Data Generation Application, Christopher J. Vitale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

First created as part of the Digital Humanities Praxis course in the spring of 2012 at the CUNY Graduate Center, Tandem explores the generation of datasets comprised of text and image data by leveraging Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV). This project builds upon that earlier work in a new programming framework. While other developers and digital humanities scholars have created similar tools specifically geared toward NLP (e.g. Voyant-Tools), as well as algorithms for image processing and feature extraction on the CV side, Tandem explores the process of developing a more robust and user-friendly …

Secret And Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode To The Art Of Cruising, Terrence T. Hunt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cruising is a practice that connects people looking for casual sex through a series of gestures, behaviors and codes that signal one’s sexual orientation and interest. These cruising behaviors and codes are changing because of advances in technology, because of cruising’s sudden exposure to the wider community through media, and evolving cultural values that no longer demand gay sex be kept secret. Cruising is in the public consciousness like never before. This project, a short film entitled Secret and Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode to the Art of Cruising, investigates, records and pays homage to the cultural practices of …

The Proscriptive Principle And Logics Of Analytic Implication, Thomas M. Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The analogy between inference and mereological containment goes at least back to Aristotle, whose discussion in the Prior Analytics motivates the validity of the syllogism by way of talk of parts and wholes. On this picture, the application of syllogistic is merely the analysis of concepts, a term that presupposes—through the root ἀνά + λύω —a mereological background.

In the 1930s, such considerations led William T. Parry to attempt to codify this notion of logical containment in his system of analytic implication AI. Parry’s original system AI was later expanded to the system PAI. The hallmark of Parry’s systems—and of …

The Fabric Of Manhattan: Art And Industry In The Era Of A.T. Stewart, Patricia Wadsley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Soft spoken, short of stature, his sleepy blue eyes gazing wistfully upon the world around him, the Irish émigré A. T. Stewart hardly looked like a titan of business. But by 1863, he’d built two architecturally significant department stores, he was one of the leading importers, manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers in this country, and he had begun to collect significant works of art, which today have pride of place in art museums around the world.

Like many wealthy nineteenth century New Yorkers, Stewart amassed his wealth through commerce. However, Stewart was not just a merchant. As a leader in apparel …

Dancing Silhouettes: Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures Of Prince Achmed: A Critical Study, Maria N. Rhodes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed has been relegated to a curiosity in film history textbooks for some time. Known as the first surviving feature length animated film, it is talked about but rarely seen. However, it is more than just a point in a film history timeline. The film is a beautiful piece of art that engages with the time period in which it was made in a critical and political way. The subject matter, silhouettes as animation, the political atmosphere of Weimar Republic Era Berlin and the role of the spectator are all explored in this thesis …

A Reformers' Union: Land Reform, Labor, And The Evolution Of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860, Sean G. Griffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Reformers’ Union: Land Reform, Labor, and the Evolution of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860” offers a critical revision of the existing literature on both the early labor and antislavery movements by examining the ideologies and organizational approaches that labor reformers and abolitionists used to challenge both the expansion of slavery and the spread of market relationships. Extending the timeframe of the antislavery and labor movements backwards to the 1790s, this dissertation situates the origins of the pre-Civil War labor movement in republican ideology and currents of transatlantic radical thought, and traces the rise of agrarian and communitarian labor reform against the …

The Protagonist's Experience: Temporality, Narrative, And Harmonic Process In Brahms's Solo Lieder, Loretta Terrigno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores musical and poetic temporality—expressions of the past, present, and future—in eighteen of Johannes Brahms’s solo Lieder. The selected songs illustrate that common tonal patterns in Brahms’s instrumental music, including tonal and modal ambiguities and associative harmonies, also suggest recurring narrative archetypes in his songs. Separate poetic and musical analyses use literary theory (narratology), as well as Schenkerian analysis and Schoenbergian conceptions of motivic development.

Narratological interpretations of poetry by Daumer, Platen, Köstlin, Goethe, Groth, Schenkendorf, Hebbel, and others first demonstrate that a series of psychological transformations form a lyric poem’s “plot” or “temporal progression.” This subjective level …