Digital Commons Network^™

L'Harmonie Révée: An Analysis Of Henri Pousseur's 'Votre Faust' And 'Les Litanies D'Icare', Andre Rene Bregegere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters, largely self-contained, each dedicated to a different piece by Belgian composer Henri Pousseur (1929-2009). The first chapter presents a detailed survey of Pousseur's opera, Votre Faust, attempting to address all major aspects of this vast, ambitious work: origins and reception, compositional design, relationship with the Western operatic and literary tradition, formal experimentations, and harmonic innovations. The second chapter presents a detailed analysis of a work representative of Pousseur's more recent output, Les Litanies d'Icare (1993) for piano solo, focused on Pousseur's trademark techniques of parametric, serial design (technique des groupes), and …

Use Of The Modified Emotional Stroop Task To Detect Suicide Risk In College Students, Yeunjoo Chung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is a challenge to detect those who are at potential risk for suicide because the base rate of suicidal behaviors in non-clinical samples is low. The aim of the present study was to investigate the concurrent and predictive validity of the emotional Stroop task (EST) as a behavioral marker for suicidal behaviors in a college population. Eight hundred and twenty students were asked to perform the EST and to respond to suicide-related self-report measures and were followed up with18 months later. The results indicated that participants with past suicide attempts had longer response latencies to the word "suicide" as …

Held And Dropped: A Study Of Metaphor And Subjective Experience In A Psychoanalytic Treatment, Alison Michele Ferst

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores particular patterns of change that might unfold over the course of an intensive psychoanalytic treatment by mapping the forms of change that might take place in terms of a patient's subjective experience and the meaning that the patient attributes to it as reflected in the effort to express that experience in figurative language (i.e., metaphors). The data set was treatment session transcripts provided by P. A. Dewald over a period of 2 years and is partitioned by Dewald into three sequential phases.

Figurative language in general and metaphor in particular consists of essential forms of representation of …

Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, And The Scholar's Art, Stefania Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instead of describing poetry as a set of constraints or history of practices, Muriel Rukeyser calls it "one kind of knowledge." Dark Matter heeds Rukeyser's call, theorizing a poetics of the "scholar's art," in which documentary investigation, autobiographical exploration, and formal innovation are mutual, interwoven concerns. The dissertation pairs American poets Susan Howe (b. 1937) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), reading their hybrid works not through the received categories of American poetry, or through common generic and disciplinary divisions, but using an inductive methodology that takes its lead from the poets. Understanding Howe and Rukeyser's literary experiments as serious interventions in …

Vocabulary Through Affixes And Word Families - A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Program For Adult Ell Students, Magdalena Kieliszek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vocabulary plays an important role in language learning of ELL (English Language Learner) students. This work discusses the importance of metalinguistic awareness in teaching vocabulary to adult English Language Learners at an intermediate- or advanced-level of English language proficiency with an emphasis on learning vocabulary through word families and increased morphological awareness. The main contribution is a computer-based program that guides users through a series of interactive reading and vocabulary practice exercises which allow them to explore and learn how certain words are connected through word families and how some of the most common affixes in English can affect the …

Syntactic Constraints And Social Uses Of Greek-English Intrasentential Codeswitching, Despina Stefanou Malliaroudakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There are many multilingual speakers who codeswitch in daily conversation. By learning the specific points where this codeswitching occurs, the reasons why the speaker codeswitches are revealed. In obtaining both, one can see how a speaker utilizes two or more languages to convey their point in a conversation. The list of features may also hold useful linguistic information regarding codeswitching boundaries that can be further applied to other areas within linguistics.

This study will use the recorded speech of six bilingual speakers who codeswitch between Greek and English to determine specific codeswitching boundaries. Once obtained, the reason behind the codeswitch …

The Encoding Of Temporality In Second Language Acquisition: A Study Of Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Esl Learners, Li Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the influences of pragmatic factors, lexical devices, as well as the lexical aspectual properties of verbs on second language learners' encoding of temporality in their target language. The pragmatic factors being investigated include a recency effect and the number of occurrences of a tense in the previous context, and the lexical devices include past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs. The role of the lexical aspectual properties of verbs is checked against the Aspect Hypothesis, which states that learners will initially restrict past or perfective marking to achievement and accomplishment verbs and later gradually extend this usage to …

The Effect Of Orthographic Mapping, Context, And Word Class On Sight Word Learning For Native And Nonnative English-Speakers, Katharine Pace Miles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated three questions: 1.) Does training in orthographic mapping better support flashcard reading over a control group, 2.) Does providing meaning clarifications during flashcard reading better support learning over not providing meanings, 3.) Does grammatical word class affect word learning, and 4.) Do these manipulations affect word learning differently in native and nonnative speakers? Additionally, this study investigated whether literacy and language skills predict the reading of words presented in isolation. Native (n = 40) and nonnative (n = 41) English-speaking kindergarten students' were randomly assigned to either the orthographic mapping or control condition prior to flashcard word …

Physiological And Subjective Aspects Of Positive Mood In Relation To Executive Functioning: The Potential Moderating Role Of Personality, Luz Helena Ospina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Positive affect has been demonstrated to improve aspects of cognition. However, recent studies reveal that positive affect may hinder the same cognitive processes, such as executive functioning, memory and creativity. These discrepant findings may be due to differing levels of physiological arousal, a component of the circumplex model of affect, which has been largely ignored in affective research. For example, one recent study suggests that positive valence coupled with varying levels of physiological arousal (i.e., low, moderate, and high) may differentially affect performance on tasks of verbal fluency and memory. Furthermore, one other explanation for these inconsistent findings may relate …

Performing Blackness In A Mulatto Society: Negotiating Racial Identity Through Music In The Dominican Republic, Angelina Maria Tallaj-García

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation analyzes Dominican racial and ethnic identity through an examination of music and music cultures. Previous studies of Dominican identity have focused primarily on the racialized invention of the Dominican nation as white, or non-black, often centering on the building of Dominican identity in (sometimes violent) opposition to the Haitian nation and to Haitian racial identity. I argue that although Dominicans have not developed an explicit verbal discourse of black affirmation, blackness (albeit a contextually contingent articulation) is embedded in popular conceptions of dominicanidad ("Dominicanness") and is enacted through music. My dissertation explores ways in which popular notions of …

Poetry And The Arab Spring, George A. Simon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Abstract: In 2010-11 the world saw the rise of the Arab Spring, a series of uprisings across the Arab world. These uprisings were attempts by the Arab peoples to over throw their governments and bring freedom and change to their societies in order to live in dignity and grace. These populist uprisings produced powerful poetry focusing on the corruption of Arab governments and the rampant economic and social problems faced by the youth of the Arab world. In the following work I have chosen a number of Arabic poems which I translated and analyzed in order to see the relation …

The Effects Of Morpho-Phonemic And Whole Word Instruction On The Literacy Skills Of Adult Struggling Readers, Susan Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the effects of two kinds of word study on the literacy skills of 34 adult struggling readers. Young adults seeking high school equivalency diplomas were randomly assigned to intensive individual tutoring, two hours once a week for four weeks, in either morpho-phonemic or whole word study to learn academic vocabulary from a civics curriculum. Participants were African American and Latino adults in secondary education who had learned English either as their native language or as their second language in early childhood. Those given morpho-phonemic instruction analyzed Latin and Greek word origins, parsed morpheme and syllable structures, and …

The Emergence Of L1 Innovations In Spanish-English Bilinguals: Evidence From Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming, Agustina Carando

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the hypothesis that structural priming is an internal mechanism motivating processes of convergence in bilinguals. The focus of the investigation is linguistic innovations in Spanish produced by Spanish-English bilinguals. Innovations involve both changes in the frequency of alternative constructions and existing patterns produced in new contexts modeled on English equivalents. From structural priming techniques that model convergence, the data assess the extent of English influence on Spanish, in a contact setting (New York, United States) and a non-contact setting (Córdoba, Argentina).

In the field of language contact, convergence may manifest itself as an increase in the use …

An Examination Of The Effect Of Vision-Related Factors And Availability Of Health Care Resources On Depression, Functional Status, And Falls Among New York City Senior Center Attendees, Lauren Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is substantial variability across different geographic regions and demographic groups in health outcomes and health resource availability. This dissertation examines the relationship between self-reported ocular disease and depression, functional status, and falls in a diverse sample of senior center attendees in New York City. Further, these analyses explored whether the availability of health care resources at the area level affects the observed relationship between ocular disease and these other adverse outcomes.

This dissertation project addresses two main gaps in the current research, specifically, the need to better understand elders' experiences with these conditions in different geographic regions and demographic …

Civilizing Settlers: Catholic Missionaries And The Colonial State In French Algeria, 1830-1914, Kyle Francis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that between 1830 and 1914, with increasing intensity over time, French Catholic missionaries sowed divisions among the European population of French Algeria. The French government initially welcomed missionaries to cater to religiously devout Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers in Algeria and to foster their loyalty to the colonial state. Missionaries, however, incited the professional jealousy and personal animosity of the territory's generally less devout French population, who saw Catholicism and missionaries as little different from Islam and the "fanatical" Muslim population. Throughout this period, missionaries thus occupied a liminal space in the racialized hierarchy of colonial rule. …

Ni Francaise, Ni Juive, Ni Arabe: The Influence Of Nineteenth Century French Judaism On The Emergence Of Franco- Jewish- Arab Literature, Deborah Rosalind Gruber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study proposes that the influence of nineteenth century French Judaism on the Jewish communities of the Middle East from approximately 1910­‐1956 has had an indelible influence on the evolution of Franco- Jewish‐Arab literature today. From the late nineteenth century, the education of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire was provided by the Paris based Alliance Israélite Universelle, an organization established by French Jews with the purpose of emancipating disadvantaged Jewish communities outside of France. The result was the establishment of Franco­‐Jewish-Arab communities that regarded French education as a means of both social and economic advancement. Although the curriculum of …

Disseminating Devotion: The Image And Cult Of The Black Christ In Colonial Mexico And Central America, Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following the conquest of Mexico in 1521, Spanish conquerors and friars considered it their duty to bring Christianity to the New World. Even before the task of conversion began, they introduced Christian images, like the cross, to the native peoples they first encountered. Eventually, local artists began to create the sacred objects.

This study is the first in-depth, art historical inquiry into the significance of the most prominent Black Christ crucifix images and cults in various regions of Mexico and Central America from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century. It traces the origin and history of the Black Christ, often …

Upon The Plains Of The Soul .'. The Liberating Logos Of Joao Guimaraes Rosa In "Grande Sertao: Veredas", Jizelda Galvao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two drawings accompanied the novel Grande Sertão: veredas by João Guimarães Rosa in its second edition (1958). Not much attention has been given to them. In fact, their corners and ends have, in many editions, suffered "amputations." So many are the published editions that have simply discarded them. In my dissertation, I sustain that these "maps" are part of the text of the novel. They are the "Roteiro de Deus," Man's Path of Return to the "Paradisical Garden." I propose an esoteric reading of them along with an esoteric reading of the novel itself. Rosa's novel is an alchemical furnace, …

Reexamining Linguistic Relativity: What Adult Bilinguals Can Teach Us About Culture, Language, And Cognition, Natalya Petroff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Extending Whorf's popular notion of linguistic relativity (LR) to bilingual contexts, one would argue that a speaker's first language (L1) influences her thinking and behavior under second language (L2) conditions. According to one interpretation of LR, inter-language relativity, L1 instills in its speakers habitual ways of thinking and thus influences their perception and categorization in L2 contexts. Under intra-speaker relativity, bilinguals follow either L1 or L2 patterns of performance, depending on L2 proficiency. Finally, according to usage-based accounts of language, there is no qualitative difference between mono- and bilingual speakers, and a bilingual's performance under L2 conditions is best viewed …

All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Thomas Rinaldi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work of comparative literary criticism focuses on the presence of mathematical and scientific concepts and imagery in the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, beginning with an historical overview of scientific philosophy and an introduction to the most significant scientific concepts of the last several centuries, before shifting to deep, scientifically-driven analyses of numerous individual fictions, and finally concluding with a meditation on the unexpectedly fictive aspects of science and mathematics. The close readings of these authors' fictions are contextualized with thorough explanations of the potential literary implications of theories from physics, mathematics, neuroscience and chaos theory. …

The Influence Of Advanced Cognitive Ability On The Development Of Psychological Defenses And In Understanding And Managing Affect: A Study Of Latency-Aged Gifted Students, Kahlila Ife Robinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examines the influence of advanced cognitive ability on the development of psychological defenses and in understanding and managing affect, using the lens of Emotional Intelligence (EI). Theories of psychological defense maturity state that defense mechanisms are influenced both by the cognitive level of the individual and by the cognitive complexity of the defense itself (Cramer, 1999; Cramer, 2009). Individuals with exceptional cognitive ability may therefore show a corresponding "match" with complex defense use. In addition to defense use, how well one is able to identify, understand, manage and use emotion to facilitate thought, abilities often labelled Emotional …

'Like Iron To A Magnet': Moses Hayim Luzzatto's Quest For Providence, David Sclar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a biographical study of Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707-1746 or 1747). It presents the social and religious context in which Luzzatto was variously celebrated as the leader of a kabbalistic-messianic confraternity in Padua, condemned as a deviant threat by rabbis in Venice and central and eastern Europe, and accepted by the Portuguese Jewish community after relocating to Amsterdam. Using unpublished archival documents and manuscripts, as well as rare printed books, I seek to reconcile the seemingly incompatible aspects of Luzzatto as 'heretic' and 'hero.'

Chapter one sets the tone for the dissertation by analyzing the original version of …

Infrastructure, Production, And Archive: American And Japanese Video Art Production Of 1960s And 1970s, Ann Atsuko Adachi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing a study on the infrastructure of artistic production and maintenance opens a space in which to examine the relationship between artistic inspiration and knowledge making, the occurrences and the writing of its history. In the case of the comparative study of the emergence of Japanese and American video art, common artistic technique employed may indicate motivations derived from the technical possibility of the video medium, while the study of infrastructure demonstrates how large-scale funding, formation of archives, the establishment of systems of distribution and channels of education affect the emergence and development of video art as a genre. This …

The Status Of Neonatal Hearing Screening In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review, David Engelman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Late identification of hearing loss can lead to speech and language delays, as well as social and academic difficulties. Neonatal hearing screening has reduced the age of identification of hearing loss in many developed countries. However, the practice is limited or non-existent in much of the developing world, such as sub-Saharan Africa. This systematic review used currently available literature to determine the status of neonatal hearing screening programs in sub-Saharan Africa and to develop a model program for the region. Results suggested a lack of neonatal hearing screening services in sub-Saharan Africa, stressing the need for more pilot hearing screening …

Senecan Tragedy And Virgil's Aeneid: Repetition And Reversal, Timothy Hanford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the relationship between Senecan tragedy and Virgil's Aeneid, both on close linguistic as well as larger thematic levels. Senecan tragic characters and choruses often echo the language of Virgil's epic in provocative ways; these constitute a contrastive reworking of the original Virgilian contents and context, one that has not to date been fully considered by scholars. This study is organized according to three main themes that are argued to have strong intertextual aspects: repetition of the past, victor and vanquished, and maius nefas, or greater crime. In each case Seneca tragicus is seen to take a theme …

Striving For Integration: Referential Activity And Object Relational Level In A Sample Of Bisexual Women, Lauren Demille

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexuality has been theorized as a particular human experience that is driven, unmirrored in development, and enigmatic, not reaching what Fonagy describes as "second order representation." Yet, as a social being, one is expected to declare and publically live out a sexual identity. This study is situated within this point of contact between the visceral and the sociolinguistic, with particular attention paid to the experiences of bisexual women, whose potential challenges in articulating a sexual identity are considered. The study sample was comprised of forty bisexual women participating in the Dually Attracted Women's Narratives study (Levy-Warren, 2013) returning for the …

Can All Religions Live In Peace?, Antony Das S. Devadhasan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Can All Religions Live In Peace?

Religion is identified as one of the main factors that divide humanity. Pluralists like, John Hick identify the conflicting truth claims or the doctrines of different religions as the basis for religious exclusivism. Hick accuses the exclusivists of being epistemically arrogant and morally oppressive. His remedy for eradicating exclusivism is that every religion with conflicting truth claims should reinterpret these claims so as to share an outlook with other religions. Alvin Plantinga, a critic of Hick, contradicts Hick on behalf of a believer or an exclusivist.He argues that for a believer his beliefs are …

Archives Of Transnational Modernism: Lost Networks Of Art And Activism, Anne Donlon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Archives Of Transnational Modernism: Lost Networks Of Art And Activism considers the work of several intersecting figures in transnational modernism, in order to reassess the contours of race and gender in anglophone literature of the interwar period in the U.S. and Europe. Writers and organizers experimented with literary form and print culture to build and maintain networks of internationalism. This dissertation begins to suggest some of these maps of connection, paying particular attention to people who played key roles as hubs within networks. British radical Sylvia Pankhurst's 1920s publications, which have not been much considered in terms of literary contribution, …

Jean Sénac, Poet Of The Algerian Revolution, Kai G. Krienke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work presented here is an exploration of the poetry and life of Jean Sénac, and through Sénac, of the larger role of poetry in the political and social movements of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, mainly in Algeria and America. While Sénac was part of the European community in Algeria, his position regarding French rule changed dramatically over the course of the Algerian War, (between 1954 and 1962) and upon independence, he became one the rare French to return to his adopted homeland. I will argue, sometimes polemically, that Sénac was and should be considered a properly Algerian …

How To Ask Questions In Mandarin Chinese, Woan-Jen Liing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis re-examines the four main question-types in Mandarin Chinese, namely, particle questions, háishì questions, A-not-A questions and wh-questions, whose previous accounts are argued to be unsatisfactory due to various faulty assumptions about questions, particularly the stipulation of `Q'. Each of the four Mandarin Chinese question-types is re-accounted based on the view that questions are speech-acts, whose performance are done by way of speakers' subconscious choice of sentence-types that mirror their ignorance-types, as proposed in Fiengo (2007). It is further demonstrated that viewing questions as speech-acts instead of a structurally marked sentence-type allows a simpler and more intuitive account for …