Digital Commons Network^™

The Visual Staging Of Audio Plays, Alex P. Burkart

Theses and Dissertations

The Visual Staging of Audio Plays explores the directing practice of radio dramas that are staged for viewing purposes rather than their typical solo-auditory purposes. The thesis is comprised of three separate parts: a brief history of theatrical sound, an introduction to radio drama theory and practice, and application. The application portion is a detailed first-person account of my personal experience staging It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play by Joe Landry for TheatreVCU’s Mainstage winter special event in 2015. It is also in this section where I integrate history, theory, and practice to formulate technique for directing the …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Image, Text, And Social Commentary In Victor Ekpuk's Cartoons For The Daily Times Of Nigeria, 1989-1998, Kaleb W. Jewell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of the cartoons produced by Victor Ekpuk for The Daily Times newspaper of Nigeria from 1989 through 1998 and the artist’s use of ancient nsibidi script to “hide in plain sight” his social commentaries on sociopolitical and economic issues in Nigeria. Victor Ekpuk’s original cartoons within the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art are examined in the context of indigenous masking practices and other indirect methods employed by indigenous comedians to protect themselves. Moreover, the cartoons’ use of caricature and their nsibidi scripts within are argued to provide a connotative …

Unmarked Boxes: A Solo Show, Nicole Dietze

Theses and Dissertations

Unmarked Boxes is an original solo show, written during the fall of 2015 and performed on December 2, 3 and 4, 2015 at the Center for Performance Experiment, 718 Devine Street, Columbia, SC, along with seven other solo shows in the showcase, Light Through a Pinhole. Examining American perspectives on grief and dying, Unmarked Boxes tells the story of a young American woman who struggles to plan and perform a sky burial in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Virtual / Reality: Designing Permeable Spaces For Social Well-Being In The Digital Age, Thomas R. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

The digital age has pushed people closer together than ever before. A device that fits in the palm of your hand allows instantaneous communication with billions of other human beings. People share everyday experiences, passing thoughts, personal photos, sometimes privately, often publicly. Distances between people and places feel reduced. Never has it been so easy to be so emotionally close to so many people.

But as digital experiences become routine, our collective perceptions of closeness and distance shift. As virtual communities become larger, so does our awareness of the actual distance between things. Even though humans can be genuinely close …

Death Vegas Valley, Eric M. Diehl

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores hallucinatory landscapes of the US American West by using a combination of painting styles outside of the Western painting canon. I cross-reference painting and cinema, interweaving video, acrylic paint and the panorama to create a satirical homage to the history and present state of the USA. However, through an earnest devotion to the medium - both painting and cinema - I find my criticisms also yearn to hold onto a belief in a myth I know to be false.

This is an American History conversation about artifice and consumerism through advertising. I use Las Vegas and the …

The Actor Behind The Camera, Zechariah H. Pierce

Theses and Dissertations

Through an accidental discovery of an interest in the film making process, I decided to explore the opportunities that would come through self-education in the field. Along the way, I found that the process of working behind the camera can, in fact, help the actor’s career in front of the camera and provide a chance to train in a nontraditional way. After directing two projects (one simple and one more complicated), I decided to propose a class in which students would be required to self- produce their own video projects online. The class was vastly popular, and the students’ responses …

Paul Scott's "The Jewel In The Crown": A Novelist's Philosophy Of History And The End Of The British Raj, Kathryn Ann Hughes Nedegaard

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of Paul Scott’s best-known novel The Jewel in the Crown,

published in 1966. Scott noted that much of the research and writing on the British

Raj that ended in 1947, lacked an adequate understanding of the union that had

endured for more than three centuries. Scott believed too that many interpretations

of why the Raj ended relied too heavily on monolithic categories of “us and them”

and that they over-emphasized the socio-political and economic influences of

empire. He also believed that many scholars of the Raj ignored the love that existed

among all the people …

Redefining Islamic Identity: Cosmopolitanism In The Theater Of Tawfiq Al-Hakim And Akbar Ahmed, Gaber Abdelghaffar Abdelrahman Hasaneen

Theses and Dissertations

The question whether Islam is compatible with American, or generally “Western,” values has now imposed itself on public debates, gaining more urgency and traction with every tragic act of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. In these debates Islamic identity is usually defined in Orientalist terms. Fundamentalist Muslims reiterate Orientalist concepts of who a Muslim is. Orientalist observers on the one hand, and on the other fundamentalist Muslims have defined Islam as the West’s inimical Other, which has made the so-called clash of civilizations sound inevitable.

I argue that cosmopolitan observers challenge these misrepresentations. Representation, particularly self-representation, of the …

"Mad In Craft": Action And Melancholy In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Daniel Arthur Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contains two parts. First, I will present a character analysis of Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet; secondly, I will perform the role and conclude this project with a brief reflection on the experience. For the character analysis, I will examine Hamlet’s inner action and his melancholy.

Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …

Choreographic Space, Kelsey Sheaffer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, Choreographic Space, and accompanying exhibit is an arrangement of contemporary work being done in the cross-over between movement, drawing, sound and architecture. The thesis develops a lineage of choreographic thinking through a fissure in the classification of a dance as necessarily the body in motion. Through the link of the “choreographic object,” Choreographic Space asks how an interdisciplinary exploration of the principles of movement can reveal novel ways to think about the body in space.

The Use Of Micro-Blogging For Teacher Professional Development Support And Personalized Professional Learning, Saress Ellerbe Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to look at how teachers use micro-blogging, in this case Twitter (www.twitter.com), for their own personalized professional learning and how effective Twitter is as a professional development (PD) tool. In order to measure the effectiveness of the tool, the researcher first gleaned nine essential characteristics of effective PD from the literature. This list was validated by experts in the PD community. The significance of this study was to reveal how participants actually used Twitter for PD, what their perspectives on the tool were, and how effective their experiences were with Twitter as a …

Internship Directors' Perspectives On Emerging Trends In Psychological Assessment Training And Practice, Angel Faith

Theses and Dissertations

Psychological assessment represents a core competency domain that continues to be uniquely associated with professional psychology. Despite the necessity and value of psychological assessment across domains of practice, there is growing concern regarding the training provided to developing clinicians, specifically psychology graduate students. Past studies have drawn attention to the discrepancy between predoctoral internship directors’ expectations related to assessment and the competency levels of incoming psychology interns. The purpose of this study was to conduct a national, online survey of psychology internship directors to examine their perspectives regarding current practices, emerging trends, and needed changes regarding psychological assessment at the …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

Deposition, Conjecture, And The Word Of Nod, Victor Vaughn

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis involved mixed medium drawings based on written colonial papers regarding the beginning of a border war between the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. To fill in the fragmented historical information, the project incorporated period artifacts as merged and manipulated by contemporary technology and the internet’s ethos.

Frank Martin's Arranged Works For Flute: Sonata Da Chiesa And Deuxieme Ballade, Jessica Dixon Leeth

Theses and Dissertations

The Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) wrote three major works for flute—Ballade for flute and piano, Sonata da Chiesa for flute and organ, and Deuxième Ballade for flute and piano. Of these, both the Sonata da Chiesa and Deuxième Ballade were arrangements of two of his previously written works, Sonata da Chiesa for viola d’amore and organ and Ballade for saxophone and piano (or string orchestra, piano, and percussion), respectively. Martin wrote both works in their original versions in 1938, a time in his career when he realized his true individual style, embracing the chromaticism of twelve-tone serialism while maintaining …

A Work In Process: The Diligence Behind The Art, Marc Hurst

Theses and Dissertations

The following is an in depth analysis of the development process from script to stage for the lighting design of five productions. These productions were commissioned to MFA lighting design candidate Marc Hurst during his three years in the University of South Carolina Department of Theatre and Dance's Master of Fine Arts Program. This paper critically examines the process by which the artist develops their lighting design from first read to fully realized production.

Coercing Beauty: From Peanuts To Daggers In The Night, Brad Cozby

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to show the journey of a young designer. I will show through three separate productions the struggles, along with the triumphs of a designer learning the ropes. I will discuss in this paper the process by which the designer grew and expanded his understanding of design as well as the role of a designer in a theatrical production.

The Effects And Comparisons Of Receptive Live Music Listening And Expressive Music Making On Mood With Elderly Adults In A Congregate Residential Setting, Rory Kendall Bolton

Theses and Dissertations

It is important to consider mood and its effect on elderly persons as many older adults will experience symptoms of depression. In prior studies, research indicated that preferred music listening and expressive music making can positively change mood in older adults. The purpose of this research study was to investigate the differences between receptive music listening and expressive music making (presented as a facilitated group music therapy session) and their effect on participants’ mood. The researcher hypothesized that 1) there would be a significant difference for pre and posttest standardized mood assessment (PANAS) scores between the receptive music listening and …

Resisting The Resistance: The Emancipation Of Students From The Hidden Curriculum Of Commodified Resistant Narratives In Young Adult Dystopian Film Through Open Pedagogical Space And Culture-Jamming, Robert B. Bauer

Theses and Dissertations

Young Adult Dystopian Film exercises an influence over young people of which they are not aware. As part of a structure of domination these films teach students to participate in their own oppression by the capitalist system. The film industry maintains a hidden curriculum like that utilized in school classrooms to conceal the oppression from the masses. One particularly effective means is the portrayal of resistance against oppression in the narratives of the YA Dystopian Film. Young people are drawn to that narrative and end up supporting the structure of domination financially and ideologically. Modes of resistance to this oppression …

A Page Of Her Own: How Women Navigate The Public And Private Facets Of Blogging, Emily Marie Flinders

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the complexity of the texts women create through blogging and their inherent value. I seek to explore how the mothers who blog are constructing online identities for their family units and family members in this space and how those constructions affect and inform the mothers' construction of their personal identities online. I analyze how perceptions of gender norms and practices of gender performance may affect and inform the identities thus constructed, and further complicate the liminal nature of blogging spaces. I begin with the sociological framework of Erving Goffman, which is commonly used to deconstruct identity performance …

Incorporating A Robot In Intervention With Children With Asd: The Effect On Tantrum Behaviors, Tayler Bodon Whitmer

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effect of intervention involving a humanoid robot on challenging or tantrum behaviors of four children with low-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current work was part of a larger study involving the effect of the robot on functional communication skills on a variety of different interactions with different communication partners. All participants took part in a single-subject, multiple-baseline design with various session types including baseline, traditional play-based treatment, treatment including the robot, and follow-up sessions. For the purpose of this study, only the sessions including treatment with the robot where the robot interaction occurred at the …

Audience Participation In Blue Man Group: Success Through Authentic Character, Adaptable Narrative, And Accessible Space, Haley Lauren Flanders

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between performer and spectator is a constant topic in theatre since audiences are essential to any performance. Some contemporary performances strive to blur the line between the two by allowing audiences to participate during the show. Often, audience participation is despised and therefore avoided by spectators and theatre practitioners. However, Blue Man Group thrives on it due to their authentic character, adaptable narrative, and accessible space. Through my examination of the show as an audience member, I theorize that these three elements control the audience's willingness to participate in the production and in turn make the entire experience …

A Theory Of Presence: Bringing Students And Art Closer Together, Joshua T. Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

In seeking to create a richer learning environment in a junior high art classroom, the author develops a theory of presence. Closely connected to object-centered learning, a theory of presence in the art classroom places value on students being in the presence of, interacting with, and responding to artworks, artists, and other individuals and objects from the visual arts community. The author then describes how curricular plans are influenced by this theory of presence. Using an action research methodology, the author engages in the spiral process of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting on curriculum that explores the possibilities of connecting …

Reject Or Redemptive Fathers? A Content Analysis Of Father Portrayals In Top Box Office Family Films, Cassidy Jo Wadsworth

Theses and Dissertations

More research is needed to fully understand the way in which parents, particularly fathers, are portrayed in family films and the effects those portrayals might have. Viewers, particularly parents, need to understand how the material their children view presents reality and how it may shape their children's perspectives of the real world, particularly where the family unit and parenting role are concerned. By exploring these portrayals through the lens of Cultivation Theory, this study sought to answer this overarching question: How are fathers portrayed in family films as opposed to television? This quantitative study explores the top twenty films from …

Instrumental Music Participation And The Differences In Academic Performances For Students In Poverty, Shawn A. Oban

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the emphasis on No Child Left Behind and high stakes testing, school districts and administrators have been limiting or eliminating fine arts courses from an already shrinking curriculum, focusing on the subjects being tested. Students living in poverty are often entering formal schooling behind academically.

The researcher examined longitudinal test data from 2010-2015 from middle school aged students in a large Midwest school district. The researcher focused on test scores from the sixth grade when instrumental music was offered, examined test data from tenth grade, and studied academic growth. All student scores were included, but the independent variables …

Racial Intolerance During The California Gold Rush, Raul David Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and lasted to the mid-1850s. Though short in duration, the impact the Gold Rush had in the United States, along with populations from many areas in the rest of the world, proved detrimental to many different ethnic groups that arrived to the mines and came into contact with various cultures, principally the white Anglo-American culture. This thesis focuses on themes such as race, gender roles, free labor versus unfree labor, extra-legal violence, and informal laws passed in the mines to exclude foreigners. It addresses why certain nationalities were taxed and targeted as foes, …

Living Between Dialectics: A Bakhtinian And Lacanian Reading Of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter And Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Xiaojun Luo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation creates a dialogic web encompassing the sociocultural and psychological aspects of Jade Snow Wong's and Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiographies Fifth Chinese Daughter and The Woman Warrior. The American mainstream society and Chinese patriarchal community have conceived insurmountable ethnic and gender differences that are inherent in Wong's and Kingston's growing-up environment. The dissertation argues that how the two authors perceive the way of how these differences have been conceived is central to our understanding of their representations of ethnic female consciousness when they are writing as both subjects and writers. The dissertation notes, to be more specific, Wong's and …

Full-Scale Instrumented Evaluations Of Multiple Airfield Matting Systems On Soft Soil To Characterize Permanent Deformation, Lyan Ivonne García Beltrán

Theses and Dissertations

Airfield matting systems are used for the expedient construction of temporary airfields and rapid expansion of existing airfields to provide maneuvering support for military aircraft. They protect the subgrade by distributing the load exerted by aircraft over a larger area. Six airfield matting systems of varying materials and designs were evaluated through the construction of full-scale test sections to determine their effectiveness at reducing the accumulation of subgrade deformation and decreasing the pressure experienced by the subgrade. The matting systems were tested on a California Bearing Ratio (CBR) of 6 and subjected to simulated F-15E aircraft traffic while monitoring mat …

Glimpses Of World War Ii In Denmark: Memory And History In Frayn's Copenhagen And Sibbern's Resistance Scrapbook, Adriana Pinegar

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between history and memory is long and complex. While some theorists argue that they are at odds with one another, this thesis explores the necessary relationship between the two. Using Michael Frayn's 1998 play, Copenhagen, and the scrapbook of a Danish police officer and resistance fighter during World War II, the author posits the central role of uncertainty in the negotiation of individual memory and history. The position of the observer or witness to history affects the way the past is remembered and recorded. Individual witnesses, even and perhaps especially where they stray from the accepted historical narrative, …