Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Essential New York City Films, Nikola M. Durkovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Films play significant part in the creation and preservation of the New York City’s image and must be consulted by anyone interested in exploring the City’s history and character. The essential New York films tell stories about New Yorkers and how they deal with their reality of extreme diversity and competition. In my opinion, there are six essential New York City films: Shadows (1959), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Manhattan (1979), and 25th Hour (2002). My goal is to explore the essential New York films and demonstrate how their content and form reflect …

The Psychology Of Plato's Republic: Taking Book 10 Into Account, Daniel Mailick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Three puzzles motivate this dissertation. First, how much does Republic Book 10 contribute to the dialogue’s main argument? For centuries, commentators have found Book 10 to be a puzzling and disappointing conclusion to the dialogue. The second puzzle is the important and still much debated question of whether Plato considered the parts of the soul to be independent and agent-like (as ‘realists’ interpret the dialogue) or not (as ‘deflationists’ argue). The third puzzle regards an issue that is much less discussed in the literature, namely the Republic’s notion of character. On the one hand, Socrates never launches an explicit inquiry …

The Fragmented Mind: Working Memory Cannot Implement Consciousness, Javier Gomez-Lavin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In both philosophy and the sciences of the mind there is a shared commitment to the idea that there is a center—the seat of consciousness, the source of deliberation and reflection, and the core of personal identity—in the mind. My dissertation challenges this deeply entrenched view. I review the empirical literature on working memory, psychology’s best candidate for the workspace of the mind, and argue that it is not a natural kind and cannot inform these central cognitive processes. This deflationary view directly imperils many naturalistic theories of consciousness that rely on working memory, which are reviewed in this project. …

Rachmaninoff And The Flexibility Of The Score: Issues Regarding Performance Practice, Tanya Gabrielian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s piano music is a staple of piano literature, but academia has been slower to embrace his works. Because he continued to compose firmly in the Romantic tradition at a time when Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg variously represented the vanguard of composition, Rachmaninoff’s popularity has consequently not been as robust in the musicological community. He left a rich legacy of recorded material which provides a first-hand account of his approach to musical interpretation. Few have analyzed Rachmaninoff’s recordings in great detail, and there are even fewer studies addressing Rachmaninoff’s performances of works by other composers.

The aim of this …

Un Buenos Aires Ibérico: Cultura Impresa Y Modernidades Divergentes En El Exilio (1936-1959), Pablo Garcia Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation, Un Buenos Aires ibérico: Cultura impresa y modernidades divergentes en el exilio (1936-1959) –Iberian Buenos Aires: Print Culture and Diverging Modernity in Exile (1939-1959)–, analyzes print culture as a site of interaction between the intellectuals and artists exiled from the Spanish Civil War and the Argentinian Cultural Field. This doctoral research uses previously unpublished materials –with texts written in Spanish, Galician and Catalan, ranging from journalism and private correspondence to literary prose and drama; as well as graphic design, illustration and canvases– to engage with current conversations and debates in both the humanities and the …

Haunted Stories, Haunted Selves: Ghosts In Latin American Jewish Literature, Charlotte Gartenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study approaches haunting in Latin American Jewish Literature from the 1990s through the 2010s as it appears in works by and featuring the descendants of Jewish immigrants. In these decades, this trope is frequently invoked as both a literary metaphor and a critical lens. It arises from and activates a number of themes common in trauma studies and in postmodernism, such as loss, the transmission of memory, our relationships to the past, the rupturing of traditional realities and questions of what can be known and represented. It is particularly prevalent amongst those who pen and protagonize the works examined …

Essence, Explanation, And Modal Knowledge, Antonella Mallozzi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The primary aim of this project is to put forward a novel account of knowledge of metaphysical modality. I call this the “Essentialist Superexplanatory” account of modal knowledge, because it relies on the following two main theses: (a) knowledge of metaphysical necessity is grounded in knowledge of essence; and (b) essences are properties, sets of properties, or mechanisms, having distinctive explanatory powers for how things are. While thesis (a) is quite popular in the current debates, mostly thanks to Kit Fine’s recent work in modal metaphysics, thesis (b) introduces an original brand of essentialism. As I show by means of …

Theories Of Perception And Recent Empirical Work, Philip Zigman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I answer the following question: Does recent empirical work give us reason to think that naive realism is false or that indirect realism is correct? There is a small amount of literature arguing that recent empirical findings pose problems for naive realism and suggest that perception involves mental representation. I review this literature and the arguments therein, examine the relevant empirical work, and argue that recent empirical work on perception does give us reason to reject naive realism and to favour an indirect realist view that countenances mental representations.

Demystifying The Placebo Effect, Phoebe Friesen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a philosophical analysis of the placebo effect. After offering an overview of recent evidence concerning the phenomenon, I consider several prominent accounts of the placebo effect that have been put forward and argue that none of them are able to adequately account for the diverse instantiations of the phenomenon. I then offer a novel account, which suggests that we ought to think of the placebo effect as encompassing three distinct responses: conditioned placebo responses, cognitive placebo responses, and network placebo responses. Next, I consider implications of the placebo effect’s role in complementary and alternative medicine for discussions …

Morality As Social Software, Jongjin Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation research is a project to understand morality better through the concept of ‘Social Software.’ The dissertation is, consequently, to argue that the morality in a human society functions as a form of social software in the society. The three aspects of morality as social software are discussed in detail: the evolutionary, anti-entropic, and epistemic game-theoretic aspect.

We humans ‘usually’ think that, for example, (a) killing other humans without any necessary reason is morally wrong, and (b) helping other humans in need is morally right. We want to know, in this dissertation research project, why we think in such …

Migration, Colonialism, And Belonging: Tunisians Around The First World War, 1911-1925, Chris J. Rominger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the little-examined transnational experiences of ordinary North Africans around the First World War, demonstrating how the war catalyzed a wide and unexpected range of concepts of political and social belonging. With the Mediterranean once again the site of massive migration provoked by war and economic inequality, scholars and commentators have begun to revisit the First World War’s legacy in the Arab world. Yet much work focuses on the emergence of Arab nationalism or on the diplomatic folly of the European victors. My research confronts scholarly assumptions about the temporal and geographic boundaries of the First World War …

Disorderly Histories: An Anthropology Of Decolonization In Western Sahara, Mark Drury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation situates the disputed geopolitical territory of Western Sahara in a broader, regional history of decolonization. Eschewing the conceptual framework of methodological nationalism, and pushing beyond the period of Moroccan-Sahrawi political conflict, it examines how decolonization has generated multiple, unresolved political projects in this region of the Sahara, dating back to the 1950s. These formations, encompassing southern Morocco, Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, and northern Mauritania, include a zone of militarized occupation, a movement for nation-state sovereignty based in refugee camps, and the borderlands in between. By considering the overlapping processes that emerge through these unresolved …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Merchant Seamen, Sailortowns, And The Shaping Of U.S. Citizenship, 1843-1945, Johnathan Thayer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that merchant seamen, because of their inherent transience, diversity, and the unique nature of their work, occupied a marginal position in U.S. society, and that that marginalization produced a series of confrontations with shoreside people, communities, institutions, and the state, most specifically over the nature and definition of citizenship. This argument is developed through examination of a series of encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked from the piers, back alleys, and boardinghouses of the nation’s “sailortowns” from the 1830s through World War II, including: 1) nineteenth century maritime ministry projects in the Port of New York …

Las Novelas De La Violencia Y La Revolución En La Formación Del Frente Nacional En Colombia Y El Estado Revolucionario Mexicano, Luis J. Henao Uribe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the face of the social and political crises that were both cause and consequence of the Mexican Revolution and the period in Colombia known as “la Violencia”, two state projects were consolidated and dominated the field of power throughout the 20th century. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico and the bipartisan coalition of the National Front in Colombia made use of the notions of revolution and violence, respectively, to legitimize their nation projects. This project investigates the role of the novel in the formation of these two new founding myths, from the urgent literary works that were written …

African American Performers In Stalin’S Soviet Union: Between Political Promise And Racial Propaganda, Christopher E. Silsby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first half of the twentieth century, a significant number of African Americans left the United States for the promise of racial and economic equality in the supposedly class-less society of a post-Revolution Soviet Union. This dissertation uses a series of interrelated case studies to contextualize the theatrical work of Paul Robeson, jazz dancer Henry Scott, actor Wayland Rudd, and the 1955-56 international tour of Porgy and Bess within the overlapping social, political, and aesthetic landscapes of African American and Soviet performance in Moscow during the rise and height of Stalinism.

Starting with an overview of race in the …

Strauss And The City: The Reception Of Richard Strauss’S Salome, Elektra, And Der Rosenkavalier Within New York City, 1907–1934, Christopher G. Ogburn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century was growing into its status as one of the world’s great cultural centers. At the same time, across the Atlantic, Richard Strauss was emerging as Germany’s preeminent composer. The city and Strauss, although seemingly unrelated, were more intertwined than it would at first appear. This study examines this connection through a reception history of Strauss’s Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier in the city, beginning in 1907 with the New York City premiere of Salome and concluding in 1934 when the opera returned to the Metropolitan’s stage. The reception …

The Body And The Sacred In Contemporary Italian Women Writers, Laura R Feola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation explores the presence of what has been called the “persistence of the sacred” in modern and contemporary Western culture. More specifically, I focus on the intertwining dimensions of the human body and the experience of the sacred in selected works by Dacia Maraini, Elena Ferrante, Cristina Campo, and Alda Merini. Despite their different voices, and the “secular” or “religious” labels with which each of these Italian authors could be defined or confined, I identify and analyze patterns, similarities, and differences in the interwoven realities of the body and the sacred present in their works.[1]

[1] See Snyder, …

Dear Son Of Memory: Milton's Engagement With Shakespeare, Bradley Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dear Son of Memory establishes new lines of inquiry into Milton’s engagement with Shakespeare, exploring explicit verbal allusions to Shakespeare’s plays in Milton’s works, as well as echoes of characters, scenes, and themes. It argues that Milton viewed Shakespeare sympathetically, rather than as a rival and it therefore revises the legacy of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” model, which still dominates scholarship in Milton studies today. More specifically, this project offers evidence from Milton’s early poems to show that Milton regarded Shakespeare as a fellow vatic poet and a friendly influence who helped him to dramatize the two central tenets …

Experimental Philosophy And Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts And Complements, Amanda Huminski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent turn toward experimental philosophy, particularly in ethics and epistemology, might appear to be supported by feminist epistemology, insofar as experimental philosophy signifies a break from the tradition of primarily white, middle-class men attempting to draw universal claims from within the limits of their own experience and research. However, the relationship between the two is not so straightforward, and an analysis of their connection bears on broader questions concerning intuitions, philosophical methodology, and epistemic standards more generally. This dissertation project aims to 1) examine the conception of intuitions that appears to underpin many projects in experimental philosophy, 2) levy …

The Philosophical Foundations Of Plen: A Protocol-Theoretic Logic Of Epistemic Norms, Ralph E. Jenkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I defend the protocol-theoretic account of epistemic norms. The protocol-theoretic account amounts to three theses: (i) There are norms of epistemic rationality that are procedural; epistemic rationality is at least partially defined by rules that restrict the possible ways in which epistemic actions and processes can be sequenced, combined, or chosen among under varying conditions. (ii) Epistemic rationality is ineliminably defined by procedural norms; procedural restrictions provide an irreducible unifying structure for even apparently non-procedural prescriptions and normative expressions, and they are practically indispensable in our cognitive lives. (iii) These procedural epistemic norms are best analyzed in …

Throwing Off The "Draggling Dresses": Women And Dress Reform, 1820-1900, Laura J. Ping

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1851 a group of woman’s reformers adopted a radical garment called the bloomer costume and thus launched a dress reform movement. During this era women typically wore corsets and layers of underclothes beneath dresses with tight bodices and voluminous skirts. In contrast, the bloomer costume included a loose dress, shortened to the knee, and harem style trousers. Underclothes, including corsets, were discouraged. The purpose of adopting such clothing was twofold; social reformers believed that women were in need of comfortable garments and they also hoped that by rejecting fashion woman’s rights activists could cast off the stereotype that women …

The Syndrome Of Romantic Love, Arina Pismenny

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What kind of phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk think it is an emotion. I challenge this assumption and argue instead that romantic love is best characterized as a syndrome ⎼ a pattern comprised of different kinds of mental states and behaviors that tend to co-occur. An examination of major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology demonstrates that romantic love does not fit into any of them. Likewise, the commonly endorsed but increasingly controversial categories of basic and nonbasic emotions do not account for romantic love. While both culture and evolution have shaped the phenomenon of …

El Negro Y El Haitiano En La Literatura Dominicana De La Diáspora, Juan Nicolás Tineo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the diverse representations of blackness and Haitian culture in the literary works of the Dominican diaspora. First, the texts of the Dominican diaspora that highlight Africa are analyzed in order to determine to what extent these works represent real historical and social phenomena accurately, and in what ways these texts question or present other realities that have not been studied by the critics. It may be said that the writers of the diaspora allude to their African heritage because it was in the United States that they discovered their true racial identities. It is because of this …

Sunken Ii Chords And Inwardness: A Correspondence Complex In Robert Schumann’S Liederjahr Songs, Alexander J.J. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation advances a new approach to text-music relationships with a view to identifying and exploring a specific, recurring text-music relationship in Schuman’s Liederjahr songs. Chapter 1 proposes to update and restructure the taxonomy of possible text-music relationships. I argue that there are four categories of text-music relationships: two conjunctions, viz., correspondences and Widersprüche; and two disjunctions, viz., Gleichgültigkeiten and Eigenständigkeiten. I am principally interested in exploring how structures and tonal archetypes native to Schenkerian theory may function as musical metaphors for themes, ideas, and imagery in the text; a survey of extant literature reveals that Schenkerian analysts …

Postcolonial Indian Nonfiction Cinema: The Documentaries Of Satyajit Ray, Muzahid Sharif

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), one of the great masters of world cinema has directed five documentary films, other than his 29 feature films, in his long four decades of career as a filmmaker in India. He constructed his cinematic language and style with neorealism and a very distinct humanist approach to celluloid. Ray made his films in Bengali, English, Urdu and Hindi; his films depicted the complexity of human relationship, conflicts and interactions in contemporary Indian societies with great details and different levels of interpretations. Western and international audiences are mostly familiar with Ray’s fiction films, though his documentaries were well-acclaimed …

The Distant Early Warning Line: Geographies, Infrastructures, And Environments Of Warning, Jordan Steingard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was a Cold War era project aimed at providing advanced warning of incoming Soviet attack via the northern periphery of Canada and the United States. The Line was comprised of radar stations across the 69th parallel, spanning from Western Alaska to Baffin Island, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Academic institutions and research labs, private corporations, and military entities collaborated to develop the DEW Line.

The domes used to shield the radar from the extreme terrain were designed by architectural icon Buckminster Fuller, who was elaborating upon a symbolic language of security …

Recognizing The Twentieth-Century Love Story, Angela Francis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recognizing the Twentieth-Century Love Story investigates an alternative framework through which we can understand the form and function of love stories in the twentieth century. While the love story has previously been understood in terms of a requirement that the lover renunciate passion in order to enjoy a positive narrative outcome, I suggest that some love narratives instead center mutual and “accurate-enough” recognition as a requirement of the desired happily ever after. In addition to requiring that the characters “know themselves,” such recognition goes beyond framing the loved other as an independent subject by also recognizing the beloved in ways …

Against Criminalization And Pathology: The Making Of A Black Achievement Praxis, Charles M. Green Sr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Utilizing 29 in-depth semi-structured interviews, the life-course narratives of Black male scholars who, as victims of varying manifestations of structural violence, have “beat the odds” academically. Findings suggest that Black men and boys benefit from positive, racially-informed socialization that assists in the development of an internalized identity that (a) acts as a protective and resistant barrier against some of the impediments of institutional racism, (b) operates as a counter-criminogenic influence, and (c) facilitates educational resilience. Criminogenic Resistance Theory (C.RT) is presented as an alternative conceptualization of the process by which Black boys resist the criminogenic influences of structuralized violence.

Toward A Posthuman Ecology: Evolutionary Aesthetics In Transatlantic Romanticism, Kaitlin Mondello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation traces the vibrant interchange between Romantic literature and science in the nineteenth century that necessitated new forms of aesthetics. I argue that Romantic writers and scientists co-created a new way of understanding nature that moved away from hierarchical anthropocentrism toward what I call “posthuman ecology.” This work explores shared scientific, literary, and philosophical sources for Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Mary and Percy Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson. I connect aesthetic innovation to ethics to ask more broadly how literature can provide an affective and effective space to represent and engage scientific discourse. I conclude that understanding …