Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Fallibility And Normativity, Joshua Dipaolo

Doctoral Dissertations

We are fallible, and knowledge of our fallibility has normative implications. But these normative implications appear to conflict with other compelling epistemic norms. We therefore appear to face a choice: reject fallibility-based norms or reject these other epistemic norms. I argue that there is a plausible third option: reconcile these two sets of norms. Once we properly understand the nature of each of these norms, we aren’t forced to reject either.

Multimodal Assessment In Action: What We Really Value In New Media Texts, Kathleen M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

As the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing illustrates, writing teachers at all educational levels can no longer ignore multimodality and the challenges that come with incorporating multimodal writing—texts composed using a combination of sound, images, video, etc.—into the classroom (NCTE, Framework). A chief struggle most writing teachers face is how to evaluate the multimodal texts their students produce, texts that are inherently diverse. In answer to the calls of scholars such as Yancey, Herrington, and Moran for research exploring multimodal assessment in situated classroom practice, my dissertation examines what K-16 writing teachers are and should be valuing in …

Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford

Doctoral Dissertations

The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts' role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory of concepts' formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism …

Protest Lyrics At Work: Labor Resistance Poetry Of Depression-Era Autoworkers, Rebecca S. Griffin

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that scholarly inquiry into American poetry of the Great Depression is incomplete without a critical understanding of poems produced within the labor movement. Through archival research and methodologies drawn from American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and labor history, this dissertation demonstrates that autoworkers from 1935-1941 developed a rich poetic discourse that championed their cause. Autoworker poets—including autoworker song lyricists—used humor and borrowed extensively from popular, religious, and “folk” cultures to craft their own poetic styles and trope sets. They wrote about a diverse range of topics from their hopes for the unionization movement, to scab conversions, …

A Period Examination Through Contemporary Energy Analysis Of Kevin Roche’S Fine Arts Center At University Of Massachusetts-Amherst, L Carl Fiocchi Jr

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies of buildings belonging to a subset of Modernist architecture, Brutalism, have included discussions pertaining to social and architectural history, critical reception, tectonic form and geometry inspirations, material property selections, period technology limitations, and migration of public perceptions. Evaluations of Brutalist buildings’ energy related performances have been restricted to anecdotal observations with particular focus on the building type’s poor thermal performance, a result of the preferred construction method, i.e. monolithic reinforced concrete used as structure, interior finish and exterior finish. A valid criticism, but one that served to dismiss discussion that the possibility of other positive design strategies limiting energy …

Children In Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films, Delene M. White

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS SEPTEMBER 2016 DELENE CASE WHITE, B.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA M.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barton Byg This dissertation is about central functions children play in the Holocaust films of (East) German director Frank Beyer: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1974), and Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (While all Germans Sleep, 1994). Beyer’s child characters contribute to resistance and challenge oversimplified ways the Holocaust and German division have often been remembered. Beyer’s …

Women, Convergent Film Criticism, And The Cinephilia Of Feminist Interruptions, Rachel L. Thibault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which female film critics practice film criticism in the convergent age. In original research drawn from ethnographic interviews with eight female film critics and bloggers as well as textual, historical, and reception analyses of criticism, this dissertation argues that women who write film criticism in the convergent era are not only writing from a space of marginalization based on the patriarchal dominance of the film industry, but also face a series of obstacles through gendered and discursive conflicts that are unique to writing online and which do not exert the same impact on male …

Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics Of Student Scientist-Activists, Jesse Priest

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative study of the experience of undergraduate students learning how to teach issues of sustainability to their campus communities through an innovative outreach program at a large northeastern research university. While most previous work on science writing and rhetoric focuses on disciplinary, publishing, or genre practices, I examine the holistic student experience by placing outreach, writing, and the classroom in conversation with each other, illuminating how discourses can cross institutional and contextual borders. Furthermore, while most previous work involving student engagement has focused on the positive and rewarding aspects of engagement, I examine how tension and …

Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot

Doctoral Dissertations

Anglophone theatre provided a solid cultural bridge between Britain and America and served as an influential, informative, and accessible mode of social, political and cultural exchange transported throughout the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. Unlike works focusing on colonial American restrictions on theater, or examining its subsequent role in constructing American nationhood and identity, I explore how theatre served to both cultivate and challenge transatlantic connections. I show that actresses and women playwrights played a distinctive role in this process; they exercised agency in helping shape Anglo identity, influenced the formation of the cult of celebrity, challenged physical gendered spaces and normative …

Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action In Digital Spaces, Jessica Ouellette

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation raises questions about the possible efficacy of digital spaces as sites for transnational feminist action and engagement. Using a qualitative approach, I analyze a case study involving the digital circulation of texts that arose from activist Amina Tyler’s decision to post a nude photo with controversial, provocative language sprawled across her chest. The circulation of this image by feminist groups such as FEMEN and Muslim Women Against Femen, as well as the mass media, led to global conversations about women’s roles and rights, definitions of feminism, and statements about the body. In employing a transnational feminist rhetorical analysis …

From What Remains: The Politics Of Aesthetic Mourning And The Poetics Of Loss In Contemporary African American Culture, Kajsa K. Henry

Doctoral Dissertations

While critical analyses of loss and mourning in African American studies have tended to focus on narratives that primarily concentrate on the Atlantic slave trade/slavery and music, particularly blues and gospel spirituals, this project advocates reimagining the boundaries of our discussions of loss to include other art forms, including assemblage art and performative dance. From What Remains: The Politics of Aesthetic Mourning and the Poetics of Loss in Contemporary African American Culture includes the assemblage art of the 1966 exhibition Signs of Neon and Tyree Guyton’s ongoing Heidelberg Project that respond to the violence of urban rebellions and decay and …

"Daring Propaganda For The Beauty Of The Human Mind:" Critical Consciousness-Raising In The Poetry And Drama Of The Black Power Era, 1965-1976, Markeysha D. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a literary and intellectual history of the contributions of black American theorists, poets, and dramatists in the 1960s and 1970s towards the establishment of black critical consciousness in order to lay grounds for black people to experience a fuller existence as human beings through black-centered creations and presentations. Through the following chapters, I establish the framework and evolution of black psyche-liberation theories—spanning Du Bois’s theory of double-conscious through the contributions of black artist-theorists like Baraka, Neal, and Woodie King, Jr., followed by examinations at length of the theories of black liberation in praxis by the poets and …

Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1969, militant factions within both Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) began to form the United States’ first clandestine revolutionary urban guerrilla organizations: the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). These groups carried out bombings, police ambushes, and other attacks throughout the country, prompting responses from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Several historians have analyzed U.S. leftist guerrillas’ motives, and much has been written on FBI operations against the Black Power movement and New Left, including the Bureau’s covert counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) …

Mesa Para Dos. La Gastronomía En La Poesía Y El Cine Españoles, Dolores Juan Moreno

Doctoral Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation examines the alliances between Gastronomy, Film and Poetry in Peninsular Spanish Culture between 2000 and 2015. The thesis that I defend in this project argues that poetry and cinema employ the same tools in their display of culinary elements. These techniques are rooted in a concept promoted by the Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià: the “extrañamiento” that comes from a process of culinary deconstruction. Because of their need to enhance multiple meanings in a limited space, poets and filmmakers turn to “extrañamiento” as a means to capture the attention of the public who, unexpectedly, is able to shed …

Carmen(Es) Y Lola. El Continuo Generacional De La Educación De La Mujer Desde La Novela Y El Monólogo Teatral De Cinco Horas Con Mario Hasta La Película Función De Noche, Elisabet Pallàs

Masters Theses

Taking as a point of reference the voice and figure of Carmen Sotillo, the present study analyzes Miguel Delibes’ Cinco horas con Mario (1966), the theatrical adaptation with the same name directed by Josefina Molina, and the film Función de noche (1981), directed also by Molina. The study addresses, on the one hand, the analysis of the mentioned works, establishing a cause-consequence relationship between Carmen’s speech and the educational paradigms of the Francoist regime in regard to women. On the other hand, the study is interested, from a general perspective, in the ideological state apparatuses and the mechanisms destined to …

Genuineness And Love: A Study Of Feng Menglong's Collection Of Mountain Songs (Shan'ge 山歌), Yujia Ye

Masters Theses

Shan’ge 山歌 is a collection of popular songs in Wu dialect by the late Ming scholar Feng Menglong 冯梦龙 (1574-1646). Due to a lack of detailed literary analysis of the songs, and a lack of appreciation of these songs from the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, I aim to provide a close reading of the siqing (私情) songs in Shan’ge. With the intention to offer a fresh perspective into the depiction of emotions and sentimental feelings, as well as the various ways of presenting the people’s perception of love and sexual desire in these songs, I endeavor to both enrich …

Re-Envisioning A Discipline: Martin Wickramasinghe’S Contribution To Comparative Literature, Chamila Somirathna

Masters Theses

This thesis, “Re-visioning a Discipline: Martin Wickramasinghe’s Contribution to Comparative Literature,” explores the comparative approach of Martin Wickramasinghe, the pioneering twentieth-century Sri Lankan novelist, literary-cultural critic, and journalist. Wickramasinghe drew on Sinhala folk and classical, Pali, Sanskrit, and Western literary traditions, especially those of England, and Russia. His comparative approach had two main principles: First, literary concepts do not belong to any literary culture on the basis of their origin. Second, any concept that exists in a given literary culture can be “remoulded” and incorporated by another culture. The rejection of the notion of origin-based ownership of literary concepts and …

A Study On The Mutual Replacements Of Three Des In Chinese Blogs, Hui Sha

Masters Theses

Three des, as structural particles in Chinese, are phonologically the same, but written differently. Through analyzing the written forms of these three homophonous particles, the research has come to some valuable conclusions that cannot be obtained by only observing the speaking language of Chinese. This paper studies the relationships among three “des” (de1 as “的”; de2 as “地”; de3 as “得”), which function as structural particles in the written language of Chinese, by examining their mutual replacements in blogs. The research regards every living language as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) with continuing changes. So this study’s perspective not only …

Songs Of Ishq, Freedom And Rebellion: Selected Kafis Of Bulleh Shah In Translation, Zainab Sattar

Masters Theses

Abdullah Shah (1680-1757) was the birth name of the boy who would later become one of the most eminent Sufi poets of South Asia, and the master of Sufi lyrics in Punjabi—Bulleh Shah. Living during times of strife and major conflict between the Sikhs and the crumbling Mughal Empire, Bulleh Shah wrote poetry with an underlying humanist and tolerant philosophy that challenged the turmoil of his times. Blind to the bounds of religion and caste in an increasingly divided India, Bullah’s spiritual philosophy and his message of equality found voice in his kafis—a genre of poetry indigenous to the …

In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(M)Motions Of Science And Subjectivity, Cordelia Sand

Masters Theses

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, …

Japanese Pronoun Adventure: A Japanese Language Learner's Exploration Of His Japanese Gender Pronoun, Takumi Nakano

Masters Theses

In Japanese, there are various kinds of first-person pronouns, and some of them express the referent’s gender identity. Gender-neutral pronouns are made in English- speaking world day by day, but there is not any common first-person pronoun which indicates the gender identity that positions the referent’s gender somewhere between masculine and feminine. The present paper conducted a life story research on the “Japanese life” of an advanced learner of Japanese at a university in the United States who has been exploring his gender identity by coining and using a new Japanese first- person pronoun 㛪 ore, which indicates “in the …

Reimagining And Rewriting The Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library: Translation, Ideology, And Power, Muira N. Mccammon

Masters Theses

The main argument of this thesis is that the rewriters of the story of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library, namely journalists and filmmakers, engage differently with primary source material about the detention facility; what they omit and include in their narratives varies and depends largely on their pre-established ideologies. In the field of translation studies, this thesis contributes a new case study; it considers the problematic interplay between law, libraries, and multilingual information access in detention facilities. My research also demonstrates the challenges of examining a library that belongs to a highly controversial military system. In the first chapter I …

The Phonological System Of A Xin'an Idiolect, Shuiying Lu

Masters Theses

My idiolect, a Xin’an idiolect, belongs to the Wuxi dialect, which is the northern Wu dialect. It carries most of the characteristics of the Wuxi dialect, such as the tripartite division of the manner of articulation of initial stop consonants. However, with the special geographic position, on the bounty of Wuxi dialect from the northwest area to southeast area and connected with Suzhou city, my idiolect shows its unique features, such as the condition of the retroflex. This study analyzes the phonological system of the idiolect and discusses the features. Since the dialect of the suburban area of the Wuxi …

The Ladies And The Women, Caroline V. Jauch

Masters Theses

- ABSTRACT -

THE LADIES AND THE WOMEN

An Exploration into Faulkner’s Rhetoric of Female Hood

Caroline V. Jauch, B.A in French and English languages and literatures, Université de Genève, Switzerland

With his novels, Faulkner takes us on a journey to the South. He invites us into his character’s surroundings, homes, landscape, smells and especially into their hearts and minds. His portrayals of the white and black people that populate the South, his acute sense of observation regarding their external and internal dialogue, as well as his unique narrative style, all contribute to making him into a reliable witness of …

Vielleicht Hier, Um Zu Sagen: Bildung And Elegy In The Duineser Elegien, Du Côté De Chez Swann, And Misérable Miracle, Emily Heilker

Masters Theses

In the wake of the industrialization, urbanization, and global conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europe was forced to call into question its Enlightenment faith. In particular, Bildung—as the cultural education of the individual that emerged out of the Enlightenment—lost its footing amidst experience’s new texture of trauma. This thesis will examine Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann, and Michaux’s Misérable miracle as each work pertains to and reconceives of the intertwining of Bildung and elegy, as a literary form both underpinned by and unconvinced of Bildung. For them, I will …

Colonialism, Education, And Gabon: An Examination Of The Self-Translation Of Gabonese Citizens In Their Post-Colonial Space Through Education And Language, Moussavou F. Batsielilit

Masters Theses

ABSTRACT

COLONIALISM, EDUCATION, AND GABON: AN EXAMINATION OF THE SELF-TRANSLATION OF GABONESE CITIZENS IN THEIR POSTCOLONIAL SPACE THROUGH EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE.

SEPTEMBER 2016

MOUSSAVOU FROY BATSIELILIT, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Maria Tymoczko

Gabon’s educational model, mode, and language of instruction are similar to that of France. Likewise, the official language in Gabon remains French. The similarities between both countries, as a result, have continued to perpetuate and reinforce the indirect, or direct, influence of French culture in Gabon. The resemblance also contributed to the inability of Gabon to create an independent identity …

Creating A Successful Wayfinding System: Lessons Learned From Springfield, Massachusetts, Yanhua Lu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The masters project presents findings from recent work the author completed related to wayfinding, and wayfinding systems. This work began as part of a graduate urban design studio, followed by work as a research assistant at the UMass Design Center in Springfield, on a new “demonstration” wayfinding system installed in Springfield, Massachusetts. The wayfinding project was done in association with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the Springfield Office of Planning and Community Development, was implemented with the main goals of improving public health by encouraging more people to walk.

Wayfinding systems are increasingly seen as an important part of …

Deconstruction Of The Sacred, Ontologies Of Monstrosity: Apophatic Approaches In Late Modernist Cinema, Scott D. Vangel

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I compare apophatic[i] approaches including those associated with Christian mysticism, early postmodern thought and the literature of Gothic monstrosity through their collective emergence in late-twentieth century modernist cinema. I identify confluences between these and related theoretical strains with regard to metaphysics, ontology, ethics and mimesis. The dissertation is structured around concepts relative to limit-experience including death’s impossibility, the gift and phenomenological excess culled from texts such as Jacques Derrida’s Donner la mort (1999), Emmanuel Levinas’ Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (1961), Maurice Blanchot’s L’écriture du désastre (1980), and Jean-Luc Marion’s De Surcroît: Études sur …

Callar Y Revelar Dos Novelas Extremas De La Transición Chilena: Entre La Censura Y La Reconquista De La Palabra, Robert Silveri

Doctoral Dissertations

This investigation proposes to explore relationships between politics and literature within the framework of three decades (1970-2000) that include a particularly dramatic period in Chilean society: the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and the later transition to democracy (1988-2000). Such exploration focuses on the narrative genre, a form well suited to show the perverse effects of the censorship and the destruction of public and private life under the dictatorship, but also a form that converts itself into a symbolic space in which takes place, upon the transition back to democracy beginning in 1988, an explosion of important Works that characterize …

Prosthetizing The Soul: Reading, Seeing, And Feeling In Seventeenth-Century Devotion, Katey E. Roden

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation proposes a new context for reading early modern devotional writing’s rich engagement with the language of the body in its focus on the relationship between gendered representations of devotional desire and spiritual ability in the religious poetry of seventeenth-century England. By tracing how somatic speech and bodily conditions are portrayed in the devotional poetry of John Milton, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne, and An Collins, this project examines how these writers fashion spiritual states through the language of a sometime sorrowful and sometime ecstatic, but always desiring body. My project reveals how early modern authors manipulate or respond to …