Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ageing: A Sin In Nigerian Society?, Raji Abdullateef, Sunkanmi Folorunsho, Adeshina Olawale, Raji Adeyemi

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ageing can be said to be a permanent and irreparable innate process determined by a reduction in mental and equally physical status of people. Due to multiple factors, this essential process and its significance vary significantly among individuals and across cultures. The phenomenon of ageing is not attracting the attention it deserves especially in the developing countries like Nigeria. Importantly, old people in Nigeria are facing many challenges ranging from financial and economic shortcomings, socio-cultural discriminations among others. The study set out to understand the challenges and prospects of ageing in Nigeria. The theory used to explain this is the …

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sensemaking approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Social Issues In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: Perceptions Of Social Stigma And Drug And Alcohol Abuse: 2018 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy Meyer

Rural Futures Institute: Publications

Conclusion

Many rural Nebraskans think it brings shame upon a person to do the following: file personal bankruptcy, apply for food stamps and apply for income assistance. Most rural Nebraskans disagree that the following items bring shame to a person: go to Alcoholics Anonymous or other alcohol treatment, seek mental health care, and go to drug treatment. In general, rural Nebraskans say that residents of their community are more likely than they personally are to think doing the items brings shame upon a person.

At least one-third of rural Nebraskans think the following are a very serious problem or a …

Pottery And Purpose: Using Gis To Evaluate The 'Scroll' Jars At Qumran, Patricia A. Patton

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis uses geographical information systems (GIS) to map the findspots of the so-called ‘scroll’ jars and associated artifacts at Qumran. The goal of this project is to contextualize the jars in order to evaluate their function. Past scholarship on the ‘scroll’ jars has typically assumed their purpose for storing scrolls more based on the name they were given when the first cave containing Dead Sea Scrolls was found by a Bedouin man, rather than any strong archaeological or textual evidence. The man did describe finding scrolls in one of the jars inside the cave before he removed them. Since …

A Musical Analysis And Performance Guide To Alejandro Viñao's Burritt Variations For Solo Marimba, Michael Gordon Roe

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

This dissertation and accompanying lecture recital examine musical aspects and performance considerations for Alejandro Viñao's Burritt Variations (2012).

An exhaustive examination of the formal, melodic, motivic, and rhythmic aspects of the piece will highlight the complex compositional processes and thematic transformations found throughout the work. The discussion will also briefly examine the composer's background and the genesis of the work, as well as key influences found in Burritt Variations. These influences include the multi-temporal music of Conlon Nancarrow, and many Latin-American musical styles, especially Salsa music. The discussion will then focus on considerations for those wishing to perform the work. …

Modeling Sound In Ancient Maya Cities: Moving Towards A Synesthetic Experience Using Gis And 3d Simulation, Graham Goodwin

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Digital technologies enable modeling of the potential role of sound in past environments. While digital approaches have limitations in objectively rendering reality, they provide an expanded platform that potentially increases our understanding of experience in the past and enhances the investigation of ancient landscapes. Digital technologies enable new experiences in ways that are multi-sensual and move us closer toward reconstructing holistic views of past landscapes. Archaeologists have successfully employed 2D and 3D tools to measure vision and movement within cityscapes. However, built environments are often designed to invoke synesthetic experiences that also include sound and other senses. Geographic Information Systems …

Building Bigness: Reputation, Prominence, And Social Capital In Rural South India, Eleanor A. Power, Elspeth Ready

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Anthropologists have long been concerned with how reputations help people gain the support of others. Here, we study the support ties among adult residents of two Tamil villages, asking how reputational standing in each village mediates access to social support. We find that a reputation for influence has the weakest effect on support ties with others, while a reputation for generosity has the strongest. Further, a reputation for influence is not associated with greater connections to people of “high position” outside the village. Given the weak effects of a reputation for influence, we turn to a network measure of social …

Blanket Statements, Issue 134, Summer 2018

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 134, Summer 2018

Midwestern Portrait For Chamber Jazz Ensemble And Solo Tenor Saxophone, Andrew Janak

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

“Midwestern Portrait” for Chamber Jazz Ensemble and Solo Tenor Saxophone is an original composition consisting of three main movements, an introduction, and two interludes. The piece is written for a full ensemble of 17 musicians – one solo tenor saxophone, four woodwinds, four brass, four strings, and four rhythm section players. The “Introduction,” “Interlude 1,” and “Interlude 2” feature smaller performing forces while the three main movements (“For GK,” “The Tradition,” “The Search) are written for the full ensemble.

“Movement 1: For GK (Lincoln)” is a tribute to my time at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and showcases the solo tenor …

Economic Development In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: Internet Use, Nature-Based Tourism, Federal Tax Policy And Workforce Development: 2018 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy Meyer

Rural Futures Institute: Publications

Conclusion

The proportion of rural Nebraskans accessing the Internet using their cell phone has increased compared to two years ago. But, the proportion subscribing to high-speed Internet service at home remained stable during the past two years. Persons living in or near the smallest communities are less likely than persons living in or near larger communities to have high-speed Internet service at home.

Not many rural Nebraskans report significant limitations from their home Internet service on their ability to do most tasks. At least one in ten report being limited significantly or not being able to play real time video …

Letters From Olive Fremstad To Willa Cather: A View Beyond The Song Of The Lark, Jessica Tebo

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1913, Willa Cather met opera-diva Olive Fremstad and the two formed a friendship that would span at least a decade. Fremstad has long been recognized as an inspiration for the character Thea Kronborg of Cather’s Song of the Lark (1915) but has not been portrayed as influential in any other aspects to Cather’s career. Letters sent by Fremstad to Cather have recently been located, and they reveal an ongoing and interdisciplinary dialogue between the two women that negotiates issues surrounding art and professionalism. I locate these letters within the broader context of Cather’s public and fictional statements about art …

Review Of Chris Ware: Conversations, Carly Diab

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

Review Of Pioneering Cartoonists Of Color, Carly Diab

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.

Sharing Identity: Indexing Cultural Perspectives Through Writing Responses To Graphic Novels, Alex Romagnoli

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Indexing identity through writing responses among ELL students in response to a graphic novel helps provide insight into how writing responses represent people and how graphic novels can aid in that process of self-discovery through their inherent multimodalities. This study takes looks at four students in an ELL class at an urban high school in southern Pennsylvania as they responded in writing to a portion of Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City (2006). All of the participants took events from the portion of the graphic novel provided to them and indexed their urban, cultural perspectives through their …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives On How The Use Of Toon Comic Books During Guided Reading Influenced Learning By Struggling Readers, Ewa Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger, Gina M. Doepker, Samantha Mcgeorge

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The study presented in this article examines the use of comic books, specifically the TOON comic books during guided reading instruction. The instruction was provided to struggling readers by the Literacy Center at a comprehensive university in southeastern United States. What most pre-service teachers in this study agreed upon was that comic books served as an effective tool for getting their students interested in reading. Reading comic books with tutors as partners in conversation with the struggling readers in this study was also a powerful medium for facilitating students’ literacy skills development, particularly in the areas of reading fluency and …

Review: Architectural Involutions: Writing, Staging, And Building Space, C. 1435–1650. Mimi Yiu., Kelly Stage

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Mimi Yiu’s Architectural Involutions is an expansive, impressive, and largely interdisciplinary study. Many recent books have touched on related topics—probably most relevantly Henry Turner’s The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580–1630—but this one reads from architecture and space forward rather than seeks answers about the theater foremost. The book’s main focus is to theorize the “inward journey” made possible by modes of understanding, building, and reading space in early modern Europe, although England is central to much of the work’s concerns. As Yiu explains in her introduction, the book “suggests a method for spatial mapping …

Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolutional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.

Los Productos Textiles De Los Andes Sur-Centrales: Guía Ontológica Centrada En La Región Aymara-Hablante, Denise Y. Arnold

Textile Research Works

El presente libro ofrece una organización ontológica de los productos textiles andinos. A nivel mundial, los museólogos están dando cuenta de la utilidad de este recurso para estructurar sus colecciones de objetos y para vincularlas con datos de respaldo (registros, catálogos, dibujos, fotos, etc.). Una ontología es una especificación explícita de una conceptualización, que proporciona una estructura y los contenidos que codifican las reglas implícitas de una parte de la realidad, en este caso del dominio textil. Aquí presentamos una representación del conocimiento del dominio textil centrada en las ‘formas’ textiles, por decir los tipos de prendas (ahuayo, acso, unco, …

Shoes @ The Krasl: Photographs, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The Krasl Art Center, in Saint Joseph, Michigan, is not only an energetic organization but also an ever evolving physical space replete with exciting sculptural experiments. My longtime Krasl favorite, Michael Dunbar’s dramatic Allegheny Drift, was the setting for the initial photograph (inset) in what became my visual explorations with the Blue Shoes (documented in The Year- Long Adventures of the Blue Shoes and Their Friends (Lincoln: Zea Books, 2016); available gratis as a PDF download from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Digital Commons: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/49/). Inspired by the recent transformations of the Krasl’s grounds, the eight plates in this portfolio …

Lord Of The Flies: A Scenic Design, Lisa Haldeman

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials that document the scenic design for the co-production between the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film and the Nebraska Repertory Theatre titled Lord of the Flies. This thesis contains the following: research images collected to develop and communicate ideas about location, shapes, forms, texture, scale, mood, and historical reference to the production team; preliminary sketches and photographs of the 1/4” scale model, visual tools used to convey the ideas of the scenic design; a full set of drafting plates, 1:1 paint samples and …

Race, Slavery, And Evasion: Whitman And Melville’S Changing Perspectives And Their Glancing Poetic Treatment Of The Core Civil War Issue, Said Hail Fallaha

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Whitman and Melville’s poetry about the Civil War is almost completely silent when it comes to slavery. Both writers depict a newly emancipated person in their poems about the Civil War, but they seem to do so almost as an afterthought. Both Whitman's “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors” and Melville's “Formerly a Slave” represent an elderly African American woman. These poems stand alone in their representation of an African American. Peter J. Bellis argues that both writers were concerned with how to negotiate national emotions and policies by the end of the war and these “emotions” and “policies” were vital to …

A Friend Beyond The Screen, Raymart Pontemayor

Laurus: Undergraduate Literature Journal of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln

This essay highlights the importance of friendship through online communication which is not often seen in today's society. Most friendships occur on a real life basis, however there is a layer of intimacy when distance is involved. As a result, long distance relationships build a stronger foundation between friends that is underappreciated.

Re-Making The Mark, Zora Murff

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Is there a difference between a Black body lynched in 1919 and the forced removal of a community through the construction of a freeway? Or a blighted landscape shaped through generations of segregationist legislation versus a Black life taken by police in 2018? With Re-Making The Mark, I produce a mixture imagery and history to prompt inquiry into not only how racial violence has been recorded through images, but how they can also become a subversive code to interrupt collective belief. I capitalize on photography’s capacity to reveal temporal layers, and my work reinterprets American narratives about power, race, and …

Representations Of Mainstream And Marginalized Subjects In The Work Of Diane Arbus, Grace Short

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis considers the photographs of the twentieth-century photographer, Diane Arbus. In America during the 1950s and 60s, Arbus photographed both marginalized and mainstream subjects including dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, debutants, socialites, and celebrities. At one point in her career, she expressed an interest in family portraiture and, indeed, a number of her images depict families.

Scholars who have written about Arbus, such as Susan Sontag, Carol Armstrong, Anthony W. Lee, and John Pultz, have formulated theories about Arbus’s motivations, although their findings focus on individual features of her work. Sontag argued that Arbus exploited her unorthodox sitters whereas Armstrong …

The Cask Of Amontillado, Elysia Arntzen

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

This document details the process of creating an opera, from its inception through the premiere. Opera is a very large musical genre, and having a new opera premiered poses different challenges than other musical genres. I discuss the adaptation of the short story, The Cask of Amontillado , into an opera libretto, the composition of the opera, the production and directing of the opera, and what I learned in the process. In the conclusion, I discuss what I have learned as a composer and director, as well as how I can use this knowledge in future productions.

Advisor: Tyler G. …

8scenes, Spencer G. Perkins

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

This work explores the juxtaposition of a live ensemble, and pre-collected field recordings. The material for the ensemble is divided into eight sections, or “scenes,” which unfold one after the other without pause, at times blending musical material to where it is unclear when the music has transitioned to the next section. The field recordings are divided into three main sections, which are defined by the underlying loop as follows: “sunny day recording”; “people talking recording”; and “rainy day recording.” Atop these structural loops, it is the responsibility of the “electronics player” to que other recordings in a manner that …

Harmonic, Tonal, And Formal Asynchrony In Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe Und Leben, Kelli E. Bomberger

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

This thesis explores the asynchrony among form, harmony, and tonality in Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42. Using several theoretical lenses, this study identifies and analyzes a selection of songs from this work that distort tonal, harmonic, and formal relationships and how the text setting may inform these distortions. This is shown through detailed analyses of several songs from the cycle that highlight areas of asynchrony. The first section of this document explores the background of Frauenliebe und Leben and draws upon other musical examples in order to establish working definitions of asynchronous elements. The following sections are …

Avenue Q: An Endeavor In Technical Direction, Brendan Greene-Walsh

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska began its spring semester of the 2017-2018 season with a production of Avenue Q. Director Andy Park staged this production in the Johnny Carson Studio at the Lied Center on the University of Nebraska campus. My role in the production was that of technical director. The responsibilities of the technical director include budgeting of departmental resources, money and labor, engineering and construction of all scenic elements, maintaining a safe working environment, creating and adhering to a timely build schedule, maintaining the designer’s aesthetic vision throughout, the …

The Earliest Surviving Version Of Charles Chesnutt's "Rena Walden," The Short Story That Became "The House Behind The Cedars", Dominic Yarabe

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

My research project presents an edited version, with an introduction, of the earliest surviving version of “Rena Walden,” the short story that ultimately became the novel The House Behind the Cedars. The novel is a passing story in which a light-skinned, mixed race girl enters white society to live life as a white woman. Interestingly, however, the short story on which the novel was based began as a fiction with no white characters whatsoever. As the manuscript of this story is often difficult to read because of hard-to-decipher handwritten revisions, I had to create my own editorial policy to …

Reading Charlotte Brontë Reading, Madhumita Gupta

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This essay considers the significance of undirected childhood reading on an author’s mind and the reason some authors reference specific real books in their fiction. I argue that independent reading (as against schooling or formal education), and the direct and indirect references to certain books in Jane Eyre^[1] were deliberate, well-thought-out inclusions for specific purposes at different points in the story. When a title pointedly says Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, it is probable that a significant part of the author’s life has seeped into her creation which makes it essential to consider the relevant parts of her life to …