Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The American Academy Of The Fine Arts, New York, 1802-1842. (Volumes I And Ii), Carrie J. Rebora

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1802, Robert R. Livingston, the United States Minister to France, conceived of the American Academy as a salon that would inspire American artists and uplift the minds of others. His brother Edward, Mayor of New York who also believed that the city's leaders were responsible for the cultural enlightenment of artists and the general public, generated financial support from the city's ruling elite. Neither the Livingstons nor the members, however, planned for the Academy's operation. The institution languished until Mayor De Witt Clinton assumed the Academy presidency in 1813. With the help of his friend John Pintard, Clinton placed …

Improvisation For Actor Training And Performance In 20th Century America (With Special Emphasis On The Spolin And Sills Tradition), Jeff David Brone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the methods and value of using improvisation to train actors in their craft and to help them perform scripted material more effectively. The period and place covered is primarily America in the 20th century. The dissertation also analyzes the use of improvisation from a theoretical, historical and practical perspective and discusses the work of various acting teachers and companies who use (or used) improv to create theatre and who have been influenced by the basic teachings of Spolin, Sills or, in some significant instances, Stanislavski.

After a brief introductory chapter on the use of improv in the …

Class Culture And Generational Change: Immigrant Families In Two Connecticut Industrial Cities During The 1930s, Ivan Greenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent social history stresses the autonomy of workers, especially the ways that immigrant families made "lives of their own." However, little attention is focused on the particular experiences of the second generation and the ways they forged their own group identity. This study, by locating the emergence of this generation, highlights an important demographic change within the working class.

Familiar developments of the 1930s take on new meaning. For example, the pivotal role of the second generation in the rise of the CIO helps to recast the early history of industrial unionism. The resurgence of the labor movement parallels the …

Conflicting Attributions In The Continental Motet Repertory From Ca. 1500 To Ca. 1550, Young-Han Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study attempts to bring together all the conflicting attributions in the motets attributed to composers who worked on the Continent during the first half of the sixteenth century. In all, it accounts for a total of 266 motets (listed in the Inventory, Appendix A) that involve conflicting attributions among 122 composers. Rather than placing the emphasis on the problem of determining the correct authorship, however, I have used the conflicting attributions as a springboard in order to shed light on a number of different aspects of sixteenth-century music.

Chapter I briefly surveys conflicting attributions in various genres from ca. …

The Changing Face Of Fortune In Six English Versions Of The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra, Mary Aileen Mallery

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study traces the development and changes in the depiction of the goddess Fortune in a selected group of dramas written between 1592 and 1678: the six English versions of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concepts surrounding the goddess Fortune and her place in any culture change with the idea of the individual's ability to shape his own destiny. In the seventeenth century in particular Fortune becomes increasingly connected to questions of personal identity and what Stephen Greenblatt has called "self-fashioning," so that by 1678 the subject of John Dryden's All for Love is not the quest for …

Mrs. Trollope's American Novels, Linda Abess Ellis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Frances Milton Trollope (1779-1863) was one of the most popular novelists and travel writers of her generation. Her visit to the United States (1827-32) provided her with material for her first and most famous book, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), and for four novels set in America (The Refugee in America, 1832; Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, 1836; The Barnabys in America, 1842; and The Old World and the New, 1849).

This study treats all four American novels, examining them against a background of other travellers' accounts and against other fiction of the early nineteenth century in order to show how …

Talent And Technique: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" And John Paul Ii's Mayday 1984 Address To New York Gay And Lesbian Socialists' League At Cooper Union's Great Hall (Transcribed Into Verse From Unauthorized French And Italian Versions Of The Official Soviet Translation Of The Polish Original By Norman Macafee) For Tenor Solo, Chorus (Satb), And Eight Players, Arthur Maisel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation consists of two parts, an analytical essay and a composition.

The essay starts from the fact that the musical worth of the Rhapsody in Blue has often been questioned, despite its having been a fixture of the repertoire since its premiere. A close (Schenkerian) analysis shows the flaws of the piece in detail. It also reveals considerable structural coherence, however, comprising very sophisticated treatment of motives in the foreground and middleground, and, in the background, the unfolding of a tritone as the boundary of a tonic that is both B-flat major-minor and a whole-tone collection. Since Gershwin was …

The Theatre Of Adrian Hall, Jeannie Marlin Woods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The topic of this study is the American stage director, Adrian Hall, who has been the artistic director of the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1964 and who has held the same position concurrently at the Dallas Theater Center in Texas since 1983.

Part 1 presents an historical overview of Hall's career, beginning with his first professional productions in Texas, continuing through his work Off-Broadway in New York in the 1950s, and covering his quarter-century at Trinity Rep and six seasons at Dallas. This segment of the study traces how Hall developed the principles that inform his …

Escaping The Alphabet: The Reading Of Silence In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Patricia Laurence

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The exploration of the theme and narration of silence in Virginia Woolf's novels in this dissertation brings under scrutiny nothing less than her perceptions of the nature of gender, being, mind, knowledge and language. Woolf, searching for a language of mind amid changing concepts of mind in the twentieth century, creates a new rhetoric of silence. In defining silence as a "presence" and not just an "absence" in life and narration, Woolf displaces the privileged place of the "speaking subject" and speech or dialogue in the novel. In Chapter 1, there is an attempt to define what "silence" is in …

Feminist Theory And Postwar American Drama, Gayle Austin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is concerned with developing feminism as a critical tool, to be applied to drama. Feminist theory from anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, and film theory is summarized and one theorist from each field is selected to serve as an example of how feminism in that field can illuminate drama written by both women and men.

I begin by outlining the three chronological stages of feminist criticism: (1) Images of women; (2) Women writers; and (3) The questioning of an entire field. The various political divisions of feminism (liberal, radical, and socialist) also need to be kept in mind, and …

The Politics Of Experience: Robert Morris, Minimalism, And The 1960s, Maurice Berger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Robert Morris's oeuvre, unlike the work of most other so-called minimalist artists, is both stylistically and intellectually diverse. His range was broad: expressionist paintings, Duchamp-inspired objects, dances and performances, minimalist sculptures, large scale installations and sound environments, earth and land reclamation works, films and videos, and political acts against the museum, the labor economy, and the Vietnam war. The philosophical sources for Morris's art (he was a philosophy major at Reed College in the late-1950s) are equally rich: Herbert Marcuse, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jean Piaget, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce. As choreographer, writer of influential theoretical texts, and …

The Experience Of Public Art In Urban Settings, Roberta Degnore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The sine qua non for an artwork in the urban realm is neither its judged "goodness" nor the ability of audiences to perceive it "correctly," but is the total experience the work contributes to as part of the fabric of interlocking meanings that places have in people's lives.

In urban settings, the physical attributes and private intentionality of a work do not stand alone. As carefully as an artist installs his/her pieces in a gallery, the same concern for their working together and with their total environment must be applied to artworks in complex public settings, where choice to be …

Sinfonia Brevis (Original Composition), Jeffrey Lynn Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sinfonia Brevis. A work for orchestra (2d1 2 2 2 - 4 2 2 0, timpani, 2 percussionists, strings) in one movement divided into four sections (Andante Moderato, Allegro, Adagio, Allegro), with a duration of approximately 17 minutes.

Voice-Leading Patterns In The Fugal Expositions Of J. S. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier", William Jonathan Michael Renwick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although Heinrich Schenker's theory of tonal music goes very far towards uniting the traditionally independent domains of counterpoint and harmony, it does not deal directly or deeply with the connective role which imitative texture often plays in this synthesis. The obligations inherent in a canonic or fugal texture may limit compositional choices, but they also provide an underpinning of control and direction to voice leading. This dissertation demonstrates the structural role of imitation in tonal music by comparative analysis of a selected body of imitative music: the fugues of J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

A consistent and close interrelationship exists …

Eustache Deschamps' "L'Art De Dictier", Deborah M. Sinnreich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

L'Art de dictier, written in 1392 by the prolific courtier-poet Eustache Deschamps, is the first ars poetica ever written in French. It provides invaluable insights into medieval poetics as perceived by a respected medieval poet.

L'Art de dictier is composed of two sections: a brief introductory liberal arts treatise and a prescriptive poetics devoted to the lyric. In the introduction, music is divided into two sub-categories. Deschamps calls instrumental music "artificial music" because he feels it can be taught to anyone. "Natural music," in contrast, is poetry, for only those who are inspired to compose it can do so. …

Revolutions Off Off Broadway, 1959-1969: A Critical Study Of Changes In Structure, Character, Language, And Theme In Experimental Drama In New York City, Alexis Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze and categorize the approaches to structure, character, language, and theme that make the dramaturgy of certain playwrights writing for the Off Broadway theatre during the 1960s revolutionary in contrast to the dramaturgy of the majority of American playwrights of the 1950s. The playwrights under discussion include George Birimisa, Kenneth Bernard, Kenneth Brown, Rosalyn Drexler, Grant Duay, Tom Eyen, Maria Irene Fornes, Paul Foster, John Guare, A. R. Gurney, Jr., William M. Hoffman, Kenneth Koch, Charles Ludlam, Murray Mednick, Joel Oppenheimer, Rochelle Owens, Tom Sankey, Sam Shepard, David Starkweather, Ronald Tavel, Megan Terry, …

An Analysis Of Roberto Gerhard's "Libra", Jeffrey Lynn Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Libra (1968), for mixed chamber ensemble, is one of the last works by the Anglo-Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970). Analysis of this work reveals that it employs a variety of compositional techniques, including pitch cells, serialism, folk elements, and structures based primarily on texture and timbre. This multiplicity of means reflects Gerhard's background, which included beginnings in Spanish nationalism and later work as a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. Libra is unified through the dramatic combination of the various elements, the use of a limited number of motives, and the possible influence of a secret autobiographical program.

Sinfonia Brevis. A work …

A Muted Cry: White Opposition To The Japanese Exclusion Movement, 1911–1924, Bruce A. Abrams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study identifies the missionary-related leadership of the Federal Council of Churches, and its lay pacifist and internationalist supporters, as the most significant opposition to the anti-Japanese immigration movement in the period from the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 to the exclusion legislation of 1924. Sidney L. Gulick (1860-1945), as a missionary on furlough and executive secretary of the F.C.C.'s Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, provided cohesion to this effort through his proposal for comprehensive immigration and naturalization reform. His program of reform centered on removal of racial barriers to naturalization and the universal application of immigration restrictions based on …

Ives On His Own Terms: An Explication, A Theory Of Pitch Organization, And A New Critical Edition For The "3-Page Sonata", Carol Kitzes Baron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ives's musical vision is tied to the expression of programmatic content. He believed that all music is program music. The first part of this study, "An Explication," shows how the extramusical dimensions are articulated in the formal design of the music. The formal, motivic, textural, and tonal techniques relate to the program. The program for the 3-Page Sonata is found in three literary sources: a note Ives pinned to his copy of the first edition, the marginal notes on the composing score, and "Memo 5" from Ives's Memos, which contains a parody of the writing of the critic W. J. …

Gestus In The Theaters Of Brecht And Beckett, Barry Joseph Batorsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation asserts that the gest is the benchmark of Brecht's theater and is a basic element of the Beckettian vision. Part one defines the gest for Brecht's work. Chapter one of part one distinguishes gestic drama from other forms. The gest, understood as a historically significant comportment, proves incompatible with traditional plot and character structures. Chapter two suggests that gestic comportments loosen drama's connection to topics. Mother Courage is not about the horrors of war, but about how society chooses war. Chapter four contrasts the gestic, "typical"-event drama to events-of-character dramas. The distinction is then developed to explain Brecht's …

String Quartet, No. 2, Edward M. Smaldone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Three movements (Vibrant, Exalted, Recitative: Scherzo) for two violins, viola, and 'cello. Part I of this dissertation is an essay entitled "Linear Analysis of Selected Posttonal Works of Arnold Schoenberg: Toward an Application of Schenkerian Concepts to Music of the Posttonal Era."

Linear Analysis Of Selected Posttonal Works Of Arnold Schoenberg: Toward An Application Of Schenkerian Concepts To Music Of The Posttonal Era (And) String Quartet, No. 2 (Original Composition), Edward M. Smaldone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The analysis of posttonal music is approached through a method (which originated with Henry Weinberg) utilizing Schenker's approach to tonal music as a conceptual model. This method differs from all other methods of analysis in that voice leading is combined with a unique approach to nontonal harmony. The presentation of the analytical method is given a historical perspective through the analysis of "Jimbo's Lullaby," by Debussy. There follows detailed analyses of Op. 15 no. 1 (The Book of the Hanging Gardens) and Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 by Arnold Schoenberg.

Part II of the dissertation is an …

A Descriptive Catalog Of A Collection Of 'Comedias Sueltas' In The Hispanic Society Of America (Volumes I And Ii), Szilvia E. Szmuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The impetus behind this dissertation was to bring to light 475 individual comedias sueltas bound in 26 volumes and entered under the single subject heading: "Teatro espanol" in the library of the Hispanic Society of America.

Chapbooks were a printers' genre during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries popular throughout Europe and they encompassed all types of literature. This collection of Spanish sueltas consists only of comedias, bailes, and autos, mostly eighteenth-century reprints of Golden Age plays, and contemporary editions of comedias nuevas and sainetes.

The emphasis of this study is on the sueltas as physical objects, i.e., the work constitutes …

Gertrude Kasebier: Her Photographic Career, 1894-1929, Barbara L. Michaels

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) is best known for her affiliation with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. However, as this study shows, she also conducted a successful career as a studio portraitist in New York, and contributed to popular illustrated magazines.

Chapters are devoted to Mrs. Kasebier's professional development, including her education at Pratt Institute, her successes in photographic publications and exhibitions, and her friendships with such photographers and artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, F. Holland Day, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Robert Demachy, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Auguste Rodin. Her portraits of Rodin and his studio are analyzed.

Her …

Universal Expositions Of The Second Empire: A Study In Art And Politics (Volumes I And Ii), Patricia Mainardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the Second Empire (1852-1870), the world of art changed rapidly from one that had preserved many aspects of centuries old tradition, to one that developed most of the attitudes and institutions of our modern era. Universal Expositions, combining art and politics, acted as catalysts for many of these changes. This study attempts to assess the significance of these first international exhibitions of contemporary art, presented in the context of Industry and Commerce. It treats in depth the painting of France, England, Belgium, and Germany, and the fate of history, genre, and landscape painting during this period. It also examines …

Christopher Caudwell And His Critics: A Study Of Caudwell's Philosophy Of Art And The Critical Response, Thomas Riggins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the philosophy of art of the British Marxist, Christopher Caudwell. It begins with a general discussion of the intellectual environment of Caudwell's day–i.e., the 1920s and 30s in Europe and especially in England. It then procedes to a presentation of Caudwell's basic philosophical position with major emphasis on his work Illusion and Reality. This is followed by a review of the critical assessment Caudwell's ideas evoked and a number of detractors and supporters are discussed. Special attention is then placed on a review of the aesthetic theory of Socialist Realism and Caudwell's relation to it. …

Instruments In Sacred Vocal Music At Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel: A Study Of Changing Tastes In The Seventeenth Century, James Leonard Brauer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Short Piano Works Of Edward Macdowell, Francis Paul Brancaleone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) was thought by many to be America's leading composer. His fame rested on his personal appearances, performances of his orchestral suites, piano concertos, and other piano works, as well as his teaching position at Columbia. This study presents a style analysis of the complete body of short piano works (160), including the unpublished juvenilia (32 compositions) and those works published under the pseudonym of Edgar Thorn (13 compositions).

MacDowell's published short piano compositions consist of 115 pieces in 19 sets, composed over the period 1880-1902. These pieces constitute a significant …

Aristotle's Conception Of Megalopsychia, Kevin Patrick Osborne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Memory In Stendhal: His Evolving Ideas, 1801-25, Pamela Park

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.