Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Effect Of Range Training On The Vocal Accuracy Of Restricted And Complete Range K -3 Singers, Jane Mary Rooks

Masters Theses

The study investigated the effects of remedial vocal training on inaccurate singers. A pretest given to inaccurate singers in kindergarten through third grade differentiated inaccurate complete range singers from inaccurate restricted range singers. Three equivalent groups of these singers were given vocal instruction through a Systematic Vocal Training method in either their low, high, or high/low range. A posttest was administered to ascertain gain scores.

The results demonstrated that the gain scores of the restricted range singers were significantly greater than those of the complete range singers. The results also indicated that the scores in the low range of the …

The Effects Of Music Video Violence On The Aggression Level Of Emotionally Disturbed Adolescents, Kathleen Jo Young

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of violent music videos on aggressive behavior in psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. Associations between male and female responses were investigated as well as responses between high-aggressive and low-aggressive subjects.

Subjects were 30 in-patient emotionally disturbed adolescents, 13 to 17 years of age. Subjects served as their own controls. Treatment consisted of the viewing of a violent video with violent lyrics, a violent video without violent lyrics, and a non-violent video. Aggression was measured prior to the treatment with a 23 True-False questionnaire completed by subjects and Behavior Rating Forms completed by …

Fables: Love, Life, Heroes, Jeffrey Neal Woodson

Masters Theses

"Fables" is a creative work which combines music, dance, and theater into a complete multi-media event. The musical portion of the work, the texts, and stage directions are documented in this the sis. The music was realized on electronic tape using the analog Moog synthesizer and the digital Apple lie computer. The tape and slides used for performance are available through arrangement with the composer.

The focus of "Fables" is a story of two characters and a day in their lives. This story line is interspersed with dances which comment on and are a diversion from the dreamlike atmosphere of …

A Study-Support Program For High-Risk, Black College Freshman Enrolled In A General Psychology Course, Angela Michelle Williams

Masters Theses

As a replication of Jackson's (1984) work, this research compared the performance of three groups of college freshmen. The groups consisted of black, high-risk students who voluntarily enrolled in a study-support group because of their initial quiz scores. The support program required the students to study each week's psychology objectives in four smaller segments, rather than studying all the week's material at once. The assumption was that this would increase the students' contact with the study material and improve their performances. An ABA design was used. The participants in the support program received higher quiz scores and final grades than …

Personal, Professional, And Educational Characteristics Of Illinois Women Superintendents In 1987, Joyce Simpson Kaufman

Masters Theses

This study reviewed the personal, professional, and educational characteristics of the Illinois women superintendents in 1987. A questionnaire was mailed to the twenty-two women superintendents. Eighteen of them replied.

The three specific problems addressed by the study were:

1. What are the personal, professional, and educational characteristics of Illinois women superintendents in 1987?

2. What are the special problems encountered by women superintendents?

3. What advice do the present women superintendents in Illinois offer to women aspiring to become superintendents?

The responses were based on the perceptions of the eighteen women superintendents who replied. The questionnaire results were reported in …

“What Thyng It Is That Wommen Moost Desiren”: Image And Self-Realization In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Thomas W. Köhn

Masters Theses

The Wife of Bath is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating of the Canterbury pilgrims. At the same time she is one of those literary figures whose complex character constantly seems to elude the reader's judgement. Alisoun presents herself as a feminist advocating male subjection and female sovereignty in marriage, but her self-assertive behaviour cannot conceal an equally powerful longing for love and acceptance. Some critics therefore praise the psychological depth of the Wife's portrayal while others label her a stock character and join in the derisive laughter they believe her fellow pilgrims to bestow on her.

This thesis explores …

An Analysis Of William Lloyd Garrison’S Accusations Against The American Colonization Society, Peggy A. Mcgill

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the accusations made by William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, against the American Colonization Society. The charges were based upon his publication Thoughts on African Colonization published in 1832. In the book, he insisted that the Colonization Society fostered ineffectiveness, insincerity, and inconsistency. Because of the Society's ineptitude, he regarded it as a proslavery faction dedicated to racial segregation.

The paper will focus on two important questions. First, was the Colonization Society an antislavery organization? Second, was its objective to aid free blacks or to rid America of the black race.

From hindsight, it …

The Technical Achievement Of C. Rossetti In Goblin Market And Other Poems, Jay D. Fisk

Masters Theses

During Christina Rossetti's lifetime (1830-1894), and for some fifty years after her death, critical attention focused on her life, more specifically on how that life affected her poetry. Critics tried to show how her Italian ancestors, artistic brothers, spiritual mother and sister, and her many illnesses influenced her works. Other than these basic facts, little else was known.

Later, psychological critics found much sexual symbolism in the "repressed" poet's works. "Goblin Market," with its tale of strange little goblin men seducing innocent maids with their fruits seemed particularly well-suited to a Freudian approach. This poem received so much attention that …

A Survey Of The Keyboard Prelude, Bonnie Fansler Mcarthur

Masters Theses

A study of the prelude, the oldest form of idiomatic music for keyboard instruments, offers insight into the heart of piano music. This thesis, a survey of the genre, traces the evolution of the prelude from its roots in the organ improvisations of the fifteenth century to the present century. Although the paper deals exclusively with piano preludes in the chapters after "Preludes of J. S. Bach," the chapters devoted to the organ and harpsichord preludes reveal crucial information necessary to enlightened appreciation of the development of the genre.

Originally a purely functional piece, the prelude allowed the performer to …

A Weaverian Analysis Of The Secular Humanism/Christianity Arguments, Colleen Deborah Ryan

Masters Theses

Since the Renaissance, the unclearly defined movement known as "Humanism" has been a part of society. However, it is only recently that the movement itself has caused significant controversy. What is responsible for this sudden outbreak of humanism hysteria? Is it even to be classified as a problem? To many, especially the Catholic church and many fundamentalist groups, it presents an overt threat.

A vital area of controversy centers around education and the fight between a religious-based curriculum and the more recent secular studies. The issues, it appears, are often obscured by the rhetoric. Indeed, Karl Wallace sees rhetoric as …

Image And Meaning In The Floral Borders Of The Hours Of Catherine Of Cleves, Elizabeth R. Schaeffer

Masters Theses

The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, produced in

the Netherlands c. 1440-45, is one of the most beautiful and

complex illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.

The Master's originality in his symbolic use of floral

images in the borders of the manuscript is remarkable, yet

little study has been made of this subject. The meaning of

these floral images is, however, important to a complete

understanding of the illumination of the manuscript.

Using a set of criteria based on the tenets of the

Devotie Moderna, a philosophy strong in the Netherlands at

the time, I show that …

A Study Of The Reliability And Validity Of A Social Skills Rating Scale For Use With Chronically Mentally Ill, Susan J. Egeler

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and concurrent validity of the Social Skills section of the Day Treatment Client Assessment, a series of rating scales used to assess behaviors of chronically mentally ill adults. Forty-one clients enrolled in a day treatment program formed the 4 subject groups. Each group met for three 1-hour music therapy sessions specifically designed to foster social behaviors. Three observers participated in each group and rated the clients' behaviors using the Social Skills scale. The observers' ratings were correlated with each other to determine the scale reliability and were correlated with staff …

Cognitive Levels Of Thinking For Religious Training Materials And Infusion Across The Curriculum, Patrick Low

Masters Theses

The major accomplishment of this project was the creation of cognitive levels of questions spanning Bloom's (1964) taxonomy of learning, fostering religious training in nontraditional class settings at Kalamazoo Christian High School, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Classes involved were business mathematics, health, and physical education.

Descriptors, i.e., key terms, were developed from teachers' goals and objectives. Descriptors were then checked in a concordance to help develop Scripture reference for question development. Weekly or biweekly, participating teachers and the curriculum committee were supplied draft sections of the project; they gave feedback relative to usefulness and acceptability.

The results have been termed "very useful" …

So This Is Progress, Edmondson?, Simon William Edmondson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Female Criminality And Feminism – Is There A Causal Relationship?, Heather Whitcroft

Masters Theses

In the past, many criminologists have viewed the collective sentiments of feminism as potentially crimogenic (Lombroso, 1985; Thomas, 1923; Pollak, 1950). Even female academics writing in the last decade have claimed the women's movement has a "darker side" (Cowie, 1968; Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975; Hart, 1975; Dening, 1977). Substantial sceptics appear to remain unheard amongst those who profess that "liberated" women are committing more masculine, violent, serious, male-dominated and occupational crimes. Such remarks are generally unsubstantiated by research.

Box and Hale (1983:36) suggest that "... those who are attempting to prove a causal connection between emancipation and female crime by …

Trying To Publish An Article On American Painter Thomas Eakins, Elise Hempel

Masters Theses

Freelance writing for magazines is an uncertain business; that is, one cannot specifically school oneself to guarantee even a modicum of success in this career. A writer may, of course, learn the "proper" procedures for preparing and submitting an article by reading any of several reference books written by those who have "made it" in the business. These procedures vary, however, with each author; also, they say little or nothing about the actual business of writing well. Ultimately, then, a writer must test the waters of freelance magazine writing by trying and failing and trying again.

This paper details the …

A Handbook For The Development Of Recorded Interviews For A Course In Oral History, Rickie Dean Everett

Masters Theses

The local community has a natural resource that in all too many places is not being used properly. If this resource is not preserved, it will be lost forever. The natural resource is the experiences and recollections of people, people who have memories of the events that the students of the community have only read about. These people's recollections, with their unique way of conveying them should be saved.

Charleston High School is suggesting just such preservation. A class in oral history is under study for Charleston High School. This paper is part of an attempt to lay a foundation …

Instruction And Entertainment: Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, Marco L. Bergandi

Masters Theses

The "Nun's Priest's Tale" is one of the most entertaining stories in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales--it is captivating, witty, and amusing--but it is also one of the most instructive in the entire collection. In fact, the Nun's Priest himself emphasizes the instructional purpose of his tale by telling his listeners "Taketh the moralite, goode men" (NPT 3440), advising them to look for the points he makes in his narration.

Although the Nun's Priest never explicitly states the "moralite" of his tale, many scholars have taken his advice seriously and searched for its instruction on their own. Approaching it from a …

The Free Negro In Illinois Prior To The Civil War, 1818-1860, Steven J. Savery

Masters Theses

Free Negroes embodied one of the great dilemmas in the ante-bellum history of the state of Illinois. Nominally a free state, Illinois endeavored mightily to suppress, exclude, and dispose of a class of people who were the ultimate result of the anti-slavery movement. While a majority of Illinoisans deemed the peculiar institution undesirable, they had no intention of accepting free Negroes as equal citizens. Free blacks were often regarded as dangerous and a menace to the well-being of the entire society. Yet, Illinois reconciled its apparently contradictory views on slavery and the free Negro to a remarkable degree.

The reconciliation …

Wit And Humor In Asl, Keila Tooley

Masters Theses

In his article "Linguistics and the Study of Poetic Language," Stankewicz (1960) characterizes poetic organization as "completely embedded in language and fully determined by its possibilities." The purpose of this study is to examine the form that poetic function assumes in a language that itself has a structural organization fundamentally different from that of oral languages and in which, accordingly, the possibilities for poetic organization are radically different.

In wit and poetry, elements of form and meaning—a linguistic system--are used to create complex multi-layered expressions with multiple meanings and systems of form and meaning. Similarities--and differences—in form, function and meaning …

The Battle Of The Wills In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Ruth M. Cook

Masters Theses

Throughout the 400 pages of the first installment of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, the heroine vies with at least three important people for the right to govern herself. Her brother, James Harlowe, Jr., is leader of the large extended family unit and is aiming at family aggrandisement by forcing Clarissa to marry a wealthy but odious man, Roger Solmes. Clarissa's mother, Mrs. Harlowe, aims at family peace, hoping to coax Clarissa into the same sort of obedience to patriarchal authority that she has adopted as her lifestyle. Robert Lovelace, a debonair young rake, aims at gaining total control of Clarissa, …

What's On Tv? A Demonstration Of The Utility Of Contextualism And Content Analysis In Mass Media Research, Craig P. Gaumer

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis has been to develop, test and utilize a reliable method to quantify the prevalence of pro- and anti-social behavior on children's television as assessed from a contextualist perspective. Many previous studies in the area of television have arbitrarily assigned either pro- or anti-social labels to television programs without the benefit of analyzing the content of these programs

The few studies that have attempted to analyze the pro- and anti-social content of children's television have used only physical parameters to define pro- or anti-social behavior. Through the development of a reliable method of analyzing the contextually …

The Deterioration Of U.S.-German Relations, 1933-1939, With Special Focus On The Czechoslovakian Crisis, Robert D. Ubriaco

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The American Reaction To Germany's Annexation Of Austria, Mark A. Tarner

Masters Theses

Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938 was the cumulation of almost twenty years of Austrian dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Saint Germain, the lack of consistent political and economic support by the western democracies and the international instability of the 1930s. All these factors worked in favor of pro-Anschluss Germans and Austrians and to the handicap of the allies. Once Adolf Hitler came to power, he drastically changed German policy toward Austria. Anschluss had special significance for Hitler and his decision to abandon an evolutionary revision of Austria's political status to one of radical expansionism and annexation proved fatal …

The Republican Party And Civil Rights, 1877-1976, Gordon E. Sparks

Masters Theses

There have been many works written on both the Republican and the Democratic parties. Many works have also described the problem of civil rights and the historical difficulties blacks have had in an attempt to fit in politically. These works, however, have left out one major aspect of this process. Relationships of blacks to the political parties themsevles must be studied to understand one aspect of their continuous struggle for civil rights in America.

It is time that an overview be done on how the political parties have dealt with the civil rights problem throughout their histories. The Republican party …

The Development Of A Program For Minority Dropout Prevention In The Decatur, Illinois Public School District #61, Priscilla Marjorie Palmer

Masters Theses

The purpose of this field study was to identify the need and present a workable model designed to address minority dropout prevention for the Decatur, Illinois, Public School District #61. The overall district dropout rate at the time this field study commenced was 26.6 percent. However, the dropout rate for minority (Black) males was 43.1 percent and 24.9 percent for minority (Black) females. The data shows that a problem of minority dropouts did exist in Decatur School District #61 and that a preventive program was needed to address this problem.The Program to Improve Student Attendance (PISA), was designed for use …

An Application Of Mikhail Bakhtin’S Theory Of The Grotesque To The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Holly Roberts

Masters Theses

The grotesque in Flannery O'Connor's fiction has always been a central concern of her readers and critics, because it is such a prominent aspect of her work and is usually connected with the equally pervasive characteristics of violence, destruction, and death. Many of her critics see the grotesquerie of her characters and landscapes as indicative of humanity's fallen existence--that it serves only to reveal what is wrong with the human condition. Such views echo the premises of Wolfgang Kayser's theory of the grotesque presented in his well-known book, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, but as I point out, …

Dream In The Fiction Of Nathanael West, James M. Caldwell

Masters Theses

Since the publication of his first novel in 1931, Nathanael West has presented significant problems for critics in their attempts to arrive at conclusions about his work and to classify him among twentieth century novelists. Various critical approaches have helped to clarify some of the ambiguities in West's four novels, but the bibliographic, source, and psychological studies have often often neglected specifics of the texts in favor of finding West a niche in relation to his twentieth century contemporaries.

Most criticism of West's fiction discusses dreams to some extent. His fictions are considered dreamworlds, and each novel's ordering dream is …

A Directory Of Loose Ends, Angelique Cain Jennings

Masters Theses

A Directory of Loose Ends is comprised of a collection of thirty original poems, and a prose afterword. The collection of poems is divided into three groups according to subject, tone, and technique. The afterword details influences, biographical elements, and inspiration.

The first group consists mostly of poems in which mythical characters such as Grendel, Penelope, and Ulysses, speak. Unidentified speakers also offer myths of other kinds, such as "Salvador Dali in a Wheelchair on TV," in which an imaginative speaker addresses the painter, describing for him a dream she claims he has had, and "Confirmations," in which the speaker …

Music: A Nursing Intervention For Increased Intracranial Pressure, Carol Roberts

Masters Theses

Individuals with increased intracranial pressure (ICP) from all causes are subject to periods of marked increased intracranial pressures. Research since the 1960's has focused primarily on pathophysiologic causes and on variations between pathologies. Since 1978, nursing research has identified increases in ICP with patient-related activities such as suctioning, vagal stimulations, positioning, turning, noises, and emotive conversations. The use of therapeutic touch has been identified as a nursing intervention that correlates with a lowering of ICP. Since auditory pathways have been shown to be intact even in severely brain-injured individuals, the use of music (the universal language) may be effective in …