Arts and Humanities Commons^™

An Analysis Of And Conductor's Guide To Eleanor Daley's Requiem, Andrew James Robinette

Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a thorough analysis of and conductor's guide to Eleanor Daley's Requiem. It includes a theoretical analysis, a textual analysis, an analysis of performance and conducting considerations, a list of compositions by the composer, and a discography. Additionally, it includes score corrections, the composer's biography, a brief history of the Requiem Mass and Christian funeral music, and historical connections to other Requiems, including a chapter dedicated to the Requiem of Herbert Howells.

The study was informed by numerous correspondences and multiple interviews with the composer, as well as singing under her direction. It is the author's hope that …

The Finer Things, Jasmine Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

It is through the grotesque that Flannery O'Conner's characters achieve grace, and often the only hope for self-actualization rests in death and malformation. This is perhaps her greatest irony. The protagonists of The Finer Things, however, never self-actualize: they simply act without understanding or questioning why. This is because they are rarely confronted with the grotesque; instead they actively seek it for themselves. The grotesque isn't revelatory, but rather, it satisfies romantic ideals and desires, or is pursued in effort to escape aggressive bureaucracies that typify Kafka's short stories. This characterizes the ironic aesthetic of The Finer Things. Working in …

Deconstructing Books, Reconstructing Women, Summers Esther Morris

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of my thesis project is to examine the notion of choice encountered by females with respect to gender roles. I intend to underscore the turmoil which often comes from choices that leave many classic feminine roles left unattended by either sex. I have created three altered books that address these struggles, as I have personally experienced these, regarding marriage, motherhood, and domesticity. Each book analyzes the conflicting nature of choice and, according to my own decisions as a modern feminist, concludes accordingly. This in-depth look at the struggle for women to not only choose gender roles to adopt, …

The Attraction Of Imperfection: Depreciating Social Capital In Victorian Marriage Plots, Catherine Clair England-Plisiewicz

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines the importance of social capital in British marriage plots. While most people imagine heroines of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels embody virtue, I argue that many of the most innocent heroines speculate that sacrificing good assets can produce better marriages. These marriage plots demonstrate that a heroine's reputation must be somewhat damaged before she receives her reward of marriage. In other words, these novels do not uniformly represent, or recommend, the preservation of a heroine's good reputation; rather, they implicitly suggest that some spoiling occur before the consummation of marriage. I study how this curious freckling of heroines' …

Selling The Country’S Secrets: Willa Cather’S Eco(Self)Criticism In My Antonia And The Professor’S House, Elizabeth Nicole Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

This study considers Willa Cather's ecological consciousness as a writer of place, particularly in My Antonia and The Professor's House. In these two works, Cather's narrative distance provides her with the room to investigate the relationship between humans and their environments. Jim Burden, Godfrey St. Peter, and Tom Outland all exploit their environments to greater or lesser extents based on their way of seeing the world, which Cather draws attention to through her careful characterization and narrative distance. In each narrative, Cather forces readers to recognize the environmental consequences of egocentric vision, and the way such vision can be sustained …

The Rhetorical Event Of Modern Southern Humor: "A Requisite Element In Discourse", David Allen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical nature and dynamics of Southern humor in the second half of the twentieth century by analyzing, from a distinctly rhetorical perspective, a selection of popular Southern humor texts. It seeks to understand how Southern humor happens--its methods and techniques--and it also seeks to understand, as much as possible, the implications of these events for the various interlocutors and participants involved. By investigating the stylistic, storytelling, and linguistic techniques of Southern humor, while relying on the scholarship of writers in a variety of academic disciplines, I hope to answer the following research question: how does Southern …

La Quête D'Identité À Travers La Quête De L'Autre Dans Le Cinéma De Cédric Klapisch, Jade Marie Mathieu

Theses and Dissertations

Malgré une présence extrêmement populaire dans le cinéma français depuis la sortie de son premier film, Riens du Tout, en 1992, Cédric Klapisch est un cinéaste en général peu étudié. Pourtant, si ses comédies séduisent le public, c'est avant tout par leur côté réaliste, avec lequel de nombreux spectateurs peuvent s'identifier. Dans ses premiers films, Klapisch semble avant tout s'adresser aux jeunes en quête d'eux-mêmes, grâce à L'Auberge Espagnole, qui reste son film le plus célèbre, ou à la comédie Le Péril Jeune. Pourtant, au fil de son évolution, le cinéaste met un point d'honneur à intégrer cet esprit de …

Female Character Development In Select Works By Lope De Vega, María De Zayas, And Calderón De La Barca, Adrianne Woods

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of three works of the Spanish Golden Age:Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocañaby Lope de Vega,La traición en la amistadby María de Zayas, andLa vida es sueñoby Calderón de la Barca. The focus of this work is on the main female protagonists: Casilda, Fenisa, and Rosaura, respectively. Applying feminist and visualization theories, the thesis examines these women in regards to how they conform to and subvert prevailing stereotypes of the time. The characters are analyzed based on personality, as illustrated through the choices they make; their roles in the microcosm of the play in contrast …

Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, And Diaspora, 1970s-1990s, Tiffany Nicole Florvil

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation, "Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, and Diaspora, 1970s-1990s," explores the birth of the Afro-German movement, including its two organizations: The Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, ISD) and Afro-German Women (Afro-deutsche Frauen, ADEFRA) in West and then reunified Germany. In it, I uncover the efforts of Black Germans to organize a diasporic and literary movement to confront discriminatory discourses and practices that simultaneously ignored them and positioned them as "Others" in postwar German society. Through their diverse literature and coordinated events, Black Germans enacted membership in the African diaspora, articulating and claiming an identity that supported a …

Re:Creation, Heather Boone

Theses and Dissertations

This intent of this project is to explore the importance of handmade objects in the age of information.

Experience As An Experiment, James Walker

Theses and Dissertations

My work is an exploration of new media that demonstrates the influence a community has on visual communication. The community reveals content as objects go unnoticed after they become a permanent part of the landscape and assumptions are made from cultural archetypes. Through exploration, immersion, and reflection, I am able to recognize the invisible and expected, establish a familiarity with a community, and design responses that communicate directly to it.

Autonomous Systems, Karolis Kosas

Theses and Dissertations

The ubiquity of digital media provides an unprecedented possibility to redefine the process and methods of design. Through experience from a series of creative projects, I investigate how certain aspects of the web allow for design to attain a degree of autonomy, thus producing results that go beyond anticipation and expertise of the author. Utilizing an unlimited capacity to store the content and retrieve immediate feedback, the designer’s role can be shifted to that of an initiator defining rules and boundaries, from which the process can evolve independently based on the input of users and data. The design output in …

Arabic Typography Play, Sarah Alfalah

Theses and Dissertations

I believe that spoken and written languages are verbal and visual expressions of cultures. Language is used to convey and sustain values and the belief system of people. Arabic is a language of complexity and formal beauty that is being disregarded and pushed away by its own native speakers. It is losing its value in the Arab world. In other words it is dying. Both the written and spoken language is being affected. As the world is interchanging, integrating, and becoming closer, there has been a strong impact on many societies, threatening their original culture. Arab cultures are abandoning the …

Blue Book, Daniel Cole

Theses and Dissertations

Alain De Botton writes in The Architecture of Happiness, that “any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports.” Interpreting design then is done by understanding the attitudes of the designer, which either will or will not resonate with the viewer. I may consider the formal and conceptual merits of an object of design, but ultimately my attitudes determine whether the object will have resonance with me. These “attitudes” are, anthropologically speaking, values: what a person finds most good, proper, or desirable in life. Values are the key to the creation of …

Transforming Narratives, Lucia Weilein

Theses and Dissertations

Narrative, often considered synonymous with “story,” can be viewed from a structuralist perspective and analyzed independent of any particular content. Breaking narrative into categories of story and discourse, this autonomous structure makes possible a translation of content from one form to another. The various media and form types common in graphic design can serve as both recipient and translator of narratives, converting content into a framework that includes the concept of craftsmanship, aesthetic components and specifications, legibility and composition, and the physical form of the designed object. To examine how this framework functions in practice, I have developed a series …

Wanderings, Jetter Jorge Silva

Theses and Dissertations

While it implies aimless movement, the act of wandering is an act of discovery and can become a search for the unexpected. Wandering, as a metaphor for making, creates opportunities to work in ways where the final outcome is unknown. This can be accomplished by the creation of methods and instructions designed for wandering-the act of discovery. In the field of design, these ideas can be incorporated as methods for making that guide the design process in ultimately unknowable ways, resulting in products that bear little trace of preconception. The role of chance and indeterminacy as methods for relinquishing control …

Multi-Culturalism & Alzheimer’S Disease: Patient-Centered Design As A New Care Model For Multi-Cultural Patients With Alzheimer’S Disease, Sang Ryu

Theses and Dissertations

The multi-cultural demographics of those who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease should be closely examined. From a designer’s standpoint, its cultural traits can foster positive behaviors that lead to better quality of life for patients and caregivers. A patient-centered approach in design was explored in order to shape community-based care that empowers (1) individuality in care services, (2) interpersonal connection in caregiver–patient activities, and (3) a communal culture of being valued via humanitarian approaches.

What?: Visual Interpretations Of The Miscommunication Between The Hearing And Deaf, Virginia Shou

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis visualizes the communication challenges both latent and obvious of my daily life as a hard of hearing individual. By focusing on a variety of experiences and examples I demonstrate the implications of a hard of hearing individual’s life. The prints, objects and videos that I have created for my visual thesis aim to enrich the understanding of a broader public on issues regularly faced by Deaf people. At the heart of my work my goal is to generate mutual empathy between the hearing and the Deaf.

"Without A Few Negroes": George Whitefield, James Habersham, And Bethesda Orphan House In The Story Of Legalizing Slavery In Colonial Georgia, Tara Leigh Babb

Theses and Dissertations

A 1735 law banned slavery in the new English colony of Georgia. The colony's Trustees considered slavery to be incompatible with their aims of using the colony to provide a subsistence living for England's poor and to provide a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida. In the ensuing years, various parties linked the colony's failure to thrive (and their own failure to succeed within Georgia) to the lack of an enslaved labor force. By 1750, the Board of Trustees relented to pressure and enacted what they considered to be a humane slave code. Evangelist George Whitefield and teacher and …

For Their Mutual Benefit: Public Support And Private Development Of Historic Buildings In Columbia, South Carolina, Angi Fuller Wildt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on successful rehabilitations of historic buildings in Columbia, South Carolina. All were undertaken between 1976 and 2013 by private developers in conjunction with public support. The cases presented are located in four downtown districts known as the Vista, the Main Street Corridor, the Granby and Olympia Mill Villages, and Innovista. The rehabilitations differed due to variables unique to their locations in each of these areas as well as conditions in the years that they took place. Public support included financial incentives and guidelines offered by federal, state, regional, and local governments and professional guidance provided by the …

Altar And Stage: Liturgical Drama In Three Theatrical Traditions, Patrick Kenneth Boos

Theses and Dissertations

This paper compares the historical, religious and political situations surrounding the origins of three important dramaturgical texts: Regularis Concordia in tenth-century England, The Natyasastra in seventh-century India, and Zeami's Fushikaden of fifteenth-century Muromaki Japan. It attempts to explore and identify the ways that their corresponding theatres have their roots in liturgical practice, and how those liturgical practices are intricately tied up in the historical and political situations in which they came to be. The fundamental qualities of theatre which I explore are five key areas in which the three traditions, surprisingly, converge as often as they diverge: in their emphasis …

The Flying University, Catherine Friesen

Theses and Dissertations

The Flying University is solo theater performance framed as an academic lecture about Marie Curie and her discovery of radium, delivered to a group of women who have gathered in secret to further their education. As the lecture proceeds, the professor brings in her own research based on a study of Esther Horsch (1905-1991) who lived on a farm in central Illinois. She introduces data from Esther's journals, personal memories, and dreams about Esther's life. The professor's investigation of radium plays at the intersections of magical and mundane, decay and the transformation of life, and the place of ambition in …

Ziggy The Clown, Donald T. Russell

Theses and Dissertations

The contents included here consist of the research, editing, and rehearsal process for the written script, as well as the live performance. There is also a brief analysis of the process, and documentation of how to proceed with the piece in its current state, or if any additions will be made. The full script is included. The solo show itself was a culmination of what my Master's Training provided, up until the point of performance.

Black Feminine Identity: An Examination Of Historical And Contemporary Dramatic Texts Through A Critical Race Theory Framework, Devair Jeffries

Theses and Dissertations

Race, class and gender exist as categorizations to distinguish and preserve privilege and identity in the United States of America. These societal constructs of race, class and gender often place African-Americans in comparison or in contrast to White cultural identities. Furthermore, these characteristics differentiate African-Americans as an 'Other;' a categorical group in conflict with dominant White societal values and norms. African-American female playwrights Lorraine Hansberry and Lydia Diamond address established attitudes about race, class, and gender in their plays, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Stick Fly (2006) respectively. Their works present strong Black female characters that contend with …

Atmospheric Patterns And Asian Typhoon Landfalls, Ivetta Abramyan

Theses and Dissertations

The Western North Pacific Ocean (WNP) produces more frequent and intense tropical cyclones (TC) than anywhere else in the world, and these storms greatly impact society. This study examines synoptic scale atmospheric patterns and their effects on landfalling typhoons in Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam using composite analysis at upper and mid-levels of the atmosphere, as well as analyzing teleconnection impacts on tropical cyclone frequency, duration and intensity.

Examined Best Track data (1946-2010) shows an increased likelihood of Taiwan landfalls earlier in the season, Japan landfalls mid-season, and Vietnam landfalls towards the end of the typhoon season. The formation locations also …

Made In Japan: Kumi-Daiko As A New Art Form, Anna Marie Viviano

Theses and Dissertations

Japanese taiko ensemble drumming, known in Japan as kumi-daiko, is an art form that has only taken shape within the past fifty years. This new performance style involving taiko seems, on the surface, to have much in common with traditional Japanese court and theater music, regarded by scholars as the art music of Japan. Using drums that have a long history in Japan, however, does not necessarily make that ensemble part of ancient Japanese tradition. By studying the most famous groups in Japan, such as Kodo, it is easy to discern that kumi-daiko has many different inspirations, but is not …

Conrad Susa's Discovery And Praises: A Conductor's Guide To Performance Considerations, Keith Harry Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Conrad Susa (b. 1935) is an American composer who has contributed over thirty choral works that are of high quality incorporating texts written by well-known literary figures. His choral works are usually spiritual in nature though not strictly liturgical. Discovery and Praises is a presently unpublished cantata in four movements for mixed chorus, solos for two sopranos, an alto, a tenor, and a baritone. The accompaniment is scored for organ, harp, percussion, flute and handbells. Susa chose to set ancient poetry by Caedmon, Wipo of Burgundy, John Donne, and St. Patrick. Although the piece was composed in 1966 and revised …

The Role Of The Trickster Figure And Four Afro-Caribbean Meta-Tropes In The Realization Of Agency By Three Slave Protagonists, David Sebastian Cross

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I aim to demonstrate that the figure of the trickster is a key trope for the achievement of agency by the narrators of the three slave narratives Autobiografia de un esclavo, "Routes in North Africa by Abu Bekr es siddik" [sic], and Biografia de un cimarron. I also intend to show how both the realization of the trickster's role and the achievement of agency to which such a role is oriented are dependent on the use of the four Afro-Caribbean meta-tropes ndoki, nkisi, nganga, and simbi. To demonstrate this, I plan to analyze these four meta-tropes; their …

Putting Place Back Into Displacement: Reevaluating Diaspora In The Contemporary Literature Of Migration, Christiane Brigitte Steckenbiller

Theses and Dissertations

In order to improve the engineering properties of soft soils, materials, such as cement and fiber, can be introduced to the soil mass. Currently, design criterion for a cement-soil mixture requires only the measurement of unconfined compressive strength. This simple measurement may not be adequate to describe the behavior that results from differing field loading conditions. A series of consolidation tests and unconfined compression tests were conducted with special attention being paid to the effects of curing time and vertical curing stress. It is shown that the introduction of cement into soft soils results in decreased compressibility and increased unconfined …

William, Allison Marie Mcnutt

Theses and Dissertations

William is a novel that examines the lives of a pair of protagonists who are separated by approximately three hundred years of history. Liam is a modern history PhD who studies the colonial south, specializing in the years immediately following the pioneering period of Carolana rice cultivation around the turn of the eighteenth century; this is the middle ground after survival in the colony was largely secured, but when social hierarchies and racial allegiances were still in flux as the cash crop best suited to the coastal settlements had only just been discovered. Will is Liam's historical counterpart and lives …