Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Rewriting The Human: Death Anxiety And Posthuman Vision In Literature Since 1945, John Allen Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

ISS_para>The technology-driven years following the close of World War II provided a new lens through which the human subject could be rethought and, theoretically, improved: no longer did physical and mental shortcomings have to limit the capacity of the individual. The atomic bomb and Colossus computer, though destructive forces, pushed scientists and philosophers to consider new models of the human, including flesh/machine amalgamation and reinscription as downloadable, digital information. While these posthuman constructions promised to distance the human from its material shortcomings, especially its vulnerability to bodily decay and death, they encountered significant resistance in the twentieth century.

By …

A Global Joyce: Early Sightings Of Cosmopolitan Ethics In Ulysses, Matthew Zeller

Theses and Dissertations

'Ulysses is like a great net let down upon the life of a microcosmic city-state, Dublin, wherein lie captured all sorts and conditions of men and minds,' wrote Stuart Gilbert, the famous literary scholar whose landmark 1930 book-length investigation into Joyce's magnum opus cemented his legacy as one of the first Joyceans. In saying so, Gilbert quietly proposes an early reading of Joyce's global ethics long before the study of humanities had developed the post-colonial focus necessary to more fully grasp the cosmopolitan ethics asserted in Ulysses. Gilbert was not alone. Because of his self-imposed exile and thematic insistence on …

Divine Discontent: Nathan Carter Newbold, White Liberals, Black Education, And The Making Of The Jim Crow South, Barry Malone

Theses and Dissertations

In the first half of the twentieth century, a small but vocal group of white southerners believed it possible to protect the flanks of the South's caste system by dampening black impatience with Jim Crow. Nathan Carter Newbold, a white racial moderate and State Agent for Negro Education, became a leading voice for the 'equalization without social equality' movement. Newbold believed blacks accepted the separation of the races as natural and beneficial to both, but they also expected whites to deliver equality of opportunity. The failure to meet this responsibility led blacks to engage in political and judicial activism. This …

The Politics Of Homosexuality In The Twentieth Century Black Freedom Struggle, Glenda Elizabeth Sherouse

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the changing status and role of queer African Americans during the twentieth century in the context of increasing black politicization. Moreover, it traces the relationship between queer African Americans and their communities until the emergence of queer black identity politics in the 1970s. Specifically, this dissertation seeks to more fully illuminate both the experiences of queer African Americans and how their communities and leaders discussed and dealt with homosexuality in the broader context of black political mobilization from the Jim Crow era and the Harlem Renaissance, through the Black Power and early Gay Liberation movements, roughly the …

Taking Oaths And Giving Thanks: Ritual And Religion In Revolutionary America, Tara E. Strauch

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the early modern ritual traditions of oaths, thanksgivings, and fast days in Revolutionary America and argues that American politicians and citizens negotiated the meanings of these rituals for American citizenship throughout the Revolutionary era. Oaths of office and allegiance, thanksgivings and fast days were tools for creating a united nation, but they also posed significant challenges because of the religious and political associations inherent in such rituals. These rituals came out of early modern Europe's religious and political culture which was useful for establishing America as a legitimate European nation. As colonials on the edge of the …

The Conflicted Artist- An Analysis Of The Aesthetics Of German Idealism In E.T.A. Hoffmann's Artist, Leigh Hannah Buches

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will analyze the characteristics of the artist as an individual who attempts to attain an aesthetic Ideal in which he believes he will find fulfillment. In the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, most notably Das Fräulein von Scuderi and Rat Krespel, the artists René Cardillac and Rat Krespel not only fall short of this ideal, but also limit themselves to the point that they cannot advance further without causing destruction in their own lives. The failure of these artists is not due to their imperfections, but rather to their strict adherence to German Idealist principles, which limit the artist …

A Case Study Of Three African-American String Players Participating In A Community Orchestra, Kimberly Prescott Williams

Theses and Dissertations

While there has been interest in the subject of diversity in orchestras and audiences, very little qualitative research exists exploring this issue. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that motivate African-American musicians to begin and maintain involvement in orchestral music. This research is a case-study of three African-American amateur musicians comprised of participant observation, in-depth interviewing, document collection, and analysis. Field observations and interviews occurred over a 22-week period. The resulting analysis revealed common themes that contributed to the participant's initial interest in string music and their continued participation as adults. The availability of music programs in …

An Investigation Of Selected Collegiate Voice Teachers' Descriptions Of Repertoire Selection Practices., David Stephenson

Theses and Dissertations

Repertoire is a critical component of the instructional process at all levels of music education, and more insight into music educators' repertoire selection practices is a need, especially in the case of the collegiate voice studio. A particular void in this topic is the lack of pre-service instructional training including repertoire assignment strategies for prospective and novice voice teachers. The investigator studied these topics using two data collection phases: 1) collecting descriptive data from vocal recital programs in three universities from the southern United States; and, 2) conducting interviews with five experienced voice teachers recruited from the aforementioned institutions. The …

[Threshold]: Understanding Noise Through Play, Cecil Decker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the theoretical underpinnings of my culminating project, the video game [threshold]. It describes the subject of the game--noise --and the method of its discussion--play. The goal of this game is to encourage players to re-contextualize noise, away from interference and error, as the source code of the universe. This new viewpoint forces us to focus on all of the data we filter out. By assessing this data, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world around us.

The Wind Chamber Works Of Ernst Toch: A History And Comparative Analysis, C. Nicole Gross

Theses and Dissertations

Ernst Toch (1887-1964) is one of the forgotten composers of the twentieth century. Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill were contemporaries, while Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Erich Kleiber championed his early works. Toch lamented his lack of notoriety to Nicolas Slonimsky two years prior to his death. Forgotten or underappreciated were his numerous compositions of art music written in the decades prior to his immigration to the United States and in the final years of his career; remembered only were his lighter works and American film music.

Toch composed one work for military band: Spiel für Blasorchester, Op. 39 (1926), …

Fertility, Contraception, And Abortion And The Partnership Of Henry Miller And Anaïs Nin, Kathryn Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

During their creative and sexual relationship, Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller together shaped their identities as artists. When they met, both were married and had tried writing before, but their partnership pushed them into a new kind of life in which writing took precedence. During this process, they described their relationship as literarily fertile; a few years later, Nin actually became pregnant with Miller's child and decided to have an abortion. In Nin's diary, metaphor and reality overlap as she anxiously makes sense of her decision that is informed by her belief that an artist cannot be a mother. In …

Going Into The Word-Hoard: The Writing Process, Language, And Its Implications In The Poetry Of Medbh Mcguckian And Paul Muldoon, Elizabeth Peele

Theses and Dissertations

As two prominent figures of Northern Irish poetry, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon are often discussed as being "difficult" and "oblique." However, I argue that this categorization of their poetry is too simplistic and overlooks the dissimilarities in their writing process and view of language, and ultimately, in their poetry itself. By going back to the fundamentals of their works, I claim that the basis for this dissimilarity is, in fact, a differing view of the founding blocks of poetic language. McGuckian sees syntax as being the important factor while Muldoon focuses on the individual lexical meaning of words. These …

Ulysses In The Age Of Digital Remediation, Melissa Hart Higgins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an in-depth study of the implications of digital technologies and information literacy for the reading and scholarly study of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Because the reading experience of Ulysses depends heavily on both its physicality and the interaction of the reader with the text, the changes in reading practices and scholarly study brought about by digital adaptations and hypermediations of this novel can offer new modes of understanding and characterizing readers relationships with text, as well as how the readers' digital interactions with Ulysses might engender or inhibit potential interpretations.

Each of the three chapters in this …

Into A Wild New Yonder: The United States Air Force And The Origins Of Its Information Age, Robert Howard Lass

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force is an organization operationally focused on gathering, processing, and utilizing vast quantities of information, so much so that it added "cyberspace" to its core missions of air and space in 2005. Service leaders have argued that a USAF information revolution - its entrance into the "Information Age" - began as early as the first computers in the 1940s or as late as the proliferation of networks in the 1990s. Upon close inspection, however, it becomes clear that such assertions overlook decades of information operations and management, and overemphasize the concept of a single information age. …

Going Hard, Going Easy, Going Home: Death And Dying In 20th Century African American Literature, Chayah Amayala Stoneberg-Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation answers the question: How can art represent the essential human experience of death, particularly when the creative context is one of extreme violence? And, what can be learned about the risks and rewards of the living's relationship with the dead by way of these artistic representations? Further, how do these aesthetic renderings of death construct the ethics of life for survivors? In the case of African America, discussion of, and responses to, these questions have been primarily explored in novelist and creative writing. This dissertation examines these novelistic treatments of death-tropes, or thanatropes in eight novels written by …

Building Morale In A Soldier Town: Home Front Women And The Gi In Columbia, South Carolina, 1941-1945, Jessica Kathleen Childress

Theses and Dissertations

As the United States mobilized for war in 1941, cities and towns across America, especially those closest to military bases, were faced with an unprecedented influx of soldiers, airmen, and sailors. To cope with these waves of servicemen in their off-duty hours, particularly to provide for wholesome entertainment and lessen the emotional weight of wartime, Columbia, South Carolina solicited participation in morale-building programs from its residents. Community leaders recognized their responsibility for funding programs and providing buildings to meet the soldiers' recreational needs, but they relied on women's organizations and female students to build morale through meaningful social interactions with …

Identity Crisis And The Emergence Of The Picaresque In Literature From Early Modern Spain And Twentieth Century Argentina, Mary Johnson Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

The picaresque genre and character appeared in what is considered the first modern novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, which was published anonymously in 1554, when Spain was on the cusp of a slow transition out of feudalism. The pícaro has continued to appear in literature across regions and epochs. This thesis looks at the socio-ideological factors that give birth to picaresque identity and behavior, as well as the verisimilitude of fiction in relation to reality. The first part of this study is dedicated to the Spanish picaresque tradition and focuses on the universal qualities of the literary figure and genre, as …

An Institutional History Of The Higgins Armory Museum And Its Relationship With Worcester, Massachusetts, Kary Ashley Pardy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the institutional history of the Higgins Armory Museum through its connection with the industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It documents the museum's beginning as a commercial museum connected with the Worcester Pressed Steel Company and analyzes both Worcester and the Armory's survival methods when their affiliated industries folded under economic pressures following World War II. The thesis follows the Higgins' attempted transformation to a nationally-recognized museum of arms and armor, and concludes with the Armory's identity struggles and eventual merger with the Worcester Art Museum.

Forgotten Russian Piano Music: The Sonatas Of Anatoly Aleksandrov, Irina Pevzner

Theses and Dissertations

This historical and analytical study focuses on the piano sonatas of Anatoly Aleksandrov (1888-1982), the longest-living Russian and Soviet composer-pianist of the twentieth century. The fourteen piano sonatas, written between 1922 and 1971, reflect not only the composer's evolution of style, but also reveal the vast array of influences which characterize the music of the twentieth century. Chromaticism that results from stretched harmonic sequences, strong melodic lyricism that threads these epic compositions, rich writing for piano, and hints of Russian folklore all contribute to the composer's original style, which synthesizes Aleksandrov's four main figures of influence, namely Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Medtner, …

El Rol De La Cultura Visual En El Desarrollo De Una Nueva Espacialidad En La Literatura Argentina, Maria Paula Rivero

Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the use of visual culture in Horacio Quiroga's 'La c├â┬ímara oscura', Julio Cort├â┬ízar's 'Apocalipsis de Solentiname', and Rodolfo Walsh's 'Fotos', focusing on its role in the development of a new conceptualization of the argentine space. The visual culture in these short stories, represented through the art of photography, gives the reader a new way of access into a national space that has been historically established by a politically dominated narrative. While the past rhetoric has been characterized by recognizing the territory as empty and assigning it the preferred meaning, these short stories revert such mechanism by developing …

Recuperando La Memoria De La Guerra Civil Española En Luna Lunera Y La Higuera, Whitney Anne Waites

Theses and Dissertations

Desde el comienzo de la Guerra Civil española en 1936 hasta la Transición a

democracia en los años 1980, España ha sufrido un proceso de "historical and social amnesia" (Cardus i Ros 18). Como resultado surgió una cultura de silencio: no había que hablar de la Guerra Civil española o los años de miedo y de violencia durante la dictadura. Con eso, hoy en día, varios autores españoles intentan combatir dicha amnesia y la cultura del silencio en la forma de la novel de la memoria. Esta investigación analizará como dos novelas de la memoria, Luna Lunera y La higuera, …

The Function Of A Middle Woodland Site In The Central Illinois Valley: A Ceramic Study Of Ogden-Fettie, Montana L. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Ogden-Fettie is a Middle Woodland Havana-Hopewell mound group in the Central Illinois Valley. Fv196 is the midden area near the largest mound. The function of Fv196 was in question, because it does not conform to the settlement and function models that have been applied to other sites. The ceramic collection from Fv196 was typed and categorized into categories based on perceived function, either habitation or ceremonial. The majority of the pottery belonged to the Havana series, which is traditionally considered habitation pottery; however, many of the Havana sherds were decorated indicating a ceremonial function. The highly decorated pots showed the …

Visual Storybooks: Connecting The Lives Of Students To Core Knowledge, Keven Dell Proud

Theses and Dissertations

In order to help students find connections to the Core Knowledge curriculum and the principles of Discipline-Based Art Education, the author uses narrative and visual storytelling in the form of altered books to make meaning and relate the lives of students to the art content. The author uses methods of action research to plan a curriculum intervention, work with the students to create their visual stories, reflect on his instruction along with student learning, and collect students' responses through surveys. The author also gathers data through the students' journals and artworks. Through the project the author is able to give …

Theatre History In The Secondary Drama Classroom And Beyond, Sandra Kay Millet

Theses and Dissertations

Current Utah State Core Standards for Theatre require that theatre history be taught at levels II (Standard 3 Objective C), III (Standard 4 Objective D), and IV (Standard 4 Objectives A and D) of high school drama classes. However, a 2011 survey of Utah high school theatre teachers indicates that only 54% include theatre history as an "important" or "very important" part of their curriculum, while another 36% say they "touch on it." This thesis is designed to be a resource for secondary drama teachers in integrating theatre history pedagogy into their drama classes, in an engaging and performance-based manner …

The Experiences Of Hispanic International Students As Interviewees In A Cross-Cultural Interview Project, Ren S. Carbutt

Theses and Dissertations

In the field of world language education, it has long been affirmed that language and culture are inseparable. It has also often been asked how teaching language and culture in an inseparable way is to be accomplished. One solution that has been proposed is ethnographic interviews. Other studies have demonstrated that interviewing native cultural informants is beneficial for language students. This study examined whether such interviews are also beneficial to the native informants. The participants in this project, sixteen native speakers of Spanish, were each interviewed three times by a pair of Spanish students who employed ethnographic techniques as a …

Traducción De Un Documental Para Televisión Con Una Visión Integradora Destinada A Una Audiencia Diversa, Fernando Dealba

Theses and Dissertations

Este proyecto consiste en la traducción de un guión de documental para televisión de carácter informativo y motivacional, adaptada a la diversidad de población de hispanoparlantes con diversidad de modalidad de habla. También, por encargo del cliente, el documental será adaptado en su traducción a una amplia audiencia diversa en cuanto a características socioculturales. Para realizar traducción, se utilizará una visión integradora aplicada a las diferentes teorías de la traducción. A pesar de tener en cuenta a los hispanoparlantes del mundo, la población a la que se dirige en particular el proyecto es la población hispanoparlante que convive en Estados …

"Une Transformation Profonde": Decay And Beauty In Cléo From 5 To 7, Susan J. Garver

Theses and Dissertations

Cléo from 5 to 7 is perhaps the most famous work of influential French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who is often called the "Grande Dame of the New Wave". The depth of symbolism, the richness of imagery, the beginnings of cinécriture (a Varda-ism describing cinema as a form of writing that uses all the tools available to a filmmaker, not just words), and the charm of the story have guaranteed Cléo's popularity with scholars and audiences alike. Current scholarship has tended to focus on a few aspects of Cléo, including her role as a flâneuse, the use of …

In Search Of Real Fathers: Plenzdorf's Die Neuen Leiden Des Jungen W. And Vater, Mutter, Mörderkind, Michelle Schwoebel

Theses and Dissertations

Plenzdorf's works, one written before the fall of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (hereafter referred to as the DDR), and one after, portray relationships between fathers and sons, which act as a metaphor to express a personal perspective of the state, revealing that the DDR was neither as repressive or as omnipresent for the average citizen as outsiders are often given to believe. The father, or Übervater, a figure deeply rooted in the German consciousness, is represented by the state and proves itself as an entity which gives the protagonists in both works little notice, despite their best efforts …

Austro-American Reflections: Making The Writings Of Ann Tizia Leitich Accessible To English-Speaking Audiences, Stephen Andrew Simon

Theses and Dissertations

Ann Tizia Leitich wrote about America to a Viennese audience as a foreign correspondent with the unique and personal perspective of an immigrant to the United States. Leitich differentiates herself from other Europeans who reported on America in her day by telling of the life of the average working American. In so doing, Leitich uses her work as a foreign correspondent to create a new identity for Austria between the World Wars. Leitich uses America in the 1920's and 1930's as a cultural mirror in which the new Republic of Austria can see itself. Leitich's perspective of America is not …

George Dibble And The Struggle For Modern Art In Utah, Sarah Dibble

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I explore the spread of modern art to conservative regions of the country, in particular Utah. By using George Dibble as a case study this thesis will also address the struggle that Utah artists had to endure to have their progressive ideas in art be accepted in such a conservative area. It will address the criticism that Dibble had to endure by discussing specific incidents involved with certain works of art. Although there were plenty of people who did not like modern art, there were some institutions and people who were advocates of this progressive form of …