Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Negotiating Identity In The Transnational Imaginary Of Julia Alvarez's And Edwidge Danticat's Literature, Erik R. Kerby

Theses and Dissertations

The increased contact between nations and cultures in the globalization of the twenty-first century requires an increased accountability for the ways in which individuals and countries negotiate these points of contact. New World and Caribbean Studies envision the cross-cultural and transnational encounters between indigenous, European, and African peoples as important contributors to a paradigm within which identity in relation offers an alternative to identities rooted in national and filial frameworks. Such frameworks limit the ability to construct identity without relying upon static representations of history, culture, and ethnicity that tend to privilege one group over another. In the literature of …

Sympathetic Observations: Widowhood, Spectatorship, And Sympathy In The Fiction Of Henry James, George Michael Gordon-Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the roles of widowhood and sympathy in Henry James's short and long fiction. By the time James established himself as a writer of fiction, the culture of sentiment and its formation of sympathetic identification had become central to American and British writers. Critically, however, sympathy in James's fiction has been overlooked because he chose to write about rich expatriates and European nobility. James's pervasive use of widowed characters in his fiction suggests the he too participated in the same aesthetic agenda as William Dean Howells and George Eliot to evoke sympathy in their readers as a means …

Mormon Rhetoric And The Theory Of Organic Evolution, Kurt Wilford Laird

Theses and Dissertations

Most rhetorical studies of evolution/religion debates have addressed the media version of the debates that pits fundamentalist religion against science. Yet, most of the rhetorical studies in this area have not been nuanced enough to appreciate the complexity of the rhetoric resulting from this rich area of discourse. This study provides a rhetorical analysis of the evolution rhetoric in one particular religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and focuses on the discourse of two prominent leaders in the LDS Church, B.H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith. In the LDS Church there is a clear distinction …

The Man In The Transatlantic Crowd: The Early Reception Of Edgar Allan Poe In Victorian England, Brian Robert Wall

Theses and Dissertations

An important anomaly in transatlantic criticism is the contrast between transatlantic theory and the applied criticism of literature through a transatlantic lens. While most transatlantic scholars assert the value of individual strands of thought throughout the globe and stress the importance of overcoming national hegemonic barriers in literature, applied criticism generally favors an older model that privileges British literary thought in the nineteenth century. I claim that both British and American writers can influence each other, and that mutations in thought can travel both ways across the Atlantic. To argue this claim, I begin by analyzing the influence of Blackwood's …

Cross-Language Perception Of German Vowels By Speakers Of American English, Lore Katharina Gerti Schultheiss

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on how the cross-language perception of German vowels by native speakers of North American English differs based on various levels of classroom instruction and experience in a German-speaking country. Of special interest is whether more advanced students and those with target country experience have a different cross-language perception of German vowels from naive or less-experienced listeners. It further examines how English-speaking learners perceive German sounds that are not found in English, namely the front-rounded vowels. Study participants were students at Brigham Young University, divided into four groups: those 1) without knowledge of German; 2) in their 3rd …

After August: Museums As Mirrors, William Pinholster

Theses and Dissertations

The After August Museum collects and exhibits an open, user-generated body of content. Its primary objective is to help heal the post-Katrina Lower Ninth Ward community. It is respectful and considerate of the area's established traditions, present concerns, and future goals. The museum assumes multiple shapes and plays multiple roles as it acts as the center of the transitioning community.

Facing God: Contemporary American Devotional Poetry, Sarah E. Jenkins

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis examines the connection between scripture and contemporary American poetry. Scripture is inherently poetic, employing devices that require analysis and explication. Poets drawing from scriptural text for narrative, language, or form are not looking to replace scripture, or even enhance it. Poets create new experiences in language, and their writing can illuminate the poetics of scripture. My thesis will examine work by three contemporary poets who have imitated, alluded to, and re-created scripture: Jacqueline Osherow's "Scattered Psalms" from 1999 collection Dead Men's Praise; Louise Glück's 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Wild Iris; and Morri Creech's "The Testament of Judas" …

A Study Of The Life And Work Of Christopher Durang: Laughing Wild Amidst Severest Woe, Jeannine M. James

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis maps Durang's struggle with faith and demonstrates how his personal journey to discover and document his pain acts as a catalyst for his creative work. It will explore his style of masking and unmasking himself in his characters revealing his innermost pain and suffering. I also surmise that his work serves as a kind of therapy by allowing him to constantly unravel and unveil his investigation of self.

This thesis examines Christopher Durang's personal history and family struggles in an effort to understand the experiences that shaped the work of one of America's premier authors of absurdist comedy. …

Storming The Castle: Non-Secular Subversion Of The Pas D'Armes In The Castle Of Perseverance, John Moss

Theses and Dissertations

It is important to remember that the categories of medieval performance were established far removed from their period in history. As a genre, the morality play includes a wide diversity of time, geography, content and performance styles. Such disparities have made it difficult to develop a comprehensive definition, without which comparisons between works cannot be consistent. As scholarship continues to explore these works in context of their performance, it becomes increasingly important to identify which performance styles best inform their production. In examining The Castle of Perseverance within the parameters of pas d’armes, new meanings can be drawn from its …

Making Time, Christine Coffey

Theses and Dissertations

We are living in an age where the quantity of information has exceeded its quality. No doubt the digital and information revolutions have provided the world with countless positive improvements, but they have also increased the speed at which we live and work to the detriment of the heath of our world. This project explores ways in which designers can aid in an effort to slow down in order to reinvigorate a more sustainable graphic design product.

Typography As Performance: Bringing The Stage Into The Design Process, Ann Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Graphic design is historically a visual language consisting of text and image composed for the purposes of sending messages in print format. The voice of graphic design is typography—structuring and arranging letter forms into visual language. Over the past two decades, new communication formats such as motion and interaction have frequently been related to performance. My intention, however, is to explore how performance can influence typography in two and three dimensions, and even in digital environments.

Fundamentals In Nature, Andrea Quam

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores innovative methodologies for design education. It is an investigation of teaching design fundamentals in an outdoor classroom.

Unamunian Microcosms: Four Short Stories In A New Translation Into English, Emily A. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno's short fiction is neglected in both the academic and nonacademic communities, and it is especially underrepresented in English-language translation. This thesis constitutes a comprehensive approach to four short stories: "El que se enterró," "La manchita de la uña," "Mecanópolis," and "Batracófilos y batracófobos." A detailed exploration of thematic resonances among them, and between these and other works by Unamuno, precedes side-by-side translations of all four texts, of which only "Mecanópolis" has been previously published in English translation.

Mods: Collaboration And Play In Design, Margaret O'Saben

Theses and Dissertations

Located in Richmond, Virginia, MO Design is a small design/build company founded by Molly O’Saben. Ms. O’Saben received her bachelor’s degree in Craft & Material Studies and her master’s in Interior Environments from Virginia Commonwealth University. MO Design was founded in 2010 with a team of fellow alumni from VCU.

We make objects that inspire inventiveness. Our reconfigurable components offer our clients the unique ability to adapt their environments to life’s ever-changing needs.

We make MODs: Make your Own Designs.

Our products are for people who appreciate efficient spaces, are open to exploring possibilities, and like to play. Just as …

What Is A Partition?, Lee Dijoseph

Theses and Dissertations

Buildings from the nineteenth century are rich with history and tradition in their materials,design and construction. Over the past few years in Richmond, many of the formerly vacant buildings have been converted into residential “lofts”. These spaces have the potential to teach and serve us in a way we could never duplicate today. The space we live in has the power to determine how well we function. I believe this is one of the keys to happiness. I like to think of these buildings holistically in terms of past, present, and future . I will supplement the space with partitions …

Unlisted Properties: An Exploration In Solo Performance, Jason Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the process of creating, producing and performing a solo performance titled UNLISTED PROPERTIES. We intend to intertwine historical text and contemporary narratives to create portraits of women throughout different periods of history/her-story dealing with the theme of women as property or owning others as personal property. The historical text will be taken from the self-written works of Mary Chesnut, Harriet A. Jacobs, and Elizabeth Packard. The contemporary pieces have been pulled from a variety of sources, which include an interview with Mary Ford, an Army bride during World War II, Pagan Moss, a website blogger describing her …

Unlisted Properties: An Exploration In Solo Performance, Lauren White

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the process of creating, producing and performing a solo performance titled UNLISTED PROPERTIES. We intend to intertwine historical text and contemporary narratives to create portraits of women throughout different periods of history/her-story dealing with the theme of women as property or owning others as personal property. The historical text will be taken from the self-written works of Mary Chesnut, Harriet A. Jacobs, and Elizabeth Packard. The contemporary pieces have been pulled from a variety of sources, which include an interview with Mary Ford, an Army bride during World War II, Pagan Moss, a website blogger describing her …

Objects: Entropy And Temporality, Anthony Cioe

Theses and Dissertations

The transparent qualities of glass lend to the creation of elements that suggest presence and absence. I often use glass as a surrogate for lost time or space in an object, comparable to the human prosthetic and the notion of a phantom limb. Recent objects of exploration have included broken bottles, fallen tree limbs, and a human skull. The practical knowledge I gained while working in a conservation lab has directly influenced the methodology for treating these objects of disrepair. My primary impetus is a desire to construct what has been lost during an objects existence and reveal sublime qualities. …

The Effect Of Home Musical Environment On Child Attitude And Aptitude, Donna Lyon

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent the home musical environment affects a child's attitude towards and aptitude in music. Factors that were explored were parent attitudes, parent music background, child attitudes, child aptitudes, age, and gender roles. Parents (N=95) from a suburban elementary school completed an online survey to determine the nature of the musical environment of their home. Their children (N=121), who were first and fourth graders, completed a student attitude survey. The Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation was administered to determine student aptitude. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyze the data …

An Analytical And Educational Survey Of Kenneth Hesketh's Vranjanka, Alisha Marie Wooley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore Kenneth Hesketh's "Vranjanka" in both analytical and educational domains. Timothy and Hilary Reynish commissioned this piece in 2005 in memory of their son William. Tim Reynish is the former conductor of the Royal Northern College of Music's Wind Ensemble. He has also been deeply involved with the Commissioning Project of the Royal Northern College of Music (1982-2002), which produced over seventy compositions for wind band, and the William Reynish Commissioning Project (2002-2007) that has commissioned over twenty works for wind band. The piece is based on the Serbian Folksong Sano Duso. Vranjanka, literally translated, means "from …

An Introduction To Baroque Ornamentation For Solo Trumpet Literature (1638-1709): A Preliminary Guide For Applied Trumpet Teachers, Adam Seth Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This graduate music project is designed to be a pedagogical supplement for high school trumpet teachers who wish to incorporate baroque music into their curriculum. This document addresses the interpretation and execution of select ornaments during the years 1638-1709. The chosen ornaments include the appoggiatura. mordent, inverted mordent, and trill. These notated ornaments were selected based on their relative frequent use in Italian Baroque music. These ornaments are defined via prose and supplemented with musical examples that illustrate their original notation and execution. In addition, musical excerpts from composers such as Jan Krutel Jiri Neruda and Dominico Gabrielli will be …

Healing, Learning And Play, Kangana Bhatnagar

Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that the first five years of life are critical for building the foundation for children’s success throughout their schooling and life. Throughout these first years of life there are a number of essential windows of opportunity during which certain kinds of stimuli are needed to help the brain develop and maintain critical connections necessary for learning. This project is a unification of a Child Development Center and a therapeutic center. This center includes children who suffer from bereavement; a broken home, death of a parent or child abuse. These children are provided with therapy by a specialist, and …

Corporate Housing And Training, Cojo Gerardo Del

Theses and Dissertations

Corporate Housing & Training is a hybrid project that promotes the future use of living-and-working environments in the same site offering the amenities of a hotel, apartment and an office in one. The challenge of approaching this type of project is the way the program works and how it flows together with different users and different needs without even getting out of the building at the same time. This project helps the actual local and global needs because it would be a big impact for the traveling executives and companies by promoting business, exchange of ideas, and socializing; due to …

Julia Hills Johnson, 1783-1853 My Soul Rejoiced, Linda J. Thayne

Theses and Dissertations

Julia Hills Johnson, the 48-year-old wife of Ezekiel Johnson and mother of sixteen children, found spiritual fulfillment in the doctrines of a new religion called Mormonism. Her baptism in 1831 was a simple act that ultimately led her halfway across the American continent, and strained her marital relationship, yet filled her with a sense of spiritual contentment. Julia's commitment to her faith, her tenacity, self-determination and willingness to take risks to participate in this new religious movement sets her apart from other nineteenth-century farm women in New England and New York. Julia's religiosity was self-determined and tenacious. She chose to …

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Annotations In Improving The Listening Comprehension Of Intermediate Esl Learners, Ryan K. Rocque

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to answer the age old question of what kind of input is best for ESL learners, but it approaches the question with a new perspective. There are many options when it comes to a choice of curriculum, both in terms of the method that is used and the materials that are available. Feature film is one important resource that has received increased attention in recent years. Curriculum specialists and teachers are incorporating various film clips into instruction to enhance a grammar point, to teach culture, or as a way to motivate learners. Yet adequate research does not …

How Soviet Russia Liberated Women: The Soviet Model In Clara Zetkin's Periodical 'Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale', Liberty Peterson Sproat

Theses and Dissertations

Clara Zetkin was celebrated in both Germany and the Soviet Union before World War II because of her active involvement in the communist movement. She wrote prolifically and preached the virtues of socialism. She concerned herself particularly with women's needs, arguing that women would respond best to a different form of agitation than that used among men. Zetkin asserted that communism was the only way to respond to women's concerns as mothers and that only state involvement in domestic life would allow women to be fully emancipated. Women needed freedom from household work and increased training and support to aid …

Spatial Practices Of Icarian Communism, John Derek Mccorquindale

Theses and Dissertations

Prior to the 1848 Revolution in France, a democrat and communist named Étienne Cabet organized one of the largest worker's movements in Europe. Called "Icarians," members of this party ascribed to the social philosophy and utopian vision outlined in Cabet's 1840 novel, Voyage en Icarie, written while in exile. This thesis analyzes the conception of space developed in Cabet's book, and tracks the group's actual spatial practice over the next seventeen years. During this period, thousands of Icarians led by Cabet attempted to establish an actual colony in the wilderness of the United States. Eventually settling in the recently …

Les Pas Perdus: Images Of Feet And Shoes In Surrealist Art, Emily Patricia Asplund

Theses and Dissertations

Although feet and shoes appear throughout surrealist visual art, their significance within surrealist theory has not been studied as thoroughly as other familiar themes of surrealist art, such as the eye or the hat. The purpose of this project is to recover feet and shoes from their lowly position and to uncover their meaning and function in surrealist theory, particularly the theory of Georges Bataille. Feet were implicitly important to surrealists like André Breton and Louis Aragon, whose early and central literary texts were based on their favorite pastime: flânerie or wandering the streets of Paris. Images of feet can …

A Call For Liberation: Aleijadinho's 'Prophets' As Capoeiristas, Monica Jayne Bowen

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the late eighteenth century, many Brazilians became inspired by the political revolutions of the French and American colonies and sought for a similar type of revolution, hoping to gain independence from the Portuguese. One nationalistic group, the "Inconfidência Mineira," probably influenced the art of the sculptor Aleijadinho (1738-1814). Aleijadinho's work has been examined as a political message previously, but never as propaganda through the representation of capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art. Capoeira probably formed as a means for Afro-Brazilian slaves to fight their way out of captivity. While training to fight, slaves would disguise capoeira to look like a …

The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon

Theses and Dissertations

Countering traditional claims that the feminist movement all but vanished during the early nineteenth century, this thesis suggests feminism remained prominent in both the literature and rhetoric of the time. In tracing the development of the "New Rhetoric," a rhetorical movement that aimed to accommodate new principles of the Enlightenment, I focus in part on the rhetorical battle between Edmund Burke, with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man. From there, I suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in the wake of the Burke-Paine debate and drawing upon the rhetorical philosophy of George …