Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Vibe Diggers: The Sampling Of Brazilian Music In Hip-Hop, Romulo De Carvalho Moraes Barbosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the trend of musical borrowings of 1970s MPB (música popular brasileira) by contemporary American hip-hop producers, especially in terms of what they have called a “Brazilian vibe.” A lot has been said about sampling already from legal, sociological, and historical points of view, but less has been said about its aesthetic procedures, and even less about the wider implications of a tendency for using transnational sources. In the case of MPB, hip-hop artists seem to understand the music they sample through an often vague, intuitive representation, which fuses qualities of those recordings with an intersubjective mood, a …

Possibilities Of Being: Black Women's Storytelling As Archival Undoing, Dasharah Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a discursive genealogy of Black women’s storytelling, positioning its art and aesthetics as a form of colonial archival undoing. Each chapter explores how transmission and documentation can transform—and circumvent—traditional colonial archives. Beginning at the start of the twentieth-century to present, this project traces the discursive legacies of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, and Staceyann Chin, examining each writer as a site of becoming as they individually (and collectively) seek to articulate an expansive idea of a Black world that constitutes a broader understanding of Black freedom. They each share a common goal of creating a …

"Is This America?" Fannie Lou Hamer, Humanity, Citizenship And The Struggle For Inclusive Democracy, Rhonda Chambers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the life, political rhetoric, and enduring legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, focusing on how her lived experiences under Jim Crow shaped the development of a distinctive political voice grounded in dignity, moral conviction, and democratic struggle.  Born into a Mississippi sharecropping family and denied the educational and political opportunities afforded to white Americans, Hamer developed an understanding of injustice through the realities of racial and economic oppression. Her experience with segregation, voter suppression, violence, and the Black church became central to the way she understood citizenship and was able to articulate the demands of freedom.

Through an …

Analyzing Harmony In Bulgarian And Bulgarian-Influenced Choral Arrangements From The Radio To The Screen, Annie Beliveau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates developments in arrangements and compositions made for Bulgarian choirs between 1950 and 2025. Arrangements from Bulgaria’s communist period (1944-1989), when musical radio broadcasts were tailored to promote nationalist sentiment, eventually reached the ears of foreigners on the other side of the Iron Curtain via recordings and ensemble tours. These obrabotki (arrangements of folk tunes) became popular in the “world music” boom of the 1980s, and foreign composers soon began to create new compositions for Bulgarian choirs to sing on albums and in scores for film, television, and video games. Over time, the uses of Bulgarian choir in …

Panopticism And Pan-Oticism: Sound-Power From Foucault To Deleuze, Eric Dillenberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From Muzak to long range acoustic devices (LRADs), the contemporary proliferation of sonic technologies for governing moods, behaviors, and potentialities complicates the virtual absence of sound within Michel Foucault's primarily visual modality of disciplinary power in Discipline and Punish, exemplified by his central conceptual model of the panopticon. This thesis develops the corollary concept of pan-oticism to theorize the transformation of sound-power and its political function within administered sonic ecologies from Foucault's disciplinary societies to Gilles Deleuze's societies of control. Within the enclosed spaces constitutive of disciplinary societies, sound-power remains subordinated to Foucault's visual logic of panopticism, extending …

Waltzing Into Silence: Time, Space, And The Afterword In Ravel’S Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales In Comparison With Schumann’S Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, Nora I. Bartosik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation undertakes an analysis of Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano against the backdrop of Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, a work with significant parallels in structure, character, and narrative. The Davidsbündlertänze are examined as a model for the Valses nobles et sentimentales, with an emphasis on the two works’ use of the waltz form, their structure as a series of miniature dances composed as a single cohesive work, and their inclusion of an afterword, or epilogue. The analysis draws from the extensive literature on Schumann’s piano cycles in order to apply similar techniques to …

Symphonies That "Sing": Reevaluating Voices And Vocality In Mahler's Early Symphonies, Erin M. Johnston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the role of vocal music in Gustav Mahler’s early symphonies through the lens of the composer’s practice of self-borrowing. Mahler was known to use his own pre-existing songs as the basis for large-scale movements in his early symphonies. While scholars have long recognized the close relationship between Mahler’s songs and symphonies, existing studies have emphasized questions of biography, intertextuality, musical meaning, and quotation rather than sustained analytical investigations of vocal influence in Mahler’s large-scale symphonic forms. The present study places this vocality at the forefront of its analyses, arguing that Mahler’s reworking of his own Lieder is …

New Cities, Old Names, Jason J. Palladino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates instances of etymology-based wordplay of words from languages other than Latin and Greek in the Aeneid. There are instances of etymology-based wordplay (also known as etymological glosses) of multiple languages other than Greek and Latin. Books 1, 4, and 6 have etymological glosses of the Punic language, and Books 7, 9, and 12 have etymological glosses of various other languages of Italy, such as Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan. This thesis is divided into two sections that examine Punic etymological glosses and Italic etymological glosses, respectively. It aims to place Virgil’s use of non-Greek and Latin etymological wordplay …

Performing Hybridity: Solo Cello Works By Diasporic Korean Composers Isang Yun And Younghi Pagh-Paan, Sarah Song

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation follows my personal exploration of solo cello works by Korean diasporic composers Isang Yun and Younghi Pagh-Paan. While the study of postwar Korean music has long been discussed within an “East meets West” framework, my research aims to abandon such divisive binaries and explores the activity between two musical cultures during learning and performance. By engaging with a wide network of meaning (e.g., score-based, extra-musical knowledge, historical context), I track cumulative layers of discovery while considering a multitude influences from Korean and Austro-Germanic cultures as a second-generation Korean American. My methodology includes a reflective approach categorized in two …

Object (Im)Permanence: Toward A Hauntology Of The Violin, Pala Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Object (Im)permanence goes looking for the violin’s ontological uncertainties, its persistent historical specters, and its relation to things not fully present, no longer, or yet to come. Drawing on the history of the author’s own instrument as an inherited object, this study explores the violin’s strangest affordances: its capacity to hold a psychic charge, sustain absent presence, remotely activate somatic memory, and invite reciprocal relationality. Adapting the Derridean concept of “hauntology” as a framing for the violin’s spectral vitality, Object (Im)permanence imagines how a hauntology of the violin can account for its ontological uncertainties, logic of absent presence, and persistent …

Reimagining Folk Songs: A Bridge Between Tradition And Innovation In Georgy Sviridov’S Music, Polina Nazaykinskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998), one of the most prominent Soviet composers of his generation, remains largely underrepresented in Western performance and scholarship. This dissertation examines the compositional language of Sviridov’s Kursk Songs (1964) through direct comparison with the seven folk songs published in Anna Rudneva’s 1957 collection Kurskie pesni that served as the work’s source material. The study addresses a central paradox of Sviridov’s musical language: how remarkably economical, predominantly diatonic materials can produce powerful and highly individual expressive results.

The analysis considers how Sviridov preserves essential characteristics of the folk sources while transforming their harmony, rhythm, form, texture, orchestration, and …

Assessing The Relationship Between Housing Provision And State Legitimacy Through The Vision 2030 Plan In Saudi Arabia, Shovan Bala

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars have long evaluated the politicization of housing by examining the relationship between housing provision and legitimacy across democratic and authoritarian states. This thesis contributes to the scholarship on housing provision and state legitimacy by examining the Saudi state’s recent housing development efforts, and its role in shaping citizens’ housing aspirations and informing their understanding of housing as a state responsibility. Using the Vision 2030 Plan’s Sakani and Ejar initiatives, I examine the nexus between Saudi government’s housing development efforts and provision of financial incentives and citizens’ perceived reliance on the state for housing. I evaluate these housing initiatives through …

Curated Spaces: Cognition By Design, Sydney Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Curated Spaces: Cognition by Design” is a dissertation that considers the connection between designed spaces and cognition. This work combines philosophy of mind and aesthetics. The dissertation introduces the term “Curated Cognition”, which builds on the concept of situated cognition ( Brooks, 1991; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman,  2003;  Sterelny, 2010; Krueger, 2015; Colombetti, 2020 ). The dissertation argues that the environment is essential to cognition, and all environments are curated; therefore, the way we think, feel, and act is curated as well. Some non-human animals may inhabit worlds that are not curated. For example, an octopus may find shelter in …

Modeling Large Language Model Cognition, Eleni Angelou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project builds three core directions in a philosophy of cognitive science for large language models (LLMs): 1) interpreting LLM behavior, 2) analyzing the system in terms of Marr’s three levels, and 3) mapping the correspondence between behavioral outputs and the internals of the system. It consists of the following three chapters accordingly:

Dennettian Stances and Large Language Models

The aim of this chapter is to argue that there are convincing grounds for applying Dennett’s framework of stances to LLMs against worries that doing so produces “counterfeit people”. After introducing the intentional and design stances, I take sycophancy as a …

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Model-Theoretic Arguments In Philosophy, Peter Susanszky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is on model-theoretic arguments in philosophy, especially those of Quine, Davidson, and Putnam. In the first part, to ground the debate, I give a rigorous introduction to the salient parts of first-order model theory. I start the second part by giving an introduction to Quine's philosophy, and how the model-theoretic arguments fit into it. After considering how Donald Davidson adopted the Quinean lesson, I move on to Putnam's model-theoretic arguments. Putnam's spin on these model-theoretic considerations significantly departs from Quine and Davidson, while retaining many of the core ideas. Most importantly, I argue that the target of Putnam's …

Urban Counterpoint (1992–2003): The Piano Music Of Ed Bland, Joseph Vaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the piano music of Ed Bland, a politically and philosophically vocal composer active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose music draws on both the European and American twentieth-century avant-garde, and on African American vernacular music genres from ragtime to hip-hop. A review of the historical and personal context for these pieces, and a detailed examination of the compositional processes used in this music, work together to demonstrate how Bland thought about the relationship between different musical genres and languages.

Through this combination of theory of musical genre, historical and biographical study, and detailed analysis …

Nāgasvaram Ensemble Music In Contemporary South India: Perspectives Of Revival, Rajeswari Ranganathan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of nāgasvaram ensemble music in South India based on ethnographic research in Tamil Nadu conducted between 2022 and 2026. Drawing from observations of its various performance contexts and extensive interviews with contemporary practitioners, teachers, students, impresarios, and archivists, this study examines how the aesthetics, social contexts, and circulation of nāgasvaram ensemble music have evolved over the last four decades. Countering prevalent narratives of its decline and highlighting its endurance, I argue that this musical practice is undergoing a revival, both shaped by and contributing to ongoing social transformations.

Nāgasvaram ensembles featuring the double-reed woodwind instrument …

Theoretical Analysis And Performance Interpretation In Thomas Adès’S Traced Overhead, Han Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While many post-tonal composers avoid any inkling of tonality by embracing dissonance or breaking tonal resolutions, Thomas Adès does not shy away from the traditional harmonies that strongly relate to tonal music, such as the circle of fifths, major and minor triads, and the horn-call motif, but adopts several intervallic systems that govern all the notes, including aligned cycles, parsimonious voice leading, and the twelve-tone aggregate.

To examine how Adès uses these intervallic systems to repurpose traditional harmonies, this dissertation presents a close tonal analysis of his solo piano work Traced Overhead. Integrating historical, pianistic, and extramusical contexts, this …

The Game Within: An Anthropological Approach To Games And Play, Nehal Maged Mohamed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on an eighteen-month ethnography of El Ghawasa, an Egyptian play-based organization that designs educational games, tools, and services. Claiming that El Ghawasa, with its ethos of play, seeks to create an alternative to the capitalist corporate structure. Through tracking how this organization navigates ruptures, negotiates constraints, and experiments with different practices and internal restructuring, I explore the possibilities and limitations of El Ghawasa, while attempting to resist absorption by the very system it opposes. I ask: when the rules keep changing (while the logic of the capitalist corporate structure remains the same), and the boundaries of …

Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates

Graduate Masters Theses

The cultural and social history of America in the 90s is examined in this thesis by looking at the Disney Renaissance, a period of ten films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). This thesis illustrates how the animators were able to seamlessly incorporate important societal trends of the 90s into their films, portraying a changing world within their films. As they were creating a new style of the animated movie musical, they were creating works that connected to the audiences watching in new ways, by putting up a reflection of society within their films. The way that the …

Comfort In Cases Of Sickness: Health And Colonialism At The Eastern Pequot Reservation, 1800-1850, Katherine N. Brauckmann

Graduate Masters Theses

Health and sickness were major concerns for the Eastern Pequot community in the first half of the 19th century. At this time, the Eastern Pequot’s collective finances were controlled by a court-appointed overseer who rented reservation land to non-Pequot individuals and used the generated funds to purchase goods and services for those on the reservation. In an 1841 petition to remove an overseer for failing in his duties, issues of health were brought up twice among their grievances: that they received little support “in Sickness or in health” and that “our Land if family rented […] would add much to …

Propagating Labor: How The Craft Brewery Movement Attracted And Grew A Workforce To Fuel Its Rise, Timothy J. Vlieger

Graduate Masters Theses

The craft beer movement grew from just a few tiny microbreweries and disparate homebrewing clubs to a nationwide phenomenon accounting for over ten thousand businesses and hundreds of thousands of employees. The arrival of this movement in the 1980s coincided with drastic changes in the economy, which was moving away from the manufacturing base that enabled postwar prosperity and developing a “New Economy” of high-tech and service sector employment. Within this economic transition, the social contract between capital and labor was being rewritten and what constituted a good job was being redefined. Employment in the emerging craft brewing industry represented …

The Furry Community As A Case Study In Identity-Related Conflict, Patrick Hampton

Graduate Masters Theses

The “furry” community has gained notoriety both on the internet and in physical spaces for the dramatic portrayal of animal-based personas referred to as “fursonas.” This group has become the subject of ridicule and moral concern due to the occasionally controversial nature of the content produced by some members of the community. However, there are many different interpretations both within and outside of the community around what the community entails. In this thesis, I examine how the furry community and the identity of its members is shaped by external pressure or social stigmatization? I answer this through the following three …

From Ecclesiastical Tradition To Judicial Authority: Divorce In Scioto County, Ohio, 1809-1851, Franchesica Lashelle Kidd

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines divorce in Scioto County, Ohio between 1809 and 1851 as a case study of the legal and social transformations that followed the American Revolution. While previous scholarship has focused primarily on New England and the colonial period, Ohio has received comparatively little scholarly attention. Using legislative records, court proceedings, census records, and individual divorce petitions, this study argues that Ohio’s transition from ecclesiastical precedent toward judicial authority reshaped the ways in which marriage and divorce were understood. Divorce became increasingly accessible to both women and men, while changing legal practices reflected broader shifts in gender, family, and …

Civilian Sustenance: Parcel Exchange, Household Provisioning, And Soldier Foodways In The American Civil War, Kathleen Migneault

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines parcel exchange between Civil War soldiers and the households and communities that continued to sustain them after military service removed them from ordinary domestic provision. Drawing on forty published collections of Civil War correspondence and diaries, it follows references to boxes, parcels, food, clothing, money, medicine, and useful goods across camps, hospitals, prisons, and home front networks. It argues that parcels from home were neither incidental sentimental tokens nor simple supplements to the ration, but a recurring practice of civilian sustenance shaped by affection, scarcity, infrastructure, and loss. The chapters trace the routes through which parcels moved, …

Female Perpetrators In Nazi Germany: The Effects Of Nazi Ideology And Radicalization On Three Female Concentration Camp Perpetrators, Stephanie Afonso

Graduate Masters Theses

The Second World War in Germany saw the largest number of civilian German women participating in brutal violence against Jewish peoples. The combination of sources used aids in presenting a broader image of these women both within the concentration camps and during their trials. This thesis argues the effects of Nazi ideology and radicalization on the three main subjects, Irma Grese, Maria Mandl, and Ilse Koch. Equally as important is how the American public perceived them and their roles during their respective post-war trials--which looked at them through the lens of femininity and sexuality. Within that violence came the transgression …

A Bostonian In Cuba: Edwin F. Atkins And United States Imperialism In Latin America, Miles Klotz

Graduate Masters Theses

Edwin F. Atkins, a native of the Boston area and member of a well-known Brahmin family, was the largest and most powerful American property owner in Cuba at the turn of the twentieth century, overseeing a massive sugar plantation called Soledad in the southern port city of Cienfuegos. Atkins’ ownership of Soledad coincided with massive changes in Cuba’s colonial system of government, concluding with the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898) and the War of 1898, which saw the United States defeat Spain, gain control of Cuba, and install a military government on the island. This thesis examines the attitudes and …

As Sacred As The Laws Of God: Property As The Link Between Cicero, Jefferson And Adams, Adam Mattison

Graduate Masters Theses

Gilbert Chinard’s publication of Thomas Jefferson’s legal commonplace book in 1926 and literary commonplace book in 1928 introduced a new question into the study of the American Founders: what was the relationship between the Founders and the authors of the classical world? Through the twentieth century, the historiography of that question has resolved into three separate streams represented by Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Meyer Reinhold’s Classica Americana and Carl Richard’s The Founders and the Classics. These three scholars argued respectively; that the Founders were not influenced by the classics and only used them as ornamentation …

'In America On Twofold Mission': Elite Filipina Women On The U.S. Stage, 1898-1929, Catherine D. Mayfield

Graduate Masters Theses

After more than 300 years of Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the United States’ acquisition of las Islas Filipinas at the end of the Spanish-American War introduced the Philippine Islands to yet another colonizer. Amidst a backdrop of insurgent resistance and the building of a U.S.-based education and government system under the guise of “benevolent assimilation,” elite Filipina women navigated a mélange of cultural values and the possibility of new public roles. Filipino “elites,” those with political or economic power at the upper echelons of Philippine society, played key collaborative roles for the U.S. colonial regime. Yet the actions and …