Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Trajectories Of Transplants: Singing Alha, Birha, And The Ramayan In The Indic Caribbean, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

Indo-Caribbean music culture includes a stratum of traditional genres derived from North India’s Bhojpuri region. This article discusses three such genres: Alhâ-singing, an archaic form of birhâ, and an antiphonal style of singing the Tulsidas Râmâyan. Despite the lack of supportive contact with the Bhojpuri region after 1917, these genres flourished until the 1960s, after which the decline of Bhojpuri as a spoken language in Trinidad and Guyana, together with the impact of modernity in general, undermined their vitality. A comparative perspective with North Indian counterparts reveals illuminating parallels and contrasts.

Misrepresenting Misery: Slaves, Servants, And Motives In Early Virginia, Jamin P. Riley

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Violence has frequently been connected to the history of slavery. Graphic depictions of slaveowner violence can be found in popular literature and media. The slave experience, especially in the early modern period, should instead be explained to wider public audiences in its totality. The regulation of reproductive and familial rights by slaveowners, the use of sexual punishment, and the permanence of slavery made the enslaved life truly unique, and set it apart from the experiences of other repressed elements of early modern English society, such as the poor. The creation of the slave system and the development of its regulatory …

Peltasts And Javelineers In Classical Greek Warfare: Roles, Tactics, And Fighting Methods, Derrick A. Niese

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the developing roles, tactics, and fighting methods of javelin-armed soldiers in classical Greek warfare. The chronological scope of the paper will be broad, incorporating early evidence from the eighth century B.C.E. but focusing on the fifth and fourth centuries. Throughout the thesis I will argue that javelineers and especially peltasts earned an increasingly prominent role in Greek warfare due to several interrelated factors: constant warfare occurring on increasing and unprecedented scale; professionalization of military leadership; growing frequency of large-scale campaigns waged on diverse terrain; and an overall increase in the use of …

Spirit Possession: Exploring The Role Of The Textual Tradition In Islam, Megan Renee Werth

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This investigation focuses on locally specific manifestations of spirit possession found in Muslim societies throughout the world. Though allegedly founded on the same textual traditions, historians and anthropologists have observed that 'popular' and 'orthodox' Islamic practices have given rise to seemingly multiple, religiously inspired responses to societies' problems and to a variety of ritual acts. In spite of the numerous practices documented by scholars, a hidden narrative emerges, that Islamic spirit possession practices, whether licit or illicit, represent a phenomenon of tandem development between two distinct authorities, coexisting within a greater Islamic worldview. Muslims must deal with it in one …

Cullah Mi Gullah, African American Female Artists And The Sea Islands: Exploring Africanisms And Religious Expressions In Creative Works, Rebekkah Yisrael Mulholland

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While the Sea Islands have captured the interest of scholars and artists, especially since Zora Neale Hurston's groundbreaking novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), this thesis provides a historiography of Africanisms and religious expressions explored in Gullah literary traditions within African-American women's fiction, specifically with regards to the works of Julie Dash and Tina McElroy Ansa. Following Hurston's example, during the 1980s Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara and Paule Marshall further laid the groundwork for writers to signify upon. This qualitative study of Dash's 1991 film and novel Daughters of the Dust (1997) along with Ansa's novels Baby of …

The Antislavery Movement In Clermont County, Bethany Marie Pollitt

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The United States grappled with the question of slavery, that peculiar institution, for decades prior to the Civil War. One result of those debates was the antislavery movement. Gaining ground in the 1830s, the antislavery movement motivated people to respond to the issue of slavery in the way that suited their conscience. The Ohio River Valley is located on what once was the border line between North and South, and what to slaves meant the difference between freedom and a life of enslavement. Clermont County, located along the Ohio River, was no different than other communities along the border, such …

Nietzsche's Aristocratic Radicalism, Jonathan James Michalski

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My thesis is that Nietzsche's political philosophy is a form of aristocratic radicalism, which means that society should be ruled by the few. The goal of Nietzsche's political system is the furthering of higher culture. He rejects most modern ethical and political philosophies, because they are harmful to life, especially for the aristocratic noble types of people. Nietzsche favors an aristocratic politics, because this system can best accomplish his goals, such as the revaluation of old values and the creation of new ones. I will be arguing against those who think that he is either a radical democrat or that …

The Japanese American Resettlement Program Of Dayton, Ohio: As Administered By The Church Federation Of Dayton And Montgomery County, 1943-1946, Paul Michael Dankovich

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In September 1942, the Church Federation of Dayton and Montgomery County (Church Federation) was established. It created a Commission on War Services that coordinated social services to the thousands of military personnel and migrant war workers who flooded into wartime Dayton. Strategically, Dayton supported the nation's defense through the presence of two Army airfields and many vital industrial facilities.

Beginning on October 1, 1942, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) permitted those of Japanese descent to leave the internment camps on indefinite leave, and resettle outside of the West Coast exclusion zones. The WRA supported this program by opening field offices …

Illusionary Strength; An Analysis Of Female Empowerment In Science Fiction And Horror Films In Fatal Attraction, Aliens, And The Stepford Wives, Jennifer Lynn Ruben

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An expanded notion of empowerment along with three specific theories-Beauvoir's concept of the Other, Speciesism, Cyborg Feminism-is used to analyze the female protagonists and antagonists in the following 1970's and 1980's science fiction and horror films: Fatal Attraction, Aliens, and The Stepford Wives. The female protagonists are allowed more access to power as human beings pitted against nonhuman antagonists, but these characters are ultimately not empowering for women because they reinforce rather than undermine the patriarchal structure. Implications for further research encourage a critique of female empowerment based on both gender and species.

Blueprints: Poems, Dylan Garity

English Honors Projects

Each of the poems in Blueprints explores questions of creation: artistic and interpersonal, religious and scientific. As a writer whose work has often been based in performance, and thus explicitly focused on the relationship between author and text, i have long been fascinated by these questions: where does my voice end and the poem's begin? How do they influence each other? How does a creation, artistic or otherwise, shape its creator? Working on the page during this Honors Project has given me the opportunity to explore these questions in a more nuanced light. Many of the poems in Blueprints inform …

The Limits Of Self And Sovereign: Performing Failure In Nabokov's Pale Fire And Rushdie's Midnight Children, Michael Ferut

English Honors Projects

This project examines Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel, Pale Fire, and Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel, Midnight's Children, in conjunction with literary and political theorists including Mikhail Bahktin, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Achille Mbembe. Using Bahktin's assertion that the novel is "necessary incomplete," I examine how the authors' uses of irony and framing seeks but ultimately fails to achieve a complete, enduring representation of selves. By analyzing how this failure leads to the application of sovereign power - even its violent extreme, "necropower" - I argue that the novels revise the unified, teleological narrative structures of Bahktin and Benjamen. While not …

Ausencia: A Novella, Sarah Mintz

English Honors Projects

This honors thesis is an extended work of fiction that explores the effects of trauma on two generations of Argentine Jews. When Daniel Susterman is kidnapped by the government in 1970s Buenos Aires, his wife Marcela tries desperately to find him and bring him home safely. In the US nearly 40 years later, 14 year-old Nico begins to question what prompted his parents' feud with his grandmother, challenging their policy of silence about the past. Through alternating storylines, Ausencia explores the concepts of loss and family secrets band begs the question: are some memories better left buried?

Linguistic Discrimination In Writing Assessment: How Raters React To African American “Errors,” Esl Errors, And Standard English Errors On A State-Mandated Writing Exam, David M. Johnson, Lewis Vanbrackle

Faculty Articles

Raters of Georgia''s (USA) state-mandated college-level writing exam, which is intended to ensure a minimal university-level writing competency, are trained to grade holistically when assessing these exams. A guiding principle in holistic grading is to not focus exclusively on any one aspect of writing but rather to give equal weight to style, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and development. This study details how raters react to “errors” typical of African American English writers, of ESL writers, and of standard American English writers. Using a log-linear model to generate odds ratios for comparison of essays with these error types, results indicate linguistic discrimination …

The Many Pedagogies Of Memoir: A Study Of The Promise Of Teaching Memoir In College Composition, Melissa Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the promise and problems of memoir in the pedagogy and practices of teaching memoir in college composition. I interviewed three University of Central Florida instructors who value memoir in composition, and who at the time of this study, were mandated to teach memoir in their composition courses. The interviews focus on three main points of interest: (1) the instructors’ motivations behind their teaching of memoir, (2) how these instructors see memoir functioning in their classes, and (3) what these instructors hope their students will gain in the process of writing the memoir essay. By analyzing these interviews, …

The Yellow Fever Epidemic In Savannah, Georgia Of 1876: A Case For Applied Historical Analysis, James R. Gruenberg

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Yellow fever was a constant and deadly visitor to the southern United States since the middle of the seventeenth century. Dying of yellow fever was gruesome and terrifying. Black vomit was the prominent symptom as the patient bled to death internally and externally. Yellow fever, or 'yellow jack' to the locals, would bring Savannah, Georgia to its knees on three different occasions. In 1876, however, the city would lose a full 6% of its population, or 1,066 souls. This thesis argues that this tragic outbreak was preventable, and that the physical conditions that were well known to contribute to yellow …

Anthony Eden, Appeaser Of The Soviets?, Mark A. Turner

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In late May 1942, while the Soviet Union staggered from catastrophic defeats at Kharkov and in the Crimea, British and Soviet representatives met in London and signed a treaty of mutual assistance that would lay the basis for the Grand Alliance. This thesis, based on the newly discovered material from Stalin's secret archives, argues that Anthony Eden, British Foreign Minister, far from the weak-willed appeaser caricatured by subsequent historians, was a shrewd, yet principled diplomat, who assessed the Soviets far more realistically than did his British counterparts. Moreover, Eden was a skilled and resourceful negotiator who drove a very hard …

Writing For Change And Changing Writing: Service Learning, First-Year Composition And Writing About Writing, Vanessa Rae Bormann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through a piloted model of curriculum designed for ENC 1101 this teacher-research study investigated how service-learning can shape the experiences of both teachers and students in the first-year composition classroom. The research aimed to determine the ways in which enhancement occurred for students and teachers through evaluation of student coursework, a post-semester student focus group and a faculty interview. Focusing on the impacts of this curriculum on a part-time teacher, this study also aimed to bring to light some of the challenges inherent in service-learning within FYC, while offering ways to mediate those challenges in both course design and departmental …

"We Are Scattered, Starved, Hunted, Half-Naked, But We Are Not Conquered": Masculinity, Race And Resistance In Bleeding Kansas, Cori Simon

History Honors Projects

This project uses the dual lenses of race and gender to put the perspectives of white men fighting in Bleeding Kansas in conversation with the often silenced voices of African Americans and American Indians. Black abolitionists and soldiers in the territory articulated the conflict as central to the future of the free black community. American Indians participated in this conflict while resisting white conquest of Kansas. With these perspectives, this project argues that conceptions of masculinity, intricately tied to race, played a central role in fueling the border violence and determining the way it is remembered.

The Metaphysics Of Improvisation, Tobyn C. Demarco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In "The Metaphysics of Improvisation," I criticize wrongheaded metaphysical views of, and theories about, improvisation, and put forward a cogent metaphysical theory of improvisation, which includes action theory, an analysis of the relevant genetic and aesthetic properties, and ontology (work-hood).

The dissertation has two Parts. Part I is a survey of the history of many improvisational practices, and of the concept of improvisation. Here I delineate, sketch, and sort out the often vague boundaries between improvising and non-improvising within many art forms and genres, including music, dance, theatre, motion pictures, painting, and literature. In addition, I discuss the concept of …

(Re)Forming Italians: Children's Literature In Italy, 1929-1939, Marisa Giorgi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues for the centrality of children's literature under Fascism as a tool to bring about the ultimate goal of forming the "new" Italian. This project examines the relationship between children's literature, the creation of culture and the transmission of ideology in Fascist Italy. I chose the period 1929-1939 because this decade encompasses the years the regime actively sought consolidation of power and consensus, as well as the years of the fascistization of Italian schools. These novels are conduits of fascist ideology veiled as adventure stories, historical novels, bildungsroman or romantic fiction for children and young adults and deserve …

Global Wreckage And Consumer Illusions: Responses To The Human Effects Of Economic Globalization In Sub-Saharan African Francophone Novels And Films, 1973-2006, Sara C. Hanaburgh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My study examines a group of nine novels and films set in Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Cameroon and Gabon written and produced between 1973 and 2006 in which "the West" and its international finance network are depicted as the fundamental contemporary world power that wields a destructive dominance over African countries. These forms of control are in many ways similar, yet distinct, from the projects of European imperialism. I analyze consumerism as a major feature of globalization, and discuss the linkage of globalization and the consumer society by looking at various theoretical models, in particular that which Jean Baudrillard conceptualized …

The Museum Of Modern Art's "What Is Modern?" Series, 1938-1969, Jennifer Tobias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1938 and 1969, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) poses the question of What Is Modern? (WIM) in a series of books, traveling exhibitions, and a symposium. This dissertation argues for the WIM project as a sustained if minimally effective effort to influence popular American perceptions of modern art, architecture, and design, at the same time embodying tensions inherent to the museum and its notions of that modernism.

MoMA is an unquestionable influence on modern art history. WIM is a significant component of this influence, yet scholarship on the series is minimal. Hiding in plain sight, the series offers …

Recollecting Turbulence: Catastrophe And Sacrifice In The "History Of My Life" By Henry Darger, Carl Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of "The History of My Life" the 5,086 page autobiographical text by the outsider artist/author Henry Darger, uses non-linear modes of analysis, such as chaos and complexity theory, to explore the meaning of Darger's epic narrative. Beginning with the idea that turbulence, seemingly chaotic, actually comes about as a compensatory restructuring of inadequate or unstable system dynamics, this study goes on to show that, as both influence and effect, turbulence is found at every level of Darger's life and art, both in theme and structure. "My Life" is a prime example: an extended narrative describing a cataclysmic tornado, …

Reading Through Prayer: Lectio Divina And "Liturgical Reading" In Some Medieval Texts, Marie Schilling Grogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prayer texts found in a variety of medieval genres merit more careful scrutiny from literary critical perspectives. Such attention to the verbal artifacts, prayers, that memorialize an activity of central importance in medieval culture, praying, deepens our understanding not only of the prayers and the works in which they are found, but also of the milieu that produced them. This study seeks to model such a critical turn by reading three particular works "through" the prayers that constitute, punctuate and frame them -- privileging the prayers as the starting points for the investigation of their literary and devotional settings. This …

Aspects Of Adaptation In The Egyptian Singing Film, Margaret Jean Farrell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores aspects of adaptation in the Egyptian singing film in the period from 1932 to 1962. The primary types of adaptation examined are those that are evident in the stories the films told, the ways in which the songs functioned within the stories, and the music for which these films formed the setting. Research was conducted through the viewing of over sixty Egyptian films as well as time spent in Cairo to study Arabic language and music, and to collect primary sources in the form of films, press books, books, and periodicals.

The goal of this study is …

Baseball In The Heartland: Semi-Pro Baseball Survives In Iowa, Todd Michael Hospodarsky

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Baseball has been an important part of American popular culture for over one hundred years. In the early part of the twentieth century baseball was the nation's most pervasive sport and symbolized many values and attitudes that Americans held dear. During the late nineteenth century, adult baseball teams were formed within small towns across the nation. The team members were typically considered amateur athletes playing "town team" baseball. Over the years, as they were given opportunities to make money from their play, the term of semi-professional was applied to many of these players.

The decades following World War II were …

Binding Ochre To Theory, Simone E. Nibbs

Pomona Senior Theses

Widely found throughout the archaeological and artistic records in capacities ranging from burial contexts to early evidence of artistic expression, red ochre has been studied in archaeological and art conservationist communities for decades. Despite this, literature discussing binders is disparate and often absent from accessible arenas. Red ochre is important historically because its use can be used to help further the understanding of early humans, their predecessors, and their cognitive capabilities. However, there is not much written speculation on the processes involved in binder selection, collection, and processing. Based on the idea of these three activities associated with binders, I …

How Open Are We To Healing By Healed Healers? One Missionary’S Story, Brian Rude

Consensus

No abstract provided.

“Love One Another As I Have Loved You”, Ali Tote

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Two Kinds Of Love: Martin Luther’S Religious World, Allen Jorgenson

Consensus

Title: Two kinds of love : Martin Luther's religious world Author: Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna Publisher: Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780800697075