Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Moonbird, Samuel Kinsman

Theses and Dissertations

Love is a formless entity. Transformative and elusive, it can wreak havoc in one's life if misplaced. Unrequited love has potential toxicity, rage can stem from the most loving of places, and countless crimes of passion are committed every year.

However, in its base nature, love is formative. It has the potential to bring two separate energies together, the ensuing combination is what people dream of. The chemical process of love, the intellectual understanding of attraction and the visceral pit-in-stomach when one looks across the room at their lover are all worth exploring, especially in the theater.

In this piece …

Without A Net: Creating A One-Man Show, Joseph Timothy Mallon

Theses and Dissertations

During the Spring of 2011, I wrote and performed a one-man show entitled Hamlet and Pancakes, which was inspired by my Irish grandfather who used to cook pancakes for me while reading Shakespeare aloud. This sparked my love of all things theatre, food, and performance. This thesis contains the full script of that one-man show and it serves as an overview of the creative process that led to the show's development and evolution. What began as a seemingly daunting assignment quickly became one of the more enjoyable endeavors of my life as an actor. The show seemed to write itself …

The Definition Of Youth, Jessta Noel

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to write my own theatrical production which would solely include me as the actor. I drew upon my experience of childhood growing up in Atlanta, GA as well as the stories passed on in my family.

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 …

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 …

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 Meaning And Purpose Of Quotation And Stylistic Reference In Hans Werner Henze's Requiem: Nine Sacred Concertos For Piano Solo, Trumpet Concertante, And Large Chamber Orchestra (1990-92), Daniel C. Pappas

Theses and Dissertations

Quotation and stylistic reference are important communicative devices in the musical language of Hans Werner Henze that serve as a means of expression in his multilayered approach to composition. This study examines the central role that quotation and reference play in Hans Werner Henze's Requiem: Nine Sacred Concertos for piano solo, trumpet concertante, and large chamber orchestra (1990-92). While some studies have identified selected references, their primary focus has been on the work's pitch organization and formal plan. This study instead considers Henze's unique approach to quotation and reference. In addition to interviews with the composer, Henze's own writings are …

Piano Music Of Elisenda Fábregas: A Stylistic Analysis, Jinha Park

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to present a stylistic analysis of the piano music by American-Spanish composer and pianist Elisenda F├â┬íbregas (b.1955). F├â┬íbregas' compositional output includes more than forty works for solo, chamber ensemble, vocal, chorus and orchestra; her large-scale piano works consist of Mirage (1997), Portraits I (2000), Homenatge a Mompou (2006), and Hommage ├â┬á Mozart (2006). Chapter I consists of an introduction, including the purpose of the investigation and a literature review. Chapter II covers brief biographical information, compositional genre and style, and compositional output of piano, vocal and chamber music. Chapter III provides a stylistic analysis …

Blogging Chronic Illness And Negotiating Patient-Hood: Online Narratives Of Women With Ms, Collette Sosnowy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Personal narratives about women's everyday lives with chronic illness are mapped onto the landscape of social media through blogging. Social media is facilitating an already-existing shift in patients' roles as they are increasingly enabled and expected to self-educate themselves about their illness, collaborate with providers, self-manage their care, and engage in health activism. The health care industry has seized on the widespread use of social media to bolster rhetoric that the accelerated knowledge development made possible through social media has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Critics, however, argue that responsibility and activism via digital technologies has become …

A Single Day: Isolation And Connection In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway And Christopher Isherwood’S A Single Man, Hannah Williams

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

A Critique Of Charles Peirce's Account Of The Necessary Conditions For The Possibility Of Experience, Daniel Edward Kruidenier

Theses and Dissertations

Herein is investigated the effort to establish the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience begun by Immanuel Kant and carried further by Charles Peirce. I focus my attention on Peirce's development of a Kantian strategy for discovering and proving such conditions. The conclusion that I argue for is that such an effort requires the use of a rational intuitive faculty. Both Kant and even more vociferously Peirce overtly reject the existence of such a faculty, yet, I argue, it is difficult to make sense of certain crucial discoveries in its absence.

The South Carolina Sanatorium: The Landscape Of Public Healthcare In The Segregated South, Amanda Noll

Theses and Dissertations

This site-specific study examines the development of the South Carolina Sanatorium, which operated as a state-funded tuberculosis treatment center between 1915 and 1953. Using the South Carolina Sanatorium as a case study, this thesis draws upon the history of the Progressive Era, medicine, and architecture to analyze the influence of segregation on public healthcare in the South. By looking at the development of individual buildings and the site as whole, the built environment of the South Carolina Sanatorium is used as a framework to assess the effects of segregation on tuberculosis treatment in South Carolina.

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.

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 …

The Music Of James Reese Europe For Vernon And Irene Castle, Ralph G. Barrett

Theses and Dissertations

James Reese Europe (1881-1919) was one of the leading African American musicians of the first two decades of the twentieth century. He was renowned as a conductor of theater and dance orchestras, a composer of syncopated dance music and popular song, and an advocate for improved opportunities and remuneration for African American professional musicians in New York. From late 1913 until mid-1915, Europe was musical director for the popular exhibition dance team of Vernon (1887-1918) and Irene (1893-1969) Castle. During their brief career, the Castle's were instrumental in changing the sordid image of social dancing during America's 'dance craze' of …

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), …

Some Assembly Required, Anthony Feggans

Theses and Dissertations

'Some Assembly Required' is a short story collection that explores the construction and deconstruction of identity within various fields of interest, generally hobbies or professions, and the type of people who do those professions or hobbies. It also explores dynamics of familial and romantic relationships.

Literacy Crisis, Technology, And The Radical Reversal Of Power, Erin Michelle Cromer

Theses and Dissertations

As new media is changing the way individuals communicate, efforts have already been made within universities to, once again, construct new literacy standards in the digital age, producing the appearance of a literacy crisis. I argue that rather than producing another literacy crisis, the fundamental reversal of the power structure concerning who dominates standard literacy places greater expectations on composition scholars and practitioners--rather than students--ultimately providing the conditions of possibility for using power productively to imagine a new pedagogy of rhetorical dexterity that reverses the role of expectations from standards to invention. Such a pedagogy offers rhetoric and composition a …

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 …

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 …

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 …

An Essay On Musical Narrative Theory And Its Role In Interpretation, With Analyses Of Works For Saxophone By Alfred Desenclos And John Harbison, Ian Macdonald Jeffress

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the field of semiotics has increasingly been applied to musicology, with particular attention paid to the area of narrative theory. This study will provide an introduction to the essential concepts of semiotics and narrative theory, the development of a methodology of narrative analysis with examples from the saxophone repertoire, and the application of that analytical approach to Alfred Desenclos' Prélude, Cadence, et Finale and John Harbison's San Antonio. The goal of this study will be the demonstration of narrative theory's applicability to a variety of styles pertinent to the concert saxophone repertoire. It is hoped that this …

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 …