Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Communication, Labor, And Communicative Labor, Rachel Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project looks at the work we do to understand, to be understood, and to act on the basis of such understanding. Communicative labor is an important and under-theorized aspect of communication, and one that significantly impacts our epistemic, social and political lives. In this dissertation I take such labor as my object of analysis, and show how it bears on speakers and contexts.

First I provide an analysis of labor suitable for characterizing unwaged, immaterial and reproductive labor, and argue that such an analysis helps make sense of language systems ' the common pool resource systems that allow speakers …

Sublimity And Identity: Portrayals Of The Female Body By Latin American Women Poets In The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Kathryn Mendez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the different portrayals of the female body and its relationship to transmodernity, sublimity and identity in the latter part of the 20th century up to the first decade of the 21st century. The poets cited in the following chapters are Gioconda Belli, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ana Istarú, Elvia Ardalani, Nancy Morejón, Eliane Potiguara, and Natalie Diaz. The selected poets reflect a diverse sampling of writers from the last fifty years who regularly reference the female body as part of their work, particularly in the context of violence and testimony, motherhood and authorship, the search for home and cultural …

Civil Unrest In The Untied State Of America: Facing The Threat, Menemsha P.S. Milnor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the purpose and function of the police in a modern state. It draws mainly from the ideas put forth by Walter Benjamin in his 1921 essay, Critique of Violence, and focuses exclusively on the events surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. By applying political theory to concrete events, it attempts to expose the mechanics of capitalist state repression as presented in its current form. Central themes are police violence, state repression, popular sovereignty and political resistance. It is the intention of this piece of writing that it be used for practical purposes, to serve as a foundation …

The Making Of Knowledge-Makers In Composition: A Distant Reading Of Dissertations, Benjamin M. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Combining qualitative coding with original algorithmic and quantitative analyses, this project aggregates and visualizes metadata from 2,711 recent doctoral dissertations in Composition/Rhetoric, completed between 2001 and 2010 (inclusive), in order to establish an empirical baseline of what new and established scholars in Composition/Rhetoric agree upon as acceptable research in the field. I find that both subject matter and methodologies largely collocate within a small number of clusters, but not without cross-over among these clusters, and I call for increased dialogue among schools focusing on these different methods and subjects.

Chapter 1, 'Disciplinary Anxiety and the Composition of Composition,' reviews the …

Theater Matters: Female Theatricality In Hawthorne, Alcott, Brontë, And James, Keiko Miyajima

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the ways the novelists on both sides of the Atlantic use the figure of the theatrical woman to advance claims about the nature and role of women. Theater is a deeply paradoxical art form: Seen at once as socially constitutive and promoting mass conformity, it is also criticized as denaturalizing, decentering, etiolating, queering, feminizing. These anxieties coalesce around the image of the actress. In nineteenth century fiction, the image of a woman performing on stage is a powerful one, suggestive of ideal femininity, but also of negative traits including deception, artificiality and an unfeminine appetite for public …

Renaissance Humanism And The Ottoman 'Other' - Discourse Construction, Position And Power, Aramis Miranda-Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had an overwhelming geopolitical impact on Western Europe which included a discursive shift that depended greatly on the ideological construction of this event by its contemporaries for its consequences. In other words, the nature of Western European discourse subsequent to the Fall of Constantinople was rooted in the psychological impact this loss of territory had in contemporary secular and church leaders as well as their functionaries, many of which were key humanist figures. Consequently, Renaissance writers who constructed the Ottomans as 'others', were also writing within a context of power relations. In this …

Music In Poetry And Poetry In Music: Tumanian's Anush, Beata Asmik Navratil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The poem Anush by the Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanian (1869-1923) is rooted in traditional Armenian music. Tumanian's poem reflects a number of manifestations thereof: (1) It borrows in its style from Armenian lyrical songs (such as lalik and khagh), from the parerg style (the traditional dance-song), and from the voghb style (laments such as funeral laments, bayati, and tragic odes). (2) Ashug style of storytelling/singing as a main form of conveying the storyline and emotions of protagonists are present. (3) Dancing and music making during Armenian traditional rituals -- in particular, the Hambarsum celebration (Feast of Christ's Ascension), …

"The Planet Is The Way It Is Because Of The Scheme Of Words": Sun Ra And The Performance Of Reckoning, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This constellatory essay is a study of the African American sound experimentalist, thinker and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial Sun Ra (1914-1993) through samplings of his wide, interdisciplinary archive: photographs, film excerpts, selected recordings, and various interviews and anecdotes. In composing this essay, I particularly consider how these fragments resonate against each other, offering insight into how Ra radically subverts the restraints imposed upon him as a black man in the United States and thus transfigures his racial alienness into a liberatory, literally alien performance. This self-transfiguration allows Ra to transform such impossible restraints into a condition of possibility for reckoning. I …

Sisters In Sublime Sanctity: Schiller's Jungfrau, Euripides's Iphigenia Plays, And Joan Of Arc On The Stage, John Martin Pendergast

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schiller reinvented the image of Joan of Arc in his play, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, with consequences that affected theatrical representations of Joan for the rest of that century and well into the twentieth. Regarding representations of Joan of Arc to be found in Shakespeare or Voltaire as unworthy of her nobility, Schiller set out to create a more powerful character who suffers at the hands of fate but changes history by sheer force of will. He took as his allegorical model the characterization of Iphigenia made famous by Euripides in …

Education As A Site For Ethical Transformation And Activism, Lindsay Sudeikis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In adolescence, purpose, integrity, and wonder come to life. It is of paramount importance that ethics-in-action be taught in our high schools. There is a need for a broader vision of the purpose of education beyond instrumental uses, specifically beyond preparing young people only for the work force. In the twenty-first century, we are educating laborers, homo economicus, and not whole persons, homo sapiens. Does this mentality negate the heart, psyche, dignity, feelings, awe, and creativity of one's humanity? Likewise, does it negate one's ethical responsibility to their fellow human and to the natural world? Who has the …

The Architecture Of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Sugar Mills: Creole Power And African Resistance In Late Colonial Cuba, Lorena Tezanos Toral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba had become the world's leading sugar producer, providing about a third of the world's supply. As a result, sugar mills dominated the Cuban countryside, each one growing into a micro-town, with housing complexes (mansions for owners and slave barracks or bohios for workers), industrial facilities (mills and boiler houses), and adjoining buildings (kitchens, infirmaries, etc.), all organized around a central, open space, known as a batey. Owned by the Creole elite (New World offspring of Spanish settlers) and worked by African slaves, sugar mills became places of enslavement and subjugation as well as contact, …

A Light In The Darkness: Argentinian Photography During The Military Dictatorship (1976-1983), Ana Tallone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2006, on the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup that brought Argentinian democracy to a halt, a group of photojournalists put together an outstanding exhibition of images from the dictatorship. This dissertation critically engages with the most enduring photojournalistic works produced during this period and featured in the landmark retrospective. By researching the historical context of these photographs, I aim to underscore the important contributions photojournalists made not only during the dictatorship, but also in its immediate aftermath, when the most iconic images were republished in printed publications including newspapers, magazines and books. As a starting point, I review …

Organizing Against Discrimination: The Chinese Hand Laundrymen Historical Niche And Ethnic Solidarity In America, Johnny Thach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From the late 1800s to early 1900s, hand laundries developed into the first Chinese historical niche in America in conjunction with Chinese laundrymen's activism, community organization, and ethnic solidarity in response to the proliferation of anti-Chinese discriminatory ordinances and laws instigated by White laundries and government officials. Using primary sources and secondary historical examples, this thesis explores the formation of the niche through the collective actions of two Chinese laundrymen organizations: the Tung Hing Tong “("同心堂")” in California, and the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in New York. This thesis demonstrates that not only were both organizations founded differently and for …

Siento Una Flauta: Improvisational Idiom, Style, And Performance Practice Of Charanga Flutists In New York From 1960 To 2000, Jessica Lynne Valiente

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Siento una Flauta: Improvisational Idiom, Style, and Performance Practice of Charanga Flutists in New York from 1960-2000.

The charanga, the Cuban dance music ensemble consisting of flute, strings, piano, bass, timbales, congas, and güiro, and vocals, underwent five decades of evolution in Cuba, beginning in the early 20th century. It was the breeding ground for two significant popular dance music genres, the mambo and the cha-cha-chá, before being transplanted to New York City in the mid-1950's. Charangas came to New York when the popularity of the mambo and the cha-cha-chá was well-established there. Once in New York, the charanga gave …

The Heterotopia Of Flight: Resisting The Domestic, Sarah Elizabeth Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The familiar image of a woman fleeing danger is a well-worn convention of heroine-centered fiction, a plot device inevitably resolved when the heroine returns safely to her home and family. This dissertation proposes a new reading of that narrative by asserting that rather than serving as a space of protection, the home poses the greatest threat to an individual's autonomy. If we understand the domestic as a space in which bodies are ordered and, more specifically, gendered, classed, and raced, the trope of flight from the domestic can be read as an act of resistance to subjugation. This act is …

The Inconstancy Of Bodies: Yvonne Meier's Works, 1985 ' 2012, Lindsey Ann Drury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What is ability? And conversely, what is disability? This research on the dancer and choreographer Yvonne Meier theorizes that her more than 30-year career has challenged the oft perceived polarities between function and dysfunction, utility and futility through the physical actions of dance performances. As she developed as a dancer and choreographer, Meier engaged in forms of movement training that pledged to expand her ability by unearthing the hidden causes and effects of actions. And yet, she created works which foregrounded the very gaps in knowledge between acts, their intentions, and effects. The fundamental disability expressed through Meier's works is …

Gender And Trauma From World War I To The War In Iraq: Narrative In The Aftermath Of Loss, Jenny Young Kijowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trauma Studies is predicated on the idea of unspeakability: events that are experienced as deep psychic wounds break the frameworks for understanding, resulting in an inability to translate the experience into language. Scholars who study the literature of trauma are thus faced with this central paradox: how do writers speak the unspeakable? Trauma literature is generally regarded as texts that not only are thematically centered on a traumatic event or series of traumatic events, but also structurally reflect the symptoms of trauma. Thus the formal qualities of trauma narratives include fragmentation, contradiction, repetition, circularity, and intrusion, such that these texts …

On The Threshold: Breadwinning, Capitalism And The Absent/Present Father In The Works Of Three Late 20th-Century U.S. Novelists, Nancy J. Hoch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As society industrialized in the nineteenth century and jobs moved outside the home, a figure which I call the absent/present father began to make his appearance in American literature. This figure, hovering physically or emotionally on the threshold of family life, never completely present but never completely absent either, has filled the pages of fiction from that time until recently when, as the U.S. becomes postindustrial, depictions of the absent/present father decline.

Bringing a socio-economic as opposed to the usual psychological perspective to my close readings of the fictional family, I explore the cultural work the absent/present father does in …

Gender Difference In Working Parents' Perceptions Of Work/Family Conflict And The Role Of Occupational Prestige, Heather Kirsten Mccabe

Dissertations and Theses

As many Americans move away from the traditional homemaker-breadwinner family model, research on gender and work/family conflict has become increasingly important and the question of gender difference in experiences of work/family conflict continues to be relevant. While there is research that shows women tend to experience significantly greater work/family conflict than men, there are also studies that have shown little or no gender difference, and some that offer evidence that men are reporting more work/family conflict. This study contributes to the debate by examining gender and occupational prestige in regard to working parents' perceptions of work-to-family and family-to-work spillover, with …

Migration Of The Butterfly, Todd Keisling

Kaleidoscope

This is an excerpt from a novella.

More Than A Game: The Legacy Of Black Baseball, Tara Moriarty

Kaleidoscope

Out of a segregated and persecuted black society, the Negro Leagues arose to provide a form of business, entertainment, and charity. The leagues served as a form of uplift within the race and as a tool to bring blacks together within their communities. In 1945, with the signing of Jackie Robinson to Montreal, baseball became a vehicle for integration. While Robinson broke the color line in professional baseball, he simultaneously broke the Negro Leagues. Black fans abandoned black baseball and turned to the Major Leagues to watch Robinson. Although the integration of baseball was the first major victory for integration …

On The Coexistence Of Freedom And Necessity, George Younger

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Fabricating Wigs For Madama Butterfly, Daniel Townsend

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Creating Kimonos For Madama Butterfly, Kiralyn Davison, Mathew Seckman, Daniel Townsend

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Drink From The Jar, Erik Tuttle

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Angry Banshee, Melanie Mcconathy

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Introduction To My Poems: Understanding The Soul In Tieck, Leibniz, Shelley, And Kleist, Tasha Pedigo

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Home, Amanda Doerrfeld

Kaleidoscope

This is a portion of a longer work that includes the story of Zoshia leaving her home and embarking on her voyage.

"Speak 'Em Fair": Discourse And Dissembling In The Jew Of Malta, Andrew Bozio

Kaleidoscope

Barabas, the title character of Marlowe's tragedy, is the embodiment of contradiction. Under persecution, he trangresses Christian norms in order to create his own identity, and yet, in the same instant, his antics make him the very monster of medieval legend. Hence the question arises: is Barabas' rebellion skillful enough to deconstruct Maltese (and English) anti-Semitism, or do his actions merely confirm the Jewish stereotype? In working toward an answer, in this paper I provide an introduction to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, using containment theory to create a theoretical framework for addressing the problems of representation in The Jew …

Revamping The Roles Of Women In Vampire Film Or Women Who Suck The Life Out Of You, Christy Freadreacea

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.