UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Nature and Power: The Game Sill Lifes of Jan Weenix (1641-1719)(2023) Altizer, Kathleen Joanna; Wheelock, Arthur K; Colontuono, Anthony; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Dutch artist Jan Weenix (1641-1719) was the most successful game painter of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Specializing in large-scale still lifes that foregrounded naturalistically depicted game arranged before ornate garden views, these innovative images were highly sought after by wealthy merchants, Dutch nobles, and German princes alike. Despite the renown of Weenix’s art in his own time and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these paintings have never been the focus of in-depth critical analysis. Scholarship on Weenix has mostly concentrated on his early Italianate landscapes and his wall panels, while interpretations of his game paintings have almost exclusively focused on their place within the long tradition of dead animal painting in Northern art, beginning with sixteenth-century Flemish market scenes. This dissertation departs from this approach by arguing that Weenix’s game paintings are best understood within the dramatic cultural shifts and political upheavals of William III’s stadholderate (1672-1702). It was during this period that Weenix first specialized in game paintings. At this time, estate ownership, hunting, and garden design were becoming newly significant performances of authority, wealth, and power, both among members of the wealthy merchant patriciate and at William III’s court. Tracing Weenix’s evolution as a game painter alongside the cultural-political history of Dutch hunting practices and gardens, I explore the nuanced ways in which Weenix’s art drew from a myriad of contemporary visual sources to stylistically and conceptually promote his patrons’ belonging to a community of pan-European elites. I show how merchant collectors sought out Weenix’s game paintings as representations of estate ownership, which had become an increasingly significant marker of inherited wealth and dynastic privilege among the merchant class. In the same period, hunting and garden art became invested with new political meanings as Stadtholder William III made hunting a centerpiece of Dutch court life for the first time, while his courtiers developed magnificent gardens to celebrate his military achievements. I prove that Weenix’s art directly refers to these activities and spaces, enabling those inside and outside the court to adopt the imagery of political power to promote their own status. Combining a sustained visual analysis of Weenix’s game paintings with an in-depth study of his patronage, I demonstrate how Weenix’s art reflected and furthered the aspirations of his patrons, and consequently participated in the construction of elite social identities. I conclude that, through Weenix’s art, collectors claimed the right to to exercise control over nature, identifying themselves with pan-European nobility and ultimately illustrating their participation in the establishment of cultural and political hegemony over their domains.Item Estimating Population Trends in American Woodcock (Scolopax Minor) Using Population Reconstruction Models(2016) West, Brent Hopkins; Bowerman, William W; Environmental Science and Technology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The American woodcock (Scolopax minor) population index in North America has declined 0.9% a year since 1968 prompting managers to identify priority information and management needs for the species (Sauer et al 2008). Managers identified a need for a population model that better informs on the status of American woodcock populations (Case et al. 2010). Population reconstruction techniques use long-term age-at-harvest data and harvest effort to estimate abundances with error estimates. Four new models were successfully developed using survey data (1999 to 2013). The optimal model estimates sex specific harvest probability for adult females at 0.148 (SE = 0.017) and all other age-sex cohorts at 0.082 (SE = 0.008) for the most current year 2013. The model estimated a yearly survival rate of 0.528 (SE = 0.008). Total abundance ranged from 5,206,000 woodcock in 2007 to 6,075,800 woodcock in 1999. This study represents the first population estimates of woodcock populations.Item Chincoteague in Transition: Vernacular Art and Adaptation in Community Heritage(2014) Sullivan, Kristin Marie; Chambers, Erve; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In addition to serving aesthetic or representational purposes, art can express values related to heritage and identity politics. This dissertation discusses the ways in which the vernacular arts of hunting decoy and decorative wildfowl carving in Chincoteague, Virginia, as well as the closely related tradition of wildfowl hunting, express understandings of various forms of heritage in touristic and community exchange, representing and helping tell the story of the ways in which this locale's rural population has adapted to, resisted, and at times encouraged changes related to tourism development and environmental regulation. In the process this project considers how embodied cultural knowledge is presented through carving and closely related practices such as hunting, how environmental and community values relate to carving and carving-related traditions, and the ways in which community members negotiate identity and maintain the integrity of their communities through the production and appreciation of localized artistic expression. Research supporting this dissertation consists primarily of systematic participant observation and key informant interviewing with hunting decoy and decorative wildfowl carvers. It was conducted over the course of nearly two years living on Chincoteague Island, developing close relationships with wildfowl carvers and others associated with this tradition, for example shop owners, arts organizations, local historians, hunters, and museum specialists.