UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item TONIGHT WE MAY WIN: CHALLENGING THE UNIVERSAL IN QUEER EMBODIMENT AND PERFORMANCE(2024) Steinberg, Rebecca Anne; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I sit in this chair how I always do, snug to the left side. I feel the warm hum of my laptop resting on my thighs. I feel the external rotation of my hips that allows my legs to casually cross with my feet cradled by the ottoman. I feel the spiral of my spine supporting a slightly forward head that looks down at the computer screen as I simultaneously sense the weight of chronic pain pooling heavy in my tired bones. I come to write words on this page through a commitment to embodiment as a state of profound possibility. As dance scholar Susan Foster suggests in her essay Choreographing History, “I am a body writing, I am a bodily writing.” I write through, with, and from embodiment. I define embodiment as a state where one has a heightened consciousness of their sensorium through acknowledged sensation. This state of awareness through sensation grounds the “self” in the body. Through this lens, embodiment is a mobilization that has the power to redefine how queerness is enacted and perceived through the medium of live performance. My dance thesis work, Tonight, we, may win, wields the social commentary of this position of audience privilege as farce. In this work, the dancers engage in what I’ve named “performing performativity.” Performing performativity makes transparent the exchange of currency between audience member and performer. Performing performativity functions in Tonight, we, may win as both a lens through which to view the performance and a performative state the dancers enact. The performers and the choreographer together have the power to enact possibility through this viable exchange. The potential of this enacted possibility is extensive, complex, nuanced, and political. It is an exchange that requires a book of its own to justly unpack. Although this is not the space for that unpacking, this is a space where I utilize my thesis choreography as a primary example where the power of possibility through embodiment is examined thoroughly through various theoretical lenses and multiple works of performance art. The epicenter of this physical and theoretical research revolves around the development and execution my thesis choreography, Tonight, we, may win, performed February 16-18, 2024 at University of Maryland, College Park. The enacted examples of a body first politic are constructed in this research through the vehicle of my choreographic work. I enact a body first politic in my work and I use the following chapters to bring in the choreographic voices of both my own work and dance makers and performers who succeed in challenging the impositions of the cisheteropartriarchy through queer embodiment. In the first chapter I provide an introduction the theoretical and chorographic groundwork of this world through the lens of queer embodied subjecthood. In Chapter 2, I use a solo work I created in 2022, titled Soft Caution, to activate choreography as feminist knowledge production through movement analysis and feminist theory. In the third chapter, I evoke failure as both a queer action and choreographic tool and argue for queerness as a technology in live performance. I bring in the choreographic works of Age & Beauty: Part 3 by Miguel Gutierrez and Black Hole by Shamel Pitts as examples of live performances that make queerness as a technology visibly tangible. In Chapter 4, I closely analyze the lyrics of “I Don’t Care Much” from the musical Cabaret through black feminism, performance studies, queer studies, and beyond to dissect the thin façade of queer apathy in its application to performance, queerness, communal grief, and more. In the final chapter, I excavate both the process and the product of my thesis choreography Tonight, we, may win. Through movement analysis and rehearsal reflections I endeavor to add depth and dimension to the ephemeral world created and left on stage during my thesis concert. This research privileges embodiment, communal care, and queerness through the vehicle of live performance to argue for the enactment of inclusive and equitable futures on the stage and beyond.Item Examination of US Transportation Public-Private Partnership Experience: Performance and Market(2024) Zhang, Kunqi; Cui, Qingbin; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Worldwide, public-private partnership (P3) project performance and benefits accrued to market participants are understudied. Focusing on the US, this dissertation examines the country’s transportation P3 experience through three empirical studies comparing P3 to design-bid-build (DBB), the traditional delivery method. Throughout, the Information Source for Major Projects database, built by a University of Maryland team in which the author led the data collection effort, served as the data source. In the first study, the researchers examined P3 cost and time performance using piecewise linear growth curve modeling, recognizing that past cross-sectional studies had produced mixed results. With 133 major transportation projects, the longitudinal analysis confirmed P3’s time performance advantage and efficiency diffusion effecting cost savings in DBB, where efficiency diffusion was a new term describing the spillover and internalization of technical and managerial innovations inducing an efficient outcome. The second study used social network analysis to investigate collaboration patterns among different types of players in the P3 market (i.e., public sponsors, special purpose vehicles, investors, lenders, advisors, contractors, and professional service firms). With 135 projects and 1009 organizations, data found that both P3 and DBB networks are small worlds. Exponential random graph modeling revealed that practicing in the DBB market helps firms participate in P3 projects and that large firms (vis-à-vis small/medium-sized firms) are not privileged. The third study, further exploring the P3 market, focused on the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. Administered by the US Department of Transportation, the program promotes the participation of small, disadvantaged firms in federal-aid projects. Linear regressions on 134 contracts showed that P3 associates with higher DBE goals in terms of percentage of dollars to be awarded to DBEs, whereas the delivery method does not affect the actual attainment. Overall, the findings justify continued policy support towards P3 implementation.Item MAINTENANCE ART FOR OTHER POSSIBLE WORLDS: Rehearsing a Pedagogy of Care(2023) Peskin, Eva; Lothian, Alexis; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)MAINTENANCE ART FOR OTHER POSSIBLE WORLDS: Rehearsing a Pedagogy of Care brings together stories, moves and activations for approaching access and difference as preconditions for belonging. Both a text and an enactment, the project offers a framework for interdependent creative practice and care-oriented collaboration, doing multiple things at once: it demonstrates an ethic and technique of play-based learning, offers a story about maintenance as the work it takes to keep caring together, and embraces lunacy as a method for creative resistance. Drawing on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ premise that attention to maintenance can pause the perpetual motion machine of capitalist consumption/production and Ruth Wilson Gilmore's insistence that freedom is a place we make together in the present, the dissertation stages a confrontation of the multiple trainings that have formed my ethical, aesthetic, and relational processes of learning – both within and beyond the academy, both amateurish and professional – in order to lean into the fissures and ruptures one might ignore that the other can see. This inquiry takes shape in a spiral geography of four repeating moves, a conceptual fractal which gives rise to the action of the work: Unsettling, Dwell, Meanwhile, Sensuousness. The project rehearses this repertoire of moves as a means to center consent, access, self-determination, deep listening, and joy – necessities for the creativity required to undo/step away from/dismantle the many intersecting projects of empire which conspire unendingly against life itself, and to collectively transform into a culture of care.Item Spoken Words, Embodied Words: A New Approach to Ancient Egyptian Theatre(2022) Hedges, Allison; Hildy, Franklin; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, the author advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of dramatic texts and theatrical performances in ancient Egypt. Two primary lines of inquiry run through this study. The first is an in-depth historiography of ancient Egyptian drama and performance in the American discipline of theatre history over the last one hundred years, to better understand the positioning (or lack thereof) of ancient Egypt in American narratives of early theatre history. An important aspect of this historiographical approach is the observation of missed connections between twentieth century Egyptological advances in the discovery and interpretation of dramatic texts, and contemporary conversations in the field of theatre history about the role of ancient Egypt in the formation of the art form. The second line of inquiry follows a Performance as Research (PAR) approach, to evaluate theatrical practice as a useful tool in further interpreting dramatic texts and understanding theatrical performances in ancient Egypt. The goal of this study overall is to encourage collaboration between theatre practitioners, theatre historians, and Egyptologists for a more holistic understanding of the ancient Egyptian theatrical tradition, and to raise awareness of the potential for modern performance of ancient Egyptian dramatic texts.Item EFFECTS OF AUGMENTED REALITY BASED OBJECT ILLUMINATION ON HUMAN PERFORMANCE(2020) Stone, Matthew; Akin, David L; Aerospace Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) in space are generally considered to be high-risk, costly activities, due to the nature of the working environment and the limitations imposed on astronaut mobility and dexterity. Procedures are scheduled out and rehearsed far in advance, with time being considered a precious commodity during missions. Providing artificial task guidance to astronauts could potentially improve their efficiency, enabling for shorter duration EVAs and/or a larger quantity of tasks completed. This research quantitatively measured the effects of virtually illuminating or “cueing” objects of interest on a user’s ability to complete a predefined task, through the use of augmented reality (AR) “active display” symbology. This was achieved through the implementation of a Microsoft HoloLens™ head mounted display. It was demonstrated that, after controlling for a variety of factors, virtual illumination techniques improved task completion speed by approximately 100% and reduced perceived mental workload, with no adverse effects on accuracy.Item Laughing to Keep Human: Disruptions of Racist Logic in African American Humor(2021) Morgan, Abbey A.; Washington, Mary Helen; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project examines black humorists who challenge the Eurocentric, racist logics delimiting what it means to be human while demarcating blackness as inferior. While many scholars in black humor centralize humor as a means of resistance, a source of comic rage or redress, this project suggests that black humor offers a space to celebrate black humanity as it broadens representations of blackness. By turning to the staged parodies of Frederick Douglass in the 19th century, the stand-up routines of Jackie "Moms" Mabley and Richard Pryor in the 20th century, and the satire of novelist Paul Beatty, the project uses this unlikely assemblage to reveal a lineage of black humor that has effectively and cogently disrupted white supremacist logics while enacting a type of self-actualization of a fuller sense of humanity.Item FROM YOU I GET THE STORY: Tracking spirituality through the three iterations of The Who’s Tommy(2020) Marsten, Medha; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the late 1960s, Pete Townshend, lead guitarist and composer for British rock band The Who, discovered the teachings of Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba. Inspired by these teachings he wrote the concept album for the first successful rock opera: Tommy. The smashing success of this album led to its adaptation into a major Hollywood film directed by Ken Russell in 1975 and its adaptation into a Broadway musical directed by Des McAnuff in 1992. This thesis examines how each adaptation contributes to the Westernization, generalization, and sanitization of the spirituality inherent to the original concept album as well as how these adaptations reflect the conflicting objectives of their lead artists.Item TragedyMachine(s): Performances of Power and Resistance in Indebted Greece(2018) Banalopoulou, Christina; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)TragedyMachine(s): Performances of Power and Resistance in Indebted Greece looks at the negotiations between Greece and its international creditors, street protests and demonstrations, refugee camps, and theatre productions in Greece within the larger context of the 21st century European debt-economy. Building upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works on Nietzsche’s notion of tragedy, it introduces a concept of tragedy valid in contemporary frames of European neoliberalism. TragedyMachine(s) argues that the relations between Greece and its international creditors are non-resolvable power relations between a creditor and a debtor, hidden beneath the appearance and seeming promise of a resolution that nonetheless remains elusive. In the first chapter, titled “The Tragedy of the Greek Debt Crisis” I contend that the works of Deleuze and Guattari on Nietzsche’s notions of tragedy help us grasp the conceptual foundations of the 21st century European debt-economy. In the second chapter titled “Dromocratic Democracies,” I draw upon the tensions between Austin’s notion of a “happy performative” and Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “order word” and “collective assemblages of enunciation.” I closely examine why the NOs of both the “NO” demonstration—the demonstration that took place two days before the Greek bailout referendum of 2015—and the Greek referendum of 2015 did not succeed in their resistance against Greece’s international creditors. The third chapter titled “Imperceptible Performances” focuses on the flows of forced migration that emerge from the Syrian War. In the fourth and last chapter of my dissertation titled “Theatres of Dramatization” I look at Zero Point Theatre Group’s—one of the most popular Greek avant-garde theatre companies—production of Buchner’s Woyzeck and Yiannis Houvarda’s—a well-known Greek director—production of Aeschylus’ Ορέστεια. I argue that these two productions dramatized the destruction of promises of resolution of the non-resolvable power relations between Greece and its international creditors.Item Transgresiones espaciales y funcionales: la audiencia en la producción teatral chilena durante el periodo dictatorial de Augusto Pinochet(2017) Gonzalez-Contreras, Melissa; Cypess, Sandra M; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the theatrical production written and staged during Augusto Pinochet’s (1915-2006) dictatorship (1973-1990) and the prevalence of the figure of the audience in the theatrical text and performance. The theatrical audience is explored as a theoretical and concrete example of the fluctuating role deemed necessary of the social audience or citizenry. The focus on the theatrical audience is informed by the expansive theatricality of the Chilean State in its sociopolitical and economic displays; by the exploration of the mechanisms by which the sociopolitical milieu and the theatrical stage and event coincide and inform each other; by the revision of the dictatorial setting through the lens of the theatrical paradigm; and by the inquiry upon the degree of participation, interaction, and influence that the sociopolitical and theatrical performances allow from their participants. This project analyzes the figure of the theatre critic of the period as a means to apprehend the experience of this particular type of audience, but most importantly it explores the spatial and functional transgressions of the theatrical audience in six plays that, in addition to portraying the shifting conception of the participants in the theatrical event, are also indicative of the formal innovations of the Chilean theater of the period: Hojas de Parra (1977) by Jaime Vadell and José Manuel Salcedo, Baño a baño (1978) by Jorge Vega, Guillermo de la Parra and Jorge Pardo, Redoble fúnebre para lobos y corderos (1981) by Juan Radrigán, Cinema Utoppia (1985) by Ramón Griffero, Lo que está en el aire (1986) by Carlos Cerda and ICTUS, and Retablo de Yumbel (1986) by Isidora Aguirre. I argue that by means of the plays’ themes and innovative theatrical techniques, dramatists and directors trigger an active role for the audience that is directly correlated with the social, political, and economic state of their context. The reconceptualization of the role and participation of the audience during the theatrical event proves to be symptomatic of the necessary social and political reorganization of Chile’s social spheres during the country’s dictatorial period.Item STAGING SACRED SPACE: A Ritual Performance History of the UMD Memorial Chapel(2017) Cyr, Renee; Frederik, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study addresses the interconnections between belief, ritual, and space. Through an examination of the Memorial Chapel archive, I trace the history of Memorial Chapel from its founding in 1952 through today, focusing on the tension between sacred space and secularism. In this project I examine how religious groups have created and utilized sacred space in a non-denominational chapel as well as in a nontraditional worship spaces on and around campus. This investigates how the chapel itself performs and how participants of religious life perform their faith at a public university. I examine the role of theatricality in shaping religious rituals and giving them potency. In the second part I document my ethnographic research with Lutheran Campus Ministry.
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