Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Jewish Marriage and Divorce in America, 1830-1924(2020) Shaw Frank, Laura Rachel; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The centrality of marriage to American identity dates back to the founding of the nation. Americans saw marriages by choice and for love as microcosms of their democracy in which the people chose their leaders and were bonded to them in a relationship of mutual trust and affection. During the era of mass migration to America from 1820-1924, the institution of marriage became a locus for debates over American identity. In myriad ways, American legal and societal norms made it clear that attaining full inclusion in the American polity meant interacting with the institution of marriage in a particularly American way. As Jews immigrated én masse to America in this period, they quickly understood that incorporating American legal and cultural norms with respect to marriage into their personal and communal lives was integral to their acculturation. Individual Jews adapted to the American milieu in certain ways, marrying for love (or at least pretending to do so), often at quintessentially American white weddings. However, such Jews simultaneously retained Jewish traditions and rituals both in spousal choice and in the celebration of their weddings, sometimes weaving their proud new American identities into those traditions and rituals. For their part, Jewish communal leaders worked tirelessly both within and outside the Jewish community to ensure that Jewish marriages were also American marriages. They exhorted their flocks to marry as respectable Americans, debated and changed Jewish marriage rituals to better fit American sensibilities, fought to attain legal imprimatur for rabbis to serve as marriage officiants on behalf of the state, weighed in on national conversations about issues related to marriage and divorce, and even worked with state authorities to punish those Jews whose behavior flouted American marriage norms and laws. Through their interactions with the American institution of marriage, American Jews simultaneously declared their Americanness and reshaped the definition of American marriage. Over the course of the century of mass Jewish migration to America, American Jews redefined both Jewish and American marriage and in so doing, reshaped both American Judaism and the contours of American identity.Item The Great House of Benjamin West: Family, Workshop, and National Identity in Late Georgian England(2014) Fox, Abram Jacob; Pressly, William L; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Anglo-American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820) holds a unique position in the history of Western art. Active during the foundational periods of not one, but two, national schools of art to which he could rightfully claim membership, West recognized his inimitable position in the development of English and American art and sought to position himself at the forefront of each nation. This dissertation examines his fluid national and artistic identities over the course of his instructional relationships with his American students, and the shifting personal and professional goals harbored by each party. While scholars have acknowledged the relation of West's pedagogical practice to his identity as an artist, this study presents an organic account of the relationships between teacher and students as an embodiment of West's ongoing and unprecedented attempts at fame, fortune, and legacy. This legacy was central to Benjamin West's identity as an artist. His professional career was dedicated to the self-aggrandizement of his identities as an (exotic) American, a prolific painter of high-minded scenes of history and religion, and the head of a workshop teeming with artists who shared his heritage, though not always his aesthetic inclinations. Over his career he cultivated a reputation as a welcoming instructor, always willing to give advice or lessons to any artist who approached him. This was not solely an act of altruism. Instead, it was the cornerstone of his construction of a proverbial House of West, a workshop-family whose members and their works would reflect back on the genius of the master, just as strongly as his own oeuvre. Through the examination of four case studies of his instruction of American students – that of Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and a circle of students led by Washington Allston – this study integrates Benjamin West's teaching practice with his career aspirations, positioning his pedagogy within the greater framework of his self-presentation. In doing so, it presents a history painter engrossed in the promulgation of his name throughout history, through his own artistic output and those of his children and students, as the progenitor of American artists working in the European tradition.Item Visa Denied: U.S. Playwriting and the anti-Political Habitus post-"Angels in America"(2013) Pressley, Daniel Nelson; Bryer, Jackson R; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Visa Denied: U.S. Playwriting and the Anti-Political Habitus post-Angels in America," a dissertation by Daniel Nelson Pressley, argues that an anti-political prejudice operates across the points of the U.S. theater-making spectrum, with particularly inhibiting results for playwrights even in the two decades following Tony Kushner's influential political epic. Using a reception framework suggested by Susan Bennett and others, along with the memory and "ghosting" ideas of Marvin Carlson and Diana Taylor, the dissertation suggests unrecognized anti-political patterns in criticism and production, explores broken links with the traditions of the 1930s and the lost lessons of workers' theater movements from the 1920s and 1930s, and contrasts contemporary American and British practice and reception by examining dramatic technique in plays by David Hare, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Arthur Miller and Wendy Wasserstein. The project acknowledges the absorption of political energy on the stage by the rising documentary forms since the emergence of solo performer Anna Deavere Smith, concluding that the acceptance and dominance of fact-based methods, while expanding the drama's vocabulary, contributes to an even greater outsider position for the playwright as political thinker.Item Unsatisfactory Progress: The Pursuit of Good Schools in Suburban America, 1940-1980(2011) Sullivan, Jeremy Patrick; Gerstle, Gary; Sicilia, David B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project is a case study of educational politics in Montgomery County, Maryland, an affluent suburban county bordering Washington, D.C., from 1940 to 1980. Following World War Two the county experienced significant population growth due to the baby boom and migration, transforming it into a thriving suburb. Concurrently, state party control over the county's school system was replaced by a pluralist system characterized by local grassroots activism, allowing groups of citizens to articulate and organize around distinct educational visions influenced by attitudes about race, class, and political ideology. Citizens debated the meaning of good schools and discussed the best way to achieve them, and over time conflicts between proponents of different educational philosophies revealed clearly defined segments of people within the county. These divisions developed within a consensual yearning for excellent public schools, and this dissertation explores the tension between the shared desire for educational excellence and the specific, competing desires of activists to define educational quality and influence educational policy. Current scholarship on the history of education in America focuses on urban schools or examines particular issues, like desegregation or teacher unionization, in isolation. This investigation highlights suburban educational politics and explores how suburbanites confronted numerous challenges simultaneously as they worked to make good schools in their community. Four groups of county residents emerged and sorted themselves into associations and activist organizations during the postwar decades: liberals, African Americans, conservatives, and teachers. Members of competing activist organizations defined good schools differently and employed different strategies to implement their preferences, including lobbying, electoral activism, petitioning at public hearings, and direct action such as protests and strikes. Cooperation between activists seemed possible initially, but over time the democratic mechanisms of pluralist educational politics helped cultivate suspicion in the minds of many citizens, splintering the consensus about the quality of the school system and prompting people to view public schools as a limited resource, with benefits available only to some, as opposed to a common good. In this way, the democratization of educational politics constrained what these suburbanites thought public schools could achieve and tempered their hopes for the future.Item Building a Muslim-American Identity: An Islamic College(2011) Zaman, Ahmed; Kelly, Brian; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In contemporary American culture Islam is often misrepresented and misunderstood. This thesis seeks to revive the Islamic intellectual tradition by using architecture and campus planning to construct a more accurate understanding of Islam in an American context. Designing an institution for Islamic higher learning will provide American-born Muslim scholars with the opportunity of assuming a positive role in society. The thesis explores repurposing and retexturing of West Berkeley, California as a method of weaving the Muslim American narrative in the design of Zaytuna College, America's first liberal arts Islamic College. The college itself will house students of diverse backgrounds, both Muslim and non-Muslim, accommodate prayer facilities for the neighboring Muslim community, and engage in interfaith and civic dialogue. The thesis will speculate on how the campus will evolve over time and identify a scale that is appropriate to its context.Item Fathers and Sons: American Blues and British Rock Music, 1960-1970(2008-11-30) Kellett, Andrew James; Herf, Jeffrey C; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the unique cultural phenomenon of British blues-based rock music in the 1960s. It provides answers to two important questions of trans-Atlantic intellectual and cultural history. First, this dissertation will provide answers to two questions. First, it interrogates how and why African-American blues music became so popular amongst a segment of young, primarily middle-class men in Great Britain. It maps out "blues trade routes"--that is, the methods by which the music was transmitted to Britain. It explains the enthusiasm shown by young male Britishers largely in terms of their alienation from, and dissatisfaction with, mainstream British masculinity. Seen in this light, the "adoption" of African-American bluesmen as replacement "fathers" can be seen as an attempt to fill a perceived cultural need. This dissertation will also examine how these young British men, having formed bands to perform their own music, began in the mid-1960s to branch out from the blues. In a developing dialogue with like-minded bands from the United States, bands such as the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds started combining the lessons of the blues with other cultural influences such as jazz, classical music and English folk. The resulting cultural bricolage innovated popular music on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1970s onward. The dissertation draws on a variety of primary sources, including the popular music press, published interviews with key musicians, and, of course, the recorded music itself. Fathers and Sons uses the development of popular music to address issues that have traditionally been central to the study of ideas and cultures. These include: the role of interpersonal relationships in disseminating ideas and culture; the impact of distance and proximity in impelling cultural innovation; the occurrences of bursts of creativity in distinct places at distinct times; and the ways in which gender and sexual identity are performed and negotiated through mass consumer culture. These are salient issues with which intellectual and cultural historians have dealt for decades. Thus, Fathers and Sons seeks a broader audience than merely that which would be interested in American blues, British rock music, or both.