Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

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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2010 - 20172

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    INSTRUMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
    (2017) Kilian, Joshua Kyle; Ambrose, Michael; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The objective of this thesis is to study the audible impacts of architecture, and explore how music and sound can enhance learning. Modern culture is known to be ocular-centric, relying heavily on vision. Aesthetically, visual beauty often overshadows aural beauty. Pragmatically, visual cues often influence our behavior, understanding, and navigation more than auditory cues. Due to this, the implications of sound often go unnoticed. Even undesirable sound, or noise, is tolerated on a daily basis. This becomes an issue when noise starts to influence users psychologically, physiologically, behaviorally, and even cognitively. Architecture has become more visually-dominant in the modern era, so architecture itself contributes to this visual distraction. How can architecture address these visual biases and promote aural stimulation? How can architecture manipulate sound so it is celebrated rather than tolerated? This thesis exploits sound to increase aural spatial awareness, and as a byproduct, enhances learning
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    Spirituals And Gospel Music Performance Practice: A Dual Curriculum That Bridges The Cultural Divide
    (2010) Jefferson, Robert Lee; Mabbs, Linda; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study explores methods in which the teaching of Gospel Music and Spirituals can be used as a conduit to bridge ethnic, cultural, and racial divides that are often found in American society. After working with various cultural and racial groups within religious and secular circles, the researcher has observed that individual cultures can have very distinct and opposite approaches to learning music, even in the United States, which some consider to be a cultural "melting pot." More specifically, there are cultures that embrace the written or visual learning tradition, while others lean more heavily toward the aural or oral learning tradition. As a result, the perceived differences deriving from these two opposite learning traditions can often create both unconscious and conscious divisions among various cultural and ethnic groups. However, using teaching techniques and performance practices related to both Gospel Music and Spirituals (which use different although related learning approaches), one can create an opportunity to bridge the gap between the aural and visual learning traditions and can create an environment ripe for intra-cultural and cross-cultural communication. This dissertation studied two separate groups of individuals; one group from the visual cultural learning tradition and one group from the aural cultural learning tradition. Both groups were taught music through the process of either an aural or visual process (or in some cases, by a combination of both), and their behavioral responses were observed during rehearsals. The results of these observations are used to create an outline for curricular approaches to teaching groups from opposing learning traditions, utilizing the opportunity that this presents not only to bridge the divide which often exists between individuals from different learning traditions, but also to offer a way to address ethnic and cultural divides.