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.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Practicing local culture as a vehicle of integration? Creative collaborations and Brussels' Zinneke Parade.(2012) Costanzo, Joseph M.; Brower, Sidney; Martiniello, Marco; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Immigrant integration, and socio-economic cohesion more broadly, continue to be top priorities at many levels of governance in Europe and are long-standing fixtures of scholarly, political and public debate across Europe and North America. Although integration and culture have been dominant themes in contemporary European and American social science and humanities literatures, their intersections--particularly involving immigrant participation in local arts and cultural activities--remain understudied. Through the use of mixed-methods research, my doctoral thesis addresses how participating in such creative activities serves as a vehicle for integration. This topic is examined within the context of the European capital city-region of Brussels, and provokes further inquiry into the role of place in integration and identity-making particularly within a context in which there is no universal or normative local identity. With the onsite support of local experts, artistic and cultural actors and the public at large, I examine the `creative collaboration' of Zinneke Parade 2010--a biennial socio-cultural and urban project with origins in the Brussels 2000 European Capital of Culture Programme (ECoC). Though politicians and community organizers frequently cite Zinneke as an exemplary project of the Brussels-Capital Region, to date, no formal study has been conducted neither into its role in bridging many of the city's socio-linguistic, spatial and economic divides nor into its role as a source for building local networks, social, cultural, economic or otherwise. Finally, this work is unique in its treatment of migrant and ethnic minority identity representations in an explicitly non-ethno-cultural event. In its biennial parade, Zinneke purposefully does not re-present separate ethno-cultural pasts, but instead reflects the identities of collective and creative efforts of today's local Bruxellois. Fielded throughout 2010 and early 2011, in-depth interviews, combined with short as well as detailed questionnaires, form the basis of data which I have collected to answer the question: Does practicing local culture facilitate integration?Item Michael Sweerts (1618-1664) and the Academic Tradition(2013) Yeager-Crasselt, Lara Rebecca; Wheelock, Jr., Arthur K.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document: MICHAEL SWEERTS (1618-1664) AND THE ACADEMIC TRADITION Lara Rebecca Yeager-Crasselt, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Department of Art History and Archaeology This dissertation examines the career of Flemish artist Michael Sweerts (1618-1664) in Brussels and Rome, and his place in the development of an academic tradition in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Sweerts demonstrated a deep interest in artistic practice, theory and pedagogy over the course of his career, which found remarkable expression in a number of paintings that represent artists learning and practicing their profession. In studios and local neighborhoods, Sweerts depicts artists drawing or painting after antique sculpture and live models, reflecting the coalescence of Northern and Southern attitudes towards the education of artists and the function and meaning of the early modern academy. By shifting the emphasis on Sweerts away from the Bamboccianti <&mdash>- the contemporary group of Dutch and Flemish genre painters who depicted Rome's everyday subject matter <&mdash>- to a different set of artistic traditions, this dissertation is able to approach the artist from new contextual and theoretical perspectives. It firmly situates Sweerts within the artistic and intellectual contexts of his native Brussels, examining the classicistic traditions and tapestry industry that he encountered as a young, aspiring artist. It positions him and his work in relation to the Italian academic culture he experienced in Rome, as well as investigating his engagement with the work of the Flemish sculptor Fran<ç>çois Duquesnoy (1597-1643) and the French painter Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665). The breadth of Sweerts' artistic and academic pursuits ultimately provide significant insight into the ways in which the Netherlandish artistic traditions of naturalism and working from life coalesced with the theoretical and practical aims of the academy. This dissertation thus seeks to broaden our understanding of the artistic exchanges between the North and South, and the evolving role of the artist and the academy in the changing artistic landscape of the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century.