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 Seeds of Discord: Extraordinary Commands and Constitutional Thought in the Roman Republic(2023) Cranford, Dustin Scott; Eckstein, Arthur; Lapin, Hayim; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Extraordinary commands remain a controversial subject in the history of the Roman Republic, especially regarding whether (or how) such commands contributed to the ultimate collapse of Rome’s republican government. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the definition of extraordinary commands or the criteria for identifying them in modern scholarship, without which historians are unable to discern the true significance of these commands in Roman history. This dissertation argues that extraordinary commands are best understood as deviations from the Roman constitution, wherein the socio-political norms and laws intended to regulate Rome’s magistracies were subordinated, through either senatorial decree or popular vote, in order to accommodate the creation of an otherwise illegal military command. Starting with a historiographical survey of the modern discussion surrounding extraordinary commands, the early chapters of the dissertation also focus on analyzing the socio-political norms and rules that formed the basis of Rome’s republican constitution, as well as a detailed examination of Rome’s political institutions, especially the development of its executive magistracies. Next, a philological analysis of the terms extra ordinem, extraordinarium, and their Greek equivalents examines how Romans and Greeks themselves perceived extraordinary commands. The final chapters of this dissertation argue that the identification of extraordinary commands ultimately comes down to three analytical perspectives: the potential legal criteria of irregular magistracies, the magnitude of their occurrence, and whether they represented a deviation from Roman constitutional law. Finally, the dissertation concludes with an overview of all exceptional and extraordinary commands occurring over the course of the Roman Republic (509-31 BCE), along with a statistical analysis of the changing trends and evolution of extraordinary commands over time. In the end, a proper method of defining and identifying extraordinary commands helps modern historians truly understand the significance of such commands in Roman history. A well-known facet of Rome’s constitution was its flexibility, which allowed the Romans to find innovative solutions to crises facing the state over time, but extraordinary commands represented the breaking point of this flexibility.Item On the Threshold: Visualizing Ambiguity in the Art and Experience of Ancient Roman Doorways(2022) Chen, Amanda Kane; Gensheimer, Maryl B.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Neither interior nor exterior, doors, thresholds, and passageways were regarded as powerful, yet ambiguous areas by the ancient Romans. Ancient myths and texts characterize thresholds as sites of magic and ritual and record that improper movements or interactions could enact misfortune or physical peril for those who transgressed the space. These concerns about the liminal nature of doorways are reflected in the art historical and archaeological records, where corridors are often decorated with charged images or inscriptions. This dissertation examines the wide variety of efficacious images that accompany domestic doorways in the cities of ancient south Italy (Campania) from the second century BCE through the first century CE. The project investigates the painting, mosaic, architectural features, and surrounding urban landscape of domestic doorways to understand how images were used to mark and mediate transitional spaces, and to reconstruct the ancient experience of moving through spatially ambiguous areas. In doing so, it offers new insights into the active nature of Roman images and the mechanism of this “superstitious” practice. The phenomenon of decorating spaces of passage with powerful imagery existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean and reveals not only Roman concerns with the uncertainties of liminal space, but also that images were considered an effective tool for mitigating the perceived vulnerabilities of thresholds. This dissertation demonstrates that homeowners in ancient Campania safeguarded their thresholds by embellishing their entrance corridors with images that themselves possessed ambiguous or transitional qualities and associations. By addressing spatial ambiguity with its visual and ideological counterparts, the Romans developed a visual language that they used to mediate transitional areas. The efficacious images also physically engaged viewers in these protective mechanisms through pointed visual details that encouraged reciprocal interactions and activated the images. This project draws on data collected from a survey of all domestic doorways in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. It combines wide-ranging philosophical, anthropological, art historical, and archaeological theories to assess the material, and offers a new methodology for understanding and evaluating spatial ambiguity. The conclusions, methodology, and datasets presented in this dissertation exhibit the importance of a comprehensive contextual approach to the art and archaeology of ancient Campania, while they also demonstrate the interconnected nature of art, space, and spiritual practice in ancient south Italy. The project thus carries important implications for studies of Roman art, archaeology, and space, but also for perceptions of and responses to ambiguity and uncertainty more broadly.Item Between Temple and Tomb: Lararia, the Lares, and the Dead in Roman Pompeii (80 BCE-79 CE)(2018) Evans, Sarah Frances; Gensheimer, Maryl B; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Lares familiares were a group of ancient Roman gods worshipped at lararia, the shrines that stood at the center of domestic religion. In this thesis, I revisit a century-long debate and present new evidence, derived from the close observation of the design and representational elements extant on the material remains of temples, tombs, and lararia, for the previously proposed but recently rejected theory that the Lares familiares were the spirits of deceased ancestors. In opposition to the approach of previous publications, I place archaeological, rather than textual, evidence from Roman Pompeii in the forefront to examine what new conclusions might be drawn. In Part 2, I consider the elements of formal design that may connect lararia not only with temple architecture, but also with tomb design. In Part 3, I analyze a series of representational elements that may suggest a similar visual connection between the Lares and the dead.Item IDENTITY, IMMORTALITY, INTERACTION: FEMALE FUNERARY MONUMENTS AS SITES OF IDENTITY BUILDING IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE(2016) Chen, Amanda Kane; Gensheimer, Maryl B; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As final markers of identity and memory, the tombs of Roman women carried ritual, ideological, and emotional significance. By surveying the funerary monuments of four distinct Roman women, it is possible to reconstruct, at least in part, the exhibited identities of Eumachia, Naevoleia Tyche, Faustina the Elder, Claudia, Amymone, and Postumia Matronilla. Drawing in the viewer to participate in the creation of identity through narrative and contextual relationships, each of the sepulchers solidifies the memories of the deceased women, thereby granting them an immortality of sorts. Engaging with issues of gender, status, the politics of self, propaganda, and regional variation, this paper seeks to explore the nuances of life, death, and identity in the Roman world, with an emphasis on understanding the monuments in their original contexts.Item Egyptian Pagans through Christian Eyes(2016) Juliussen-Stevenson, Heather Ann; Holum, Kenneth; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Construction of Christian identity in Egypt proceeded in pace with construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other” between the second and sixth centuries. Apologies, martyrdoms, apocalypses, histories, sermons, hagiographies, and magical texts provide several different vantage points from which to view the Christian construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other”: as the agent of anti-Christian violence, as an intellectual rival, as an object of anti-pagan violence, as an obstacle to salvation, and—perhaps most dangerously—as but another participant in a shared religious experience. The recent work of social scientists on identity, deviance, violence, social/cultural memory, and religiosity provides insight into the strategies by which construction of the “Other” was part of a larger project of fashioning a “proper” Christian religious domain.Item Mapping a Late Antique Republic of Letters(2014) Conner, Elizabeth Mattingly; Holum, Kenneth G.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This is a study of how the letters of Procopius of Gaza, Aeneas of Gaza, Synesius of Cyrene, and Isidore of Pelusium, created circuits of intellectual sociability and exchange transcending the territorial limits of Empire and thereby affirmed their participation in a common culture of Learning. The figurative model of a Republic of Letters provides a useful organizational heuristic that illuminates the social phenomena to which these letters point: intellectual sodality conducted through the medium of a classicizing sociolect regulated by strictures of genteel conduct and the shared perception of the morality of the pursuit of knowledge. Understanding these letters as forming a Republic of Letters, I contribute to the study of social networking in Late Antiquity by elucidating the specific communications mechanisms the letter writers deployed to build ever-shifting networks of friends and colleagues. I explore the topography of identities and affiliations that these long-neglected epistolographers developed through epistolary conversations, and examine how these discursive representations suggest the letter authors' participation in greater rhythms of change and continuity in the Later Empire.Item Nature and Artifice: An Essay on Conventionalism(2012) Newton, Benjamin Patrick; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Conventionalism asserts that there are a variety of notions of justice, but no true one. The fundamental laws of any given society are said to be grounded, not on external considerations of natural right, but human agreements which change from society to society and age to age. Justice is viewed as arbitrary and the best regime a fiction. Political society is an artificial, not natural, means to achieve man's true end--individual pleasure. Thus the crucial problem raised by conventionalism is whether political society exists by convention or nature. This dissertation examines the central claim of conventionalism, namely, whether human beings gather together into political society by convention or nature. The former argument is given to the Roman Epicurean Lucretius; the latter, the Roman Academic Cicero.