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 King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494(2016) Riesenberger, Nicole Joy; Gill, Meredith J.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.Item WHO IS A PERSON AND WHY? A STUDY OF PERSONHOOD IN THEORY AND THE LAW(2012) Chandler Garcia, Lynne Marie; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study concerns what it means to be a person and the role the law plays in bestowing the status of person. The purpose of this dissertation is to further our understanding of how courts in the U.S., and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, have defined "person" as a legal construct within Constitutional law. In order to achieve this, court decisions concerning the personhood of key entities with a claim to personhood are analyzed and compared in order to yield a more meaningful understanding of the word "person." The entities studied include slaves, corporations, fetuses, and higher-order animals. To focus the study, several theoretical dichotomies are presented that unite the scholarship of personhood as it pertains to each of these entities. These include the dichotomy between a human being and person; property and person; and inclusion or exclusion in a community of persons. Each of these entities is then thoroughly examined in terms of the theories of personhood that are applicable to that entity, the particular historical and political circumstances that surround each entity, and finally the court decisions that determined that entity's status as a person. Through careful analysis of court documents, the study tests to see if the legal decisions reflect the dichotomies between person and human being or person and property. Further, these legal decisions are compared in order to determine if the courts have been consistent in the bestowal of personhood. Through a thorough analysis of judicial decisions concerning personhood combined with a theoretical foundation of the interdisciplinary discussions that inform and affect judicial and moral personhood, this study seeks a more concrete answer to the question, "Who is a person and why?"Item A Longitudinal Study of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: A Decade of Balancing Judicial Discretion and Unwarranted Disparity (1993-2003)(2007-04-27) Sharp, Barbara Ann; Wellford, Charles; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research focuses on judicial decision-making in the federal courts to determine whether unwarranted disparities persist, and also to gauge the change, if any, that occurs over time. Three sentencing outcomes were analyzed: the in/out incarceration decision, the length of term of incarceration decision, and the judicial downward departure decision. Eleven consecutive fiscal years of data from all 94 federal district courts were used to assess the effects of a defendant's gender, race and ethnicity, mode of conviction, offense type, district court location, and year of sentencing on the sentencing outcome. The results of the study were presented along two dimensions, namely as overall aggregate findings concerning the effects of these factors, and secondly, as findings concerning the effects of these factors on each individual fiscal year to measure the changes in the influence of these factors over time. The aggregate findings show that female defendants are treated more leniently while black and Hispanic defendants were hampered in all three sentencing outcomes--Hispanics more so for the incarceration decision, and blacks more so for the length-of-term and the judicial downward departure decision. The mode of conviction was found to be highly significant, penalizing those defendants who were convicted at trial. The influence of the offense type categories, the fiscal year of sentencing, and many of the district court variables were also significant. The findings from the temporal analysis indicate that gender became less significant over time in the incarceration decision as the probability of going to prison increased for all defendants. The probability of Black and Hispanic defendants being incarcerated and of their length-of-term changed over time, but their likelihoods for receiving downward departures did not. The only change noted for the mode of conviction was for judicial downward departures, but the change was an even greater decrease in the likelihood of receiving this type of departure. Additional findings suggest that defendants sentenced for immigration offenses are treated differently at sentencing, and that differences in these three sentencing outcomes vary by district court and by the fiscal year in which the sentencing occurred.