Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item OF MUSES AND MONSTROSITIES: ENGLISH TRAVESTIE PERFORMANCES OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY(2018) Ginder, Brittany; Kim Lee, Esther; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation serves as an introduction to the performance genre of travestie. Unlike the popular breeches form in which an actress plays a female character who crossdresses as a man for a short duration of time but returns to her skirts by the end of a play, travestie performance is defined as an actress performing a male character on a public stage in male disguise for the entirety of a production. In this dissertation, I showcase how travestie questions the complex eighteenth-century English conceptions of normative gender roles, gender identity, and gender representation through performances of public undress that may have been the precursor to the modern burlesque genre. Through examining the case studies of Miss Margaret “Peg” Woffington, Mrs. Charlotte Charke née Cibber, and Mrs. Dorothy “Dora” Jordan, this dissertation analyzes the travestie genre through its connections to comedy, mythmaking, iconography, and the modern burlesque movement. I have chosen to utilize the spelling of travestie over the Italian and contemporary English spellings (travesti and travesty, respectfully) in accordance with the accepted spellings of the term within the eighteenth-century London theatrical landscape. I assert within this dissertation that the actresses who performed travestie purposefully chose this genre through their own theatrical awareness and business savvy. Emphasizing transhistorical perspectives and historiographical intervention, this dissertation reassesses and reinterprets contemporary views of these travestie actresses, using autobiography, biography, and narrative techniques to allow the long-gone voices of these actresses to speak for themselves. Muses for various artists and poets, the successful travestie actress lived within the liminal space between the fluidity of gender. Within their travestie performances, these actresses housed within their own bodies monstrous contradictions of gender that are explored in this dissertation through the interdisciplinary lenses of theatre historiography and gender studies.Item PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA, PRAGMATIKE HISTORIA, AND THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL POWER(2017) Frechette, Joseph Raymond; Eckstein, Arthur M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The implicit assumption in many recent treatments of the sixth century historian Procopius of Caesarea and his history of the wars of the emperor Justinian is that the “classicizing” elements contained in the Wars are a product of mimesis that Procopius deployed for literary or political purposes. These approaches lead to the conclusion that the Wars are disconnected from the realities of the mid sixth century. This dissertation suggests that we may gain a better understanding not only of this important historian and his most substantial work, but also the regime he served and criticized, by suspending our disbelief and taking the Wars on its own terms. That is, as a work of analytical history whose author expected would be useful to its readers in the conduct of military and political affairs. To this end it examines Procopius’ career, the nature and relative dates of his works, the historiographic context in which he operated, the nature of his audience, some of the recurrent issues faced by Roman commanders as described in the Wars and their practical applicability to a contemporary military audience, points of contact between Procopius and the didactic military literature of the period, the inapplicability of discussing Procopius as a critic of a “totalitarian” regime, and the Wars’ portrait, instead, of an imperial regime limited by both external and internal constraints.Item PANG XUNQIN (1906-1985) - A CHINESE AVANT-GARDE'S METAMORPHOSIS, 1925-1946, AND QUESTIONS OF "AUTHENTICITY"(2009) Zhu, Xiaoqing; Kuo, Jason; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation has three goals. The first is to chart the artistic life of Pang Xunqin (1906-1985) and his art works from 1929 to 1946. Pang's metamorphosis from an aspiring young artist in Paris and Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s, into an artist in his own right, a graphic designer, an educator, and a scholar of the history of Chinese art and craft, while ceaselessly trying to renew himself - all this is a record that deserves an art historical recognition. The second goal is to locate Pang Xunqin in the historiography of Chinese modern art in an attempt to problematize issues of inclusion and exclusion in the historiography of the field. The third goal, which is closely tied to the second, is to utilize post-colonial inquiries to explore myriad issues of non-Western modernism embodied in Pang Xunqin's case. Such issues include the divisions among the "traditionalists," the "academic realists," and the "modernists," colonial cosmopolitanism in the Shanghai of the 30s, and the appropriation of "primitivism" in the 40s. Attention also focuses on the issues of authenticity and "hybridity," Western orientalization of the East and self-orientalization by the East in cross-cultural encounters, and identity politics and nationalistic agendas in the construct of the guohua (national painting) and xihua (Western painting) divide. The post-colonial methodology employed here helps raise questions regarding the binary construct of tradition vs. modernity, the East vs. the West, the center vs. the periphery, and the global vs. the local. By placing Pang Xunqin's case in its semi-colonial historical and transnational context and by engaging in dialogue with the recent rich scholarship on cultural and post-colonial critiques, in conjunction with a formal analysis of his paintings and designs, this dissertation offers not only a monographic study of Pang's artistic life but also a critical examination and reassessment of the established art historical narratives of Western-trained artists in the historiography of Chinese modern art.