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
21 results
Search Results
Item Tolkien's Two Faces of War: Paradox and Parallel Structure in The Lord of the Rings and "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth"(2010) Grybauskas, Peter; Flieger, Verlyn; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)J.R.R. Tolkien once referred to The Lord of the Rings as a "rather bitter, and very terrifying romance." This paper examines the paradoxical representation of Tolkien's war--one which is at once bitter and romantic--in The Lord of the Rings and the dramatic dialogue, "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son." Structural comparison of the works suggests that Tídwald and Torhthelm, the two voices in opposition throughout "The Homecoming," in some sense continue their unending debate on the nature of war in Books III-VI of The Lord of the Rings. The structures of these works, defined by contrasting visions of war, reflect Tolkien's ongoing struggle to square the two incompatible strands. The tension between these two views of war is a crucial ingredient to Tolkien's work--and a struggle never tidily resolved.Item In Questionable Taste: Eating Culture, Cooking Culture in Anglophone Postcolonial Texts(2009) Phillips, Delores Bobbie Jean; Ray, Sangeeta; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation produces an extensive and intensive study of the culture of food in postcolonial literature and cookbooks that describe particular regions and cultures. My interrogation treats novels and cookbooks that depict food and eating in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean to argue that while both cookbooks and novels depict as unstable the connection between food and culture; the key difference lies in the manner in which each genre describes that instability. My dissertation uses memoir cookbooks (cookbooks that use the autobiographical accounts of their authors as a method of organizing content and providing context for recipes) and literary depictions of cooking and eating to trouble the neat tautology that establishes food and home as interchangeable cultural signifiers of equal weight. I evaluate the work that cookbooks do by comparing them to representations of cooking, eating and food in representative novels that frame depictions of citizenship and the nation in deeply ambivalent terms even as they depict delicious meals, well-laid family tables, and clean, productive kitchens. I use both cookbooks and novels to illustrate how the text under consideration in my dissertation act out the concerns that structure postcolonial critique. If regional cookbooks provide obscured or incomplete insight into the cultures they purport to authentically depict, then the novels I study provide openly ambivalent accounts of cultural identification. My dissertation begins by examining how pan-cultural cookbooks do the work of drawing multiple nations beneath the aegis of the global--and how this work fails to engage the problematic cosmopolitics of globality as revealed in two South Asian novels. I then examine African texts to analyze the difficulties that press bodies into motion--hunger and impoverishment, political disenfranchisement and oppression, and attenuated relationships with cultural traditions. The dissertation then moves to America via the Caribbean, examining diasporic longing in Cuban expatriates and the manner in which regional cookbooks and memoirs construct the past by reinventing the spaces that their authors have left behind.Item Digital (In)Humanities: Re-reading Digital Archives as a Form of Cultural Expression(2009) Dinin, Aaron; Nell Smith, Martha; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A 2007 PMLA article discussing the Walt Whitman Archive juxtaposed narrative and database as competing forms of cultural expression. This article incited a flurry of responses which continued to use the database and narrative comparison. Dinin, in his article "Digital (In)Humanities," reassesses the terms of the digital archive debate, arguing that the terms "narrative" and "database" are both constricting and misleading. The juxtaposition shouldn't be database versus narrative to see which one becomes the dominant form of cultural expression because narrative, he argues, is a form of database. The more proper juxtaposition, as presented by the paper, is one that places "digital archive" alongside "narrative" because both are products of database and both are forms of cultural expression. Dinin, in his article, then goes on to explore the potential of digital archives as a form of cultural expression.Item ANIMALITÉ ET ALTÉRITÉ AU XVIe ET AU XVIIe SIÈCLE : LA THÉORIE DE L'UNCANNY VALLEY APPLIQUÉE À LA LITTÉRATURE ET PLUS PARTICULIÈREMENT AUX ESTATS ET EMPIRES DE LA LUNE DE CYRANO DE BERGERAC(2009) Arnaud, Cybèle; Campangne, Hervé; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle, l'autre est une fascinante énigme à résoudre pour certains, une source de peur et de haine pour d'autres, mais les écrivains se tournant vers l'étranger partagent un même désir : celui d'établir un bestiaire de l'inconnu et de l'inusité. Sous les formes de femmes-chattes et de princes porcins, d'autruches et de loups-garous, l'animalité se décline dans le but d'incarner la gamme des sentiments, souvent contradictoires, que l'on peut ressentir pour l'autre. Cette thèse étudie le choix des animaux dans les contes et fables, les libelles et pamphlets, et les récits de voyages réels ou imaginaire, comme celui de Cyrano de Bergerac, Histoire comique des Estats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, afin d'établir une hiérarchie des animaux et des émotions qu'ils provoquent, puis de comparer ces résultats à ceux des recherches effectuées par le robotocien japonais Masahiro Mori, créateur du concept de l'Uncanny Valley.Item Disjuncted: A Collection of Stories(2009) Fang, Sarah; Lewis, William H; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This collection of fictionalized work (long short stories, novellas, novel excerpts) represents my thematic interests as a writer: challenging traditional notions of race, class, history, and culture in American identity, via the fictionalized lenses of history, school, and family life. Most of my work tends to involve a wry look at the orthodox views of "truth" and culture, and ranges from sassy cultural musings to wallowing in tragic hybrid space.Item Expanding the Choral Conductor's Horizon: The Application of Selected Literary Theories to the Process of Choral Score Study(2009) Seighman, Gary Bernard; Maclary, Edward; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The main premise of this document is that the various movements associated with literary theory can provide unique interpretative insights for the modern choral conductor during score study. Traditionally, score study involves making performance decisions based upon formal analysis, study of performance practices, examination of historical and stylistic information, and practical ensemble considerations. By adopting a stance that also acknowledges elements offered by literary theory, the conductor can begin to uncover those elements in the music that maximize the potential for the singer to have a meaningful musical experience. Literary theory deals critically with the process of interpretation and focuses especially on the relationship between the literary text and the reader. On one end of the literary theory spectrum, formalist studies of interpretation place value only on the words and notes and their grammatical relationship with one another while ignoring historical information as a determinant source for meaning. On the other end, Reader-Response Criticism focuses on the attributes of the reader, understood as part of the culture he belongs to, and through his personal background and experiences. Many branches of theory are located in the middle and consider how the properties of a text fuse with a reader's expectations and guide him to a particular interpretation. The adaptation of these theories to music is not new, as shown by the sizeable corpus of books and articles devoted to musico-literary studies. Few if any of these studies focus exclusively on choral repertoire or address practical issues of score preparation and conducting gesture, however. This document surveys several literary theories, identifies their key concepts, and adapts them to the analysis of specific choral works. The result is a series of analyses that offer fresh perspectives for a variety of choral works. Topics include, but are not limited to the following: uncovering hidden dialogue, music as a system of signs (semiotics), tropes and hermeneutic windows, the vocality of text, and conducting gesture as metaphor. The goal of musico-literary studies as it relates to choral training should be to educate a new generation of conductors who understand the processes of how we as both performers and listeners perceive meaning from our vast repertory and to develop strategies that improve its accessibility.Item Reading Beyond the Page: Contextualizing Reading Within the Lives of Avid Readers(2008-07-01) Nolan-Stinson, Jennifer Anne; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation seeks to add to our understanding of reading as a social and cultural practice by examining the roles that reading plays within the everyday lives of four avid readers. The recent proliferation of national reading studies in the English-speaking world indicates a current international preoccupation with reading, but neither these studies nor most previous academic scholarship on reading have taken actual, individual readers into account. Through employing a self-reflexive ethnographic life history approach that includes a series of interviews with each reader and an analysis of how the readers arrange their reading materials in their homes, my work contextualizes how readers use reading and make it meaningful. I argue that new questions and emphases emerge once we center studies of reading within the lives and words of actual readers. For example, my focus on these readers' daily reading practices reveals problems inherent in privileging book and literary reading and points to the need to include a broader variety of genres and a wider array of formats, such as periodicals and online reading, if we wish to understand how reading is used in everyday life. Looking at each reader's life history also emphasizes the need for considerations of the influences of space and time on reading, both at home and while traveling, as well as the material aspects of the reading experience. Furthermore, when we pay attention to the complex negotiations each reader makes between her/his reading interests, social locations, and cultural traditions, it becomes clear that generalizations about groups of readers suppress individual relationships that readers have with their cultural and social influences and therefore how each of these interact with reading. What my dissertation makes most clear is that we must begin to expand our notion of reading beyond the page and into the lives of individual readers if we wish to understand it as a cultural practice.Item Reading Utopian Narratives in a Dystopian Time(2008-01-08) Taylor, Deborah; Donawerth, Jane L; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a feminist study of the reading process of contemporary utopian novels by women: Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Toni Morrison. These novels are not utopias, in the sense of place, since they are set in dystopian times. Instead, this study explores the reading process as a part of a text's presentation of utopian desire. The first chapter focuses on Le Guin's 1985 Always Coming Home, set in a future United States polluted by environmental toxins and divided between a patriarchal Condor nation, and a communal, matrilineal, and non-hierarchical Kesh culture. Le Guin uses a made-up language, constructed without hierarchies, concepts from Native American story-telling and Taoist philosophy, and multiple narrators to encourage a collaborative reading process where readers weave a utopian vision from the pieces of Kesh culture, balanced against the Condor. The second chapter examines Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1997). In this future, California has disintegrated into anarchy and violence, and Lauren Olamina survives the razing of her walled community, creates Earthseed - a new philosophy-religion, and founds a utopian settlement that is destroyed by Christian fundamentalists. Butler parodies false utopias--gated communities, company towns, and the Christian Right--and presents Lauren's religion, Earthseed, built on the idea of "God is Change," as a utopian alternative. Butler merges the genres of diary, scripture, jeremiad, and slave narrative to offer a collaborative reading experience. False utopian ideals of exclusivity, security, and institutionalized religion are resisted by meditating on Earthseed Scriptures. The third chapter considers Morrison's Paradise (1998), set in western United States, and recounts the story of an all-black town, Ruby, and its destruction of an all-women "convent" near the town. Because Morrison tells her story with non-chronological fragments and multiple viewpoints, the reader must become the point of view character, constructing a coherent narrative and image of paradise from conflicting accounts. Morrison explores spiritual connectedness and healing by drawing on the history of all-black townships and all-women communities. The narrative strategies of these novels--defamiliarzation, polyvocalism, fragmented structure, and meditation--encourage readers to collaborate in exploring utopian desire.Item Flight Animal(2007-05-08) DeBlassie, Katherine Priscilla; Plumly, Stanley; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Flight Animal is a collection of poetry in four sections. Specific layering of names, countries and cities frame deeply personal experience; the speaker's tone, in patterned free verse, connects events and perspectives. New Mexico, London, the Chihuahua Desert, Italy, Prague, Mexico and New York are reflected upon. Objects that aid travel ranging from buses, wings, trains, legs, bridges, planes, bicycles and cars save as both literal and metaphorical "vehicles." The title of the collection, Flight Animal, suggests the book's inherent subject of movement as a means of survival.Item Summon Up the Blood(2007-04-27) Stephens, Evan Matthew; Collier, Michael; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Summon Up the Blood is a collection of poems divided into two sections. The first, entitled "Country" deals with the relationship between the individual and the natural world, and with the tendency for one to reflect the other; the second, entitled "City" is primarily concerned with the inner life of the individual amid the stresses of society and culture, and with the difficulties of preserving a sense of self in the modern world. Both sections share the overarching goal of extensively inspecting the necessity of being an honest observer of both the interior and exterior worlds. Influences include Robinson Jeffers, Ezra Pound, Tomas Transtromer and Robert Frost.
- «
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- »