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 “In The Good Old Days of Long Ago": Echoes of Vaudeville and Minstrelsy in the Music of Uncle Dave Macon(2016) Hermann, Eric Neil; Warfield, Patrick; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Uncle Dave Macon provided an essential link between nineteenth-century, urban popular stage music (especially the minstrel show and vaudeville) and commercialized country music of the 1920s. He preserved through his recordings a large body of songs and banjo techniques that had their origins in urban-based, nineteenth-century vaudeville and minstrelsy. Like the minstrel and vaudeville performers of the nineteenth century, Macon told jokes and stories, employed attention-grabbing stage gimmicks, marketed himself with boastful or outrageous slogans, and dressed with individual flair. At the same time, Macon incorporated many features from the rural-based folk music of Middle Tennessee. Overall, Macon’s repertoire, musical style, and stage persona (which included elements of the rube, country gentleman, and old man) demonstrated his deep absorption, and subsequent reinterpretation, of nineteenth-century musical traditions. Macon’s career offers a case study in how nineteenth-century performance styles, repertoire, and stage practices became a part of country music in the 1920s. As an artist steeped in two separate, but overlapping, types of nineteenth-century music—stage and folk—Macon was well-positioned to influence the development of the new commercial genre. He brought together several strains of nineteenth-century music to form a modern, twentieth-century musical product ideally suited to the new mass media of records, radio, and film. By tracing Macon’s career and studying his music, we can observe how the cross-currents of rural and popular entertainment during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries interacted to form the commercial genre we now know as country music.Item Edythe Meserand: Radio Pioneer and First President of American Women in Radio and Television(2014) Cox, Merrilee A.; Beasley, Maurine H.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This historical dissertation examines the career of Edythe Meserand, a broadcast executive and the first president of American Women in Radio and Television, the oldest established professional association dedicated to advancing women in broadcasting. The research - the first in-depth account of Meserand's professional life - uses primary sources to investigate the tactics Meserand used to build a successful career in broadcasting's early decades, from the mid-1920s through the early 1950s. Her strategies reflected both her times and the conservative nature of the broadcasting industry. Much of her work took place in the gendered space that women typically occupied, but her most important work occurred during the fifteen years she spent in the male-dominated newsroom at WOR radio. This research adds to the historical record by providing a comprehensive case study of a notable woman whose career sheds light on the range of challenges and opportunities women faced. It also explores the prominent role she played in the founding and early development of AWRT where she inspired and mentored other women for more than 30 years. The author will argue that this work, and Meserand's ability to position herself as a worthy role-model for women in the broadcasting and media industry, is her most significant contribution.Item German Radio Propaganda in the Soviet Union: A War of Words(2012) Butsavage, Christopher James; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The focus of this study is the content of Nazi radio propaganda to and concerning the Soviet Union. The radio was a new and innovative means for the Nazi regime to directly communicate with the masses of illiterate civilians in the Soviet Union on a daily basis. This study finds that as the war in the east progressed, there was an increasingly stark dichotomy between the positive messages found within German radio propaganda and the harsh reality of the Nazi occupation. It seems almost as though there was a morbid inverse correlation between the amount of violence the Germans inflicted upon civilians (including forcibly sending them to work in Germany) and the amount of radio propaganda exhorting these same civilian populations to join the Nazi cause. It is also important to note that every German radio broadcast to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was not propaganda. In fact, by 1943, a great deal of news items broadcast on German radio in occupied territory were administrative in nature. Announcements such as local curfews, blackouts, conscription and mobilization decrees, and warnings were frequently broadcast.Item Using Radio-Frequency Identification Technology To Measure Asphalt Cooling(2010) Pfeiffer, Grant Howard; Schwartz, Charles W; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Realistic prediction of asphalt temperatures as a function of time during paving is essential for optimizing compaction operations. Continued compaction after the asphalt lift has dropped below a critical threshold temperature may result in particle breakage and degradation of the material properties. To address this issue, this study evaluates the feasibility of using Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) based Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to measure HMA temperatures via wireless sensors during paving. The survivability and temperature measurement capabilities of the SAW RFID sensors are demonstrated in the field. The measured asphalt cooling curves (temperature versus time) are compared with predictions from previously developed theoretical models for mat cooling. The prediction accuracy of these models is improved via a field calibration procedure using measured temperatures from the SAW RFID sensors. The predictions from the calibrated theoretical model are reasonable and agree well with the measured temperatures in the field.Item LISA SERGIO: HOW MUSSOLINI'S "GOLDEN VOICE" OF PROPAGANDA CREATED AN AMERICAN MASS COMMUNICATION CAREER(2005-12-05) Spaulding, Stacy; Beasley, Maureen; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1937 Lisa Sergio, "The Golden Voice" of fascist broadcasting from Rome, fled Italy for the United States. Though her mother was American, Sergio was classified as an enemy alien once the United States entered World War II. Yet Sergio became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and built a successful career in radio, working first at NBC and then WQXR in New York City in the days when women's voices were not thought to be appropriate for news or "serious" programming. When she was blacklisted as a communist in the early 1950s, Sergio compensated for the loss of radio employment by becoming principally an author and lecturer in Washington, D.C., until her death in 1989. This dissertation, based on her personal papers, is the first study of Sergio's American mass communication career. It points out the personal, political and social obstacles she faced as a woman in her 52-year career as a commentator on varied aspects of world affairs, religion and feminism. This study includes an examination of the FBI investigations of Sergio and the anti-communist campaigns conducted against her. It concludes that Sergio's success as a public communicator was predicated on both her unusual talents and her ability to transform her public image to reflect ideal American values of womanhood in shifting political climates.