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
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Item THE LESSONS OF TREACHERY IN POLYBIUS’ HISTORIES(2022) Slavik, Jordan Francis; Eckstein, Arthur; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation offers a new analysis of Polybius of Megalopolis’ Histories by looking at the Achaean historian’s many depictions of treachery and deception during the third and second centuries BCE. Chapter 1 introduces the topic and explores how Polybius’ moral evaluations of treachery consistently center on the personal gain of the betrayer and the context of the situation. Chapter 2 surveys instances of treachery and deception taken against friends and allies in the Histories, which are remarkably even-handed. Polybius makes allowances for certain betrayals in the face of extreme necessity and wicked allies, and he is especially critical of treachery committed despite past kindnesses. Chapter 3 discusses Polybius’ accounts of treachery and deception carried out against one’s own state. In addition to showcasing continued Polybian contextual nuances, the chapter emphasizes the frequency and severity at which these internal betrayals occur in monarchies, when compared with republics, providing insight into Polybius’ attitude toward monarchies, republics, and the morally corrupting weight of power on different forms of government. Significantly, the Romans remain unique in the Histories in their utter lack of any such internal treachery. Chapter 4 explores instances of diplomatic deception employed during times of war, maintaining that Polybius allowed for a significant amount of diplomatic deception and maneuvering when a formal treaty or truce had not been sworn. In the Histories, when oaths are sworn, the Romans are typically the victims of such treachery, often characterized by Polybius as παρανομία. The exception to this is Polybius’ condemnation of Marcius Philippus’ deceptions against Perseus in 172/171, which seems inconsistent given Polybius’ heavy praise of Scipio in 203 and Flamininus in 198/197 for strikingly similar deceptions. This deviation matches Polybius’ efforts throughout the Histories to fabricate a contrast of earlier Roman virtue with contemporary Roman depravity. Chapter 5 adopts a “Greek vs barbarian” lens to argue that Polybius connected the acquisition of power with the moral decline and political collapse of the state – both of which are forecasted by Polybian descriptions of παρανομία. Notably, throughout the Histories the Romans never exemplify such παρανομία. The interconnection between moral corruption and pragmatic consequence is emphasized in Polybius’ descriptions of the many unjustified instances of treachery throughout his work, all of which are carefully shown to have dire consequences for the culprits. The dissertation concludes by arguing that Polybius realized that in the new unipolar reality of Roman domination, the only check on tyrannical Roman behavior would have to come from the Romans themselves. Thus, Polybius uses his fabricated model of past Roman virtue and present Roman depravity to challenge the Romans to surpass the benevolence of their ancestors, while warning the Romans about what would happen should they resort to “barbaric” tyranny. These didactic efforts suggest that Polybius wrote the Histories with a Roman readership in mind.Item Fictions of Hybridity in the Anthropocene: Literature and Science in the Works of Rétif de la Bretonne(2021) Bezilla, Charlee Myranda; Benharrech, Sarah; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Experiments in genetic engineering have raised environmental, medical, and ethical questions concerning the manipulation of biological processes. Does modifying an organism in this way change its nature? What do increasingly complex relations between human and machine, organism and technology, mean for human identity and our relations with non-human lifeforms? These questions rest on uneasy but persistent dichotomies of nature and culture, of the humanities and the sciences, and on notions of modernity and progress central to ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Conceptions of humans as distinct from nature—what anthropologist Philippe Descola names the “nature/culture” divide—are deeply imprinted in the Western psyche and reflected in disciplinary divisions separating the humanities and the sciences, what Bruno Latour calls the “Internal Great Divide.”These questions about hybrid beings, manipulating nature, and the nature/culture divide were particularly pertinent in eighteenth-century French literature and natural history, a period coinciding with the nascence of biological science wherein many thinkers locate the beginnings of the “Anthropocene,” an epoch in which human activity has markedly affected earth systems. Drawing on methods from literary studies and ecocriticism, I examine how literary texts engage debates on the mutability of species, the nature of man, and anxieties about governing populations that remain relevant today. Through the lens of Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne’s 1781 novel La Découverte australe par un homme-volant, I engage close readings of the novel alongside natural historical texts to consider the possibilities of “hybridity” as a tool for understanding literary production, the relationships between humans and nonhumans, and how the domains of fiction and science can come together. I find that these texts posit hybridity as a promising intervention, despite growing concerns about degeneration stemming from crossbreeding experiments. After analyzing the formal aspects of the “hybrid” text and its paratexts in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, I examine how the novel incorporates, interrogates, and extends contemporary theories about the nature of humans and animals. Chapter 3 explores the manipulation of hybrid creatures and proto-eugenicist politics in La Découverte australe alongside key texts from the period to trace how the novel engages contemporary discourses of perfectibility and degeneration. Chapter 4 shows how the novel promotes mechanical technology, along with biological hybridization, as tools of imperialism and societal improvement at a pivotal moment leading up to the industrial revolution.Item Juan Ramon Jimenez, su vida y su obra(1952) Palau de Nemes, Graciela; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item Repertoire des Themes d'Alfred de Vigny(1953) Fagg, Simone Fastres; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item Viajeros españoles a Rusia: Cartografía de una ilusión, 1917-1939(2015) BECERRIL LONGARES, MARIA ELENA; NAHARRO-CALDERÓN, JOSÉ M; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Spanish travel accounts and their search for a better society in the USSR between the 1917 Russian Revolution and the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939) were marked by socialist ideas that had taken strong root in early 20th century Spain. Eventually, the II Spanish Republic (1931-39) was perceived as a possible springboard for spreading the worldwide worker’s revolution. New Humanist ideals were also combined with theories of perfect governance and the renaissance of Utopias. Antonio Machado, a poetic icon, praised the revolutionary “goodness” early on and was an advocate for the need for change among Spanish society. Battleship Potemkin and other films contributed to the Spanish proletariat’s revolutionary awakening and participation. In this socio-historical context, ideologically diverse intellectuals began their travels to the USSR seeking to confirm firsthand the “Russian experiment.” They ranged from later renowned authors such as Rafael Alberti, Max Aub or Manuel Chaves Nogales to the forgotten, like León Villanúa or Amado Blanco. Upon these voyagers’ return to Spain they availed themselves of a myriad of literary genres: testimony literature, personal memoirs, autobiography, travelogues and parodies, their impressions and experiences quickly becoming widespread. Therefore, my dissertation dissects the impact and reception of the Russian Other throughout these diverse Spanish traveler’s accounts, imaginaries, and their reader’s reception as well as the structural changes evident in this diverse corpus and its authors. It also turns a critical eye towards the Russian miracle agitprop rhetoric and the decline and crisis of the USSR Spanish travel examples, particularly during the post 1939 Spanish Civil War exile, the Cold War and Stalinism horror revelations.Item BRILLER SUR SCÈNE : L'ASTRONOMIE DANS LE THÉÂTRE DU GRAND SIÈCLE(2014) Arnaud, Cybele; Campangne, Hervé Thomas; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)January 5th, 1634, the news of Galileo's condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church for his heretical belief in heliocentric theories -theories that postulate that the Earth orbits the Sun- reach France. As the professors of the Sorbonne condemn Galileo, as René Descartes, ever-cautious, chooses to forgo publishing his Treatise on the World, an ever increasing number of French writers turn to fiction to prove, attack, or simply present astronomical and cosmological theories to their audience. While much has been written about the new astronomy's relationship to poetry, proto-science fiction and vulgarization through novelization of scientific knowledge, its presence on the French stage, in comedies and ballets, has been mostly ignored by the scholarship. This thesis constructs a timeline of "natural philosophy theatre", tracking the movement of the sun and the earth and the representation of the theories elaborated by Copernicus, Tycho Brahé and Descartes through plays and ballets published in the 17th century and beyond, in order to analyze the function of laughter in the context of the scientific revolution. The following questions will be answered: How is the new astronomy presented on stage, both in comedies and ballets? What role does laughter play in the representation of science? Is it simply used to challenge the audience's beliefs? Is dance's only purpose to mimic the orbits of the planets, or does it hold a deeper meaning? What, if any, is the greater purpose of including scientific knowledge in theater?Item Espacios de mujeres españolas: memorias, represión, fragmentos y espectáculos, 1939-.(2013) Di Stravolo, Loredana Margaret; Naharro-Calderón, José María; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Spain suffered a huge repression, as General Francisco Franco overtook an established Republican Government and stayed in power for nearly forty years. People lived in fear; a fear so severe that they were forced to repress their memories of wartime events. After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain established a democratic-monarchic government. Again, forgetting the past was the path taken by all political parties to avoid any confrontations, as memory slipped into oblivion. In my investigation, I will contribute to the excavation of the past and help break the silence by focusing on Spanish women's spaces during the social context of the Spanish Civil War, Spain's postwar, Transition to Democracy and PostTransition. I will study theories of memory based on the research of Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, Pierre Nora, and Maurice Halbwachs, as a source to explore Spanish women's spaces and identities as well as their contributions, not only to society and culture but also to the literary world. The authors at the core of my study include: Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite, María Luisa Elío, Mercé Rodoreda, Carmen Praga, Tomasa Cuevas, Dolores Medio, Dulce Chacón, Ricardo Vinyes and Javier Cercas. My research spans several genres, with novels and testimonies by and about women that use memory - individual and collective - as a vehicle to reconstruct their feminine identities and spaces. Although Spanish women were trapped in a patriarchal society during the postwar years, they were able to skillfully manipulate the imposed censorship to express themselves and their needs. The texts that I include in my investigations can be broken into three main phases: repressed memory, fragmented memory and spectacular memory. This dissertation shows how memory can serve as an agent for liberation especially for women of an oppressed and forced silence of the past.Item Writing at the Edge of the Empire: The Poetics of Piracy in the Early Modern Atlantic World(2012) Payton, Jason M.; Bauer, Ralph; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines four pirate-authored texts from the early modern period, each of which centers on the development of piracy in the Atlantic world. Contrary to popular opinion, not all pirates were illiterate thugs. Many wrote about their experiences, and their narratives were immensely popular among early modern readers. I focus on the generic choices pirate-authors made as they crafted their narratives for popular consumption, particularly their use of chivalric romance, which they drew on to present "enchanted" histories of the Atlantic world. By representing themselves as chivalric knights-errant, pirate-authors transformed themselves from thieves to gallant knights, they recast their raids as knightly quests, and they re-imagined their gruesome acts of violence as heroic feats of daring at arms. The romance form thus allowed pirate-authors to create modern spaces of agency within empire that resembled the mythical landscapes of the medieval chivalric tradition. It also allowed them to fashion critiques of empire, which increasingly limited the social mobility of the lower classes from which most pirates hailed. Pirates' reflections on the violence of empire offer a disenchanting picture of the development of imperialism during the colonial American period. My dissertation begins with Sir Walter Raleigh's 1596 Discovery of Guiana, which narrates the author's voyage to Guiana simultaneously as a knightly quest for the mythical city of El Dorado and as a mercantilist voyage for England. Raleigh was met with severe criticism for his decision to frame the history of his voyage as a romance quest because the notion of the adventure-quest celebrated the freedom of the individual apart from the power of the state. The conflict between the interests of the pirate-as- knight-errant and the aims of the state became even more pronounced during the seventeenth century. I trace the evolution this conflict in three narratives written by Caribbean pirates--also known as buccaneers--during the late seventeenth century: Alexander Oliver Exquemelin's 1678 Buccaneers of America, Raveneau de Lussan's 1689 Journal of a Voyage Made into the South Sea, and William Dampier's 1697 New Voyage Round the World. Whereas Raleigh could envision his adventure-quest as part of a larger narrative of English imperial expansion, buccaneer authors understood piracy as a utopian escape from the hegemony of empire. For Exqmemelin and de Lussan, piracy represents an alternative to their lives as servants. The chivalric ethos that Exquemelin and de Lussan projected onto pirate society allows them to level a devastating critique of the debasing nature of empire. For Dampier, representing his circumnavigation of the globe as the adventure-quest of a troupe of knights-errant allows him to imagine a global space in which pirates could create a society completely free from constraints of imperial governance. Ultimately, my dissertation demonstrates that the most unlikely band of literati in the Atlantic world made significant contributions to the development of American literary forms. By adopting the Old World form of the chivalric romance to New World contexts, pirate-authors created spaces of individual agency at the edge of the imperial domain, which allowed them to offer sharp critiques of the systems of exploitation and subjugation that structured imperial culture. The narratives I treat here reveal that the history of early America cannot simply be told as the history of states and empires. Rather, my research shows that early American scholars must broaden their disciplinary horizons to include the literary contributions of trans-national, trans-Atlantic subjects whose lives at the edge of empire allowed them to pursue lives of political transgression and fashion narratives that challenged progressivist narratives of imperial history.Item (RE)NEGOCIATIONS DES FRONTIERES: PENSEE DU MONDE ET DISCOURS SUR LA MODERNITE CHEZ JEAN D'ORMESSON(2012) Elhaddad, Nermine Shawki; Verdaguer, Pierre M.; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Situated at the crossroads of two dominant discourses, literature and philosophy, the writings of Jean d'Ormesson appear to be constantly negotiating a space for a new way of thinking. He doesn't propose any conceptual models but sees philosophy as an egotistical interpretation deeply rooted in one's life experiences, values, desires, and projects. Thus, philosophical thinking should stray away from subjective speculation to include all the aspects that are usually discarded such as affectivity, morality, and artistic creativity. By breaking away from immanentism, nihilism and relativism, philosophy should be able to contemplate the status of the self in the composition of its discourse. The similarities that can be drawn between d'Ormesson's way of "thinking the world" and the Integralism of Jean Granier are apparent. Both philosophies mull over the role of values in shaping human lives and their aspiration to fulfill their ultimate "human destination". Self-valorization is therefore what determines man's quest for meaning inside the world and beyond. A philosophical anthropology concludes that a "transvaluation" is necessary to avert modern materialist values while preventing post-materialist values from slipping into pure selfishness. Currently considered as the most important writer in France, d'Ormesson offers in his novels an illustration of what can be described as "probable thinking". Through the analysis of existential clues and transcendent evidence, the author constructs a line of argument capable of tying Human Life to a "supreme destination" guaranteeing a meaningful outcomeItem Digital Poetry: Comparative Textual Performances in Trans-medial Spaces(2011) Magearu, Mirona; Harrison, Regina; Carlorosi, Silvia; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study extends work on notions of space and performance developed by media and poetry theorists. I particularly analyze how contemporary technologies re-define the writing space of digital poetry making by investigating the configuration and the function of this space in the writing of the digital poem. Thus, I employ David Jay Bolter's concept of "topographic" digital writing and propose the term "trans-medial" space to describe the computer space in which the digital poem exists, emerges, and is experienced. With origins in Italian Futurism, the literary avant-garde of the first half of twentieth century, digital poetry extends the creative repertoire of this experimental poetry tradition using computers in the composition, generation, or presentation of texts. Because these poems convey a perception of space as changeable and multiple (made of computer screen and code spaces), this "trans-medial" space is both self-transformative (forms itself as it self-transforms) and transforming (transforms what it contains). Media scholars such as Espen Aarseth and Stephanie Strickland often explain how computer programming makes such digital works become sites of encounter between agencies such as author, text, or readers. Conversely, I show that this "trans-medial" space is also a mediating agent in the performance of the text along with its readers in the sense that it engages in and with the performance of text. I examine three forms of digital poetry: Gianni Toti's video-poetry, Caterina Davinio's net-poetry, and Loss Pequeno Glazier's JavaScript-based poetry. These Italian and United States poet-scholars are leading figures in digital poetry. As scholars, they articulate the theoretical frameworks of this genre in landmark anthologies. As poets, their digital works are similar in that they are indebted to Italian Futurism; and yet they represent distinct visions of and about poetry in new media spaces. I use their works to think through video-graphic spaces, networked spaces, and scripting spaces as expressions of trans-medial space. In this respect, my comparative analysis opens up new venues for the reading of digital poetry by re-fashioning the concept and the function of the writing space of our digitized world.