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.

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2017 - 20202

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    Of Flesh and Feathers: A Study of Artistic Labor and the Politics of the Sensuous in New York Neo-Burlesque
    (2020) Fallica, Elisabeth T.; Frederik, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation presents an ethnographic study of the neo-burlesque scene in New York City, a group of nightlife artists who perform theatrical striptease. Based on fieldwork conducted from 2015 to 2018, this study uses the lens of labor to explore issues of art making, aesthetics and materiality. Specifically, it focuses on the artistic labor of performers on and off the stage; how the concept of labor is evoked in performance; and the work of material objects on stage. Looking at labor in relationship to neo-burlesque hopes to advance discussions on costume and materiality, the artist’s relationship to concepts of work, and artistic process. In doing so, this project also seeks to broaden the scope of previous scholarship on burlesque and erotic performance that more often than not has read such performance as either oppressive or empowering. I begin by providing a contemporary history of the neo-burlesque scene in New York, a scene that emerged in the 1990s at late night parties and strip clubs, among performance artists and strippers. I then analyze the heated, emotional choreography in contemporary burlesque acts and consider its relationship to Post-Fordist work modes. In my discussion of neo-burlesque performance I also analyze the active role of costume, arguing that burlesque costumes are actants that cue performers choreographic choices. Finally, I offer an embodied approach to understanding the artistic practices of neo-burlesque in the classes offered through The New York School of Burlesque, illuminating the DIY ethos that undergirds the community.
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    THE IRRECONCILABLE VOLATILITY OF BLOODY BETTY & THE ONLINE ARCHIVE
    (2017) Walker, Jonelle; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This project investigates volatile portrayals of rape and sexualized violence in gorelesque performances by Vancouver-based troupe Bloody Betty and the Deadly Sins, as well as the digital YouTube archive that preserves those performances. Through examining how both the work of Bloody Betty and the manner in which that work is preserved maintain mutually exclusive contradictions, this project offers performance scholars a feminist theoretical framework for approaching similarly volatile contradictions in Fourth Wave feminist aesthetics and the online archive. This project proposes that both those objects of study require a feminist reconsideration of the gaze (live and online) that does not neutralize the volatility of sexual objectification, but rather accepts its inevitability in service of more effective feminist praxis.