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 (Musical) Sales Pitches from the "Salesman of Americanism:" The Comic Operas of John Philip Sousa(2012) Chessum, Tracey Elaine; Nathans, Heather S; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)When Americans hear the name John Phillip Sousa, they likely equate him with brass band music and the Fourth of July holiday. Neither theatre scholars nor audiences generally link Sousa with musical theatre; however Sousa saw nine of his comic operas and one musical comedy produced between 1879 and 1913. This dissertation is primarily a work of musical theatre history; however, it argues that Sousa's comic operas were constructed to play a role in how American identity was manufactured and disseminated at the turn of the twentieth-century by reflecting new definitions of the "American" from the stage and circulating these new definitions nationally and internationally. Sousa constructed himself into an American cultural icon, a "Salesman of Americanism," during an era renegotiating national identity. His works, therefore, carry the weight of his iconic stature, casting their messages as an `American' point of view. In addition to a comprehensive discussion of each operetta's form and production history, I argue that Sousa's comic operas can be cast as cultural ambassadors for social and political ideas; as musical theatre works attempting to re-define American identity in the eyes of audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. While situating Sousa's comic operas within the framework of musical theatre history, I argue that these cultural ambassadors were powerful agents advocating political and social change, intervening in the major social debates of the period, specifically in dialogues on race, foreign policy, copyright, labor, and suffrage. Because of his status as a great `American,' and as a musical theatre composer rivaling Victor Herbert and George M. Cohan, the use of Sousa's operettas to sell ideology taught those watching that propaganda could be effectively integrated into musical theatre offerings. The musical theatre production - particularly on tour - served as one of the first forms of mass popular entertainment that could be used for political and social advantage. Sousa's comic operas, therefore, were a small part of the redefinition of the American musical, pushing its form toward integration, and shifting it from diversion and spectacle to ideological tool.Item The Browning of the All Blacks: Pacific Peoples, Rugby, and the Cultural Politics of Identity in New Zealand(2008-05-07) Grainger, Andrew David; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I examine how the complex, and often contradictory, discourses of being a 'Pacific person' are played out in, and through, New Zealand rugby. In particular, I interrogate how these discourses--manifest in various forms of public expression--structure, regulate, and, potentially, challenge traditional notions of nationality. In the opening chapters I first explore how liberal values and the goals of inclusion and pluralism have been an important part of defining New Zealand identity. In this regard Pacific peoples are playing an ever-more important role. I suggest, however, that an emergent 'Pacific multiculturalism' actually reinforces white cultural power. It also masks the way national belonging has been racialized in New Zealand, and the role rugby has, and continues to, play in inscribing the Otherness of Pacific peoples. What I suggest is needed is alternative or resistant models of 'culture.' In the concluding chapters I turn to the notion of diaspora as one potential alternative. Rearticulating the insightful ideas of Paul Gilroy in my penultimate chapter, I argue that diaspora can be productively adapted as a model to comprehend the lives, travels, migrations, and significances of Pacific athletes. I suggest they provide important diasporic resources for rearticulating modes of belonging that exceed national boundaries. Methodologically, this project is a discursive analysis of the public discourses of Pacificness circulating in a diverse range of documentary, literary, and media sources. I suggest that this critical analysis of the performance, practice, and institutions of Pacific/New Zealand rugby provides a unique context within which to examine the ensemble of discourses and forces by which identity is understood and produced, and through which the Pacific subject in constituted. My hope is that, in accord with Gilroy (1993), this analysis both identifies and actively produces alternatives to divisive discourses of national and ethnic absolutism. That is, my goal is to produce a text which not only critiques, but offers strategies of resistance to, the practices, structures, and ideologies of exclusion.Item Narrating Tragedy: From Kennedy to Katrina, From Sports to National Identities(2007-11-26) Gavin, Michael; Struna, Nancy L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)On September 11, 2001, Major League Baseball commissioner Allan 'Bud' Selig postponed the baseball season to offer proper respect to that day's terror victims. On September 16, 2001, when the major league season resumed, sports columnists across the nation-state referred to the New York Yankees as 'America's team.' When the Yankees made their run to the World Series, many columnists argued they 'healed the wounds of the nation.' Likewise, as water settled in the French Quarter after Hurricane Katrina, columnists suggested the New Orleans Saints were 'capable of healing the nation' and referred to them as 'America's team.' When the Saints returned to the Superdome in 2006, many columnists suggested the region and nation were both healed. This dissertation uses discourse analysis to reveal the constructions of and contestations for dominant versions of national identity and memory in which sports columnists engaged in the context of tragedies like the John F. Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. In examining sports columnists' work over five decades, I offer a historical overview of sports columns and their relationship to dominant discourses of race and national identity. In the process, I contend that the voices comprising mainstream sports columnists through the 1960s generally constructed a mythological national identity that privileged whiteness. By the late 1990s, however, the voices comprising mainstream sports columnists included both those who constructed and confronted white hegemony. Interestingly, some of those columnists supporting whiteness were minorities; and some of those confronting whiteness were themselves white. Hence, I argue that whiteness is a standpoint, not a condition of skin color. Likewise, I contend that mainstream sports columnists confronting whiteness work within a system often identified as producing hegemony in order to dismantle it, and potentially exert a great amount of cultural power.Item "The Swinging Door": U.S. National Identity and the Making of the Mexican Guestworker, 1900 - 1935(2006-11-21) Noel, Linda Carol; Gerstle, Gary; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines U.S. national identity in the first third of the twentieth century. During this period, heated discussions ensued throughout the country regarding the extent to which the door of American society should be open to people of Mexican descent. Several major events brought this issue to the foreground: the proposed statehood of Arizona and New Mexico in the early twentieth century, the increase in Mexican immigration after World War I, and the repatriation of Mexican immigrants in the 1930s. The "Swinging Door" explores the competing perspectives regarding the inclusion or exclusion of people of Mexican descent embedded within each of these disputes. This dissertation argues that four strategies evolved for dealing with newcomers of Mexican descent: assimilation, pluralism, exclusion, and marginalization. Two strategies, assimilation and pluralism, permitted people of Mexican descent to belong to the nation so long as they either conformed to an Anglo American identity or proclaimed a Spanish American one rooted in a European heritage, whiteness, and a certain class standing. Exclusion denied entry into the U.S., or in the case of those already there, no role in society. Marginalization, which became the predominant strategy by the 1930s, allowed people of Mexican descent to remain physically within the country so long as they stayed only temporarily or agreed to accept a subordinate status as second-class Americans. The prevailing view changed depending on the economic and political power of people of Mexican descent, their desire to incorporate as Americans, and the demand for their labor or land by other Americans. One of the most significant findings of this project is that as the marginalization strategy gained adherents, the image of Mexican immigrants as temporary workers or "guestworkers" became the primary way in which Americans, Mexicans, and the immigrants themselves regarded the newcomers from Mexico. Despite the fact that this image was often false, the notion of Mexicans as only temporarily in the U.S. proved too seductive for the many divergent voices to resist as this image theoretically allowed Mexicans to enter the country and to provide their labor without threatening extant notions of American identity.Item The Shadow of the Habsburgs: Memory and National Identity in Austrian Politics and Education, 1918-1955(2006-06-01) Campbell, Douglas Patrick; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how the people of Austria portrayed their past as part of the centuries-old, multinational Habsburg Monarchy in order to conduct a public debate about what it meant to be an "Austrian" during a tumultuous era in Europe's history. As its main sources, It draws upon the public writings of Austrian politicians and intellectuals, as well as on educational laws, curricula and history textbooks used by the different Austrian governments of the era in order to describe how Austrian leaders portrayed Austria's past in an attempt to define its national future, even as Austrian schools tried to disseminate those national and historical ideals to the next generation of Austrian citizens in a practical sense. The first section describes how the leaders of the Austrian First Republic saw Austria's newfound independence after 1918 as a clean break with its Habsburg past, and consequently pursued a union with Germany which was frustrated by the political interests of the victors of World War I. The second section details the rise of an "Austro-fascist" dictatorship in Austria during the mid-1930s which promoted an Austrian patriotism grounded in a positive portrayal of the Habsburg Monarchy in order to remain independent from Nazi Germany. The third section examines Austria's forcible incorporation into the Nazi German state, and the effort by the Third Reich to completely eradicate the existence of a distinctive Austrian identity by casting the Habsburg era in a negative light. The final section describes the rebirth of an independent Austrian state at the insistence of the Allied powers after World War II, and the manner in which the leaders of the Austrian Second Republic used memories of the Habsburg Past in order to portray Austrians as the victims of foreign German aggression who bore no responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. This study ultimately shows that national identity was variable in post-Habsburg Austria, and that Austrian leaders and educators were able to construct narratives regarding their past which at times argued both for and against Austrian Germanness in response to the changing demands of the European balance of power.Item RETURNED DIASPORA, NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN LATVIA AND LITHUANIA(2005-05-09) Skulte, Jennifer Annemarie; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation looks at the phenomenon of diaspora political participation in their homelands through focusing on one aspect of diaspora homeland political action: holding political leadership positions in the homeland. Specifically, the research asks: When are returned diasporans able to enter into political leadership in their homelands and how do they act as political leaders? Furthermore, does this hold across countries or are the factors allowing for returned diaspora to become political leaders country-specific? The research focuses on two of the three Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania. Each country has witnessed significant returned diaspora participation in national political leadership as well as share a number of characteristics. In the research, when and how returned diaspora enter political leadership and how they act as political leaders in the countries is investigated through intensive field work and other research, analyzed, and then compared across countries. Characteristics that differentiate returned diaspora individuals from non-returned diaspora, here, "natives," are highlighted and analyzed. Overall, the research and analysis yields three important findings. Return diaspora enter homeland political leadership when there are political opportunities to do so. These opportunities are created by regime change, how political institutions and processes are structured and how national identity is formally and informally defined. Furthermore, returned diaspora political leaders display characteristics and actions that seem to be rooted in both their experience and time abroad as well as rooted in their identity as members of diasporas with strong ties to specific homelands. They also act in the political realm in different ways relative to natives and draw support and information from different national and international networks. This research adds to the body of knowledge on the institutional and cultural legacies of Sovietization. The research also highlights the importance of how national identity is defined in creating political opportunities for returned diasporans to enter homeland politics. While the case of diaspora impact on postcommunist Baltic politics may be rooted in a specific historical context, the more general impact of diasporas on politics in their homelands is a phenomenon with which not only academia but real politics will need to contend.