College of Arts & Humanities
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1611
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item “But Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not” Comparing Gender Roles in the Ballad Tam Lin and Medieval and Renaissance Scotland.(2023) Conant, Charlotte; Bianchini, \Janna; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tam Lin, a medieval Scottish Ballad tells the story of an unusually forceful young Lady Janet. Janet does many of the feats of strength in her story, defies her father, refuses to behave as a ‘good Christian woman’ might and suffers no consequences for her actions. She ends her story successfully married to a noble Christian man, having saved him from the evil pagan Fairy Queen. This ballad has been popular for centuries, and has been cited as a ballad unique to Scotland that represents Scottish culture. The ballad contains ideas that one might think contradictory to the ideas of a medieval Christian society, yet the ballad was so popular it had a ballet (now lost) and has survived for at least four hundred years. This dissertation examines the differences and similarities between the lack of consequences Janet suffers and what real women in Scotland from the Medieval Ages to the Early Modern period would have experienced. It also will delve into the various cultural groups that contributed to the ‘Scottish Nature’ of the ballad. Stories are told by humans all across the world, a ballad, likely sung in a group, in order to continue being told, must not go against the inherent social rules of the people performing it, or else act as a cautionary tale. However, since Janet does not end her story suffering, Tam Lin is not meant to be a cautionary tale. Why then, was this ballad, that might appear to be so contradictory to the society that was telling it, have managed to survive (and be so popular) to the current day and age.Item “LEARN AS WE LEAD”: LESSONS FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN(2021) Hufnagel, Ashley Marie; Padios, Jan; Hanhardt, Christina; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the spring of 1968, over six thousand poor people—black, chicano, white, Puerto Rican, and Native American from rural areas to urban centers—converged on Washington, D.C. to call attention to poverty and inequality in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. This six-week demonstration was part of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final and oft-forgotten Poor People’s Campaign. Fifty years later, thousands of people in over forty states have taken part in reviving this movement as the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC 2018+), co-chaired by Bishop William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. From low-wage workers’ fight for $15/hour minimum wage in the South to the Apache struggle to protect sacred land from copper mining in Oak Flat, Arizona; from the battle to stop emergency managers from poisoning and privatizing water services in Michigan to the urgent demands to abolish the criminalization of black, immigrant, and poor communities, “Learn as We Lead” investigates how local and national organizers are utilizing the vehicle of the campaign to build a broad-based movement across lines of identity, geography, and issue, while centering the leadership of the poor. Drawing on participant observation within the campaign, interviews with over forty grassroots leaders from twenty-seven states, and archival research, this dissertation uncovers how movement practitioners are reproducing and reformulating a long history of multiracial and multi-issue class politics—from the welfare rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the National Union of the Homeless of the 1980s and 1990s, from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) of the early 2000s to the Moral Mondays and low-wage worker movements of recent years. In a time of deepening political, economic, environmental and health crisis, leaders with the PPC 2018+ offer critical insights on forging class consciousness and solidarity across difference.Item LEARNING PATHWAYS: A PROJECT AND INTERNSHIP REFLECTION(2021) Pecoraro, Alexandria Sofia; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis seeks to examine the author’s experiences as an intern for Smithsonian Folkways and their work on the Smithsonian Folkways Learning Pathways project. The aim of the Learning Pathways project was to create an open-source resource for K-12 educators and students that utilizes Smithsonian Folkways large and diverse musical catalogue, while also providing a much-needed resource on musics of diverse populations in the USA and abroad. The background of the project, along with the methodologies used both by the author and the Folkways Learning Pathways team to create learning materials are investigated and reported upon, and the ethical implications of the project are explored.Item Trans Space As Cultural Landscape--Transgender Women of Color in Washington, D.C.(2019) Anthony, A S; Parks, Sheri; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transgender civil rights and public displays of trans visibility have come to the fore of the American imagination. To date, however, little work has thoroughly examined Black and Latinx trans women’s central role as experts in LGBT community-caregiving practices. As a result, scholarship and popular culture concerned with “the transgender tipping point” (Time May 29, 2014) generally endorse a narrative that characterizes transgender women of color primarily as celebrities, victims of transphobic violence, or historic figures of the LGBT liberation movement, if they are mentioned at all, making their everyday lives marginal or non-existent at a time when their presence in popular culture is exploding. Without an adequate fieldwork model, we undervalue the everyday lives and landscapes of transgender women of color in the United States, ultimately leading to a two-dimensional conceptualization of identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. Trans Space as Cultural Landscape—Transgender Women of Color in Washington, D.C, remedies this gap by creating and applying Bodies in spaces—the trans cultural landscape analysis fieldwork model. The trans model extends the work of Americanist Jeremey Korr (2002) to reimagine the study of trans space, place, and gender transition. It is divided into the following components: detailed site description, aesthetics, language and material culture, and community research. At the heart of Trans Space is an ethnographic study of Casa Ruby, a bilingual social service nonprofit in Washington, D.C. (casaruby.org). The trans model allows me to addresses the queer and trans problematics of my particular site: addiction, prostitution, and homelessness. The model then expands to examine the work of trans celebrities such as Laverne Cox in order to trace the circuitous paths of daily transition and sisterhood. The evolution of the following inquiry guides my commitment to cross-discipline methodologies and community involvement. Space stages the expansive possibilities of gender transition. In extending gender transition narratives to functions that do not apply to space, how do we know a trans space when we see it? And what do these spatial transitions and pop culture representations tell us about an American investment in identity and its tipping points?Item RELEVANCE, SELF-DETERMINATION, AND UNIVERSALITY THROUGH ST. AUGUSTINE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S GOSPEL CHOIR(2019) Visceglia, Victoria Lynn; Lie, Siv B.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Second Vatican Council provided ample opportunity for individual Catholic parishes to choose music that suited their congregations and contribute to the “Universal Church” through their particularity. St. Augustine Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. formed a gospel choir in light of this newfound freedom. Based on about one year of participant observation, this thesis analyzes the Gospel Choir’s role in making the Mass more relevant and interactive for parishioners. Singers maintain certain practices and ideals of the Church that they know make their ministry more effective while acknowledging the shortcomings of Catholicism at an institutional level. They animate listeners to respond dialogically with the Mass, allowing their lived experiences to inform their spiritual transformations. After more than 40 years, the Gospel Choir continues to navigate the boundaries between sacred and secular, Catholic and Protestant, and contrasting conceptions of African American identity.Item Dancing the Archive: Rhythms of Change in Post-Volcano Identities on Montserrat, West Indies(2016) Spanos, Kathleen Aurelia; Frederik, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I demonstrate how improvisations within the structures of performance during Montserrat’s annual festivals produce “rhythms of change” that contribute to the formation of cultural identities. Montserrat is a small island of 39.5 square miles in the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands, and a volcanic disaster in the 1990s led to the loss of villages, homes, and material possessions. The crisis resulted in mass displacement and emigration, and today’s remaining population of 5,000 is now in a stage of post-volcano redevelopment. The reliability of written archives for establishing cultural knowledge is tenuous, and the community is faced with re-energizing cherished cultural traditions. This ethnographic research traces my embodied search for Montserrat’s history through an archive that is itself intangible and performative. Festivals produce some of the island’s most visible and culturally political events, and music and dance performances prompt on- and off-stage discussions about the island’s multifaceted heritage. The festival cycle provides the structure for ongoing renegotiations of what it means to be “Montserratian.” I focus especially on the island’s often-discussed and debated “triangular” heritage of Irishness, Africanness, and Montserratianness as it is performed during the festivals. Through my meanderings along the winding hilly roads of Montserrat, I explored reconfigurations of cultural memory through the island’s masquerade dance tradition and other festival celebrations. In this work, I introduce a “Cast of Characters,” each of whose scholarly, artistic, and public service work on Montserrat contributes to the shape and transformation of the island’s post-volcano cultural identities today. This dissertation is about the kinesthetic transmission of shared (and sometimes unshared) cultural knowledge, the substance of which echoes in the rhythms of Montserrat’s music and dance practices today.Item "Unique By Nature, Traditional By Choice": Music Initiatives and Social Change in a Rural Appalachian Community(2014) Terman, Jennie; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In Pocahontas County, West Virginia, a cherished musical heritage exists alongside a continuously changing population, and music initiatives demonstrate the tension between preserving local traditions and embracing diversity. Employing practice theory, concepts of globalization, and an applied ethnomusicological approach, three music initiatives--a historical performance hall, public school music education, and the local community radio station--are investigated in terms of their history, current role in the community, and programming and curricula. These initiatives serve as tools for exploring how the music programming and education in this community reflect outside interests and social changes during the past century and help frame suggestions of how public music initiatives, both in this community and elsewhere, might better respond to social change. With collaboration and an in-depth understanding of the complexities of a population, music initiatives can make positive and effective contributions to communities.Item TODAY WE ARE ALL SCOTTISH: PERFORMANCES OF SELF, COMMUNITY, AND NATION AT HIGHLAND GAMES AND GATHERINGS(2014) Dawn, Karalee; Meer, Laurie A; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I analyze the complicated history and markers of cultural identity, as well as the sometimes-diverse performances of Scotland and Scottishness. I have documented that although Scottish symbols carry centuries of meaning, they have not endured without reinventions and struggle. Whether they are seen in Scotland or at Highland Games and Gatherings in the United States, and regardless of the traditions' "inventedness," "selectivity," or contested status, their interaction and dialogism work to represent the unique history and heritage of Scottish national cultural identity in local communities and in the overseas marketing campaigns for a growing and essential tourism industry. This dissertation examines the factors that draw together thousands of people who proudly proclaim (or seek) their Scottish heritage in a variety of performances, rituals and festivities. I examine how popular markers of Scottish heritage, such as bagpipe playing, kilt wearing, and clan affiliation transform when they change locations and cross borders. I ask if the "Wearing of the Tartan" changes meaning when it shifts locations, and I investigate how issues of shared heritage, genealogy, and membership are interpreted and enacted in a global Scottish community.Item Place as Common and Un-Common Wealth: A Relational Ethnographic Analysis of the Conceptual Landscapes of Place Amidst the Shifting and Marginalized Grounds of Letcher County, Kentucky and Southeast Washington, D.C.(2014) Crase, Kirsten Lee; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a relational ethnographic analysis of how people in two marginalized places that are undergoing significant disruptive change understand the idea of place. The rural eastern Kentucky coalfields community of Letcher County and the urban neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. share in having been structurally and discursively marginalized, both historically and in the present; they also share in having residents who are disadvantaged through the interplay of race, class, geography, and other factors. Both places currently face significant shifts in their social, economic, and structural landscapes. The disruptive shift facing Letcher County is the intensification of mountaintop removal coal mining methods that threaten ecological well-being and inflame longstanding local tensions over livelihood, identity, and the future of the community. The disruptive shift facing Southeast D.C. is increasing levels of redevelopment, as associated with the beginnings of gentrification in the community, and the heightening of longstanding tendencies toward displacement among the community's most marginalized residents. This study uses interviewing and participant observation to bring the flexibility of ethnography to bear on the complexities and subtleties of how people understand place. The focus of my study is a series of in-depth interviews with four key research participant residents in each community, interpreting their articulations in terms of the relationship between place, marginalization, and change. This study also makes use of a relational approach, juxtaposing and interlacing explorations of both places. There are many differences in the disruptive changes facing these places and in their general characteristics as communities--Letcher County is a rural, overwhelmingly white community and Southeast D.C. is an urban, overwhelmingly African American community. I argue, however, that broad and foundational resemblances exist between how residents of the two communities think and feel about place in relation to marginalization and change. I conclude that my research participants in Letcher County and Southeast D.C. share broadly similar understandings of what constitutes local well-being, or common wealth, and I demonstrate those parallels by elucidating my participants' conceptual landscapes of place.Item Subjacent Culture, Orthogonal Community: An Ethnographic Analysis of an On-Line Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Community(2013) Ali, Asim; Caughey, John L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the community of fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer whose members frequented the online linear posting board known as The Bronze. Buffy originally aired from 1997 until 2003, but the community that formed at the official Buffy fan site in 1997 continues on in real life and on line, having survived the end of Buffy and the closure of all three of its official posting boards. This study uses an interdisciplinary combination of textual analysis and ethnographic techniques (interviews, participant observation, autoethnography, cyberethnography) to ascertain the importance, relevance, and meaning of The Bronze community to its members, known as Bronzers. I argue that the nature of the linear posting board allowed Bronzers to form a unique and long-lived community by using The Bronze in creative and imaginative ways. In particular, language--to some degree appropriated from Buffy--was used by Bronzers to write a better world for themselves on line. Hence, the community is built on (and maintained by) language that is used in an unusually postmodern manner. As a group, Bronzers tend to be highly educated, literary, and artistic. To Bronzers, much of Buffy's appeal was its emotional realism and imaginative depth. Unusually for television, these elements were combined with strong female leading roles, a cast of bookish and somewhat countercultural characters, and a foregrounding of emotionality and interpersonal relationships. Bronzers were drawn to these aspects of Buffy--which formed its "gothic aesthetic"--and in turn created their own somewhat countercultural community, one that came to reflect their own close ties and emotional attachments. I argue that The Bronze community exists subjacent to mainstream cultural formations, and orthogonal to real life communities. Using this framework, a number of implications emerge for computer-mediated communication in general, including an explanation for the prevalence of hostility in online communication. Furthermore, when situated in its broader context, The Bronze can be seen as a meager palliative to the damaging effects of contemporary post-industrial capitalism, one that nonetheless illumines the brightly stultifying commonplaces that lead people to seek shelter in dimly-lit imagined spaces.