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 Separation and Loss: Sequential Traumatization and the Loss of Family Life Experienced among the Children of the Kindertransports(2014) Stahl, Matthew Christian; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between December 1938 and September 1939, 10,000 Jewish children were evacuated from Nazi territory to the United Kingdom. Approximately ninety percent of these children were never reunited with their families. This thesis draws upon oral histories and memoirs of children from the Kindertransports in order to understand and analyze the traumas they experienced before fleeing from Nazi persecution and as a result of their separation from their parents as well as the factors that most influenced the long-term effects of this trauma.Item Opera Delaware's Family Opera Theatre(2010) Covert, Kalle; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nearly every opera company in North America conducts some form of outreach to children with the intent to educate and develop young audiences. By examining the forty-year history of Opera Delaware's Family Opera Theatre, the biography of its most influential director, Evelyn Swensson, and four children's operas commissioned and produced by the company, I identify the educational and artistic goals that have made this company successful. These include allowing children opportunities to participate in the creation of professional opera, providing high quality preparatory materials, and performing operas based on quality children's books that are taught in the school curriculum. The critical analysis of four original children's operas compares the approaches of three different composers to this task and demonstrates key features of successful children's opera, which include brevity, relevant subject matter, repetition of themes or lyrics, and a balance between musical elements that are familiar and unfamiliar to children.Item Nurturing Change: Lilly Martin Spencer's Images of Children(2008-04-22) Napolitano, Laura Groves; Promey, Sally M.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is the first full-length study to concentrate on American genre painter Lilly Martin Spencer's images of children, which constituted nearly one half of her saleable production during the height of her artistic career from 1848 to 1869. At this time, many young parents received advice regarding child rearing through books and other publications, having moved away from their families of origin in search of employment. These literatures, which gained in popularity from the 1830s onward, focused on spiritual, emotional, and disciplinary matters. My study considers four major themes from the period's writing on child nurture that changed over time, including depravity and innocence, parent/child bonding, standards of behavior and moral rectitude, and children's influence on adults. It demonstrates how Spencer's paintings, prints, and drawings featuring children supported and challenged these evolving ideologies, helping to shed light not only on the artist's reception of child-rearing advice, but also on its possible impact on her middle-class audience, to whom she closely catered. In four chapters, I investigate Spencer's images of sleeping children as visual equivalents of contemporary consolation literature during a time of high infant and child mortality rates; her paintings of parent/child interaction as promoting separation from mothers and emotional bonding with fathers; her prints of mischievous children as both considering changing ideals about children's behavior and comforting Anglo-American citizens afraid of what they saw as threatening minority groups; and her pictures with Civil War and Reconstruction subject matter as contending with the popular concept of the moral utility of children. By framing my interpretations of Spencer's output around key issues in the period's dynamic child-nurture literature, I advance new comprehensive readings of many of her most well-known paintings, including Domestic Happiness, Fi, Fo, Fum!, and The Pic Nic or the Fourth of July. I also consider work often overlooked by other art historians, but which received acclaim in Spencer's own time, including the lithographs of children made after her designs, and the allegorical painting Truth Unveiling Falsehood. Significantly, I provide the first in-depth analysis of a newly rediscovered Reconstruction-era painting, The Home of the Red, White, and Blue.Item The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/Mormon Children's Music: Its History, Transmission, and Place in Children's Cognitive Development(2005-08-01) Karnas-Haines, Colleen J.; Provine, Robert C.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a children's auxiliary program for ages three to eleven that meets weekly before or after their Sunday worship service. This auxiliary, called Primary, devotes much of its time to singing. Music is not a childish diversion, but an essential activity in the children's religious education. This study examines the history of the songbooks published for Primary use, revealing the many religious and cultural factors that influence the compilations. The study then looks at the modern methods of transmission as the author observes the music education aspects of Primary. Lastly, the study investigates the children's use of and beliefs about Primary music through the lens of cognitive development. The study reveals that Primary music is an ever-evolving reflection of the theology, cultural trends, and practical needs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Unaware of such implications, the children use Primary music to express their religious musicality at cognitive developmentally appropriate levels.