College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Employment Writing in Group Outplacement Training Programs(2017) Brearey, Oliver James; Wible, Scott A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation provides an empirical account of rhetorical and writing practices in outplacement, which comprises a collection of for-profit and governmental organizations that offer consulting and counseling services to aid displaced professional workers—who are usually highly experienced in their fields—in finding new employment. Outplacement organizations offer training and support in job application letter, résumé, and networking script writing; capabilities assessment; job-finding strategies; networking and interview preparation; and ongoing opportunities for out-of-work people to provide each other with mutual support. Neither job-placement agencies nor recruiters, outplacement training programs are sites of teaching and learning that prepare experienced professionals to find new employment independently. In outplacement, out-of-work people learn to apply their professional capabilities to the task of finding new employment. Through participant observation in group outplacement training programs, interviews with outplacement practitioners and participants, and analyses of published outplacement training manuals and other textual artifacts produced by outplacement organizations, I discern three distinct ways in which outplacement consultants, the providers of the service, help outplacement candidates, the service’s recipients, to engage in rhetorical and writing-based job-finding practices. First, as they compose in practical job-finding genres by writing résumés, job application letters, and networking scripts, outplacement candidates learn to both identify their professional capabilities and connect them to new workplace opportunities. Second, as they compose in reflective genres, including those of life writing, outplacement candidates learn to negotiate tensions between their personal goals and the contemporary realities of professional employment. Third, as they learn job-search strategies that include tasks such as composing audio-visual job-finding texts and participating in both traditional and distance-mediated, multimodal employment interviews, outplacement candidates become familiar with technological innovations in personnel recruitment and learn how to adapt, throughout their careers, to the continually changing contexts of professional hiring practices. My dissertation makes a unique contribution to rhetoric and writing studies by focusing on the rhetorical and writing work that out-of-work people do at key moments of transition in their professional lives as they move from workforce displacement, through unemployment and outplacement, and toward reemployment.Item Electracy in Praxis: Pedagogical Relays for an Undergraduate Writing Curriculum(2016) Geary, Thomas Michael; Logan, Shirley W.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The paradigm shift from traditional print literacy to the postmodern fragmentation, nonlinearity, and multimodality of writing for the Internet is realized in Gregory L. Ulmer’s electracy theory. Ulmer’s open invitation to continually invent the theory has resulted in the proliferation of relays, or weak models, by electracy advocates for understanding and applying the theory. Most relays, however, remain theoretical rather than practical for the writing classroom, and electracy instruction remains rare, potentially hindering the theory’s development. In this dissertation, I address the gap in electracy praxis by adapting, developing, and remixing relays for a functional electracy curriculum with first-year writing students in the Virginia Community College System as the target audience. I review existing electracy relays, pedagogical applications, and assessment practices – Ulmer’s and those of electracy advocates – before introducing my own relays, which take the form of modules. My proposed relay modules are designed for adaptability with the goals of introducing digital natives to the logic of new media and guiding instructors to possible implementations of electracy. Each module contains a justification, core competencies and learning outcomes, optional readings, an assignment with supplemental exercises, and assessment criteria. My Playlist, Transduction, and (Sim)ulation relays follow sound backward curricular design principles and emphasize core hallmarks of electracy as juxtaposed alongside literacy. This dissertation encourages the instruction of new media in Ulmer’s postmodern apparatus in which student invention via the articulation of fragments from various semiotic modes stems from and results in new methodologies for and understandings of digital communication.Item Lear(2015) Oberhauser, Michael James; Wilson, Mark E.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This opera, Lear, draws its libretto directly from William Shakespeare's King Lear. Some supporting characters and subplots have been removed, and some characters have been fused to reduce the time and forces needed to produce this piece. Parent/child relationships, eyesight, and deception/disguises are important themes in this adapted libretto. The last point, deception and disguises, receives special attention in the opera. Each time a character dons a disguise a "transformation" motive is heard. Simultaneously, at least one of the woodwind players will switch to a traditional doubling instrument to add a timbral change to the visual change on the stage. Two characters in the opera never sing, but only speak: Lear and Gloucester. This separates them from the rest of the cast to highlight their paternal nature. The music for spoken sections includes liberal use of fermatas, vamps, and other forms of repetition to underscore the speech. Most characters have musical motives and/or signature styles to aid in their characterization. Goneril and Edmund are intelligent, eloquent, and manipulative. heir music can be triadic and diatonic when they need it to be, and their lines are often winding and chromatic. Regan and Oswald, on the other hand, are more characters of action than thought. Their music is more blunt and to the point. The harmony of the opera moves among diatonic, quartal, whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic, and more complicated harmonies, depending on the character singing or speaking and what his motives are at that moment. At several points in the opera, a rhythmic pattern will continue over a bar that obscures the meter. Sometimes multiple patterns will be present at once. The harmony is at its most complicated when these patterns overlap, or when two characters' personal motives are presented simultaneously. The opera's duration is approximately two hours. The cast calls for two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, two baritones, a bass-baritone, and two male actors. The opera is scored for Flute (doubling Piccolo and Alto Flute), Oboe (doubling English Horn), Bb Clarinet (doubling Bass Clarinet), Bassoon, Horn in F, Percussion (one player), Piano, String Quartet, and Double Bass.Item Distant Light: Songs on Texts by Richard Boada(2010) Collier, Robert E.; Wilson, Mark E; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Distant Light: Songs on Texts by Richard Boada is a collection of songs for baritone voice, piano, alto saxophone, and percussion (vibraphone and marimba). The texts do not present a continuous narrative, but they share common themes. Most are set in the rural South and deal with the conflict between nature and industrial development. This piece functions as a cohesive whole, but each song could be performed separately and would be effective out of the context of the entire work. Distant Light is made up of eight songs and is approximately 23 minutes in duration.Item Requiem for Chorus and Harp: Conductor as Composer, Composer as Conductor(2008) Culverhouse, William; Maclary, Edward; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Western music history is filled with composers who also conduct their own works, and conductors who also devote time to composing. This project will attempt to examine the experience of the composer-conductor by addressing the following questions: First, what is it like to compose a piece of music for a group one conducts regularly? How does one's experience as a conductor influence compositional decision-making? Second, what is it like to conduct one's own music? How does one's experience as a composer influence rehearsal planning and performance conducting? The inquiry will focus on the preparation for and performance on May 16 of three pieces: Advent Antiphons and The Transfiguration, both written for the St. Matthew's Schola Cantorum in 2000, and the Requiem for chorus and harp, begun in January 2007 and completed in April 2008, all with the composer conducting. The completed project will include copies of scores, a DVD of rehearsal excerpts, CDs and DVDs of the performance, and a text document examining the questions mentioned above. The text document will address biographical information on the composer-conductor, focusing on experiences relevant to the inquiry; composition and history of the St. Matthew's Schola Cantorum and of his relationship with them; information about the compositions themselves and the compositional process; and a discussion of the rehearsal process and performance of the pieces.Item The Status of Instruction in Composition in Elementary General Music Classrooms of MENC Members in the State of Maryland(2008-05-05) Phelps, Kerry Bowman; Silvey, Philip; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the status of composition activities in elementary level general music classrooms in the state of Maryland. Participants (N=60) completed an online questionnaire with questions in the areas of teacher demographics, beliefs about composition, and frequency of composition activities in the classroom. Responses indicated that composition was present, at a low frequency, at all student grade levels. Relationships were found between student grade level and structure of composition activity and student grade level and group structure of composition activity. Implications of the frequency of composition activities as well as relationships found for music education are discussed. Suggestions are made for increasing the frequency of composition activities by building upon the most common practices identified by this study.Item At the Brighter Margins: Teaching Writing to the College Student with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(2008-04-26) Cooper, Barbara Graham; Fahnestock, Jeanne; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Composition studies has paid a great deal of attention to student differences in identity, including gender, race, and socio-economic status. It has also considered the generic problems of writing anxiety and of so-called "basic writers." But composition studies has almost completely neglected the problems and needs of college students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). This dissertation argues that college students with AD/HD face a unique set of challenges as writers; these challenges need to be acknowledged, explored, analyzed, and addressed. The rhetorical construction of the individual with AD/HD is examined in both contemporary culture and in the document which authoritatively defines the disorder--the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders-IV Training Revision (2000). Results of a qualitative study of four current college students and of six college graduates all of whom have been diagnosed with AD/HD are presented. This study explored six areas of inquiry in personal interviews with the participants: 1) How does the AD/HD identity affect their self-image as individuals and as writers? 2) How does AD/HD affect their writing process? 3) What positive experiences have they had with writing? 4) What negative ones? 5) What coping mechanisms have they developed for the challenges imposed by AD/HD on the writer? 6) What is or has been helpful to them in the college English class? Further, this paper analyzes how impairment in executive functions of the brain affect the writing of college students with AD/HD. Finally, pedagogy, which is based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning, is suggested to address the challenges faced by the college writer with AD/HD.Item Doubt, for narrator and orchestra(2008-04-18) Srinivasan, Asha; Gibson, Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Doubt is a single-movement composition of roughly twelve minutes for narrator and orchestra (woodwinds, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani, percussion, strings). The piece explores the controversial issue of capital punishment. The text was compiled from resources found on the websites of Death Penalty Information Center (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org) and Anti-Death Penalty Information (http://www.antideathpenalty.org), as well as excerpts from the Bible. Doubt was conceived of as a dramatic work in which a narrator recites factual information in a direct and unemotional manner and the orchestra provides a response to the mixed emotions elicited by the text. The list of dates and case summaries presented in the middle section of the piece seemed most powerful and effective when recited in a natural speaking voice, which is why I chose not to set the text as song. Also, I chose the orchestral medium rather than a chamber setting because the nature of the topic demanded a larger range of colors and combinations, as well as a louder, fuller sound. Much of the music was composed while deciding which texts to include. Thus the music influenced the choice of text as much as the text suggested the musical setting. The four formal divisions of the piece are delineated primarily by the text. The first section is an orchestral introduction representing various emotional perspectives suggested by the texts. The narrator begins the second section with a Biblical verse over sparse orchestration. The third and main section of the piece begins with a new melody in the low strings that is closely related to the harmonic organization of the piece. The narrator lists dates of convictions, executions, exonerations and facts related to doubtful cases. The third section and the narration conclude with another brief passage from the Bible. The fourth section is a dramatic orchestral coda, bringing back the opening harmonies of juxtaposed perfect fifths. The final chord is full of tension and discord, reflecting the oppositions inherent in the topic of capital punishment: life vs. death, sympathy vs. reproach, pain vs. hope, but above all, doubt about guilt vs. innocence.Item Quantification and Second-Order Monadicity(Blackwell, 2003) Pietroski, PaulThe first part of this paper reviews some developments regarding the apparent mismatch between the logical and grammatical forms of quantificational constructions like 'Pat kicked every bottle'. I suggest that (even given quantifier-raising) many current theories still posit an undesirable mismatch. But all is well if we can treat determiners (words like 'every', 'no', and 'most') as second-order monadic predicates without treating them as predicates satisfied by ordered pairs of sets. Drawing on George Boolos's construal of second-order quantification as plural quantification, I argue that we can and should view determiners as predicates satisfied (plurally) by ordered pairs each of which associates an entity with a truth-value (t or f). The idea is 'every' is satisfied by some pairs iff every one of them associates its entity with t. It turns out that this provides a kind of explanation for the "conservativity" of determiners. And it lets us say that concatenation signifies predicate-conjunction even in phrases like 'every bottle' and 'no brown dog'.Item String Quartet no. 2(2006-04-26) Arbury, David Bryant; Gibson, Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)String Quartet, no. 2 is an original composition for standard string quartet that was completed in March 2006. While the piece is intended primarily as a stand-alone creative work, I approached it as something of a culmination of my compositional work to date as well as a look forward into the next phase of my career. As such, the quartet is something of a transitional work, combining elements from my own past technique with a more recent and unified sense of my own style. The quartet is divided into four movements. During my time at the University of Maryland, a frequent topic in my lessons was that of sectionalism in music composition, which is to say the aesthetic of juxtaposition of different musical elements as opposed to composition using a unified texture or a gradual transformation between ideas. As a result of these discussions, one of my first choices in beginning work on this quartet was to choose a unified approach versus a sectional approach. The four movements are organized as follows: a thematic fast movement composed of short elemental themes, a slow movement centered around two canons (one atonal and one modal), a dance movement that uses the baroque menuet and trio as a template, and a dramatic, texture-driven finale. In this way, the macro-structure serves as a kind of homage to classical tradition, an appropriate approach since the piece occasionally serves as an homage to older elements in my own style. However, the classical model only applies to this macro-level of the composition. Most elements within each movement depart significantly from traditional classical forms, just as my own style has macro-elements of classical form and technique that dissipate upon closer scrutiny.