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 Faucets and Fertilizers: Interpreting Technological Change in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico, 1946-1988(2015) Walker, Joshua Charles; Vaughan, Mary Kay; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Faucets and Fertilizers: Interpreting Technological Change in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico, 1946-1988 argues that peasant farmers in Oaxaca were key actors who helped to oversee the technological modernization of their villages in the twentieth century. From the 1940s to the 1980s, federal and state development programs sought to introduce new tools like chemical fertilizers, water faucets, roads, and mechanical corn grinders to villages in the countryside. These programs were often unevenly distributed and poorly designed, forcing peasants to rely on old skills and customs in order to acquire and use the technologies they wanted. As peasants learned about the benefits of the technologies, they also learned to use them to challenge the power of family patriarchs, village elders, and federal leaders. Far from being the passive victims of modernization described in the historiography of rural Mexico, Oaxacan peasants participated in technological change and used new tools in an attempt to overcome problems with low crop production and restricted mobility.Item Reason and Faith: A Study of Interwar Chilean Eugenic Discourse, 1900-1950(2013) Walsh, Sarah; Rosemblatt, Karin A; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how social reform discourse that rationalized gender difference allowed Chilean Catholics to play a critical role in the development of eugenic science between 1900 and 1950. Building on scholarship relating to the development of a modernized, patriarchal system during the 1920s and 1930s and the rise of eugenics among scientists during the same period, this dissertation posits that eugenic science in Chile was the result of a complex interaction between Catholic and secular intellectuals vying for dominance in the reconstruction of the modern Chilean social order. Political liberals characterized the Catholic Church as a dogmatic monolith that was antithetical to social progressivism and disconnected from the realities of modern life. At the same time, Chilean Catholics used the social disruptions caused by capitalist industrialization to assert their social, moral, and scientific superiority. The dissertation asserts that anti-clerical discourse popular among progressive actors served to obscure the scientific and social contributions, both conservative and progressive, of the Catholic Church and its supporters in Chile. Each chapter in this dissertation examines how Catholics responded to secular efforts to oust them from their traditional places of social influence - hospitals, orphanages, schools, charities, and family life - through the application of eugenic science. Secular reformers contrasted their own presumably rational, scientific responses to social problems while feminizing religious practice and Church or Catholic perspectives. Chilean Catholics responded by asserting the compatibility of science and religion, particularly in the field of eugenics. Catholic scholars suggested, for instance, that they had to be involved in eugenic practices to ensure the most ethical application of scientific principles.Item Art comme archive dans (Archives du nord)(2012) Phair, Elise; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Archives du nord est l'histoire d'une humanité où la présence de l'auteur est évidente non dans la forme traditionnelle d'un personnage, mais dans les opinions et l'imagination insérées dans ses réflexions sur l'art et son analyse de l'art comme témoignage de l'Histoire et de la pensée humaine. Ce mémoire explore le discours sur l'art dans Archives du nord et montre en quoi il est un témoignage historique selon Yourcenar, ses perspectives sur l'Histoire de la pensée, et comment art reflet sa propre identité, liée aux cultures française, flamande, et européenne en général. Ces réflexions sont fondées sur des peintures, des sculptures, et dans quelques cas, des photographies. Yourcenar donne à l'art une place importante dans les archives qui forment la base de son oeuvre, car les tableaux et les portraits sont des témoignages visuels de l'identité individuelle et universelle, propre à ses personnages et générale à tout le monde à la fois. Archives du nord is a story of humanity where the author's presence is felt through the opinions and use of imagination included in her reflexions on art and her analysis of art as a testimony of human thought, rather than in the form of a traditional character. This thesis explores the discours on art in Archives du nord and reveals how Yourcenar considers it historical evidence, her perspectives on human thought, and how art reflects her own identity as it is linked to French, Flemish, and European culture in general. These reflexions are based on paintings, sculpture, and in some cases, photographs. Yourcenar gives art an important position among the archives that provide the basis of her work, for paintings and portraits are visual testimonies to both individual and universal identity, relating to her characters and to humanity in general.Item The Long Tradition: Black Women and Mothers in Public Discourses(2009) Sanders, Tammy L.; Struna, Nancy L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document THE LONG TRADITION: BLACK WOMEN AND MOTHERS IN POPULAR DISCOURSES Tammy Sanders, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Directed By: Chair and Professor Nancy Struna Department of American Studies With her insightful analysis, Nancy Lurkins in &ldquoYou are the Race, You are the Seeded Earth:&rdquo Intellectual Rhetoric, American Fiction, and Birth Control in the Black Community (2008), asserts &ldquo(past) black leaders promoted the ideal of black domesticity and moral motherhood as a counterstrategy to white attacks. Over time, appreciating and even desiring black motherhood came to be identified with black communal pride and as a result black women became responsible for upholding the entire race&rdquo (47). Similarly, recent history has proved to be no different when it comes to the responsibility of black mothers. This dissertation will explore how public discourses involving the social sciences, films, and novels historicize, represent, and re-envision black motherhood. It will investigate how these discourses about motherhood are shaped by the historical moment of their occurrence and what they tell us about the attitudes of those establishing critical thought. By examining texts like the Moynihan Report, Ann Petry's The Street, Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, and the 1974 film Claudine, this project will analyze the rhetoric of scholars about black motherhood alongside popular images of black mothers to illustrate how they overlap and how black women's bodies are consistently at the nexus of academic, social, cultural and political conversations. In an attempt to further complicate mothering studies by using black feminist thought as my lens, this dissertation seeks to tease out the interconnectedness of historical moments and discourses without perpetuating traditional gender norms as it relates to black female identities.Item Ad/ministering Education: Gender, Colonialism, and Christianity in Belize and the Anglophone Caribbean(2008-01-28) Rellihan, Heather; Bolles, Augusta L; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation looks at the relationship between educational achievement and power in the Anglophone Caribbean, with particular emphasis on Belize. Girls are outperforming boys at every level of education, but women still have higher unemployment rates and hold the lowest paying jobs, while men are in more decision-making positions in every sector of the economy. This project considers one major question: Why do women remain in less powerful positions even when they are better educated? To explore this question I look at the role that missionary groups played in administering education under British colonialism. I focus on Belize where religious groups maintain a high level of control over education in the postcolonial era. I use twentieth-century Caribbean literature to suggest the effects of Christian ideology on the hidden curriculum and on women's social, economic, and political power. The literature I discuss includes George Lamming's In the Castle of my Skin (Barbados), Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack (Barbados), Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey (Trinidad), Merle Collins's Angel (Grenada), Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John and Lucy (Antigua), and Zee Edgell's Beka Lamb (Belize).Item THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY: A STUDY OF LITURGICAL AND THEATRICAL PRACTICES IN BYZANTIUM(2006-07-23) White, Andrew Walker; Hildy, Franklin J.; Majeska, George P.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study attempts to fill a substantial gap in our knowledge of theatre history by focusing on the Orthodox ritual aesthetic and its relationship with traditional theatrical practice in the Eastern Roman Empire - also known as Byzantium. Through a review of spatial practices, performance aesthetics and musical practice, and culminating in a case study of the Medieval Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how the Orthodox Church responded to the theatre, and determine whether the theatre influenced the development of its ritual aesthetic. Because of the well-documented rapprochement between church and theatre in the west, this study also tries to determine whether there was a similar reconciliation in the Orthodox east. From the Early Byzantine period onward, conduct of the Orthodox Liturgy was rooted in a ritual aesthetic that avoided direct imitation or representation. This Orthodox ritual aesthetic influenced every aspect of the Liturgy, from iconography to chant to liturgical dance, and involved a rejection of practices that, in the Church's view, would draw too much attention to the material or artistic aspects of ritual. Theatrical modes of representation were consistently avoided and condemned as anathema. Even in the Middle Ages, when Catholics began to imitate Jesus at the altar and perform representations of biblical episodes using actors, realistic settings and special effects, Orthodox hierarchs continued to reject theatrical modes of performance. One possible exception to this rule is a Late Byzantine rite identified by western scholars as a "liturgical drama" - the Office of the Three Children. But a detailed reconstruction of its performance elements reveals that it was quite different in its aesthetics from Medieval Catholic practice. Some of the Office's instructions, however, lend themselves to a theatrical interpretation; and the instability of the Office's manuscript tradition, as seen in five extant versions, reveals strong disagreements about whether and how to include many of its key visual and musical elements.