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 Drink, Dance, and Devotion: The Role of Restoration Popular Music in Creating a Protestant English National Identity(2021) Massey, Elizabeth D; Warfield, Patrick; King, Richard; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In Restoration England (1660–1707), religious disputes between Protestants and Catholics dominated not only politics but everyday life and mapped onto the long-simmering conflicts between England and France. Popular music both referenced these seemingly constant tensions and also participated in reifying the antagonistic, xenophobic relationship between the two religions and regions. Drawing upon theories of musical topic, intertextuality, semiotics, and nationalism, this dissertation presents three case studies of how Restoration popular music helped to create a Protestant English national identity. The folia, a ground bass and one of the most popular foundations for musical structure in the history of Western art music, became disassociated from its original genre and, through texts and performance practices, became a set of fixed melodies that indexed and embodied a community among those in Restoration England. Building on this idea, a second case study expands the musical content from melody to genre by focusing on the cibell dance and how it functioned to produce a sense of historical continuity in England, eventually becoming an invented tradition. In a final case study, the musical focus is expanded yet again to consider both the metrical psalm and ballad genres. The musical and thematic relationship between the proper tune for Psalm 124 and the ballad tune “Fortune My Foe” speaks to how popular music moved across boundaries of venue and genre, and in doing so, helped to make commonplace the idea of the Protestant Self—defined against the Catholic Other—as the standard for belonging in and to England.Item THE ARTĚL COOPERATIVE (1908-1934): CRAFTING CZECH MODERNITY(2020) Bratton, Lyndsay; Mansbach, Steven A; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Eight founding members of Artěl—the Prague avant-garde’s response to the Wiener Werkstätte—united in 1908 with a manifesto proclaiming their goals to combat inferior factory substitutes for handcrafted designs and to restore society with a sense of taste through affordable products for everyday life. Across Artěl’s stylistic, political, and ideological development, its members consistently demonstrated the complementary relationship between the folk and the modern. Whether working in the Czech variant of Cubism in the final years of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, the folk-infused nationalist “decorativism” of the First Czechoslovak Republic after 1918, or the sober Functionalism of the late 1920s, Artěl designers struck an aesthetic balance between regional Czech folk arts and international avant-garde styles. The group thereby served to construct and promote a distinctively Czech visual culture for the international stage at a transformative moment in Czech history.Item REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MILITARY IN 20TH CENTURY ETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURE(2017) Fontenot, Kara Parks; Nunes, Zita C; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 20th century ethnic American literature, writers deploy representations of the US military to expose the operations of American hegemony, articulate relations of power, reveal how they are maintained, identify contradictions in the rhetoric of American nationalism and imagine not yet manifest possibilities for social justice coalitions that cross racial, ethnic, and national lines. As a national institution controlled by the US government and consuming labor in the form of military service from citizens of all classes, races and ethnicities in ways that reflect existing relations of power in American society at large, the US military presents a unique and powerful site for articulation of relationships between nation, race, and class. As evidence, this dissertation explores six American novels, all published in the 20th century and taking as their subject matter US military involvement in declared and undeclared military conflicts of that era. Close readings of these novels bring our attention to three specific examples of political projects for which representations of the US military in literature have been deployed: to question constructions of American nationalism by highlighting contradictions and inconsistencies, to consider the military’s institutionalized labor practices in order to explore relationships between race and class as well as imagine means of struggling for social justice, and to critique US foreign policy and military operations overseas. These writers individually and collectively refuse to examine race and/or ethnicity in isolation but instead consider these aspects of subjectivity in the context of national identity, class relations, immigration, globalization, and other social forces. While the relationship between ethnicity and military service has been addressed in other disciplines, such as history, political science, and social science, I argue that literature is a medium especially well-suited for this exploration as it not only allows for the articulation of existing social relations but also for the imagination of not yet manifest possibilities for social justice coalitions that cross racial, ethnic, and national lines.Item Gospel Music Training, Performance Practice and Its Impact on Leadership Development and Performed Nationalism in a Collegiate Military Choir(2015) Scott, Karla; Balthrop, Carmen A.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since America’s beginnings as a British colony, its musical standards have adhered to those of Western Europe. For this reason, musical forms native to America like Black folk spirituals and Gospel music have historically been marginalized in favor of music in the Western classical tradition. Today, a bias towards music of the Western classical tradition exists in those American universities that grant music degrees. While this bias is understandable, inclusion of Gospel music history and performance practice would result in a more complete understanding of American music and its impact on American nationalism. The United States Naval Academy is one of the few American universities that have consistently elevated the performance of Gospel music to the level of Western Classical music within its institutional culture. The motivations for writing this document are to provide a brief history of Gospel music in the United States and of choral music at the Naval Academy. These historical accounts serve as lenses though which the intersection of Gospel music performance practice and leadership development at the United States Naval Academy may be observed. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Gospel music intersected American military culture at the U.S. Naval Academy. After a few student-led attempts in the 1970s, a Gospel Choir was formed in 1986 but by 1990, it had become an official part of the Music Department. Ultimately, it received institutional support and today, the Gospel Choir is one of three touring choirs authorized to represent the Academy in an official capacity. This document discusses the promotion of Gospel music by the Naval Academy in its efforts to diversify Academy culture and ultimately, Naval and Marine Corps leadership. Finally, this dissertation examines the addition of performed cultural expression (Gospel music) in light of a shift in American nationalism and discusses its impact on Naval Academy culture.Item Culture Wars and Contested Identities: Social Policy and German Nationalisms in Interwar Slovenia, 1918-1941(2013) Reul, Nathaniel; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis analyzes the nature of ethnic Germans' self-identities and nationalisms in interwar Slovenia. Slovenia's German minorities' reactions to domestic social policies and world events that impacted them are examined primarily through locally-based German-language newspapers. Germans in Slovenia had had multiple identities and nationalisms, and these were shaped by social policies and domestic and foreign events, especially after the National Socialists' seizure of power in Germany in 1933. Pan-German nationalism was strong and widespread, and viewed Slovene minority policies as being purposeful attempts to eradicate the very existence of Germandom. This type of nationalism competed with other types of German nationalisms and identities which sought to integrate into and contribute to Slovene society without compromising their uniquely Germanic culture. National Socialism's appeal was so strong because it promised a reunion of Slovenia's Germandom with the wider Volk and a restoration of the minorities' societal dominance in the region.Item "Founding a Heavenly Empire": Protestant Missionaries and German Colonialism, 1860-1919(2012) Best, Jeremy; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the relationship between German Protestant missionaries and secular leaders of colonial politics and culture in the German colonial empire during the nineteenth century. In particular, it examines how missionaries defined their collective identity as an international one against pressures that encouraged mission societies to adopt and promote policies that favored the German colonial state and German colonial economic actors. Protestant missionaries in Germany created an alternative ideology to govern Germans' and Germany's relationships with the wider world. The dissertation examines the formation of an internationalist missionary methodology and ideology by German missionary intellectuals from 1870 and the shift to traditional Protestant nationalism during World War I. It then examines the application by missionaries of this ideology to the major issues of Protestant mission work in German East Africa: territorial rivalries with German Catholic mission orders, mission school policy, fundraising in the German metropole, and international missionary cooperation. In so doing, it revises conventional interpretations about the relationship between Protestantism and nationalism in Germany during this period.Item MOZAMBICAN NATIONAL ANTHEMS: MEMORY, PERFORMANCE, AND NATION-BUILDING(2010) Curtis, Katherine June; Provine, Robert C; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines the national anthems of Mozambique. Crises in Mozambique's history prompted the search for a new national anthem three times, with only two of the searches ended in a new national anthem--namely, "Viva, Viva a FRELIMO" the anthem adopted at independence and the current national anthem "Patria Amada." Using theory from ethnomusicology, anthropology, political science and others, the role of these national anthems in national unification and cultural solidification are discussed. In order to analyze the anthems of Mozambique, national anthems will be explored as static symbols and performed rituals. The history of Mozambique from its first contact with colonization through the present day will add insight to the associations that make anthems powerful in those roles.Item The National Woman's Party's Militant Campaign for Woman Suffrage: Asserting Citizenship Rights through Political Mimesis(2008-09-05) Stillion Southard, Belinda Ane; Parry-Giles, Shawn J.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project attends to ways in which the National Woman's Party's (NWP) militant woman suffrage campaign empowered U.S. women to assert their political agency and help earn women's fully-enfranchised citizenship rights through rhetorical acts of political mimesis. Specifically, this study examines how the NWP mimicked political rituals and rhetorics to simultaneously earn political legitimacy and expand women's citizenship roles in the nation-state. To this end, this project examines the NWP's suffrage discourse between 1913 and 1920 to demonstrate the ways in which the group's mimetic strategies both reified and challenged progressive and wartime notions of U.S. nationalism promoted by President Woodrow Wilson and members of Congress. These chapters trace the trajectory of the NWP's campaign as it mimicked inaugural parades, third-party strategies, and congressional and presidential politicking to empower NWP members with the political authority that rivaled the nation's political leaders. The NWP's mimetic strategies allowed NWP members to constitute their national citizenship identities as they accessed reserved political spaces, demanded the attention of President Wilson and members of Congress, engaged the U.S. citizenry as political actors, and suffered severe backlash against their militant acts. In so doing, the NWP helped normalize women's presence in the political sphere, nationalize the suffrage movement, attract national media attention, and ultimately, earn widespread recognition and political legitimacy. Finally, this study looks at the empowering and disempowering potential of political mimesis as a strategy for social and political change, particularly as the NWP formed alliances and divisions among women in national and international communities. In the process, the project looks at how the NWP's rhetoric of political mimesis shaped and was shaped by the democratizing exigencies of President Wilson's nationalist vision; in turn, the NWP's militant campaign helped re-envision the gendered nation.Item Bulgaria's Macedonia: Nation-Building and State Building, Centralization and Autonomy in Pirin Macedonia, 1903-1952(2006-11-25) Frusetta, James; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the intersection between rival forms of consciousness in Pirin Macedonia: national and local, from the anti-Ottoman Ilinden Uprising in Macedonia in 1903 to the end of the Communist "Macedonianization" campaign in 1952. Bulgarian, Macedonian and English-language historiographies have each portrayed this period as one in which a centralized state extended its power into the region and codified a Bulgarian national consciousness among its inhabitants. This dissertation finds that a rival, local consciousness existed through this period as well. The inability of the Bulgarian state in 1878 to secure the annexation of all geographic Macedonia, however, had led in the late nineteenth century to the emergence of a local paramilitary organization, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). VMRO is generally portrayed as a nationalist organization. But in leading Macedonians within a struggle against first the Ottoman Empire, then against Greece, Serbia (later, Yugoslavia) and even factions within Bulgaria, it provided an alternative experience of mobilization. The Organization took on functions of the state, able to do this as the Bulgarian state was weakened by internal crises and external enemies. This period thus saw a lengthy struggle between VMRO and the central state to consolidate control over Pirin, a conflict that continued between local elites and the state even after the paramilitary organization was driven underground in 1934. The "Macedonian Question" has been portrayed as a wedge issue by which external actors -- particularly the Communist International, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany -- could seek to divide Southeastern Europe. This dissertation goes farther in arguing that Macedonia was a divisive issue within national politics as well. Even in the post-1934 Zveno and royal dictatorships, then the Communist-dominated regime after 1944, Pirin remained a divisive issue and one in which a weak central state was forced to find compromise with local interests. The "Macedonianization" campaign that followed the Second World War was the vehicle by which Pirin was subordinated to the Bulgarian state. As such, the campaign appears less as a Soviet-directed campaign for the benefit of Yugoslavia, and more as a means by which Sofia was able to establish control over the district.Item Mapping Terrorism: Amorphous Nations, Transient Loyalties(2006-05-04) Saksena, Ritu; Ray, Sangeeta; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Terrorism has a predilection with nations and nationalism and it plays on the symbiotic relationship between nationalism and violence. But "forgetting" this violence and bloodshed was crucial to the perpetuation of the myth of civilized nations. While Postcolonial Studies has offered incisive justifications for anti-imperialist movements and the creation of new nations within the colonizer/colonized paradigm, there is now a need to critically examine terrorism with its demands for new nations with its narratives of violence. This dissertation, Mapping Terrorism: Amorphous Nations, Transient Loyalties is a comparative study of the narratives of terrorism in specific texts that invoke the re-imagining of the narratives of the nation and the re-configuration of national subjectivities. Furthermore, since globalization has extended the national imaginary beyond borders, it has forced us to engage with the implications of diasporic populations that have sometimes attributed to the formation of transnational communities of violence (both real and imagined). Through my analysis of fictional representations of terrorists, terrorism and terrorist acts in cinema and fiction and using the rubric of Postcolonial Studies, I locate these narratives within a discursive space framed by the interstices of dominant discourses, where nation and state do not collide. For my larger overarching argument in theorizing terrorism, I introduce a new category of (anti)nationalisms that includes all forms of variant nationalisms like sub-nationalisms, ethnonationalisms, counter-nationalisms, fundamentalisms, extremism, secessionism etc., each of which is uniquely different but all of which define themselves using the discourse of Nationalism as its oppositional 'Other'. Using this overarching category of (anti)nationalisms offers us a new space - an in-between space, to talk about variant nationalisms that are not necessarily congruent with terrorism. Doing so, offers us the opportunity to address each of these variant nationalisms in depth without having to engage with issues of ethical implications of these imaginings. It is my assertion that (anti)nationalisms are the geneses of all terrorist activities and conversely, terrorism can be argued as constituting the performative aspect of the political agenda of (anti)nationalisms. My dissertation thus addresses a broader need for theorizing terrorism through cultural representations within the framework of Postcolonial Studies.