The contributions made by American composers to the repertoire for women's chorus have increased significantly since 1940. This study was undertaken because previous investigations are international in scope and do not give an adequate view of the broad range of American works now available. Criteria established for works to be included in the study were as follows: (1) original compositions by American composers; (2) at least six minutes in duration; (3) available to the public from a publisher, composer, or repository of American works; (4) publication or composition date after 1940 and before 1980. The study includes both secular and sacred works. Qualitative comments were avoided because they were not consistent with the object of the study. Since numerous works are out of print and are almost impossible to obtain, the 91 works annotated in the study represent but a portion of the total output of American composers. Each annotation includes composer name; composer dates (when available); title of composition; date of publication or composition; text source; voicing; ranges of individual parts; level of difficulty; duration; accompaniment medium; and publisher and catalog information. A descriptive paragraph on the work in toto and on each movement or set piece briefly discusses text content, harmonic background, melody, rhythm, tessitura, meter, texture, form, role of accompaniment, and/or other salient features.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis grounds its examination of the maras of El Salvador in the historical past (1971-1992) rather than the present, which constitutes a departure from current scholarship on the subject. This thesis revises our current understanding of the emergence and development of maras in El Salvador through the recovery, insertion and examination of key local events, conditions, and historical actors of the 1970s and 1980s. From signifying friendship and camaraderie prior to the late 1980s, the maras increasingly became the target of public concern and Salvadoran security forces over the course of the 1980. By the late 1980s the maras increasingly became associated with criminal activity in Salvadoran society and popular culture. To document these changed conditions, this thesis relies extensively on previously untapped and ignored primary sources: newspapers and oral history interviews.

The hypothesis this thesis tests is that interwar hegemonic discourses of Englishness located it as originating in the heterosexual bond between a masculine national subject and a feminine nature/landscape. Discursively, this left little space for women to insert themselves in to such a cultural formation. However, a paradox of this heterosexualising cultural matrix may have been to give a voice to lesbian subjectivity, since If 'women' might not be English, could lesbians be? If national land was figured as feminine, and women desired identification with their country-as-land, to become English might mean for some women that they should become lesbian. In order to explore this, three main questions are examined. Firstly, to what extent did the dominant discourse of the rural in the interwar period define 'Englishness' as masculine and 'Nature' as feminine? Secondly, if women were excluded from this discursive heterosexual relationship, can it be seen paradoxically to have opened up a space for alternative sexualities to emerge? If lesbianism were an instance of the latter, then what writing strategies were adopted in order to articulate a relationship between Englishness and lesbianism? Thirdly, what can censored and other literary texts of the period reveal about the relations between such an English masculine national subject, the meaning and powers attributed to literature, and forbidden sexualities and subjectivities? In its analysis of the relationship between national identity, geographical location and sexuality, this thesis contributes to studies of England and Englishness through the addition of the concept of 'sexuality' to an understanding of their construction. It also contributes to lesbian and gay critical theory by examining the national processes which impinge of the construction of the homosexual subject. Beyond that, the importance of the materiality of the locations offered to different subjectivities shows how national identifies are both enabled and limited by these same locations.

Research through practice into the actual process of composing, such as William James on automatic writing and thought processes, or Sigmund Freud on creative writing and the unconscious, is rare, and needs extension and updating. This study builds a new theoretical framework for critical and practical work on imaginative composition by investigation of Edward Thomas's composing processes and complementary analysis of the processes of writing my own poetry collection. Thomas's emphasis on fragmentation of thought, hesitancy and silence in the content and form of his poetry, positioning him on the borders of Modernism, reflects essential aspects of his composing processes, as documented in his notes, letters, prose and poetry. The creating and revisiting of my own works-in-progress and final collection, in the light of the study of Thomas and in dialogue with readers, reveals further insights into poetic composition. Chapter One examines the point at which poems emerge and the influence of external writing conditions. Chapters Two and Three look at absence in the composing process in ellipses, aporia, gaps and unfinishedness, and in the art of submission as it is used in composing. Chapter Four investigates distraction, non-logical connections and physical and temporal disturbances in composing. Chapter Five shows the importance when composing of sustaining a flexible and exact attention to immediate perceptions and thoughts. The thesis concludes with an original poetry collection resulting from the documentation of my composing processes during the research period. These poems reflect and refract many points made in previous chapters, offering practical evidence of them. The principles of poetic composition established in this thesis are also more generally applicable to the composing of poetry. Similarities observed in composition processes in other art forms and in the writing of this thesis indicate that these principles also apply to other creative and academic disciplines, providing areas for further research.

6 Abstract This diploma thesis deals with the life story of Ernest Prince of Schwarzenberg (1892- 1979). The 20th century was a century of upheavals and changes. All events of this hectic century are significantly reflected in Ernest's life. Ernest was born into the aristocratic family of Schwarzenberg, whose roots date back to the early 12th century. Members of Schwarzenberg's family held important position under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. On this basis, Ernest received a proper upbringing and education. During the World War II he was a soldier on the front lines in Poland and Italy, but he also served in the imperial court in Vienna. After 1918, Schwarzenberg had to find its place in civil society in newly formed Czechoslovakia. In 1936, due to inheritance from his uncle Frederick II., Ernest became a landowner and tried to take care of his estate in Tochovice. During the World War II he had to defend Tochovice before Nazi rule and after the war he had to defend himself and his Czech nationality. After 1948, Ernest remained as the only one of the Schwarzenberg's family in communist Czechoslovakia. He lost all his assets, twice ended up in a communist prison, and yet refused to leave the country. The aim of this diploma thesis was to show the life and fate of Ernest Schwarzenberg with all the twists,...

Thesis advisor: Marjorie Howes / This dissertation examines the dual impacts of evolutionary theory and the industrial revolution on late 19th and early 20th century transatlantic fiction, particularly in articulating the concepts of perfectibility and degeneration. Darwinian evolutionary theory made real the possibility failing to successfully evolve and adapt as a species could cause humans to go extinct or, maybe worse, devolve into monstrosities. The industrial revolution, on the other hand, enabled humans to conquer nature to a degree that suggested a power to become engineers of our own future world and selves. At the same time, this ability to understand and alter ourselves dissolved the distinction between humans and machines, and the realities of industrial technology under a capitalist system revealed that humans could also be reduced to machine-minding cogs. The two (sometimes conflated) categories of animal and machine, which we have long used to distinguish ourselves as humans, were breaking down and threatening to undo our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. The authors whose works I discuss in this dissertation recognized that <italic> human </italic> could no longer be considered a stable category or entity, and they worked from within the received conceptual language of animals and machines to challenge our ideas about what being human means. They believed that by using imagery and narrative to re- articulate human identity and purpose, they could change behavior, morality, politics, economics, culture, and the future evolution of the species. In this dissertation, I examine the different approaches that H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, and D.H. Lawrence used to engage this dangerous and exciting problem of reimagining human meaning and human potential through narrative. By situating these authors in conversation with each other, I am able to highlight different facets, concerns, and shortcomings of each approach. This study also reveals that these authors were already engaging in a dynamic discussion currently gaining prominence and urgency in our own time as we explore through science, technology, philosophy, and narrative what we are and what we want to be. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / In 1990, Derrida added an introduction to his earliest long work, his student mémoire of 1954, which explained that he found in that work a “law” that had continued to impose itself across his oeuvre. This dissertation investigates selected works of the early Derrida, from that first student work of 1954 up to segments of Of Grammology, to demonstrate how Derrida’s “law” developed at least as far as his early system in 1967, as a basis for approach to Derrida’s overall oeuvre. / XL2018

Thesis advisor: Carlo Rotella / During the early to mid-1900s, an infatuation with the “gangster” grew in American popular culture. In response to historical events of the early twentieth century that polarized the United States class system, especially the Great Depression, those in the growing lower class became fascinated with actual and fictional figures that could demonstrate the ability to live “in-between;” that is, anyone who did not benefit from corporate capitalism but, rather, from standing on the dangerous middle ground between the classes, challenging economic, ethnic, and even legal boundaries. Both fictional and nonfictional figures of the “gangster” arose in American media in the form of a hyper-masculine character who could transform his humble origins into a luxurious life by committing brilliantly brutal crimes with bravado. As the gangster became more established over the course of the following decades and expanded in popularity beyond the original working-class audience, the gangster also became a nostalgic figure who offered a sense of tradition, which in part accounts for the gangster’s continuing popularity in modern media. As the first chapter explains, due to the association of southern Italian immigrants with crime and patriarchy in the United States, gangster and mafia fiction most largely concern southern Italians and Italian- Americans. Since its inception, the Italian-American gangster hero, or the “Mafioso,” has commanded a strong following among American audiences. Due to the saliency of the Mafioso figure and the widespread influence of the genre, both the figure and the narrative merit critical discussion and analysis. The first chapter of the following article outlines the ways in which traditional mafia fiction, epitomized by Puzo and Coppola’s sensational The Godfather, extrapolates from historical phenomena, like the hyphenate individual, with the tools of genre fiction in order to craft the classical Mafioso. The chapter considers the reliance of the Mafioso on such elements as bella figura and omertà, as well as socio-cultural norms assigned to Italian-Americans in the media, and considers the characteristics of the Mafioso by examining the character system present in The Godfather. In outlining the evolution of the Mafioso character, the first chapter explores what it means for the character of the gangster hero to perpetuate the values that once popularized it. In response, the second chapter provides a close reading of the work of parodist and multi-genre writer Giose Rimanelli, who takes bold and innovative steps in questioning the mafia narrative in his novel Benedetta in Guysterland. Rimanelli, a writer undoubtedly more focused on high-literary intertextuality than a genre writer, includes characters branded by the same traditional elements of The Godfather’s Mafioso but, instead of aggrandizing the Mafioso in the traditional fashion, utilizes these elements to question the foundation upon which classical mafia fiction relies. The chapter explicates Rimanelli’s clever use of referential language, unique narrative structure, and complex characters in order to analyze the ways in which Rimanelli demonstrates the potential for Italian-American literature to evolve. The chapter discusses Rimanelli’s recognition and distortion of mafia fiction tropes, scrutinizing key characters, and ultimately assays the potential for expansion in the mafia fiction genre. By providing a close reading of two texts, related in content but highly divergent in their method and objective, this article juxtaposes the historical Mafioso against his reexamined counterpart. Through an analysis of the history and canonical figuration of the gangster hero in The Godfather, and an examination of Rimanelli’s extensive reworking, the following two chapters call readers to recognize the historical context in which the Mafioso formed and rethink the literary outcomes of reinventing the tradition of both the character and the narrative. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: English.