Critics have analyzed Leni Riefenstahl's four feature length films from 1932 to 1954 largely for their depictions of fascist ideals while often neglecting how they represent gender. Viewing Riefenstahl's films using the theoretical gender models of Judith Butler and R.W. Connell provides a greater understanding of gender roles in Germany during both the Weimar and Nazi eras. Beginning with Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932), and continuing to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), Olympia (1938), and concluding with Tiefland (The Lowlands, 1954), there is a clear evolution of how Riefenstahl understood and represented gender. Riefenstahl's earliest film Das Blaue Licht depicts a strong and independent female protagonist in Junta, but with the rise of fascism in Germany this type of character disappears and evolve into the weak and helpless figures like Martha in Tiefland. This study will look at these films within the cultural context of early-twentieth century Germany and National Socialism to consider how Riefenstahl's films participate in the understanding, articulation, and performance of gender at a crucial turning point in the history of Western Culture.

This thesis analyzes the text, stage design, and historical context of Lothar Müthel's production of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy in 1936, which was sponsored by the National Socialist government during a broader publicity campaign during the Summer Olympics of 1936. The third play, Eumenides (Die Versöhnung in German) has democratic undertones, and therefore seems incompatible with Nazi ideology at first glance. There are three ways in which the Nazis made Müthel's adaptation of Die Versöhnung compatible. First, in the context of the Olympics, the Nazis attempted to draw a connection or relationship between modern German and ancient Greek culture, implying themselves to be successors to ancient Greece. Second, through Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's interpretations of the Greek word δίκη (justice), a central concept in the Oresteia, the Nazis were able to emphasize the progression of a state from a savage, chaotic period to a new, better civilization, an idea that particularly appeals to Nazi narrative owing to their own recent history with the Weimar Republic. Third, the Nazis shifted focus from the institution of the Areopagus to the role of Athena and interpreted her to be a Germanic goddess. Müthel's adaptation is a good case study in how, through appropriation, a political movement can interpret a text to fit their ideology.

Modernism is a popular topic for diverse kinds of scholarship and theories, yet the possibilities of its contribution to education have been neglected. This thesis is an attempt to illustrate modernism's utility in forming a theory of education through examining the thoughts of two prominent modernists, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. In reviewing both their fiction and nonfiction, we not only gain valuable insight into and contextualization of modernism, we are also introduced to possible (theoretical) solutions to problems that continue to plague our classrooms. By evaluating modernist themes of form, narration, becoming a reader and a critic, and time, I hope to illustrate modernism's capacity to contribute to the educational conversation in unique and valuable ways. As we channel the values Woolf and Forster lived by and demonstrated in their writing into an adaptable educational theory, we will be able to produce generations of better readers, better thinkers, better learners, and ultimately better individuals.

Michel Foucault is a celebrated post-structuralist theorist that has helped shape gender and sexual theory. In A History of Sexuality Volume 1 Foucault dismantles many longstanding sexual traditions and morals by exposing them as societal constructs. According to Foucault, anonymous yet fully invasive power sources have shaped and continue to shape sexual culture and more importantly, individual beliefs about sexuality. However, Foucault's obsession with the influence of power limits his sexual theory in three particular ways. First, he disregards the female sexual experience; second, he undermines individual agency; and third, he undermines the innate desire for love and family. The first half of the paper focuses on his dismissal of the female experience and individual agency. This section of the thesis relies heavily on other feminist scholars, social studies, and the work of historians. The second half of the paper focuses on the human desire for love and family and looks to dystopian literature to help critique Foucault. Dystopian literature has often been paired with modern cultural criticism, including psychoanalysis and post-strucutralism as both act as critiques of the permeating effects of societal control at a community and individual level. However, even dystopian literature leaves some room for individual agency and explores the innate desire for love and family.

This paper explores the Hellenistic Ideal of the good or virtous life by looking at historical backround, the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, and the literary works of Euripides.

This paper addresses the causes and effects of grief within Homer's Iliad. In addition, this paper argues that error, both committed and suffered, is the primary cause of grief, and that grief is particularly transformative in regard to Achilles, both in his motivations and his physicality.

In The Holy Kinship (1500-1510), the artist Matthäus Gutrecht the Younger defies convention by portraying the importance of matriarchy, via the semiotics of the nimbus. Within Christian art, the nimbus has been widely used as a signifier of divinity. Saints and angels, as well as members of the Holy Family, are often depicted nimbed in the history of art. In particular, men of divine status are frequently nimbed, as Christianity was predominantly patriarchal. However, there are several cases in which women are also represented with this divine signifier. One work in which the nimbus as a signifier of matriarchal status and lineage is epitomized is Gutrecht's portrayal of The Holy Kinship, in which the women, but not the men, are shown nimbed. This thesis explores the varied significance of the matriarchal nimbus. Furthermore, it challenges traditional patriarchal analyses of late medieval, German culture in order to examine how this altarpiece both reflects and constructs attitudes regarding a celebration of women's spiritual and secular roles. In this way, the painting presents a direct challenge to the more familiar representation of patriarchal lineage and power in Tree of Jesse images.

In Servius' commentary, there are two elusive statements concerning the ending of the Georgics. Both of these statements seem to imply that Vergil changed the ending of the Georgics and that the Orpheus epyllion as it now stands was a later edition to the poem. The question of whether or not Servius is correct in this assertion is a central question in Vergilian studies. By focusing on the reception of Orpheus prior to Vergil, the Roman Orpheus of Vergil's time, and Vergil's own use of the Orpheus figure, a potential answer emerges to the Servian question. In order to answer this question, the primary inquiry of this paper seeks to find from where Vergil received his Orpheus story. A comprehensive analysis of references to Orpheus in ancient literature leads to the conclusion that before the first-century B.C.E. the primary narrative of Orpheus is not one of failure. Rather, Orpheus appears to successfully retrieve his wife from the underworld. Orpheus does not appear as an important figure in Roman literature until the second half of the first-century when nearly at the same time as Vergil is writing the Georgics Orpheus' popularity explodes in Roman art and literature. Yet, Vergil does not seem to be the source of Orpheus' popularity in Rome, nor does Vergil seem to be inventing a new narrative in which Orpheus fails. The missing source for Vergil's Orpheus figure appears to belong to the first-century. Orpheus appears as a central figure in the Georgics, the Eclogues, the poems of Propertius, and the Culex. Each of these works is rife with references to the poetry of Cornelius Gallus. Given Gallus' prominence in first-century Roman poetry, his close association with Orpheus, the Servian claims of a laudes Galli in the fourth Georgic, and the rise of Orpheus' popularity in the second half of the first-century, Gallus seems a likely source for Vergil's Orpheus.

In 1941 a large cache of papyri preserving the writings of Origen and Didymus the Blind were discovered in Tura, Egypt. 43 years later 22 signatures from the Tura papryi containing Ps. 26:10–29:2, 36:1–3 from Didymus the Blinds' commentary on Psalms were acquired by Brigham Young University. These signatures remain unpublished at present. This paper examines Didymus' use of the New Testament in this hitherto unpublished section of his commentary and seeks to reevaluate past scholarship on the New Testament text of Didymus in light of this new data. In addition to providing an inventory of all the New Testament references and significant textual variants used by Didymus in this section of his commentary, this paper will also analyze the consistency, or lack thereof, with which Didymus referenced the New Testament throughout his five Tura commentaries. This analysis will show that previous conclusions on the New Testament text of Didymus the Blind need to be reevaluated in a manner that takes into account the significant lack of consistency with which he referenced the New Testament in his classroom lectures as opposed to his published works that were intended for circulation.

There are many aspects of ecological thinking. When reading texts through a lens of dark ecology, certain conflicts that arise from the imposition of human expectations on natural systems are revealed. These include interconnectedness, complicity, and ambiguities. Within a system, boundaries are contingent and transitory. Beginnings and ends are gradual, not definite. Ecological systems change over time, but it is a category error to imagine that change represents progress or to assume a teleological purpose. While there are hierarchies of power, and different roles, no species is, ecologically speaking, more advanced than another. Ecological criticism focuses on interconnectedness, complicity, and ambiguity in art and literature, and is well suited to texts that deal with destructive processes like degradation and decay. Noir serves as a good example of a genre that can be read as an ecological system. Graphic novels, which already defy easy categorization are also ripe for ecological study..In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep the boundary between natural and artificial is blurred, not just through the exploration of empathy, but in human artifacts. Watchmen uses many techniques, including a fractured narrative, simultaneous scenes on a single page, and the visual unity space and time to undermine the idea of clear beginnings and endings and critique teleology. A third work, Beautiful Darkness, probes how natural forces of disintegrations overcome temporary human constructs, including civilization. A dark ecological reading yields a sense of humility, instead of certainty, about human capacity for knowledge regarding ecological systems. It fosters respect for the unknowable that lies in shadow and the complicated natural systems that defy attempts at reduction. Disruptive events in narratives, when read ecologically, remind us of the unpredictable results that manipulation of components of the system can have for humanity, as well as on the functioning and balance of the system as a whole.