In her autobiography, Isadora Duncan recalled an assertion made by Karl Federn: "Only by Nietzsche, he said, will you come to the full revelation of dancing expression as you seek it" (Duncan 1995, 104). Duncan also told her students to read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, as if it was their "Bible" (Duncan 1928, 108). These statements justify an examination of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy as an imperative source for understanding the depth of her dance philosophy. This dissertation asks what it means to see Duncan's philosophy of dance and its practice in the context of this nineteenth-century German philosopher. It examines Nietzsche's words and ideas about the birth of tragedy and how they become body in the writings and dance of Isadora Duncan. This dissertation focuses on the philosophical idea of the "tragic idea" according to Nietzsche's and Duncan's interpretations and applications of philosophy bodied forth in dance. This tragic idea comes from an emerging idea in intellectual history initiated by followers of Kant. The idea of drawing from Greek tragedy a philosophy that could be used in philosophical thought to debate the meaning and function of art and even life was particular to German thinkers, philosophers and literati. While it drew from Greek tragic plays a philosophy, German thought on tragedy differed from the ancients in that it was applied as a philosophy for life. The ideas on Greek tragedy that Nietzsche situates his own within were developed within and against the Romantic aesthetic. The characteristics of Romantics provide context for understanding the use of tragedy as a source for thought and art. Although Nietzsche came to oppose aspects of Romanticism, his first book was in part a dialogue with German Romantic thought and aesthetics. Nietzsche's idea of tragic philosophy in his The Birth of Tragedy is examined in precedence to Duncan's use of his book. This dissertation provides an historical contextualization of the idea of a tragic philosophy to show that Duncan's choice to base her dance philosophy on Nietzsche's tragic philosophy follows this historical philosophical thread. As Nietzsche both dedicated The Birth of Tragedy to Wagner and based the book on Wagner's interpretation of Greek tragedy (Williamson 2004, 238), and Duncan wrote on and danced to Wagner, Wagner is relevant within the specific context of understanding Duncan's dance as a philosophical practice of The Birth of Tragedy. This dissertation, then, looks into Duncan's writings as a way to read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, and through these texts to interpret some aspects alive within the Romantic mood. In addition, this dissertation incorporates as part of both the literature and the analysis of Duncan's moving image, an embodied voice of personal experience from its writer, who has practiced this dance intimately. I weave my personal experience into the dissertation, using my experience in dancing within this dance form to reflect on the ideas presented here. The tragic idea as I see it within this movement drives the dancer's ideas about dance as an expressive art form. A tragic philosophy/wisdom motivates the imagination, the range of emotional expression and the physical body as it shapes and moves itself in, through and around space. A tragic sensibility represents a quality of investigation about the range of human experience that happens in and from out of the body. It comes from deep within the body's inner space and emotional and physical aliveness. It is an idea that the dancer is conscious of and actively engaged in as a process of dancing (for oneself) and making dance (as performative). / Dance

Purpose/Aim: To find power structures within the blog network. Material/Method: Using keywords to find all available blog posts about the National Defence Radio Establishment from the blog search engine Twingly, and thereafter using the same blog search engine to find inlinks from other blogs, to those posts. The data is set into the context of the small-world networks models of Duncan J. Watts and rich-club models of Sergi Valverde och Ricard V. Sole. Main results: 5183 unique blogs have written about the subject in 22779 blog posts to which 28128 inlinks from other blogposts are made. Just over one fifth of the blogs are linkted to each other in one big network, where the remaining blogs stand without any ingoing or outgoing links. The first bloggers are the one who continue to write for longer period of time and also the ones who attracts most inlinks. The blogosphere around this subject is highly connected, shows features as one would find in a small-world network, displays a power-law distribution for inlinks and is highly clustered around a few rich- club nodes.

Los principios de la danza libre, desarrollados por Isadora Duncan a inicios del siglo XX, tales como la observación de la naturaleza, la belleza y la forma, y el ritmo proponen un acercamiento personal al movimiento libre del cuerpo y al retorno de las formas naturales físicas que el ser humano dejó de utilizar producto de la búsqueda de un esteticismo en las danzas clásicas como el ballet durante los siglos anteriores. Estas danzas se caracterizaban por ser rígidas y cumplir patrones de movimiento inalterables que deformaban el cuerpo. Por ende, la investigación se propone recuperar la libertad de movimiento que propuso Duncan en su danza libre adaptándola al teatro y aplicándola al entrenamiento físico del actor en nuestro contexto actual con el fin de redescubrir y ampliar sus posibilidades físicas comunicacionales en escena. Así mismo propone desarrollar una conciencia plena del cuerpo, su uso y la relación con el otro en el espacio. El objetivo principal radica en validar que enfoque de trabajo de los principios adaptados funciona como medio para la construcción de códigos corporales extracotidianos que como consecuencia permiten adquirir mayor libertad creadora en escena. Por ende, el proceso del laboratorio intenta probar que el cuerpo posee gran capacidad comunicativa y expresiva que se encuentra dormida o poco desarrollada, pero que puede ser incrementada entrenando con los principios adaptados de la danza libre. / Tesis

The Seattle Repertory Theatre is one of the most successful regional theatre companies in the country. This study attempts to determine the components-of its success. It concludes that the unique community acceptance and support of the Seattle Repertory Theatre is due primarily to the innovations of its Artistic Director, W. Duncan Ross, including a departure from the "permanent company" repertory theatre concept to a more flexible "nucleus company" supported by special guest artists, a shift in play selection emphasis from traditional dramatic plays to more contemporary and comedic works, and shortened .duration for each play from four to three weeks. Also examined are the growth of American Theatre, Ross's community involvement, guest directors, critical acceptance, and audience attendance.

It is widely accepted, amongst epistemologists, that evidence plays an important role in our epistemic life. Crucially, there is no agreement on what evidence is. Following Silins, we can cash out the disagreement around the notion of evidence in terms of the opposition between Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism (Silins, 2005). Evidential internalists claim that evidence supervenes on one's non-factive mental states, such as, beliefs, impressions (BonJour, 1999, Audi, 2001). Evidential Externalists deny that. In this Thesis, first, I contrastively assess the plausibility of two prominent contemporary externalist theories: Duncan Pritchard's Epistemological Disjunctivism, the thesis on which one's evidence in perceptual cases is truth-entailing and reflectively accessible (Pritchard, 2012), and Timothy Williamson's E=K, the thesis on which one's evidence is all and only the propositions one knows (Williamson, 2000). Second, I develop a novel externalist account of evidence that I call Ecumenical Evidentialism. I show how Ecumenical Evidentialism is able to bring together some of the benefits of both Pritchard's Disjunctivism and Williamson's E=K. This Thesis is structured into three sections, each of which addresses the following three questions respectively: Does the Access Problem represent a real threat to Evidential Externalism? Is Evidential Externalism committed to a sceptical variety of Infallibilism? How does Evidential Externalism understand the relation between evidence and epistemic justification? I argue that neither Epistemological Disjunctivism nor E=K are fully satisfying Externalist accounts of evidence. On one hand, I argue that Disjunctivism captures the orthodox intuition on which justification is a matter of being evidence-responsive, but it does so on pain of facing the so-called Access Problem. On the other hand, by rejecting any strong accessibility thesis, Williamson's E=K is better positioned to resist both the Access Problem as well as the Infallibility Problem, but it does not vindicate the orthodox intuition on which justification is a matter of being evidence-responsive. Finally, I show that, while retaining the main commitments of Williamson's theory of evidence, such as, E=K, my Ecumenical Evidentialism is able to capture the orthodox responsiveness intuition about epistemic justification.

This thesis considers and critically analyses literary representations of what I have called “alternative masculinities” within a selection of texts by male writers from the turn of the millennium. The novels chosen for this analysis are Last Drinks by Andrew McGahan (2000), World of Chickens (2001) by Nick Earls and Sushi Central by Alasdair Duncan (2003). The work of R.W. Connell, Doreen Massey and Bruce Bennett will inform a framework blending theories of masculinities, spatiality theories and critical regionalism, providing the tools to conduct a reading of the spaces fictional representations of alternative masculinities engage with. Applying Connell’s hierarchy of masculinities (1995) I examine the emerging textual constructions of alternative masculinities that correspond with the changing cityscape of Brisbane. Within the above texts I argue there is a strong emphasis on the connections between identity and place. This is expressed through references to Brisbane’s social and historical identity and the gendered alignment of Brisbane spaces with particular masculinities.

The purpose of this study is to outline the origins of African-American men in musical theatre, uncover their contributions to the art form, and explore how their legacy is continued today. I was inspired to do this research because through my undergraduate curriculum I have only narrowly studied African-American men in musical theatre and opera history. Upon realizing the lack of attention to this subject matter, not only in my curriculum but in historical resources, I was inspired to address the need for this research. The courses I have taken included Theatre History 1 and 2 and Musical Theatre History 1 and 2; recognition of African-Americans in the theatrical arts has been discussed at a minimal level. The majority of African-American studies in these classes focus on minstrelsy and its contribution to American musical theatre. Minstrelsy was an American form of entertainment consisting of variety acts, dancing, and music during the early 1900s. The shows were a mockery of African-Americans with white (Sometimes Black) men dressing themselves in clown-like costumes and black face paint to depict a caricature of blacks. Throughout my coursework I have found there is still a presence of Minstrelsy in the framework of American musical theatre today. Understanding how minstrelsy influenced musical theatre led me to research Bert Williams, a pioneer African-American performer both in minstrelsy and American theatre. Bert Williams broke racial barriers, allowing African-Americans to perform alongside whites and gain proper show billing. This not only influenced theatre, but the social temperature of the time as well, as the stereotype of African-Americans in society slowly began to be broken down, and whites having the opportunity to see African-Americans as normal people aided in the seeding and progression of the civil rights movement. To further study the works and life of Bert Williams, I learned and performed his iconic song, "Nobody." The song is a commentary of how Williams is overlooked because he is an African-American man. It talks about how he is expected to be funny and make a mockery of himself at the expense of himself. In researching the historical context and gaining an understanding of the content within the song, I was able to better understand other roles I have played in various musicals. This gave me a different perspective to the subject matter of racism within a show. Furthermore, it allowed me to view the evolution of African-American roles in musical theatre, and how they originated in vaudevillian shows. A subject of which I had never explored within my classes. Williams had a very successful and influential career and became the basis for my research. However, as I began my exploration, I realized there were a vast variety of men of color who either contributed as much, if not more, to the progression of African-American men in musical theatre and opera. Bert Williams, Todd Duncan, and Paul Robeson all forged careers in musical theatre and/or opera. These men aided in presenting African-American men in realistic settings and not as stereotyped caricatures. African-American men in musical theatre and opera are typically overlooked for their contribution to the art forms. However, Bert Williams, Todd Duncan, and Paul Robeson were trailblazers for African-American men in musical theatre and opera; utilizing their status and fame to make political change and fight for equal rights, both on and off stage. Their legacy is seen in the art form through the structure of musical theatre, the content of the musical comedy that led to the musical drama, and through the integration of the African-American performer in both musical theatre and opera. In continuation of their legacy, we see more roles in shows for African-American men and a growing interest in shows with African-Americans. The recent opening and revivals of shows like Porgy and Bess, Motown: The Musical, and Kinky Boots all feature leading African-American men on stage. My duty as a young African-American practitioner of both musical theatre and opera is to continue their legacy through both my studies and performance. I am honored to be a part of their legacy, furthering their contributions, and bringing light to their stories through my research and analysis.

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This thesis was planned as a cross-case study of three docent-led museum tours, examined through the lens of liminality. The liminal, as identified by anthropologist Victor Turner, is an ambiguous and transitional state that is “betwixt and between” normative structures. When applied to the art museum, I argue that the liminal is a zone of negotiation that can assist in transformation and personal meaning making through a phenomenon of thought. This study centers on the following questions: How can liminal theory, as applied to museum education, illuminate the relationships between gallery teachers, visitors, and objects? And, in what ways does liminality allow for visitors’ personal meaning making to occur? These questions were answered through the planned observation of three docent-led museum tours at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin. Video and audio recordings, as well as observational field notes, occurred in one museum gallery and focused on one artwork, Cildo Meireles’ Missão/Missões (How to Build Cathedrals). Data was collected from narrative transcripts of the aforementioned video and audio recordings, exit interviews with docents, observational field notes taken during each tour, and observations and notes made while analyzing the video and audio footage. Two of these three tours fit within the parameters set by the researcher and, therefore, one tour was eliminated from the research findings. Content analysis is utilized in this study. This type of data analysis placed information into three categories modeled after Arnold van Gennep’s rites de passage: separation, the liminal, and aggregation. Four subcategories were subsequently discovered during this analysis: observation, connection, realization, and transformation. Conclusions determined after the analysis of this data revealed fluidity between these stages. Additionally, liminal theory illuminated the relationships between visitors, objects, and museum educators in a way that stressed that the negotiation of the artwork, meaning making, and the process of transformation are part of a collaborative journey, and that the spaces “betwixt and between” are valuable for the advancement of museum education. / text

The American Projectivist verse of Jack Spicer, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan contains within its poetics many epistemological assumptions shared by quantum physics. These assumptions exist in three broad categories: perception, process, and wholeness. In physics, the epistemology of perception has been profoundly altered by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation, which creates a symbiotic relationship between the observer and the observed. At least one photon of light is necessary to observe an electron; one photon is sufficient to alter the electron's momentum or position; therefore, a physicist affects an electron's "fate" in the act of observing it. Similarly, in Projectivist poetics, the perceptions of the reader are often enlisted to help "compose" the poem which is offered to him in "pieces," or, as in Robert Duncan's poetry especially, in self-reflexive segments. By "self-reflexive," we further mean that the Projectivist poem often "mirrors itself" as an electron "mirrors itself" as wave or as particle, while it is paradoxically both. A Projectivist poem may pause halfway through and "unravel" itself, i.e., study its own etymology. The reader thus must participate in "putting the poem back together," as the physicist participates in the phenomena he observes. The second epistemological model in physics and poetry stresses becoming, rather than being. Matter at the subatomic level has been defined as energy-in-flux. Similarly, the Projectivist poems of Charles Olson especially often exist as "fields" with no syntactical beginnings or endings. Moreover, the "I" of the Maximus Poems is often seen in a perpetual process of becoming the world of spacetime in the poems, creating a system similar to the being-and-becoming model of particle-and-field in quantum mechanics. Third, wholeness is a premise governing poetry and physics separately and together. Jack Spicer's thematics blend matter and consciousness, as "love and death matter/Matter as wave and particle." Similarly, Robert Duncan's poetics describes a "dancing organization between personal and cosmic identity." In physics, wholeness is seen primarily in an "implicate order" which attempts to overturn the old paradigms of fragmentation and connect matter and consciousness, including language, as interrelated systems of information.