The following essay examines the image of "Barbary piracy" created by two prominent political figures, Thomas Jefferson and William Eaton, and by the American public from 1784 to 1805, and how those images shaped the policy of the American-Barbary War. Eaton‟s Orientalist approach to describing piracy and the North African population limited his views of this region, thus reducing the American conflict to the annihilation of animalistic "brutes." Jefferson‟s practical approach to describing piracy and the North African population focused on emancipating the region from the corrupting influence of greed, allowing him the necessary flexibility to solve the conflict by either by military force or with peace treaties, whichever was necessary. I will show the impact that categorizing piracy as either the result of a depraved society or as a corrupting force had on both American perceptions of the North Africa people and on the outcome of the American-Barbary War.

L'expérience de diffusion Compton profondément virtuelle sur le proton (DVCS) du Hall A a pris le faisceau d'électrons de 5.757 GeV polarisé du Jefferson Laboratory de septembre à décembre 2004. Elle a utilisé un spectromètre à haute résolution associé à un calorimétre électromagnétique en fluorure de plomb et à un detecteur de protons tous deux spécialement con\c cus pour fonctionner à une haute luminosité de 10^37cm^-2s^-1 permettant de signer les<br />événements exclusifs sans ambiguïté. Trois mesures ont été effectuées a x_bjorken=0.32 constant pour 3 valeurs de Q^2 : 1.5 GeV^2, 1.91GeV^2, 2.32 GeV^2. Une électronique dédiée a aussi été mise en place permettant de résoudre l'empilement durant l'analyse ainsi q'un module de coïncidence électron photon. Les données de la cinématique à 2.32 GeV^2 et s=5.6GeV^2 ont permis d'extraire un résultat préliminaire pour la section efficace d'électroproduction exclusive de pi^0 sur le proton.

Les distributions généralisées de partons (GPDs) sont des fonctions universelles permettant une meilleure compréhension des propriétés des nucléons en termes de quarks et de gluons. La diffusion Compton profondément virtuelle (DVCS) est le processus le pus simple permettant leur mesure. En particulier, le DVCS sur le neutron est sensible à la GPD E qui est la moins contrainte à ce jour et dont la connaissance s'avère indispensable pour accéder au moment angulaire des quarks. La première expérience dédiée au DVCS sur le neutron a eu lieu fin 2004 au Hall A du Jefferson Lab. La haute luminosité de l'expérience et le taux de bruit de fond qui en découle ont nécessité le développement d'équipements spécifiques qui sont décrits. Les méthodes d'analyse utilisées sont présentées et les résultats de l'expérience conduisant à des contraintes préliminaires sur la GPD E sont discutés.

This dissertation illuminates the links between agriculture, popular culture, social class, and agrarian nostalgia. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I draw from the fields of American Studies, American History, Agricultural History, Environmental Studies, popular culture, and cultural geography. Consisting of four diverse case studies, my project focuses on America's evolving relationship with its agrarian roots from the late eighteenth century to the present. Each case study pays close attention to the ways in which the forces of modern consumerism have shaped public understanding of agricultural issues. The dissertation pivots on two main arguments: 1) the modern realities of industrialized agriculture have sparked a desire for highly romanticized visions of farming, particularly tourism to rural places that promise temporary pastoral transcendence to consumers, and 2) as a result of the public demand for idyllic constructions of American rural life, agrarian nostalgia has frequently been deployed in the service of commerce. From the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Laura Ingalls Wilder, to Currier and Ives painting, Martha Stewart's media empire, and state fairs of the American Midwest, I analyze a variety of highly romanticized cultural forms that enrich our understanding of the nation's agrarian heritage. Yet, I also make important links between the past and present, and demonstrate how and why debates about such issues as farm policy and the politics of food once again stand at the forefront of popular consciousness in the twenty-first century. / text

This thesis explores the implications of chinoiserie, or Western creations of Chinese-style decorative arts, upon an eighteenth century colonial American audience. Chinese products such as tea, porcelain, and silk, and goods such as furniture and wallpaper displaying Chinese motifs of distant exotic lands, had become popular commodities in Europe by the eighteenth century. The American colonists, who were primarily culturally British, thus developed a taste for chinoiserie fashions and wares via their European heritage. While most European countries had direct access to the China trade, colonial Americans were banned from any direct contact with the Orient by the British East India Company. They were relegated to creating their own versions of these popular designs and products based on their own interpretations of British imports. Americans also created a mental construct of China from philosophical writings of their European contemporaries, such as Voltaire, who often envisioned China as a philosopher's paradise. Some colonial Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, fit their understanding of China within their own Enlightenment worldview. For these individuals, chinoiserie in American homes not only reflected the owners' desires to keep up with European fashions, but also carried associations with Enlightenment thought. The latter half of the eighteenth century was a time of escalating conflict as Americans colonists began to assert the right to govern themselves. Part of their struggle for freedom from England was a desire to rid themselves of the British imports, such as tea, silk, and porcelain, on which they had become so dependent by making those goods themselves. Americans in the eighteenth century had many of the natural resources to create such products, but often lacked the skill or equipment for turning their raw materials into finished goods. This thesis examines the colonists' attempts to create their own chinoiserie products, despite these odds, in light of revolutionary sentiments of the day. Chinoiserie in colonial America meshed with neoclassical décor, thereby reflecting the Enlightenment and revolutionary spirit of the time, and revealing a complex colonial worldview filled with trans-oceanic dialogues and cross-cultural currents.

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La tesi si occupa di verificare l’influenza che i classici greci e latini hanno esercitato su i padri fondatori americani e più in particolare su Thomas Jefferson. La prima sezione tratteggia il contesto universitario e lo studio delle lingue classiche tra seicento e settecento, comprendendo non solo le università inglesi (Oxford e Cambridge) e scozzesi, ma anche i nuovi college nati nelle colonie americane. Tale analisi dei modelli e delle pratiche educative ha permesso, in effetti, di comprendere meglio l’influenza dei classici sui rivoluzionari americani. Nello specifico viene scandagliata a fondo l’educazione ricevuta da Jefferson. Tra i numerosi spunti di studio aperti da codesto argomento, il lavoro si concentra sulle modalità con cui i classici gli furono insegnati, sul suo Commonplace Book (una raccolta di brani tratti in parte da autori antichi letti in giovinezza) e su documentazione epistolare. Quest’ultima è oggetto particolare di studio, allo scopo di scoprire quali opere antiche Jefferson, in età adulta e durante la vecchiaia, lesse e apprezzò. Essendo un collezionista di libri, comprò moltissimi testi classici come dimostrano alcuni suoi manoscritti. Nonostante manchino dati precisi a riguardo, risulta inoltre che Jefferson, benché facesse largo uso di traduzioni, preferiva leggere in originale e che probabilmente abbia letto la maggior parte di questi libri durante il ritiro dalla vita politica. La seconda parte della tesi si concentra, invece, a indagare quanto la sua educazione classica abbia contributo alla formazione della sua personalità e delle sue idee, nonché alla forma stessa del suo pensiero in merito ad alcune tematiche. Lo studio è di conseguenza dedicato all’esperienza umana di Jefferson, in particolare alla sua riflessione sulla morte e sull’eternità, temi fortemente legati alla sua ricezione di idee epicuree e stoiche. Epicureismo e Stoicismo rappresentano, in definitiva, i due sistemi filosofici antichi che hanno maggiormente influenzato la sua personalità e il suo pensiero. / The aim of the present work is to evaluate the impact of the ancient classics on the American Founding Fathers, with a particular focus on Thomas Jefferson. The first section gives a wide portrait of the academic context in which the Founders were educated, comprising not only of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Scottish universities, but also the colonial colleges. The evaluation of the educational practices in use at the time makes it possible to understand better the classical impact on revolutionary Americans. In particular, this analysis studies in depth Jefferson's education. Of the many possible perspectives and approaches to this topic, the present work focuses on the way ancient classics were taught to him, his Commonplace Book, which reports part of the ancient classics he read during his youth, and his correspondence. The latter has been studied especially to understand which other ancient writers he read, valued, and esteemed in his adulthood and old age. As book collector, Jefferson bought an incredible number of ancient classics, as attested by a few manuscripts of his book lists. Despite the dearth of sure evidence, it is very likely that he read the ancient works largely during his retirement. He loved reading them in the original, though he made great use of translations. The second part of this work is dedicated to investigating how Jefferson's classical education contributed to the building of his personality and ideas, as well as how he elaborated specific classical themes in his own life. The study is thus focused on Jefferson's personal human experience, specifically on his reflection on human mortality and the afterlife. These themes, indeed, are strictly linked to his reception of Epicurean and Stoic tenets, the two ancient philosophical systems which had the greatest and most profound impact on Jefferson's personality and thought.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-64).

Jazz music is transmitted by aural and oral means. As recording and broadcast mediums became increasingly ubiquitous, starting in the mid twentieth-century, an ever greater proportion of jazz’s aural transmission would be mediated by these developing technologies. Many commentators address sound’s mediation from one state to another by identifying the resulting recording as an object. This object transcends temporal and spacial proximity, possessing inherent authority with implications for authorship, related work-concepts, and even issues of cultural assimilation. From a perspective informed by writings in musicology, philosophy, and sound studies, I examine recorded jazz music from the twentieth-century. I begin by positioning the history of jazz music in relation to the emergence of recording technologies to establish recordings as authoritative texts. I then translate (by transcription) primarily non-literate jazz recordings into the primarily literate discourse of musicology. In the course of examining music by James Moody, Eddie Jefferson, Bud Powell, Chick Corea, and others, I conclude that they all exemplify musical intertextuality. In some cases, technological mediation connects the texts. I then turn to an examination of recordings specifically. I begin by questioning musical notation as an adequate description of sound and move to developing a broader analytical framework. This thesis culminates with a comparison of Bud Powell’s 1949 recording of Bouncin’ With Bud and Chick Corea’s 1997 recording. Using the framework mentioned, disparate potentialities afforded by each recording’s mediation are connected to musical characteristics. / Graduate

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / A foreign concept to most twenty-first century individuals, a saddletree provides support and acts as the framework to saddles, giving saddlers a base on which to add cushioning, stretch leather, and create beautiful or functional saddles. Saddletree factories were an integral part of Madison, Indiana’s late nineteenth-century economy. As one of the Ohio River town’s leading industries, saddletree shops employed approximately 125 men during 1879, Madison’s peak saddletree production year, and made Madison a national center of saddletree production. However, the industry faded into oblivion as the beginning of the twentieth century, leaving the men drawn to these shops in the 1870s and 1880s to find new opportunities. While past historians contributed to the fields of industrial and economic history by studying large industries engaged in mass production in major urban areas, Madison’s saddletree workers represent a view of nineteenth-century specialized production. This thesis examines the saddletree industry’s place in Madison during the late nineteenth century and the lives of saddletree workers during and after the industry’s peak. My findings, based off extensive digital research and tools utilized in earlier social mobility studies, create a nuanced view of Madison’s relationship to the saddletree industry, saddletree makers, and what the industry’s collapse meant to saddletree factory employees.