In this essay, Kate Chopin's portraits of women in three short stories, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse and the novel The Awakening are studied. It is argued that the outcomes depicted can be seen as increasingly provocative and extreme and that the main conflict and ending of The Awakening is a development and combination of the conflicts and resolutions in the three short stories. / I uppsatsen studeras Kate Chopins kvinnoporträtt i tre noveller, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse och i romanen The Awakening. Syftet är att visa att huvudhandlingen och slutet på The Awakening är en utveckling och kombination av de alltmer provokativa och extrema handlingarna och upplösningarna i novellerna.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Portraits from the Tudor period are filled with symbols of status, wealth and power. This paper explores what role materiality plays in this communication. By exploring the role of materiality primarily linked to trade and relations between artists, patrons and the art market, two portraits depicting Mary I are analyzed. The role of materiality in the portraits is discussed based on, among other things, Bia Mankell's theories of materiality. The analysis shows that materiality is used in two different ways in the two works, but what they have in common is that the presence of materiality in both works seems to be important in the expression of wealth and thus power. The portraits' communication of status is reinforced by the material qualities of the works by using either precious materials or skilled artists. Something that depended on both access to financial means and geographical location.

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The first part of this Thesis deals with the analysis of piecewise-smooth mechanical systems and the definition of special stability criteria in presence of non-conservative follower forces. To illustrate the peculiar stability properties of this kind of dynamical system, a reference 2 d.o.f. structure has been considered, composed of a rigid bar, with one and constrained to slide, without friction, along a curved profile, whereas the other and is subject to a follower force. In particular, the curved constraint is assumed to be composed of two circular profiles, with different and opposite curvatures, defining two separated subsystems. Due to this jump in the curvature, located at the junction point between the curved profiles, the entire mechanical structure can be modelled by discontinuous equations of motion, the differential equations valid in each subsystem can be combined, leading to the definition of a piecewise-smooth dynamical system. When a follower force acts on the structure, an unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour may occur: although the two subsystems are stable when analysed separately, the composed structure is unstable and exhibits flutter-like exponentially-growing oscillations. This special form of instability, previously known only from a mathematical point of view, has been analysed in depth from an engineering perspective, thus finding a mechanical interpretation based on the concept of non-conservative follower load. Moreover, the goal of this work is also the definition of some stability criteria that may help the design of these mechanical piecewise-smooth systems, since classical theorems cannot be used for the investigation of equilibrium configurations located at the discontinuity. In the literature, this unusual behaviour has been explained, from a mathematical perspective, through the existence of a discontinuous invariant cone in the phase space. For this reason, starting from the mechanical system described above, the existence of invariant cones in 2 d.o.f. mechanical systems is investigated through Poincaré maps. A complete theoretical analysis on piecewise-smooth dynamical systems is presented and special mathematical properties have been discovered, valid for generic 2~d.o.f. piecewise-smooth mechanical systems, which are useful for the characterisation of the stability of the equilibrium configurations. Numerical tools are implemented for the analysis of a 2~d.o.f. piecewise-smooth mechanical system, valid for piecewise-linear cases and extendible to the nonlinear ones. A numerical code has been developed, with the aim of predicting the stability of a piecewise-linear dynamical system a priori, varying the mechanical parameters. Moreover, “design maps” are produced for a given subset of the parameters space, so that a system with a desired stable or unstable behaviour can easily be designed. The aforementioned results can find applications in soft actuation or energy harvesting. In particular, in systems devoted to exploiting the flutter-like instability, the range of design parameters can be extended by using piecewise-smooth instead of smooth structures, since unstable flutter-like behaviour is possible also when each subsystem is actually stable. The second part of this Thesis deals with the numerical analysis of an elastic cloak for transient flexural waves in Kirchhoff-Love plates and the design of special metamaterials for this goal. In the literature, relevant applications of transformation elastodynamics have revealed that flexural waves in thin elastic plates can be diverted and channelled, with the aim of shielding a given region of the ambient space. However, the theoretical transformations which define the elastic properties of this “invisibility cloak” lead to the presence of a strong compressive prestress, which may be unfeasible for real applications. Moreover, this theoretical cloak must present, at the same time, high bending stiffness and a null twisting rigidity. In this Thesis, an orthotropic meta-structural plate is proposed as an approximated elastic cloak and the presence of the prestress has been neglected in order to be closer to a realistic design. With the aim of estimating the performance of this approximated cloak, a Finite Element code is implemented, based on a sub-parametric technique. The tool allows the investigation of the sensitivity of specific stiffness parameters that may be difficult to match in a real cloak design. Moreover, the Finite Element code is extended to investigate a meta-plate interacting with a Winkler foundation, to analyse how the substrate modulus transforms in the cloak region. This second topic of the Thesis may find applications in the realization of approximated invisibility cloaks, which can be employed to reduce the destructive effects of earthquakes on civil structures or to shield mechanical components from unwanted vibrations.

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Notre mémoire propose une analyse des portraits peints par Théophile Hamel. Nous avons choisi d'aborder ces portraits par le biais des notions de ressemblance et de caractère. Après une mise en contexte des oeuvres étudiées, cette étude nous conduit à une réflexion plus large sur les valeurs collectives de la bourgeoisie du Bas-Canada au XIXe siècle, valeurs reflétées dans l'impressionnante galerie de portraits que nous a laissés Hamel. Dans la première partie de ce mémoire, nous faisons appel à la morphopsychologie pour démontrer le talent du peintre à révéler l'intériorité de ses modèles en soulignant certains traits de leurs visages. Le second chapitre identifie les moyens employés par Hamel pour illustrer les valeurs et les sentiments des personnages portraiturés. En présentant le discours engendré par la réception de ses oeuvres dans le troisième chapitre, nous voulons prouver que l'artiste a dépassé le rendu de la ressemblance pour exprimer le caractère de ses modèles. Nous terminons cette recherche par une analyse de l'esthétique du peintre, esthétique mise au service de la biographie visuelle de ses sujets.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / The following report is an in depth research and analysis project based on the graduation requirement for a Masters in Music Degree from Kansas State University. The product of this project was a conducting recital performed by Michael E. Bistline with the Union High School Concert Band. This performance was held on May 5, 2009 in Matt Auditorium at Union High School. The repertoire included National Emblem March by E.E. Bagley/edited by Frederick Fennell, On An American Spiritual by David Holsinger, Portraits by Jim Colonna, and Serenade Op. 22 (c) by Derek Bourgeois. The theoretical, historical and technical analyses of this project was collected using the Unit of the Teacher Resource Guide, developed by Richard Miles and the Macro, Micro, Macro score analysis form developed by Dr. Frank Tracz. This report also includes documentation of the planning and evaluation of each rehearsal.

This thesis is an examination of Charles I of England’s projection of kingship through Sir Anthony van Dyck portraits during his personal rule. These portraits provide important insight into Charles’ vision of kingship because they were commissioned by the king and displayed at court, revealing that his kingship rested on complementary ideals of traditional kingship in addition to divine right. In this thesis, Charles’ van Dyck portraits are studied in the context of seventeenth-century ideals of paterfamilias, knight, and gentleman. These ideals provide important cultural narratives which were seen to be reflective of legitimacy, power, and masculinity, which in turn gave legitimacy to Charles’ kingship. The system of values and ideals represented in Charles’ portraits reveal that his vision of kingship was complex and nuanced, demonstrating that divine right was just one aspect of many, upon which his kingship was premised. / viii, 164 leaves : [18] leaves of color plates ; 29 cm

Using portraiture methodology and social practice theory, this study examined the identity work of young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. This research asked four interrelated questions. Through the lens of a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans, 1) How do contextual figured worlds influence artist identity work? 2) How does artist identity work manifest through personal narratives? 3) How does artist identity work manifest in activities? 4) What are the consequences of artist identity work? The findings of the study highlight how sociocultural factors influence dis/identification with the visual arts in young people and provoke considerations of in/equity in the arts.