In my thesis I focused on the matter of the relationship of Americans during the decades after World War II to their own identity, as well as to the myths of the West or consumer society. I wanted to compare these aspects on plays by Sam Shepard and David Mamet, two playwrights concerned with similar issues in 1960s and 1970s. In the theoretical part of the thesis I concentrated on the development of the American theater off Broadway. I described three significant theater groups of the era and the differences in their approach. I based the comparison of the plays on Richard Schechner's performance theory and J. L. Austin's theory of the so-called "performatives." Later I discussed the matters of rituals and myths in the postmodern society where I based my theory especially on Victor Turner's and Marie Maclean's work. The two main chapters are dealing with comparing two plays by each author with regard to the way Shepard and Mamet work with rituals and modern myths. Those are considered commonplace, insufficient, almost misleading in a modern society, and the plays' characters thus cannot cope with the society. They end up being on its outer edge and do not seem to be able to find the way back. As a result of the comparison of the plays based on the theoretical part I concluded that even though from the...

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This paper examines violence and masculinity in Sam Shepard's work as a symptom of war trauma, apparent in his characterization of several of his male characters as war veterans and the violent language accompanying his other characters. War becomes a cultural disease infesting and destroying the family on Shepard's stage.

Review of Emma Creedon, Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, xi + 199 pp., $90.00.

Excerpt: In 1975, Bob Dylan invited Sam Shepard, the young playwright who had ignited the Off-Broadway and London theatre scene, to go on tour with him in order to write scenes and dialogue for a film of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Langues, littératures et civilsations étrangères : Paris 4 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran titre. 222 références bibliographiques.

This thesis presents the shortcomings of the Fair Use exemption within the Copyright Act through an in depth analysis of the recent Shepard Fairey v. Associated Press surrounding the well-regarded Hope Poster. The thesis critiques the unpredictability of the law, the copyright holder’s growing sense of monopolized ownership over her or his work, the complex facets of art that are overlooked in the court’s legal analysis, and finally, the social justice implications of the Copyright Act. The thesis argues that Fair Use should make room for appropriation art, otherwise successful and progressive artists, such as Shepard Fairey, will be discouraged from creating.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-271). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-271). Also available on the Internet.

[pt] Muitos problemas reais em modelagem computacional requerem o uso de aproximação de funções. Em alguns casos a função a ser avaliada no computador é muito complexa, portanto seria desejável que ela fosse substituída por uma função mais simples e mais eficiente de ser calculada. Para fazer isso, calcula-se o valor da função escalar f em um conjunto de N pontos {x1, x2, . . . , XN}, onde x(i) (pertence a) R(n), e faz-se uma estimativa dos valores dessa função f em qualquer outro ponto através de um método de interpolação. Um método de interpolação é qualquer procedimento que toma um conjunto de restrições e determina uma boa função que satisfaça essas condições. O método de interpolação de Shepard originalmente calcula o valor estimado dessa função num ponto qualquer x (pertence a) R(N) como uma média ponderada dos valores da função original nas N amostras dadas. Sendo que o peso para cada amostra x(i) é função das potências negativas das distâncias euclidianas entre os pontos x e x(i). Os núcleos K: R(N) × R(N) (EM) R são funções que correspondem ao produto interno no espaço de Hilbert F da imagem dos pontos x e z por uma função phi (conjunto vazio) : R(N) (EM) F, ou seja K(x, z) = < phi (conjunto vazio) (x), phi (conjunto vazio) (z) >. Na prática, as funções núcleos representam implicitamente o mapeamento feito pela função phi (conjunto vazio) , ou seja, se define qual núcleo usar e não qual phi (conjunto vazio) usar. Esse trabalho propõe uma modificação do método de interpolação de Shepard que é uma simples substituição no método original: ao invés de usar a distância euclidiana entre os pontos x e xi sugere-se usar a distância entre as imagens dos pontos x e x(I) por phi (conjunto vazio) no espaço de Hilbert F, que pode ser calculada diretamente com o uso da função núcleo K. Os resultados mostram que essa pequena modificação gera resultados melhores quando comparados com o método de Shepard original. / [en] Several real problem in computational modeling require function approximations. In some cases, the function to be evaluated in the computer is very complex, so it would be nice if this function could be substituted by a simpler and efficient one. To do so, the function f is sampled in a set of N pontos {x1, x2, . . . , xN}, where x(i) (is an element of) R(n), and then an estimate for the value of f in any other point is done by an interpolation method. An interpolation method is any procedure that takes a set of constraints and determines a nice function that satisfies such conditions. The Shepard interpolation method originally calculates the estimate of F(x) for some x (is an element of) R(n) as a weighted mean of the N sampled values of f. The weight for each sample xi is a function of the negative powers of the euclidian distances between the point x and xi. Kernels K : R(n) ×R(n) (IN) R are functions that correspond to an inner product on some Hilbert space F that contains the image of the points x and z by a function phi (the empty set) : R(n) (IN) F, i.e. k(x, z) =< phi (the empty set) (x), phi (the empty set) (z) >. In practice, the kernels represent implicitly the mapping phi (the empty set), i.e. it is more suitable to defines which kernel to use instead of which function phi (the empty set). This work proposes a simple modification on the Shepard interpolation method that is: to substitute the euclidian distance between the points x and xi by a distance between the image of these two point by phi (the empty set) in the Hilbert space F, which can be computed directly with the kernel k. Several tests show that such simple modification has better results when compared to the original method.