This thesis will prove how the male domestic servant shows a conservative evolution of class freedom through early American films. As an individual thrust into a liminal sphere, these characters paradoxically become a character type for both keeping class-consciousness as well as breaking up notions of class, albeit in a slow process. In comedy, domestic male servants have always been on duty to help their masters while also becoming sources of mischief as tricksters. In early American films, these characters embody the anxiety of a classless body of men who become scapegoats, trickster-figures, and mask-wearing sages in order to survive—attracting as many functions as possible in order to help society question notions of class. Although butlers and valets have existed for several centuries, the Victorian era molded the butler into a marginal existence, trapping this servant into a liminal, and therefore unlikable, sphere. Comedic writers in the Victorian era played the anxiety up—presenting butlers and valets as pompous and unintelligent scapegoats placed in texts to make their masters look good while becoming invisible themselves. Yet, by the time the stereotype reached America through P. G. Wodehouse, the butler became a trickster figure—ready to use the Victorian code as a way to gain monetary compensation and control of the private domain. Jeeves does in fact receive his desires, but he resorts back to set codes—becoming a character that subverts and maintains class structure simultaneously. Charlie Chaplin's butler in City Lights does the same in film. As the overly serious foil, Chaplin's butler controls the class hierarchy by keeping Chaplin away from his master; yet, the butler does this by copying his master's actions, putting himself on the same level as his master. It is only through Sturges films that butlers become relatively free from subordination and even more multivalent as these films delve into class reality versus desire. These butlers and valets continue to play the part of the Victorian butler, but they also become the pivotal characters that move plots in their intended course—becoming fatherly and less anxiety-ridden—creating a freedom unknown to their predecessors.

In this thesis I explore the spread of modern art to conservative regions of the country, in particular Utah. By using George Dibble as a case study this thesis will also address the struggle that Utah artists had to endure to have their progressive ideas in art be accepted in such a conservative area. It will address the criticism that Dibble had to endure by discussing specific incidents involved with certain works of art. Although there were plenty of people who did not like modern art, there were some institutions and people who were advocates of this progressive form of art. Through determination and persevering through challenges, artists like Dibble made it easier for the next generation of modern artists to gain acceptance. Dibble and his generation of artists opened the door to the acceptance of truly abstract and modern works of the Abstract Expressionist. This thesis also will deal with the origins of modernism in America and how it spread throughout the country starting with the Amory Show in New York in 1913 and going through the Great Depression with the WPA. It will examine the artistic climate of Utah during the first three decades of the twentieth century and artists who came before Dibble who came in contact with the European modernists. Although there has been some scholarship on the history of Utah art, there has been little written on the spread of Modern art through the state. Utah art historian Bob Olpin has done the most scholarship on Dibble and his contemporaries.

In this thesis I consider photographs of the mannequin by Vogue's fashion photographer, George Hoyningen-Huene. Little scholarship has been written on Huene, as well as many other fashion photographers of the twentieth century. I examine four of Huene's works and his appropriation of the surrealist aesthetic, specifically the use of the mask and mannequin, which were directed at female spectators during the interwar atmosphere and development of the identity of the interwar modern woman. These images include Life-mask of Dolores Wilkinson (1933), Antoine with One of His Creations (1933), Scarf and Gloves by Chanel, Mannequin by Pierre Imans (1934) and Mauboussin Diamond-and-Topaz Corsage Clip, Mannequin by Pierre Imans (1934). I argue that his use of the mask and mannequin legitimates his work as he draws from the artistic milieu of nineteenth and twentieth-century high art.My survey describes photography's theoretical affinities with fashion and surrealism, the surrealist aesthetic and Huene's adoption of it in his fashion photographs of the mannequin, primitivism and Huene's adoption of high art themes and use of the mask, the interwar modern woman in a consumer society, female spectatorship and Huene's surrealist images functioning through a female gaze.

In this thesis I explore the importance of elite women in early twentieth-century Vienna in relation to the Wiener Werkstätte. My research has led me to believe that the Werkstätte held a more egalitarian view of women than other contemporary European applied arts workshops. Unfortunately the art-historical canon has generally overlooked the applied arts of the Wiener Werkstätte, as well as the significant roles of women in the Werkstätte as artists, clients, patrons, and promoters. In this thesis, I consider cases of women in these roles in early twentieth-century Vienna in order to gain a greater understanding of Viennese women's place economically and politically, as well as socially and culturally. In particular, I examine the Werkstätte's primary records of sales and production (called model books), housed in the Wiener Werkstätte archives at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, as a means to better understanding their participation. The evidence of the importance of women in relation to the Wiener Werkstätte, includes: 1) the creation of new opportunities for women in the arts; 2) the emergence and popularity of a liberating reformed fashion; 3) the focus of the Werkstätte on creating objects that would appeal to a female clientele; and 4) the Werkstätte's success, particularly among prominent wealthy female art patrons. I conclude that women's roles as artists, clients, patrons, and promoters can be seen as positions of empowerment for Viennese women of the early twentieth century.

In recent years, the concept of monstrosity has received renewed attention by literary critics. Much of this criticism has focused on horror texts and other texts that depict supernatural monsters. However, the way that monster theory explores the connection between specific cultures and their monsters illuminates not only our understanding of horror texts, but also our understanding of any significant cultural artwork. Applying monster theory to non-horror texts is a useful and productive way to more fully understand the cultural fears of a society. One text that is particularly fruitful to explore in this context is John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, East of Eden. The personification of evil in the text is one of the most memorable monsters in 20th century American literature—Cathy Ames Trask. Described by the narrator as a monster from birth, Cathy haunts the text. She rejects any and all attempts to force her to behave in socially acceptable ways. Cathy refuses to abide by the roles that mid-century American culture assigned to women, particularly the roles of wife and mother. Feminist theorists have often examined Cathy’s character in this context, although many of them emphasize Steinbeck’s personal misogyny. While Steinbeck’s personal fears have clearly formed the basis of Cathy’s character, the concept of the monster extends beyond idiosyncratic fears. Monster theory, through its emphasis on the particular cultural moment of the monster, allows for a broader understanding of cultural fears. Although the description of Cathy in the text connects her to a long tradition of female monsters, including Lilith and the Siren, Steinbeck’s characterization of the monstrous woman focuses on specific mid-century American cultural fears. The most significant of these cultural fears are those of emasculation and the potential flexibility of gender roles. These fears have often been associated with the feminine monster, but they became a crucial part of postwar American cultural discourse. The character of Cathy Trask, while exhibiting many traits that have been assigned to female monsters during the course of Western history, is essentially a 20th century American monster, one who encapsulates the fears of midcentury American men faced with rapidly changing gender roles and boundaries. The creation of such a horrifyingly monstrous woman, one that continues to haunt the reader even after her eventual de-monstration, testifies to the intense cultural anxiety about gender roles, particularly in the context of the heterosexual nuclear family, present in post-World War II America. This anxiety is dealt with in the figure of the monster Cathy, who represents forbidden desires and is then punished for those desires; her eventual demise reinforces the culturally patriarchal social structure and serves as a warning against transgressive gender behavior.

During an era when the Seminoles were little regarded in Florida, despite mass Indian reform nationwide, Minnie Moore-Willson of Kissimmee and Ivy Stranahan of Fort Lauderdale attempted to bring reform to the state. Living amongst members of the tribe, both women used their familiarity with Seminole life and practices, as well as their political and social connections, to enact change for the tribe. This was done, respectively, through the creation of reservations and attempting to increase educational and vocational opportunities for tribe members. This thesis examines the lives and activism of Minnie Moore-Willson and Ivy Stranahan over the first two decades of the twentieth century and details their attempts to reform federal and state policies towards Seminoles in Florida. It illustrates the relationships of the women with each other, the Seminoles, and political power brokers in early twentieth century Florida, and attempts to determine their motivations. In doing so, the thesis argues that, though often ignored in the historiography of Seminoles in Florida, these women served as key figures in enacting Seminole-related reforms during the era. Examining Moore-Willson and Stranahan's lives and works affords a greater understanding of how non-Seminole women conceptualized and carried out Florida reform efforts and provides a new perspective for evaluating the early stages of Florida Seminole reform and comparable efforts in other areas of the United States.

Modern flute pedagogy tends to focus on repertoire which utilizes or builds upon tonal and Romantic stylistic conventions, largely ignoring works that disregard or reject these conventions until later in student's education. This lack of stylistic diversity in commonly studied works from the first half of the twentieth century can be problematic when students are approaching avant-garde or modernist repertoire for the first time, as they are unfamiliar with the style and technical needs of the pieces. This dissertation provides a style guide and progressive curriculum for the avant-garde repertoire of the early- and mid-twentieth century to help students bridge the gap from commonly-studied early-twentieth century repertoire to Post-War Modernist works. The curriculum and style guide are accompanied by an overview of avant-garde musical styles prominent in Europe and American between the 1890s and 1970s, a discussion of the pedagogical challenges of avant-garde repertoire, and two performance guides for avant-garde pieces included in the curriculum, Diaphonic Suite No. 1 by Ruth Crawford and Variations for Solo Flute by Ursula Mamlok.

This dissertation considers sites of religious broadcast designed for and used by Protestant television evangelists in the postwar United States. It interrogates both the transformation of ritual space as it relates to and is infused by broadcast media, and the architectural and infrastructural adaptations that conditioned such spaces as a result of this mediation. These ritual sites, either retrofitted to accommodate television or designed explicitly for its technology between the late 1950s and the early 1980s, emerged in a period marked both by the ascendance of television broadcasting and by the increasing cultural and political visibility of conservative Protestantism in the United States. While the architecture of television evangelistic practice has also evolved in ways that parallel, and often complicate, changes in mainstream ecclesiastical architecture in the twentieth century, the protagonists of this narrative do not fall into two better-documented genealogies—neither the history of denominationally specific church consulting and the practical guidance penned in its support, nor accounts of high architectural, often academic, reflection on sacred space. Instead, the architecture of these often culturally marginal practices has been critically segregated from much other religious and spiritual construction, despite its effective proliferation across the American landscape to this very day. The wake of this bias leaves resultant lacunae in scholarly and critical attention, which this dissertation works in part to fill. In beginning to account for this history, I examine a variety of evangelical spaces—mostly worship spaces, but also broadcast stations, hospitals, and university campuses—and draw upon their archival and textual traces. Primary case studies in California, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia are framed by questions of style and typology, examined alongside contemporary theories and criticisms of mass mediation, and located in relation to histories of mediated healing practices and apocalyptic thinking. This specific ritual architecture, which the dissertation terms televangelical space, not only negotiated between received ideas of the sacred and newer discourses around twentieth-century media, building practices, and community structures, but also raised the issue of conservative Christianity’s fundamental relationship to the modern world. It traced a basic ambivalence about the relationship between the contemporary and the sacred, and about the relationship between religious practice and the technological realities and cultural habits of an increasingly mediated and increasingly atomized present. I suggest that the historical materialization of this negotiation generated both new kinds of ecclesiastical architecture and spatial effects that transcended its walls. Rather than insist on the relevance of the spaces of broadcast religion according to a rubric of aesthetic value, this project examines them for what they can reveal both about architecture for and with media and about the transformation of spirituality and community under new forms of mediation.

By using oral history as the primary research method, the aim of this thesis is to document and analyse the experiences of women woollen textile workers in the mid-twentieth century. The thesis contains a critique of oral history as a research method in general and the feminist practice of oral history in particular. In order to locate the women in the study in a particular place, there is description of the development and eventual collapse of the woollen textile industry in the Huddersfield area of West Yorkshire. Tape recorded interviews were carried out with 17 women. The key findings from their experiences fall into two main areas. The first relates to the experiences the women describe about the daily routine within the woollen mill, especially for new recruits and the tasks they had which were unconnected with their job. The second relates to the descriptions of the actions the women took during the collapse of the industry. This thesis contributes to the wider body of work on working class women and offers original insights into the experiences of women who worked in an industry which has all but disappeared.

No description available.