Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia college. / Vita. List of books quoted.

In his 2008 book, American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945, Gavin Jones calls for academic studies of literature that examine poverty as its own actuality, worthy of discussion and definition despite its inherently polemical nature. As presented by Jones and tested here, American literature reveals how poverty is established, defined and understood; the anxieties of class; imperative connections with issues of gender and race; and the fictions of American democracy and the American Dream. This proves to be especially interesting when examining the 1890s. From a sociological standpoint, the eighteenth century's approach to poverty was largely moralistic, while the early parts of the nineteenth century moved toward acknowledging the impact of environmental and social factors. Literature itself was changing as a result of the realism and naturalism movements; the resulting popularity of local color and dialect writing and the exploding market for magazine fiction created access to and an audience for literature that discussed poverty in multifarious ways. Furthermore, New York proved to be an ideal setting - the influx of immigrants, the obvious problem of the slums, and the public's infatuation with those slums - and served as a catalyst for a diverse body of writing. Middle-class anxieties, especially, surfaced in this modern Babel. This study begins with a historical and sociological overview of the time period as well as an analysis of the problematic photography of the effective reformer Jacob Riis. Like Riis's photography, the cartoons of R.F. Outcault both challenge and subtly support stereotypes of poverty and serve as a reminder of the presence of poverty in day-to-day life and entertainment of turn-of-the-century New Yorkers. Stephen Crane's Maggie is discussed in depth, and his Tommie sketches are contrasted with the middle-class Whilomville Tales. These pieces have in common several unifying qualities: the centrality of the human body to the discussion of poverty, the failure of language for those in poverty, vision as a tool writers and artists lean heavily upon, and the awareness of multiple audiences within and without the text. Ultimately, the pieces return to the burdened bodies of small children - "the site that bears the marks, the damage, of being poor" (Jones American Hungers 3).

In FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED, unwilling refugees from an alternate universe find their place in our New York City, making peace with what they have lost.

With my dissertation entitled “Between the Flash and Fall of Turning”: “New York” School Poets, American Pragmatism and the Construction of Identity, I seek to account for the depiction of the anti-foundational self which emerges time and again in the poetry of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler and Kenneth Koch. While theorizing the self as a contingent, provisional, and shifting construct is hardly new to a theoretically oriented academy transiting into the present century, scholars and critics have tended to ground such interpretations in “structural linguistics” and so-called “French philosophy.” One of the goals of this project, therefore, is to propose that the philosophical skepticism toward the self as a site of stable and enduring meaning has always been felt and articulated by American Pragmatism, specifically in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James and John Dewey. While a handful of critics have looked to Pragmatism to account for the protean self in the work of “New York” School Poets, these commentators have tended to focus their attention largely on O’Hara’s and Ashbery’s poetry. This project seeks, on the one hand, to round out this work with close readings of all the major “New York” School Poets, and extend it, on the other, by looking beyond poetry to visual art and classroom pedagogy to examine evidence of a Pragmatist orientation across the disciplines, despite the apparent interpretive consensus that American Pragmatism “goes silent” at mid-century.

George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898) was a prominent American instrumental performer, teacher, conductor, and composer working in New York City in the mid-nineteenth century. His compositions provide valuable insight into the musical life of New York at that time, and into the development of American music. Presently, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts holds a wealth of manuscripts of his work, and very little of it has been published. Bristow's Niagara Symphony, Op. 62, was composed in 1893 and received its first performance under the baton of the composer shortly before his death in 1898, and represents the culmination of his compositional output. The symphony is divided by Bristow into two large parts of equal duration: the first part consists of three movements scored for orchestra only, and the second part is a multi-section cantata for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. I have here created a critical edition of the fourth movement of George Frederick Bristow's Niagara Symphony that faithfully and accurately represents the composer's intentions. I also provide here a meticulous recounting and justification of my editorial decisions, a thorough analysis of the work including an examination of compositional influences, and a discussion of performance considerations. This completion of a modern performing edition of the fourth movement of the Niagara Symphony is intended to help make the work of George Frederick Bristow more widely known, and to help scholars, performers, and audiences grasp our own American musical heritage.

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

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Dissolutional features called karst exist on the surface, and in the subsurface as caves. In glaciated regions caves were thought to be post-glacial in origin. Work in the 1970s demonstrated that pre-glacial caves existed, but did not answer if a cave could form post-glacially. A model proposed by Mylroie and Carew (1987) states that a post-glacial cave would be controlled entirely by glacial features and the deranged drainage of glaciated terrains. Caves known as maze caves form at maximum rates, and could form to navigable size in the time since deglaciation. Maze caves form in the shallow subsurface, allowing them to be removed in subsequent glaciations. GIS water flow analysis, and calculation of formation times using cross-section data demonstrates that maze caves in the glaciated region of New York are post-glacial in origin fitting in the deranged drainage and forming in the time since deglaciation.

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