Thesis (A.Mus.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0425. Adviser: William Moersch. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-195) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The purpose of this work is to present the development of a robotic leg, based on a four-bar 4R spatial mechanism, named as Bennett s mechanism. Using an adequate configuration of this mechanism, it is possible to describe a spatial curve, which is similar to the profile of a gait, using only one degree of freedom. Due to its simplicity, the modeled leg is simpler than the legs which are currently used on the mobile robots. To make easy the obstacles transposition, another two degrees of freedom had been added to the leg, allowing it a higher mobility. These aditional degrees of freedom don t compromise the performance of the structure because they are used just during the crossing of the obstacle, where the robot normally moves at lower speeds. The modeled leg, although not to have its configuration optimized, it has presented good results, being capable of crossing obstacles of considerable dimensions, comparing to its own dimensions. Graphical simulations have shown that the physical dimensions of the structure influence the dimensions of the obstacle that the leg can transpose. / O objetivo desse trabalho é apresentar o desenvolvimento de uma perna robótica, modelada com base em um mecanismo espacial de quatro barras do tipo 4R, denominado mecanismo de Bennett. Sabe-se que com uma configuração adequada desse mecanismo é possível descrever uma trajetória espacial, com perfil similar ao perfil de um passo, utilizando apenas um grau de liberdade. Em função disso, a perna modelada é bem mais simples do que a grande maioria das pernas que são utilizadas atualmente nos robôs móveis. Em função da necessidade de se transpor obstáculos, foram adicionados à perna dois graus de liberdade, dando a ela uma maior mobilidade. Esses graus de liberdade adicionais não comprometem o desempenho da estrutura, pois são utilizados apenas durante a transposição de obstáculos, que é uma situação na qual o robô normalmente se movimenta a velocidades mais baixas. A perna modelada, apesar de não ter tido sua configuração otimizada, apresentou resultados satisfatórios, sendo capaz de transpor obstáculos de dimensões comparativas às dimensões da perna. As simulações gráficas confirmam que as dimensões físicas da estrutura exercem grande influência sobre as dimensões de obstáculos que a perna pode transpor. / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

This thesis examines how three nineteenth-century British novels purvey and critique contemporary standards regarding social performance and reticence and the strains such standards place on those whose dispositions disincline them to conform to the regulations for decorum articulated in conduct books of the time. Utilizing the psychological lens of introversion and extroversion alongside the cognitive narrative theories of Alan Palmer and Lisa Zunshine, this thesis investigates the construction of individual character identities through the reading of interactions among multiple fictional minds in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860).

This dissertation is a study of the relationship between the modern Künstlerromane of Arnold Bennett, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf and issues of embodiment. Born of the field of aesthetics, the literary genre of Künstlerroman inherits its conflicts. The chief dilemma of the form is how an isolated artistic consciousness connects with the world through a creative act. Bennett, Joyce, and Woolf offer different and contradictory resolutions. By examining how each writer conceives the body, I discover in Woolf the idea of an ethical aesthetics that contravenes the assumed polarity between mind and body, between self and other, and between material and ideal. Written only a few years apart, Clayhanger (1910), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and The Voyage Out (1915) tell a compelling story of the relationship between embodiment and a creative life.

This dissertation is a study of Bennett College for Women (Bennett College), one of two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) whose mission continues to be the provision of higher education to Black women in America. It is one of just over one hundred HBCUs still operating in the United States. This dissertation tells the story of an institution founded as a day school in 1873 and its reorganization in 1926 as a college to educate Black women. The study answers the following research question: How does student participation in protest and activism at Bennett College for Women between 1930 and 1960 broaden our understanding of the experience of Black women in higher education? Located in Greensboro, North Carolina, Bennett College began operating through collaboration between the Woman’s Home Mission Society and the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The College, under the leadership of David Dallas Jones and Willa Beatrice Player, revised its curriculum and developed and expanded its co-curricular offerings in a way that empowered students to raise their collective voice, and that fostered a dynamic culture of activism among its students, faculty, and the Greensboro community. Until now, little was known of the their activism and protest during the early twentieth century. This dissertation explains how the College reviewed and revised its curriculum and developed a co-curricular program designed to meet the needs of Black women during the early twentieth century, with the goal of re-envisioning their role, place, and voice in American society. It also illuminates the students’ involvement in activism over a thirty-year period to better understand Black women’s higher education experience in the twentieth century. In addition to answering the research question, a history of the college is provided, with a focus on the early years during which David Dallas Jones and Willa Beatrice Player served Bennett College for Women as its first two presidents. I discuss how the curriculum revision and expansion of the co-curricular offerings lent itself to Bennett College re-envisioning the role, place, and voice of Black women in American society. I discuss social and gender roles, norms, and expectations of Black women during the period, as well as the rules and regulations that shaped higher education and campus life for Black women in the South generally and specifically for students at Bennett College. Bennett College publications were used to capture the student and faculty voices, in addition to the types of issues that concerned them, and around which they organized as activists, to advocate and protest. The implications of Bennett’s students’ participation in protest and activism are discussed, and how their activism challenged the gender roles, norms, and expectations for Black women in American society.

This thesis considers the teaching of English literature within extramural organisations for adults in England between 1885 and 1910. This challenges the assumption that the beginnings of English as a tertiary-level academic subject can be traced back only as far as the foundation of the Oxford English School at the end of the nineteenth century; in fact extramural English courses had been flourishing for decades before this, and these reached their zenith in the final years before it was introduced at Oxbridge. Oxford created an Honours School of English in 1894, and the Cambridge English Tripos was established in 1917; in ideological terms, such developments were of course crucial, yet it has too often been the case that the extramural literary teaching being conducted contemporaneously has been sidelined in studies of the period. My first chapter will consider the development of English in various institutional and non-institutional environments before 1885, including Edinburgh University, Dissenting Academies, and Mechanics’ Institutes. Thereafter I will explore the campaign, led by University Extension lecturer John Churton Collins, to incorporate English literature as an honours degree at Oxford. Focusing on the period between 1885 and 1891, this second chapter will assess the veracity of some of Collins’s most vehement claims regarding the apparently low critical and pedagogical standards in existence at the time, which he felt could only be improved if Oxford would agree to institutionalise the subject, and thereby raise the standard of teaching more generally. Collins’s campaign enjoyed more success when he drew attention to the scholarly teaching available within the University Extension Movement; my third chapter is underpinned by research and analysis of previously unexplored material at the archives of London University, such as syllabuses, examination papers, and lecturers’ reports. I examine the way in which English literature, the most popular subject among Extension students, was actually being taught outside the universities while still excluded from Oxbridge. Thereafter my penultimate chapter focuses on an extramural reading group formed by Cambridge Extension lecturer Richard G. Moulton. This section considers Moulton’s formulation of an innovative mode of literary interpretation, tailored specifically to suit the abilities of extramural students, and which also lent itself particularly to the study of novels. Uncollected T. P.’s Weekly articles written by Arnold Bennett highlight the emphasis that he placed on pleasure, rather than scholarship. My final chapter considers Bennett’s self-imposed demarcation from the more serious extramural pedagogues of literature, such as Collins and Moulton, and his extraordinary impact on Edwardian reading habits. A brief coda will compare the findings of the 1921 “Newbolt Report” with my own assessment of fin-de-siècle extramural education.

This thesis is about Charlotte Whitton’s advisory role to Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett during the summer and fall of 1932 researching and producing the only official report on unemployment and relief ever commissioned by the Bennett administration during the Great Depression. By 1932, the collapse of Bennett’s previous relief policies convinced him to reconsider his approach to relief. At Bennett’s behest, Charlotte Whitton, one of Canada’s most prominent social workers, undertook a June to August tour of Western Canada, observing how each province experienced and dealt with unemployment and relief. Whitton then prepared a report for Bennett which informed him of her observations and made specific recommendations for how Canada’s relief system could be reformed. Her final product, however, was far from an impartial policy document. As this thesis argues, Whitton’s report was a biased document which reveals as much about Whitton’s personal ideology and professional ambitions as it does the conditions facing the Western provinces; the observations and suggestions contained within it were heavily conditioned by Whitton’s pre-existing belief in social and fiscal conservatism. Although Whitton’s tour allowed her a first-hand view of the amount of poverty and despair faced by Canada’s unemployed, as this thesis argues, her beliefs conditioned her response and nothing she encountered changed her hard-line, traditionalist approach to relief. Yet, while Whitton’s report reveals much about its author, as this thesis contends, an analysis of Bennett’s reaction to it also sheds light on Bennett’s approach to unemployment and relief during this time. His commissioning of the report marks a moment three years before his New Deal legislation when Bennett pondered reforming the relief system. Yet, instead of taking action, Bennett did nothing to change the status quo. While Whitton’s conservative report certainly agreed with his personal assessment of relief and unemployment in Canada, her central suggestion, that professional social workers be placed in charge of Canada’s relief system at all levels to increase efficiency and curtail abuse, was still too costly for Bennett to implement. His failure to seize on this earlier opportunity to introduce a solution to Canada’s unemployment issues challenges the sincerity of his New Deal legislation, and his claims to support reform.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-200).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-200).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-200).