Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / For women in patriarchal societies, life is stitched with silence and violence. This is especially true for women of color. In a world that has cast women as invisible and voiceless, to create from the margins is to demand to be seen and heard. Thus, women’s art has never had the privilege of being art for art’s sake and instead is necessarily involved in the work of articulating and (re)writing female experience. When women seek, through their work and art, to feel deeply and connect with other women, they tap into what Audre Lorde has famously termed “the power of the erotic.” Lorde suggests that to acknowledge and trust those deepest feelings within our bodies is a subversive power that spurs social change. In the following work, novels by Kate Chopin, Gayl Jones, and Edwidge Danticat are linked by their female characters who seek the erotic via their art of choice and, in doing so, resist disempowerment and explore the life-giving nature of female connection. Furthermore, because the authors themselves are engaged in rendering the female experience visible, the novels discussed actively converse with their respective waves of feminism and propel social activism and feminist discourse. Hence, this project provides both a close reading of The Awakening, Corregidora, and The Dew Breaker, and a broader contention on the role of women’s literature in social justice.

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Die Untersuchungen dieses Beitrages gehen von dem Gedanken aus, daß sich bestimmte Eigenschaften musikalischen Erlebens erst erklären lassen, wenn man grundlegende Eigenschaften von Geistestätigkeit theoretisch erschlossen hat. Entsprechend skizziert Abschnitt 2 einen Ansatz zur Modellierung von Geistestätigkeit, welcher das Fechner’sche Gesetz zum Bindeglied zwischen der transzendenten Geistestätigkeit und ihrem immanenten Erleben erklärt. Mit der Charakterisierung einer modellhaften Geistestätigkeit als ›meta-physikalisch‹ wird dieser eine physikalische Kompetenz zugeschrieben. Konkret geht es um das Vollziehen kanonischer Transformationen, die von zentraler Bedeutung für das Verständnis von Bewegung in der Theoretischen Physik sind. Das Fechner’sche Gesetz vermittelt entsprechend zwischen den Transformationen und ihren infinitisimalen Erzeugenden. Aufgrund der Nichtkommutativität der Transformationengruppe ergeben sich Diskrepanzen zwischen der transzendenten Tätigkeit und ihrem immanenten Erleben hinsichtlich der Bilanzierung von zusammengesetzten Transformationen. Sie betreffen u.a. die Verrechnung von subjektiven Standpunktwechseln, welche sich in der tonalen Musik bei harmonischen Ausweichungen manifestieren. Musikalischer Untersuchungsgegenstand sind deshalb tonale Ambiguitäten. Abschnitt 3 rekapituliert und vergleicht Analysen von Chopins Prélude op. 28/4 von mehreren Autoren und sammelt dabei Indizien für das Bestehen einer genuinen Ambiguität, welche sich auf mehreren Beschreibungsebenen manifestiert. In Bezug auf den Kontrapunkt wird die Ambiguität vor dem Hintergrund einer Unterscheidung von (diatonischen) Schritten und (chromatischen) Alterationen gedeutet. In Bezug auf die Harmoniebewegung geschieht dies vor dem Hintergrund einer Unterscheidung von Fundamentschritten und virtuellen Verrückungen des tonalen Bezugs. / The investigations in this article are based on the idea that certain characteristics of musical experience can only be explained when fundamental characteristics of mental activity have been theoretically opened up. Correspondingly, Section 2 outlines an approach to the modeling of mental activity. It explains Fechner’s law as the link between transcendent mental activity and its immanent experience. With the characterization modelled mental activity as “meta-physical” a physical competence is assigned to it. It consists in the performance of canonical transformations, which are of central importance for the understanding of motion in theoretical physics. Fechner’s law mediates between the transformations and their infinitimal generators, accordingly. Due to the non-commutativity of the transformation group, there are discrepancies between the transcendent activity and its immanent experience with regard to the accounting of composite transformations. These involve the comprehension of changes of the subjective point of view. In tonal music they are manifest in local displacements of the tonic. The music-theoretical investigation therefore focusses on tonal ambiguities. Section 3 recapitulates and compares analyses of Chopin’s Prelude op. 28/4 by several authors and thereby collects evidence of the existence of a genuine ambiguity, which appears on several levels of description. With regard to counterpoint, the ambiguity is interpreted on the background of a distinction between (diatonic) steps and (chromatic) alterations. With regard to the harmony movement, this is being done on the background of a distinction between fundamental steps and virtual shifts in the tonal reference.

Drowning is a frequent mode of death for female literary characters because of the strong symbolic relationship between female sexuality and water. Drowning has long been a punishment for sexually transgressive women in literature. In the introduction, Chapter 1, I describe the drowning paradigm and analyze drowning scenes in several pre-twentieth century works to establish the tradition which twentieth-century women writers begin to transcend. In Chapter 2, I discuss three of Kate Chopin's works which include drownings, demonstrating her transition from traditional drowning themes in At Fault and “Desiree's Baby” to the drowning in The Awakening, which prefigures the survival of protagonists in later works. I discuss one of these in Chapter 3: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although Janie must rely on her husband to save her from the flood, she survives, though her husband does not. In Chapter 4, I discuss two stories by Eudora Welty, “Moon Lake” and “The Wide Net.” In “Moon Lake,” Easter nearly drowns as a corollary to her adolescent sexual awakening. Although her resuscitation is a brutal simulation of a rape, Easter survives. “The Wide Net” is a comic story that winks at the drowning woman tradition, showing a young bride who pretends to drown in order to recapture the affections of her husband. Chapter 5 analyzes a set of works by Margaret Atwood. Lady Oracle includes another faked drowning, while “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water” feature a protagonist who feels invulnerable after her near-drowning. The Blind Assassin includes substantial drowning imagery. Chapter 6 discusses current trends in near-drowning fiction, focusing on the river rafting adventure stories of Pam Houston.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Slawomir P. Dobrzanski / The following report analyzes compositions performed at the author’s Master’s Piano Recital on March 15, 2012. The discussed pieces are Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata in G major, BWV 916; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat major, op. 31, no. 3; Frederic Chopin’s Ballade in F minor, op. 52; Leoš Janáček’s In The Mists: I. Andante, III. Andantino; and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata in A minor, op. 28. The author approaches the study from the historical, theoretical, stylistic and pedagogical perspectives.

<p>This dissertation examines Charles Darwin’s major texts together with literary works by turn-of the-century American women writers—Nella Larsen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Kate Chopin—in order to trace how evolutionary theory shaped transatlantic cultural ideas of race, particularly black identity, and gender. I focus on the concept of “descent” as the overarching theme organizing categories of the human in evolutionary terms. My perspective and methods—examining race and gender from a black feminist perspective that draws on biopolitics theory, as well as using close reading, affect theory, and attention to narrative in my textual analysis—comprise my argument’s framework. By bringing these perspectives and methods together in my attention to the interplay between Darwinian discourse and American literature, I shed new light on the turn-of-the-century transatlantic exchange between science and culture. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that descent constitutes a central concept and point of tension in evolutionary theory’s inscription of life’s development. I also show how themes of human-animal kinship, the Western binary of rationality and materiality, and reproduction and maternity circulated within this discourse. I contribute to scholarly work relating evolutionist discourse to literature by focusing on American literature: in the context of turn-of-the-century American anxieties about racial and gender hierarchies, the evolutionist paradigm’s configurations of human difference were especially consequential. Moreover, Larsen, Gilman, and Chopin offer responses that reveal this hierarchy’s varied effects on racialized and gendered bodies. I thus demonstrate the significance of examining Darwinian discourse alongside American literature by women writers, an association in need of deeper scholarly attention, especially from a feminist, theoretical perspective. </p><p>This dissertation begins with my application of literary analysis and close reading to Darwin’s major texts in order to uncover how they formed a suggestive foundation for late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century ideologies of race and gender. I use this analysis as the background for my investigation of Larsen’s, Gilman’s, and Chopin’s literary texts. In Chapter 1, I conduct a close reading of Darwin’s articulation of natural selection in <i>The Origin of Species</i>and focus on how Darwin’s syntactical and narrative structure imply evolution as an agential force aimed at linear progress. In Chapter 2, I analyze Darwin’s articulation of the development of race and gender differences in <i>The Descent of Man</i>, as well as Thomas Henry Huxley’s <i>Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature</i>, and argue that Darwin’s and Huxley’s accounts suggest how anxiety over animal-human kinship was alleviated through structuring nonwhite races and women as less developed and hence inferior. In Chapter 3, I argue that Larsen’s novel <i>Quicksand </i>interrogates and complicates aesthetic primitivism and biopolitical racism and sexism, both rooted in evolutionist discourses. Finally, in Chapter 4, I focus on Gilman’s utopian novel <i>Herland</i>and select short stories by Chopin. While Gilman unambiguously advocates for a desexualized white matriarchy, Chopin’s stories waver between support for, and critique of, racial hierarchy. Reading these authors together against the backdrop of white masculine evolutionist theory reveals how this theory roots women as materially bound reproducers of racial hierarchy.</p>

This study investigates the importance of Hummel as a transitional composer, pedagogue and pianist between the Classical and Romantic periods, his contribution to the development of piano technique, and his influence as a pedagogue on later generations. The bases of this study were his treatise A complete theoretical and practical course on the art of piano playing (Ausführliche theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Pianoforte-Spiele) of 1828, his Préludes op. 67 of 1814/1815 and his 24 Grandes Études op. 125 of 1833. Hummel’s treatise is an important musicological document detailing keyboard performance practices of the 18th and early 19th century. He lived at a time when the present day piano was still evolving. The new instruments with their resulting new possibilities found expression in his 24 Grandes Études op. 125. Important sources consulted were the following:  The piano concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel by F.H. Mitchell (1957)  The music of J.N. Hummel: its derivations and development by R. Davis (1965)  Romantic Music: A history of musical style in the 19th century by L. Plantinga (1984)  The Kristeva Reader edited by Toril Moi (1986)  How did they play? How did they teach? by S. Soderlund (2006); and  Johann Nepomuk Hummel: a musician’s life and world by Mark Kroll (2007). Although Hummel was deeply rooted in the Classical style, his compositions displaying the hallmarks of the style galant, can be divided into two style periods. The first style period ending about 1811 shows harmonic simplicity, regularity of phrasing and elegant cantabile melody. His second period post-1811 saw the composition of works with bolder, more dissonant harmony resulting in greater chromaticism. After 1814 his piano compositions demand greater variety of tone colour, more expressive use of dynamics, rubato, and advanced technical facility of the performer. According to Mitchell (1957: 75, 76) Hummel’s art and ornamentation are related to the virtuoso technique expanded by the Viennese pianistic style of the early 19th century. Hummel developed the ornamental style further, culminating ultimately in the poetry of the tone-coloured fioritura of Chopin. One aim of the study was to reveal the individual contributions Hummel made to the changes taking place between the Classical and Romantic styles. Innovative aspects include new virtuoso technical demands that would find fruition in the études of Chopin an Liszt. His influence on Chopin was undeniable as one perceives the early distinguishing characteristics of Chopin’s style in many of the compositions of Hummel. Schumann and Liszt were familiar with the music of Hummel in their formative years and there is much evidence of Hummel’s style in their compositions. In Chapter 4 on intertextuality, Hummel’s influence on Chopin, Schumann and Liszt is examined, and in Chapter 5 his pedagogical principles as set out in his treatise are appraised. Chapter 6 is an investigation into the technical principles embodied in Hummel’s 24 Grandes Études op. 125 and their influence on the development of the Concert Étude. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Music / unrestricted

Presenting and applying an ideal developmental model for the classical existential hero, or main character, provides a functional paradigm for discrimination between essentialist and existential texts. In particular it allows for degrees of fine existential differentiation amongst the hero's acts of any literary work. The paradigm does so by making it possible clearly to discern and describe the "recuperation" that a reader must do to render an "impaired" text intelligible. The paradigm covers four phases of transformational activity by the hero, more or less successfully negotiated, depending on the given work under analysis; vacillation/bad faith; crisis/arrest; abrogation/nothingness; and nihilation/project choice. Only one of the three novels so analyzed, Camus' The Stranger, contains a hero, Meursault, who is able to engage this paradigm successfully. The other two novels, not generally associated with existentialism, Heller's Something Happened and Chopin's The Awakening, reveal important and explicable variations of the model, but neither finally gives an exemplary authentic hero. The value of this paradigm is the way it functions as a dynamic heuristics, as a template, to isolate and render meaningful the dimensions of the career of each main character of these works as an "existential murderer." After an introduction of the paradigm, the thesis analyzes the tragic suicide of Mrs. Edna Pontellier, the comic infanticide of Bob Slocum, and the tragicomic homicide of Meursault.

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This thesis describes a two of newly introduced types of aircraft (Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing 737 MAX) and compares the operating characteristics of the operational aspects of the airports of the Central European region.