This dissertation argues that music is always ideological. For this thesis two lines of argument are given. The first states that music is always ideological because it requires verbal discourses about itself. The second line of argument states that music is always ideological because it influences the listener affectively. That language is necessary for talk about music is trivial. The point is rather that talk about music is necessary for auditive behaviour to turn into complex cultural artefacts. Without language humans would have no more music than birds, whales or duetting apes. At the other extreme, musical experiences are affective in nature. To have a musical experience is to experience an affective unfolding through time. Affect (as distinguished from the emotions) refers to the amodal properties of perception-such as intensity, shape, rhythm-and lies at the heart of human communication. With its roots in early mother-infant interaction, affective communication is inherently social. Together with discourses about music, the affective properties of musical experiences makes music into an extremely subtle, and thereby efficient, ideological manipulator in various types of social contexts. Finally, the theoretical conclusions reached will be exemplified by introducing a virtual listener, the various facets of whose listening experiences are captured by different analytical methods and listening reports as applied to some of the "serious" music by Frank Zappa. Central for the explanation of these listening experiences are the "passions," that is, the affects, moods and emotions that the music evokes in the listener, or that the listener takes the music to express. / <p>The attached fulltext is a revised version of the original thesis.</p>

AN ECCENTRIC PLACE OF VERY HIGH QUALITY: OSSABAW ISLAND, GEORGIA AS A CONTEXT FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORICAL, CULTURAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ON THE ATLANTIC COAST by LINDA ORR KING Under the Direction of Glenn T. Eskew, PhD ABSTRACT This sweeping narrative demonstrates how Ossabaw Island’s landowners, some with a dedicated will and others unwittingly, managed to galvanize social, cultural, scientific, and political forces to preserve its natural environment despite a culture motivated by profit. Although geographically isolated, Ossabaw Island’s owners and inhabitants were active participants within the Atlantic World. Ossabaw’s owners and inhabitants adapted environmental strategies and social ideologies in accommodation not only with Ossabaw’s fragile barrier island ecosystems, but also with Southeastern coastal Georgia’s social and political movements. In particular, this work examines how the advantages of wealth and privilege provided the catalyst that ultimately benefited rather than exploited social and economic conditions on the island, leading Ossabaw Island to become the first barrier island Heritage Preserve on the southern Atlantic Coast. In addition to an analysis of unpublished manuscripts, maps, correspondence, and oral histories, this endeavor expands on the current knowledge about barrier island planters, slaves, freedmen, tenant farmers, lumbermen, boatmen, industrialists, and privileged families. It builds on previous works by including the guests, artists, scientists, writers, and environmentalists who visited the island. Furthermore, it investigates their interaction within political, economic, cultural, religious, and ideological spheres. Ossabaw Island’s indigenous societies, landed gentry, and wealthy owners shaped its cultural and economic identity from the 1560s to the modern day. It analyzes additional materials, including colonial and plantation records, official and personal correspondence, travel narratives, newspaper and magazine articles, and oral histories. This study seeks to expand the discourse on the exchange of sea island economies and societies well beyond the Savannah coastal region of the Atlantic World. The Ossabaw community evolved through conflict and compromise, and eventually encompassed not only sons and daughters of privilege and descendants of former slaves, but also artists, writers, scientists, and scholars from around the world. The central theme of this narrative history is the study of the motivating forces, both natural and synthetic, that shaped Ossabaw Island’s current distinctive cultural, environmental, and educational mission, with the major emphasis placed on the events of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Thesis (M.A. )--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1997. / Restricted until May 1998. Bibliography: leaves 105-114. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-238).

Resumo: Na Odisseia, de Homero, Penélope se destaca como personagem de grande influência no enredo, ao mesmo tempo catalisadora da crise em Ítaca e protetora do lar do marido. Caracterizada repetidamente como prudente e dúbia, a personagem deu vazão a diferentes leituras e interpretações críticas e literárias ao longo do tempo. Em A odisseia de Penélope, romance publicado por Margaret Atwood em 2005, Penélope e as escravas mortas por Telêmaco ressurgem como narradoras com ponto de vista próprio, donas da história, retomando o enredo clássico por meio de vozes femininas e marginais. Em uma disputa metaficcional, as narradoras sobrepõem experiências e opiniões, buscando ter a última palavra. A partir da análise e da comparação dessas duas obras, o presente trabalho busca traçar paralelos que indiquem semelhanças e diferenças na caracterização da personagem Penélope nesses textos, examinando seus papéis e como o processo de paródia e reescrita a transformou do épico clássico à produção pós-moderna.

In this study of several novels each by Barbara Pym, Fay Weldon, and Margaret Atwood, I focus on two areas: the ways in which female protagonists break out of their victimization by individuals, by institutions, and by cultural tradition, and the ways in which each author uses a structural pattern in her novels to propel her characters to solve their dilemmas to the best of their abilities and according to each woman's personality and strengths.

In 1972, the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) began in the states. Many states quickly ratified the amendment but the ERA stalled fifteen states short of the necessary three-fourths to become part of the United States Constitution. Virginia was one of the states who did not ratify the amendment and this study examines the reasons why. Much like other southern states, conservative Virginia legislators wanted to maintain traditional gender roles. STOP ERA and other anti-ERA organizations mobilized before the proponents developed a unified campaign. Legislators were able to use the rules of the General Assembly to block serious consideration and ratification of the ERA. Proponents of the amendment started with an educational campaign but faced the problem of not being in a position to challenge the powerful conservative leaders in the General Assembly. They then shifted to a campaign based on electoral politics. However, the transition occurred too late to effect the outcome of ERA ratification in Virginia.

This thesis is an attempt to render theatrically the establishment and eventual dissolution of the Federal Theatre Project, from the point of view of its appointed director Hallie Flanagan. Drawn from a variety of historical sources, including subjective first-person accounts and objective transcripts of congressional investigation testimony, the play approximates the structure of the Living Newspaper, a style of presentation adopted by the Federal Theatre Project. This thesis also includes an appendix, which details my playwriting process for this particular play, from initial concept through to production.

This thesis argues that through bringing together two branches of inquiry???the literary work of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark and socio-feminist theory on health, contagion and the female body???the discursive body of the mother-figure in their novels serves as a trope through which otherwise unspoken tensions???between the personal and the political, between family and nation and between identity and race in Australian cultural formation???are explored. The methodology I use is to analyse the literary mother-figure through a ???discourse on health??? from a soma-political, socio-cultural and historical perspective which sought to categorise, regulate and discipline women???s lives to ensure that white women conformed to their designated roles as mothers and that they did so within the confines of marriage. The literary mother-figure, as represented in Prichard???s and Dark???s novels, is frequently at odds with the culturally constructed mother-figure as represented in political and religious discourses, and in popular forms of culture such as advertising, film and women???s magazines. This culturally constructed ???ideal??? mother-figure is intimately linked to nationalist discourses of racial hygiene, of Christian morality, and of civic and social order controlled by such patriarchal institutions as the state, the church, the law and the medical professions during the period under review. This is reflected in Prichard???s and Dark???s inter-war novels which embody unresolved tensions in a way that challenges representations of the mother-figure by mainstream culture. However, their post-war novels show a greater compliance with nationalist ideologies of the good and healthy mother-figure who conforms more closely with an idealised notion of motherhood, leading up to the 1950s. Through a detailed analysis of the two writers??? changing representations of the mother-figure, I argue that the mother-figure is a key trope through which unspoken tensions and forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) Australian culture and society can be understood.

Bibliography: leaves 466-497.