In recent years, researchers have continued to examine factors that contribute to the ongoing loss of women in mathematics programs and careers at a higher rate than their male counterparts. An important element in women choosing to persist in mathematics may be the ability to identify as mathematically able, however popular culture often constructs ideas of ‘mathematicians’ and ‘femininity’ in ways which render them difficult to reconcile. This research explores the narratives of Canadian female undergraduate students in mathematics-intensive programs in order to develop further understanding of how they negotiate identities as ‘feminine’ and mathematically able. Four students from a Canadian university were recruited to participate in narrative research interviews. Using Holland et al.’s (2003) concept of figured worlds, this study employs a thematic analysis of the data to examine how participants use, adapt or reject available discourses to perform identities as feminine and mathematically able. Depuis quelques années, les chercheurs continuent d'examiner les facteurs contribuant à la déplétion continue des femmes dans les programmes et les carrières en mathématiques à un taux plus élevé que leurs homologues masculins. Un élément important dans le choix des femmes de persévérer dans les mathématiques semble être la capacité de s'identifier comme mathématiquement capables, or la culture populaire construit souvent des concepts de «mathématiciens» et de «féminité» de manière à les rendre difficiles à concilier. Cette recherche explore les rapports narratifs d'étudiantes canadiennes au baccalauréat dans des programmes intensifs en mathématiques afin de mieux comprendre comment elles négocient des identités tel que «féminine» et mathématiquement capable. Quatre étudiantes d'une université canadienne ont été recrutées pour participer à des entrevues de recherche narrative. En utilisant le concept de «figured worlds» de Holland et al. (2003), cette étude utilise une analyse thématique des données pour examiner comment les participantes utilisent, adaptent ou rejettent les discours pour réaliser des identités comme féminines et mathématiquement capables.

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This ethnographic case study investigates the diverse means and processes by which environmental identities were produced by five first grade students as they participated in an emergent, public school garden space. The children's histories, choices, personal and social experiences, expressions, and corresponding narratives are explored alongside the garden structure and social context to unpack the individualized and layered nature of children's environmental identity and care development. To locate and analyze children's engagements in the garden space, ethnographic, discourse, and narrative analysis methods are employed. The figured world concept is used to theorize and study the caring, environmental identities taken up and enacted by the children in this context. Through participation in emergent provocations, the creation and leveraging of garden artifacts, and investments in caring relationships, the children in this study shaped and cared for the garden space while it simultaneously shaped and cared for them. The environmental identity stories presented in this work broaden the definition of environmental identity to be more inclusive and less normalizing, thus, creating new spaces and moments for children to identify as environmentalists. The stories also raise implications for environmental education researchers to utilize more rigorous frameworks for investigating environmental care and identity development in the field. Findings from this research indicate that emergent garden spaces are potential sites for children to build relationships with nature in the public school. This is a significant practice for schools, as children today lack spaces in which to form environmental identities that implicate environmental care behaviors. / Ph. D.

Theoretical constructs latent in thoroughbass treatises of the 18th century can serve students of thoroughbass today. In the following work, I draw from Johann David Heinichen’s Der General-Bass in der Composition (1728), David Kellner’s Treulicher Unterricht im General-Baß (2nd edition, 1737), Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg’s Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (part 2, 1762), and recent scholarship in the areas of Partimento theory, Musica Poetica, and early music theory in general, to demonstrate how the many thoroughbass figures can all be contextualized in an historically informed theoretical framework. In the first two chapters, (1) thoroughbass figures are analyzed as having an internal hierarchy of primary and auxiliary intervals, allowing chords to be understood both vertically and linearly; (2) chords are localized in the major and minor modes according to bass scale steps; and (3) the various contrapuntal procedures associated with dissonant chords used in both the strict style (stylus gravis) and freer styles (stylus luxurians communis and stylus luxurians theatralis) are analyzed as German musical-rhetorical figures. In chapter 3, these three theoretical constructs are used to organize an extensive collection of dissonant chord progressions derived from the aforementioned treatises of Heinichen, Mattheson, Marpurg, and Bach. In chapter 4, I draw from basic elements of partimento theory—namely cadences, sequences, and the Rule of the Octave (regola dell’ottava or règle de l’octave)—to construct a series of exercises; most of these exercises use a relatively strict four-part texture and are illustrated from multiple righthand starting positions to promote flexibility in the student. Finally, in chapter 5, practical matters of thoroughbass realization, namely pragmatic and expressive concerns, are discussed and illustrated with examples from many treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The principles of ancient Greek architecture have persevered through millennia, their impact ebbing and flowing perhaps, but still considered a fundamental layer on which Western architectural traditions have been built. Keeping in mind the pragmatic, aesthetic, and ideological influence Greek architecture has continued to have, my dissertation turns to contemporaneous sources to gauge the Greeks’ reception of their own sacred architecture. Scholars of Greek religion tend to agree that the temple was not a necessary component of ritual – boundary stones delineating sacred space and an altar on which communication with the divine was sought through sacrifice and non-sanguinary offerings were enough for religious rites. Why, then, were considerable effort and funds put towards the construction of temples, often monumental and virtually ubiquitous across the Greek landscape? Paradoxically, why is Greek literature, an art form that valued ekphrastic accounts of artworks (Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles [Iliad 18.478-608] is an oft-cited example) mostly silent on sacred architecture save for few laconic and formulaic appellations and rather dry descriptions (Greek traveler Pausanias, for instance, focused on sanctuary histories and votive offerings but was rather disinterested in architecture)? There appears to be a disparity between etic and emic perceptions of Greek sacred architecture, but, in fact, ancient evidence proves otherwise and demonstrates that artists were mindful of the potency of sacred structures. My dissertation pieces together their visual testimonies, particularly in vase painting which is arguably the most prolific and far-reaching medium of Greek art. Through an exhaustive perusal of museum collections, archives, and pottery-focused publications, the present study assembles a collection of nearly three-hundred vase paintings with depictions of sacred architecture and covering a time period of around three centuries from the Archaic period (seventh-century BCE) to the end of the Late Classical period (late fourth century BCE). The majority of the objects originate in Athens and its environs (Attika) and Magna Graecia. Based on this chronological and geographical scope, the study examines the images in four chapters: Attic black-figure vase paintings, Attic red-figure vase paintings with non-mythological subjects, Attic red-figure vase paintings with depictions of myth, and South Italian vase paintings. Within these chapters, the typology of architectural elements (e.g., freestanding columns, temple facades) and subject matter (e.g., myths, quotidian activities) constitute the primary criteria with which the images have been categorized. This extensive collection of vase paintings provides manifold insights into not only the reception of sacred architecture but also architectural elements as effective pictorial motifs. A great number of the depictions can be connected to “real” prototypes and, in some cases, distinct religious practices. While previous studies have taken a similar approach only to fixate on the discrepancies between prototypes and what architectural depictions can tell us about ancient building practices, the present study argues that vase painters rarely, if at all, intended to reproduce existing structures. Thus, the evidence should be used to study the ways in which artists reflected and refracted how buildings shaped and were shaped by the needs of their users. Creating an autonomous visual language built on abbreviation, elision, and synthesis, artists, in fact, rendered structures fit for the pictorial world. Their aim was not exactitude but rather verisimilitude – temples, shrines, portals, sanctuaries that were guided by but never unequivocally subservient to reality. The semiotic analysis of architecture, meanwhile, considers the aesthetics of vase painting and the objecthood of the vase. Beyond their face value (i.e., signifying sacred structures), elements like columns and simplified temples configure the surface of the vase into distinct zones, thus denoting spatio-temporal transitions, and hierarchize figures within the depicted events. Moreover, there are numerous instances where the pictorial frame is transformed into a built environment itself with the use of architecture – a practice that urges the viewer to contemplate the tension between the flatness of the ‘canvas’ and the habitable spaces defined by the juxtaposition of figures and structures.

MPhil University College London, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-240) and indexes.

Black and red figured pottery is a captivating, while also a vast and demanding subject of research. For decades, vases were primarily studied as valuable art objects and scenes depicted on them considered as testimonies of ideas and lives of their creators and users. Many researchers focussed on interpreting the scenes captured on these vessels. When studying works by our research predecessors, it can be noted that their methods and conclusions were often influenced by the socio-cultural context in which they lived and worked. The aim of this thesis is not to create new, surprising interpretations of selected scenes or to point at erroneous interpretations of other researchers. The aim of this work is to draw attention to how contemporary society has influenced researchers and the methods they use and conclusions they draw when interpreting scenes considered for long periods as immutable, final and undisputable. While re-evaluating adopted conclusions I drew on gender studies and gender analysis which require a multidisciplinary approach to research and interpretation of vase paintings. In four subject areas I pointed out to what extent the dichotomies within which we are used to think and with which we work, i.e. dichotomies of masculine - feminine, public - private, exterior - interior, but also...

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : ? : ? : 1997. / Comprend : Text ; Plates. Bibliogr. p. 258-266 (vol. 1). Index.

For the past 30 years, researchers in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Block, 2007; Lantolf and Pavlenko, 2001; Norton, 2000) have emphasized the need to integrate the language learner and the language learning context and to analyze relations of power and how they affect the language learner, the language learning processes, and the learner’s identities. Several researchers (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001; McKay & Wong, 1996; Skilton-Silverstein, 2002; Vitanova, 2005) have studied the connections between language learning, identity, and agency. The participants in these studies were immigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, or Africa living in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Few studies (Menard-Warwick, 2004, 2009) have analyzed the experiences of adult Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. in relation to English learning and identity construction. This dissertation reports on a study exploring how five adult Hispanic immigrants learning English in a major city in Texas negotiated their identities as English speakers and exercised agency in contexts where English was spoken. The study also analyzed the learners’ investment in learning English. The sociocultural theory of self and identity developed by Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998) was the framework which helped conceptualize identity and agency. The work of Norton (2000) on language learning and identity and her notion of investment were used to understand the participants’ experiences learning and using English inside and outside the ESL classroom. A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted to understand the experiences of the participants who were learning English in a community-based ESL program, where the researcher became a participant observer during the six months of data collection. The findings of the study show the complex identity negotiations that the participants underwent in the different contexts where they interacted in English. Social class, immigrant status, and other social factors, such as lack of access to English-speaking contexts, high prevalence of Spanish in contexts where the participants interacted daily, and positioning of the participants (by others and by themselves) as limited English speakers strongly influenced how they negotiated their identities as English speakers. Despite these social factors, the participants exercised agency and were highly invested in learning English. / text

Because of their abundance and because of the insight into the ancient world offered by the depictions on their decorated surfaces, Attic painted ceramics are an extremely valuable source of material evidence. Knowing the identities and personalities of the artists who painted them not only helps us understand the paintings, but also helps in the process of dating them and, in the case of sherds, reconstructing them. However, few of the artists signed their wares, and the identities of the artists have to be revealed through a close analysis of the style in a process called attribution. The vast majority of the attributions of archaic Attic vases are due to John Beazley whose monumental works set the stage for the dominance of attribution studies in the scholarship of Greek ceramics for most of the 20th century. However, the number of new scholars trained in this arcane art is dwindling as new avenues of archaeological research have gained ascendency. A computer-aided technique for attribution may preserve the benefits of the art while allowing new scholars to explore previously ignored areas of research. To this end, the present study provides a theoretical framework for computer-aided attribution, and using the corpus of the Princeton Painter - a painter active in the 6th century BCE - demonstrates the principal that, by employing pattern recognition techniques, computers may be trained to serve as an aid in the attribution process. Three different techniques are presented that are capable of distinguishing between paintings of the Princeton Painter and some of his contemporaries with reasonable accuracy. The first uses shape descriptors to distinguish between the methods employed by respective artists to render minor anatomical details. The second shows that the relative positions of cranial features of the male figures on black-figure paintings is an indicator of style and may also be used as part of the attribution process. Finally a novel technique is presented that can distinguish between pots constructed by different potters based on their shape profiles. This technique may offer valuable clues for attribution when artists are known to work mostly with a single potter. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.