The characters of Forlorn Days have been beaten down, be it personally or professionally. These stories are meant to present these characters as they struggle in their own indecisions and adversities. Some are more successful than others, while some come to the realization that it is nearly impossible to escape their flaws. The worlds they occupy are filled with a sense of disillusionment, whether it be soul crushing jobs, fractured relationships, or a lack of communicating with those around them. The characters that populate these stories are looking for a connection of any kind to break out of the fates that await them. In this yearning to break out of their disillusionment, they find that it’s more difficult than they thought. Life continues to go around regardless of the decisions they have made.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / L. Frank Weyher / Deadheads (fans of the Grateful Dead) created a durable culture that has lasted for over 50 years despite the death of several band members and the break-up of the band in 1995. What mechanisms account for the rise and persistence of this culture? This empirical question informs a theoretical question: what mechanisms are responsible for social cohesion? Social cohesion has been widely studied in sociology, but because these studies range from sovereign states to interpersonal interaction, the field lacks definitional consensus for the term. Instead of focusing on definitions, therefore, this study instead seeks to contribute to the understanding of underlying mechanisms that are responsible for the development and maintenance of social cohesion. This study employs a mixture of qualitative methods: I conducted seven years of face-to-face and online participant observation, conducted 22 semi-structured, informal face-to-face interviews with 39 interviewees, and collected 86 online, long-form surveys (combined n=125). This study uses both inductive and deductive approaches to analyze material gathered from a mixture of qualitative methods: ethnography, open and closed coding of interviews and surveys, and triangulation to the body of historical work on the Grateful Dead. The mechanisms that emerged from this study suggest that processes related to ritual, religion, and identity, all operating through emotion, are central mechanisms in the longtime cohesion evidenced in the deadhead community. Fan behavior at Grateful Dead shows is reminiscent of Durkheim’s description of tribal behavior in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and my research shows that fans create collective effervescence, sacred objects, and feel that they are part of something larger than themselves. Randall Collins builds on Durkheim in his theory of Interaction Ritual Chains, which informs the ways in which deadheads, through engaging collectively in intense rituals, create a long-term sense of community. Finally, I explore the structural symbolic interactionist school of identity theory with Stryker, McCall and Simmons, and Burke. When combined, these theories describe influences on deadhead group composition, explore the complex interaction between the individual and the group, and emphasize the role that emotion plays in that identity-work. Using an inductive approach and Hedström and Swedberg’s (1996) typology of mechanisms, I arrive at a number of mechanisms at work in deadhead cohesion: (1) situational (macro-level) mechanisms include internal and external constraint; (2) individual action (micro-level) mechanisms include self-transcendence, self-reinforcement, and self-talk; and (3) transformational (micro-level to macro-level) mechanisms include group maintenance and disruption. Future work should test these mechanisms using a group that shares characteristics with deadhead culture (such as transience, emergence, boundedness, motivation, and with little official structure) such as the grassroots political movement that emerged after the November 2017 national election, as well as hate groups that have existed for years but have recently become more active. Looking forward, more work is needed on meaning-making and the role of emotions in social cohesion. This work has implications for several sociological disciplines, such as group behavior, social movements, and culture, as well as social cohesion, religion, ritual, and identity theory.

This project explores how musical improvisational processes come into being through interacting discursive power relationships that are embodied and enacted through performance. By utilizing the concepts of framing and performativity I am able to show how discursive power constitutes the performance of improvisational music. To exemplify this theory, the project presents a case study examining a Grateful Dead cover band named Uncle John's Band that performs at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, FL. Using an ethnographic methodology, the project articulates the dominant discursive power relationships that constitute Uncle John's Band's improvisational performances. The dominant discursive power relationships revolve around the lived philosophies and performance style of the Grateful Dead as embodied and communicated through performance by the members of Uncle John's Band. Dominant discursive power relationships also form among audience members as well as the staff at Skipper's Smokehouse. All of these power relationships constitute the performance of improvisational music. In a reflexive turn, the project also offers a re-articulation of ethnography through the tenets of improvisation. Finally, the project presents conclusions concerning the nature of researching improvisational music performance and some future directions for this study.

This dissertation uses mass communication research about framing and positioning to explore media framing as brand positioning and analyze coverage that links the band Phish to the Grateful Dead. Based on content analysis, textual analysis, and interviews, this dissertation explores the framing of Phish--formed in Vermont in 1983 and often compared or connected to the Grateful Dead, a band formed in California in 1965-- in a popular mainstream music magazine and beyond, placing particular interest in how this framing intersects with positioning the band vis-à-vis the Grateful Dead. By exploring framing of a commercially-oriented subject that media coverage regularly constructs in terms of or in relation to another more recognizable subject, this project aims to contribute to mass communication theory and our understanding of media in society. Through comprehension of media about Phish and Phish/Grateful Dead connections, this dissertation studies how, why, and with what result stories are told through such associative coverage. After reviewing previous works regarding Phish, positioning, and framing, media content is closely examined and discussed. A case study of Phish coverage employed a three-pronged multi-method approach focusing on content (Part A) and context (Part B). Part A1 is a content analysis of all Phish album reviews from Rolling Stone. This included 12 album reviews spanning from 1995-2009 and written by eight authors. Findings showed that the majority of reviews connected Phish to the Grateful Dead, that the connections were constructed through various link forms, and that Phish were connected most to the Grateful Dead. Part A2 is a textual analysis of all Rolling Stone coverage of Phish. This included coverage from 1992-2010 and 305 items such as magazine covers, articles, and letters to the editor. Findings identified five frames and four subframes used to portray Phish. Part B is a series of interviews involving a primary group of 19 individuals who have significantly written, edited, and/or published content about Phish; and a secondary group of five individuals who added valuable context for understanding the issues. Findings included discussion of media conventions in general (journalistic) and specific (Phish) terms, and interpretation of the Phish/Grateful Dead link as a powerful, oversimplified reference point. About Phish, the project found they are an entity that innately defies standard molds and thus makes for an extraordinary and fruitful case study. Their naturally complex nature and paradoxical success makes them a potentially perplexing challenge for people in media to understand and address. Media often use the Grateful Dead motif in Phish coverage as a potent method of information assimilation to reconceive simply Phish's unusual combination of characteristics via something more familiar and accessible. In terms of the literature, the collection of media content illustrates framing of the band via socially shared and persistent organizing principles that symbolically structure Phish's character (Reese, 2003). The collection of content also illustrates positioning of Phish through portrayals that are often oversimplified and relate new information to familiar knowledge. The combination of literature on framing and positioning offers a productive explanation of media coverage about Phish, since both processes overlap in their tendency to oversimplistically relate X to Y. Thus, this dissertation's findings suggest a new way of thinking about cumulative media framing's ability to result in and serve as brand positioning, which may happen out of a brand's design. / Mass Media and Communication

For a short period during the 1960s Toronto’s Yorkville district was found at the centre of Canada’s youthful bohemian scene. Students, artists, hippies, greasers, bikers, and “weekenders” congregated in and around the district, enjoying the live music and theatre in its many coffee houses, its low-rent housing in overcrowded Victorian walk-ups, and its perceived saturation with anti-establishmentarian energy. For a period of roughly ten years, Yorkville served as a crossroads for Torontonian (and even English Canadian) youth, as a venue for experimentation with alternative lifestyles and beliefs, and an apparent refuge from the dominant culture and the stifling expectations it had placed upon them. Indeed, by 1964 every young Torontonian (and many young Canadians) likely knew that social rebellion and Yorkville went together as fingers interlaced. Making the Scene unpacks the complicated history of this fraught community, examining the various meanings represented by this alternative scene in an anxious 1960s. Throughout, this dissertation emphasizes the relationship between power, authenticity and identity on the figurative stage for identity performance that was Yorkville. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-02 09:46:00.077

These seven stories chronicle the author's apprenticeship as a fiction writer. Four are written in the first-person point of view, two are in a limited third-person, and one is written in third-person objective. The stories vary considerably with respect to character, tone, and setting; however, all may be said to explore the abjection and isolation of growing up in United States.

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L’étude du long poème épique de Lion de Bourges permet de mettre en évidence un parcours individuel modelé par la recherche d’un ordre politique et féodal, au sein duquel le héros tente d’inscrire son action, celle d’un ordre familial, au travers du lignage et de la parentèle, et celle d’un ordre personnel, à la fois recherche des origines et du père, qui devient une quête d’identité. L'idéal chevaleresque s’inscrit donc dans trois perspectives complémentaires. C’est d’abord face à l’instabilité des structures et du pouvoir royal, l’aspiration au rétablissement d’un ordre politique, mais l’inachèvement des actions entreprises et la constante réapparition du mal font que cette quête de l’ordre reste imparfaite. C’est ensuite l’effort pour la restauration d’un ordre familial mis à mal par les entreprises des traîtres et les aléas de l’aventure, mais là encore l’engagement et les efforts du héros ne permettent d’obtenir que des résultats imparfaits ou insatisfaisants. C’est donc à un niveau supérieur, dans la quête d’un ordre intérieur et dans un élan vers la perfection que l’itinéraire personnel de Lion de Bourges peut trouver son véritable sens. Cependant, son ultime tentative pour s’approcher du sacré ne conduit qu’à un échec : le contact avec le surnaturel chrétien est réservé au personnage du Blanc Chevalier, revenant secourable, et le héros doit se contenter d’une forme intermédiaire de merveilleux féerique. En définitive, ce poème témoigne, de manière originale et fort cohérente, de la vision pessimiste de l’idéal humain et de l’engagement héroïque, qui devient prédominante dans l’épopée française tardive. / The long epic poem Lion de Bourges portrays the personal quest of a hero, first, to set in order a feudal political structure; then his own family structure (through ancestry and parentage); and finally, his personal life; for seeking his origins and father becomes a search for his own identity. The chivalric ideal therefore is seen through three complementary perspectives. Initially, when faced with the instability of social structures and royal power, Lion seeks to re-establish political order, but both Lion’s inability to complete his goals and the constant reappearance of evil cause this quest to remain incomplete. Afterwards, Lion’s effort to bring his family back together is derailed by traitors’ plots and the fortunes of adventure, so there again the hero’s efforts produce only imperfect or unsatisfactory results. It is thus only at the highest level, the quest for personal order, for spiritual perfection, that the private itinerary of Lion de Bourges might find its true goal. However, his last desire, to reach sanctity, leads to failure as well: contact with the Christian supernatural is reserved for the White Knight, a helpful spirit, and the hero must content himself with a lesser form of supernatural, the enchanted marvelous world. Clearly, this poem demonstrates, in an original and highly consistent way, the pessimistic view of the human ideal and of heroic engagement that predominates in late French epic.