PhD (Tshivenda) / Senthara ya M.E.R. Mathivha ya Nyambo dza Afrika kha Vhutsila na Mvelele / Tshivenḓa is one of African languages spoken in the Northern parts of South Africa and some parts of Zimbabwe. This proposal focuses on a study of selected phonological processes involving Tshivenḓa vowels. The Tshivenḓa phonological processes involving vowels under this study include vowel elision/deletion, vowel epenthesis, vowel coalescence, vowel nasalisation, vowel harmony, vowel raising and glide formation. In this regard, consonants are not part and parcel of this study. Furthermore, the study enriches the phonology of Tshivenḓa with more phonological processes thereby adding on the existing literature. The study also attempts to motivate and encourage Tshivenḓa speaking people and those who are interested in the language to have a clear understanding of phonological processes which occur in Tshivenḓa. The theoretical framework underpinning this study is the Optimality Theory (OT). The study will be carried out through phonological analysis, that is, field work and word list. Secondary sources will also be used for data collection.

This working paper is part of a larger research project on emerging visualities and imaginaries of living together in plurality and on equal terms. Against the background of growing majoritarianism in India and the normalization of violence against religious minorities and marginalized communities, the search for new visual forms and aesthetic means to counter increasing divisiveness and conflict has acquired exceptional urgency. It is a search pursued by many and in multiple directions, occasionally even in the realm of marketing and advertising which is the focus of this article. The larger project considers documentaries, fictional films and transmedia interventions in order to understand how different actors seek to create new visualities that are markedly different from earlier form(at)s used to visually mediate the normative project of political secularism for many decades, but nevertheless draw on the idea that secularity is a mode of living together and socially interacting in plural societies.

Purpose – This study aims to explore the relationships between aesthetics and micro- influencers’ Instagram feed along with its effects on follower engagement. Based on the assumption that there is a common practice for micro-influencers who are familiar with aesthetics. Although micro-influencer content has attracted increased interest on Instagram, relatively little is known about influencers’ aesthetic strategy. Method – The present study addresses this gap by examining how feed aesthetics are associated with micro-influencers aesthetic strategy and what elements contribute to feed aesthetics. The study leverages a dataset of Instagram micro-influencers compiled by scraping an online survey and online interview to test its hypotheses with a qualitative approach. Findings – It has been indicated that feed aesthetics were positively associated with color, more specifically color harmony as well as a boost in follow engagement. However, these factors are modified by influencers’ domains of interest when creating content. The findings contribute to the literature by illuminating how principles related to aesthetics in micro- influencers’ images contribute to their aesthetic strategy and follower’s engagement on Instagram. Implications – The result of this study contributes with significant data that an Instagram client would carry out to make a feed that reflects feed style and grabs the eye of different groups. The significance of executing a thoroughly considered technique to an Instagram feed to make a tastefully satisfying look is demonstrated. In addition to that, getting a deep understanding of influencers feelings and emotions about their feeds and feed aesthetics, introducing the idea of color harmony when it comes to planning feed aesthetics. By the end of this paper a further research has been suggested which relates to the relation of aesthetics in different group genders and ages, with a different platform for instance.

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In his Southern Harmony collection, William Duckworth extracts existing material from shape-note hymns found in William Walker's 1835 publication A Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. He then applies minimalist and postminimalist processes to this material to create innovation choral compositions. This document provides a comprehensive analysis of the methods used to construct all twenty works in Duckworth's collection by tracing the extracted source material through the fabric of the new compositions. This study provides substantial evidence of Duckworth's place as a pioneer of the postminimalist genre. It also provides a discussion on the vocal implications of utilizing shape-note hymns as source material as traditional performances of the genre are typically associated with a unique vocal style.

Im Gegensatz zu in der Strawinsky-Literatur geläufigen Ansichten zur Bedeutung von Oktatonik für Strawinskys Werk kann dessen ›Leitharmonie‹ als ein verschlungenes pentatonisches Netzwerk verstanden werden: Das diesem zugrundeliegende melodische Pattern – kleine Terz, Ganzton – ist aus der anhemitonischen pentatonischen Skala ableitbar, welche Strawinsky in einem Brief von 1913 als ›pseudo-chinesische Skala‹ bezeichnet hatte. Im Unterschied zu gängigen oktatonischen Interpretationen hebt mein Zugang die ›Pentatonisierung‹ des chromatischen Tonraums hervor und beleuchtet zwei Beispiele dieses verschleierten ›Pentatonizismus‹, die der zweiten Kompositionsphase der Oper Le Rossignol (1913–14) vorangehen: erstens eine Leitharmonie-Skizze zur Einleitung des ersten Akts (1908–09), wo orthographische und modale Eigenheiten die Gegenwart der ›pseudo-chinesischen Skala‹ maskieren; zweitens einige Stellen in L’Oiseau de feu (1909), wo dieselbe Skala wiederum durch eine vertikale Überlagerung pentatonischer Ketten mit Kleinterz-Ganzton-Zellen verschleiert ist. Eine Charakterisierung dieser bislang kaum untersuchten Techniken verlangt es, der Schlüsselrolle der pentatonischen Skala in den zwei besprochenen (wie auch möglicherweise in anderen zwischen 1908 und 1914 entstandenen) Werken Aufmerksamkeit zuzuwenden. ›Pentatonizismus‹ – eine oft vernachlässigte Facette von Strawinskys Kompositionspraxis um 1910 – kann sowohl auf den Einfluss einer modernen Pariser als auch der traditionellen chinesischen Klanglichkeit zurückgeführt werden; er manifestiert sich in der ›Leitharmonie‹ und durchdringt Strawinskys Musik auch jenseits von Chinoiserien in der Oper. / The present study offers an alternative understanding of Stravinsky’s ›Leitharmonie‹ that reads it as an intricate pentatonic network instead of octatonicism. The underlying melodic pattern – minor third with whole tone – is derivable from the anhemitonic pentatonic scale, which Stravinsky referred to in a letter from 1913 as the ›pseudo-Chinese scale‹. Contrary to existing octatonic interpretations, my approach highlights the ›pentatonicisation‹ of the chromatic pitch space and illuminates two instances of this disguised pentatonicism that precedes the second composition phase of the opera, Le Rossignol (1913–14): firstly, a ›Leitharmonie‹ sketch for the Introduction to Act I (1908–1909), where orthographical and modal idiosyncrasies mask the presence of the ›pseudo-Chinese scale‹; secondly, several passages in L’Oiseau de feu (1909), where the same scale is again veiled through vertical superimposition of pentatonic chains with minor-third-major-second cells. A characterisation of these little-examined techniques calls for critical attention to the key roles of the pentatonic scale in the two discussed works (and potentially others created between 1908 and 1914). Pentatonicism – an oft-neglected facet of Stravinsky’s compositional practice around 1910 – can be traced back to the influence of modern Parisian as well as traditional Chinese sonorities; it manifests in ›Leitharmonie‹ and penetrates Stravinsky’s music beyond the chinoiseries in the opera.

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A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science / This thesis examines how emotion is conveyed in music from different eras, and attempts to reconcile differences between psychological and music-theoretical approaches. Chapter 1 introduces the concepts embodied by the two manuscripts within this thesis. Chapters 2 and 3 describe two separate but related complimentary research projects. Chapter 2, entitled “Breaking with Common Practice: Exploring Modernist Musical Emotion”, compares perceived emotion in prelude sets by D. Shostakovich, F. Chopin, and J.S. Bach. This work seeks to clarify the relationship between historic changes in music’s structure and conveyed emotion, particularly in the twentieth century–which remains largely unexplored. Building on previous work, we used commonality analysis to break down the unique and joint contributions of various cues to perceived emotion and provide insight into their changing roles in the twentieth century. The work described in Chapter 3, “Cleaning up our work: Applying decision hygiene to analysis of musical structure”, was inspired by previous attempts in diverse fields (e.g., medicine, judicial sentencing) to resolve unwarranted disagreement, and used a novel procedure to distinguish genuine disagreement from disagreement that is not reflective of true differences of opinion amongst music theorists. Unlike other fields involving judgement, individual theorists’ unique perspectives are valuable. Therefore, rather than forcing inauthentic agreement, our procedure clarified and enhanced individual perspectives in musical analysis. Taken together, the research described in Chapters 2 and 3 bridge the gap between epistemologically different approaches to disseminating musical knowledge–cognition and theory. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Music’s expressive capabilities has inspired scholarship from psychology, music theory, musicology, and philosophy for centuries. Although research in psychology has produced consensus about how certain musical elements contribute to its emotional meaning, musicological research shows that music’s structure evolved across history. Little research has explored emotional communication in music from the twentieth century, raising important questions about how emotion is conveyed in the music of our time. This oversight may contribute to continuing disagreement between music psychologists and music theorists on how music’s structure affects its perceived meaning. Thus, by bridging the gap between theory and cognition, this thesis aims to: (i) shed light on the role of music’s evolving structure–particularly in the twentieth century–on perceived emotion; and (ii) reduce error in music analysis while preserving valuable differences in theorists’ perspectives through applying a novel method inspired by optimized decision-making procedures.

<p>I examined the development of sensitivity to two fundamental aspects of Western musical pitch structure, key membership and harmony, which can be acquired without formal training. In Chapter 2 (Experiment 1), I describe the novel and engaging behavioural task that I designed in order to study a younger age group than in previous research. On each trial, children watched videos of puppets playing unfamiliar piano melodies and chord sequences, in which one puppet’s music conformed to Western pitch structure and the other’s did not. Children judged which of the two puppets played the best song. Five-year-olds demonstrated sensitivity to key membership but not harmony, whereas 4-year-olds demonstrated sensitivity to neither. However, event-related potential (ERP) responses to a subset of the stimuli (Experiment 2) showed evidence of implicit sensitivity to both key membership and harmony in 4-year-olds. These components differed from the typical response elicited in older children and adults, but were consistent with other studies showing similar immature components in young children. In Chapter 3, I found that 4- and 5-year-old children demonstrated behavioural sensitivity to both key membership and harmony in a less demanding task than was used in Chapter 2, specifically, in a familiar song. In Chapter 4, I compared children who were or were not taking music lessons and found that musical experience accelerated enculturation to musical pitch structure. Together, these findings indicate that under some circumstances even 4-year-old children demonstrate behavioural sensitivity to Western musical pitch structure, that implicit processes show sensitivity to Western musical pitch structure before this knowledge is demonstrated behaviourally, and that intensive musical experience accelerates musical acquisition.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The land where I grew up gives me a sense of purpose and belonging. It embodies the Navajo concept of hózhó, which represents harmony, beauty, and balance. Being in tune with this spiritual connection inspires me to bring people together through art and healing. I use natural materials like sand, sage, cedar, tree twigs, and yellow and blue cornmeal to create my art. To maintain the spirituality of my work, I employ traditional and ritualistic harvesting methods passed down from generation to generation. These techniques are deeply connected to the land and are essential to my identity as an artist who continues to navigate between the traditional and contemporary worlds.