Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Advisers: Erica McClure; Wayne Dickerson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-183) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Many Japanese families come to the US because the fathers are dispatched to work at Japanese companies in the US, and they return to Japan after a 3-4 year stay. Many children attend an American local school as well as a supplementary Saturday school, hosh&umacr;k&omacr;, in order to keep up academically after they return to Japan. However, balancing an American and a Japanese education while in a foreign country is a challenge for both Japanese parents and children. Children who plan to permanently live in the US also spend a lot of time to maintain their Japanese at the hosh&umacr;k&omacr; and home. This study examines Japanese families' attitudes and strategies for maintaining and further developing their children's Japanese in the US. Additionally, this study investigates issues regarding their children's education in the US.</p><p> To understand the overall context of the focal hosh&umacr;k&omacr; and the Japanese families, the principal of the hosh&umacr;k&omacr; was first interviewed. Then, 92 Japanese parents participated in a survey regarding their attitudes and strategies for maintaining and developing their children's Japanese. Thereafter, five in-depth case studies of Japanese families (a mother and at least one school-aged child) were conducted to investigate issues regarding children's education in a foreign country. Activity theory was utilized to analyze the interview data on strategy use. It was found that Japanese families have positive attitudes toward Japanese maintenance and development and utilize multiple combinations of strategies. Moreover, it was revealed that the Japanese families' issues moved from English education to a stronger emphasis on Japanese education over time, and they struggled both in local schools and the hosh&umacr;k&omacr; because of the educational and language differences. The study documents how Japanese families, both sojourners and permanent residents, take advantage of the hosh&umacr;k&omacr; resources helping their children prepare to return to Japan and to maintain their children's Japanese and cultural knowledge.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Sciences, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 20, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: A, page: 0980. Adviser: Raquel T. Anderson.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Sciences, 2007. / Adviser: Raquel T. Anderson.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, August, 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

“The Piano Music of Jean Coultthard” provides a musicological assessment of keyboard literature by one of the leading composers in the history of Canadian music. Coulthard's piano works are discussed from aesthetic, historical, and analytical perspectives. Discussion of specific piano works is prefaced by a more general overview of aesthetic principles pertaining to Coulthard's compositional style (including a comparative study between Coulthard's music and the art of Emily Carr) and the question of a Canadian musical identity. The historical focus of the study relates to three main fields of inquiry: the development of Coulthard's distinctive style of piano writing from the early mature works of the 1940s to the more recent compositions of the 1980s and 1990s; the composer's historical position in twentieth-century music; and her lasting influence upon Canadian culture. Analytical issues addressed include Coulthard's innovative reworking of traditional musical forms and the characteristic features of her musical vocabulary and pianistic style. This study will demonstrate Coulthard's vital role in the development of piano music in Canada as well as her overall significance in twentieth-century music. / Graduate

Isaac Rosenfeld's short novel The Colony1 is an orwellian allegory which on a significant level explores the range of attitudes expressed by contemporary Jews toward themselves and other Jews. Set in an exotic fictional country on the Indian subcontinent, the narrative pits the intellectual Satya, successor to a prophet-like leader, against the machinations of a controlling technology given to efficiency and the waging of modern war. During a rally at which he urges his audience to passively "despise and disobey," Satya is seized and imprisoned, whereupon his true ordeal begins. He is accosted by foes even more formidable than his jailors: his people and himself. Initially lauded by his companions for his vision and patriotis, Satya is by devolving stages doubted, then suspected, then vilified, and finally beaten to the brink of senselessness by his fellow prisoners. The divisiveness which the regime wished to incite among the colonials is complete, for the victims come to admire their tormentors in proportion to their own self-disparagement, signalled by their pummeling of the man they originally exalted.

Thoreau’s case is easy in one sense and difficult in another. One of the chief attractions of Civil Disobedience, and one of its necessary limitations, lies in its prophetic quality. Recent American history has confirmed Thoreau’s good judgment in abhorring state-supported racism and a questionable war. But in sympathizing with his outrage over these conditions, we are spared the difficult test to our forbearance that arises when others dissent against issues that lack the persuasive moral justification of Thoreau’s case. So in this respect at least, Thoreau presents a comparatively easy case. His case is difficult in that he minimizes the problem which makes civil disobedience interesting in the first place. That is, Thoreau does not present himself as a genuinely loyal citizen for whom civil disobedience is a difficult act fraught with the pain that gives it moral persuasiveness. Thoreau’s solution to the age-old problem of what to do when one can no longer be both a good person and a good citizen is to deny the problem. For Thoreau, one is always an individual before he is a citizen.

The American Indian has functioned metaphorically in American literature at least since his characterization as an agent of Satan in the captivity narratives of the 17th century. From then until now, the Indian has tended to represent either the noble savage of the primitive heathen. Moreover, literary criticism dealing with these images has shown a primary interest in the historical accuracy and fairness of portrayal of the Indian and his way of life. That is to say, relatively little critical attention has dealt with the Indian as metaphor, examining how the Indian functions figuratively in the literature. Two excellent studies representative of this historical, literal approach are Roy Harvey Pearce’s The Savages of America and Elémire Zolla’The Writer and the Shaman. While neither study wholly excludes consideration of the Indian’s figurative function in the literature, each subordinates close analysis of individual works to a discussion of broad, historical fluctuations in stereotypes images of the American Indian. This historical view, however, is of little help in appraising the metamorphic function of Pocahontas and other Indians in two comparable and influential works published early in the 10th century. The Indian material in William Carlos Wlliam’s In the American Grain (1925) and Hart Crane’s The Bridge (1930) is not well served by a critical reliance on hackneyed categories like the “noble savage” and “primitive innocence,” or reliance on negative appraisals of how “real” Indians have fared in American literature. Both In the American Grain and The Bridge call for a kind of criticism that will examine rather systematically their use of the Indian as metaphor. Such an examination will reveal striking parallels in the way both authors handle the Indian material to shape and express their respective visions of the state of the American culture.

”Parker’s Back” is the last short story Flannery O'Connor wrote before the ravaging disease Lupus took her life in August of 1964. When Caroline Gordon visited her “in a hospital a few weeks before her death,” she spoke of her concern about finishing it. “She told me that the doctor had forbidden her to do any work. He said that it was all right to write a little friction, though, she added with a grin and drew a notebook from under her pillow. She kept it there she told me and was trying to finish a story which she hoped to include in the volume which we both knew would be published posthumously.” The story was “Parker’s Back,” and it was, indeed, published after her death: initially in Esquire magazine (April, 1965) and later that same year in Everything that Rises Must Converge. Genetic criticism, then, can serve as an invaluable critical tool, and it reveals something of the author herself and her intentions; furthermore, it illumines the imaginative development of the story, the ways in which alterations in the form and content led to meaning. Disciplined effort and the creative process itself transformed the crudity of the early drafts of “Parker’s Back” to the art of the final version. For the critic who has been intrigued at the seeming “ease” with which she communicates the vagaries of man’s relationships with ultimate goodness and evil, fascination lies in following the path along which her imagination led her. Like the hound dog to which she likened herself once, we too can “follow the scent.” And if as she said, “It’s the wrong scent and you stop and go back,” in the manuscripts one can pursue the story’s trail on its winding way to its final telling.