Expected mindreading is the belief that romantic partners should know one’s needs and feelings without overt communication. This dysfunctional belief is predicted to undermine relationship satisfaction, yet previous research provides mixed support. In two studies, I test my prediction that individuals higher in expected mindreading would be more reactive to misunderstandings by assessing relationship quality and attributions after participants imagined feeling understood or misunderstood by their romantic partner. In Study 1 (introductory psychology students), participants who felt misunderstood and were higher in expected mindreading were more likely to attribute misunderstandings to their partner’s lack of love than those who felt understood or were lower in expected mindreading. In Study 2 (community sample), satisfaction was lower for individuals who felt misunderstood and were higher in expected mindreading, compared to those who felt understood and were lower in expected mindreading. These findings have important implications for relationship counseling. / October 2016

The Italian composer of operas, Giuseppe Verdi, relied heavily on plays of the Romantic Era as sources for opera librettos. Three such plays were from the Spanish Romantic School: El trovador and Simon Bocanegra by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, and Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino by Angel de Saavedra, el Duque de Rivas. The operas which Verdi composed using these plays as sources--Il trovatore, Simon Boccanegra, and La forza del destino--range in popularity from near zenith (Il trovatore) to near nadir (Simon Boccanegra). The study attempts to assess the suitability of the three Spanish dramas as source material for operas, and to determine if this suitability is correlated to each opera's popularity.

This study examined associations among romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance, positive and negative religious coping, and marital adjustment in a community sample of 81 heterosexual couples. Both spouses completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR), a brief measure of religious coping (Brief RCOPE), the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), and a demographic questionnaire as part of a larger study. Multilevel modeling (MLM) for the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used. Attachment avoidance was inversely related to positive religious coping. In contrast, attachment anxiety was directly related to negative religious coping. Positive religious coping buffered the relationship between attachment avoidance and marital adjustment. In contrast, attachment anxiety was detrimental to marital adjustment regardless of positive religious coping, and positive religious coping was related to higher marital adjustment only in the context of low attachment anxiety. Surprisingly, the spouse's attachment anxiety was inversely related to the respondent's marital adjustment only when the respondent reported low levels of negative religious coping, whereas in the context of high negative religious coping, the partner's attachment anxiety was related to higher marital adjustment. Results support using attachment theory to conceptualize religious coping and the consideration of both attachment and religious coping constructs in counseling.

HIV/AIDS is a highly stigmatizing condition that dramatically influences the social relations of those infected with the disease (Herek & Glunt, 1988; Kalichman, 2000). Stigmatized individuals experience interpersonal rejection because of their stigma and this rejection can heighten dispositional sensitivity to rejection (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Increased sensitivity to interpersonal rejection has been shown to decrease relationship satisfaction and lead to relationship dissolution (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998). Few studies have examined the influence of stigmatization on romantic relationships and little is known about the romantic relationships of people living with HIV/AIDS. The current study examined the role of rejection sensitivity as a mediator in the association between HIV/AIDS stigma and romantic relationship satisfaction. A diverse sample of HIV-positive participants was recruited from Vermont and neighboring states. Participants completed measures of perceived stigma, rejection sensitivity and satisfaction with their current romantic relationship. Disclosure concerns and enacted, or personalized, stigma predicted decreased relationship satisfaction. Rejection sensitivity did not mediate the relationship between stigma and relationship satisfaction. Results suggest that both rejection sensitivity and perceived stigma independently influence relationship satisfaction. The implications of the influence of stigma on romantic relationships are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of School of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / This study prospectively examined how parent-adolescent relationships influence romantic relationship quality of offspring, utilizing the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (ADD Health, n = 3,946). Further, this study investigated whether self-esteem and depression symptoms mediated these relationships, and if gender was a significant moderator. Adolescent girls who perceived their relationships with their mothers and fathers to be strong were more likely to have better quality romantic relationships as young adults. This relationship was found to be direct and indirect, through the effect of self-esteem. Adolescent boys who perceived their relationship with their father to be strong and whose mothers were more knowledgeable about them were less likely to experience depression symptoms as young adults, and in turn, to have better quality romantic relationships. Adolescent boys whose mothers perceived to have a strong relationship with them had higher self-esteem as young adults. Finally, there were significant differences between boys and girls in that the association between mother knowledge and depression symptoms was stronger for boys. Results support the stability of parent-adolescent relationships in influencing future relationships and highlight the importance of parent-adolescent relationships in predicting psychological wellbeing and romantic relationship quality.

These eleven chapters comprise Part One of a novel of thirty-seven chapters, entitled As Runs the Deer. It is a dialectic play on the processes of Time, as well as a play with evolving dialects. Nominally set in the 19th c., in an Appalachian-like terrain, it shows the difficulties James Ian Pierson meets when emerging out of his wilderness to re-enter his former life. Opening his own story by means of his sycamore cane, the 19- yr.-old amnesiac must soon reconcile his past with the invading "Now!" He evades the intrusion of a drunken hunter, is overcome by the wintry elements, brought from his icebed by Welsh woodsman Eustace, befriended by Mercury, ancient herbalist, keeper of the Myths. Frivolous Emily Marie Marchault must also reconcile herself with Ian's uneasy re-entry. Shackled by gilded chains of manners, she sees herself as overprotected by her guardian, Breton, and chips away at his ivory tower.

The question of whether or not music can be considered a universal language, or even a language at all, has been asked for centuries—and indeed, it is still being addressed in the 21st century. I return to this question because of the way the German Romantics answered it. Music becomes embodied in not only human language in Novalis’ concept of Poesie in “Die Lehrlinge zu Sais” (1802), but also nature and the human body in Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s scientific speculations in Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers (1810). Seen as the manifestation of the world soul, this embodiment was an attempt to come closer to naming the unnamable, and, I argue, became the perfect platform for E.T.A. Hoffmann to develop his pseudonym and literary character Johannes Kreisler and the mysterious power of music he experiences in the collection of musical critiques and essays, Kreisleriana (1810-1814), and the novel, Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr (1819/1821). Finally, I argue that Hoffmann’s musical literary style can be heard and ‘felt’ in Robert Schumann’s piano cycle, Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838), as other scholars have also analyzed, but that there is also a ‘mixing of discourses’ involved, including Schumann’s own words about the suite. Music is not a universal language—at least, not as understood by the mind and described through words. These writers and composer grapple with the observation that music has a powerful influence over the body—can music then be seen as a ‘language’ received and understood by the body? If so, can an interdisciplinary approach to music and language through science lead to better understanding, as was already exemplified by the collaboration among the German Romantics? This dissertation includes previously published material, which has been substantially revised and updated.

abstract: Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Major is a work for trumpet and piano. It is composed in the romantic tradition and is thirty minutes in length. Trumpet chamber repertoire has increased dramatically in the past century, but few new works are representative of the harmonic language or extended forms of the late romantic tradition. The first movement, “Allegro con spirito,” is in sonata form with fantasy qualities allowing the exposition to meld with the development. The primary theme in 3/4 meter develops a neighbor-tone motive; in contrast, the second theme in 4/4 (in the same tempo) is more lyric in nature. In the development, the juxtaposition of these themes provides changing meters and opportunity for dramatic tension. The bold and metric nature of the first movement is contrasted with the slow, more lyric second movement, “Dolce e sensibile,” (Sweet and sensitive, pg. 22). This movement in E-flat major is in sonata form and encourages a more expressive, rubato interpretation. The second theme of the first movement shares a similar falling gesture as the themes of the second movement, but are different in their expressive qualities. The third movement (“Grave et lento”) is played attacca and begins with a transition from the ideas of the second movement (pg. 30). The dissonant harmonies and low register of the piano solo create an ominous atmosphere which mutates to the bold nature of the first movement. The remainder of the third movement is a seven-part Rondo. The primary theme (m. 20, pg. 31) is derived from a theme from the development of the first movement (m. 210, pg. 12). The C section of the rondo (m. 118, pg. 40) develops the opening theme of the third movement and leads to the primary theme in B-flat major. The final A section of the rondo is piu mosso with the primary theme in a compound meter providing a coda for the entire work. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2018

This work is concerned primarily with the five seasons the castrato soprano, Giovanni Battista Velluti spent in London between 1825 and 1829. This time-place is unique in operatic history insofar as it sees the meeting of the new, exhaustively detailed, descriptive musical-critical journalism that emerged in the nineteenth century as it encountered the last operatic castrato in the last decade of his public performing career. Beginning with a historiographical overview of writings about the castrati, spanning from the early eighteenth century to the present day, the introduction establishes the methodological and thematic placement of this dissertation. Chapter 1 details the events of the last fifteen years of Velluti's career. These almost exactly overlap the period of his presence in English periodicals and the focus of the next chapter, the late, English, literary Romantic. The Romantics were deeply interested in music and were the principal intellectual creators of the music critical style that arose in the 1820s. Their cognition will be explored to the extent it can found utilized in writing about the voice, the otherness of disability and horror and fear of the other intruding upon the personal space of the self. Chapters 3 and 4 will proceed from literarily expressed cognitive understanding to the operatic voice of the 1820s: not only the castrato, but female singers, tenors and countertenors. While chapter 4 establishes the manner in which these voices functioned in their various, clearly audible registers, chapter 5 will then explore the meanings that each of these registers conveyed, especially regarding perceived gender and disability. These meanings are reinforced by excerpts of poetry and prose, fact and fiction, from England and the Continent. Chapter 5 examines the two ornamentational styles of Velluti, as they survive in published and manuscript sources from the 1810s and 1820s, comparing them to other singers of his time and reading them as literary texts. Velluti's highly literary rather than purely melodic ornamentation lends itself particularly to this cross-disciplinary approach. The work concludes with a short chapter concerning the end of Velluti's life and the last two castrati, one undoubted, one dubious, to appear on the English concert stage.

The following piece is a three movement, twenty minute orchestral work in a Romantic style whose primary goals are accessibility and beauty. In the process of writing this piece, I learned that strong and memorable melodies are the key to a successful composition - taking influence from Henry Mancini and early Japanese video game composers, this work takes a central melodic theme through a series of variations to demonstrate the power of harmonic and orchestrational recontextualization. Rhythmically, the work utilizes techniques from the Minimalist and Progressive Rock traditions to strike a balance between rhythmic complexity and melodic focus. The three movements are meant to represent three steps towards self-actualization - Explore depicts curiosity and open-mindedness, Engage demonstrates the merits of focusing on one's craft, and Wonder represents the value of feeling awe towards the world even if it is not easy or simple. Ultimately, the work moves through a wide variety of moods and textures throughout its duration while staying focused on the central theme until the end, with the goal of creating a listening experience that is both rich and memorable.