<p> My dissertation explores how sound informs the representation of cross-cultural interactions within early modern drama and travel writing. "Sounding" implies the process of producing music or noise, but it also suggests the attempt to make meaning of what one hears. "Otherness" in this study refers to a foreign presence outside of the listening body, as well as to an otherness that is already inherent within. Sounding otherness enacts a bi-directional exchange between a culturally different other and an embodied self; this exchange generates what I term the sonic uncanny, whereby the otherness interior to the self vibrates with sounds of otherness exterior to the body. The sonic uncanny describes how sounds that are perceived as foreign become familiar through the vibratory touch of the soundwave that attunes a body to its sonic environment or soundscape. Sounds of foreign Eastern and New World Indian otherness become part of English and European travelers; at the same time, these travelers sound their own otherness in Indian spaces. Sounding otherness occurs in the travel narratives of Jean de L&egrave;ry, Thomas Dallam, Thomas Coryate, and John Smith. Cultural otherness is also sounded by the English through their theatrical representations of New World and Oriental otherness in masques including <i>The Masque of Flowers,</i> and plays like Robert Greene's <i>Alphonsus,</i> respectively; Shakespeare's <i> The Tempest</i> combines elements of East and West into a new sound&mdash;"something rich and strange." These dramatic entertainments suggest that the theater, as much as a foreign land, can function as a sonic contact zone.</p>

<p> In this dissertation, I explore the intertextual dialogue between two fifth century Attic playwrights, the comedian Aristophanes and the tragedian Euripides, and the influence that each had on the development of the other's characteristic style, or 'brand' (&chi;&alpha;&rho;&alpha;&kappa;&tau;&eta;&rho;). Scholarship on the two playwrights has tended to focus almost exclusively on the transgression of generic boundaries. But studies of paratragedy and parody in Aristophanic comedy and comic elements in late Euripidean tragedy fail to take into consideration the fact that in addition to appropriating material widely across genres, Aristophanes and Euripides also seem to have shared a specific mutual interest in each other's work. I propose a refinement to the traditional model and argue that the two playwrights mutually drew inspiration from each other's differing interpretations of similar themes and motifs. </p><p> Over the period of two decades, the comedian and the tragedian gradually expanded a common repertoire from which they responsively developed variations on the same themes. Each sequence of variations on a theme begins with an Aristophanic running gag mocking a recurring tendency in Euripides' tragedies. Euripides tended to respond to Aristophanes' variations on his themes by embracing and continuing to employ the tropes that Aristophanes had singled out as being characteristically Euripidean. My study focuses primarily on Aristophanes' <i>Acharnians</i> and <i>Thesmophoriazusae </i> and Euripides' <i>Helen</i> and <i>Bacchae</i>. I argue that this exploration of shared thematic material was for both Aristophanes and Euripides an endeavor that was especially productive of their unique brands. </p>

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This thesis addresses the volatile body as a historiographical and literary category in selected works of Renaissance English literature. Through readings of poems by Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton, and of plays by Ben Jonson, John Webster, Richard Brome, Philip Massinger, and Sir William Berkeley, I investigate how Renaissance writers trope the idea of transformation in different ways, in different moments, and in different genres. What meanings inhere in the shifting forms they represent, and how do these transformations interplay with both literary and non-literary modalities? Each chapter focuses on metamorphic changes that at times engage with psychological inwardness and at other times manifest social, political, or theological imperatives arising out of the Reformation. My inquiry is not, however, limited to instances of physical transformation: to these writers, shapeshifting is not simply a subject matter or theme but an aesthetic practice preoccupied with molding and remolding literary form itself. Recognizing the formal implications of textualized, topical, and literal transformation helps us understand the complexity of early modern ideas about transformation without losing sight of transformation.s material aspect. Chapter One focuses on Adicia, Spenser.s embodiment of injustice in The Faerie Queene, whose psychosomatic transformation complicates Spenser.s politically topical allegories of justice in Book 5 and opens up new ways to read his approach to Elizabethan historiography. Chapter Two examines Milton.s Satan, whose hardened and altered body manifests his fallen and polluted inner state. Satan's physical volatility and newfound capacity to feel pain is, physiologically and semantically, integral to Milton's phenomenology of evil. Chapter Three considers how Donne.s preoccupation with transformation shapes his sacramental poetics, focusing on Metempsychosis, the Holy Sonnets, and La Corona. This sequence of poems illuminates Donne's sacramental transformation not only conceptually but also formally, manifesting Donne.s turn to poetry as liturgical artifact. Chapter Four explores Stuart dramas that exploit the trope of Aethiopem lavare or "washing the Ethiope white," using washable blackface to enact man-made miracle. The staged transformation of a chaste woman from black to white is in these plays instrumentalized to conform (if not reform) libertine masculinity to patriarchal ideology, especially marriage.

In this dissertation I examine how skin, both human and non-human, was defined and represented on stage in the medieval English cycle plays, and more importantly how those material representations both reflected and transformed medieval understandings of skin and its relationship to the body. I consider how the creators of the medieval English cycle plays dramatized and expanded upon medieval readings of skin as a changeable and transformative outer covering that not only altered the body's physical shape but also defined its essential nature, demarcating the limits of human identity. I propose that skin was used both explicitly and implicitly throughout the cycles as a means of defining and distinguishing human bodies, and that this use enhanced the cycles' larger exploration of the creation, fall, and salvation of mankind. In addition to close readings of the play texts, I also draw on theatre history and production records to tease out an understanding of how the various types of skin depicted on stage were materially represented, as the necessities of theatrical staging required certain alterations and created a space for problematizing accepted readings and traditions. I argue that readings of skin as a literal covering and as a figurative garment regularly became conflated on stage, and the theatre's necessarily literal presentation of bodily change often amplified the metaphorical meanings. While in the gospels the Resurrection is a mystery that can be believed without being seen, on stage it must be embodied and a tangible representation of Jesus Christ's transformed body and skin depicted. In determining ways to present this body of Christ-as-divinity on stage, as well as the other human and non-human bodies within the plays, the medieval cycle producers fashioned outer skins that reflected traditional conceptions, yet also re-shaped and deepened their audiences' understanding. Ultimately, I argue that both the language of the plays and the material representations demonstrate and support a theological reading of skin as a permeable and changeable border between human and non-human, body and soul, and mortality and immortality that delineates not only the limits of the human body but of human identity itself.

Built on original archival research, this dissertation elucidates how the Federal Theatre Project's (FTP) dramas of Depression-era poverty functioned as proselytism for class-conscious social reform. Through a combination of unique narrative structures and mimetic depictions of class struggle, these "poverty dramas" questioned the viability of the American Dream and its related concepts of upward mobility, limitless possibility, and the idea that America functions as a meritocracy. Chapter one discusses the Federal Theatre's relation to the American workers' theatre of the early twentieth century, particularly the ways in which the transactional re-lationship between artist, worker, and artistic production evolved from the theatre of the Progressive era to the emergence of the poverty dramas in the late 1930s. Chapter two discusses two of the New York Federal Theatre's plays. Triple-A Plowed Under critiques class disparity and calls for a more class-conscious American ideology. Class of '29 is read through the work of Pierre Bourdieu to show how the play makes visible the performative aspects of economic class. Chapter three examines the Philadelphia Federal Theatre's rewrite of the famous New York production of One-Third of a Nation. This chapter shows how the Philadelphia production encouraged a more racially pluralistic view of "the people" and a more nu-anced understanding of lived poverty in America. Chapter four shows how the Los Angeles Federal Theatre's The Sun Rises in the West simultaneously represented the conservative American ideology of the nation's dust bowl farmers while allowing for the expression of the play's left-leaning playwrights. The chapter argues that the play's multiple ideological threads, which at first appear in conflict, are in fact compatibly bound through the play's engagement with and re-working of a persevering American myth structured by a Frontier Archetype. The epilogue broaches the topic of what it means to undertake archival research so as to speak directly to the complex if occasionally problematic relation a researcher has with archives. The epilogue also briefly addresses one aspect of the Federal Theatre's legacy: its redefining of the theatre as a "people's art" rather than a cultural event reserved for the cultural and economic elite.

Drawing on recent criticism in food studies and material culture, this dissertation examines representations of recreational consumption in early modern drama. Shakespeare and his contemporaries litter the commercial stage with scenes of appetitive desire, leisurely eating, and conviviality. This dissertation asserts that such moments provide more than comic relief or colorful accents to staged fictions; they coalesce into a socially and politically resonant discourse of profitable consumption. While pastimes such as civic festivals and pageants were common in early modern England, what I term the culture of the everyday feast--commercially organized opportunities to eat, drink, and recreate that occurred in and around London's public theaters--emerged as a new, socially powerful phenomenon. By closely examining depictions of recreational spaces and goods in plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and many others staged between 1585 and 1615, I demonstrate how recreational experiences not only make social relations visible but also interrogate the sources of social authority. By strategically celebrating and satirizing various alimentary desires and practices, the theater encourages audiences to consider the ways in which leisurely consumption can be constitutive, not corruptive; communal, not isolating; and, above all, socially and politically advantageous. This dissertation adopts two strategies to explore staged depictions of socially profitable consumption. The first is a treatment of theater's engagement with one of early modern London's most popular recreational spaces, the tavern, and the way that chronicle history plays and urban comedies utilize the tavern as a setting in order to negotiate the changing nature of political and social life in urban culture. The second strategy involves case studies of consumable goods, such as tobacco and other novelties, which provide evidence for the material culture that shapes and defines recreational commerce and how it functions dramatically. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the theater's efforts to distinguish itself within the broader recreational economy of early modern London. The theater does so by incorporating London's other pleasurable practices and spaces into its staged narratives, and imagining the social possibilities--the liberties and limits--that the recreational marketplace affords its participants.

Collaborative arts incorporate multiple theatrical elements including sound, movements, text, design, technology and visual elements into a synthetic original form of art. The versatile possibilities of the art form allow artists to actualize their boundless imaginations, and to experiment with an innovative expression to exhibit emotions, ideas, social concerns and philosophical issues. This study briefly summarizes the historical development of collaborative arts from Wagner and Kandinsky, and explores the sub-category, New Music Theater, in the contemporary context from the 1950s onwards. Artists and theorists featured include John Cage, Heiner Goebbels, Mauricio Kagel, George Aperghis and Daniel Ott. International composer Manos Tsangaris and Hong Kong artists Kung Chi Shing, Steve Hui and Amy Chan are interviewed to exhibit their personal creative and collaborative experience, as well as the current practice of New Music Theater in Hong Kong. The insights gathered from artists and theorists considered in this study have inspired the composer to create a composition portfolio, in particular a research-based New Music Theater project, Battle, along with an analysis to illustrate the interaction between the arts, the collaborative process and the effectiveness of the approach.