Throughout the history of Western Music, composers have written works on rural and agricultural subjects. The first half of this dissertation examines a number of important works from the Baroque era through the present day and the composers who have chosen this specialized subject matter. Rural communities are underserved where the arts are concerned. Yet, rural audiences have perhaps the best chance at identifying with the subjects of this particular subset of vocal art music. The second half of this dissertation examines reasons why it is important to reach rural communities with vocal art music. Four sample recital programs appropriate for rural audiences are included.

I focus on four operas premiered in Europe and the United States between 2009 and 2016 in which elements of the medieval, ritual, ancient, religious, and mystic emerge through their source material: _Adam and Eve: A Divine Comedy_ (2015, Norway), by Cecilie Ore and Bibbi Moslet; _Kalîla wa Dimna_ (2016, France), by Moneim Adwan and Fady Jomar; _Lilith_ (2009, USA) by Anthony Davis and Allan Havis, and _Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)_ (2013, Austria), by Peter Eötvös and Albert Ostermaier. This dissertation argues that these operas, rather than seeking a renaissance or rebirth of the mythic, draw inspiration and narratives from what I am calling “distant pasts,” reimagining universal or “timeless” narratives of humanity through a specific contemporary lens in an explicit and deliberate interrogation of the political present. Mapping out different modes of staging these distant pasts in response to cultural and political change in the twenty-first century, I suggest new modes of conceiving adaptable operatic “networks of comprehension” that encompass the multiple subject positions and geographical and cultural contexts that shape opera today. Each opera is presented as a case study in a single chapter, balancing musical analyses with political, historical, and cultural critique. Interviews with “stakeholders” (composers, librettists, singers, directors), many of which I conducted, form an integral part of this process. My analyses explore these four operas’ unconventional attitudes towards time, narrative, and drama, and in probing each opera’s idiosyncratic relationship with its distant pasts, I chart the complex manifestations of recent political discourse in Europe and the United States, especially concerning the intersection of feminism, race, religion, and secularism.

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Greek literature is infamous for its fondness of narrating in horrific detail the violent plots of man versus man, man versus beast, and even man versus god, encompassing conflicts that range from individual vendettas to large-scale warfare. The extant stories of Greek epic and drama preserve merely a snippet of the ancient audience’s fascination with violence in all its forms. Depicted among these bloody confrontations is a subject that seems taboo even to modern viewers—kin murders. Epic conceals the most brutal violations of kinship ties, preferring a more nuanced approach to such horrors. Tragedy, in contrast, relishes translating these particular crimes onto the public stage. However, in dramatic performance the violent acts themselves are only either described in words or alluded to; they are always completed off-stage, and audience members must rely on their imaginations to recreate the most offensive parts of an episode. There is a similar hesitation in visualizing these gruesome stories of parents slaying children, wives murdering husbands, brothers turning against each other, or sons slaughtering mothers in Greek art. In contrast, there are numerous portrayals of lethal violence in other contexts that are unabashedly explicit and shockingly gory. For example, images of quarrels between political rivals or cultural others enjoyed popularity from the earliest periods of Greek art. But depictions of sanctioned violence in the military sphere occupy a different realm than the rare illustrations of the most sinister of transgressions—the murder of one’s own kin. The tantalizing few examples of this exceptional category of violence prompt further study, yet there has never been a comprehensive investigation on portrayals of intrafamilial murder in in the visual repertoire. In Kindred Killers: Intrafamilial Murders in Archaic and Classical Greek Art, I bring together and examine for the first time the evidence for murder against kin in Greek art from the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE. I assemble a catalog of 202 images related to four types of intrafamilial murder within the nuclear family unit: filicide, spousal homicide, parricide, and fratricide. Geographically, the material spans from mainland Greece, including Attica, Corinth, and the Peloponnese, to East Greece, and to South Italy and Sicily; the objects range from pottery, shield bands, seals, and other representatives of the so-called minor arts, to statue groups, temple architecture, and lost monumental wall paintings. I investigate the iconographic patterns of the four typologies, tracing their changes through time, medium, and area of production, while also considering factors, such as manner, intent, and motivation, in order to establish a visual language for “intrafamilial murder.” I frame the images within broader, shifting cultural notions of violence and explore how the various scenes of kinship murder challenge and solidify social norms, negotiate interpersonal power, and express the tensions brought about by ever-changing family dynamics.

The mass media have been widely studied because of their pervasiveness and effect on society. The comic strips, as part of the newspaper, are widely read. By their very existence and pervasiveness they mold our culture. The purpose of this study was to examine marriage and the family and how it is portrayed in the comic strips. A historical overview of significant family comic strips was done using comic strip texts. A content analysis of contemporary family strips was also done. The strips were analyzed to determine how often demonstrated affection and/or abuse occurred. In addition, the strips were analyzed to determine the quality and quantity of parent-child, sibling, and husband-wife relationships. Two month samples of 15 different comic strips were analyzed. The comic strip family emerged as a stereotyped group that was white, lower-middle class, with a father who worked at a white collar job and a mother who was a housewife. The family included several school-aged or teen-aged children. Neither demonstrated affection nor abuse was found to occur often in comic strip families. Parent-child interactions and interactions among siblings were judged to be more positive than negative. Husband-wife interactions were more often negative than positive, although there was a wide variance among individual strips. Interactions about leisure time and its use occurred more often than any other category. Household tasks, food, finances, in-laws or parents, dress and health comprised the other major categories of interactions. / Master of Science

Brian John Hooper. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-149). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Preface --- p.iv / Introduction --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter One: --- """The Matrix and Fusion in Hong Kong Anglophone Literature""" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- """The Matrix and its Malcontents in Acheson's Flagrant Harbour´ح" --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- """Lee's Running Dog´ح" --- p.65 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- """Mo's Signifying Monkey King""" --- p.76 / Conclusion --- p.106 / Bibliography --- p.109

The Enigma of Appearances is an examination into the medium of three-dimensional photography, with particular focus on the technique of stereoscopy. Invented in the mid-Victorian era, stereoscopy was an attempt to simulate natural three-dimensional perception via a combination of optics, neurology, and a pair of dissimilar images. Whilst successful in producing a powerful illusion of spatial depth and tangibility, the illusion produced by stereoscopy is anything but ??natural??, when compared to three-dimensional perception observed with the naked eye. Rather, stereoscopic photography creates a strange and unnatural interpretation of three-dimensional reality, devoid of atmosphere, movement and sound, where figures appear frozen in mid-motion, like waxwork models, or embalmed creatures in a museum. However, it is precisely stereoscopic photography??s unique and enigmatic interpretation of three-dimensional reality, which gives it its strength, separating it from being a mere ??realistic?? recording of the natural world. This thesis examines the unique cultural position that stereoscopy has occupied since its invention in 1838, from its early role as a tool for the study of binocular vision, to its phenomenal popularity as a form of mass entertainment in the second half of the 19th century, to its emergence in contemporary fine art practice in the late 20th and 21stt centuries. Additionally, The Enigma of Appearances gives a detailed analysis of the theory of spatial depth perception; it discusses the dichotomy between naturalia versus artificialia in relation to stereoscopic vision; and finally, traces the development of experimental studio practice and research into stereoscopic photography, undertaken for this MFA between 2005 and 2007. The resulting work, Camera Mortuaria (Italian for ??Mortuary Room??), is a powerful and innovative series of anaglyptic portraits, based upon an experimental stereoscopic technique that enables the production of extreme close-up three-dimensional photography. Applying this technique to the reproduction of the human face in three-dimensional form, Camera Mortuaria presents a series of ??photo sculptures??, which hover between reality and illusion, pushing the boundaries of stills photography to the limit, and beyond.

The Enigma of Appearances is an examination into the medium of three-dimensional photography, with particular focus on the technique of stereoscopy. Invented in the mid-Victorian era, stereoscopy was an attempt to simulate natural three-dimensional perception via a combination of optics, neurology, and a pair of dissimilar images. Whilst successful in producing a powerful illusion of spatial depth and tangibility, the illusion produced by stereoscopy is anything but ??natural??, when compared to three-dimensional perception observed with the naked eye. Rather, stereoscopic photography creates a strange and unnatural interpretation of three-dimensional reality, devoid of atmosphere, movement and sound, where figures appear frozen in mid-motion, like waxwork models, or embalmed creatures in a museum. However, it is precisely stereoscopic photography??s unique and enigmatic interpretation of three-dimensional reality, which gives it its strength, separating it from being a mere ??realistic?? recording of the natural world. This thesis examines the unique cultural position that stereoscopy has occupied since its invention in 1838, from its early role as a tool for the study of binocular vision, to its phenomenal popularity as a form of mass entertainment in the second half of the 19th century, to its emergence in contemporary fine art practice in the late 20th and 21stt centuries. Additionally, The Enigma of Appearances gives a detailed analysis of the theory of spatial depth perception; it discusses the dichotomy between naturalia versus artificialia in relation to stereoscopic vision; and finally, traces the development of experimental studio practice and research into stereoscopic photography, undertaken for this MFA between 2005 and 2007. The resulting work, Camera Mortuaria (Italian for ??Mortuary Room??), is a powerful and innovative series of anaglyptic portraits, based upon an experimental stereoscopic technique that enables the production of extreme close-up three-dimensional photography. Applying this technique to the reproduction of the human face in three-dimensional form, Camera Mortuaria presents a series of ??photo sculptures??, which hover between reality and illusion, pushing the boundaries of stills photography to the limit, and beyond.

Thesis (MA (Dept. of Ancient Studies) -- University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Throughout the centuries artists have visualised the imaginative works of Publius Vergilius Maro in a variety of art forms. Paintings, frescoes, sculptures and even tapestries have made the wordscenes of his great epic, the Aeneid, concrete. The thesis investigates only the illustration of the epic in manuscripts and printed texts or translations. The illustrations of scenes in Book VI – the journey of Aeneas in the underworld – are studied using the reception-historical approach. This is to determine whether the illustrations of the Trojan hero’s journey in the underworld reflect the reception of the Aeneid in the different eras or periods. The illustrator is a “reader” of the Aeneid text or translation and consequently his/her illustration of a particular scene reflects his/her own visual interpretation thereof. Illustrations of Book VI in manuscripts like the Vergilius Vaticanus of late Antiquity and the mid- 15th century Riccardiana Vergilius of Apollonio di Giovanni are examined. A study of illustrations in printed texts or translations range from the 1502 Grüninger edition of Vergil edited by Sebastian Brant to the Book VI illustration of Thom Kapheim in a textbook published in 2001. The aim is to establish how illustrators associated with Book VI, interpreted it, how their environment and the spirit of the age influenced their visualisation and how their illustrations reflect the reception of the epic throughout the centuries. Such a study hopes to provide a contribution to Vergilian reception and Nachleben. In the process a better understanding can be obtained for the importance and changing role of Aeneid VI and the whole epic in different eras. It is found that the illustrators of the Aeneid – influenced by the different spirit of their times and environments – brought forth unique visual interpretations of scenes in Book VI that suggest a particular reception of the epic at that specific point of time. The illustrative spectrum of Book VI throughout the centuries can be summarised as follows: revival, allegorisation, pedagogic, realistic decoration and eventually increasingly unrealistic decoration. From late Antiquity to the beginning of the 21st century, the illustrative visualisation of the journey of Aeneas in the underworld indicates that there has always been a definitive response to Vergil and his epic.