In their shared goal of communicating left-wing principles to children through music, Marc Blitzstein's Worker's Kids of the World (1935), Aaron Copland's The Second Hurricane (1937), and Alex North's The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither (1941) exhibit a fundamental unity of purpose that binds them both to each other and to the extensive leftist pedagogical efforts of their time. By observing the parallel relationship among these three children's works and contemporary youth organizations, summer camps, and children's literature, their cultural objectives and stylistic idiosyncrasies emerge as expressions of a continuously evolving educational tradition. Whereas Worker's Kids comes out of the revolutionary Communist aesthetics of the Composers' Collective and the militant activism of The Young Pioneers, The Second Hurricane and Danny Dither reflect the increasingly accommodating educational efforts of the American Popular Front.

This paper traces the genealogy of the Hotteterre and the Chédeville families through a translation of three works by Jules Carlez, Ernest Thoinan, Nicolas Mauger. Carol Padgham Albrecht annotates these translations with biographical information and highlights the contributions of the instrument makers.

The thesis of this paper is that Mencken was a better critic than he is credited with being, that he was unusually discerning in his judgment of the fiction of his time, and that his criteria are clearly stated in various of his writings. It is conceded, however, that his taste in poetry was limited and that his contribution to dramatic criticism was not? greatly significant.

This thesis describes a pilot study for a new cultural anthropology initiative at Team One, a US-based premium and luxury brand advertising agency. In this study, I explore the role and meaning of technology among a population of affluent individuals in Southern California through diaries and ethnographic interviews conducted in their homes. Using schema theory and design anthropology to inform my theoretical approach, I discuss socioeconomic and cultural factors that shape these participants' notions of affluence and influence their presentation of self through an examination of their technology and proudest possessions. I put forward a theory of conspicuous achievement as a way to describe how the affluent use technology to espouse a merit-based model of affluence. Through this model of affluence, participants strive to align themselves to the virtuous middle-class while ascribing moral value to their consumption practices. Lastly, I provide a typology of meaningful technology artifacts in the affluent home that describes the roles of their most used tech devices and how each type supports conspicuous achievement.

This study is an investigation of the subject matter of eighty Italian cassone paintings of the fifteenth century now located in the United States and answers a four-part question: (1) What were the major themes pictured on cassoni panels during the Quattrocento? (2) Were the themes of cassoni in Quattrocento Italy predominantly of a religious or secular nature? (3) If secular subject matter was dominant in cassone painting, was this a reflection of the newly founded tastes of aristocratic, wealthy and middle classes? (4) Did cassoni mirror the way these classes viewed themselves and the place occupied by women in society?

This collection of three original short stories is an excerpt from a novel about an East Texas family whose common bond is the need for a second chance. A preface dealing with the use of setting as a character precedes the short stories.

Modest Musorgsky completed two versions of his opera Boris Godunov between 1869 and 1874, with significant changes in the second version. The second version adds a concluding lament by the fool character that serves as a warning to the people of Russia beyond the scope of the opera. The use of a fool is significant in Russian history and this connection is made between the opera and other arts of nineteenth-century Russia. These changes are, musically, rather small, but historically and socially, significant. The importance of the people as a functioning character in the opera has precedence in art and literature in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth-century and is related to the Populist movement. Most importantly, the change in endings between the two versions alters the entire meaning of the composition. This study suggests that this is a political statement on the part of the composer.

This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the fatal woman motif in the writings and art of Edvard Munch from the early 1890s to 1909. It uses a background of the women in the artist's life as well as the literary and artistic worlds in which Munch participated. Following separate accounts of Munch's relationships with five women, the manner in which the artist characterizes each as a fatal woman in his writings and art is discussed and analyzed. Next, the study describes the fatal woman motif in late nineteenth century art and literature. It begins with a discussion of the origin of the Symbolist and Decadent Movements and an ideological examination of the fatal woman motif as it is manifested in the writing and art of these two groups. In addition, it compares Munch's visual manifestations of the femme fatale with the manner in which the artist's contemporaries depicted her. Finally, this study describes two groups of men with whom Munch was particularly close: the Christiania Bohéme and the Schwarzen Ferkel Circle. An examination of the literary works of these men helps to determine the way in which they affected Munch's pictorial perception of the fatal woman.

The preface, "Against Buses: Charles Baxter and the Contemporary Epiphany" deals with the epiphany as a potential ending to short stories. Baxter holds that epiphanies are trite and without purpose in today's fiction. I argue that Baxter's view, while not without merit, is limiting. Beginning with James Joyce and Katherine Anne Porter and moving to my own work, I discuss how some epiphanies, particularly false ones, can enhance rather than detract from excellent fiction. Five short stories make up the remainder of this thesis: "Dedication," "Taking it with You," "Transition to Flowers," "Profile in Courage," and "Henderson Street Bazaar."

Heinrich Koch completed his treatise in 1793, a pioneering work regarding the musical phrase as well as a sonata form description (lacking that term). Composition of Opus 18 began in 1798, a momentous project for several reasons in Beethoven's early career. Here, the theories expressed in Koch's Versuch are taken as an analytic springboard into a thorough analysis of the first movement of the quartet published no. 3, which was the first composed; additionally, nos. 1 and 6 are explored to a lesser degree. This study in phrase-analysis demonstrates significance in the fundamental ideas of Koch as applied to a masterwork of the turn of the 19th century.

My thesis provides evidence supporting a theory asserting that the high level of competition that exists between motor carriers operating within long-haul trucking is the most significant factor contributing to the continuously high driver turnover rates affecting the entire logistics industry. I explore how long-haul truck drivers internalize the conflict between their identity and the aggressively competitive environment within which they work. Social science authors, industry reports, and truck driver feedback from my own ethnographic study are analyzed for contexts in order to explore the current operating definition of success for motor carriers in both monetary and human terms.

Many researchers of gender studies and colonial history ignore the lives of European women in the British West Indies. The scarcity of written information combined with preconceived notions about the character of the women inhabiting the islands make this the "final frontier" in colonial studies on women. Over the long eighteenth century, travel literature by men reduced creole white women to a stereotype that endured in literature and visual representations. The writings of female authors, who also visited the plantation islands, display their opinions on the creole white women through their letters, diaries and journals. Male authors were preoccupied with the sexual morality of the women, whereas the female authors focus on the temperate lifestyles of the local females. The popular perceptions of the creole white women seen in periodicals, literature, and caricatures in Britain seem to follow this trend, taking for their sources the travel histories.

Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom is a narrative by the author about his two years as a teacher in the People's Republic of China. Organized chronologically, the account begins in August, 1985, and ends in June, 1987. The narrator describes meeting students at Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, designing English classes for English majors, daily episodes in the classroom, and interaction with Chinese colleagues. The narrative alternates between life on a university campus and extensive trips the narrator made to various cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Guilin, Harbin, Hohot, and Guangzhou. Also recounted are the narrator's reactions to the student demonstrations of December, 1986, and the resulting anti-bourgeois liberation campaign of January-April, 1987.

Slogans can be attributed as a way in which to communicate a brand's message to its key consumer. An effectively established brand amongst targeted consumers can in turn generate profitability and ever further promote the brand. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effectiveness of advertisements that employ vague or precise cosmetic product brand slogans among both male and female consumers. Ultimately, the end goal of marketing is to make a sale. Additionally, the purpose of this study was to determine whether or not the length of a slogan is an influential factor on the participant's motivation to purchase a cosmetic or skincare product. Data was collected through the use of survey in an online social media format, in order to test the effectiveness of different lengths of slogans for slogan recall, brand recall, brand awareness and purchase intention. Prior research and hypotheses were used to predict the concept that shorter more concise or precise slogans in this study would heighten the levels of all measured variables in the study, slogan recall, brand recall, brand awareness and purchase intention. The results of this paper conclude overall vague slogans have the potential to reach higher levels of slogan recall …

Dolores Dyer played from 1952-1953 for the Texas Cowgirls, a barnstorming women's basketball team that provided a form of entertainment popular throughout the United States in that era. The story of Dyer's life demonstrates how a woman could attempt to achieve the American dream—a major theme in American history—through success in athletic competition. Dyer's participation with the Texas Cowgirls also provides a look into the circumstances that limited women's participation in professional sport during the mid-twentieth century. Women's sports studies, although some are very thorough, have gaps in the research, and women's barnstorming basketball is one of the areas often overlooked. In light of this gap, this thesis relies on a variety of sources, including primary documents from unpublished collections, archived materials, and original oral histories from several members of the Texas Cowgirls team. This thesis contains analysis of the socioeconomic factors that influenced Dolores Dyer's maturation into a professional basketball player, examines what the American dream meant to her, and evaluates the extent to which she achieved it. Overall, it constructs a social history that can serve as a foundational source for further study of women in sports during the twentieth century.

This paper is a study of the major influence of the German philosophy, Krausism, in the writings of Benito Perez Galdds. The study is an analysis of the effects of this ideology on Spain and her people, as illustrated in the works of the most representative writer of the nineteenth century in that country. Also included is a discussion of historical incidents of the period which is necessary to place the acceptance of both this philosophy and the works of Perez Galdos in its proper perspective.