After he died, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged throughout his short life despite the release of sixteen brilliant albums. Since his death, numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles published, in addition to several books (including Robert Hardy’s A Deeper Blue by UNT Press). For the Sake of the Song collects ten essays on Townes Van Zandt from a variety of approaches. Contributors examine his legacy; his use of the minor key; his reception in the Austin music scene; and an exploration of his relationship with Richard Dobson, with whom he toured as part of the Hemmer Ridge Mountain Boys. An introduction by editors Ann Norton Holbrook and Dan Beller- McKenna provides an overview of Van Zandt’s literary excellence and philosophical wisdom, rare among even the best songwriters.

Music binder's volumes, or collections of sheet music typically bound by women in the nineteenth century, constitute an informative and underutilized set of historical artifacts. Each binder's volume can be viewed as a Spotify playlist frozen in time. An individual volume contains more than just the volume's individual pieces; it also holds the marginalia, the choices women made on what to include in a binder, and information on where and how music was produced. This dissertation examines music binder's volumes quantitatively, processing information found in binder's volumes by using the MARC and other cataloguing data to construct a relational database. I engage with broad questions of music publishing and consumption and provide a method to contextualize qualitative results on a larger scale. In doing so, I make two distinct contributions to music research and the digital humanities. First, this project offers a clear path for engaging with music binder's volumes and material history of nineteenth-century America in ways that scholars have rarely engaged in prior to this point. I highlight how data analysis provides new framings for binder's volumes and for sheet music consumption both at the song-level and at larger levels of the data. Second, and more broadly, this …

Marianna Martines (1744-1812) was a highly celebrated composer, singer, and keyboardist during her lifetime in Vienna, praised by such dignitaries as Dr. Charles Burney, and achieving the honor of being the first woman composer to be admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1773. She composed both large-scale and smaller works, including masses, oratorios, keyboard sonatas and concerti, cantatas, and arias. Yet today, despite a revival of interest in this important composer, she remains largely unknown and her nearly 70 surviving works remain all too underperformed. The purpose of this dissertation is to add to the existing scholarship by exploring the first movement of her Harpsichord Sonata in G Major, the last of her three extant sonatas, which is marked Allegro brillante, and is indeed a work of technical brilliance and difficulty, through various theoretical frameworks. This study demonstrates the extraordinary nature of this work by invoking classical formal theory, topic theory, with particular emphasis on the "brilliant" and "singing" styles, and the more recent feminist studies illuminating gender-coding in music. This theoretical analysis is considered against the backdrop of sociological studies examining the gender politics of Vienna and other parts of Europe during this time period. This study …

Although in 2000 he became the first sideman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “King Curtis” Ousley never lived to accept his award. Tragically, he was murdered outside his New York City home in 1971. At that moment, thirty-seven-year-old King Curtis was widely regarded as the greatest R & B saxophone player of all time. He also may have been the most prolific, having recorded with well over two hundred artists during an eighteen-year span. Soul Serenade is the definitive biography of one of the most influential musicians of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. Timothy R. Hoover chronicles King Curtis’s meteoric rise from a humble Texas farm to the recording studios of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and New York City as well as to some of the world’s greatest music stages, including the Apollo Theatre, Fillmore West, and Montreux Jazz Festival. Curtis’s “chicken-scratch” solos on the Coasters’ Yakety Yak changed the role of the saxophone in rock & roll forever. His band opened for the Beatles at their famous Shea Stadium concert in 1965. He also backed his “little sister” and close friend Aretha Franklin on nearly all of her tours and Atlantic Records productions from 1967 …

This extremely valuable collection of texts in the Lahu language represents the language and culture in the 1960’s, a time when the heritage language and culture were still vibrant and not yet globalized, hence the title Window on a Vanished World. It is also one of the largest collections of texts in any Tibeto-Burman language. The texts are available as a book and online with the audio (originally from 1960’s magnetic tape). This is a massive achievement for all involved in the recording, conversion, and editing.

Occupational burnout is a concern to the health and longevity of clergy and musician careers. However, no known study has assessed occupational burnout among pastoral musicians. A literature review revealed pastoral musicians anecdotally experienced multi-tasking, workplace politics, inequality of workload, competing liturgical styles, lack of job security, lack of financial security, and lack of rest, among other indicators of burnout. Therefore, the aims of this paper were to: (1) describe pastoral musicians as a population; (2) identify the prevalence rate of burnout among pastoral musicians; (3) investigate the relationship between pastoral musicians' burnout and religious coping; and (4) investigate the relationships between pastoral musicians' burnout and depression, anxiety, and stress. In 2021, an online questionnaire was designed to assess burnout among pastoral musicians. Dissemination techniques included emails to members of the Hymn Society of North America and via social media to collect data from pastoral music directors in the United States of America. The survey yielded n = 1,050 respondents: 83.8% experienced one or more symptoms of burnout (41.3% with low efficacy; 12.4% with high emotional exhaustion; 21.3% with high cynicism; 8.8% with burnout). Ineffectiveness was positively correlated with negative religious coping. Emotional exhaustion and cynicism were positively correlated with …

“There are some poets we admire for a mastery that allows them to tell a story, express an epiphany, form a conclusion, all gracefully and even memorably— yet language in some way remains external to them. But there are other poets in whom language seems to arise spontaneously, fulfilling a design in which the poet’s intention feels secondary. Books by these poets we read with a gathering sense of excitement and recognition at the linguistic web being drawn deliberately tighter around a nucleus of human experience that is both familiar and completely new, until at last it seems no phrase is misplaced and no word lacks its resonance with what has come before. Such a book is Austin Segrest’s Door to Remain.”— Karl Kirchwey, author of Poems of Rome and judge

Utilizing many sources new to publication, James L. Haley delivers a most readable and enjoyable narrative history of Texas, told through stories—the words and recollections of Texans who actually lived the state’s spectacular history. From Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s myth-enshrouded stand at the Alamo, to the Mexican-American War, and to Sam Houston’s heroic failed effort to keep Texas in the Union during the Civil War, the transitions in Texas history have often been as painful and tense as the “normal” periods in between. Here, in all of its epic grandeur, is the story of Texas as its own passionate nation.

This anthology collects the nine winners of the 2021 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First-place winner: Greg Jaffe and his three-part series on the pandemic, beginning with “The Pandemic Hit and This Car Became Home for a Family of Four” (The Washington Post). Second place: Hannah Dreier with “The Worst- Case Scenario” (The Washington Post). Third place: Leonora LaPeter Anton, Kavitha Surana, and Kathryn Varn with “Death at Freedom Square” (Tampa Bay Times). Runners-up include Rory Linnane, “Maricella’s Last Breath” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Hannah Dreier, “Tatiana’s Luck” (The Washington Post); Deborah Vankin, “This 81-Year-Old was L.A.’s Most Devoted Museum-Goer until COVID-19” (Los Angeles Times); Lauren Caruba, “Night Shift” (San Antonio Express News); Mark Johnson, “Saving Raynah’s Brain” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); and John Woodrow Cox, “They Depended on Their Parents for Everything” (The Washington Post).

America’s Wild West created an untold number of notorious characters, and in southwestern Texas, John King Fisher (1855– 1884) was foremost among them. To friends and foes alike, he insisted he be called “King.” He found a home in the tough sun-beaten Nueces Strip, a lawless land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There he gathered a gang of rustlers around him at his ranch on Pendencia Creek. For a decade King and his gang raided both sides of the Rio Grande, shooting down any who opposed them. Newspapers claimed King killed potential witnesses—he was never convicted of cattle or horse stealing, or murder. King’s reign ended when he was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly. In no uncertain terms he advised Fisher to change his ways, so King became deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. But his hard-won respectability would not last. On a spring night in 1884, King made the mistake of accompanying the truly notorious gambler and gunfighter Ben Thompson on a tour of San Antonio, where several years prior Thompson shot down Jack Harris at the latter’s saloon and theater, the Vaudeville. Recklessly, King Fisher accompanied Thompson back to the theater, where assassins were …

On a cold, windy December night in 1926, hell was unleashed on a tenant farm near Farwell, the last Texas town before the New Mexico border. Prone to the bottle and fits of rage, the burly man with the smiling blue eyes was in no mood to quarrel with his third wife over his bootleg whisky and sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. He went from room to room in the house, killing his wife and each child with primitive cutting tools and his bare hands. By the time he concluded his bloody work, he had taken the lives of nine family members ranging in age from 2 to 41, committing what one local reporter called “the blackest crime” in the history of the West Texas Panhandle. Husband, father, uncle, embezzler, serial mass murderer, philanderer, child molester, convict, and military deserter, George Jefferson Hassell was many things to many people, most of them bad. His pattern of familicide crime had begun in 1917, when he slaughtered his common-law wife and her three kids in Whittier, California. Later, in Texas, he married his brother’s wife and became stepfather to her eight children. Using Hassell’s confessions and his many interviews with reporters as …

In this work, I examine and analyze women representation and themes in Pakistani literature in order to explore the emergence and development of feminist thought as reflected within it, from pre-independence to present day Pakistan. One of my central arguments is that the theorization of a workable feminism in the conflictual Pakistani state depends on understanding and accounting for the socio-political, religious, and economic milieu of the country under which women live. In the following chapters, I delineate the challenges feminism in Pakistan faces in conjunction with the analysis of selected literary works to highlight the way the figure of the woman emerges in public discourse. It is through this engagement, that I demonstrate, the complexity of Pakistani feminism and its negotiations with nationalism, religion, and patriarchy to create the basis for theorizing a workable Pakistani feminist politics. Following Dipesh Chakraborty's theorization of historicism in his book, Provincializing Europe, the basic premise of this dissertation is to explore the emergence of feminist thought in Pakistani literature while keeping the changing religio-political and socio-economic realities of the country at the forefront to establish an analysis grounded in worldliness of these texts. The goal of this exploration is to theorize a feminism …

This report discusses the future of academic libraries which serve as an essential gateway to knowledge. It discusses how libraries, as one of the largest facilities on campus, have become vibrant hubs for diverse purposes while retaining flexibility for future needs. How librarians have been steering discussions about open-source journals and courseware, which has profound implications for student access and success, and institutional budgets. Why libraries are leveraging special collections to carve out niches for their institutions and bolster connections with students and the local community. What librarians are saying about how varied their jobs have become, and how the profession is – and isn’t – diversifying. How librarians have adapted to automation to learn new technical, legal, and interpersonal skills.

This dissertation includes background on influences of mathematics, mathematics education, and who is viewed as a mathematician leading into three articles exploring students' and teachers' perceptions of mathematics through their lived experiences in both mathematics classrooms and their communities. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis for the methodology, all three articles analyze mathematics autobiographies and semi-structured interviews with five student participants enrolled in the same Algebra I course; Paper 3 also includes the Algebra I teacher. Paper 1 focuses on how students describe their lived experiences in mathematics classrooms. Three themes emerged from the participant data: 1) lack of autonomy and access, 2) feelings hinge on performance in mathematics, and 3) the need for support in mathematics. Each participant shared different experiences, but these experiences can help inform educators how to improve students' experiences in the classroom. Paper 2 sought to understand how middle grade students make sense of what it means to do mathematics in their community. The three themes include: 1) navigating the usefulness of mathematics outside of school, 2) who directs mathematics outside of school, and 3) the need for mathematics in future plans. Connections students made between mathematics and the lives outside of school varied suggesting how broad …

Life coaching is a rapidly expanding industry that focuses on client development, enhancement of life experience, and goal attainment often when clients are experiencing personal, professional, and social change. Online communities of practice (CoPs) provide opportunity for individuals to connect, share experiences, and learn from each other under the auspices of a unifying theme or subject. Since the 1990s, CoPs have spread from education to other areas of business and industry and continue to shape participant professional development. However, the everyday life information seeking and practices of life coaches remains unexplored within information science literature from the perspectives of life coach engagement in seeking information, life coach engagement in CoPs, and life coach interactions with other coaches. The purpose of this research study was to explore life coach perspectives of coaching, the diverse information needs of life coaches, the types and strength of relationships between life coaches and CoPs, the role of coaching certification and/or licensing as contributing to the professionalization of life coaching, and the means of communication exchange by life coaches through information communication technologies. This mixed method study focused on life coaches who self-identify as belonging to a CoP and those that do not. Theoretical frameworks for …

Presentation from librarians at the UNT Libraries share some of the EDI initiatives taking place in the UNT Libraries stemming from a multi-level climate survey, how the libraries as a whole is trying to be a better ally, and how we can help other departments with their EDI initiatives. It was presented at the 2022 UNT Equity & Diversity Conference held on March 23, 2022.

Visual impairment/blindness is not often discussed in a media space, and the community is often left out and forgotten otherwise in the course of history. Through documentary filmmaking, Consider the View (La Vue) provides an artistic exploration of blindness by using the camera as optical power and other forms of art. Viewers experience a new perspective of what it means to be visually impaired.

This study quantitatively and qualitatively measured gender and age differences in cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement while playing video games among the University of North Texas (UNT) undergraduate students. Also, it examined the relationship between time spent playing video games and the three engagement states. For the quantitative method, the data of this study was collected via an online survey, the Consumer Video Game Engagement Scale (CVGES), distributed at UNT (N = 140). The qualitative method involved asking open-ended questions at the end of the survey. The CVGES uses a 5-point Likert scale that encompasses three subscales: (a) Cognitive Engagement, (b) Affective Engagement, and (c) Behavioral Engagement. A series of analyses were conducted to analyze the quantitative data via SPSS. Also, the open-ended questions' responses were analyzed by using an inductive analysis approach. The main findings of this study were: (a) there were significant differences between males and females in cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement, (b) there were no significant differences between age groups in the three engagement states, and (c) there is a positive relationship between the time spent playing a video game and the three engagement states. Also, the game elements, such as characters, storytelling, content, the objective …

Carl A. Helmecke, like many German Americans marginalized by the anti-Germanism of the First World War and interwar period, believed that democracy had failed him. A professor with a doctoral degree in social philosophy, he regularly wrote newsletter columns declaring that the emphasis on individualism in the United States had allowed antidemocratic forces to corrupt the government, oppress citizens, and politicize schools and institutions for propaganda purposes. Moreover, widespread hunger and unemployment during the Great Depression added to the long list of failures attributable to democracy. What the United States needed, Helmecke thought, was political change, and he believed that the Nazi regime in his homeland, albeit flawed, had much to offer. In 1937, he went on a teaching sabbatical to Nazi Germany to study the Third Reich's education and social programs. When he returned to the United States, he began promoting Nazi ideals about education and labor camps. Although Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, followed by the United States entry into World War II, brought his fascist illusions for political change in the United States to an abrupt end, his belief in the correctness of an autocratic system of governance for Germany rather than that of the western democracies …

A collection of short stories exploring patterns that play out in people's lives and relationships.

Overall my dissertation work tries to capture a holistic view of the various complex interactions that occur in technology development, implementation, adoption and diffusion, in the context of three industries by examining issues that arise due to regulation of technology. Essay 1 focuses on the social media industry, which is in the early stage of the industrial life cycle, and is the foci of government attention for its ill effect on society. Results from the study (N= 647 employed adults in the US) supported hypotheses related to the antecedents and outcomes of platform utilization in the context of the three regulation dimensions. Essay 2 focuses on the automotive industry, which is in the growth stage of the industrial life cycle. Here the focus is on electric vehicles (EV) transitioning from the niches to the main market. Results from the longitudinal study (N = 429) support the moderating role of political activism on innovation capability of manufacturers and presence of ancillary services in the diffusion of different types of electric vehicles in the US market. Essay 3 focuses on the US healthcare industry, reflecting mature stage of industrial life cycle, yet also characterized with high cost and fragmentation of service. The …

Autoimmunity is a modern age medical dilemma which is inextricably linked with emotional stress. Based on semi-structured interviews and participant Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) survey results, this study confirms that the autoimmune process may be initiated via psychosocial factors like emotional stress and childhood trauma. Ninety-three percent of participants experienced adversity or trauma in childhood, and 50% of participants talked about a period of prolonged stress that preceded the onset of their condition. This study also confirms the intimate and satisfactory relationship developed between patients and complementary and alternative (CAM) practitioners, who invite patients to be co-producers of health and holistically address patients' minds, bodies, and souls. Finally, this study demonstrates the incredible resiliency of people diagnosed with autoimmune conditions and how they find healing and meaning post-diagnosis.

At least half of the art objects in the public trust are currently in need of conservation today. In consideration of this crisis, a posthuman version of art conservation curriculum is proposed to transgress current limitations of the field. Through applying Michel Foucault's genealogy and archaeology to art conservation and its education, Anthropocentric motivations undergirding conservation are revealed. Foucault's death meditation inspires my narrativization of a fire event that incites a re-visioning of my over 25 years of conservation and teaching experience. By re-contextualizing theorist Ted Aoki's works, art conservation curriculum becomes a reflective and affective site for reciprocal healing of self and other, incorporating the lives of conservation students and art objects. Reconsidering art conservation curriculum in light of Aokian notions of curriculum as plan and curriculum as lived, provokes the curricular potentialities of new materialism, along with quantum physics' entanglement, intra-agency and intra-activity for the field. Art conservation and its curriculum are radically reimagined as indwelling between humanist priorities of the Anthropocene and posthumanist possibilities towards more caring, ethical and sustainable futures for both human and nonhumans' coexistence on this planet.

This study focuses on the discourse that orders and creates a logic of the extraterrestrial during postmodernity, what I term "Fringe." Using Foucault's notion of discourse, I define and theorize Fringe and its formation during postmodernity, looking at the particular features of the historical moment post-1960 that contributed to the creation and regulation of a particular extraterrestrial. I then investigate historical conceptions of the extraterrestrial from Aquinas to Kant. This genealogy of the extraterrestrial reveals a rich history of the extraterrestrial and compares this history with Fringe. After this I discuss two precursors of Fringe discourse: the Society for Psychical Research and the writings of anomalous researcher Charles Fort. This investigation of pre-Fringe notions of the psychical in discourse shows how the SPR and Fort's work both created new ways of looking at and speaking about phenomena falling outside the purview of "normal science" and contributed to the formation of Fringe while also being distinguishable from it. Finally, I analyze two popular iterations of Fringe discourse—the ancient aliens hypothesis and the abduction narrative—as popularized in the works of Erich von Däniken and Whitley Strieber.