Academic Commons Search Results Academic Commons Search Results en-us Comparative Study of Traditional Jointing Techniques of Vernacular Timber Framings in New England, America and Jiangnan, China and Some Applications Conservation Practice Cao, Manqing Mon, 20 Jul 2015 10:10:41 +0000 The start point of this comparative study was to understand how vernacular timber houses in New England and Jiangnan in history responded to building tasks with their characteristic framing and jointing techniques. Function of wood joints was taken as the basis for comparison, as it was the fundamental consideration in the design of joints, and quite similar in vernacular buildings from different building cultures. Therefore two buildings - the Horton House and the Yin Yu Tang house - were chosen as the paradigms of traditional vernacular buildings in New England and Jiangnan. Detailed comparisons were made between their framing methods and wood joints, and more importantly, how the joints accomplished their building tasks. After that, the two actual buildings were located in the larger building contexts of the regions they belonged to, to examine the shared characters as well as diversity within each building culture. The basic consideration was still the problem-solving mechanism, and some concepts underlying were discussed. The comparison study concluded that: the box frame utilizing three-dimensional jointing, the self-supporting triangular roof structure and jointing emphasizing on structural function were the core characters of English timber framing; while structure composed of simple duplication of building components, ingenious joint designs which had more consideration for aesthetics and reinforced the structure only indirectly were essential to timber construction in Jiangnan. This conclusion was then applied to develop a critical thinking about methodologies of wood building conservation, with specific emphasis on practices in China. The conclusions were in two categories: 1. applying some western approaches in Chinese timber framing conservation, such as developing systematic scientific research; 2. revitalizing traditional practices of construction and repairing in China, such as studying past techniques via precise conservation process, identifying and utilizing techniques which are culturally valuable, and training professional craftsmen to recover the glorious beauty as well as physical soundness. Architecture, Asian studies, American studies mc3845 Historic Preservation Master's theses Political Mormonism From Joseph Smith to Mitt Romney, 1844-2012 Frost, Abraham J. Tue, 29 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 An analysis into the political development of the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) movement from Joseph Smith until the candidacy of Mitt Romney. The basic inquiry attached to analyzing Political Mormonism is fundamentally twofold: exploring the why of political Mormonism as well as how it came to its current station in America. Both seek to understand the operative function of Mormon political behaviors, while exploring the unique position Mormons hold in the American experiment. By looking at the evolution of normative Mormon political output, we come to understand the important and contemporary role Mormons hold in the American polity. American studies, Political science ajf2179 American Studies Master's theses The Rise of the Mall Ortega, Lauren E. Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000 This thesis builds a case for the significance of the regional shopping center—the mall—within the context of postwar American suburbs. Through an analysis of its history, design and the culture it created, the role of the mall within the greater landscape of suburban development arises as a critical component within the social and architectural systems of suburbia. During an era when the suburban development was exploding prewar concepts of what defined a 'suburb', the regional mall arose as a centralizing force within the sprawl. As a new building type, the mall was designed as a civic and commercial center, a place where social life could convene and flourish. Plans and speeches from mall designers were full of idealistic rhetoric yet the mall's overwhelming success proved its necessity. It was the public's response to the mall that allowed it to achieve its idealistic goals and take its place a suburban center. This role within the larger historic framework of the suburbs has been underplayed and as a result, many historic malls are being demolished or severely changed without any discussion of their significance. This thesis discusses the possible futures of historic malls and the challenges they face that prevent many from the wrecking ball. The mall's past as a civic and social center for suburban life defines its significance for preservation today. The reincarnation of this role is also that which can save the mall and define a new future for this unique suburban building. American studies, Architecture ley2105 Historic Preservation Master's theses The Salome Ensemble and the Dialectics of Visibility: Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezierska, Sonya Levien and Jetta Goudal Ginsberg, Alan Robert Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 Four women, a journalist, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an actress, joined forces in the nineteen-twenties in a project of artistic and personal creation. They produced tangible, material results, in the form of a popular novel and a Hollywood movie, which advanced the careers of the collaborators. In this process they also participated in and contributed to a profound social and cultural shift which continues to reverberate in society almost a century later. While helping each other, they advanced the status of American women, workers, immigrants, the downtrodden and the dispossessed. Together these four women invented a fictional character, an imagined combination of their own selves, who pursued love, professional success, and artistic fulfillment with passion, effort and tenacity. She reflected the attractive and the subversive aspects of her creators. She was dubbed a "Salome" because she actively pursued her desires, using all of the powers she could summon, including sheer force of will, intelligence, and sexual allure. This "Salome of the Tenements" of the novel and the movie of that name delighted young women while offending genteel sensibilities throughout the nation. The journalist, poet, playwright and political activist Rose Pastor Stokes, the cooking teacher-turned-novelist Anzia Yezierska, the lawyer, magazine editor and screenwriter Sonya Levien, and the stage and screen actress Jetta Goudal comprised a purposeful community of discourse, a foursome, a group, a quartet, an ensemble. Each played an instrumental role in the creation and performance. They began as four penniless Jewish immigrants to America who were powerfully attracted to wealthy, educated, sophisticated, aristocratic men from old, established American Protestant families, men of letters and titans of industry. To these women the attraction was more than erotic. They were drawn to these men as role models, as icons of Americanism; they did not only want to marry these men, they wanted to be them. Disillusionment inevitably followed. To the men, these women were beautiful, passionate, alluring, exotic intelligent, challenging foreigners whose very differences from women of their own set made them desirable. The women of The Salome Ensemble were strong, resourceful, creative, intelligent individuals who together accomplished what they could not do alone. Rose was the mentor, Anzia wrote the novel, Sonya wrote the screenplay and Jetta starred in the movie. They each profited directly from that collaboration, but they also helped and affected each other and millions of others profoundly far beyond that immediate production. Their joint venture provided entree into social, intellectual, artistic, and political communities that crossed class, ethnic, national, and philosophical lines. They questioned authority, quested for status, won applause and opprobrium, experienced love and loss, changed laws and minds. Theirs is a compelling, and nearly-forgotten history. They discovered and experienced art as a social, not a solitary activity. They engaged with newspaper and magazine editors, book publishers, movie producers and directors, other journalists, writers, poets, politicians, educators, philosophers, lawyers, judges, playwrights, and actors. They willfully chose affiliations, personal and professional. They sought solidarity and empathy which can only be freely offered, not imposed. There was for The Salome Ensemble no apparent contradiction in the fact that individuals often achieve self-fulfillment and realization only as members of a community. That seamlessness of individualism and community informs the story of these four women and their artistic creation. They were able to pursue altruism and autonomy together; to act in the interests of self and society simultaneously. Sharing some elements of The Metaphysical Club of philosophical pragmatists, the women of the Heterodoxy Club, of which Rose Pastor Stokes was a member, the Imagined Communities identified by Benedict Anderson, the Beloved Community of New York Intellectuals of Randolph Bourne, and the Little Platoons of Society described by Edmund Burke, The Salome Ensemble was similar to these other communities of discourse, but it also was significantly different. These women assembled a kind of pre-digital social network which allowed them to work as individuals together, in a mutually beneficial affiliation which produced lasting works of art and offered them to an emerging mass consumer public. In moving those productions through the intellectual, commercial, industrial, and technological mechanisms and institutions of the age, they shaped and changed expectations, perceptions and the mechanisms and institutions themselves. Although their names are faded from memory now, when the book and movie were released, all four of them were famous. They were Zelig-like in their connections, friendships, rivalries, and romances among the intellectual world of New York City, the emerging Hollywood image machine, labor unions, political activists and agitators, international Socialists, anarchists, poets, novelists, nascent mass media, and women's rights proponents. This paper investigates the relationships between these women and the public world they inhabited. It includes both a micro-history focus on the lives of four individuals, and an investigation of the macro context in which that history took place. At the same time, I examine and place this community of discourse in a moment in literary history at the transition from romantic sentimentalism to social realism and literary modernism. American studies ag2320 American Studies Master's theses The Subway Sessions: How technology is changing the way we interact with music in public space and reshaping sociomusical theory French, Kory Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000 For the millions of Americans who use it, the iPod has changed the way we ‘receive’ music. I place an emphasis on receive because it refers to both the consumerist act of ‘purchasing’ and the inherent act of ‘listening’ to sound. Essentially, there are two properties that the iPod and its inexorable cousins of multiple musical trading platforms have brought, or at least accelerated, to music that perpetuate this shift—availability and accessibility. Availability has delimited the boundaries, both physical and cultural, of what music we can learn of, listen to, and acquaint ourselves with. Accessibility has provided us with hours of recorded material in a device that is, at times, the size of a postage stamp and can cost less than concert tickets. This has made music a part of everyday life regardless of who one is, what his or her knowledge of music may be, or the social class he or she belongs to. Together, these two properties have allowed recorded music to become as ubiquitous as any other sound of living—natural or industrial, urban or rural. American studies, Music kgf2108 Music, American Studies Master's theses