Queer Temporality and Aesthetics in Taylor Mac\u27s The Lily\u27s Revenge: a Dramaturgical Exploration of the Play at UMass Amherst

This master’s thesis documents the dramaturgical exploration of the spring 2018 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater’s production of gender non-conforming performance artist Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge. The thesis is separated into two parts. The first half focuses on my dramaturgical analysis of Mac’s play and its exploration of queer temporality and queer embodiment, asserting the importance of queer aesthetics in American drama and its vital role in shaping the future of LGBTQIA+ politics in the United States. The second half includes reflections on rehearsal processes and performances, giving readers and fellow artists examples of the potential of queer dramaturgical practices that are products of LGBTQIA+ theater and politics in the United States. These reflections show the application of research to rehearsal processes into theatrical performances as directed, designed, and performed by graduate and undergraduate students at UMass Amherst Department of Theater, located in Amherst, Massachusetts, thus giving a trajectory of how the queer and feminist theories written into the play are manifested into a full production through collaborative design, movement, staging, and performance. Drawn from my discoveries while working on The Lily’s Revenge as production dramaturg, I have shaped my own style of collaborative “queer dramaturgy” with the director and designers, hopefully, opening new entry points of future explorations for queer dramaturgs to synthesize theory and practice onto the stage with collaborators from all disciplines and identities

The Linguistics of Newswriting

The Linguistics of Newswriting focuses on text production in journalistic media as both a socially relevant field of language use and as a strategic field of applied linguistics. The book discusses and paves the way for scientific projects in the emerg­ing field of linguistics of newswriting. From empirical micro and theoretical macro perspectives, strategies and practices of research development and knowledge transformation are discussed. Thus, the book is addressed to researchers, teachers and coaches interested in the linguistics of professional writing in general and news­writing in particular. Together with the training materials provided on the internet www.news-writing.net, the book will also be useful to anyone who wants to become a more “discerning consumer" (Perry, 2005) or a more reflective producer of language in the media

Machine Performers: Agents in a Multiple Ontological State

In this thesis, the author explores and develops new attributes for machine performers and merges the trans-disciplinary fields of the performing arts and artificial intelligence. The main aim is to redefine the term “embodiment” for robots on the stage and to demonstrate that this term requires broadening in various fields of research. This redefining has required a multifaceted theoretical analysis of embodiment in the field of artificial intelligence (e.g. the uncanny valley), as well as the construction of new robots for the stage by the author. It is hoped that these practical experimental examples will generate more research by others in similar fields. Even though the historical lineage of robotics is engraved with theatrical strategies and dramaturgy, further application of constructive principles from the performing arts and evidence from psychology and neurology can shift the perception of robotic agents both on stage and in other cultural environments. In this light, the relation between representation, movement and behaviour of bodies has been further explored to establish links between constructed bodies (as in artificial intelligence) and perceived bodies (as performers on the theatrical stage). In the course of this research, several practical works have been designed and built, and subsequently presented to live audiences and research communities. Audience reactions have been analysed with surveys and discussions. Interviews have also been conducted with choreographers, curators and scientists about the value of machine performers. The main conclusions from this study are that fakery and mystification can be used as persuasive elements to enhance agency. Morphologies can also be applied that tightly couple brain and sensorimotor actions and lead to a stronger stage presence. In fact, if this lack of presence is left out of human replicants, it causes an “uncanny” lack of agency. Furthermore, the addition of stage presence leads to stronger identification from audiences, even for bodies dissimilar to their own. The author demonstrates that audience reactions are enhanced by building these effects into machine body structures: rather than identification through mimicry, this causes them to have more unambiguously biological associations. Alongside these traits, atmospheres such as those created by a cast of machine performers tend to cause even more intensely visceral responses. In this thesis, “embodiment” has emerged as a paradigm shift – as well as within this shift – and morphological computing has been explored as a method to deepen this visceral immersion. Therefore, this dissertation considers and builds machine performers as “true” performers for the stage, rather than mere objects with an aura. Their singular and customized embodiment can enable the development of non-anthropocentric performances that encompass the abstract and conceptual patterns in motion and generate – as from human performers – empathy, identification and experiential reactions in live audiences

Defining and measuring music teacher identity: a study of self-efficacy and commitment among music teachers

The two purposes of this study were to: (a) define music teacher identity and its underlying constructs based on a critical examination of the extant research, and (b) develop an instrument to measure selected constructs from among a sample of music teachers across years of teaching The Music Teacher Identity Scale (MTIS), a researcher-constructed data gathering instrument, was developed to measure two constructs of music teacher identity: Music Teacher Self-Efficacy and Music Teacher Commitment. Participants in the study were selected using a stratified sampling technique, based on music teaching level, and MENC Division membership, producing a total of 2,500 possible participants. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's coefficient alpha, item-total corrected correlation, and inter-item correlation were used to evaluate the degree of reliability of the survey instrument. A factor analysis was calculated to provide evidence of the construct validity for the measurement instrument. Factorial Analysis of Variance was used to find differences among the constructs of Music Teacher Efficacy and Music Teacher Commitment by year of teaching, gender, school location, teaching area, and by teaching level. The MTIS had an overall reliability of α = .81, with the individual constructs of Music Teacher Self-Efficacy reliability of α = .87, and Music Teacher Commitment of α = .67. The two constructs were found to contribute 42.17 percent of the variance through the exploratory factor analysis. Statistically significant differences were found among all years of teaching experience for Music Teacher Self-Efficacy. Statistically significant differences were found between Music Teacher Self-Efficacy and Music Teacher Commitment at each experience level examined. Music Teacher Commitment was found to be a statistically significant different between men and women. A significant three way interaction effect was found in Music Teacher Commitment at the 6-10 years of teaching experience between Middle /Junior High School and High School, and again at the 31+ years of teaching experience between Middle /Junior High School and High School. Recommendations were suggested for future research regarding music teacher identity construction

Women, Emotional Labor, and Higher Education Administration: A Qualitative Interview Study

Emotional labor is not a gender-specific experience. Hochschild (1983) estimated that roughly one-third of American workers encounter substantial emotional labor demands as a result of their occupation. However, this study examined women’s experiences with emotional labor in higher education because women face different expectations of emotional management (Wharton & Erickson, 1993; Hochschild, 1983). Emotions are situated within larger, gendered, and sexualized hierarchies that are reinforced through normalizing discourses and social arrangements that dictate what is normal (Illouz, 2007). Furthermore, power relations shape emotions through sometimes unseen, yet repetitious disciplinary techniques (i.e., emotional norms) that make up the patriarchy; particularly in organizational structures, which are not gender neutral (Acker, 1990). Thus, norms, such as emotions, that shape and encode our society deserve our attention, research, and criticality. This study provides a platform to recognize and acknowledge the ways in which participants experience and understand emotional labor within the workplace of higher education administration. Two semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 women higher education administrators about their experiences and understandings of emotional labor. Interview transcripts were analyzed to identify salient and emergent themes. The results of this study show that participant’s experiences and understandings of emotional labor are contextualized within their work environment and culture which emphasizes power and privilege through degrees, ranks and hierarchies. Hierarchies are made explicit in highly politicized places where emotional labor is necessary to appear as rational. Further, participants conceptualized emotional labor as part of their performance of professionalism and leadership which points to the commodification of emotions and behaviors as part of employment. Finally, through the embodiment of the organization, findings demonstrate the gendered nature of the participant’s work environment by acknowledging the way their institution privileges behavior rooted in masculine concepts such as emotion-less rationality. Implications include the acknowledgment of traditionally “invisible” work and the highlighting of gender relations within this work environment

To Affinity and Beyond: Interactive Digital Humans as a Human Computer Interface

The field of human computer interaction is increasingly exploring the use of more natural, human-like user interfaces to build intelligent agents to aid in everyday life. This is coupled with a move to people using ever more realistic avatars to represent themselves in their digital lives. As the ability to produce emotionally engaging digital human representations is only just now becoming technically possible, there is little research into how to approach such tasks. This is due to both technical complexity and operational implementation cost. This is now changing as we are at a nexus point with new approaches, faster graphics processing and enabling new technologies in machine learning and computer vision becoming available. I articulate the issues required for such digital humans to be considered successfully located on the other side of the phenomenon known as the Uncanny Valley. My results show that a complex mix of perceived and contextual aspects affect the sense making on digital humans and highlights previously undocumented effects of interactivity on the affinity. Users are willing to accept digital humans as a new form of user interface and they react to them emotionally in previously unanticipated ways. My research shows that it is possible to build an effective interactive digital human that crosses the Uncanny Valley. I directly explore what is required to build a visually realistic digital human as a primary research question and I explore if such a realistic face provides sufficient benefit to justify the challenges involved in building it. I conducted a Delphi study to inform the research approaches and then produced a complex digital human character based on these insights. This interactive and realistic digital human avatar represents a major technical undertaking involving multiple teams around the world. Finally, I explored a framework for examining the ethical implications and signpost future research areas

'Active Agony’ within Wolfgang Rihm’s Tutuguri and the 4th String Quartet

Wolfgang Rihm’s mature output has always betrayed a tangible and formative connection with other forms of artistic expression, to the extent that he effectively speaks of himself as a sculptor of sound. The successive particular influence in the 70s and early 80s of Kurt Kocherscheidt and Arnulf Rainer in the visual arts and Antonin Artaud in dramaturgy have been variously explored, at least in relation to the works from the mid 80s onwards. One work, Tutuguri, has been called a “border crossing point” in his creative development but it perhaps should thought of rather as the place where Rihm engaged in a more overt struggle to make his creative compositional processes more like those of visual artists. Rihm’s subsequent poetics, and the commentary of others, has tended perhaps to obscure the formative nature of his compositional thinking between late 1980 and 1982 during the composition of Tutuguri and the 4th String Quartet, and therefore to overlook his developing responses to other art forms which influenced his writing at that time. In focusing, for example, on Rihm’s “worked out” musical processes of the late 80s and 90s which are directly comparable and analogous to Rainer’s technique of “Overpainting”, earlier “premonitions” in Tutuguri and the 4th Quartet in particular may have been overlooked, in favour of connections with Artaud even though these are not always necessarily obvious in the music. Underpinning this struggle was the tension between the imaginary and the symbolic where the spontaneous imagination found itself at odds with the need to write the music out symbolically, a state which Rihm refers to as the “active agony” caused by the “comprehensive conflict of material and imagination”. This struggle can be illustrated through consideration of some of the tensions inherent in the 4th Quartet which Rihm, writing on the occasion of its first performance in 1983, described as a «late-comer and at the same time a precursor». In Tutuguri these tensions are evident throughout through the collision between the influential art forms of Rainer/Artaud and Rihm’s idea of ‘Musicblocks’, as expressed in his essay Ins eigene Fleisch. The resulting musical gestures can be directly and metaphorically related to “the blow of the chisel, the brushes” and these connections have not been extensively explored for the various works which constitute the Tutuguri “cycle”. This paper explores some of the complex interconnections of artistic ideas that are to be found in Rihm’s two major works of 1981-82, focusing in particular on Tutuguri parts I, VI, III and the 4th String Quartet, relating some of the essential generative conceptual ideas which inform them to examples of musical gestures and “setting” in the aforementioned works. By suggesting ways in which the actual musical materials in these compositions can be construed, our understanding of the development of these ideas in Rihm’s later music can be deepened

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy. It offers thirty-one different methods that scholars use for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy. Each chapter presents one method by explaining its utility in deliberative democracy research and providing guidance on its application by drawing on examples from previous studies. The book hopes to inspire scholars to undertake methodologically robust, intellectually creative, and politically relevant research. It fills a significant gap in a rapidly growing field of research by assembling diverse methods and thereby expanding the range of methodological choices available to students, scholars, and practitioners of deliberative democracy

REVIVING THE RULES, ROLES, AND RITUALS OF RESILIENCY

This descriptive case study of a historical period in education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky identifies the resiliency factors utilized by the first class to desegregate the Bowling Green, Kentucky, public school system. The participants in the study were members of the first African-American class to integrate the Bowling Green school system in 1965. Critical Race Theory provided the tenets undergirding the research study. The qualitative research methods included conducting semi-structured interviews with participants; studying documents and artifacts from the era; having conversations with community members and educators; and collecting, archiving, and housing Bowling Green African-American education documents, artifacts, and memorabilia. During the semi-structured interviews conducted a half century later, participants’ verbal, facial, and body expressions exemplified the pain and discomfort they experienced throughout this transition. Participants described how the use of resiliency factors learned from their families, teachers, churches, and community enabled them to analyze, interpret, navigate, compete, and graduate. Participants indicated their encounter with the historically segregated, white school system was confusing, conflicting, and in some instances, contentious. The experience was disorienting for all participants. Participants also reported achievement gap conflicts were encountered from the first day of the desegregated school year. Their explanations of the internal and external motivational resources and resiliency factors that they employed provides historical basis for discussions of achievement gap issues today. Their description of this unprecedented historical encounter shares resemblances to present day achievement gap issues. Findings from a contemporary study on resiliency conducted by Brown (2008) suggest present day achievement gap conflicts may be cultural and psychological conflicts that can be identified, measured, and analyzed by academic indicators