The process of knowledge construction: a triple parallel wrighting [sic] of science, sociology of scientific knowledge and a candidate Ph.D. thesis

This thesis is an inquiry into the 'process of knowledge construction' in three research domains. These domains are the research into endothelin (a potent vasoconstrictive peptide identified in 1988) in bio-medical science, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (henceforth, SSK) and the SSK-oriented research of the 'process of knowledge construction' pursued by the Candidate PhD student. The thesis is pursued with a recognition of the self-referential character of itself, that is, reflexivity. Namely, the Candidate's research, including the writing/reading of this thesis, is itself a process of knowledge construction. This recognition is displayed in and through a series of experimental textual forms, 'New Literary Forms (henceforth, NLFs) developed in SSK. Through NLFs, the thesis aims to make itself a wrighting, which connotes "'writing', 'righting' (correcting), and 'wright-ing' (making and working)" (Ashmore 1985, 1989), of the triple parallel process of knowledge construction. [Continues.

The Effect of Sentence-Combining Practice on the Syntactic Maturity Level of Writing and on Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of sentence-combining practice on the syntactic maturity level of the writing and on the level of reading comprehension of ninth grade students enrolled in a compensatory-level English class. The indicators of syntactic maturity used in the study were structured writing and free writing. During the six-week, sentence-combining treatment period, the experimental group focused attention on various syntactic sentence structures by writing the exercises and by class discussion of these exercises. The treatment program was evaluated by comparing the treatment group to the control group on the structured writing, free writing, and reading comprehension measures which had been used to equate the groups prior to the treatment period. The data were analyzed by means of the t-test for independent means. The result of the analysis of the data of the three areas investigated showed that the experimental group had a significantly higher mean T-unit length for the structured writing than did the control Group. A trend existed in favor of the experimental group with a mean T-unit length of the free writing higher than that of the control group, but not at a significant level. There was no significant difference between the two groups in the scores of the reading comprehension test. Based on analysis of the data, the conclusion can be drawn that sentence-combining practice does lead to an increased level of syntactic maturity in writing as measured by the repeated completion of a piece of structured writing, which is really an exercise in sentence-combining. The increased level of syntactic maturity did not carry over to the free writing at a significant level. This may be due to student emphasis on the generation of ideas rather than on the condensation and revision of sentence structure. The premise was investigated that as the student becomes aware of syntactic structures in his writing, he may also recognize and comprehend them in his reading. This premise was not substantiated in the study. This may be due to the instrument\u27s inability to measure the knowledge and use of syntax in the reading situation. Interest in writing maturity and the interrelatedness of writing and reading skills opens numerous areas which need further research and gives support for the use of sentence-combining exercises in the classroom

Globalization, values, and consumer trends: A French and USA comparison

This thesis examined how factors such as perceptions of globalization, individual and nationalistic values, and cultural products influenced consumer choice in French and American nationals

Improvising difference : constructing Canarian Jazz cultures

textThis dissertation is a performance of and around borders, emphasizing how physical and virtual boundaries impact members of a community on the global periphery. More specifically, it interrogates the ways in which Canarian jazz musicians encounter and interact with the multiple types of actively produced aislamiento (isolation). As an autonomous community of Spain, the vestiges of colonialism are quite present in everyday Canarian life, despite many inhabitants' self-identification as African. This project traces three main lines of inquiry: the historical construction of the Canary Islands as exoticized periphery; the eradication of the Afro/Canarian subject through the ongoing ideological and physical violence; and the ways in which Canarian populations are re-asserting their identities—as Afro/Canarian, diasporic, and trans-Atlantic—through critical performance against trenchant stereotypes and the dominant paradigms that propagate them. Throughout the dissertation, I examine how surfaces—architectural, cartographic, scholarly and sonic—act to frame (and mask) cultural and musical identity. The ideological seams of these surfaces can function as interstitial spaces from which critical resistance can be performed through improvising musical and discursive acts. Just as Canarian jazz musicians play against and across dominant paradigms to subsist, I will demonstrate how interstitial research methodologies can break open the potentially obscuring surfaces that these paradigms construct. I extend David Sudnow's notion of the "articulational reach" and his phenomenologically informed exploration of piano performance into ethnographic research, emphasizing how my own subjectivity as researcher/pianist impacts and shapes the project. Crucial to Sudnow's "reach" is its inherently improvisatory emergence and the uncertainty of its outcome. In short, the ways in which Canarian musicians must improvise performances in musical and social environments will be examined and resonating with an approach imbued with the same improvising, subjective unfolding—both in terms of research methodology and of writerly perspective. The dissertation could be read as an unfolding, improvised construction that is constantly accruing new meanings: its chapters are not so much driven by an overarching or individual theses so much as by the spinning out of possible responses to the questions surrounding the project's initial premises.Musi

Between Formenlehre and Cognition: A Puzzle-Based Investigation into the Perceptibility of Classical Syntax

A hybrid of theory-based analysis and empirical enquiry, this dissertation seeks to investigate the perceptibility of Classical syntax, ultimately striving to bridge the knowledge gaps that have long existed between the fields of analysis and cognitive science. In particular, the study looks to address the following unknowns: 1) recognition of initial tonic; 2) recognition of tight-knit and loose thematic constructions; and 3) understanding of the contextual nature of cadence. The study centres on the reconstruction of Classical piano sonatas that have been segmented into puzzle pieces using form-functional and sonata theories, an approach that enables the application of syntactical and formal perspectives in an empirical setting, thus giving this study its novelty. The following were hypothesised: 1) sequential accuracy, the ability to process Classical syntax and level of formal training are linearly related; 2) functional recognition, however, is found in any individual familiar with Western musical style regardless of educational background; 3) understanding of Classical syntax is largely Mozartean. The experiments were carried out virtually and were targeted at subjects that were representative of the spectrum of theoretical expertise. Results collected confirm the ability of subjects to organise formal functions, discern initial tonic given a random mix of harmonic shades, recognise the difference between tight-knit and loose themes and their significance, as well as the prevalence of Mozartean idiom in the cognitive faculty and the linear relationship between expertise and accuracy. Inasmuch as these findings strongly suggest that form-functional relationships are audible, the dissertation argues for the incorporation of both analysis and empirical science in music education, a combination that results in a richer understanding and deeper appreciation of musical processes

Thinking Through Antinomies: An Enquiry into Manfredo Tafuri's Historical Method

The following thesis addresses Manfredo Tafuri's historical and critical method. It considers a selection of studies conducted by the Italian historian at different moments of his intellectual trajectory, and it explores how his unorthodox approach succeeded in challenging established architectural accounts and in exposing the ideologically constructed figure of the architect. The thesis takes its points of departure from Fredric Jameson's interpretation of Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co's book Modern Architecture as a story of sequential failed attempts to resolve the contradiction between the city and the building (or more abstractly, between totality and individual work). Expanding on Jameson's reading, it illustrates how, in the selection of works considered, Tafuri organises his narrative around pairs of (apparently) antinomic terms such as plan and Plan, image and fragment, rule and licence, reality and utopia. Central to the thesis is also the charting of the theoretical and political encounters that shaped Tafuri's mode of thinking. Chapter One focuses on Tafuri and Italian Workerism. It investigates how the Frankfurt School-inflected critique of planning initiated by the founder of Workerism Raniero Panzieri inspired Tafuri's own reading of urban planning. It also looks at the way Tafuri extended the critique of intellectual labour advanced within the frame of the Italian Marxist journal Contropiano to the domain of architecture. Chapter Two tackles Tafuri's analysis of the use of fragment and fragmentation in the work of the Venetian etcher Giambattista Piranesi and in that of the 20th-century avant-garde. It contends that Tafuri's exploration of the meaning of the fragment in works dating from different historical moments is intended to reveal the effect of capitalist development on the communicative potential of form. Chapter Three takes its lead from the 1977 text 'The Historical "Project"', in which Tafuri establishes a set of guidelines for the historical research which will inform his study of Renaissance architecture in the following years. It examines how the application of this method allows Tafuri to challenge established historical accounts of the Renaissance such as that of Rudolf Wittkower. Finally, Chapter Four returns to Tafuri's earliest interventions in the post-war Italian architectural debate. Whereas the first part considers journal articles on the question of the replanning of Rome, the second focuses on a selection of texts tackling the discussion over the new urban scale and architectural neo-realism

Frankétienne: towards an aesthetic of rewriting

This thesis examines the Haitian writer Franketienne's practice of rewriting his own texts, a feature of his work which frequently has been overlooked. It argues that rewriting shapes his oeuvre, providing him with the opportunity to mirror the characteristic openness and mobility of his principal literary aesthetic, the Spiral. Rewriting also enables him to bring out certain themes more clearly, such as zombification, deciphering, and cannibalism. These aesthetic and thematic aspects are, the thesis concludes, the most important functions at work in Franketienne's rewriting. By focusing on this practice, I am also able to chart important evolutions across the forty years of Franketienne's literary production.Addressing this issue of rewriting, I compare a corpus of Franketienne's texts with their rewritten versions, ranging from his earliest rewriting, Les Affres d'un defi (1979), through Mur a crever (1995), Ultravocal (1995), up to Les Metamorphoses de I'oiseau schizophone (1996-7) and Dezafi (2002). The first chapter outlines the main hyperbolizing tendencies in Franketienne's rewriting of his Creole text Dezafi (1975) in Les Affres d'un defi (1979) and Dezafi (2002), arguing that Les Affres d'un defi can be seen as Franketienne's first rewriting, and not just as a French translation of Dezafi. In chapter two, I demonstrate that Franketienne renews his first literary texts Mur a crever (1968) and Ultravocal (1972) after a period of some thirty years by updating their initial presentation of Spiralism to reflect later developments in his aesthetic ideas, and through the addition of new and stronger allusions to recent events in Haiti. Based on Franketienne's most major rewriting to date — Les Metamorphoses de I 'oiseau schizophone (1996-7) — chapters three and four show how Franketienne's thematic and aesthetic concerns become far more pronounced as his practice of rewriting evolves.When Franketienne rewrites, I have found that he does so mainly by accretion, integrating additions of various lengths throughout his texts, which are swelled considerably as a result. My study shows that aesthetic concerns become more pronounced through added references to the open and mobile Spiral form, and to the aesthetic processes which constitute the rewriting itself. Four such processes are detected: hyperbolization, deciphering/clarification, recapitulation, and cannibalization. In thematic terms, his rewriting develops certain key themes with greater complexity. Clearer political references are often added, in particular to the dictatorship of Francis Duvalier, as well as to recent politically significant events in Haiti, which thus bring older works up to date. Of all these processes and themes, I argue that cannibalism is the most important because of the opportunity it affords for comment on key political themes, and for summing up the rewriting process itself. Throughout Les Metamorphoses de I'oiseau schizophone cannibalism is used as a metaphor to represent both the iniquity of those in power in Haiti since 1804, and Franketienne's practice of rewriting, which is depicted as a very physical process of eating his own texts, and bringing them back up again replete with new additions

Washington University Senior Honor Thesis Abstracts (WUSHTA), Spring 2018

Complete issue of the Washington University Senior Honors Thesis Abstracts (WUSHTA), Spring 2018. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Lindsey Paunovich Editor; Kristin G. Sobotka, Programs Manager; Jennifer Kohl