Does This Icon Tell Me This Site Is Secure?: A Study Of User Perceptions

This research examined how people perceive current site connection indicator icons and corresponding informational message statements found in six web browsers. The paper begins by providing some background of the research area as well as an overview of the site connection indicator icon and informational message statement. An online survey was also conducted, which asked participants to best match statements from the informational messages with site connection indicator icons. The main finding of this research was that based on the wording of the informational message statements, participants often chose corresponding site connection indicator icons in a manner similar to how web browser developers paired the site connection indicator icons and informational message statements. This provides evidence that web browser users perceive the informational message statements as generally matching the site connection indicator icons that represent them.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Deifying Beauty. Toward the Definition of a Paradigm for Byzantine Aesthetics

Moving from the problem of defining how medieval speculation conceived the aesthetic dimension of art, this essay purposes an insight into the aspects that describe the peculiarity of the Byzantine conception of beauty and art. Surpassing the noetic perspective established by Platonic thought – shared also by Western medieval philosophy – according to which beauty is an intelligible model subsisting in itself as an autonomous entity, the Byzantine proper vision conceives beauty as a divine energy. The implications of this perspective lead us to investigate its connection with some of the most original achievements of Byzantine speculation, such as hypostatic ontology, theology of deification, eikonic thinking, and especially sophianic gnoseology, which permit us to overcome the dichotomy of the intelligible and the sensible domains of reality

Hate Couture: Subcultural fundamentalism and the Serbian Black Metal Music Scene

This work is an ethnography of the Serbian black metal music scene. Through ethnographic descriptions and a study of the manner in which social scientists have conceptualized youth movements and scenes in the past decades it is hoped to present a study of an international phenomenon from the perspective of a Serbian music scene. Many of the current anxieties concerning the post-socialist decline in mainstream consensus and its substitution with forms of youth culture as ‘politics by other means’ will be addressed. These social scenes are a response to the demands and possibilities that contemporary modernity produces in the Balkans and within capitalist society in general. Both Serbia and the black metal scene, have in the past been represented as both ‘other’ and dangerous to the body politic of Europe. The disjuncture between perception and experience are explored here through techniques of ethnographic representation and embodied descriptions of the attraction and internal logics that operate both within Serbia and the wider black metal music scene. Hospitality, scene myth-making, cathartic effervescence, masculinity and a ‘volkish’ performance of identity are some of the themes explored here through the medium of music and its capacity to both mirror and contest extremes of ideology and violence. This work also takes into account the ‘flows’ of influence and discourse that exist in scenic networks that link Scandinavian Satanic Paganism, the extreme right in Polish and Russian metal music and a receptive but deeply individualistic Serbian version of a shared scenic space. Despite the scenes' links to extremist discourses this thesis reveals insights into a (scene based) virulently patriotic Pan-Slavic identity. An identity which manages to regularly contradict and efface many of the tensions that outside observers would typically expect to exist between Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians and their surrounding neighbors, in reflexive and surprising ways

Eucharist: prayer, communion, unity

The purpose of this thesis is to assert the theological connection between the Eucharistic Prayer and sacramental Communion. On this basis it argues that the Eucharistic Prayer ritually functions as the “heart” and “center” of the Mass, while the reception of sacramental Communion, specifically the Communion Procession, is more properly described as the ritual “summit” of the Eucharistic liturgy. It also emphasizes that the unity of the Body of Christ is the ultimate purpose of the Eucharist, which is deepened by the reception of sacramental Communion. This vital relationship between Eucharistic praying and Eucharistic Communion is in need of additional theological development, as well as ritual attention and catechetical emphasis. Ultimately, such theological, ritual, and catechetical efforts could lead to an enhanced understanding of and appreciation for each element in its full theological richness, as well as deepen the full, conscious, and active participation in the Eucharist, the supreme sacrament of the Church

"A place that has its own identity": Boston and New England as filmic imagined community

This thesis analyzes the imagination and construction of the New England region in American audiovisual media, and the resulting filmic identity of the region and its people. As a result of this presentation, filmic New England can be understood in audiovisual media as a type of imagined community that can stand as an analogue for the idea of a nation. Primarily, this thesis examines the ways the American film industry, through filmic cues in narrative, dialogue, and image, temporally imagines and spatially constructs a filmic New England identity. American audiovisual media seems to create this identity as a byproduct of a larger negotiation of an American national identity. Importantly, this thesis argues that specific “local” films, produced in the last two decades, subvert this imagined otherness by presenting an identity that allows citizens of the region to imagine their own community. Examining this constructed identity through the varying theoretical lenses of otherness and identity, history, memory, and space, this thesis argues that the filmic representation of New England exists as a type of imagined community. Organized in a chronological manner, this thesis first focuses on early American films depicting an epochal event in American pre-history, the Salem Witch Trials. It next examines a group of films from mid-century in which New Englanders travel throughout the US. Finally, the thesis follows the filmography as it turns towards urban space, and focuses primarily on Good Will Hunting, a turning point in both the presentation and construction of the New England filmic identity

Orthodox women in America : the making of the conservative-liberal subject

This dissertation asks: what does it mean and feel like to be an Eastern Orthodox woman in America? It answers this question by exploring how it is possible to become an Orthodox woman in the present day United States. By attending to the Orthodox Christian and Western liberal discourses, everyday practices and material spaces in which practitioners – Russian immigrant women and American converts – are immersed, this dissertation unveils the slow process of becoming and the everyday experience of being an Orthodox Christian subject. This dissertation proposes that it is possible for the Orthodox women in the United States to embody a double subjectivity that reconciles conservative values, such as doctrinal commitments to gendered hierarchies, with liberal values, such as personal professions of individual freedom in complex and sometimes unpredictable ways. In doing so, this dissertation complicates an assumption that Orthodox Christian identity is best understood as a subject position, which is always already opposed to the secular liberalism that defines the West.Religious Studie

Songs of Deviance and Defiance: Subjectivity, emotions and authenticity in Bhawaiya Folk Songs of North Bengal

Bhawaiya is one of the most popular folk song genres to Bengalis. While all Bangla folk songs express the emotions and the stories of the most marginal people, Bhawaiya is significant for expressing the female passion grounded in day to day material reality through the stories of the female subject of the songs. The passionate lyrics of Bhawaiya, when expressing love and desire for a woman’s lover, are not always bound to marital or ‘legitimate’ sexual relations. In this research, through the lens of these songs, I wanted to locate those emotions that are often seems deviant but at the same time can defy the normative control, to construct the female subversive subjectivities. To situate Bhawaiya, I reexamined the generic borders between Bhawaiya and other main Bangla folks song genres that were constructed through the rise of Bengali nationalism to see how Bhawaiya existed in the margins with subversive emotions connected to those identities. Through my ethnographical research of the ‘Bhawaiya people’, such as singers, producers, researchers in the main Bhawaiya areas, I see how those emotions are evoked through performances and how they made connections between the performers and the listeners. Since the contemporary reproduction of folk songs genres is difficult to compare with the original traditional forms due to the technological changes and appropriation by artists and their different interests, I also examined how these changes create an emotional atmosphere that affects the singers and the listeners. The appropriation of folk songs by contemporary singers has also raised heated debate about authenticity. I analysed how, without having the authority over authenticating the folk songs, the marginal singers and folk song producers create a vast market for the songs that are often considered deviant. These songs, despite being considered deviant by the authorities of Bangla folk songs, can challenge the authorities of authenticity debate. Through these aspects, I examined the subversive possibilities within Bangla folk songs for the people on the margins tracing the construction of the perils and pleasures of sexual subjectivity through a variety of Bangla social-cultural fields

Songs of Deviance and Defiance: Subjectivity, emotions and authenticity in Bhawaiya Folk Songs of North Bengal

Bhawaiya is one of the most popular folk song genres to Bengalis. While all Bangla folk songs express the emotions and the stories of the most marginal people, Bhawaiya is significant for expressing the female passion grounded in day to day material reality through the stories of the female subject of the songs. The passionate lyrics of Bhawaiya, when expressing love and desire for a woman’s lover, are not always bound to marital or ‘legitimate’ sexual relations. In this research, through the lens of these songs, I wanted to locate those emotions that are often seems deviant but at the same time can defy the normative control, to construct the female subversive subjectivities. To situate Bhawaiya, I reexamined the generic borders between Bhawaiya and other main Bangla folks song genres that were constructed through the rise of Bengali nationalism to see how Bhawaiya existed in the margins with subversive emotions connected to those identities. Through my ethnographical research of the ‘Bhawaiya people’, such as singers, producers, researchers in the main Bhawaiya areas, I see how those emotions are evoked through performances and how they made connections between the performers and the listeners. Since the contemporary reproduction of folk songs genres is difficult to compare with the original traditional forms due to the technological changes and appropriation by artists and their different interests, I also examined how these changes create an emotional atmosphere that affects the singers and the listeners. The appropriation of folk songs by contemporary singers has also raised heated debate about authenticity. I analysed how, without having the authority over authenticating the folk songs, the marginal singers and folk song producers create a vast market for the songs that are often considered deviant. These songs, despite being considered deviant by the authorities of Bangla folk songs, can challenge the authorities of authenticity debate. Through these aspects, I examined the subversive possibilities within Bangla folk songs for the people on the margins tracing the construction of the perils and pleasures of sexual subjectivity through a variety of Bangla social-cultural fields

A Symbolic-Realistic Guide for Image-Makers: Performing the Contemporary Byzantine-Inspired Iconic Vision from the Spectacle

This practice-oriented research examines the presence of the image in an artistic vision from the Byzantine perspective of an icon-maker. To do so, I extract a list of Byzantine canonic guidelines and explain how the technical (realistic) and conceptual (symbolic) construction of an iconic/idolic vision performs at the level of an aesthetic judgment. Using the epistemological definition of the image affirmed by the Second Council of Nicaea (787 CE) in conjunction with Jean-Luc Marion�s phenomenological framing of the icon and idol, I outline three underlying modes of artistic vision that expose the metaphysical issues of representation within today�s spectacle of technological screens: 1) a symbolic (Platonic) seeing of the invisible as totally absent from the visible, 2) a realistic (Nietzschean) seeing that claims the invisible as really present in the space defined by a viewer�s perspectival gaze, and 3) a symbolic-realistic (Byzantine) vision of evoking the presence of an absent, invisible image through a tangible creative experience�specifically, although the image stays ontologically transparent, it becomes a visible trace of its absence left on a frame for representation. While delineating the three visions in terms of abstract and naturalistic depictions, I also present my own Byzantine-inspired method of painting on wood panels to point key iconic elements for evoking an image in a concrete aesthetic context. I particularly do this through a performative inquiry (as video documented in Portrait of an Icon Maker and Performing the Icon) into a canonically contextualized aesthetic experience that is sensitive to the Incarnational dimension of the image. This Byzantine artistic framework opens up an interdisciplinary field of artistic research into the metaphysics of presence that bridges visual criticism, performance theory, and Byzantine theological convictions pictured by a range of contemporary thinkers, such as Fischer-Lichte, Nanna Verhoeff, Eric Jenkins, John Lechte, and Nicoletta Isar. It not only places visual criticism inside of what it means to iconically craft an image, but also allows image-makers to see, in a non-referential way, how the symbolic and realistic visions look through a kind of keyhole towards images of reality in order to constitute them in a metaphysical perspective