Synch Holes and Patchwork in Early Feature-Film Scores

The aesthetics of early feature-film scores were shaped by narrational problems introduced by multi-reel features and their longer durations. Using The Patchwork Girl of Oz, I show how stylistic devices like silences and musical pun- ctuation were used to address the coherence and pacing of multi-reel storytelling

A Modernized Fairy Tale: Speculations on Technology, Labor, Politics, and Gender in the Oz Series

On the surface, L. Frank Baum\u27s Oz series would appear to merely be fourteen books of inventive children\u27s fantasy, but in truth Baum communicates several personal progressive beliefs to his youthful audience through the use of his fantastical world upon closer examination. For my research, I reread every book in Baum\u27s original Oz series and made note of any potentially relevant allegorical or metaphorical themes. Once I started to notice a trend of themes regarding technology, labor, politics, and gender, I settled on these themes to be the overall focus of my thesis\u27s discussion. I read as many academic essays and articles on the Oz series as I could find, observing previous readings and arguments to better inform my own work. Finally, I read a comprehensive biography on Baum\u27s life to contextualize his perspectives based on when, where, and how he grew up and lived. Overall, I found the Oz series to hold a host of interesting ideas and opinions that paint Baum as quite a colorful individual, one interested in the potential for America to change how it operated during his time and hoping to do so by encouraging children to challenge the society of their parents

Musical Mimesis in Orphans of the Storm

In this essay I explore the use of musical mimesis in the score for D. W. Griffith’s 1921 film Orphans of the Storm. I demonstrate that the score, created by Louis F. Gottschalk and William Frederick Peters, offers coherence through the use of central themes and the employment of several characteristic leitmotivs; provides recognizable musical characterizations of emotions and physical phenomena, establishing a consistent mimetic aspect to the music; and reflects the structure of the film as a whole

"A Modernized Fairy Tale": Speculations on Technology, Labor, Politics, & Gender in the Oz Series

On the surface, L. Frank Baum’s Oz series would appear to merely be fourteen books of inventive children’s fantasy, but in truth Baum communicates several personal progressive beliefs to his youthful audience through the use of his fantastical world upon closer examination. For my research, I reread every book in Baum’s original Oz series and made note of any potentially relevant allegorical or metaphorical themes. Once I started to notice a trend of themes regarding technology, labor, politics, and gender, I settled on these themes to be the overall focus of my thesis’s discussion. I read as many academic essays and articles on the Oz series as I could find, observing previous readings and arguments to better inform my own work. Finally, I read a comprehensive biography on Baum’s life to contextualize his perspectives based on when, where, and how he grew up and lived. Overall, I found the Oz series to hold a host of interesting ideas and opinions that paint Baum as quite a colorful individual, one interested in the potential for America to change how it operated during his time and hoping to do so by encouraging children to challenge the society of their parents

The Ithacan, 1931-12-15

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/ithacan_1931-32/1010/thumbnail.jp

Hypertext: A Sacred (He)Art?: Cor ad Cor Loquitur from Augustine to Shelley Jackson.

Self-discovery, self-exploration, the creation of the self or the Subject is a human preoccupation that goes beyond the postmodern era. The epigraphs that begin this paper show that the human concern with how language and representation play a crucial role in the formation of the subject flows back through time from our present to Augustine, the fourth-century master of the art of self-knowledge, and beyond. When Augustine started writing his Confessions, the self as something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity, was already well established. In his Confessions, Augustine uses cor ad cor loquitur, or to put it plainly, having a heart to heart with God. Such a conversation was meant to change his life by teaching him how to revise himself in Christ\u27s image. In other words, cor ad cor loquitur is a lesson in subjectivity. Today, as someone who is a medievalist, theologian, and techno-geek, I find myself pondering how this ancient and never-ending conversation echoes still, even in the realm of hypertext. And yes! I did say hypertext. As theologian and medievalist, I wander on my pilgrim way in many different worlds, antique and contemporary. For me, the hypertext world of Cyberia (that computerized technological world in to which we are presently evolving) continues the ancient trail of a conversation, of heart speaking to heart, in which subjectivity evolves. The mechanism of self-reflection, central to cor ad cor loquitur, resides in the rhetorical structure of hypertext. Contemporary pilgrims negotiating their way as author and audience through the lexias[i] and byways of Cyberia\u27s hypertext find themselves following in the footsteps of their medieval ancestors who pondered on author and audience in the book of the heart known as cor ad cor loquitur. I invite you to accompany me as I use the medievalist’s lens to investigate how hypertext is the latest evolution in cor ad cor loquitur

The Geographic (Un)representativeness of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

This Note examines the legislative history of Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act, describes the relevance of geographic representativeness in recent confirmations of Board members, reveals interesting historical trends in Federal Reserve Board of Governors membership, and describes how the geographic composition of the Board may affect the Board’s implementation of monetary and financial stability policy. To correct the errors of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which incompletely analyzed the legislative history of the geographic diversity requirements in an attempt to increase Executive nomination discretion, Part I analyzes the legislative history of Section 241’s geographic diversity requirements and shows that populist members of Congress viewed these requirements as essential to prevent East Coast or Wall Street interests from dominating the Board of Governors. Part II describes how these geographic requirements were applied in recent confirmation hearings of Board members, particularly the hearings that prevented Peter Diamond, a Nobel Laureate in economics, from assuming a position on the Board of Governors. Largely thanks to the inaccurate conclusions of the OLC, the geographic diversity requirements “have for some time been effectively read out of the Federal Reserve Act,” as Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute has noted disapprovingly. Part III discusses this Note’s research, by far the most comprehensive analysis of this unexplored subject, into how the Executive and the Senate historically have viewed the geographic connections of successful nominees to the Board of Governors. While the other diversity components of Section 10 are even more difficult to measure and less salient to the Senate at the time it votes on nominees, each nominee to the Board of Governors is described in Senate deliberations as “of” a particular state, which helps establish congressional understanding of where a nominee is from. Part III reveals that Board members from eastern Federal Reserve Districts have dominated the Board’s membership for the past two decades with eighty percent of all recently confirmed nominees born on the East Coast. Finally, Part III also demonstrates that the overwhelming East Coast dominance on the Board of Governors is a recent phenomenon that diverges from a history of greater geographic diversity. Part IV provides brief policy suggestions for carrying out Mark Calabria’s recommendations for improving and clarifying the geographic diversity requirements

The Invention of Oz

Since L. Frank Baum published his first Oz book in 1900, Oz has become an integral part of American society; yet, only recently have his books begun to receive critical attention. Critics seem most interested in dealing with them in terms of sociology, popular culture, and psychology, but a few have recognized Baum\u27s contributions to the birth of science fiction, to the depiction of a female hero in Dorothy, and to Baum\u27s imaginative and perceptive examination of what separates humans from machines. This thesis will analyze the literary dimension of the Oz series. The goal will be to perceive the invention of Oz as a process and as a product of imagination. In the first chapter, I briefly discuss the genres of the fairy tale and fantasy, as well as Baum\u27s goals as a writer of children\u27s books. In the second chapter, I focus on Baum\u27s life as the inventor of Oz, identifying those events from his biography that particularly influenced his invention of Oz. In chapter three, I discuss the thematic and pragmatic function of the actively moving cogs in the invention--his wonderful characters, the pattern of their interaction, how the process of their creation demonstrates Baum\u27s probings into the questions of identity and the essence of humanity in an age of increasing technology. In the concluding chapter, I examine how Baum\u27s anticipatory vision has altered the genre of the fairy tale and, especially, how his use of the image of technology as a force in a turn- of-the-century children\u27s fantasy anticipated and inspired not only the writers who followed him but perhaps America\u27s image of itself as well