Alien Registration- Connors, James B. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/25098/thumbnail.jp

Staging polemics: Charles Palissot, Voltaire, and the theatrical event in eighteenth-century France

This dissertation explores the exciting world of eighteenth-century French dramatic writing, performance and criticism from the point of view of the theatrical spectator. Instead of focusing on one single genre or writer, I assemble the textual creation, performance, and criticism of certain “polemical” plays into what I term a “theatrical event.” This optic provides a holistic vision of theater and an accurate view of how drama underwent noticeable change due to playwrights’ political associations, public reactions to performance, and the emerging power of the periodical press. In sum, this project differs from previous studies by focusing on the increasing rhetorical and tangible significance of the theatrical spectator, and more specifically, on how he or she altered normative, established processes in dramatic writing, performance, and criticism. In the first three chapters of this dissertation, I closely examine Charles Palissot’s Les Philosophes, Voltaire’s l’Ecossaise (1760), and atypical critical reactions to both polemical comedies. Here, I focus on the way partisan dramatists and their cohorts fashioned “theatrical events” through pre-performance strategies, narrative effects, and performative ruses. Then, I inquire as to why critics emphasized audience reactions to and participation in performance, rather than summarizing the play’s narrative or weighing in on traditional literary subjects. Switching gears from a more synchronic study to a more diachronic analysis, in chapter four, I highlight a few “theatrical events” from the last years of the Ancien Régime in order to show how playwrights and critics borrowed both processes and themes from the original Palissot/Voltaire affair of 1760. With clear pictures of specific moments and more general shifts in theater history and criticism, this dissertation aims to reassess the way we think about dramatic production during the pre-Revolutionary period in France

Alien Registration- Connors, James J. (Easton, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/26358/thumbnail.jp

Effect of Ram-jet Pressure Pulsations on Supersonic-diffuser Performance

Experimental study of effects of combustion roughness and controlled mechanical oscillations on diffuser operation was conducted on an 8-inch ram jet at Mach number 1.87. Within experimental accuracy, the optimum mean combustion-chamber static pressure occurred when the maximum instantaneous static pressure equalled the optimum steady-flow value and the corresponding decrement in optimum mean static pressure was equal to one-half the total amplitude of the pressure pulsations. A marked attenuation of amplitude of cold-buzz pressure fluctuations was effected over limited range of subcritical diffuser operation by means of properly tuned rotating disk located in combustion chamber

Readership Survey of the FFA New Horizons Magazine

The study surveyed readers of the FFA New Horizons magazine to determine reader opinions about magazine usefulness