Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals Since A Chorus Line (1975)

This dissertation explores how embodied identities facing social stigmatization are represented in Broadway musicals and provides histories of casting specific kinds of embodied difference. Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals since “A Chorus Line” considers the politics of representation and makes clear that casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure favoring certain bodies. Previous scholarship on casting largely centers on race and ethnicity as the central issues; this research reframes the study of casting to focus on bodies, inclusive of race and ethnicity but especially relative to ability, gender, sexuality, and size. Though grounded in theatre studies, this dissertation’s intervention is the application of different fields emerging from social movements designed to combat stigmatization and oppression: Deaf/Disability Studies, Fat Studies, and LGBTQ+ Studies. Musicals appear to be among the most inclusive of the performing arts, yet the findings of this research describe the borders of this inclusivity. Musicals make meaning through their embodiment of difference; which identities are represented onstage reveals which identities are valued. These embodied differences are profoundly tied to an actor’s employability; when an actor enters the audition room they put their body on the line—do they have a “Broadway Body” or not? In focusing on casting as a site of power relations, this research attends which bodies are cast, and which are cast aside

Linguistic and Gender Variation in Speech Emotion Recognition using Spectral Features

This work explores the effect of gender and linguistic-based vocal variations on the accuracy of emotive expression classification. Emotive expressions are considered from the perspective of spectral features in speech (Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient, Melspectrogram, Spectral Contrast). Emotions are considered from the perspective of Basic Emotion Theory. A convolutional neural network is utilised to classify emotive expressions in emotive audio datasets in English, German, and Italian. Vocal variations for spectral features assessed by (i) a comparative analysis identifying suitable spectral features, (ii) the classification performance for mono, multi and cross-lingual emotive data and (iii) an empirical evaluation of a machine learning model to assess the effects of gender and linguistic variation on classification accuracy. The results showed that spectral features provide a potential avenue for increasing emotive expression classification. Additionally, the accuracy of emotive expression classification was high within mono and cross-lingual emotive data, but poor in multi-lingual data. Similarly, there were differences in classification accuracy between gender populations. These results demonstrate the importance of accounting for population differences to enable accurate speech emotion recognition.Comment: Presented at AICS 2021 Conference - Machine Learning for Time Series Section Published in CEUR Vol-3105 http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3105/paper34.pdf This publication has emanated from research supported in part by a Grant from Science Foundation Ireland under Grant number 18/CRT/6222 Associated source code https://github.com/ZacDair/SER_Platform_AICS 12 Pages, 5 Figure

Must Be Heavyset : Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies

This article surveys how contemporary Broadway musicals cast fat women and focuses on Hairspray. The use of fat suits and contractual weight clauses figure into the discussion of fat stigma and casting practices. Seemingly body-positive musicals both celebrate and undermine the identities staged in them

Acts of Recognition: Gesture and National Identity in Agnes de Mille\u27s \u27Civil War Ballet\u27

Through both her dances and writings Agnes de Mille explored what it means to be American. I argue that, in addition to the explicitly America-themed material de Mille chose, her choreography performs national identity through its use of gesture – informed by de Mille’s interest in folk dance and the collective unconscious. When looking at much of de Mille’s choreography, one is visually struck by its Americanness. It is this act of recognition that begins this enquiry: how does one see de Mille’s choreography and recognize its intrinsic Americanness? How did de Mille’s choreographic process allow for the expression of national identity through gesture? These questions are explored through an analysis of de Mille’s ‘Civil War Ballet’ from Bloomer Girl (1944)

Rise of Passive Investing: Impacts on Equity Market Functionality

Most investments into equity markets can be categorized into two general strategies: active investments and passive investments. These strategies impact equity markets in different ways. Over the past few decades, market participants have witnessed a radical shift from active management to passive management. This paper reviews how this shift impacts market dynamics generally, and liquidity and comovement effects, in particular. Robust statistical analysis of total passive domestic equity assets under management (AUM), individual security, and market index data demonstrates that dramatic increases in passive investment flows correlates with decreased broad market liquidity and increased security-index comovement for securities in the technology sector. Both liquidity loss and increased comovement can potentially impact the pricing efficiency of equity markets. These potential pricing inefficiencies that the statistical analysis points towards can allow active management to realize excess returns in the future. It also points to a possible cycle which, if identified, may also lead to excess returns

A Qualitative Method for Determining the Quality of BGA Solder Joints in a Lead-Free Process

The introduction of lead-free soldering is inevitable for the electronics industry and its use poses a number of challenges. Manufacturing processes need to be re-evaluated and any reliability issue needs to be addressed. In this study the effect of lead free solder on a reflow soldering process is investigated. Experimental design techniques were used to examine a reflow soldering process using the process parameters as experimental factors. The factors included the conveyor belt speed of the reflow oven and the preheat, soak and reflow temperatures of the temperature profile. Micro Ball Grid Array (EGA) packages were used as the test components. No standard method exists to assess the quality of EGA solder joints. Solder joint quality is normally assessed using lengthy reliability tests that measure joint strength. It is highly advantageous if a qualitative assessment method was available that could determine the joint quality. This study presents a scoring method that can be used to evaluate this solder joint quality quickly and inexpensively. EGA solder joint quality was assessed using x-ray and micro section inspection techniques. This qualitative data was scored and weighted. The weighted solder joint quality scores were statistically analysed to check for effect significance. It was found that conveyor belt speed had a statistically significant effect on the weighted score. The statistical approach was verified using residual analysis. The results of the experiment demonstrate that the scoring method is a practical way of assessing EGA solder joint quality. This paper presents a unique scoring method for assessing the joint quality of EGA packages

The Effects of Blood Flow Restriction Training on Strength and Hypertrophy; Is it Worth it?

We examined the effects of Blood Flow Restriction Training on Strength and Hypertrophy involving 3 female and 5 male subjects. Participants came in to train twice a week for 3 weeks and were randomly assigned to either the BFR or non-BFR group. Resistance exercise included lifting a weight to muscular fatigue or wearing blood flow restriction cuffs during resistance training to muscular fatigue performed on the smith machine. Squat exercises were performed on different days, lifting a weight at 50% of a 1 repetition maximum for a total of 3 sets with a 90 second recovery after the 1st and 2nd sets. The combined data for both groups show that the change in 1RM from pre-post was 17.0 + 5.7 pounds