South Korean "New Wild Geese" Mothers Studying in the U.S.:Balancing between Studenthood and Motherhood

Over the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of female Korean students in U.S. colleges who are married, have children, and whose husbands are in Korea. This unique phenomenon has few parallels represented by Korean men or other ethnic women in the U.S., and little is known about these Korean women's overseas lives as mothers and students. This qualitative study based on participant observation and interviews with four such women explores the causes of the emergence and increase of so-called Korean "new wild geese" mother students, and their achievements, challenges, and coping strategies while studying abroad. The emergence of these women speaks to the issues of gender, family, and education in the neoliberalizing South Korea where middle-class families cannot any longer afford full-time mothers accompanying their children's early study abroad. While enjoying relative independence in the absence of their husbands and free from their obligations as daughters-in-law, these women who make double investments in their own education as well as in their children's scholastics for the sake of their family's upward class mobility, also struggle between motherhood and studenthood

Climax Structure in Late Romantic Opera

When people listen to music, they tend to perceive dynamic rise and fall, often without preliminary knowledge of musical structures and mechanism. This perception of musical dynamism has long been assumed too intuitive and natural to merit serious academic attention. The present dissertation aims to address this neglect by approaching musical dynamism as a logical, systematic process. A formal analytical model, the climax archetype, is proposed for understanding the workings of musical dynamism; to this end, the dissertation focuses on late Romantic operas, especially the works of Wagner and verismo composers, which are characterized by intense musical, dramatic, and emotional dynamism. The first three chapters in this dissertation serve as a springboard for the presentation of the climax archetype in the following two core chapters. Most chapters are divided into two subchapters. Chapter 1 reviews terms and concepts on climax and highpoint. Subchapter 1.1 introduces Ernst Kurth’s climax theory, presented in Bruckner (1925), as a historical precedent for climax study in the modern era; emphasis is put on his concept of dynamic building, and its parameters and operational principles. Subchapter 1.2 surveys studies (mostly those by post-Kurthian scholars) in analysis related to climax building. Chapter 2 scrutinizes the various parameters used in climax building and integrated in the climax archetype. Subchapter 2.1 investigates solo operations of individual parameters such as harmony, pace acceleration, dynamics, melodic contour and pitch, and instrumentation; subchapter 2.2 addresses parametric interaction. Chapter 3 discusses narrative and dynamic arcs in literary theory and music, which provide prototypes for the climax archetype. Subchapter 3.1 examines bipartite, tripartite, and quintipartite narrative forms in literary theory; subchapter 3.2 moves on to dynamic trajectories in music and investigates dynamism in phrase or formal units, demonstrated primarily through analysis of Romantic opera. Chapter 4 articulates the climax archetype—comprised of initiation, intensification, optional delay, highpoint, and abatement—as a model to explain dynamic processes in late Romantic opera; normative examples are drawn from music by Beethoven, Bellini, Wagner, and Giordano. Chapter 5 magnifies the applicability of the climax archetype by embracing modification and variants seen in non-normative climax structures. Subchapter 5.1 delves into internal climax deformations, including the fusion or absence of climax stages, high region, and highpoint frustration; subchapter 5.2 proceeds to compound structures such as the climax succession and climax nesting. The climax archetype and its modifications broaden the analytical scope of musical dynamism in Romantic opera from the well-researched groundswell in the bel canto repertoire to diverse structures beyond the conventional form (la solita forma). Furthermore, the dissertation explains how musical climaxes interact with certain dramatic circumstances or psychological dynamics, emphasizing the prevailing aesthetic of unified musical-dramatic development. Finally, this study suggests compositional principles shared between Wagner and verismo works; out of this examination, a musical-structural principle is proposed for replacing the prevailing but inadequate definition of “verismo” as realism in opera

Nonparametric regression estimation under complex sampling designs

The efficient use of auxiliary information to improve the precision of estimation of population quantities of interest is a central problem in survey sampling. We consider nonparametric regression estimation using much weaker assumptions on the superpopulation model in more general survey situations. Complex designs such as multistage and multiphase sampling are often employed in many large-scale surveys. Nonparametric model-assisted estimators, based on local polynomial regression, for two-stage and two-phase sampling designs are proposed. The local polynomial regression estimator is a nonparametric version of the generalized regression (GREG) estimator and shares most of the desirable properties of the generalized regression estimator. The estimator of the finite population total for two-stage element sampling with complete cluster auxiliary information is a linear combination of cluster total estimators, with sample-dependent weights that are calibrated to known control totals. The nonparametric estimator for two-phase sampling with a regression model for between-phase inference is also expressed as a weighted linear sum of the study variable of interest over a second-phase sample, in which the weights are not calibrated directly to known control totals, but are calibrated to the Horvitz-Thompson estimators of known control totals over a first-phase sample. Asymptotic design unbiasedness and design consistency of the estimators are established, and consistent variance estimators are proposed. Simulation experiments indicate that the local polynomial regression estimators are more efficient than parametric regression estimators under model misspecification, while being nearly as good when the parametric mean function is correctly specified