New Issues In The Study Of Infant Categorization: A Reply To Husaim And Cohen

Husaim and Cohen\u27s focus (Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1981, 27, 443–456) on the learning of ill-defined categories by infants is securely motivated. Still, some of the particular questions they pursue—namely, how many dimensions are used to form the categories and what is the salience hierarchy of the dimensions—are tricky and perhaps misleading. Underlying their design and analysis is the basic assumption that the dimensions or attributes of the stimulus as defined by the experimenter have psychological reality for the infants. This assumption is questioned. Infants may perceive different attributes in the stimulus or they may not articulate the stimulus into attributes at all

Symphonic allegro for orchestra

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

ADApting Higher Education: Revamping Curricula for the Inclusion of Theatre Students with Disabilities

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives in higher education have been largely driven by administrators who have little to no contact with the students for whom they are working for. This top-down approach negatively impacts marginalized students and disproportionately affects the quality of experience for students with Disabilities, an often-overlooked demographic. For Disabled students enrolled in performance programs, barriers to access and inclusion don’t just exist at the institutional level, they also exist in the traditional classroom or studio as well. Through a dismantling of ableist structures inherent within higher education (i.e., American grading practices, the Western and Theatrical Canons), I argue that a student-first model of instruction, which functions on the principles of self-reflexivity, educational autonomy, and individual growth is the most direct way to successfully incorporate the guiding principle of access, which is central to achieving equity, diversity, and inclusion within college-level actor-training programs

Music and Embodied Imagining: Metaphor and Metonymy in Western Art Music

This dissertation poses the question, How does music mean? If we acknowledge that music exists in the material world as a complex sound wave only, we must wonder how music, as felt meaning, arises. Scholars have often approached this question through considering music as a language. I do not employ this approach. In fact, I criticize this analogy and the epistemology on which it is based as reductive and inconsistent with musical experience. This analogy diminishes a whole-bodied experience to one that involves only the mind and ears and decreases resonant, lived meaning to content --metaphorically an object transferred by speaker to hearer through the representative and referential functions of symbolic forms. Departing from this analogy, I develop a theory of whole-bodied, lived meaning based on Lakoff and Johnson\u27s theory of conceptual metaphor and Polanyi\u27s epistemology of tacit knowing (bodily-based, culturally-inflected knowing that one can feel, but cannot describe in full). Using this new theory, I analyze the speech of young musicians at the Curtis Institute of Music, taking it as descriptive of meaningful musical experience. I argue that enculturated listeners feel musical meaning when, employing metaphoric and metonymic processes, they use whole-bodied imagining and perceiving to integrate dimensions of tacit knowing with the sound wave. In so doing, they transform the sound wave\u27s physical qualities (frequency, amplitude, complexity and duration) into music\u27s felt dynamic qualities and events (e.g., motion, force, intensity, tension, relaxation, mood, gesture or momentum). In this way, musical meaning comes to life through the energetic mediumship of listeners\u27 tacit knowing, resonating in and throughout felt reality. Listeners do not merely hear the music and thus grasp its meaning; rather, they live its meaning. Indeed, listeners may also, through participating bodily in live or recorded musical performances, live tacitly known, felt social meanings--such as a sense of identity or place--in intensified fashion. Thus, I suggest that symbolism involves a resonant level in which participatory, lived meaning effects a connection of participants with signs, and through signs, with each other and such transcendent social realities

Aspirations as a Component of Life Satisfaction: A Look at Female Microfinance Borrowers in Oaxaca, Mexico

This research is an extension to the Oaxaca Hope Project by B. Wydick and T.J. Lybbert. How does an individual gauge her own satisfaction with life? Previous research has noted that many domains make up overall life satisfaction, i.e. career satisfaction, family life satisfaction & social life satisfaction. A burgeoning topic in this regard is the role that aspirations play in life satisfaction. Using survey data from female microfinance borrowers in Oaxaca, Mexico this project attempts to analyze the affect previous aspirations have on life satisfaction. By creating an “aspirational window” we objectively attempt to gauge the relationship between “high” and “low” aspirations in how they interact with life satisfaction as an outcome. Using a Tobit estimation and community bank clustered standard errors we find small but significant results showing that aspirational achievement does in fact improve life satisfaction. This research project hopes to add more depth to the dynamism of aspirations literature

Guest Recital: Ann Benjamin, Harp Katherine Kemler, Flute

Kemp Recital Hall Tuesday Evening September 27, 1994 8:00 p.m