Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980--Criticism and interpretation; Percy, Walker, 1916-1990--Criticism and interpretation; Hopper, Edward, 1882-1967--Criticism and interpretation; Nichols, Mike--Criticism and interpretation; Existentialism in art;...
Jean-Paul Sartre's existential philosophy concerns the free human individual,
particularly his possibilities to continuously create his own identities. Human existence is
never defined by objects, and he is only determined by his own actions. As...
Spirituality in literature; Religion in literature; Berry, Wendell, 1934---Criticism and interpretation; McCarthy, Cormac, 1933---Criticism and interpretation
This dissertation provides a reading of characters in the novels and short stories of two important contemporary American writers through the lens of spiritual theology. While spirituality has often been understood as necessitating a flight from...
Given a metric space (K, d), the hyperspace of K is defined by H(K) = {F c K: F is compact, F ≠ 0}. H(K) is itself a metric space under the Hausdorff metric dH. Hyperspaces have been extensively studied by topologists since the 1970's, but the...
We formulate an integro-difference model to predict the growth and spatial
spread of a perennial plant population with an age-structured seed bank. We allow
the seeds in the bank to be of any age, producing an infinite system of equations.
The...
This thesis is a study and critique of John Hick's pluralistic hypothesis as presented in his book "An Interpretation of Religion." I primarily focus on two issues: Hick's epistemology of religious beliefs and the pluralistic hypothesis...
I will report the development of a semi-empirical self-consistent and environment-dependent model Hamiltonian, which is intended to treat large systems in the order of 10000 atoms. This covers a range of important physical phenomena that are too...
Phenomenology and art; Art--Philosophy; Philosophy of mind; Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938; Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961
This dissertation presents the philosophical concepts of Edmund Husserl on phenomenology and image-consciousness and explores the phenomenological project of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as I have sought to render them in my creative artwork. By building...
Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen; Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805--Philosophy; Play (Philosophy)
Friedrich Schiller's psychological theory of play, his hypothesis about human nature, is embedded in the Aesthetic Letters . Its trans-historical value owes much to the committed interest in life in the late Enlightenment, and the theory itself is...
Historians and philosophers alike remember Peter Abelard as the most brilliant, original,
and influential philosopher of the twelfth century. Much ofthis reputation stems not
from Abelard's intellectual contributions but due to Abelard's scandalous...
Sociology, Urban--California--Los Angeles; Urbanization--California--Los Angeles; Ontology--Social aspects; Social epistemology
Noir Ontology: Existing in the Fragmented Urban Spaces of Los Angeles explores the role of decentered urban geography within the body of noir texts set within Los Angeles. By focusing on the development of the idea of Los Angeles in early to...
Rap (Music)--History and criticism; Music trade--United States
This thesis is a historical analysis of the narratives of rap music and their relationship to hegemony. I view the trends outlined in this thesis as a microcosm of large-scale social trends in the world of popular culture. A world dominated and...
Israel--Social conditions; Israel--Social life and customs
Times Square went mad with noise and excitement,
and a small freighter slipped from its Brooklyn berth into
the drama of the night. It was December 31, 1949--midnight-January
1, 1950; and I was on my way to the world in general
and Israel and the...
This critical inquiry into the social constructions of "black" and "white" identities analyzes the roles of the three "western" monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) in the cognitive and sociohistorical...
This dissertation addresses two different problems: 1) coronal loop detection from solar images: and 2) salient contour group extraction from cluttered images. In the first part, we propose two different solutions to the coronal loop detection...
Women and literature; Gothic revival (Literature); Zhang, Ailing; Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001; McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967
This study seeks to situate our understanding of Zhang Ailing's Chuanqi as part of global women's efforts to establish a voice of their own by way of hijacking patriarchal literary heritage. In order to show Zhang Ailing as a conscious weaver of...
United States. Army--History; Federal aid to law enforcement agencies--United States; Riots--United States
The function of the army of the United States is to protect the country against all enemies foreign and domestic. Everyone is cognizant of the accomplishments of the American forces against its foreign enemies; but there is another work, of equal...
Businesswomen--United States--History--20th century; Women, White--United States--History--20th century; Businesswomen--United States--Psychology; Women, White--United States--Psychology; Self-perception in women--United States
The purpose of this cross-disciplinary dissertation is to explore how the epistemic ruptures, such as WWII and the Second Wave Feminism, change the American society between 1963 and 1985. From a humanistic and historical point of view, it focuses...
Neuropsychology; Motor ability; Eye-hand coordination
Two major theoretical models, Direct Mapping and Functional Equivalence, suggest that the observation of action and imagery of action, respectively, involve activation of similar motor related areas. Despite the wealth of evidence that supports...
The purpose of this dissertation is to suggest that peace is an idea that changes throughout the history of the west, rather than to show how nations may achieve peace or to define what it is. It begins as a concept the power brokers refer to or...
Utopias; Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969; Irigaray, Luce; Agamben, Giorgio, 1942-
What is the idea that "utopia" names? How can discourse represent that idea? Setting aside temporarily deeper problems with the idea of representation, and focusing on how a complex philosophical discourse might approach the problem of...