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Description
Type Ia supernovae are important, but mysterious cosmological tools. Their standard brightnesses have enabled cosmologists to measure extreme distances and to discover dark energy. However, the nature of their progenitor mechanisms remains elusive, with many competing models offering only partial clues to their origins. Here, type Ia supernova delay times are explored using analytical models. Combined with a new observation technique, this model places new constraints on the characteristic time delay between the formation of stars and the first type Ia supernovae. This derived delay time (500 million years) implies low-mass companions for single degenerate progenitor scenarios. In the latter portions of this dissertation, two progenitor mechanisms are simulated in detail; white dwarf collisions and mergers. From the first of these simulations, it is evident that white dwarf collisions offer a viable and unique pathway to producing type Ia supernovae. Many of the combinations of masses simulated produce sufficient quantities of 56Ni (up to 0.51 solar masses) to masquerade as normal type Ia supernovae. Other combinations of masses produce 56Ni yields that span the entire range of supernova brightnesses, from the very dim and underluminous, with 0.14 solar masses, to the over-bright and superluminous, with up to 1.71 solar masses. The 56Ni yield in the collision simulations depends non-linearly on total system mass, mass ratio, and impact parameter. Using the same numerical tools as in the collisions examination, white dwarf mergers are studied in detail. Nearly all of the simulations produce merger remnants consisting of a cold, degenerate core surrounded by a hot accretion disk. The properties of these disks have strong implications for various viscosity treatments that have attempted to pin down the accretion times. Some mass combinations produce super-Chandrasekhar cores on shorter time scales than viscosity driven accretion. A handful of simulations also exhibit helium detonations on the surface of the primary that bear a resemblance to helium novae. Finally, some of the preliminary groundwork that has been laid for constructing a new numerical tool is discussed. This new tool advances the merger simulations further than any research group has done before, and has the potential to answer some of the lingering questions that the merger study has uncovered. The results of thermal diffusion tests using this tool have a remarkable correspondence to analytical predictions.
ContributorsRaskin, Cody (Author) / Scannapieco, Evan (Thesis advisor) / Rhoads, James (Committee member) / Young, Patrick (Committee member) / Mcnamara, Allen (Committee member) / Timmes, Francis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The most horrific, darkest, and powerful forms of the sublime take place inside the enclosure of the human psyche; the interior of the mind is the playground for the sublime--not the crag and canyon filled natural world. For Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, the driving force of the power of the sublime stems from the feelings of pain and fear: where is that more manifested than in the mind? Unlike the common, traditional, and overwhelmed discussion of Percy Shelley and his contemporaries and the power of the sublime in nature, I will argue that in The Cenci, Shelley, through well-chosen diction and precise composition of terrifying images, fashions characters and scenes in an emotion-driven play that elevates the mind of the reader to a transcendent sublime experience. Through a discussion of the theories of the aesthetic of the sublime laid out by Longinus, Burke, and Kant, I will provide a foundation for the later discussion of the rhetorical sublime evoked by Shelley in the ardent and horrifying play that is The Cenci. Looking at the conventional application of the theories of the sublime to romantic writing will make evident the holes in the discussion of the sublime and romantic writings that have almost forgotten the powerful and psychological rhetorical aspect of the sublime that is emphasized in the theoretical writings of both Burke and Kant. To clarify what is traditionally associated with Shelley and the sublime, a brief analysis of the Shelleyean sublime and Shelley's 1816 poem "Mont Blanc" will prepare the reader for an unconventional, but every bit important and powerful, function of the sublime in the 1819 play The Cenci based on the horrific happenings of a historical 16th century Italian noble family.
ContributorsGowan, Kaitlin (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Corse, Douglas Taylor (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
In the first thirty years of the XX century, an old literary visual tradition was reborn in a series of new striking visual texts better known as calligrams. They were produced by some avant-garde poets such as Vicente Huidobro, José Juan Tablada, Alberto Hidalgo and Carlos Oquendo de Amat in Latin America, and Juan Larrea, Guillermo de Torre, Francisco Vighi, Luis Mosquera, and others in Spain. However, with few exceptions, the interpretation of those written drawings has caught little attention from literary critics. This research, contrasted to that of Willard Bohn's, is a contribution to the deciphering of such literary art form, designated here as the figurative visual poem. It is a proposal for its visual reading which draws from the fact that this type of text is concretely a drawing formed by written verses. As such, it can be regarded as a plastic writing, combining pictorial and verbal signs in one perceptible configuration on the page. The result of this semiotic operation is a hybrid product in which the iconic forms become symbolic and vice versa. It is in fact, an art object which should be approached as a text that can be seen as well as read. The study leads to the conclusion that Willard Bohn misreads the order in which language and image are articulated in the visual poem identified with the second order semiological system proposed by Roland Barthes, placing preeminence on language over image. This results in reading the avant-garde visual figurative poem in an ekphrastic fashion. Consequently, the role of the image in the system is left in an ambiguous realm at the time of deciphering this hybrid text. Our contribution to re-conducting this undertaking has been equally drawn from a semiotic stance taken from Louis Hjemslev that balances language and image as correlates of a semiotic function. Due to the signaling nature of both, language and figure, a visual poem becomes an iconic metaphor as well as a metaphoric icon, and moreover a self-referential sign, thus justifying its status of an autonomous art.
ContributorsSuarez, Nelson M (Author) / Acereda, Alberto (Thesis advisor) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Garcia-Fernandez, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The hagiographic comedy written by Tirso de Molina Los lagos de San Vicente (1607) presents the journey of Santa Casilda in search of the cure of an illness in her blood that affects her. Casilda rejects the medical assistance offered to her by Muslim doctors and miraculously she finds the cure in the Christian world. In this quest, the intellectual and theological evolution of the future saint in defense of the Christian faith is presented. This dissertation will study the resources that Tirso de Molina employs to show the rejection and displacement against the Islamic world represented by a series of erotic behaviors that, in the effort of dramatizing these impertinences they are characterized within a second discourse. Tirso de Molina takes advantage of the hagiographic comedy's discourse nature and the baroque's obscure literary characteristics to express his messages. This dissertation will study in detail how the combination of hagiographic theatrical elements with linguistic expressions are used to convey a subversive discourse that therefore suggests the application of queer theory as a frame of reference. As a result of this investigation it is concluded that Tirso de Molina promotes the hagiographic model and in order to contrast the triumph of the moral Catholic world over the immoral Muslim world the play writer makes references to the nefarious sin.
ContributorsMurphy, Anayanci (Author) / Foster, David William (Thesis advisor) / Sanchez, Angel (Committee member) / Acereda, Alberto (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT As referenced in Navajo ceremonial prayers and songs, "Saad bee hahoozhood jini," it began harmoniously with language. This dissertation examines and celebrates in new ways the meaning of language in Navajo literature. The first chapter is an introduction of this dissertation. I share my personal experiences with language, both English and Navajo, and how it has shaped me to be the person I am today as a Navajo speaker, student, educator, and professional. The second chapter contains an analysis and review of Western ideology of feminism and its place in Navajo society and a comparative study of several works written by Navajo authors, including Laura Tohe, Luci Tapahonso, and Nia Francisco, and how their creative works reflect the foundation of Navajo culture, Asdzaa Nadleehe, Changing Woman. The third chapter presents my own short fiction of Navajo characters living in today's society, a society that entails both positive and negative issues of Navajo life. These stories present realistic twenty-first century environments on the Navajo reservation. The fourth chapter consists of a short fiction written originally in the Navajo language. The story also represents the celebration of Navajo language as it thrives in today's time of tribal and cultural struggles. The sense of it being told in Navajo celebrates and preserves Navajo culture and language. The final chapter is the beginning of an oral narrative presented in written form, that of my grandmother's life story. This introduction of her story also is in itself a commemoration of language, oral Navajo language.
ContributorsWheeler, Jennifer L (Author) / Ortiz, Simon (Thesis advisor) / Tohe, Laura (Committee member) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
For my project, I delve into the relationships of Victor and the Monster as well as the relationships Victor shares with other characters that were underdeveloped within the original novel by Mary Shelley in the novel Franeknstein. I examine their relationships in two components. The first through my own interpretation of Victor and the Monster’s relationship within a creative writing piece that extends the novel as if Victor had lived rather than died in the arctic in order to explore the possibilities of a more complex set of relationships between Victor and the Monster than simply creator-creation. My writing focuses on the development of their relationship once all they have left is each other. The second part of my project focuses on an analytical component. I analyze and cite the reasoning for my creative take on Victor and the Monster as well as their relationship within the novel and Mary Shelley’s intentions.
ContributorsHodge Smith, Elizabeth Ann (Author) / Fette, Don (Thesis director) / Hoyt, Heather (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.
ContributorsAlcantar, Sarah (Author) / Fette, Donald (Thesis director) / Zarka, Emily (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Reduced space is an important theme in the works of the Marquis de Sade including his epic novel The New Justine and his pornographic performance piece Philosophy in the Bedroom including the political/social treatise "Frenchmen, yet another effort is needed if you want to be a Republic". Through out his life Sade attempted to overcome reduction of space with writing. Tragically, his writing often prolonged the reduction of his space by sending him to or keeping him in prison. It is my theory that his violent, pornographic writing style is "une écriture de surjouissance" or "a writing of over-coming". Surjouissance is my theory for Sade's method, based on textual analysis of Sade's main works, that he combines through his syntactic structure, narrative voice, and semantic themes the orgasm of the mind represented by philosophical discourse with the orgasm of the body represented textually by orgiastic scenes and the language of orgasm to reach an ultimate state of complete freedom. In the political pamphlet "Frenchmen yet another effort..."Sade attempts to set this theory of sur-jouissance, or this transcendent state reached through the combination of physical and philosophical orgasm, as the political foundation for a new republic. Does he succeed in creating a viable political formula for a sustainable republic? My argument states absolutely not. His aristocratic elitism narrows his voice. But he does propose the combination of sexual, literary, and intellectual freedoms as a possible polemic against any form of reduced space.
ContributorsSwankie, Ryan James (Author) / Mullet, Isabelle (Thesis advisor) / Canovas, Frédéric (Committee member) / Bahtchevanova, Mariana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) is one of the greatest playwrights of the Romantic era. The most attractive fact of his work is the diversity of topics, genres, tones, opinions and styles. Musset's theater was created in the romantic drama period, which was influenced by abroad. He sought freedom of creation and sometimes showed independence from writers taking his own initiatives to change and mix different writing styles. Throughout the different parts of this thesis, I analyzed in detail the dramatic work of Musset, especially through his two plays, Les Caprices de Marianne (1833) and On ne Badine pas avec l'Amour (1834), to study the artistic originality of such an exceptionally talented artist. He lived in the Romantic period but never forgot his predecessors to whom he paid tribute. He was influenced by them while preserving his work's originality. This thesis consists of two chapters, the first is devoted to the Romanticism and its influence on Musset's dramatic work, and the second is about the different literary doctrines that have left their mark on Musset's theater. By studying them, I show how Musset used his talent to mix and match these several types of doctrines to create a unique artwork that is still alive and interesting today.
ContributorsAlavi, Azadeh (Author) / Canovas, Frédéric (Thesis advisor) / Cruse, Markus (Committee member) / Gallais, Sylvain (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
There are many lines of evidence for anisotropy at all scales in the explosions of core collapse supernovae, e.g. visual inspection of the images of resolved supernova remnants, polarization measurements, velocity profiles, "natal kicks" of neutron stars, or spectroscopic observations of different regions of remnants. Theoretical stability considerations and detailed numerical simulations have shown that Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instabilities arise in the star after the explosion, which leads to the early fragmentation of parts of the ejecta. The clumps thus created are of interest to a variety of topics, one of them being the formation environment of the solar system. There is a high probability that the solar system formed in the vicinity of a massive star that, shortly after its formation, exploded as a core collapse supernova. As argued in this thesis as well as other works, a core collapse supernova generally is a good candidate for chemically enriching the forming solar system with material. As forming proto--planetary systems in general have a high probability of being contaminated with supernova material, a method was developed for detecting tracer elements indicative supernova contamination in proto--planetary systems.The degree of the anisotropy of the supernova explosion can have dramatic effects on the mode of delivery of that material to the solar system, or proto--planetary systems in general. Thus it is of particular interest to be able to predict the structure of the supernova ejecta. Numerical simulations of the explosions of core collapse supernovae were done in 3 dimensions in order to study the formation of structure. It is found that RT instabilities result in clumps in the He- and C+O rich regions in the exploding star that are overdense by 1-2 orders of magnitude. These clumps are potential candidates for enriching the solar system with material. In the course of the further evolution of the supernova remnant, these RT clumps are likely to evolve into ejecta knots of the type observed in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant.
ContributorsEllinger, Carola I (Author) / Young, Patrick A (Thesis advisor) / Desch, Steven J (Committee member) / Timmes, Francis (Committee member) / Scannapieco, Evan (Committee member) / Lunardini, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011