Matching Items (4)
Description
While many report positive changes after completing a long distance hike on the PCT, many who return experience a sense of depression or intense sadness. This sadness can be debilitating, but very little research has been done to explore possible causes and remedies. This thesis argues that volatile environmental conditions on the Pacific Crest Trail act in a similar way to that of entities such as fraternities and the military in that the effort required to be initiated must be justified with the value received. As such, thru-hikers increase the value of the trail for themselves along with the cultural values that the trail may hold. These cultural values are predominantly equality, liberty, and the concept of the sublime. However, as nature is understood to be the opposite of urban environments, urban environments take on qualities of inequality, oppression, and corruption in the eyes of the hiker. These qualities then cause a hiker distress upon returning from their six month journey in that they have to both exist in and participate with such a society.
ContributorsRestrepo, Daniel Sebastian (Author) / Popova, Laura (Thesis director) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The American sublime aesthetic, discussed frequently in literature and art of the United States, is equally manifest in the nation’s symphonic music as a concurrent and complementary aesthetic. The musical application of the American sublime supports and enriches current scholarship on American musical identity, nationality, and the American symphonic enterprise. I suggest that the American sublime forms an integral part of nineteenth-century American music and is key to understanding the symphony as a genre in the United States. I discuss American symphonic works by Anthony Philip Heinrich, George Frederick Bristow, William Henry Fry, Dennison Wheelock, and Florence Beatrice Price, aided by an analytical tool which I developed, to illuminate my appraisal of the nineteenth-century American symphonic enterprise. Their compositions contribute meaningfully to the complex history of identity formation for both American composers and the nation. In focusing on these incorporations of the sublime by white composers and composers of color from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, my research demonstrates how the American sublime expanded and transformed to better accommodate the country’s diverse citizenry, despite the marginalization of some.
The nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic dialogue between Americans and their European contemporaries sustained a “distinctly cosmopolitan cultural ethos,” a phenomenon also described by Douglas Shadle as “one of the most vibrant intercultural exchanges in all of Western music history.” This dialogue shaped the cultural formation of identity for many American composers throughout the century and provided the foundation for a symphonic repertoire, which became internationally recognized for the first time as “American.” In this cosmopolitan environment, the Americanization of the sublime aided in the rebranding of long-established European artistic expressions like the symphony, while perpetuating the idealization of the nation’s geography, its people, and its beliefs. Perhaps most importantly, the American sublime supported the widely held belief in American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. The applicability of the American sublime to various genres made it a useful tool to assert autonomy and individuality in forms such as the symphony. For this reason, a revaluation of American symphonic music and its relation to the American sublime amplifies the significance of this repertoire.
The nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic dialogue between Americans and their European contemporaries sustained a “distinctly cosmopolitan cultural ethos,” a phenomenon also described by Douglas Shadle as “one of the most vibrant intercultural exchanges in all of Western music history.” This dialogue shaped the cultural formation of identity for many American composers throughout the century and provided the foundation for a symphonic repertoire, which became internationally recognized for the first time as “American.” In this cosmopolitan environment, the Americanization of the sublime aided in the rebranding of long-established European artistic expressions like the symphony, while perpetuating the idealization of the nation’s geography, its people, and its beliefs. Perhaps most importantly, the American sublime supported the widely held belief in American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. The applicability of the American sublime to various genres made it a useful tool to assert autonomy and individuality in forms such as the symphony. For this reason, a revaluation of American symphonic music and its relation to the American sublime amplifies the significance of this repertoire.
ContributorsHicks, Glen Wayne (Author) / Norton, Kay (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Solís, Ted (Committee member) / Shadle, Douglas W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Sublimity & The Bronte Men: An Exploration of Heathcliff & Rochester Through Edmund Burke's Sublime.
Description
The Brontë sisters, inadvertently, created two characters overwhelmingly offensive to the modern reader. However, I think it is time that we as readers diverge from the well-trodden path of literary analyses concerning Rochester and Heathcliff. By limiting these two characters to only their most surface-level qualities, and passing moral judgments on them as if they are somehow failing some expectation of moral behavior, these two characters are denigrated to the titles of “bad characters” or “bad men.” I propose a reading of Heathcliff and Rochester that transcends the confining rhetoric of good vs. bad and looks to Heathcliff and Rochester as agents of the sublime as defined by Edmund Burke in his foundational text A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful.
ContributorsWeiland, Madeline (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
The following work is a creative exploration of rock formations within urban settings, illuminating the sublimity of seemingly mundane micro-environments. I argue that the historical use of the sublime in landscape painting has allowed artists to create artworks capable of evoking powerful emotion. To support this claim, I investigate the works of American Traditional Landscape painters and Abstract Expressionists, focusing on the impact of their art within the context of its creation. Moreover, I illustrate the importance of redefining the sublime to contemporary society as growing urban environments decrease accessibility to uninhabited natural settings. Through the creation of three oil paintings and two charcoal drawings, I depict seemingly unimportant rock formations in an abstracted sense to demonstrate their sublime nature. I assert that a rock’s sublimity is derived from their existence on this planet as many of these formations are billions of years old, a number unquantifiable to the human mind. Therefore, as rocks frequent urban environments, I argue that the sublime can be interpreted on a micro-scale accessible within contemporary society.
ContributorsGrimes, Charles (Author) / Pomilio, Mark (Thesis director) / Button, Melissa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2024-05