Alumni + Careers: Dissertations

2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005| Prior to 2005

2005

Kim, Suk-Young

Revolutionizing the Family: A Comparative Study on the Filmed Propaganda Performances of the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 1966-1976

This dissertation investigates the dynamics of the filmed propaganda performances created by the newly founded East Asian socialist states, the People’s Republic of China (the PRC) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK), from 1966 to 1976. This period roughly marks the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the height of the DPRK’s dogmatic pursuit of independence, when sets of filmed theatre performances were produced by the state for massive circulation. The general aim of the propaganda performances was to create the spirit of an ongoing socialist revolution. But an even more compelling aim for their production was to promote the authority of the state leaders and the unity of the newborn states by appropriating Confucian ideas regarding the nation as a patriarchal family structure with a state leader as a father of the nation and the members of the state as his obedient sons and daughters.

The dissertation primarily focuses on how the multiple notions of family are negotiated in the so-called “model theatre works” (yangbanxi) of the PRC and “revolutionary operas” (hukmyung kageuk) of the DPRK, which closely resemble each other in terms of their hybrid forms of mixing traditional and modern music, dance, and performance style in an attempt to create a revolutionary form of art.

On a larger plane, it explores how a state produces a self-legitimizing myth about its existence through repeated political propaganda. Both the PRC and the DPRK regarded model theatre works and revolutionary operas as more than theatre productions, and envisioned them as a process of making a national identity by clearly indicating one’s appropriate place in the structure of a family-nation. This helped the two states establish the much-needed mechanism for inscribing the politically correct thoughts and behaviors on the mind and body of the members of the newly found states.

Together with the similarities between the People’s Republic of China and North Korea’s operas, this dissertation also takes into consideration the diverging point of the cultural expressions of the People’s Republic of China and North Korea, which is shaped by the specific historical circumstances of the two states.

Moeschen, Sheila

Benevolent Actors and Charitable ‘Objects’: Physical Disability and the Theatricality of Charity in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century America

Charity endures as a social practice and philosophical concept in America. While providing a way for individuals to reaffirm their spiritual and moral integrity, charity also produces images, ideas, and cultural attitudes of those coded as “needy” such as the physically disabled. Many studies of charity consider the rise of the philanthropic institution, document the contributions of well-known benefactors, or explore the effects of fund-raising and publicity strategies. In contrast, this dissertation examines the implications of understanding charity as a moral sentiment, deployed over the course of the nation’s history as a response to the “problem” of the physically disabled. According to Common Sense philosophers Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, moral sentiments or “fellow-feelings” such as benevolence structure social relationships. This work traces the historical cultivation of charitable “fellow-feeling” toward the physically disabled and in the process discloses charity and physical disability as mutually constitutive. Here, the artful construction of charitable sentiment is revealed, gaining intelligibility and cohesion through aesthetic devices such as theatre, photography, film, pageantry, and television.

In addition to framing the production of charitable sentiment, these devices help to facilitate theatricality: a performance theory denoting the process whereby spectators retain awareness of the way their participation either upholds or disrupts the terms of an event or situation. Theatricality operates in each case study to provide visibility to the historical relationship between benevolent actors and charitable “objects,” while simultaneously creating the possibility to reconfigure and redefine the charitable dynamic. Chapter One examines the relationship between nineteenth-century melodrama and public performances by deaf/dumb and blind pupils; Chapter Two explores the rise of cinema in conjunction with Lewis Hine’s documentary photography of crippled laborers in the Progressive era; Chapter Three takes up the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and the spectacular benevolence of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in the 1940s; and Chapter Four considers the comedic performance of Jerry Lewis during the 1980s in one of America’s most complicated annual televised “rituals,” the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon.

Wilson, Melinda D.

Coming of Age in the Black Liberation Generation: The Construction of Youth in African American Drama, 1950 – 1980

This dissertation is the first study to critically consider dramatic representations of African American youth by examining the transitional years between childhood and adulthood as explored in dramas from the civil rights movement and Black Power era. This study uses five plays and their respective initial productions as case studies to identify the interrelationship of African American theatre and drama, Black liberation movement history, and identity formation theory. Between 1950 and 1980, Black playwrights and theatre companies placed an unprecedented number of youth characters center stage just as civil rights activists positioned Black teenagers at the forefront of liberation campaigns. Black theatre purposely engaged the historical moment to pay particular attention to the social development of Black youth.

The teenage characters in Take a Giant Step (1953) by Louis Peterson, The Toilet (1964) by LeRoi Jones, Black Girl (1969) by J.E. Franklin, Black Cycle (1970) by Martie Charles, and Zooman and the Sign (1980) by Charles Fuller represent the “Black liberation generation,” the generation of Black youth who came of age during post-World War II struggles for racial justice. These plays demonstrate how changes in American race relations impacted the life chances and choices of Black youth characters. This study evaluates the decisions the characters make utilizing facets of postpositivist realist theories of identity, set forth by cultural theorists Satya P. Mohanty and Paula M.L. Moya, that privilege the mediation of social and personal experiences as vital to identity formation. “Coming of Age in the Black Liberation Generation: The Construction of Youth in African American Drama, 1950 – 1980” additionally considers the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and it adds the social category of age to African American theatre discussions. Studying the Black experience through the analytical lens of youth offers critical insights to social discourses that defined the civil rights/Black Power historical moment.