Thesiss

Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007) was one of the preeminent cellists and musical pedagogues of the twentieth century. He brought the art of cello technique and musical interpretation to new heights, but perhaps his greatest contribution to the cello community was his advocacy fo…

This dissertation identifies an intersection between language critique and biography in the early thought of Johann Gottfried Herder. Through an analysis of three works written between 1765 and 1770, I show that Herder uses the form of biography to arrive at a concept of living …

Adnan Saygun, one of the two leading composers of the Turkish Five, was a serious ethnomusicologist who led the fieldwork in gathering folk material, and collaborated with prominent musicological researcher and composer, Béla Bartók. Like Bartók, Saygun used folk elements extens…

The dissertation examines royal biographies composed during the Hundred Years War—those of Hugh Capet (anonymous, c. 1358), Pierre I of Cyprus (Guillaume de Machaut, 1369–77), Edward, the Black Prince (Herald Chandos, c. 1385), and Charles V (Christine de Pizan, 1405)—and how th…

The present study constitutes a biography of John P. Paynter (1928–1996). Paynter served his entire professional career as the second director of bands at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, succeeding Glenn Cliffe Bainum. He attended Northwestern as a theory and comp…

Rabbi David Twersky was a leading figure in Ukrainian Hasidism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Under R. David's father, Hasidism grew from a small sect to a mass movement. R. David began his career after the death of his father in 1837 by settling in Vasil'kov, whe…

This thesis aims to interrogate the notion that biography is a 'traditional, old-fashioned' genre immune to change through an investigation of the work of contemporary female biographers. Whilst biography is constrained by what could be defined as an historicist definition of fa…

This thesis offers a reconsideration of Amelia Opie’s career as a novelist in the light of her developing religious allegiances over the period 1814-1825 in particular. In twentieth-century scholarship, Opie (1769-1853) was often treated primarily as the author of Adeline Mowbra…

This thesis is the first extensive study devoted to the generic originality of Iurii Tynianov’s representation of Pushkin in his two historical novels, Pushkin (1935-1943) and the abandoned The Gannibals (1932). Chapter 1 contextualises Tynianov’s contribution to the current deb…

This is a biography of Robert Jones, 1857-1933. He was a surgeon, and is credited with bringing orthopaedics from its quack past into its scientific present. This work explores Jones’ life and times, and examines whether he is entitled to the epithet ‘father of orthopaedics’. It…

Part 1 of this thesis comprises a biography which, for the first time, places Marion Angus within her historical, family and social context. A version of this was published as the introduction to my edited collection The Singin Lass: Selected Work of Marion Angus (Polygon, 2006)…

Recent musicological discourse, while frequently considering issues of historiography and canonicity, has seldom critically engaged with biography as a genre of documentary significance to reception history for its attempts to shape public opinion of its subjects. In consequence…

Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (1173-1140) has long been considered one of the leading heroes of Wales. The life and rule of Llywelyn, known as Llywelyn the Great, is explored in detail in this thesis. The grandson of Owain Gwynedd, ruler of North Wales from 1137-1170, Llywelyn grew up du…

Sister Lorna M. Zemke (b.1933) was among the first generation of Americans to be trained in the Hungarian system of music education that is often called the Kodály concept. Zemke designed the music education curriculum at Silver Lake College, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to focus on Ko…

Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) has never had a biographer despite the fact that she was considered by her contemporaries to be a highly influential theorist and activist. Like many other unmarried mid-Victorian women she carved out a public career for herself, which she conside…

My dissertation focuses on one of the most prominent genres of historical writing in imperial China (221 BCE -1912 CE): biography. The life stories of figures from different social strata were compiled into the largest section of many Chinese dynastic histories: the “Arrayed Tra…

This dissertation investigates the state of North Carolina in the years before American intervention in the Great War by focusing on the actions, speeches, and writings of House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin. Despite his importance to such a pivotal decade in American history, …

This treatise is about the Filipino composer Col. Antonino Buenaventura and his 1969 Viola Sonata. It discusses the Sonata’s importance in the Philippines’ search for a distinctive national identity. It also offers information on how to perform the Viola Sonata and suggested bow…

How did eugenics go from an idea in Britain to a movement in America? That was the question this dissertation originally set out to answer. Also, of interest was how the theory of eugenics went from the fringes to becoming mainstream. Who were the key figures in this transatlant…