Browsing by Author "Gabriele, Matthew"
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- Imagination Movers: The Creation of Conservative Counter-Narratives in Reaction to Consensus LiberalismBartee, Seth James (Virginia Tech, 2014-03-25)The purpose of this study was to explore what exactly bound post-Second World War American conservatives together. Since modern conservatism's recent birth in the United States in the last half century or more, many historians have claimed that both anti-communism and capitalism kept conservatives working in cooperation. My contention was that the intellectual founder of postwar conservatism, Russell Kirk, made imagination, and not anti-communism or capitalism, the thrust behind that movement in his seminal work The Conservative Mind. In The Conservative Mind, published in 1953, Russell Kirk created a conservative genealogy that began with English parliamentarian Edmund Burke. Using Burke and his dislike for the modern revolutionary spirit, Kirk uncovered a supposedly conservative seed that began in late eighteenth-century England, and traced it through various interlocutors into the United States that culminated in the writings of American expatriate poet T.S. Eliot. What Kirk really did was to create a counter-narrative to the American liberal tradition that usually began with the French Revolution and revolutionary figures such as English-American revolutionary Thomas Paine. One of my goals was to demystify the fusionist thesis, which states that conservatism is a monolithic entity of shared qualities. I demonstrated that major differences existed from conservatism's postwar origins in 1953. I do this by using the concept of textual communities. A textual community is a group of people led by a privileged interpreter—someone such as Russell Kirk—who translates a text, for example Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, for followers. What happens in a textual community is that the privileged interpreter explains to followers how to read a text and then forms boundaries around a particular rendering of a book. I argue that conservatism was full of these textual communities and privileged interpreters. Therefore, in consecutive chapters, I look at the careers of Russell Kirk, John Lukacs, Christopher Lasch, and Paul Gottfried to demonstrate how this concept fleshed out from 1953 and well into the first decade of the new millennium.
- Museums That "Matter": An Analysis of Four History MuseumsSettle, Lora Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2010-05-04)Museums have, in recent years, experienced an increasing amount of pressure to fulfill their role as public institutions for both education and entertainment. For museums to ensure their success in this role, they must constantly investigate their operations in order to maximize their effectiveness. Common museological theories and literature are shared by museum professionals across the globe, roughly forming an ideal standard for museums. This study argues, however, against an ideal standard in favor of museums being evaluated in their own right. Elements of Stephen E. Weil's system of evaluation described in Making Museums Matter (2002) — and specifically his four evaluative criteria of purposiveness, capability, effectiveness, and efficiency — are employed in this study in order to evaluate four history museums — the building for the protection of the royal tombs of Vergina, Greece, the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, Greece, the Archaearium at Historic Jamestown, Virginia, and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. The use of these four criteria allows for a basic understanding of the ways in which the museums in this study have become successful despite their variance from an ideal standard.
- Syllabus - HUM 1214 (Fall 2012)Gabriele, Matthew (2012)A syllabus for HUM 1214: Medieval World, taught in Fall 2012 by Prof. Matthew Gabriele (Dept. of Religion and Culture).
- Syllabus - REL 5984 (Spring 2013)Gabriele, Matthew (2012-12-06)
- Syllabus - REL/HIST 4074 (Fall 2012)Gabriele, Matthew (2012)Syllabus for REL/HIST 4074: Memory & Legend. Taught by Prof. Matthew Gabriele (Dept. of Religion and Culture).
- Syllabus - REL/HUM 4324 (Spring 2012)Gabriele, Matthew (2012)Syllabus for REL/HUM 4324: The Language of Religious Violence. Taught by Prof. Matthew Gabriele (Dept. of Religion and Culture).
- Syllabus - REL/HUM/HIST 3504 (Spring 2012)Gabriele, Matthew (2012)Syllabus for REL/HUM/HIST 3504: Age of the Crusades. Taught by Prof. Matthew Gabrielel (Dept. of Religion and Culture).
- Syllabus - REL/JUD/HUM 3704 (Spring 2013)Gabriele, Matthew; Sax, Benjamin E. (2012-12-14)Syllabus for REL/JUD/HUM 3704: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of Judeo-Christianity (Spring 2013).
- 'What are ye, little mannie?': the Persistence of Fairy Culture in Scotland,1572-1703 and 1811-1927Hight, Alison Marie (Virginia Tech, 2014-06-09)This thesis is a chronologically comparative study of fairy culture and belief in early modern and Victorian Scotland. Using fairy culture as a case study, I examine the adaptability of folk culture by exploring whether beliefs and legends surrounding fairies in the early modern era continued into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a single culture system, or whether the Victorian fairy revival was a distinct cultural phenomenon. Based on contextual, physical, and behavioral comparisons, this thesis argues the former; while select aspects of fairy culture developed and adapted to serve the needs and values of Victorian society, its resurgence and popularization was largely predicated on the notion that it was a remnant of the past, therefore directly linking the nineteenth century interpretation to the early modern. In each era, fairy culture serves as a window into the major tensions complicating Scottish identity formation. In the early modern era, these largely centered around witchcraft, theology, and the Reformation, while notions of cultural heritage, national mythology, and escapist fantasy dominated Victorian fairy discourse. A comparative study on fairy culture demonstrates how cultural traditions can help link vastly different time periods and complicate traditional conceptions about periodization. Ultimately, this thesis reveals how issues of class impacted the popularization and persistence of fairy culture across both eras, reflecting ongoing discussions about Scottish identity.
- Where Power Resides: Femininity and Power in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and FireForbish, Katelyn Hope (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-19)This project examines the relationship between femininity and empowerment in George R. R. Martin's fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. It combines medieval historical context, psychological and sociological research, and feminist theory to construct a framework through which to discuss how power functions in Martin's fictional world of Westeros. With six key characters, I argue that femininity operates as a kind of natural resource anyone can use to access empowerment, regardless of how one personally identifies; further, I illustrate how these routes to power are ultimately more successful than others. Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, and Daenerys Targaryen are the most prominent figures I discuss at length, but Lord Varys, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, and Tyrion Lannister also serve as successful examples who additionally demonstrate the feminine as separated from sex and gender. Overall, I aim to illuminate how power is not exclusively accessed or utilized through masculinity or the rejection of the feminine, specifically by analyzing these six characters' empowerment.