Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Wills – Virginia'

"A Battle of Wills" examines the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the American Civil War. By investigating the reactions to events such as battles and political happenings that occurred among the soldiers of the Confederacy's primary army we can see how the end of the Civil War unfolded for these men. The Army of Northern Virginia was the Confederacy's main hope for independence and the vehicle through which its identity flowed. Victory or defeat of that army would dictate the outcome of the Civil War. This thesis argues that by examining the fluctuations in morale, optimism, and hope among these soldiers through their letters and diaries, along with a proper historical context of when they were writing, can provide us a better understanding about the end of the Civil War. The ending was not predetermined or inevitable and this is evidenced in the writings of the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the war.
Master of Arts
“A Battle of Wills” examines the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the American Civil War. By investigating the reactions to events such as battles and political happenings that occurred among the soldiers of the Confederacy’s primary army we can see how the end of the Civil War unfolded for these men.

The goal of my thesis was to produce a building that lives in the spirit of water - a universal substance that senses and responds to the will of the environment around it. Similar to water, the maritime museum adapts its form to external forces while borrowing and redistributing energy throughout an internal cohesive structure. The building serves as an instrument of measurement, etching the pattern of the tides in the night sky and measuring its own shifting form in relation to the moon - its form, constantly reformulates itself, and is analogous to the ebb and flow of progress in history of maritime navigation. Located on North Union Street in Alexandria, Virginia, the building is anchored to the edge of the Potomac, taking full advantage of the endless source of energy that the river provides. The building's form derives itself from the interaction between structure and water. It borrows from the paradoxical behavior of water: the tendency to alternate between platonic spherical forms which occur through internal forces and the unraveling of the sphere in response to gravitational external forces applied to it. The building's circular lighthouse on the northern end serves as a symbolic focal point as well as a central repository for the energy gathered by its two wings. The east wing closest to the water unravels in response to the 4 foot rise and drop of the tides, and borrows that energy to continually recreate an architecture in the image of itself. The west wing of the enclosed portion of the museum serves as a barrier and helps contain the water that is to be released through the lighthouse. The lighthouse also forms a symbolic focal point for the city where light for navigation towards the waterfront, provides a point for people, boats and water to come together. During low tide, a gush of water is released through the lighthouse's inner vortex, as a waterwheel harnesses the lunar energy it is released as a single beam of a light into the sky with surplus energy stored for future use. The interplay between static form and dynamic form creates a building that is both anchored to earth and free to react to the spirit of the movement of the water.
Master of Architecture

Situated in Virginia's Lower Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, Virginia, endured numerous occupations during the Civil War. Arguably the worst the townspeople endured was General Robert Huston Milroy's—January 1, 1863-June 15, 1863. A staunch abolitionist and fervent supporter of the Union, Milroy fought a war not only against Confederate troops, but against the Confederate population as well. He firmly believed that only an Old-Testament style scourge of the land could rid this country of slavery and restore the Union. Milroy's strong convictions moved him to inflict his will on Winchester's population. Exiles, arrests of civilians (women and children included), secret detectives, and widespread destruction of property, were the norm during Milroy's occupation. While this study examines Milroy's biography from birth to death, its focus is on his six month tenure as military commander in Winchester. General Milroy has never before been the subject of an in depth biographical study. His military career was plagued by his constant bickering with West Point graduates. Ultimately it was his contempt for West Pointers that brought a rapid conclusion to his military career. He despised professional soldiers and spent his Civil War career trying to prove that non-professional volunteer officers were equal or better in ability to graduates of the United States Military Academy. "My will is absolute law" also serves as a valuable tool for scholars interested in understanding the undying Confederate spirit on the home front and how Federal soldiers initially enforced President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in occupied areas.
Master of Arts

The kyanite quartzites of the Willis Mountain and East Ridge deposits in Buckingham County, Virginia hosts the world's largest kyanite mine and constitute the largest known reserves of kyanite. The stratiform kyanite quartzite is overlain and underlain by quartz-muscovite schists which are in turn enveloped by biotite-amphibole gneiss of the Cambrian Chopawamsic formation, metamorphosed volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks. The entire package of rocks has been metamorphosed to amphibolite grade peak conditions of 6.5 kb and 600°C. The kyanite quartzite is very similar in bulk composition and accessory mineralogy to high-alumina rocks of probable hydrothermal origin in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and to active stratiform hydrothermal alteration zones in Tatun, Taiwan and Otake, Japan. The major difference among these deposits is the type of aluminosilicate phase present, a reflection of the grade of metamorphism, with kaolinite and pyrophyllite appearing in unmetamorphosed deposits, pyrophyllite and andalusite appearing in zones of greenschist grade, and kyanite appearing in zones of amphibolite grade. Data from active alteration zones and mineral equilibria suggest that the kyanite quartzite was formed from intermediate volcanic rocks by hydrothermal action of acidic fluids (pH 2 to 4) at a temperature between 100 and 200°C under mildly oxidizing conditions. Alumina and silica were residually enriched as alkali and alkaline earth cations were extracted from the rock by hydrolysis. The surrounding quartz-muscovite schist was formed in the same manner by less acidic, cooler fluids. The adjacent biotite-amphibole gneiss also shows signs of partial hydrothermal alteration, such as residual enrichment of alumina represented by a kyanite and/or sillimanite-staurolite-gedrite assemblage.
M.S.

From 1978-1982 Salem High School suffered from a series of losing seasons from its football program. In wanting to regain its former tradition the Salem City Council hired Willis White to rebuild the program from the ground up. This thesis investigates the history of the Salem program prior to and through the Willis White years. The research for this thesis came from personal interviews with present and former coaches as well as members of the community. Several different newspaper companies in the Roanoke Valley contributed to the history of Spartans' games. It also comes from a collection of secondary sources that contribute to background history of the city and program.

This study examined the relationship between demographics, attitudes, and subjective norms (influences) on Virginia adults over 50 with at least one adult child and the presence of estate planning documents. The Theory of Reasoned Action (Azjen & Fishbein, 1980) was applied using a secondary data set of 189 participants. Regression analyses examined paths from external variables (demographics), attitudes toward the behavior, and subjective norms to the intention and behavior. Intention and behavior were defined as the possession, intention to possess, and non-intention to possess estate planning documents. Asset-focused documents included Will, Living Trust, Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Issues, and the Letter of Instruction. Health care-focused documents included Living Will and the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. An analysis was also conducted on the possession of a complete set of estate planning documents. Older persons were more likely to possess all documents except the Letter of Instruction. Respondents with higher assets were more likely to possess a Will. Respondents who were more educated were more inclined to possess a Living Will. Respondents that had informally promised property to their children were more likely to possess a Living Trust. Younger respondents were more likely to intend to possess a Will, the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care, and the Living Will. Persons with lower assets were more likely to intend to possess a Will, and those with a goal for privacy in financial affairs and who believed they should help their adult children financially were more likely to intend to possess a Living Trust. Participants who intended to possess a Letter of Instruction were more educated, male, owned homes, and had a goal for privacy in financial affairs. Age (younger) was an indirect influence to the Letter of Instruction, mediated through the goal to leave family financial security. Participants with lower assets and in good emotional health did not have intention to possess a Living Trust. Male gender and owning a home were influences on not intending to possess a Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Issues. Males were less likely to have a Letter of Instruction. Respondents with the goal to leave an inheritance were more likely to have non-intention to possess the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Issues. More education, lower income, and residing with a relative were mediated influences to the Durable Powers of Attorney for Health Care and for Financial Issues through the goal to leave inheritance. Respondents that were older, had more assets, owned homes, had a goal to leave an inheritance, and that had informally promised their property were more likely to possess more estate documents. Indirect paths to having a set of estate planning documents were more education, lower income, and residing with a relative, which were mediated through the goal to leave inheritance. The low number of estate planning documents respondents had and the lack of intention to obtain estate planning documents indicate a need for further education in the areas of estate planning. The occurrence of older age as an influence, particularly with health care-focused documents, indicates a need for more awareness in younger adults of their vulnerability, at any age, to illness or injury and that medical directives should be in place.
Ph. D.

The purpose of this research, based on Tönnies’s theory of Gemeinschaft and Durkheim’s theory of mechanical solidarity, was to determine if there were differences between rural Virginia teachers from rural areas and those from nonrural areas in their perceptions of salary, isolation, working conditions, NCLB requirements, and job satisfaction, as well as their plans to remain in rural schools. It also was to determine if there was a relationship between rural and nonrural backgrounds and the rural teachers’ intentions to remain employed in rural schools. Rural teachers from each of Virginia’s eight Superintendents’ Regions were selected and were asked to respond to an on-line survey. Their responses were collected and the data were analyzed using SPSS. The findings of this research showed that perceptions of isolation and working conditions were significant predictors of teachers’ plans to remain in rural schools. Although the findings of this research did not show rural origin to be significant, the concept of community that is inherent in ruralness was indicated by the significance of the relationship between feeling membership in the community and plans to remain in a rural school. In addition, the findings of this research supported the development of the grow-your-own programs discussed in the literature review. This research showed that established residency in the rural area and feeling membership in the rural community significantly influenced the decision to remain in a rural school.

This thesis explores the citation of documents in the modernist novel. From contracts to newspaper articles, telegrams to reports, documents are invoked as interleaved texts in ways that, to date, have not been critically interrogated. I consider a range of novels, including works by Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and Willa Cather, which are selected, in part, as a litmus of Anglo-American modernism, though they can more productively also be understood as coalescing around the example set by Joseph Conrad. Replete with allusions to documents, Conrad’s oeuvre is developed across the thesis as a meta-commentary on the document in modernist literature. In placing the document at the centre of analysis, and in using Conrad as a diagnostic of the document in modernity, the manifold ways in which authors use interpolated texts to perform denotative and connotative “work” in their narratives emerge, with the effect of revising our understanding of documents. These authors reveal the power of mass produced documents to lay claim to novelistic language; the historical role of documents in reifying inequality; on the level of narrative, the thematic potential of the document as a reiterable text; and finally, the capacity of the document, in its most depersonalized form, to realize social collectivity and community. This project therefore asks us to rethink and relocate the document as central to the modernist novel.

This thesis explores the changing reputation and legacy of John Powell (1882-1963). Powell was a Virginian-born pianist, composer, and ardent Anglo-Saxon supremacist who created musical propaganda to support racial purity and to define the United States as an exclusively Anglo-Saxon nation. Although he once enjoyed international fame, he has largely disappeared from the public consciousness today. In contrast, the legacies of many of Powell’s musical contemporaries, such as Charles Ives and George Gershwin, have remained vigorous. By examining the ways in which the public has perceived and portrayed Powell both during and after his lifetime, this thesis links Powell’s obscurity to a deliberate, public rejection of his Anglo-Saxon supremacist definition of the United States.

This thesis explores the evolution of American Western narrative after the 1893 closing of the Western Frontier. Formerly representing a seemingly limitless fuel of symbolic growth, the frontier's closing threatened further national prosperity. Without new Western lands to conquer, narratives about the West began to be romanticized in a new way, selectively omitting non-Anglo narrative elements and presenting a more palatable West in the form of celebratory conquest. Ignoring its imperial roots, this new twentieth-century mythologization of the West became an increasingly ubiquitous narrative of America's honorable origins. Despite its ties to the perpetuation of empire, the pervasiveness of contemporary Western narratives remains largely benign in resonance, resulting in a past that is wholly severed from the present. Using a New Historicist approach, this study pairs literary works with cultural artifacts, tracking the role of Western narrative in the furtherance of empire. The first chapter examines Frederick J. Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902) as representatives of the new romanticization of the West. Chapter two looks at how Willa Cather's anti-spectacle novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), responds to the spectacle of Empire at early twentieth-century World's Fairs. The final chapter pairs Japanese-American Internment during World War II with Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses (1992), as a commentary on the oppressive rhetoric of western space.

This thesis aims to conceptualise the Virgin through a focus on post-Reformation representations of her bodily assumption and coronation as Queen of Heaven. The Reformation’s emphasis on the Word was a driving force behind a diminishing of significance of the Virgin, underpinning a shift in perception of her image from Heaven’s Queen to humble handmaid. This thesis will show how in spite of its eradication from state-approved liturgy, iconography of the assumption and coronation of the Virgin continued to be of cultural significance. Through historicised close reading of works by writers from a range of confessional standpoints, it will show how these contentious aspects of Mariology aroused powerful and complex responses in post-Reformation England. The timescale of the thesis commences midway through the reign of Elizabeth I, in the year that marked the start of the Jesuit mission, and finishes midway through the reign of James I, in a year which saw the investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales. Thematically rather than chronologically structured, the thesis itself journeys on a spectrum of faith, encompassing views that range from Protestant polemicist to Jesuit Catholic. It will show how iconography of the assumption and coronation was symptomatic of the continued confessional complexity of post-Reformation England. The thesis commences with two chapters exploring oppositional representations of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven in Protestant writing. Chapters focusing on individual voices follow: Elizabeth Cary, the writers of recusant rosary books, Sir John Harington, Henry Constable and Robert Southwell. In a variety of ways, both oblique and direct, these writers engaged with images of the Virgin’s assumption and coronation, and their representation of the Virgin’s image reflects cultural and political as well as religious concerns.

碩士
淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
83
Virginia Woolf, one of the most well-known writers in the twentieth century, has shown the tendency to endow musical quality to her literary works. In her Mrs. Dalloway, the thematic design corresponds to the sonata form, which is normally composed in three movements: the Exposition, the Development and the Recapitulation. In this narrative sonata, the tension is constructed upon the antagonism between the Apollinian spirit (incarnated by Clarissa) and the Dionysian spirit (embodied by Septimus). Other characters, who personify different themes, threaten to intervene in Clarissa's and Septimus' melodies. The narration unfolds as each melody is propelled by its musical refrain, which parallels the will to power of each character. As soon as the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus is resolved, the dissonance is removed and at the same time, the music comes to an end.

The centre of S. Francis of Sales's spirituality is love. In my thesis, first of all, I deal with formative influences which formed his personality. This is the starting point in the discourse about Francis's theological optimism, its roots and its influence on the conception of God. For S. Francis God is esentially the God in Trinity, who share love in the highest manner also with a man through the mystery of Incarnation. Francis's conception of love that has its seat in the heart of a human being is connected with that conviction. In the very top of a heart there is the will which is called up to make decisions according to love that gives the true motivation. On the way of the growth of love the highest aim is the holy indifference, which enables God to act in a human heart according to His intentions. For S. Francis love to God is closely connected with love to a man who is the image of God. During his direction of souls to love S. Francis recommends first of all kindness and as the main mens a prayer and sacraments. The heart which has become fully pervaded with love, which loves and is loved, we can best contemplate at Virgin Mary.

Bibliography: leaves 653-669
Before God created human beings, He devised a plan to save them in case they sinned. In this plan, the second Person of the Godhead would become human. Thus, the incarnation of the second Person of the Godhead was solely for the purpose of saving fallen, sinful human beings. There would have been no incarnation if human beings had not sinned. Thus, the nature of the mission that necessitated the incarnation determined what kind of human nature Jesus was to assume. It was sin that necessitated the incarnation – sin as a tendency and sin as an act of disobedience. In His incarnational life and later through His death on Calvary’s cross, Jesus needed to deal with this dual problem of sin. In order for Him to achieve this, He needed to identify Himself with the fallen humanity in such a way that He would qualify to be the substitute for the fallen humanity. In His role as fallen humanity’s substitute, He would die vicariously and at the same time have sin as a tendency rendered impotent. Jesus needed to assume a human nature that would qualify Him to be an understanding and sympathetic High Priest. He needed to assume a nature that would qualify Him to be an example in overcoming temptation and suffering. Thus, in this study, after comparing and critically evaluating the Christological views of Jack Sequeira, Millard J. Erickson and Norman R. Gulley, I propose that Jesus assumed a unique post-fall (postlapsarian) human nature. He assumed the very nature that all human beings since humankind’s fall have, with its tendency or leaning towards sin. However, unlike other human beings, who are sinners by nature and need a saviour, Jesus was not a sinner. I contend that Jesus was unique because, first and foremost, He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit and was filled with the Holy Spirit throughout His earthly life. Second; He was the God-Man; and third, He lived a sinless life. This study contributes to literature on Christology, and uniquely to Christological dialogue between Evangelical and Seventh-day Adventist theologians.
Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology
D. Phil. (Systematic Theology)