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This research investigates the culturally programmatic symbolism of jazz music in film. I explore this concept through critical analysis of composer Terence Blanchard's original score for Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee (1992). I view Blanchard's music as representing a non-diegetic tone parallel that musically narrates several authentic characteristics of African-American life, culture, and the human condition as depicted in Lee's film. Blanchard's score embodies a broad spectrum of musical influences that reshape Hollywood's historically limited, and often misappropiated perceptions of jazz music within African-American culture. By combining stylistic traits of jazz and classical idioms, Blanchard reinvents the sonic soundscape in which musical expression and the black experience are represented on the big screen. My new work––Black Magic––is a musical response to the research found within this study. The through-composed piece is written in three movements for a studio orchestra. It is an homage to the musical, cultural, and entertainment contributions of African-Americans in the magical realm of Hollywood cinema.

Programs are not only a tool for the simplification or automation of everyday tasks; they also represent a significant time and money investment. A program's life may span years, or even decades, which creates certain risks for the stakeholders involved. To mitigate the risks associated with these legacy systems, software renovation can be undertaken. Software renovation can be described as a series of processes and/or tools used to modernize a legacy system, thereby preserving and maintaining the investment it represents while decreasing the risks associated with it. In this thesis, the focus is on renovation of software created by in-house development. A series of case studies will be examined to demonstrate basic renovation strategies, including the formation of goals for a renovation and exploring trade-offs between robustness, performance, and usability.

To date, very few studies investigating prosody its use in spontaneous speech.This dissertation examines prosodic use between friends and non-friends, as well as expert and novice dyads in a photography task. The main objective of the study was to examine if common ground units could be reliably predicted from prosodic variables, including break indices, boundary tones, and the timing of common ground units relative to preceding and following discourse. An additional objective was to examine whether potential differences were a function of relationship type or expertise level. Twelve twelve dyads participated in the study. Using a 2x2 quasi-experimental design, with relationship type (friend vs. stranger) and expertise level (high vs. low experience) as the between-subject factors, the results indicated that all of the prosodic parameters could reliably distinguish simple common ground sequences from complex common ground sequences. Overall, there were stronger effects for response phase contributions, particularly with respect to timing variables. For the between-subject factors, being a stranger and having photographic expertise had the largest effects, with placement of common ground contributions the most consistent predictor. In the discussion, several extended examples of common ground sequences are provided, illustrating how prosody and timing are used in discourse to achieve further grounding and facilitate communicational understanding. Implications for future research are presented, focusing on the ways the interpersonal communication researchers could make use of prosodic and common ground analyses in their own research.