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Image Selling: How Depictions Of Power Relations, Plasticity, And Abjection In High-Fashion Advertisements Construct Terrifying Social Narratives, Jennifer Lee Litton
Image Selling: How Depictions Of Power Relations, Plasticity, And Abjection In High-Fashion Advertisements Construct Terrifying Social Narratives, Jennifer Lee Litton
Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations
This paper examines how high-fashion advertisements use visual rhetoric in order to construct social narratives related to power struggles, plasticity, and abjection. In creating these types of images, high-fashion advertisers send explicit messages to their viewers regarding the ways they should engage with the depicted social narratives, ranging from objectification to violence to death. Through a close rhetorical analysis and observational study of high-fashion advertisements, this paper discusses the problematic nature of the marketing techniques and how they skew interpretations of social issues.
"Chance" Screenplay, Simone Laroche
"Chance" Screenplay, Simone Laroche
Honors Capstone Projects - All
My Capstone Thesis is a creative screenplay pursuing the complexities of predestination and our innate obsession to control fate. I became intrigued with the idea that our decisions or actions dictate outcomes we may have had the ability to prevent or perpetuate. I recently found it difficult to accept my misfortunes for ineptitude or lack of preparation. Instead I called it “fate” or “destiny” that circumstances were not meant to work in my favor. In hindsight I realized I had allowed my passivity to compensate for my lack of commitment and courage to take risks. Granted, I do believe regardless …
Race And Cricket: The West Indies And England At Lord's, 1963, Harold Richard Herbert Harris
Race And Cricket: The West Indies And England At Lord's, 1963, Harold Richard Herbert Harris
History Dissertations
Cricket became a sport in which there was a clear separation based on race and class; and these distinctions initially determined function within the sport. In England, where the distinction was based mostly on class, the aristocracy, who initially enjoyed watching their workers at play, became involved in playing the game, and determined roles aligned to class. In the West Indies, the distinction was determined by race. However, racial mixing blurred these demarcations and soon the underclass began to encroach onto a space that the sport had created for them. In due course, function within the sport faded into insignificance …
A Retrospective Population Based Cohort Study Examining The Black White Gap In Infant Mortality, Ina Marie Peoples
A Retrospective Population Based Cohort Study Examining The Black White Gap In Infant Mortality, Ina Marie Peoples
Presidential Alumni Research Dissemination Award
Black women in one US City have more than a 2-fold likelihood of experiencing a death in the womb or an infant death within the first year of life when compared to Whites. The purpose of this retrospective population based cohort study was to examine the unexplained high rates of Black fetal and infant (feto-infant) mortality in this city. The study was built on the perinatal periods of risk (PPOR) model. The PPOR model maps each death in a geographic region into four distinct periods of risk based on birth weight and age at death. The study relied upon 51,303 …
My Child And My Life: Sacrificial Obligation And Chaucer, Gary Scott Montano
My Child And My Life: Sacrificial Obligation And Chaucer, Gary Scott Montano
English Dissertations
Medieval literature demonstrates that Christians of that era took their Bible seriously, particularly the Old Testament account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. For them, the story was both fascinating and perplexing. Not only was Abraham one of the most revered figures, but he was also one of the most frustrating. He was admired for his ability to obey God's directive to sacrifice Isaac, but because he does so without displaying an ounce of emotion, that admiration is often coupled with irritation. How could a father as loving as Abraham remain expressionless and emotionless as he raised the knife to kill …
Korean American Matters And Identity In Korean American Novels, Seung-Won Kim
Korean American Matters And Identity In Korean American Novels, Seung-Won Kim
English Dissertations
My dissertation focuses on the intersection between the maturation of young Korean American protagonists in fiction and the writers' own growing-up of ethnic identity as Korean descendants. I analyze nine Korean American novels written by Sook Nyul Choi, An Na, and Linda Sue Park. I approach my selected texts in two different ways. First, I explore the different exigencies of their writing projects by investigating their biographical backgrounds. Second, I examine how these authors differently represent Korean American matters such as history, community, and culture in order to create stories of Korean or Korean American protagonists' coming-of-age through their writing …
Us Poets Laureate: A Literary And Cultural History, Toni M. Holland
Us Poets Laureate: A Literary And Cultural History, Toni M. Holland
English Dissertations
In 1985 the US Congress changed the title of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, which was created in 1937, to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The significance in the change is a signal to enhance awareness of American poetry to the general reading public. This dissertation is an initial look at these poets who from a government-sponsored platform represent American letters. The high profile of the position allows for a means by which the role of the poet is performed as an ambassador of poetry. Who is selected to represent the nation, how each laureate's work is …
No Longer Estranged: Women, Science, Science Fiction, Christy Tidwell
No Longer Estranged: Women, Science, Science Fiction, Christy Tidwell
English Dissertations
Feminist science fiction (SF) and feminist science studies share common concerns--the gendered perception of science and women's place in the sciences among them--but the two fields are rarely considered together. This failure to connect the two fields may be explained in part by the ongoing divide between the sciences and the humanities; it may be further exacerbated by the ghettoization of SF within literary studies. I gather together feminist SF texts, literary theories of feminist SF, and feminist science studies in order to add to the scholarship of each individual field as well as make a case for the value …
God Is Dead... Now There Danceth A God In Me. Bringing Modernist Darkness To Light Through The Apollonian And Dionysian Dichotomy, Kendall Stephenson
God Is Dead... Now There Danceth A God In Me. Bringing Modernist Darkness To Light Through The Apollonian And Dionysian Dichotomy, Kendall Stephenson
English Theses
Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy can be seen at work in the texts of canonical modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, William B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and it is in the balance of these two Greek deities that modernist literary characters affirm life, thus reversing the typically negative interpretations of modernist literature. My aim is to show how the primordial, divergent elements of the Apollonian and Dionysian reveal themselves across the field of modernist literature and synthesize to create moments of truth, mental equilibrium, and life-affirmation amongst its …
The Commentary On Female Self-Discipline In Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple And Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, Jin Kim
English Theses
This thesis studies Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette to explore the embedded commentary about the discourse of female selfdiscipline in the two novels. As two best-selling seduction stories in post-Revolutionary America, Charlotte Temple and The Coquette have often been discussed in terms of what the authors assert about the cultural emphasis on women's virtue in the early Republic through their stories about a young woman suffering and dying as a result of seduction and abandonment. In this thesis, I argue that Rowson and Foster use their narratives to study the particular rhetoric of rewards that …
Resisting Commodification (With Friends!): Facebook And Consumer Culture, Wilton S. Wright
Resisting Commodification (With Friends!): Facebook And Consumer Culture, Wilton S. Wright
English Theses
Is participating in the Facebook phenomenon (or can it become) politically resistant - even revolutionary? Or are social networking websites merely another form of commodified capitalist consumerism? In this thesis, I investigate the commodified/commodifying aspects of Facebook, as well as its political potential. In order to establish a common understanding of the problems created by contemporary capitalism, in the first chapter I use Guy Debord's theory of the Society of the Spectacle to provide a framework for evaluating the incessant commodification of contemporary culture. I then examine previous attempts to overturn the capitalist system and discuss possible reasons for their …
Digitalism: Towards A Theory Of Digital Rhetoric And Composition, Jared Chambers
Digitalism: Towards A Theory Of Digital Rhetoric And Composition, Jared Chambers
English Theses
In this thesis, I argue that the text and the textual are inherently digital and, thus, have properties that are information theoretic in origin. From that premise, I use an interdisciplinary approach to construct a theory for the reading and deconstruction of digital works and their viewers, which I then use to form a method for the analysis, composition, and reading of texts "digitally."The first two chapters introduce the relation of digital philosophy and information theory to textual works, which leads into the third chapter's ontology of digital works and their audience. Chapters four introduces the power of simulacrum in …
Conquest, Colonization, And The Cross: Religious Aspects Of The Conquest And Colonization Of Honduras, Chad Mccutchen
Conquest, Colonization, And The Cross: Religious Aspects Of The Conquest And Colonization Of Honduras, Chad Mccutchen
History Theses
Religiosity pervades the conquest and colonization of Honduras. The secular church, the missionaries, and the colonial aristocracy all played vital roles in the process. The Hispanic social consciousness emerged out of the Reconquista which allowed a fusion of religiosity and conquest, and this psyche manifested in the New World. Spain became equally dependent on the sanctioning of the Catholic Church to justify their enterprises in the Americas. However, the extreme poverty in Honduras created a unique situation in which the ecclesiastics depended on the local mining economy to survive. Therefore the clergy in Honduras struggled to balance their economic pursuits …
The Prison On The Moor: A Study Of The American Prisoner-Of-War Experience Within Dartmoor Prison, 1813-1815, Justin Jones
The Prison On The Moor: A Study Of The American Prisoner-Of-War Experience Within Dartmoor Prison, 1813-1815, Justin Jones
History Theses
The War of 1812 is a conflict best characterized by two adjectives: ironic and forgotten. Conventional histories of the War of 1812 focus almost exclusively on the land engagements of the war, despite the occurrence of several crucial engagements at sea. In what is perhaps the greatest irony of all, one of the most infamous incidents of the war--the shooting of several United States prisoners-of-war at Dartmoor prison in 1815--has received virtually no scholarly attention. The general topic of prisoners-of-war during the War of 1812 has received almost no treatment. Owing to the lack of substantial scholarly literature on Dartmoor …
"What Change Hath God Wrought?": How Gender And The Environment Shaped New England Praying Town Identity And Created A Christian Indian Elect, Kallie Kosc
History Theses
By the 1780s, Christian Indians from praying towns throughout Southern New England accepted an invitation to reside amongst fellow Christianized Oneida in upstate New York. While all parties agreed to live as one "body" with "one head, one heart, one blood," tensions quickly arose between these Christian Indians. While the joint communities of Brothertown, New Stockbridge, and Oneida were intended by the inhabitants to be a place where Christianized natives could form a strong unifying force against Anglo land encroachment, conflict emerged over how to live the proper Christian Indian existence. The two most prominent sources of disagreement between these …
William Dampier And James Cook: Two Windows Into The British Enlightened Exploration Of The Cultures And Societies Of The Pacific, Colby Ty Smith
William Dampier And James Cook: Two Windows Into The British Enlightened Exploration Of The Cultures And Societies Of The Pacific, Colby Ty Smith
History Theses
This study looks into the lives of two well-known British explorers and their own observations and interpretations of the Pacific societies and cultures that they encountered on their voyages. More specifically the study has attempted to reveal the similarities and divergences between these two British explorers and their respective interpretations of Pacific natives. Furthermore, the backdrop of Enlightenment thought is used to elucidate a better understanding of the encounters of the two very different societies of Western Europe and the Pacific world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, this study is important in that it sheds light on the …
Inflatable Rapture, Lawrence Gise
Inflatable Rapture, Lawrence Gise
Art & Art History Masters of Fine Arts Theses
Written portion of creative MFA thesis published as a book. Physical copies are available for viewing in the Art & Art History Department office.
The Trick Of The Tale: Deconstructing Johann Weyer's De Praestigiis Daemonum, James Robert Allen
The Trick Of The Tale: Deconstructing Johann Weyer's De Praestigiis Daemonum, James Robert Allen
History Theses
This thesis is an intellectual history of early modern European beliefs in witchcraft. Most research and scholarship on this period has focused on understanding the “witch hunts” and the collective phenomenon known as the witchcraze. Historians have focused more the social and political conditions that contributed to witch-hunting. These studies have tended to focus on the institutions that existed to facilitate witchcraft prosecutions. Comparatively, the writings of “demonologists” or intellectuals during the early modern period have been studied to a lesser extent.1 Early modern authors like Johann Weyer are often interpreted as either a skeptic or believer in witchcraft. Most …
Transatlantic Brinksmanship: The Anglo-American Alliance And Conservative Ideology, 1953-1956, David M. Watry
Transatlantic Brinksmanship: The Anglo-American Alliance And Conservative Ideology, 1953-1956, David M. Watry
History Dissertations
The purpose of this transatlantic dissertation is to produce a new post-revisionist history of Anglo-American relations from 1953 to 1956 that seriously re-assesses Eisenhower's "middle path" foreign policy and the differing responses to it from Churchill and Eden. This reexamination challenges the notion that Eisenhower's foreign policy represented a mere continuation of Truman's containment policy or a "middle path" between Democrats and far-right Republicans. Instead, Eisenhower intentionally adopted a distinctly far-right Republican foreign policy that overwhelmed two Conservative British prime ministers and accelerated the end of the British Empire. This transatlantic history argues that American foreign policy went from one …
Place-Names, Conquest, And Empire: Spanish And Amerindian Conceptions Of Place In The New World, Gene Rhea Tucker
Place-Names, Conquest, And Empire: Spanish And Amerindian Conceptions Of Place In The New World, Gene Rhea Tucker
History Dissertations
This research corrects the one-sided historiography of toponyms in the New World, which focus only on the European imposition of place-names, viewed by many postmodernist scholars as a way to oppress and suppress the native Indians. Instead this transatlantic dissertation recognizes that the Spanish brought patterns of place-naming created in the Old World over to the New World. The naming of the New World was not a unilateral Spanish undertaking. The Spanish did create new toponyms in the Americas. They described the land, honored their Catholic faith and their nobility, and they transferred Old World place-names to the New World--but …
Toward A Theory Of Narrative Rhetoric, Edwardo Raul Perez
Toward A Theory Of Narrative Rhetoric, Edwardo Raul Perez
English Dissertations
This dissertation suggests that the question of whether or not America should employ torture as a means of fighting a post-9/11 War on Terror was not so much debated as it was asserted (in the affirmative) by the presidential administration of George W. Bush and the news media contemporary to his administration. Building on an observation by media researcher Sasha Torres, who recognized a representation of thinking on television that served to counter the Bush Administration and the media, this dissertation investigates how television functioned as an alternate forum for a debate on torture by examining the narratives of three …
One Foot In The Grave: The Zombie's Consumption Of American Film, Ronni M. Davis
One Foot In The Grave: The Zombie's Consumption Of American Film, Ronni M. Davis
English Theses
American film has chronicled the evolution of the zombie mythos for nearly eight decades. Originally constructed as a projection of the plight of the enslaved population of Haiti, the zombie as introduced to American film remains a symbol of societal anxieties. I argue that, to reflect the changing zeitgeist, the zombie shifts into three general forms. The Haitian Zombi is generally a passive creature subject to the will of its creator; it reveals desire to control people that either pose a threat or that have something that the creator covets and is otherwise unable to attain. The Extraterrestrial Zombie represents …
Moving Beyond This Moment: Employing Deleuze And Guattari's Rhizome In Postcolonialism, Robert Larue
Moving Beyond This Moment: Employing Deleuze And Guattari's Rhizome In Postcolonialism, Robert Larue
English Theses
The aim of this project is two-fold: to discuss the limits of Frantz Fanon's postcolonial theories, and to then present a possible model for turning "the `thing' colonized [into] a new man" (Wretched 2) by liberating "him" from Fanon's desire for inclusion. Or, to put this in other terms, this investigation seeks to highlight one of the most limiting factors in Fanonian postcolonial theory: Fanon's grounding in European humanism. The goal is not to criticize Fanon's theories, but to point out the limits of them so that these limits can be addressed in order to further the theories' effectiveness. By …