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Las Etapas De Transformación De La Figura Femenina En El Exilio En Primavera Con Una Esquina Rota, "Geografías" Y "Como Greenwich" De Mario Benedetti, Maria Liliana Labrador Morales

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

During the decade of the 1970's in South America, people saw the governments become overrun by dictatorships. These dictatorships destroyed the fabric of democracy. The horror of these new politics brought destroyed men and women in many different ways. These policies included such things as torture, censorship, impositions of patriarchal ideas, exile, and even included imprisonment and disappearance.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the importance of the stages of transformation of women in the works of Mario Benedetti and how these stages reflect on the process of adaptation to exile. This analysis centers on four characters who …

What Happens Now?: Identity And Commitment Among Lesbian Women With The Passing Of Same-Sex Marriage Laws In Minnesota, Kendra Michaela Klump

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Marriage equality has become a hotly debated topic within public and political discourse within recent years. The personal choices we make based on our sexuality and intimate relationship have been taken out of the private arena and spotlighted as issues of institutional ideology, morality, and equality. Throughout this, the impact felt within LGBTQ communities based on this discourse has been largely overlooked. This study explores the immediate impact newfound marriage equality may have on individuals and couples identifying as members of a diverse sexuality group. Using semi-structured interviews, sixteen respondents self-identifying as lesbians provided narratives exploring the possible impact legalization …

"I Looked Here; I Looked There; Nowhere Could I See My Love." The Problem Of "Presence" In The Black Riders And Other Lines, Nat Gustafson-Sundell

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Although the poems of The Black Riders and other lines, by Stephen Crane, have often been treated as if they are simple--easy to interpret and easy to categorize--these poems actually support a multiplicity of interpretations. The multiplicity of interpretations available in the poems informs the possibility of tracing a variety of interrelationships through the poetry. While a few previous scholars have treated the poems as if they are interrelated, the interrelationship of the poetry has not been explicitly and substantially addressed as a feature of the poetry. The poems, in fact, support a combinatorial complexity only previously hinted at in …

Unapologetic Self, Aashish Maskey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This body of work began with an intention to transform the mundane. During this process of intuitively interacting/improvising with my surrounding environment, objects and people, I noticed the photographs had more to them than my intentional concept. They were perhaps fragments of my subconscious at the time of making each of them. This body of work represents the contents of my conscious and subconscious mind, connected through my intuition. It is a visual story of polarity, which perhaps resides within us all.

Depintrix, Samantha Mae Allen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My work speaks to the intimacy of individual pleasure. I separate the societal barriers of what private and public pleasure should be. The techniques used convey the same kind of physical consistency of sex. It is wet and sensuous, it is physical. By bringing pornography that is usually consumed in the privacy of one's own home to the public eye, one has to become accustomed to viewing these works with the added pressure of being in a public space. The same ideas follow when using the sexualized photographs of models which are viewed daily and seem to have no response …

Representing Us All? Race, Gender, And Sexuality In Orange Is The New Black, Michael Robert Chavez

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Orange Is the New Black is a Netflix television series that began in 2013. The series focuses on the lives of inmates in a fictional women's prison. Television series about prison have focused primarily on men in prison. This thesis will expand upon previous research on representation of minorities in television using a feminist media analysis to examine the first season of the series. I will explore how race, gender, and sexuality are represented within the series. I examine the representations of four characters during the first season. I chose these four characters because they represented different racial groups, sexualities, …

Persona Obscura: A Collection Of Essays On Identity And Perception, Heidi A. Fuhr

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

As humans, we like to think that our identities grow alongside our bodies and minds, that they are carved out gradually and imperceptibly by the slow-moving glaciers of lived experience. We regard the self as largely immutable-as a genuine, indelible, and whole entity that comes from within. But humans are social animals. Identity doesn't form in a vacuum. We change selves like we change clothes-and quite often when we change clothes, hairstyles, vocabularies, intonations, and mannerisms. We assume various, sometimes conflicting personas when we interact with peers, authority figures, parents, children, mentors, lovers, and strangers. When we're alone, our interior …

Directing A Piece Of My Heart, Matthew L. Caron

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This document is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Masters of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Arts at Minnesota State University, Mankato. It is a detailed account of Matthew Caron's directorial process for A Piece of My Heart by Shirley Lauro. The play was produced in the Andreas Theatre and ran from September 17 to 23, 2014. The thesis chronicles the director's artistic process from pre-production through performance in five chapters: a pre-production analysis, an historical and critical perspective, a rehearsal and performance journal, a post-production analysis and a process development analysis. Appendices and works cited are included.

Bdote And Fort Snelling: A Place Of Frame Disputes And Contested Meanings, Jason Mack

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The area where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet is a place of multiple and contested meanings for different groups of people. For the state of Minnesota, it is the location of the Historic Fort Snelling and Fort Snelling State Park. For the Dakota Nation, it is the site of their genesis story as well as a site of genocide and forced removal from their homelands. The present study describes what meanings this area has for these groups and defines the dimensions of the dispute over this place.

A purposive sample, consisting of both spoken and written discourse documents, was …

Religiosity, Spirituality, And Quality Of Life Among Selected University Students, Abby Austin Kreitlow

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Objective: College marks a time of transition and self-exploration. Quality of life can be enhanced or diminished throughout this experience. The objective of this study was to identify the level of religiosity, spirituality and quality of life and identify if there was a relationship between a person's level of religiosity and spirituality and quality of life.

Participants and Methods: The sample group, consisting of 548 Midwestern university undergraduate students, completed the Spiritual Wellbeing Scale (SWBS) and the Ontological Wellbeing Scale (OWBS) in the spring semester of 2015.

Results: Findings indicate that Midwestern university students have a moderate sense of spiritual …

"A Compromise To Help The Community": Rural Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Experiences, Rebecca R. Gonnering

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Victims of sexual assault require specialized medical care when they report to hospital emergency departments including physical examination, evidence collection, and emotional support. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) are medical professionals trained to complete the examination and evidence collection in a prompt and sensitive manner. In fact, where SANE programs exist, emergency room waiting times are shorter, evidence collection improves, and revictimization from untrained staff is reduced. Unfortunately, SANEs are not widely available, particularly in rural areas. This lack of trained examiners employed at local hospitals creates a gap in access to proper care, often resulting in long waits as …

Feminist Identities: Career Choices And Experiences Of College-Educated Women, Kerry Diekmann

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This qualitative study explored how feminism as a social identity impacts how women interpret their career and life experiences. The overarching research question that guided the study was: How do feminist-identified women make sense of their feminist identity, life experiences, and career path? The theoretical framework that provided the lens for the study included feminist, multicultural, intersectionality, and career development theories. Two distinct bodies of literature were reviewed to provide a foundation for the study: (a) women's career development, in particular, the supports and barriers experienced, and (b) feminist identity, including influences to adopting the feminist label and factors associated …

Abortion Is Communism: A Genealogy Of "Abortion Culture", Heather Nicole Bradford

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In the twenty years since the collapse of communism in the Eastern Bloc, various scholars of history, women's studies, sociology, political science, and reproductive rights have studied the occurrence of abortion in these formerly communist countries. Although some have sought to question the notion of "abortion culture," most look to these countries as places where abortion was tragically prevalent and accepted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the assumed knowledge concerning abortion and how this obscures understandings of abortion in formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe. By creating genealogy of "abortion culture," this research seeks to trace the …

Polygonal Provocateur, Abigail Daleki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis calls attention to what we interpret as a painting; an object hung on a wall for decoration, to be looked at, thought about, or just as an interruption to a dull, white surface. Historically, paintings were used in religious practice or to serve utilitarian purpose. Through the years, paintings have become less about content and more about catching the eye, making the viewer think. Paint, on a canvas, stretched over a frame and hung on a wall is, traditionally, a painting. I am focused on challenging that regime. I want to challenge the idea of what a painting …

Sound Design For Our Town, Anna Warda Alex

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This document is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in theatre. It is a detailed account of the author, Anna Warda Alex's artistic process in developing the sound design for Minnesota State University, Mankato's production of Our Town in the fall of 2014. The thesis documents the designer's process from the pre-production analysis through the designer's afterthoughts on the design in five chapters: a pre-production analysis, an historical and critical perspective, a process and rehearsal journal, a post-production analysis and a process development. Appendices and works cited are included.

Sit, Stand, Speak: Examining The Perceptions Of The Basic Public Speaking Student On Normative Forensic Practices And Their Effect On Competitor Credibility In Oratory, Katie Marie Brunner

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper examines basic public speaking students' perceptions forensic competitor credibility based on normative factors present within the forensic community. Anecdotal and experiential evidence provided this researcher with reason to believe that the unwritten rules and normative expectations of forensics were so far-removed from what students were used to seeing in their classrooms and in the media, that they could have a negative impact on a competitor's ethos, from the basic public speaking students' perspective. This research was performed in an attempt to determine whether these anecdotal and experiential assumptions were accurate and also to gain insight into the how …

Imagen Y Percepción De La Inmigración Ecuatoriana En España, Jesús Calzas Millán

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In the decade following the Ecuadorian financial crisis of 1988, Spain took in approximately half a million Ecuadorian immigrants. This study analyzes the social consequences of this migratory flow from a very particular point of view: the perspective offered by the mass media and literary works.

Using several reports as well as different newspaper articles and literary works, this project shows how this group has been stigmatized during their stay in the receiving country. The reader will be able to see that this stigmatization comes not only from the fact that it is possible to distinguish the Ecuadorian physically, but …

Vergilian Allusions In The Novels Of Willa Cather, Nathaniel Wagner

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This work aims to explore the nature of Vergilian allusion in the novels of Willa Cather - how the author implicated classical language in her own texts as well as the purpose and efficacy of such allusions. By surveying traces of Vergilian passages and rhetorical techniques such as ecphrasis and anacolouthon across three of the writer's major novels, My Antonia, The Professor's House and Shadows on the Rock, this study reveals an important and persistent aspect of Cather's artistic program. The author intentionally and regularly uses Vergilian language and figures to lend a sense of grandeur to the small, individual …

Goddess Of The Savannah: Beatrice As Achebe’S Sensible Solution, Gillian Renee Singler

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper argues that Beatrice in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah is a character whose democratic nature creates a place for voices typically excluded in the novel’s government. Functioning under the common assumption that Anthills of the Savannah is a political allegory, it is Beatrice’s democratic nature that makes her an ideal political leader. By blending change and tradition, Beatrice is able to form an inclusive and evolving solution to the novel’s leadership problem. The paper briefly reflects on colonialism’s role in destroying the socioeconomic and political systems already in place in African nations, specifically Nigeria, and the byproduct …

Revisiting The Nelson Site: Recent Archeological Investigations And Material Analysis, Jason Reichel

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The Nelson Site (21BE24) is situated on a low terrace along the southern boundary of the Blue Earth River, approximately 2 miles west of the city of Mankato, Minnesota (Appendix A, Figures 1 and 2). Initial survey of the site in 1973 identified the site as a single component Terminal Woodland habitation site associated with cultural entities centered in the Mississippi River Valley of Iowa and Wisconsin. However, subsequent analysis and additional archaeological investigations conducted in 2011 and 2013 identified additional components of the site and recognized variations in decorative elements from pottery recovered from previous surveys, which differed from …

Traditional Methods Versus Tprs: Effects On Introductory French Students At A Medium-Sized Public University In The Midwestern United States, Rishani Samari Merinnage De Costa

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of introducing a Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) approach in a French immersion classroom in comparison with a method which does not incorporate a story context within the lesson. This research was conducted in an introductory college level classroom setting. It is hypothesized that the language skills of the students in the experimental group using the TPRS method would show greater improvements on measures of listening, vocabulary, culture, grammar and writing abilities than those taught using methods which do not incorporate the story context. The research utilized a …