Scare If You Dare: A Look Into Scare Acting, Hana Goss

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scare acting has always been the unsung villains of the entertainment industry. For three months of the year, for about five minutes of a haunted house, they get attention. However, the work scare actors do to is way more than just a five second “boo.” Scare actors have been at the beginning of theatre and continue to influence modern entertainment. Even though the patrons may be the ones feeling the danger, scare actors may be even more in danger than them. Each scare actor is unique from their looks to their moves. It might be take a lot of nerve …

A Pursuance Of Self, Kassidy Albert

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The self portrait is a consistent aspect of art history, with many artists returning to it again and again across their lives. This project intends to explore the function of the self portrait. Through research and execution of artwork, the artist has found that the self portrait has multiple functions, including: a practice of anatomy; a display of status, skill, and likeness; an outlet for emotion; and a place for psychological confrontation. Across the life of this project, the artist completed twenty-two self portraits in a variety of styles and materials.

Falling Down The Rabbit Hole: World Building In Ya Literature, Claire Webb

Undergraduate Honors Theses

World building is a key component to many young adult novels, but what is world building and what are some different styles and techniques that authors use when constructing fictional universes? In this thesis, Falling Down the Rabbit Hole: World Building Techniques in YA Literature, I will examine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865), The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973), and my own unpublished novel, The Sun Kingdom, to compare different techniques and styles of world building. These works will be explored through the aspect of world building, focusing specifically on the importance of the geography, language, …

Development Of Back-Scatter And Pile-Up Identification For Ucna+, Amelia Greathouse

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The UCNA Experiment at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) uses

an electron spectrometer to observe angular correlations between the neutron spin and the momenta of beta particles emitted during the process of beta (β) decay. Combined with neutron lifetime measurements, these observations probe physics beyond the standard model. In recent years there has been an effort to modernize the equipment to reduce the physical limitations of the experiment. The new prototype helps to reduce error via use of silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs) and the SiPMs also have a greater quantum efficiency than the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). However, there is …

The Disney College Experience: A Full Recollection Of Moments And Memories Of The Disney College Program Internship, Lauren Jumonville

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I decided to do the Disney College Program as my honors thesis because Disney is something I am very passionate about. I worked for the Disney Company before and knew that I wanted to continue my experience with them. I went into the program hoping to discover what the college program could do to prepare me (or any prospective programmer) for the profession and for a life in performance. In January of 2023, I made my way to Orlando, Florida, to start my next journey with the Walt Disney World Company. I went through four different orientation processes, as well …

Navigating Through Narratives: The Development Of Opening Cinematics, Jacob Q. Stewart

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project demonstrates opening cinematic design from conceptualization to final composition. Using Unreal Engine 5, I created an opening cutscene using Unreal’s sequencer editor to film and edit my shots. This document presents the steps I took to create my sequence from the writing process to the final layout. Starting as a written story, I worked my way to the final project by creating a mock scene and storyboarding. After this, I built my scene using assets from the Unreal marketplace and lit my scene with HDRI and dynamic lighting. I encountered many new programs such as Cascade and Mixamo …

Food As A Literary Device In The Hunger Games: World Building, Characterization, And Plot Momentum, Linzee Mitchell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Food relates to the experience of life, survival, and memory. It impacts us every day, whether we have plenty of it or not. It influences our memories and connects us to one another, while structuring details of our identities and cultures. As a creative writer and English major, I recognize that food influences a story to accentuate literary concepts and unveil them, such as a character’s compassion or the poison that a villain uses to unfold the plot. The best example of food as an impactful device within a story is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. From the first …

Erwin's Second Story: Founding A Community Theatre, Bailey Robinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Erwin, Tennessee is a small town located just outside of Johnson City. The town is beautiful and the people are kind, but it lacks one thing - a community theatre. In an effort to increase student interest in the local high school drama department, allow community members of all ages a chance to perform, and to provide entertainment to the small town, I have worked to form a community theatre named Second Story. Founding a nonprofit community theatre comes with many challenges. In this thesis I will walk through my efforts and what all went into this labor of love. …

Justification And Compliance: Public Health Ethics In A Post-Covid America, Nathan Alan Turner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the high-profile nature of the public health response make it a natural context for exploring the current state of public health ethics. This paper explores this topic from two perspectives: justification and compliance. Libertarianism and utilitarianism are two frameworks that dominate the question of how public health interventions are justified. Consequently, this paper analyzes the events of the pandemic to determine how these frameworks fared in terms of offering reliable means of justifying the interventions needed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Consideration of these events suggests that a framework centered around actionable …

Libby In Limbo, Moriah Claire Hall

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Libby in Limbo is a scripted narrative podcast that follows Libby as she moves back to her small hometown, gets a job as a librarian, and learns to navigate life in a small, tight-knit community. This podcast serves two main purposes: to create entertainment media about a library that does not promote harmful stereotypes about libraries and to create awareness and accessibility of scripted podcasts.

Visual Development Of The Night Sky Circus, Rebeca Ortiz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This creative thesis explores the process of visual development and how one can apply it to their own body of work. Visual Development encompasses the entire concept design process, from the idea to the final design. Vis Dev artists document their journey to depict how an idea becomes a fully refined and polished concept. They illustrate a wide variety of elements, such as characters, costuming, props, and environments. The development of all of these factors then allows the artist to cultivate an imaginative and creative world that could be used for multiple forms of entertainment, such as animated films, video …

Diversity Of Programming By Race And Gender In College And University Band Concerts, Liz Liss

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While there are many women (and others of non-male genders) as well as people of color who compose for concert bands, they are often not given equitable recognition or representation. Over the past several decades, pushes for diversity within the classical music realm and higher education have sparked numerous discussions surrounding current practices (Bond 2017, 154; Bowman 2020, 10; Cumberledge and Williams 2022, 4; Peters 2016, 22): who are we inviting into our programs, whose music are we playing, and who are we representing? Despite these concerns, there has been very little research to provide answers to these questions within …

Designing And Creating A Prototype Board Game, Kurtis Woodward

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The goal of this project was to create a fantasy style board game prototype that is playable and enjoyable for people new to fantasy tabletop gaming. I assembled a group of 4-5 regular tabletop board game players to play test the game as well as a second group of 4-5 family members and friends to play test who aren't regular board game players. We began with a general base game that evolved with each playtest from feedback given by the playtesters. After about 18-20 play tests, I settled on game mechanics and moved on to creating the assets of …

A Director's Take On The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Billie Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines what it is like to be an assistant director. The play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was adapted from a book by Mark Hadden that is structured as if the main character was the writer. The stage production reworks that concept and turns it into a “play within a play”. The story is about a boy named Christopher, his broken family and his struggle with autism. When the director, Cara Harker first approached me about being an assistant director, I struggled with anxiety and not feeling like I had a real place in …

Racially Segregated Housing And Its Impact On Urban America, Bailey Norris

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout the late nineteenth century, into the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century, Black Americans have faced displacement, segregated housing, and limited economic prosperity. Due to this inequality, Black American’s face difficulties as they try to resurrect their hopes of the American Dream. To assess the experiences of Black Americans and the impact of racially segregated housing on Urban America, an examination of legislation, state-funded segregation, structural and systemic racism, and the acts of individuals in creating barriers to success for Black communities becomes necessary. This thesis works to understand and answer the question: to what extent does racially segregated …

“The Escapades Of Cat & Dog” The Process Of Creating A Children’S Book From Start To Finish, Cosette Simmons

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis project was to learn and understand the amount of work that goes into children’s book illustration, as well as bringing the story of another’s to life. “The Escapades of Cat & Dog” was written by my grandfather, George Petrella, to tell the story of my mother and her sibling’s pets going on kooky adventures. The script was given to me back in 2017-2018 not to long after my grandmother, Jane Petrella, passed away due to cancer. The result consists of a 36 page 9 by 9 inch fully illustrated book intended to be …

The Process And Flow Of Animation: For The Record, Dylan Gordon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A comprehensive study in the processes of animation in various forms, from concept to simple layout animation to complex overlapping action and splining, and even lighting and texturing, I will be using a popular podcast musical as a basis to study the pipeline that’s used to create an industry animation.

Visual Development For Wellspring, Jane Frances Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The primary focus of this thesis is the study of visual development for worldbuilding, starting with creative writing and documentation and translating the written content into visual concepts in both 2D and 3D. This project includes an original narrative, setting, and characters and explores aspects of the visual development pipeline. The content below contains work in visual research, 2D character design, 3D character sculpting, 3D printing and assembly, hard-surface modeling, matte-painting, illustration, compositing, and heavy creative writing.

Exploring Eclectic Styles And Original Compositions In Bluegrass And Acoustic Music, Justin Alexander

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the creation of my thesis project, I aimed to record a collection of music that highlights my influences and creative voice as an artist within the bluegrass/acoustic music genres. In collaboration with friends and colleagues that I have met during my time at East Tennessee State University, I have successfully recorded a project that surveys my current influences and creative voice as an artist, instrumentalist and composer. One goal I had for this project was to highlight compositions that I have written on acoustic guitar. Before attending ETSU, I did play some acoustic guitar, though I was primarily a …

Say His Name: Othello, Paul Robeson, And Racism In America, Brett Strother

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello faces societal pressures of racism as he marries Senator Brabantio’s White daughter Desdemona. This creates the main plot, and the villain of the play, Iago, plots against him which leads to the destruction of Othello’s reputable character. Othello is transformed into a violent, murderous husband by Iago’s villainous ploy fueled by using racial slurs, and Othello’s final form matches the name his enemies assign him. Stripping Othello of his name and portraying him as “the Moor”, a term used to describe a category of Black persons viewed as barbaric, is a tactic used throughout time …

The Impact Of Social Media On The Publishing Industry: A Case Study Of Author Colleen Hoover, Chloe Foster

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Thanks to the BookTok community, adult romance author Colleen Hoover has taken the world by storm. Anyone that has had access to TikTok within the past year has probably had a Colleen Hoover book appear in video on their “For You Page,” the page on TikTok where users can scroll through content that follows an algorithm which learns about the user’s specific interests. However, Hoover has been writing and publishing novels since 2012. She had already published more than a dozen novels by 2020, yet her popularity has only grown since she made her appearance on social media. Her book …

Female Trombonists' Experiences Of Gender Bias, Em Poff

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Female trombonists are underrepresented throughout the United States especially in collegiate teaching positions. Is the underrepresentation of female trombonists as professional musicians and teachers causing less females to pursue playing the trombone? After discussing the expected roles of females and acceptable instruments for women to play during the 1800’s, this document mentions many women who were able to surpass the norms of female musicians and make their own musical choices. The purpose of this study is to discover if there is any relevance of gender bias towards female trombonists in society today and potentially determine how these biases affect their …

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

A Survey To Highlight Areas Of Focus For Patient Care In Settings Utilizing Medical Interpretation, Azayzel Deregis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis recounts my personal experience working as a volunteer medical interpreter for the Language and Culture Resource Center at East Tennessee State University. The result of my time spent volunteering as a medical interpreter, shadowing professional medical interpreters, and witnessing patient-provider interactions during interpreted sessions was an inspiration to study medical interpretation further and delve into the challenges faced by patients who require medical interpreters. During my time researching this topic, I found that the United States is severely lacking in Spanish medical interpreters—with some healthcare facilities employing no medical interpreters—even though the size of the Hispanic population is …

Stepping Into A Moment: A Historical Reconstruction Of Lord Dunmore's Portrait, Slade Nakoff

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The study of material culture study has long been estranged from mainstream academic discourse often dismissed as the examination of pots and pans. Historians are beginning to realize that material culture and cultural reconstruction offer vital insights into the past. Building upon new developments, my project reconstructs the items painted by Joshua Reynolds in his famous painting of Lord Dunmore. This reconstruction allows for the efforts of unnamed tradesmen to be retraced, making a few people and their efforts which were lost to history known once again. By employing written documentation in tandem with extant artifacts, the project recreates every …

My Perception Of Reality Expressed Through The Arts, Amanda Dunker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis project will focus on the symbolism and artistic interpretation of how I perceive reality. This thesis project uses all artistic skills that I have acquired throughout my lifetime and combines them into one mixed digital media video. This is a mix between the two digital media formats 2D and 3D. Each animation and segment syncs with the music selected manually or technically. The process of creation for each segment and explaining which software I choose to use for each task. It also dives a little further, noting the artistic decisions and why. The symbolism used within the art …

2d Character Design And Sculpting For Concept Development, Sidney Moore

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis is on the transition from 2D character design to 3D model design, and how this transition affects the appeal, fluidity, and clarity of the 2D design. The source material for this project was an original screenplay entitled The Birds Work for Bea. Three characters from the material were selected for a process including ideation, research, 2D character and style exploration, 3D sculpting, and 3D printing and finishing. This project serves as a study in all aspects of the character concept development pipeline.

Analyzing The Use Of Chiastic Structures Within Patriarchal Narratives In Genesis, Hunter Seehorn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Chiastic structures are utilized throughout the entirety of the Bible but are prominently found in the book of Genesis. This paper aims to research the stories of four different patriarchal characters of the Bible to see how chiastic structures are used in these stories. By looking at the stories of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph in Genesis, I will demonstrate the effectiveness of chiastic structures covering the entirety of the stories, as well as how smaller chiasmi work within each. An appreciation of these chiastic structures deepens our appreciation of the formal structuring of Biblical narratives and the transformational character …

The Past And Present: Issues Of Male Patriarchy Throughout Historic Literature And Dominance In Media Today, Leah Moore

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Women’s subjugation to the objectification of men is a traced theme throughout the history of Western culture. In this thesis, the attributes of the male gaze will be explored via the patriarchal pioneers of literature: Dante to Petrarch to Shakespeare. The solidification of the male gaze takes place during the late middle ages as Dante Alighieri writes an infatuated love for Beatrice throughout La Vita Nuova and Inferno, demonstrating the virgin-whore dichotomy with Francesca. Similarly, Francesco Petrarch’s poetry of Rime Sparse describes the objectification and dismantling of woman for erotic pleasure and patriarchal power. The shift from early to …

American Fears: H.P. Lovecraft And The Paranoid Style, Bailey Marvel

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Why is H.P. Lovecraft still relevant? That is the one the questions put forward by this thesis. Lovecraft is known for his creation of Lovecraftian horror, also known as cosmic horror. However, his bigoted view on race and class muddies this legacy. What this thesis seeks to explore is how Lovecraft’s work demonstrates the fears and anxieties central to the America psyche. The paranoid style can be found in American discourse throughout history but it can also be found in the works of Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft was a prejudiced and paranoid man, and his prejudices and paranoia are a major …