Digital Commons Network^™

Crafting Iron And Other Stories, Bryana Michelle Fern

Master's Theses

The stories that follow in this collection attempt to reveal studies in characters facing loneliness, and to do so by following Alice Munro’s conception of plot—the notion that characters shape the plot according to their position in the various “rooms” of the story. Feelings of loneliness look different for everyone, and necessitate many different methods of filling that hole. In these stories, many variations of loneliness are explored. A Vietnam veteran struggles to find healing through the adoption of his young godson, whose father was his best friend in the war; a lady in Surrey, England, takes a trip in …

Three-Dimensional Analysis Of The Development Of Upper Arm Musculoskeletal Stress Markers In Late Adolescents And Young Adults Of Archaic And Mississippian Populations Of Tennessee, Heather Marie Guzik

Master's Theses

This study compares three methods for the evaluation of morphology of musculoskeletal attachment sites. Two methods were macroscopic and the third was microscopic, utilizing three-dimensional laser scanning and fractal analysis The morphology of 19 upper limb attachment sites was observed in 33 males aged 15 and 30+ years, dating to the Archaic and Mississippian periods from the southeastern U.S. It was hypothesized that 1) the microscopic method would identify subtler differences than the macroscopic methods; 2) enthesis development would be greater in the Mississippian population due to the increased subsistence workload, even among younger individuals; and 3) late adolescents would …

Bells Of Death: Rachmaninoff’S Use Of The Dies Irae In His Choral Symphony, Kolokola, Madeleine Lowrey

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates Sergei Rachmaninoff’s use of a musical theme, the Dies Irae chant, in his choral symphony Kolokola. I briefly introduce the Dies Irae theme, then examine how Rachmaninoff uses it to unify his choral work. I consider textual themes found in Edgar Allan Poe’s poems “The Bells” as well as how those themes are augmented in Konstantin Demetrievich Balmont’s Russian re-imagining of Poe’s poetry, the form set in Kolokola. The changes of the original poetry in the Russian translation are explored, with emphasis on how Rachmaninoff’s use of the Dies Irae emphasizes how conceptions of death permeate Balmont’s …

Winning At The Graduate Level Of Warfare: Six Core Factors Of A Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign And The Example Of Sierra Leone, John D. Rimann

Honors Theses

The most common form of warfare so far in the 21st Century has been insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, types of warfare which are particularly challenging for industrialized Western nations to wage effectively. This paper identifies six factors of primary importance which form the key to a successful counterinsurgency campaign. These factors are legitimacy, clarity, beneficial geopolitical factors, restraint, intellectual understanding, and an enduring commitment. This paper argues that these factors must all be present for a counterinsurgency campaign to succeed, and argues that without these factors being accounted for a counterinsurgency will fail. The British humanitarian intervention in Sierra Leone in …

Separate Ways Or Til Death Do Us Part?: Divorce In Victorian Literature, Ashley L. Felder

Honors Theses

Divorce laws changed radically across the Victorian period (1837-1901), making divorce more accessible, particularly for men. Considering how those changes affected the portrayal of divorce in early, mid, and late Victorian novels, this study analyzes the literary representation of divorce in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), and George Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways (1885), contextualizing this analysis with literary criticism and legal history. No matter how accessible divorce became during the nineteenth century and no matter a character’s reason for wanting to end his/her marriage, divorce is not presented as a legitimate option for characters …

More Sieve Than Shield: The U.S. Army And Cords In The Pacification Of Phu Yen Province, Republic Of Vietnam, 1965-1972, Robert John Thompson Iii

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the meaning and execution of pacification during the Vietnam War in the Republic of Vietnam’s Phu Yen Province. Vietnam War scholarship never defined the term, an unsurprising fact given those that directed the war itself never agreed on a lasting interpretation. Void of an analysis of the word, pacification is erroneously discussed as a separate facet, rather than the foundation, of the war. When discussed, pacification is often seen solely as the developmental aspect of the war and one far removed from the battles waged by conventional armies. On the contrary, two dissimilar and tangentially related wars …

A Discussion Of Shiguang Cui’S Piano Concerto No. 2, Focusing On A Stylistic Analysis And Traditional Chinese Musical Elements, Yuting Ji

Dissertations

Shiguang Cui (崔世光) (b. 1948) is a Chinese composer and pianist. To celebrate the 2008 Summer Olympic Games held in Beijing, his work Concerto for Ten Concert Grand Pianos and Orchestra was commissioned by the Dean of the National Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Ping Chen. Ten internationally-renowned pianists were invited to give the world premiere on August 19, 2008. The pianists were Claude Frank, Phillippe Entremont, Vladimir Feltsman, Louis Lortie, Yunyi Qin (秦云轶), Shikun Liu (刘诗昆), Lang Lang (郎朗), Cyprien Katsaris, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Sha Chen (陈萨).¹

This piece was originally conceived as Concerto for Ten Concert …

Bearing The Double Burden: Combat Chaplains And The Vietnam War, John Donellan Fitzmorris Iii

Dissertations

Throughout the period of the Vietnam War, soldiers and Marines of the United States Military were accompanied into the combat zones by members of the clergy who were also part of the military. These chaplains attempted to bring God to the men in the field by providing spiritual and moral support through worship services and certain counseling duties. A number of chaplains, however, believed so strongly in their ministry that they refused to simply stay “on base” and instead shouldered their packs and journeyed with their troops into the most perilous combat zones. In so doing , these combat chaplains …

Moving Words/Motion Pictures: Proto-Cinematic Narrative In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Kara Marie Manning

Dissertations

In the broadest sense, this project is about nineteenth-century narrative texts and optical toys, or those devices that were originally created to demonstrate scientific knowledge related to vision but that would also become popular for home and public consumption. I argue that nineteenth-century British writers borrowed and adapted the visual effects of such toys, making fiction as participatory as the toys themselves in the development of image culture and the viewing practices that would become necessary for the production and dissemination of cinema in the early twentieth century. Narrative fiction, then, should be considered along with the other precursors of …

Character Interpretation In Poulenc's La Voix Humaine: A Performer's Guide, Stefanie Nicole Anduri

Dissertations

Francis Poulenc’s 1959 opera, La Voix humaine provides uncommon opportunities for divergent character interpretations and unique challenges to the performer. The opera chronicles the final telephone conversation between the sole character and her estranged lover. The opera’s format is unprecedented; because the audience does not hear Monsieur’s responses, the performer must create and portray them through her reactions, a challenge unique to this work. Through the exploration of four distinct characterizations, I discuss the choices and ramifications for the woman’s demeanor towards other people on the telephone line, her relationship with the man, the function of the various musical motives …

Prisoner Resistance In The Auschwitz And Buchenwald Concentration Camps, Regina Coffey

Honors Theses

A great deal has been written about the Holocaust and about resistance organizations that formed in the concentration camps. Much of this literature, however, tends to focus on the contributions of a particular group of prisoners rather than on the many groups that came together to form these organizations. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the resistance organizations in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps using firsthand accounts and to come to a conclusion on how cooperation between different groups of prisoners affected the overall effectiveness of these resistance organizations.

Women In Gaming: A Study Of Female Players’ Experiences In Online Fps Games, M Allison Mcdaniel

Honors Theses

Existing literature has long been divided over whether the gaming world fosters violence and misogyny or provides a space for people to explore diverse identities. Not enough is known about how women experience videogames, especially the hypermasculine environment of first-person shooter (FPS) games. Competition, violence, and war, are dominant features of these games. The following thesis explores what harassment and discrimination women playing FPS games face, how they respond, and in what ways they find games to be empowering. A survey was distributed online to an international sample of 141 female FPS gamers. This research finds that women who play …

"Your Reclamation”: The Gothic Child And Moral Restoration In Charles Dickens’S A Christmas Carol, Ashten Roberts

Master's Theses

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), an example of Victorian Gothic literature, portrays spirits escorting Ebenezer Scrooge on a journey through time in order to transform him from a miser to a benefactor. Dickens’s text has received much critical attention, and while most critics agree that the novella includes various elements of the gothic, few draw attention to the possibility of the child characters as gothic elements. I argue that Carol’s child characters can be read in terms of what Margarita Georgieva calls “the gothic child.” According to Georgieva, the gothic child can be an adult’s memory from childhood …

Choros N. 10 By Heitor Villa-Lobos: Analyzing The Themes And Compositional Techniques Of Brazilian Modernism, Andre Oliveira Campos-Neto

Master's Theses

Heitor Villa-Lobos (b. March 5, 1887 - d. November 17, 1959) can be considered the most important composer in Brazilian music history. Although the composer is listed as one of the most influential composers in the history of the guitar, he reached his peak in his works for piano and symphonic groups. Works such as A Prole do Bebê (1 and 2), and the series of Chôros, came out during an extremely convoluted time, where Brazilian artists engaged in seeking an artistic representation of a unique Brazilian identity. Those works not only satisfied the hunger, but pushed the movement …

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

Decolonizing The Ya North: Environmental Injustice In Sherri L. Smith’S Orleans, Micah-Jade M. Coleman

Master's Theses

Young Adult (YA) dystopias, in recent years, have imagined a future world fueled by the overuse and misuse of technology, the advancement of science for human gain, as well as societies ruled by governments that govern based on their own self-interests and economic gain. Such novels have opened the door for discussion about how the present-day actions of societies can impact the future of the environment; yet many only focus their attention on societies in the North— regions considered “developed” by the western world. In her YA novel, Orleans (2014), Sherri L. Smith focuses attention on the aftermath of Hurricane …

"Too Big To Swallow All At Once": Consumption And Posthuman Healing In Ceremony And House Made Of Dawn, Matthew Thomas Craft

Master's Theses

This project examines the roles of animals and animal figures in the Native American novels House Made of Dawn (1968)by N. Scott Momaday and Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko. Both novelists consistently evoke animal imagery within their respective texts often pairing this imagery alongside symbolic and metaphorical depictions of cannibalistic identity violence. Through the use of posthuman and postcolonial methodologies and ideas, I contend that the pairing of these two distinct types of imagery that both Momaday and Silko intentionally align the animal figures with premodern, indigenous belief systems while the cannibalistic violence is more often envisioned as …

Mr. Jefferson's Army In Mr. Madison's War: Atrophy, Policy, And Legacy In The War Of 1812, David Alan Martin

Master's Theses

President Thomas Jefferson is a well-known figure, who is not well understood. His military policies are under-examined in the historiography. Yet, he had a tremendous impact on martial development in the Early Republic. Jefferson reshaped the military to suite his pragmatic republican ideals. His militia system expanded while the regulars were disbanded. The Navy was greatly decreased, and the remainder of his military was used for frontier exploration, riverine trade, road development, and other public works. This disrupted the precedent of strong federal military development as set by his predecessors: George Washington and John Adams. His reforms also left the …

"Black And White Together, We Shall Win": Southern White Activists In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Olivia Bethany Moore

Master's Theses

During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi has often been characterized as a simple battle of white racists against black activists. Drawing heavily on oral histories, personal publications, and Mississippi Sovereignty Commission reports, this thesis examines the unconventional stories of white southerners who transcended the segregationist environments in which they were born. As southern white activism took many forms, this work offers biographical insights to three individuals who have received little scholarly attention: journalist P.D East, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activist Buford Posey, and William Carey president Ralph Noonkester. While their contributions between 1950-1971 differed, being …

Bodies Unbroken: Disability In Indra Sinha's Animal's People And Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, Hannah C. Baker

Honors Theses

This project explored the representation of physical disability in modern fiction with the hope to prove that disabled characters are receiving more complex and complete treatment in fiction as a reflection of social change, progress that is also supported by the growing field of disability scholarship. I will explore how two contemporary novels depart from older conventions of representing the disabled as static symbols of good or evil or as broken persons who need to be fixed. Scholars in both English and Disability Studies have commented on these problems, and their insights informed my argument.

Furthermore, I will explore the …

Exploring Three Colombian-Andean Folk Style (Danza, Pasillo, And Bambuco): An Analysis And Arrangement Of Three Colombian Pieces For Flute And Piano, Jesus Castro Turriago

Dissertations

This dissertation contains an analysis, comparison, and transcription of three Colombian pieces for flute and piano, written by composers of three different styles of folk music: pasillo, bambuco, and danza. An understanding of the historical context of these Colombian musical genres, and comparison of these instrumental pieces for flute and piano to those of other Colombian composers, informed my subsequent transcription and edition. The selected musical material comprises Bandolita, a pasillo composed by Luis Uribe Bueno, Bambuquísimo, a bambuco by Leon Cardona, and Adiós a Bogotá, a danza by Luis Antonio Calvo.

18 Dorset Ct., Allison Catherine Campbell

Dissertations

The following poems and essays were completed by the author between October 2012 and April 2016.

Shaken, Not Stirred: Espionage, Fantasy, And British Masculinity During The Cold War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Master's Theses

This project seeks to define and explore the development of Cold War British masculinity and national identity in response to decolonization. Following World War II, Great Britain experienced a time of political and cultural rebuilding. This project argues that following World War II, Britain had to renegotiate gender and national identity within the context of decolonization, the rise of the welfare state, and Britain’s diminished role in global politics, and the tensions within gender and national identity were expressed in Britain’s interest in espionage narratives both real and fictionalized. British spy novels by Ian Fleming, Desmond Cory, and John Le …

Fanfiction Communities And Plagiarism: An Academic Inquiry, Claudia I. Hicks

Honors Theses

Fanfiction communities give would-be authors a place to practice their craft. This study focused on how fanfiction community members defined and policed plagiarism. The aim of this study was to conduct qualitative analysis of plagiarism cases in online fanfiction communities. The data sources were analyzed using Grounded Theory. Analysis found that fanfiction communities use certain protocols to police plagiarism except when it violates their highest value, popularity. This study contributes to our understanding of plagiarism in a digital age.

Sustainable Design: Can Eco-Friendly Be Beautiful?, Melanie T. Santiago

Honors Theses

Graphic design students and professionals experience an enormous amount of pressure in regards to their final printed pieces. In the effort to produce flawless work, they print several versions of a piece—often comparing dozens of copies for slight differences in ink variation, color saturation and paper quality. While this trial-and-error process undoubtedly accomplishes its intended effects, it also produces outrageous amounts of wasted paper, ink and cardboard among other products.

Graphic design has implemented computers to increase efficiency in the design process while ignoring the impact of obsolete hardware on the environment. In its perfectionism, it has sent countless pounds …

Facilitating Environmental Literacy In A Socio-Digital Landscape, Anna E. Hotard

Honors Theses

My work engages digital communications, traditional writing, and campus/community engagement in order to curate emergent knowledge of environmental citizenship and sustainable development. In the city of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, there has been a growing interest in environmental literacy both on the University of Southern Mississippi campus and within the city community. Environmental literacy takes many forms from informational sessions, fundraisers and events, to outright activism. This work informs my evolving identity as an editor as I choreograph traditional transcripts into a digital sphere in order to provide a collective space for related interests.

The Scripture Of Helices, Jessica M. Ramer

Master's Theses

This thesis comprises poems written during my two years of study for the Master of Arts Degree in English with a creative writing emphasis. The majority of the poems are written in either a received or contemporary form, although a substantial minority are written in free verse. Many of the poems deal with extreme circumstances such as combat and imprisonment. Others address family stresses due to birth, death, remarriage, and clashes of values. Some poems have a religious emphasis while others are firmly rooted in the natural world. All, however, are explorations of human nature.

Applications Of The Sierpiński Triangle To Musical Composition, Samuel C. Dent

Honors Theses

The present paper builds on the idea of composing music via fractals, specifically the Sierpiński Triangle and the Sierpiński Pedal Triangle. The resulting methods are intended to produce not just a series of random notes, but a series that we think pleases the ear. One method utilizes the iterative process of generating the Sierpiński Triangle and Sierpiński Pedal Triangle via matrix operations by applying this process to a geometric configuration of note names. This technique designs the largest components of the musical work first, then creates subsequent layers where each layer adds more detail.

Pearls And Politics: White Clubwomen’S Activism In The Postwar South, Kelly E. Liles

Honors Theses

Elite white women’s organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the American Association of University Women, provide a unique perspective on history. These political women’s clubs, which range from liberal to conservative, are discussed in the context of how they responded to the postwar era of McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement. These women wanted to become respected political actors; however, they understood this was only achieved in a manner that was considered acceptable for women. This study begins by analyzing who these women were, including their political inclinations and motivations and …

The Effect Music Has In Speech Therapy, Emily K. Nester

Honors Theses

The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine the use of music in speech therapy. A survey was sent via email to Mississippi Speech-Language-Hearing Association (MSHA) certified speech-language pathologists to acquire knowledge on the use of music in their therapy sessions. The author used the source, SurveyMonkey, to collect and analyze the data. The data was used to determine the prevalence of music in speech therapy. In addition, when music was used, the data portrayed how music was incorporated into therapy and the particular gender, genre, and/or disorder preferred.