Digital Commons Network^™

The Context And The Commissioner: The Effect Of Milwaukee’S Health Commissioners’ Social, Cultural, And Historical Understanding Of Milwaukee’S People During The Last Five Pandemics, Madeline O'Dea Fruehe

Theses and Dissertations

Resistance to pandemic response policies was observed globally throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This resistance has been linked by researchers to the prolonged duration and higher mortality rate of COVID-19 compared to previous pandemics, despite advancements in modern medicine, extensive surveillance networks and record vaccine production. However, the strategies implemented by public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic closely mirrored those successful in mitigating past pandemics. To elucidate this disparity, a historical analysis encompassing the 1918, 1957, 1968, 2009, and Covid-19 pandemics was conducted within the city of Milwaukee. By examining archival documents and over 800 newspaper articles, this research found …

Ecology And Retribution: Blake, Tokarczuk, And Animal Rights, Kristina Isaak Powell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's 2008 novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, engages with William Blake's life and his writings on animal welfare and speaks to current conversations about multispecies justice in the environmental humanities. It argues, first, that in recognizing how this novel's protagonist, Janina, selectively reads Blake to rationalize retributive justice, readers should resist a tendency to mistake this character for Tokarczuk's ideal advocate for environmental ethics. Secondly, it asserts that legal scholars' division between retributive and restorative justice offers valuable framework for approaching both this novel and ongoing debates about …

The Performative History Of Tomboys In Anglophone Literature Prior To Little Women, Kimber Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the expansive history of literary tomboys in the century preceding Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868). Applying concepts from gender performativity theory, it explores earlier and previously overlooked portrayals of tomboys (or, alternatively, "hoydens" or "romps"), especially in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's A Trip to Scarborough (1777), Isaac Bickerstaffe's The Romp; A Comic Opera in Two Acts (1786), Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817), and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand (1859). Because the tomboy phenomenon emphasizes that gender roles must be learned and can be resisted, tomboy characters are …

Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is concerned with analyzing key themes and ideas in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through an existentialist lens which is made possible through a comparison to themes and ideas in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I aim to make a contribution to my field by fulfilling a comparison that has long been made since the late 1960s when conversations about British Romanticism and Existentialism were still common. The purpose of my first chapter is to elucidate a new argument about the relationship between these two novels. There is a discernable element of Camusian Revolt exhibited by the Creature in …

“Screen Riders” An Exploration Of Breaking Away From The Norms Of Cinematic Storytelling, Jake Alexander Escamilla

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout my time in college, I would always hear people discussing how originality is dead and that everything has been done before. Though I do believe there is some air of truth to these statements, I hold tight to the idea that originality is not truly gone. My belief is that the entertainment industry is so set on playing it safe, they do not wish to break away and explore new ideas which have never been done before. I believe that if more creatives were given the freedom to try new combinations and had more fun doing what they love, …