Digital Commons Network^™

Building Columbia, Lawrence Lane

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the research from a project on the builders who helped build Columbia, South Carolina from 1890 to 1940, a dynamic time of growth as the city moved from post-Civil War recovery through industrialization and into modernization.1 Previous research of Columbia’s architectural history often focuses on the few architects with national recognition, like Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument. Frequently omitted from the city’s architectural story are the lesser-known developers, builders, contractors, brick masons, and other tradesmen from inside and outside of Columbia who contributed to the shaping of the city by helping build vernacular architecture …

Household Activities And Areas: A Reanalysis Of The John And Priscilla Alden First Home Site, Caroline Gardiner

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to further understanding of early colonial life within New England through an examination of the John and Priscilla Alden First Home site in Duxbury, MA, excavated in 1960 by Roland Robbins. It specifically focuses on the composition and spatial distribution of the ceramic assemblage to discuss household activities and the spaces in which they were performed. The findings of the ceramic analysis detail a collection composed primarily of utilitarian vessels that indicate multiple subsistence farming activities including dairying. The spatial study reveals the significant patterning of these artifacts. It is proposed that these denote specific activity areas …

Observing The Experience Of Racism Through Social Background, Leïla J. Dieye

Graduate Masters Theses

This study explores racism through the eyes of the one that experiences it. If different types of racism have already been established, the initial premise of the study is that some factors make its experience unique, such as one individual’s markers of identity and his history.

Data have been collected from in-depth interviews with ten participants belonging to five ethnic groups (Latino, African American, Asian, African and Middle Eastern). Those participants were asked to reflect on a specific moment when they witnessed racism, and on why it made them think that event in particular was racist. Then, they were asked …

Whether Or Not 'It Gets Better'…Coping With Parental Heterosexist Rejection, Cara Herbitter

Graduate Masters Theses

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people face the burden of additional stressors as a result of their experiences of stigma and discrimination regarding their sexual minority status. Parental rejection of LGB people in the context of heterosexism serves as a powerful minority stressor associated with poorer mental health (e.g., Bouris et al., 2010; Ryan, Huebner, Diaz, & Sanchez, 2009). Few contemporary theories exist to describe the experience of parental rejection. In addition, the extant empirical research has focused primarily on youth experiences among White and urban LGB samples, signaling the need for research across the lifespan investigating more diverse samples. …

For An Afghan Minority Us Involvement Has Been A Blessing And A Curse, Sharif Hassan

Capstones

My capstone is about, Hazaras, an ethnic and religious minority long persecuted in Afghanistan. But after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, they made remarkable progress in education, politics, economics, art and culture. That success did not go unnoticed by militant groups. Hazaras are increasingly becoming the target of deadly attacks. Over 350 of them have been killed and more than 750 wounded in at least 13 targeted bombings since June 2016. And these attacks forcing Hazaras to flee the country to Europe. They were massacred and forced from their lands throughout the 19 and 20^th centuries in religious and …

The Downward Spiral: Postmodern Consciousness As Buddhist Metaphysics In The Dark Souls Video Game Series, Paolo Xavier Machado Menuez

Dissertations and Theses

This paper is about locating the meaning of a series of games known as the Dark Souls series in relation to contemporary social conditions in Japan. I argue that the game should be thought of as an emblem of the current cultural zeitgeist, in a similar way one might identify something like Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums as an emblem of the counter cultural 60s. I argue that the Dark Souls series expresses in allegorical form an anxiety about living in a time where the meaning of our everyday actions and even society itself has become significantly destabilized. It does …

Workers Of The Word Unite!: The Powell's Books Union Organizing Campaign, 1998-2001, Ryan Thomas Wisnor

Dissertations and Theses

The labor movement's groundswell in the 1990s accompanied a period of intense competition and conglomeration within the retail book sector. Unexpectedly, the intersection of these two trends produced two dozen union drives across the country between 1996 and 2004 at large retail bookstores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble. Historians have yet to fully examine these retail organizing contests or recount their contributions to the labor movement and its history, including booksellers' pioneering use of the internet as an organizing tool. This thesis focuses on the aspirations, tactics, and contributions of booksellers in their struggles to unionize their workplaces, while …

Oscar Brousse Jacobson: The Life And Art Of A Cosmopolitan Cultural Broker, Anne Allbright

History Theses and Dissertations

As a graduate student studying art at Yale, Oscar Brousse Jacobson (1882–1966) pinned his career on the hopes of someday opening an art school in the American West. Jacobson was a Swedish immigrant, but he felt a deep connection to the West because he spent much of his youth on a ranch in Kansas and roamed the greater Southwest by horseback during the late 1800s. Jacobson believed that after he completed his graduate studies in New England, he would eventually return West. He planned to bring great works of art, produce his own paintings, instruct young artists, and foster art …

Facilitating Social Support Systems For Adults In Assisted Living Communities, Kathryn Marie Detwiler

Theses - ALL

This thesis project seeks to unpack how older adults living in assisted living facilities

maintain and deepen their social connections. According to established research, social support systems and active lifestyles are major factors in improving quality of life. By sitting down with residents in the assisted living division of Menorah Park in

Syracuse, and conducting a series of research activities, a better understanding of how older adults live in assisted living facilities.

One potential design solution currently being explored to keep older adults socially engaged could be the design of a social hub terminal that encourages residents to congregate daily …

Wifely Figures: Gender, Marriage, And Biblical Typology In Early Modern England, Melissa Welshans

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation illuminates how the hermeneutic of biblical typology influenced the conception of the female life cycle in early modern English literature, especially the social roles of maid, wife, and widow. Reading texts from a variety of genres and by both male and female authors, this dissertation argues that a typological understanding of marriage gave additional, spiritual import to those social roles, thus further upholding ideologies that defined women by their proximity to marriage. However, this dissertation also demonstrates how a typological understanding of marriage and the female life cycle could also be used to critique gender norms. After providing …

The Post-Neoliberal Citizen: Immigrant Identity As The New Service Learning Center, Michael Lasley

Dissertations - ALL

In my dissertation, The Post-Neoliberal Citizen: Immigrant Identity as the New Service Learning Center, I analyze the language of service-learning initiatives, particularly the language these initiatives use regarding global citizenship, through the lens of the rhetorics of neoliberalism. Much of service-learning scholarship has, I argue, taken for granted the idea of citizenship; that is, the political subjectivity of participants in these programs has been articulated from the perspective of American citizenship. I begin the dissertation by tracing the early conversations about citizenship within service-learning scholarship, and I then note how these conversations shift when second-wave service-learning scholars reframed service-learning to …

Rereading Mircea Eliade: Some Myths And Truths About The Sacred, The Historical, And The Wwii, Cong Fu

Theses - ALL

This project grows out of my dissatisfaction with a number of popular critiques against Mircea Eliade’s approach to religious phenomena, in particular the charges along the lines that his academic writings are crypto-theological, ahistorical, and fascist. The set of questions I ask are as follows: Does Eliade assume the existence of a transcendent, autonomous entity in his explanation of religion, as his critics claim? Is “ahistorical” accurate to capture Eliade’s sense of the relationship between religious phenomena and history? Why does Eliade not take advantage of the more “historical” or “scientific” tools of analysis of his time, such as Marxism …

Ordinary Disorder, Jonathan S. Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

The pictorial spaces in my paintings are found through many drawings, based on memories. In these drawings I use the architectural technique of paraline drawing, in pointed contrast to one or two point perspective. With a fixed point of view unavailable, the viewer or reader becomes the writer too. This is what I intend. The paraline method also engages specific corners of art history to which I relate, including woodblock prints of Japanese interiors, Chinese brush painting landscapes with houses, and the shifting, rotating perspectives found in Baroque painting. My intensely personal memories/drawings are transfused into highly material finished paintings. …

Jared French's State Park: A Contextual Study, Emily Sachar

Theses and Dissertations

Jared French's State Park (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1946) uses the language of magic realism in mid-20th-century America, the egg tempera technique of the Quattrocento, and the theories of Carl Jung to explore a variety of themes: homosexuality, family and power. This thesis considers State Park within the contexts of the artist's circle and liaisons with Paul Cadmus and George Tooker; his photography work with Pajama; his friendship with E.M. Forster; and homophobia at mid-century.

Rupture, Dionis Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video and installation. I employ these mediums to create a coming of age story as a Dominican New Yorker, exploring masculinity, vulnerability, the supernatural, family, and religion, as well as how culture plays a role in my community and in my life.

Motive Through Automotive Compassionately Criticizing The Desires Of Car Culture, Erika R. Lehrmann

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artwork represents my admiration and criticisms of car culture I have gathered throughout my personal experiences beginning at a very early age. The work exists in the form of drawings, paintings, prints, collage and sculpture. This work is created through the elements of personal narrative, desires, obsessions, and questions surrounding car culture and its influences. My intention to refurbish the icons of this culture has involved creating work that is both obsessive and critical for personal exploration and understanding of past memories.

The Palimpsest Boys, Brandon Stump, Brandon Stump

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

These short stories deal with young boys and men who raise themselves in the absence of proper parenting. In particular, they wrestle with big questions about the family unit, sex, and love.

Late Bloomer, Allyson M. Nobles

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Angel, Cole Connelly

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Though a new player in town, Amy isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. When she discovers a ruthless sadist named Angel is operating in her new home, Amy makes it her goal to stop Angel. Though Amy quickly finds her sense of justice is putting her at odds with her own survival when Angel takes her own interest in Amy.

Stasi Brainwashing In The Gdr 1957 - 1990, Jacob H. Solbrig, Jacob Hagen Solbrig

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the methods used by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, or East German secret police, for extraction of information from citizens of the German Democratic Republic for the purpose of espionage and covert operations inside East Germany, as it pertains to the deliberate brainwashing of East German citizens. As one of the most efficient intelligence agencies to ever exist, the Stasi’s main purpose was to monitor the population, gather intelligence, and collect or turn informants. They used brainwashing techniques to control the people of the GDR, keeping the populace paralyzed with fear …

Still Figuring This Out: A Symphony For Orchestra, Latasha Bundy

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

The Horse's Ass: A Survey Of Comediology, William M. Fisk

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

What is comedy? Can someone learn to be funny? Are there rules or guidelines for the production of laughter, the universal language? This paper, which outlines an investigation of successful comedians and the production of a short film, determines to aggregate as many of the relevant prerequisites of inducing giggles as possible, especially as they relate to the audiovisual medium of cinema.

Play Dead, Ann Hackett

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

People Like Ourselves, Harper D. Hair

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The thesis writing here is an effort by the artist to identify his motives in creating, and his aims for the audience, and to communicate this to the reader in a clear and truthful manner. Section 1 focuses on introducing the ground of the artists’ thinking, discussing his ideas of the body and culture identity, and how they motivate his work. Section 2 goes into greater detail about the manner his thought process evolved through the course of a number of works. In Section 3, there is an ever sharper focus in the works towards the isolated and inscrutable individual. …

There Will Be Time, Sherng-Lee Huang

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

A River Separates Them, A Culture Connects Them: The Mohawk Hunters Of Algiers And The Mardi Gras Indian Tradition In New Orleans, Monisha S. Jackson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

All over the world, Carnival is a time for a break in human activities, and inversion of the usual hierarchies. In New Orleans, Carnival is a time when the powerless take over the streets, and, for a time, invert control and ownership. One of the New Orleans carnival organizations are the Mardi Gras Indians, groups of African Americans who dress as Indians during the day and take over the streets of their neighborhoods, showing their power and beauty in a breathtaking display of costumes, music and dance. The Masking of the Mardi Gras Indian is a tradition dating back to …

Meno And Euphrates Elementary: Episodes 1 & 2, Thad F. Lee

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Boiltown, Eric Layer

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Lockwood To Elgin, Bryan Washington

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A linked collection featuring a young gay man -- the son of a black mother and a Mexican father -- coming of age in contemporary Houston.

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …