Digital Commons Network^™

The Life And Times Of Anita Mattie Cummings Young, Linda Delane

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

“The Life and Times of Anita Mattie Cummings Young” is a memoir about my mother’s life growing up in Los Angeles, California, during a tumultuous time for African Americans in the country. During my research I discovered additional information about her grandmother that showed me who inspired her to become the woman she was.

The River Flowing, Bailey Storm

English Literature | Senior Theses

This piece is set in Kittery Point, ME, where my cousins lived, a place in which I spent many summers growing up. I define these summers as pinpoints in my youth that helped me discover the first touches of independence away from my home in Pennsylvania. All of the time I spent alone was prominent for what I remember of this time. I was incredibly shy and detached from my cousins' friends. Though I loved being a young teenager in Maine, I could never quite grasp the social life similar to Wyatt when he is back home in Kittery from …

Naruto And Naruto: Shippuden Through The Lens Of Campbell’S Monomyth, Victor Ayon

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

“Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden through the lens of Campbell’s Monomyth” is a comparative analysis of the anime television series Naruto (2002-2007 Japan, 2005-2009 USA) and its sequel Naruto: Shippuden (2007-2017 Japan, 2009-2019 USA) with Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as delineated in his The Hero with the Thousand Faces. These Japanese anime television series that are considered one of the most popular worldwide, and yet the hero’s quest in each series is often overlooked. This study both compares and contrasts how the Campbellian stages of monomyth intersect with Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden animation narratives.

Girl On The Streets, Pamela Love

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

This novella is a story of a young girl living on the streets of a strange city. The story began as a writing assignment for an undergraduate Creative Writing course taught by Professor Thomas Burke several years ago. Now, the assignment has transformed into my final thesis project, a novella, with a reflection and study of the novella and authors that have influenced my writing along the way. I have truly enjoyed writing this piece; it is a work of love and a story that I feel passionate about and want to share with others.

A Diary Of Modern Thought And Reflection, Mateen Hirbod

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

The genre of the piece is modern literary nonfiction. The piece is broken up into five sections composed of several personal essays. The five sections are titled, Family, Basketball, Academics, Life Experience, and Faith. I wanted to comprise the piece of the five most relevant aspects of my life when contemplating what has shaped me as a person.

Prism Of Time, 1950-2020: A Collection Of Short Stories, Rosalie Marcovecchio

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This collection presents a variety of literary styles including pure fiction, auto fiction, historical fiction, biographical fiction, and creative non-fiction. Racism, abortion, political and societal events are addressed by way of the Viet Nam era Anti-war Movement, Feminism, Art, immigration, mid-century inter-racial attitudes, and individual responses to sexist behavior, fire, war, and death. Also serving as vehicles are adult behavior through a child’s eyes, and in some cases, humor. The stories are set in the 1950s and1960s in Cleveland and Chicago; also in pre-Soviet Belarus, 1920s Paris, Renaissance and 1970s Venice, and 2016 United States. Characters fictionalized in the stories …

Bernadette: A Screenplay, Dain Bedford-Pugh

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

'Bernadette: A Screenplay' is the first half of a feature-length comedy-drama road movie that centers on the relationship between Bernadette - an introverted IT professional in her late twenties - and her elderly father. When Bernadette makes a big change in her life by quitting the job that she has come to hate, she decides to take the trip of a lifetime by traveling across America. She also decides to take her father, who is on the verge of moving into a care home, with her. What follows is an exploration of their relationship, their facing up to long-hidden grief …

Draw Us Something: Ekphrasis In Reverse, A Meeting Of Minds, Cara Makuh

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This creative Master’s Thesis is a collaborative effort between my writings and various visual artistic responses. I submitted my writings to volunteers who agreed to send me a visual or illustrative response to what they read. There were no rules or formatting requirements. The response could be any kind of visual artwork, from a painting, line drawing, or even a photograph. Posting the call for volunteers on Facebook and using simple digital platforms for sharing writing and artwork proved instrumental in enabling this project to reach a global audience.

While this experiment had no expectations or intention at the outset, …

Revisioning The Devī Māhātmya: A Creative Approach To Ecofeminism, Meret A. Luthi

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This creative project consists of two parts and revisions the 6^th century puranic Goddess myth Devī Māhātmya through a critical ecofeminist lens. The first part serves as an introduction into mythology, ecofeminism, and the historical and contextual aspects of the Devī Māhātmya. This academic essay investigates how myths provide humanity with a sense of meaning and belonging. The second part of this project is a creative writing piece and a contemporary revision of the Devī Māhātmya. The aim of this approach is to demonstrate the extent to which myths continue to inform and shape us, with particular regard to …

Introducing Godzilla To Marianne Moore's Octopus Of Ice At The Intersection Of Global Warming, Environmental Philosophy, And Poetry, David Seter

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This paper explores the question: how can a poet write an ecologically aware poem about global warming? Global warming impacts everything on earth, most visibly the glaciers melting away before our eyes. Adopting Aldo Leopold’s environmental philosophy of thinking like a mountain, the poet may describe the impact of global warming upon the mountain, glacier, flora and fauna, that form an interconnected web of life. A poem that thinks like a mountain already exists: Marianne Moore’s “An Octopus” (published in 1924), which takes its title from the system of glaciers (or octopus of ice) on Mt. Rainier. For a contemporary …

So, “In Your Eyes, I Am Complete.” A Play In One Act, K. Michelle Sellers

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

So, “In Your Eyes, I am Complete” is a one-act play and a one-woman show. I will be playing various characters such as mom, dad and sister where I will address many layers: such as cross-cultural differences, mental health and alcoholism, to name a few.

Who Died: Redefining The Elegy Through Affect And Trauma, Brittney La Noire

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This project introduces the claim that death literature, specifically elegies and epitaphs, do not rely on set structure or content, but rather are poetic effects of trauma and affect. Both have been defined and redefined by critical scholars, but there is still a division about their use. The beginning of the project will pull together Paul De Man, Cathy Caruth, Theresa Brennan, and Diana Fuss to apply the theoretical principle of trauma and affect transhistorically through Theocritus, John Milton, and Percy Shelley. The final portion will be an original creative collection of elegies combined with epitaphs as ending couplets about …

The Lost Artist: Biographical Fiction And The Identity Of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Alexandra Fradelizio

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900-1948) is widely regarded as the first flapper of the Roaring 20s and is often recognized for her tumultuous marriage to acclaimed American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. As a female icon whose life was filled with salacious incidences and mental struggles, the image of Zelda continues to be reinterpreted in various movies, television series, and novels. However, very few center on her artistic pursuits of writing, painting, or dancing and how her desires to contribute to the art world were overshadowed and disrupted by her successful husband. Therese Anne Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2013), …

Juneau: Notes From The Bus, Cara Makuh

Senior Theses

This creative writing project is about a week I spent alone in Juneau, Alaska. All time and travel was spent on foot, bus and boat. Alone, I had many different experiences, and every time I interacted with a new person, that isolation became a shared experience, if even for a minute. Each day started out a blank slate, and eventually wrote itself into a story with a unique identity of its own as each day does as we travel through seconds and minutes that build up into completed days. Social interactions with so many different people turns them from strangers …

Veritas Fax Ardens – Truth Is A Flaming Torch, Meret A. Luthi

Senior Theses

Based on the vast amount of truth theories that have been suggested by a myriad of thinkers from various disciplines, it can be inferred that the question of truth has occupied humankind since the beginning of its existence. Even though some of these theories appear more promising than others, it also seems that every suggested answer poses yet further questions about what truth really is. This seemingly endless stream of debates and contradictory theories further indicates that the nature of truth remains an enigma and subject to interpretation. Reflecting on Dominican University’s Latin motto “Veritas Fax Ardens” (Truth Is a …

Collateral Damage: Exploring The Metaphors And Realities Of War In Three Fictional Narratives, Jessica N. Dancisak

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Since earliest recorded history, human beings have been going to war with each other. It seems that this is an integral and inescapable part of our existence. As humanity has advanced and expanded over time, our wars have advanced and expanded in stride, to the point that we are capable of destroying all life on the planet “at the push of a button.” This awesome power, coupled with an impulse so primal that we struggle to understand it, is a dangerous and terrifying prospect. It is vitally important that, in this age of drone strikes and nuclear proliferation, we do …

Driving With The Dead: Stories Of Loss, Journey, And Wonder, Valerie Silver

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

We humans —across time, cultures, and geography— struggle with the awareness of our own mortality. Rather than accept finitude, we embrace ideas of boundlessness and perpetuity, and perceive ourselves as beings in constant motion, as travelers, in life as well as in death. We rely on metaphors of inner and outer journey to express life challenges and opportunities, and envision our deceased to be similarly en route: crossing over, passing on, ascending or descending, and, ultimately —hopefully— transcending to some higher realm. My culminating project explores the relationships between bereavement and journey, mourning and wonder. It is a collection …

Mother's Bed: Gender Representation In Children's Literature, Karin Hanni

Senior Theses

This children's book and accompanying research paper both address gender inequity in children's literature. There is a significant imbalance of gender representation in children's literature, with the number of central male characters almost doubling that of central female characters. Additionally, the roles of males and females still tend to be stereotypical: boys are action-oriented and heroic, while girls are nurturing and passive. Further, it is believed that boys will only enjoy books about boys, while girls will enjoy books about both boys and girls. This imbalance in children's literature hurts both genders. Children not only learn to read from books, …

Twelve Rules For Drinking, Kevin Mcwilliams Coates

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Prohibition had an unexpected side effect: writers who wanted to see themselves as creative nonconformists began to flaunt their relationship with alcohol, adopting the persona of the charmingly and recklessly defiant individualist. Alcohol has been imagined as the writer’s muse and has assumed a prominent role in countless works of fiction. My culminating project is a collection of stories and poetry with that common thread: alcohol. Borrowing from the Humanist Alternative of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps, the collection is arranged into twelve sections, each headed by and inspired by a step in the program. My intent is not to …

All Four Knot, A Cover Story, Sean Adrian Smith

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

No abstract provided.

Fetus: An Exploration Of Human Nature Through The Issue Of Abortion, Grant Collis Dinsdale

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

The issue of abortion touches deep emotions in individuals and continues to be a controversial topic in the United States. The Right to Life movement believes strongly that life begins at conception, and to abort an unborn fetus is an act of murder. The supporters of the Pro-Choice movement, however, believe that a woman has the right to choose what happens with her body, and this takes precedence over other considerations. This work of fiction uses the above controversy as its framework. The primary narrator is a fetus in utero who tells the story of how his father and mother …

Making Peace With Contradictions: Reflections Of Territory And Identity In Israel/Palestine, Chase Clow

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Both historical and personal essay, this culminating project is a creative non-fiction work exploring the modern historical roots of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Part I surveys the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Palestine, centering on two key figures: Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion (1886-1973), and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muslim Leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni (1897-1974). Interweaving historical fact, myth, personal story, and biography, with Israeli and Palestinian poetry and poses by the author, themes such as relationship to land, attachment to home, and the displacement created by industrialization upon a traditional, rural lifestyle are explored. Part II relates the …