Digital Commons Network^™

Cross-Curricular Writing In Mathematics For Comprehension, Kirsten Stowell

Honors Theses

Even though the idea of implementing writing in a mathematics classroom is far from new and the benefits from doing so are hardly nonexistent, this concept is often not found in modern secondary mathematics classrooms. Writing about mathematics allows students to organize and communicate their thinking, gain a better conceptual understanding of mathematical topics, develop a stronger sense of mathematical procedure, move beyond surface-level thinking, and place abstract ideas into context. Writing can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment to explicitly determine if students are struggling conceptually or procedurally in a mathematics classroom to then adjust instruction …

Understanding The English Bible: A Comparative Analysis Of Four Bible Versions, Michael R. Coats

Honors Theses

Scholarship pertaining to the Bible accounts for a great deal of research. A search for “the Bible” on just the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries website archive results in 549,075 hits, and specifying “English Bible versions” only reduces those results to 70,000. My largest difficulty in discussing the Bible lies not in finding a conversation but in finding which part of the conversation to enter. In the past fifty years, one of the largest emphases has been on using the best translation style for the Bible, a topic that has dominated the field of biblical scholarship (Ryken, Understanding 15). I …

Dreadful Reality: Fear And Madness In The Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft, Phillip J. Snyder

Honors Theses

The effectiveness of H. P. Lovecraft’s horror relies on an atmosphere of dread in his stories. Both the verisimilitude of Lovecraft’s stories and the dilemma many of his protagonists face in losing their sanity or being perceived to have lost their sanity play a large role in creating this atmosphere. By viewing Lovecraft’s fiction through the lens of recent psychological research on fear, this project shows how his intuitive understanding of fear and his vivid imagery and sensory descriptions conform to our understanding of unconscious automatic threat avoidance behaviors. Because Lovecraft’s behavioral descriptions accurately reflect these behaviors, they increase the …

Living Within The Margins: The Constitutional Culture Of Irish Life Law And Literature, Meghan Keator

Honors Theses

Serving as a stepping stone to asserting independence from British authority and oppression, the Bunreacht Na hÉireann, Ireland’s modern constitution, allowed the nation and its people finally to shape themselves by their own legal standards, customs, and norms. Yet, after years of oppression from forced British standards, Ireland began the search for its own distinct voice as a newly liberated, competitive country. This thesis explores how the Irish Constitution contributes to shaping a homogenous society that promotes normative views and behaviors that damagingly marginalize minority groups–who differ from such social standards. By examining the specific language, diction, order and structure …

The Children Who Became Men Overnight: Memories Of Love And Violence In Afghanistan, Jamaluddin Aram

Honors Theses

The three short stories in this collection present a reverse chronology of Afghanistan’s recent past: the decade of democracy, the Taliban era, and the civil war period. On the surface each piece portrays the experiences of everyday Afghan men and women and their hopes and dreams at times of war and relative peace. At a deeper level, the stories attempt to unpack Afghan politics, traditions, ethnic tensions, and the diverse bonds that unite the nation and allow its citizens to live together. My first chapter, “Namak Haram,” is set against the backdrop of the Taliban regime. Mohsen, an ethnic Hazara, …

Combatting Human Extinction: Biblical Archetypes And Environmental Apocalypse In Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Elizabeth Hurley

Honors Theses

This project examines through recreations of Biblical archetypes the cause and effect of environmental apocalypse and potential human extinction in contemporary dystopian novels. The goal of this thesis is, in part, to argue that near-future dystopian fiction is speculative, since the fictional reasons behind the downfall are akin to Anthropocenic (that is, pertaining to the age of the Anthropocene, the contemporary world where humans have severely altered the Earth) environmental and ecological concerns. In examining The Year of the Flood (2009) by Margaret Atwood, Parable of the Sower (1994) by Octavia Butler, and The Maze Runner (2009) by James Dashner, …

The Ambiguity Of Antony And Cleopatra: Interrupting Phallocentric Schemes Of Objectification Through The Mutual Gaze, Sydney Paluch

Honors Theses

This thesis proposes an alternative to the male gaze, using Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of ambiguity in order to understand the subversive sexual politics underlying Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concept of the male gaze was first identified in feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which explains how film is explicitly constructed around the male gaze. Since the publication of Mulvey’s article, feminist theorists such as Linda Williams and Mary Ann Doane have attempted to construct a feminine counterpart to the male gaze. Unfortunately, these theorists have typically concluded that such …

A Monumental History: Stories Of The Berkshires, Kimberly Bolduc

Honors Theses

A Monumental History: Stories of the Berkshires is a creative-nonfiction work focusing on stories surrounding forgotten monuments in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts. The Berkshires exhibit a distinct regional culture that has set them apart from the rest of Massachusetts and indeed from the rest of the rural and urban United States. As one of the first American frontiers, the region was settled by self-reliant and determined pioneers who had to endure harsh environments, Native American unrest, wars, and political and religious disturbances and disagreements. Utopian communities like the Shakers would settle in the Berkshires, drawn by their promise …

Gender, Consent, And Hermaphroditic Legibility In James Joyce's Ulysses And Finnegans Wake, Carter R. Elsea

Honors Theses

It is difficult to imagine a more elusive, polemical author than James Joyce. He is often spoken of as both a cosmopolitan and a nationalist, syphilitic madman and genius, and misogynist and writer of écriture feminine. This final paradoxical view of Joyce is one that I find most compelling. However, this is not a project in feminist historiography attempting to reclaim Joyce for feminism, but rather a demonstration of the pulsing bodies that already exist between the texts. When exploring this idea of écriture feminine in Joyce’s Ulysses, one might be surprised that Hélène Cixous refers to Joyce’s treatment of …

The World’S Greatest Detectives: Analyzing The Relationship And Cultural Meaning Of Sherlock Holmes And Batman, Emma F. Reeves

Honors Theses

The characters Sherlock Holmes and Batman represent a Gothic archetype aimed at uncovering societal fears and tensions. The thesis analyzes four Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and four Batman-centered graphic novels from DC Comics. By looking at the two in conjunction with each other, this project develops a more comprehensive understanding of the Gothic detective hero in the historical contexts of Victorian England and modern United States of America. The two characters are first explained in terms of the Gothic and as archetypal figures before being examined in terms of their similar contemporary social contexts. Finally, the …

A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this scholarly fictional narrative is meant to reveal the struggles that individuals with mental illness go through, not only in their personal lives, but also with their place in society. I lay out research around the stigma that surrounds mental illness first, defining both public and self-stigma in relation to mental illness. I also briefly mention Girl, Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how authors have addressed the stigma that surrounds mental illness in literature in the past. The research is an important part of understanding why I write the fictional narrative the way I do, …

Delving Into Multicultural Literature With Inquiry, Juan Gonzalez

Honors Theses

This paper argues for the use of multicultural literature in the classroom, and puts forth a unit plan that uses critical literacy in an English 11 classroom, though it can be readapted to fit other grade levels. Bishop (1990) describes multicultural literature as a set of windows, that people use to view the experiences of others, and mirrors, that reflect and validate peoples’ experience, a core principal in this paper. Critical literacy is comprised of four dimensions (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002) that allows for analyzing literature in a different and meaningful way. The final part of this paper …

Precarious Positions Of Femininity In Contemporary Literature: A College Course Creation, Ireland Atkinson

Honors Theses

In an effort to understand college instruction, I created a collegiate literature course and its logistical materials. This process manifested in the creation of a syllabus, schedules, assignments, and a teaching philosophy statement. With the title “Precarious Positions of Femininity in Contemporary Literature,” the course is in an interdisciplinary format that explores gender and women’s studies with literary scholarship as its medium. All of the texts are not only written by female authors, but also address women’s issues and the precarious positions their femininity puts them in. With a focus on the intersectionality and the diversity of the female experience, …

You Tell The Tale: Interactive Retellings Of The Myth Of Orpheus, Christopher Mclean-Wheeler

Honors Theses

The thesis retells the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in an interactive narrative style. The interactive medium encourages readers to take an active role in storytelling by deciding what the protagonist does at key moments in the plot; each decision branches out into alternate story paths, allowing the adaptation to draw from multiple versions of the myth, particularly Ovid's The Metamormopheses and Virgil's The Georgics. The content chosen for inspiration is based on how it can offer new interpretations of and insight into this retelling of the familiar story.

Look At That Little Macho: Surveillance And Hegemonic Masculinity In Junot DíAz's The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Ludanne Francis

Honors Theses

No abstract available.

Restorative Rhetoric And Community Action In Response To The 2016 Baton Rouge Flood, Madeline Elizabeth Munch

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Rewriting Reality: The Interplay Of Journalism And Literature In Mid-Twentieth Century America, France, And Mexico, Victoria Sidener Primeaux

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Aave Be-Deletion In Quotative Be Like, Hayley Franklin

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Whose Voice The Waters Heard: A Short Story Cycle, Grace E. Hagan

Honors Theses

Abstract In this collection of short stories, each short story is a unique exploration of the powerful and often enigmatic concept of loss. The common unity for the collection presents itself in two parts: place and theme. Characters of all ages, from all walks of life, go to the river to have their voices heard and to grieve a particular form of loss. The collection takes a dynamic and expansive view on loss, and each short story reflects a different idea or experience of loss. It seeks to examine not only what can be lost, but also what can and …

Young Adult Fiction: Inside The Mirror Image, Paige Christin Flannelly

Honors Theses

Identity and image-of-self are concepts intertwined throughout the pages of Young Adult Fiction Literature. Characters in Young Adult Fiction interact with their surroundings and as a result form an identity based on these interactions. Research has shown how young adults respond to the feedback of their surroundings whether embodied by other characters or their environment. The way in which identity and the image characters see in the mirror are formed is directly related to the interactions characters experience in their daily lives. Interactions with landscapes, peers, illness, grief, and parents are the specific interactions discussed in this thesis. The novels …

Ambiguous Pleasure(Ers): Negotiating The Bodies Of Falstaff And Moll, Lauren Van Atta

Honors Theses

The British Early Modern Period was a time of shifting social ideologies where class as well as gender were mapped onto bodies and embedded in the very material conditions of life. But class and gender were not discreet categories with dichotomous definitions like ‘male’ and ‘female’, or ‘nobility’ and ‘peasant’. They had many inbetweens, and the theater was perhaps the most glaring inbetween of all. The theater necessarily complicates definitions and ways of viewing bodies as no body is what they seem. And at the heart of these ambiguous identities lay the fat body. It is consumptive, it is transgressive, …

Aiscrima E Checchi Italian-American Dialect And Development In The New Millennium, Elizabeth Loyacano Pedrotti

Honors Theses

The Italian-American identity is inextricably linked with language. Italian immigrants and their descendants have formed a culture in the United states with a dynamic history, particularly when it comes to language use and perceptions. This study examined multigenerational Italian Americans’ perceptions of English, Italian, and the unique Italian-American dialect; it aimed to discover changes in the usage of Italian-American dialect over time. Italian Americans in the Dayton area were interviewed and presented with surveys to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate that while overall usage and recognition of Italian-American lexical items has decreased dramatically since the 1980s, younger …

Limbo: An Exploration Of The Spaces Between, April Ahmed

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

“Whate’Er I Be”: The Body Liminal And The Permeable Limits Of Sovereignty In Early Modern Drama, Linda Anne Riley

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Violence And Edification In 19th Century Fiction: An Analysis Of The Novels Of Charles Dickens And Leo Tolstoy, Caroline Fassett

Honors Theses

This Thesis argues that violence is essential to the structures and plots of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities and of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is particularly essential to the edification, or the moral and intellectual improvement, of principal characters in these four novels. Additionally, this Thesis contends that this edification is both anticipated and reinforced by the novelists’ incorporation of counterparts whose demeanor and/or narrative overtly mirror that of the principal characters.

To support this argument, I bring the theory of Thomas Carlyle into conversation with the novels of Dickens …

When Worlds Collide: Feminism, Conservatism And Twentieth Century Authors, Madison Cooney

Honors Theses

Two streams of literary narratives appearing during the Great Depression grew from personal and historical experiences of their women authors with overlapping but very different perspectives on American cultural history. These were: 1) The accounts of rural frontier Midwestern regional experiences of Laura Ingalls Wilder, as edited and shaped in part by her daughter and writing partner Rose Wilder Lane, in retrospect during the New Deal era; and 2) the 1920s urban African-American experience of Zora Neale Hurston in the context of an emerging national black artistic and intellectual scene. Through a shared feminism emphasizing freedom for women, these authors …

Macbeth In Film: Directorial Choices And Their Impact On The Audience, Kellie Suzanne Mcclelland

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I closely examine William Shakespeare's 17th century tragedy, Macbeth, in comparison to five film adaptations for a 21st century audience: Roman Polanski (1971), Philip Casson (1979), Geoffrey Wright (2006), Rupert Goold (2010), and Justin Kurzel (2015). I chose to survey the women in Macbeth specifically because of historical blame placed on either Lady Macbeth or the witches for Macbeth's actions. General critical perceptions are that these women robbed Macbeth of his agency or free will and urged him, coerced him, to commit unspeakable crimes to advance his career. What I found in these productions are a variety …

From The Attic To The Screen: An Adaptation Of Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea, Farrah F. Sunn

Honors Theses

Jane and Antoinette is an adapted screenplay from the novels Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Rhys's novel, written nearly one hundred years after the publication of Jane Eyre in 1847, functions as a prequel to the original text. I develop the two stories into one, cohesive narrative for the screen. The adaptation process includes close analyses of the texts, both independently and in relation to one another. I viewed all film or television adaptations of the two novels and read critical analyses of these adaptations. I also studied adaptation theory and applied those …

There's Only This: Atheism And The Search For Meaning In Ian Mcewan's Fiction, Olivia Hope Davis

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I offer readings of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, Saturday, and The Children Act to study the relationship between meaning and faith. This is an important question because some New Atheists have pointed to McEwan's work as proof that meaning is possible in the absence of God. In this thesis I suggest that while McEwan makes a strong case for the possibility of meaning through aesthetic experiences, he also complicates meaning by suggesting that it is only achievable in the context of belief in the irreducibility of ideas like love, beauty, and wonder.