Digital Commons Network^™

Paths Of Friction: Kvæðamannafélagið, Geography And Identity In 21st-Century Iceland, Konstantine A. Vlasis

Masters Theses

Originating in the 14th century, rímur continues to remain a significant tradition in Iceland. Rímur melodies, together with the texts of Icelandic Edda and Saga poetry, were the main form of household entertainment in Iceland for almost six centuries until modern, global technologies cultivated new interests. In the early 20th century, rímur enthusiasts gathered together to form the Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers in Reykjavík, to preserve the singing traditions of their ancestors. Since then, numerous other societies have organized, many within the past decade. In this way, intoning societies have become a medium through which a national Icelandic …

Anchored In Place : Locational Identity + New Genre Public Art, Stephanie Benenson

Masters Theses

Since its inception in the 1970s when Joseph Beuys proclaimed, “Jeder Mensch is ein Kunstler” or “Everyone is an Artist”, public art that focuses on social engagement (otherwise known as new genre public art) has been tested in a variety of formats and places. Today, the breadth of work in this category is vast and the resulting aesthetics vary based on the artist’s intentions and goals. While measuring the success of these projects remains a challenge, an examination of recent history provides us with insights that can become a tool kit for artists commencing on social projects. Once examined, specific …

Untitled, Ting Tan

Masters Theses

This is a collection of things I am interested in. Through these things I attempt an understanding of myself. They are unpredictable and often difficult to capture like clouds, trees, water, winds. This book is my journey of self discovery.

I walk in my memories. I walk in the city. There, I capture and record fleeting moments of things I love. Through this process, I give myself a chance to understand the reasons for this attraction. It also gives me an opportunity to understand why I want to find myself, and why I always want an exact answer to this …

Materializing Conflict And Resilience, Neta Ron

Masters Theses

As I was growing up, making objects felt like a superpower. It was, and still is enchanting to take an idea and transform it to an existing, tangible thing. I grew up in a family that encouraged self-sufficiency and creativity. Art has always been a great part of my life and it is an anchor that I rely on when I feel that I need to strengthen myself emotionally. In the last two years, I have been focused on understanding what is the role of making in my life, and why I am attracted to making jewelry. My work allows …

Beyond Black And White: Visualizing Cultural Identity Amidst Racial Anxiety And Nativism In American Modernist Novels, Emily Moore Harrison

Masters Theses

Walter Benn Michaels’ Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism highlights that the search for identity is a mutual project of both nativism and Modernism and reveals how relevant racial identity is in American Modernism. While this is an important relationship in American Modernism, I argue that many recent studies following Michaels’ legacy of scholarship on race and nativism in modern American literature reduce individual authors’ projects, too often interpreting them all to have similar anxieties and desires for American racial identity and citing the presence of racial tropes as evidence of the authors’ own social and political arguments. Michaels set …

Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg

Masters Theses

Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …

The Importance Of Disguise In The Middle English Romances, Sarah Catherine Moore

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the literary motif of disguise in the context of the Middle English romances. The thesis seeks to explore the various manifestations and functions of disguise, and how they relate to the familiar exile-and-return structure of the genre. Chapter I discusses the conversation of genre description of the Middle English romances, and presents the scholarship reviewed for this project along with relevant terms to the discussion at large. Chapter II explores disguise as it relates to a character’s social mobility in King Horn, Havelok the Dane, and The Tale of Gamelyn. Chapter III looks at …

Japanese Pronoun Adventure: A Japanese Language Learner's Exploration Of His Japanese Gender Pronoun, Takumi Nakano

Masters Theses

In Japanese, there are various kinds of first-person pronouns, and some of them express the referent’s gender identity. Gender-neutral pronouns are made in English- speaking world day by day, but there is not any common first-person pronoun which indicates the gender identity that positions the referent’s gender somewhere between masculine and feminine. The present paper conducted a life story research on the “Japanese life” of an advanced learner of Japanese at a university in the United States who has been exploring his gender identity by coining and using a new Japanese first- person pronoun 㛪 ore, which indicates “in the …

Context Clues, Brynn Trusewicz

Masters Theses

Context Clues explores the tensions between identity and appearance, especially as it relates to queer identities and the bodies that carry them.

It assumes that identity and appearance aren’t always straight forward or line up in expected ways.

It aims to expose our discomfort about this uncertainty.

It explores how we look at and evaluate others; what we observe and what we fill in.

It compares how we look at others and how we look to others.

It critiques the absurdity of how people perceive and interact with each other, by putting them in uncomfortable scenarios and exaggerating awkward situations. …

Coming Home: How Identity Plays A Role In Students Who Study Abroad In An Area That Is Representative Of Their Heritage, Mariana I. Naddaf

Masters Theses

Study abroad participation has more than tripled over the past two decades in the United States and has led to increased research efforts on topics such as the benefits of study abroad and the development of students who study abroad; however, little research exists on students who have heritage connections to the area in which they study abroad. In order to address this need within the field of higher education and study abroad, a hermeneutic phenomenological qualitative study was conducted to explore what factors, if any, affect changes in identity salience for students who study abroad in areas that are …

"Favorite Of Heaven": The Impact Of Skin Color On Atlantic Ethnic Africans In The Eighteenth Century, Kimberly V. Jones

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake

Masters Theses

Present in Panama since the 19^th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency …

“I Guess Someone Forgot To Ask Us If We Wanted To Be America’S Diversity Mascots”: The Identity Journey Of Transracial, Transnational, Korean Adoptees, Molly Jin Ah Rigell

Masters Theses

Korean, transracial, international adoptees (TRIAs) have been given an opportunity to tell their stories in the anthologies Seeds of a Silent Tree, Voices from Another Place, and More Voices. Through an examination of twelve stories from these three anthologies, I pinpoint issues that are faced by TRIAs who were raised in white families, and the significance these issues hold. I also discuss the unique perspectives displayed in each anthology, and the overall view of racial identity that can be observed through the study of a unique community. Through their status as in-between races and cultures, Korean, transracial, international adoptees can …

Infants' Agent Individuation: It's What's On The Inside That Counts, Hernando Taborda

Masters Theses

Developmental studies have revealed that preschool-aged children believe that an agent’s internal properties are more important than its external properties for determining its identity over time. The current study examined the developmental origins of this understanding using a manual-search individuation task with 13-month-old infants. Subjects observed semi-transparent objects that looked and behaved like animate agents placed into box that they could reach but not see into. Across trials infants observed objects with either the same- or different-colored insides placed into the box. We found that infants used internal property differences more than external property differences to determine how many agents …

Beauty Through Control: Forming Pro-Anorexic Identities In Digital Spaces, Kay A.S. Mccurley

Masters Theses

Pro-anorexia is a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that exists only online. The women who participate in these websites are learning to negotiate how to manage an identity that is normalized within the group but stigmatized within larger society. Using an open-ended survey, distributed online directly to pro-ana website users, I aim to illustrate pro-anorexic experience. After a brief demographic sketch of typical pro-anorexic spaces, I examine pro-anorexia in depth by asking three primary research questions: 1) how do pro-anorexics craft their online identities within the community; 2) how do individuals interact with one another in a highly contested and heavily policed …

The British Women’S Land Army: Gender, Identity, And Landscapes, Hilary M.K. Anderson

Masters Theses

The land girls who comprised the Women’s Land Army in Great Britain during the Second World War challenged cultural assumptions regarding gender and femininity. Through their work in agriculture, social anxieties were provoked regarding proper notions of femininity and separate spheres, which left these women in conflicting positions as they carved a spot for themselves in a war torn society. In order to carry out their work in the Women’s Land Army, land girls operated at the convergence of private and public spheres in a conjoined space. Living and operating in this conjoined space enabled them to blur the ideological …

Hablo Español, You Know? Language And Identity In The Puerto Rican Diaspora, Rachel Ann Denton

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between language, personal identity, and culture among members of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Puerto Rico represents a unique situation socially and politically because of its colonial relationship with the United States. This relationship has facilitated a continuous circular migration to and from the mainland U.S. over the last century. As of 2012, the diasporic community now represents a greater population than those who remain on the island. While nationalistic debates in Puerto Rico have traditionally excluded this group (collectively dubbed “neoricans” or “nuyoricans”), their recent contributions to literature and Puerto Rican cultural theory, as well …

The Liminal Mirror: The Impact Of Mirror Images And Reflections On Identity In The Bloody Chamber And Coraline, Staci Poston Conner

Masters Theses

In Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), mirrors play a large role in the development of the female protagonist’s identity. Tracing the motif of physical mirrors and mirrored realities in these texts offers a deeper understanding of each protagonist’s coming of age and coming to terms with her own identity. Though Angela Carter’s short stories are for an adult audience, they are remakes of fairy tales, which are often viewed as children’s literature, or at least literature about the child. Though the appropriate reading age for Coraline is debatable, it can tentatively be categorized as …

Neiman Marcus Chicken Coops: Exploring Class And Identity Through Backyard Chicken Keeping And The Contemporary Food Movement, Traci D. Joseph

Masters Theses

This paper is a case study of a proposed backyard chicken ordinance for Grand Rapids, Michigan. The study is viewed in light of social movement theory, specifically new social movement theory, to determine if events surrounding and leading up to the debate can be labeled as a social movement. A key finding is a culture of consumption as a common thread throughout the debate. The poultry industry pushed for continued consumption of its products with an agenda of fear regarding disease and improper handling. Proponents countered with a discussion on an ethic of care for the birds. Ultimately, this rejection …

Addressing Local Development And Local Identity: Rethinking The Chapman Highway Corridor In South Knoxville, William Edward Copeland

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the idea of identity within the landscape. The mechanisms that form identity, the representation of identity through both tangible and intangible forms, and the growth,evolution, and erosion of identity over time are all topics that help to inform the argument being made. Moving from an abstract ideal to a specific place, I will address the needs of a local Knoxville community that has come to struggle in recent years due to a loss of their identity within a regional context. Working to translate the mechanisms that foster a sense of identity into physical changes to the landscape …

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …

Blurring The Boundaries: Images Of Androgyny In Germany At The Fin De Siecle, Daniel James Casanova

Masters Theses

The following study inquires into the emergence and development of a positive, nonnormative homosexual identity in German social discourses regarding androgyny and same-sex desire during the Wilhelmine period. Literary works, medical journals, homosexual journals, and visual art in the late-nineteenth century reflect a growing interest in androgynous bodies throughout Germany’s developing homosexual community. Such primary media provide the evidence for this study. Of particular interest are the works and theories of homosexuals themselves with an emphasis on their organizational journals (such as The Own and The Annual Book of Intermediate Sexualities) and photographs. This project examines the dissemination and …

"Nevermericans?": How Communication Issues Shape The Perceptions Of Self And The Perceptions Of American Identity Among The International Students, Lyudmyla Pustelnyk

Masters Theses

This study of Intercultural communication and identity uses Cultural Contracts theory and Narrative theory to explore how international students communicate about their understanding of self (identity) and how this understanding is influenced and changes during their studies in the United States. Research participants who have, or are currently studying in the U.S., from Eastern and Central European countries were interviewed about their communication experiences while in the U.S., resulting in different expressions of identity - in-between identity, feeling Americanized, global citizen, and crystallization of native identity - which developed as the result of their U.S. university studies. Their narratives also …

Re-Covery, Mark Christopher Manis

Masters Theses

This thesis concerns itself with the recovery of the history of Las Vegas, the effects of historic knowledge upon the cities present identity, and how focus on its past can effect individuals in its community and visitors from afar at present. Further it concerns itself with the quality of living, or lack thereof, in the surrounding neighborhoods of the thesis’ design site, The Old Mormon Fort, and seeks to make a healthy contribution to its community. The Old Mormon fort is the earliest site of modern day human settlement in Las Vegas, and in many ways has been the foundation …

Rooted In Place: The Role Of Design In Small Town Identity, Todd Owen Sparks

Masters Theses

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Longstanding critical theories on place, memory, and identity can begin to address critical questions that residents, civic leaders, and designers are currently facing in twenty-first century small town America. The rapidity with which many rural communities are now transforming is unlike any previous phase of transition; due in large part to a vastly expanding globalized economy and mass culture. Anonymous, exchangeable environments are quickly becoming a standard …

Snaps Of Eden, Michael J. Hudson

Masters Theses

The following poems are and attempt at reclamation and reconciliation. The first section wades through the delicate subject of personal history and is an attempt to show truth as a means of both self and communal healing. The second is plaintive, a brief effort to interlope into and understand worlds outside (but not foreign) to my own. The third is a poetic essay detailing the journey of a young woman facing the horrors of an undeclared, and seemingly eternal war. The fourth and final sections serve as a means of exploration of the self and place; tackling issues of sex, …