Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Analysis Of The Indian Women's Festival Of Karvachauth, Puja Sahney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The festival of Karvachauth is celebrated by upper class married women of North India and occurs in the month of October or early November. On this day married women fast to ensure the long lives of their husbands. They wake up before dawn and eat a meal. After sunrise they do not drink water or eat any food until they see the moon at night. The moon is watched through a sieve and prayed to before breaking the fast. An important part of Karvachauth is a ritual that is performed by women in the afternoon. This ritual is hosted by …

The Labour Of Her Own Hands: Nineteenth Century Gardening Discourses And The Work Of Jane Webb Loudon, Kelli Lee Towers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Jane Webb Loudon, wife of eminent horticulturist and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon, has been largely ignored by historians and literary critics. Yet in her brief career she produced some of the most practical and influential gardening works of the early nineteenth-century. Beginning with Gardening for Ladies in 1840, Loudon published seventeen books and edited two magazines on gardening, botany, and natural history, most of them specifically directed to a female audience. These books would educate an entirely new class of gardeners, and allow women in particular to engage not only with gardening, but also with aesthetics, social reform, morality, …

Monuments And Massacre: The Art Of Remembering, Lafe Gerald Conner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Rain transformed the dusty trail outside our trailer into a highway of sediments speeding and settling. Inside the trailer I pulled on my boots and raincoat while my dad slipped into a larger version of his own. Then, with my two brothers, we embarked in puddle play. Aimed at impeding the torrent, we employed any object; rocks, branches, wood chips, even our own wet boots and hands. Eight years old, maybe nine and I knew nothing about erosion or sedimentation, only that rain brought the stream and the stream brought puddle play.

I hold this memory, feeling its grainy texture …

Moral Ambiguity And Drunkenness In The Canterbury Tales, Daniel A. Nyikos

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the scholarship surrounding The Canterbury Tales, the subject of drunkenness has generally been neglected. For instance, Charles Shain's "Pulpit Rhetoric in Three Canterbury Tales," although discussing at length the reprentations of sin in Chaucer's work, does not address drunkenness as any more than a form of the sin of gluttony. This is a mistake, because the frequency with which drunkenness appears in The Canterbury Tales alone should demonstrate that it is worth closer comparative study. By examining the treatment of drunkenness in several of the tales, a more complete picture can be drawn.

Finding Flow In Photography, Cynthia Olsen Mcconkie

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The associations I bring to an image are unique to me and my life experiences. I did not fully appreciate this until, as a photographer, I began to produce a body of work about activities that provide a refuge for me from the challenges of everyday life. I am an avid runner. For me running is a spiritual experience that renews my spirits and gives me hope. I took photos of the physical act of running and I was very disappointed with the results. The images failed to capture or recreate the sensations that I experienced while running. They elicited …

Genres, Media, And Usability In The Evaluation Of Writing Quality In Digital Environments, Lisa Ferrara

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has recognized that there may be a problem with depending too much on usability studies for identifying some weaknesses in digital media. In their effort to find a substitute, they have funded more than $250,000 in research in the past two years.

The Fellowship Of The (Devil) Ring: Ethnographic Translation In The 2002 聯經 Edition Of Tolkien's The Fellowship Of The Ring, Matthew G. Wright

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A recent book written by Tom Standage pays homage to six drinks that helped shape the history of the world. Following his discussion of the first five drinks (beer, wine, spirits, coffee and tea), Standage concludes with what he calls, the drink of the twentieth century. "Coca-Cola encapsulates what happened in the 20th century: the rise of consumer capitalism and the emergence of America as a superpower. It's globalization in a bottle," Standage said in an interview with National Geographic News (Handwerk). Today Coca-cola is everywhere from Cuba to the Czech Republic (Standage even claims the drink is in more …

Innovation & Inspiration Tunnel, Bridget Noel Bybee

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

I intend to create one large scale permanent work for Utah State University as fulfillment for the senior thesis of my Honors degree. The site that has been approved for this project is the tunnel under HWY 89 connecting the student B parking lot to the eastern most end of campus where the art and engineering departments are located. This high traffic area is ugly, uninviting, and currently in need of repair. The site is perfect in its nature as a tunnel that leads towards the new School of the Arts and, thus it is an exquisite site for a …

Menander's Samia: A New Translation, Seth A. Jeppesen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

It is a commonplace thing nowadays for people to get home from work or school and settle down in front of the television to watch their favorite sitcom. There are numerous ones to choose from, but most of them involve a family or tightly knit group of friends who wander their way through seemingly everyday situations, dealing with them humorously, but in the same way you might expect someone you know to deal with them. We watch these shows, laugh at them, think about them, and sometimes even incorporate phrases and lines we hear from them into our everyday speech …

Is Pascal A Safe Bet?, Bradley Mumford

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The philosophical writings of Blaise Pascal may have passed completely unnoticed had it not been for the inclusion of his famous "wager". "Pascal's wager", as it has come to be known, has drawn a great deal of commentary and criticism over the years and it has stirred up excitement and speculation over Pascal's intended message. Many critics think his field of possibilities is too narrow. Some critics say that he allows for too few options, while others argue over the validity of his conclusion. In this essay we will discuss a number of the criticisms of Pascal's wager that have …

A Few Of My Favorite Scenes, Nancee Farrer

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

I presented my senior project on Wednesday, February 22, 2006, at 5:00p.m. and again at 7:30p.m. It was the final product of several months of research followed by several weeks of rehearsals.

This project was designed, directed, and produced by myself. I chose all of the scenes, managed all of the rehearsals, chose the actors, designed the sets and gathered any technical support that I needed for the run of the recital.

My original task with this portion of the research began as an analytical paper on the background of each of the scenes that I performed for my senior …