Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Beyond Me: Class, Sexuality, And The Work Of The Autobiographical Fragments Of Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, And Eileen Myles, Erin E. Heiser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at what I am calling the “autobiographical fragments” of three working-class, lesbian (or queer) authors: Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, and Eileen Myles whose writing is stylistically quite different from one another’s, but who nonetheless have all produced bodies of work that represent bits of their lives over and over and in different ways, sometimes overlapping in time and narrative detail. While there are certainly other writers whose work shares many of the same characteristics, I argue that the autobiographical fragment has special significance for marginalized subjects. Woven throughout the dissertation are many of my own autobiographical fragments …

Stolen Valor: Mapping The Style Subcultures Of The Left, Lydia Mokdessi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"Stolen Valor: Mapping the Style Subcultures of the Left'' performs an analysis of three observed style subcultures prevalent in American fashion between the 2000s and the 2020s and demonstrates how these distinct style languages each draw from the aesthetics of various 20th and 21st century Leftist political movements, discussing the extent to which each style subculture undergoes a process of appropriation by the dominant culture and subsequent subsumption into the mainstream compared to the extent to which the subversive communicative power of each subculture remains intact for the original adopting population. The three style vernaculars this text identifies will be …

Placemaking And Placewashing In Manhattan's Chinatown: Capitalist Vs. Community Interests, Mary Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the late 1890s, there have been internal and external placemakers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They take the form of city government, real estate developers, and community organizations vying for space, and seeking to define what this neighborhood should be, for whom it should serve, and how it should look. Sometimes these would-be placemakers operate with neoliberal goals and overt orientalist and/or racist views. They push those narratives through via media representations and as a tactic to attract tourism, but with little regard for how it affects the community. In this work, I examine connections between historic ideas of placemaking and …

The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, Giacomo R. Bianchino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, “The Redemption of History: Poetics and Politics in the Modern Epic.” provides a materialist theory of the modern epic, focusing on the way that the poets deployed this form towards political ends. Building on theories of the epic going back to the German Romantics, it argues that the modern form is predicated on the idea that it has departed from the conditions that made the ancient form possible. It examines the way that writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed the idea that the immediacy of the social “totality” expressed by the ancient epopee was …

The Four Seasons: Integrating The Big Four Sports, Joseph S. Brody

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After World War II, even though many African Americans served their country, policies of segregation were rampant throughout the United States of America. The aim of this Capstone is two-fold. First, to shed light on the men who followed the path of Jackie Robinson and give them their due. The most appropriate way to convey my research of these four athletes was by putting them all in the same fictional setting and discussing their trials and tribulations that made them the men they were in their day. Second, I want to highlight the many things I found in my research …

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …

Generational Awareness Of Folk Figures In The American Midwest, Addison L. Jensen

Honors Thesis

The popular folklore of a region can clearly reflect how its citizens understand themselves and their nation. The goal of this study was to determine the number of individuals who can be considered “well-versed” in traditional folklore and to speculate on the possible reasons for the differences in recognition that arise. Five figures (Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Annie Oakley, and Rip Van Winkle) were selected to serve as a representative sample of folk characters that have been historically significant to the country. An online survey of 279 Midwesterners and interviews with various age groups in South Dakota, found …

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

Shut Up And Dribble: The Political Contradictions Of Black Masculinity In Sports, Isaiah Rogers

Master's Theses

"Shut Up and Dribble: The Political Contradictions of Black Masculinity in Sports" is a comprehensive analysis of literature and case studies that explore the regulation and representation of the black masculine body within sports. This thesis investigates three primary themes—sport, protest, and black masculinity—and seeks to uncover the evolution of various black masculine figures and their endeavors toward racial inclusivity. By analyzing sports literature, this work examines the experiences of five significant black athletes, including Jack Johnson, Ron Artest, and Colin Kaepernick, to illustrate how sports environments police the black body. Additionally, this thesis emphasizes two archetypes of black masculinity: …

See Me Show Me: Black Women Representation In Television Sitcoms, Lauryn Jennings

Master's Theses

Television is a commonplace item within the households of America. It brings the family together as well teaching people about other people. With this Black women have been shown in one-dimensional images that are harmful. Although these stereotypes are old they are still present within modern television sitcoms.

Back To Black: Analyzing The Presence Of White Control Over Black Representations In Media And The Responses Of Black Creators, Serena Smith

Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis largely discusses the perceptions held by White people of Black people and the Black community, and how these discriminatory perceptions have been presented in various forms of consumable media and other societal aspects throughout American history. These racially biased misrepresentations have also negatively affected the progression and internalization of the concept of Black cultural identities for Black people throughout history and how they are able to relate to the rest of American society. I am arguing that contemporary media and films produced by Black creators, such as Cord Jefferson’s 2023 film American Fiction, tend …

The Black Press And Late Imperial Russia, Benjamin Pierce

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

For centuries, western observers had looked to Russia and seen a place fundamentally different from their home countries. In their accounts, Russia was distinctly oppressive, a state characterized by tyranny, barbarism, and Mongolian influence. But these accounts were faulty. They were written by merchants, diplomats, and explorers, wealthy white men who had never experienced the kind of repression they witnessed in Russia. When Black Americans looked to Russia, however, they saw a place fundamentally similar to the United States. Both countries were large, multiethnic empires driven by territorial acquisition and fueled by forced labor. By tracing the coverage of Russia …

The Extreme Rise Of The Fast Fashion Industry From Country To Country: Does Consumer Behavior Differ Cross Culturally Regarding Fast Fashion Between The United States And European Countries?, Madison R. Feuerbacher

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The apparel industry has various categories of fashion. One of these categories known more readily today as fast fashion. Fast fashion has gained immense global popularity over the past decade. The concept of fast fashion apparel involves producing vast amounts of product as quick as possible to sell to the consumer at an aggressively low price. It is important to understand this current phenomenon of the global rise of fast fashion as well as understand the devastating effects our environment is facing because of it. As the vocalization of the harmful effects of fast fashion have become more prevalent …

Visibility In The Redacted Space: What Censored Poetry Reveals About Guantanamo Bay Prison And The Individuals Trapped Inside, Chase Portaro

English Capstone Projects

This paper discusses what readers can understand about Guantanamo Bay and the larger setting of America's Islamophobic "War on Terror" through the poetry of individuals detained inside of Guantanamo Bay Military Prison. In 2002, Mark Falkoff, with the help of a team of lawyers, translators, and human rights advocates published a collection of twenty-two detainee-authored poems, titled Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. This paper discusses the emerging neo-colonial subjectivity of America's War on Terror, as it analyzes the available writings of Guantanamo poets. The new language of subjectivity of victims of contemporary American empire is defined by suppression, as …

Little Cricket On The Hearth: The Quiet Feminism Of _Little Women_, Caroline Anderson Klein

Honors Theses

Since the advent of the cult of domesticity, the stakes for female characters in domestic literature have been notoriously high. There was no room for flaws, rebellious decisions, and certainly no room for mistakes—whether of the woman’s own accord, or simply as collateral damage of a male character’s immorality. In this shallowly Calvinist domain, women were never more than one broken guardrail away from social ruin or death. In writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott breaks these molds through unflinching kindness to her female characters from childhood to adulthood, even unto death. Alcott achieves this quietly feminist feat by …

We Who Are Not As Others: Costuming The Godspell Ensemble As Historical Circus Performers, Anderson Palmer

Theatre Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the Bible as well as circus history and American history to determine the most effective way to design costumes for the musical Godspell by John-Michael Tebelak for a modern audience. The aim of all of this research is to re-center Tebelak’s original inspiration: The Feast of Fools by Harvey Gallagher Cox. Over the years since the premiere of Godspell in 1970, it has become heavily associated with hippies rather than clowns, despite the importance of clowns and clowning to the play’s inception.

Taking inspiration from primary research of circus performers, religious iconography, and early 20^th century …

“Caroline”: Deviance In Southern Women’S Poetry, Sage Aspyn Short

All Theses

Deviance in Southern women’s poetry can be characterized by uncertainty, religious images, and through the telling of stories often unheard of, forgotten, or erased, like racial and gendered violence. Glenis Redmond’s poetry in The Listening Skin and What My Hand Say both explore Southern womanhood alongside race, history, violence, illness, and legacy, among other themes and topics. In Caroline: Poems some deviances include religious metaphors alongside obsessive compulsive disorder, excessive cursing from a woman speaker, and historical graveyard musings. Critical texts about lyric theory and voice provide some background and historical significance to be used in this contemporary study and …

“Beating Back The Past”: The Psychological Justifications Of Violence In Toni Morrison’S Fiction, Catherine Buhse

English Honors Theses

This thesis examines the traumatic experiences that consume characters’ lives and, in the absence of psychological healing efforts, manifest into violent actions in Toni Morrison’s three novels The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved. I focus on the gendered experience of the female characters Pecola, Sula, Eva, and Sethe, except for the male character, Cholly in The Bluest Eye. Focusing on Morrison’s humanization of violent characters and her sharing of their full life stories, I establish the characters’ internal justifications for their violence to challenge the accepted depiction of all criminals as evil. The three chapters follow the manifestation of trauma …

The Millennial Novel: Examining A Generation Through Literature, Isabella Bokan

English Honors Theses

This undergraduate thesis examines the relationship between contemporary social circumstances and fiction novels. Generational novels are focused on cohorts or individuals who share traits that reflect recognizable social conditions of a specific era. The new generational novel is the Millennial novel. These Millennial novels generally depict American characters in American settings, but the characters are increasingly ethnically and racially diverse. These characters are often in economic precarity, they are generally highly educated and invariably find themselves at odds with traditional romantic, occupational, and domestic expectations. In many of these novels, new technologies play an important role in the narrative and …

Reproductive (In)Justice In Contemporary Dystopian Fiction: A Critical White Feminist Analysis Of The Handmaid’S Tale (2017–) And Future Home Of The Living God (2017), Kaelyn Ireland

Master's Theses

This thesis employs a critical white feminist lens to analyze themes of human migration in two contemporary feminist dystopian texts: the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Louise Erdrich’s 2017 novel Future Home of the Living God. This work draws from fields and frameworks such as reproductive justice, migration studies, and Indigenous studies to create a nuanced critique of both texts and interrogate the ways whiteness impacts the feminist dystopian heroine’s story and, potentially, audience reception. I assert that HMT and FH can best be understood as a mirror for the current state of …

The Controlled Narrative Of “Jane Roe:” Norma Mccorvey’S Life Beyond The 1973 Trial, Eleanor G. Strickland

Honors College Theses

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, 1973, wrote two memoirs twenty years after the Supreme Court trial that surrounded her third pregnancy. These memoirs (I Am Roe, 1994, and Won by Love, 1997), along with the recent documentary AKA Jane Roe (2020), provide an insight into McCorvey’s life and how she was used by politicians and civilians during and after the influential trial. McCorvey lived a complicated life and was constantly being pulled in different directions spiritually, politically, and personally. This thesis shows how McCorvey attempted to re-write the narrative of her life using …

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …

The End Of The Road: Violence Against Alaska Native Women And Indigenous Jurisprudence, Molly Simons

Senior Theses and Projects

Native communities are plagued by violence against Native women, often violence committed by non-Native people; in Alaska, Native women are overrepresented among domestic violence victims by 250%. Recent expansions to Tribal court jurisdiction have reauthorized Tribal courts to try non-Native defendants who commit crimes against Native people, a huge step in securing the safety of Native communities. There are, however, challenges to implementing this jurisdiction, challenges that are expounded by the geographical landscape in Alaska. This thesis aims to explore violence against Alaska Native women and the jurisdictional expansions granted to Tribal courts in an attempt to mitigate this violence …

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Navigating Global Capitalism: Identity, Ambivalence, And Resistance In Cultural Productions, Ahmad Bilal

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

I have navigated global capitalism in cultural productions that include selected short fiction of Rohinton Mistry, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You , and Benedict Andrews' Seberg. In these works, I have explored resistance, marginality, mobility, and identity to reflect how capitalism transcends local boundaries to become a pervasive social system worldwide.

Two Worlds And In Between: Becoming Goth In The Virtual Spaces Of Tiktok, Marlie Unger

Honors Projects

This research explores how the initiation processes of goth subculture have changed with the introduction and implementation of social media. Using a textual analysis of social media content from TikTok, this research identifies themes present in the virtual community that provide greater insight about how someone becomes goth and the factors which influence the transformation. I highlight the importance of subcultural capital in its creation of a social hierarchy and the goth status of members which fall under the categories of "elder goth," "seasoned goth," and "baby bat." Furthermore, this research examines how commodification, education, and gatekeeping influence the lines …

Beyond The Exit: Moma Design Store & The Extended Museum Experience, Anna C. Wershbale

Undergraduate Honors Theses

American art museum attendance soared following World War II as museums became popular education and entertainment destinations for the growing middle class. Shaped by the influence of 1980s Reaganomics and the effects of neoliberal funding policies, museum shops developed from small information desk ventures into a vital source of public relevance and financial sustainability. When given creative liberty and economic attention, the now standardized amenity presented the opportunity to sell institutional ethos. In light of neoliberal capitalism’s tendency to construe value primarily in economic terms, shops reveal how the art museum strategically assigns new meaning to its collection, mission, and …

The Ecology Of American Noir, Katrina Younes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In The Ecology of American Noir, I investigate the relationship between the conventions of noir fiction and film and its sub-types in relation to environmental crises. Specifically, I address questions that not only allow us to (re)read early hardboiled literature and neo-noir films, but that also help us identify a new sub-genre of noir and develop an ecocritical methodology: I call this contemporary sub-genre and methodology “eco-noir.” I trace the development of strategies of mapping urban blight and environmental deterioration in classic hardboiled fiction of the 1940s, neo-noir films of the 1970s, and eco-noir texts of the post millennial …

Power And The Press: Reimagining The World By Producing Information Together, Jen Hoyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of three collectively-organized activist printing projects examines how information production is a strategy for communities to reimagine and reconfigure oppressive power structures. I consider the High School Student Union and their newspaper, the High School Free Press; the women’s collective that took over RAT Subterranean News; and WIMP, a radical printing collective that broke away from the New York City Students for a Democratic Society chapter and supported a variety of progressive movements in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This research examines how dissatisfaction with oppressive power structures leads individuals to build collective …

Cinema And Ritual: Decolonial Feminist Approaches To Image-Making In The Americas And The Caribbean, Natalie M. Erazo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis project is composed of an open-access syllabus hosted on a CUNY commons site, as well as a paper that examines various films and texts responding to the theme of cinema and ritual. Referenced films will focus on ritual as a decolonial feminist methodological framework, rooted primarily in Afro-descended and Indigenous cosmovisions within Latin America and the Caribbean. From a dance ritual spell warding off U.S. imperialism in present-day Puerto Rico, to a poetic visual eulogy for murdered women in rural Mexico, to a community prayer to Yemaya bringing relief for water scarcity in Cuba to a cautionary tale …