Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Critiquing The Present And Imagining The Future: Diversity In Contemporary Young Adult Dystopian Literature, Ericka Stone

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This project investigates the historic and contemporary representations of diversity in young adult dystopian literature. First, the functions of utopia and dystopia are examined, as each genre seeks to create change within society, whether it is by presenting the possibility of a more hopeful future, or by projecting the problems of the present into a terrifying vision of what might happen if changes are not made. By examining the elements of utopian and dystopian fiction and the way each genre conveys their themes, this project seeks to locate the significance of diversity and representation of all races, ethnicities, genders, and …

The Framing Of The Shrew: Induction, Gender, And Agency In William Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Samantha Stringham

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Shrews abound, not only in Shakespeare’s works but in our modern world. Katherine, Shakespeare’s titular shrew, is in the good company of Beatrice, Adriana, and even, some argue, her seemingly virtuous sister Bianca. These women, all of whom push against the confines posed by the social conventions of Renaissance womanhood, have become increasingly relevant as women, now more than ever, demand that their voices be heard and continue to rally against the assertion that railing, scolding, turbulent behavior makes one a shrew (or perhaps, that being a shrew is an inherently bad thing). The increasingly feminist leanings of modern audiences …

Mining For Gold: Reimagining The Role Of Curricular Texts In Writing Instruction, Carrigan Price

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Secondary schools in northern Utah frequently combine literature and composition studies into a single English Language Arts course, limiting the time English teachers have to teach the skills and content important to both. Literature and reading often overshadow writing instruction in this situation, leading to concentrated writing instruction dependent on pre-made writing curriculum and texts. The way curricular materials used during writing instruction in ELA courses present the purpose of writing, the process of writing, and the identity of writers can impact student learning and academic identity in the short- and long-term. A rhetorical analysis, looking specifically at the writing …

Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like A Detective, Emma A. Hallock

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Studying literature is like walking through a labyrinth of interpretative possibilities. So, it is no mystery why an English major would be fascinated with detectives; they seem to show the way out of the literary labyrinth. Like detectives, literary critics look for clues in the texts they study and interpret them to find meaning. However, many critics argue that detectives make bad models, and that reading like a detective leads to interpretations that are at best boring and at worst dangerous. It is not clear whether detectives are the best literary critics or the worst. To make sense of this …

Jefferson's Sensitivities: How Thomas Jefferson's Discussions Of Race And Slavery Are Influenced By Audience, Andrea B. Carlquist-Sagers

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Thomas Jefferson is often presented as an enigma. He who wrote that “all men are created equal” also owned over six hundred slaves during the course of his life. Jefferson was a man of immense complexity and intelligence and, as such, his beliefs cannot be presented in simplified terms. Although his contradictory positions on race and slavery were common during his time, his hypocrisy received critique from contemporaries. Jefferson was a famously sensitive man, and in order to avoid judgement from his peers, he often either censored himself or used eloquent but empty words to satisfy his disparagers. Some historians …

Preventing, Perceiving, And Post-Venting Suicide: A Guide For Teachers, For Their Students, Justin Vance

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

To aid teachers with intense time constraints, the following summary includes the bolded, most important points in the paper:

• Thank you for caring about your students; by doing more than just teaching your content, you will change lives ... and may save some.

• Teachers are not responsible for student suicide; we carry enough responsibility already.

• Genuine, assertive communication of confidence and support fosters the safe environment needed.

• Improvements to how we view and speak about suicide can help reshape how young people think about it.

• As young men lose what they care about in pursuit …

"'The Grittiness Of Being Human' : Individualizing Sexual Expectations In Adichie's Novels", Madison Behrend Vaughn

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Critics of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels identify her as a nationalist author, as representing the voices on the periphery, and as advocating for multiple voices and perspectives. Critics have also largely dismissed sexual experience as a factor in her representations and have regarded her graphic descriptions of intimacy as mere entertainment or as a means to provoke criticism. I will argue that Adichie does include many instances of sexual intimacy in her novels, not as an escape from the tough subjects that she details, but to express the effects of public problems on individuals. Ultimately, the complexity of sexual experience …

Examining The Usability Of Content In Canvas: Html Vs. Pdf, Danni Noyes

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The mission statement of Utah State University (USU) includes “serving the public through learning, discovery and engagement.” In order to engage the diverse 27,932 students (Fall 2018 headcount including regional campuses), USU produces accessible content. Although accessible content is available to USU’s students, it is presented as an alternative to the original product rather than as a product itself. Thus, students must seek out this alternative, accessible content in order to engage with it. This pilot study indicates that content in Canvas should be made accessible from the beginning of its creation as is specified by the Theories of Universal …

N: A Sea Monster Of A Research Project, Adrian Jay Thomson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Ever since time and the world began, dwarves have always fought cranes. Ever since ships set out on the northern sea, great sea monsters have risen to prey upon them. Such are the basics of life in medieval and Renaissance Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland and Greenland, as detailed by Olaus Magnus' Description of the Northern Peoples (1555), its sea monster-heavy map, the Carta Marina (1539), and Abraham Ortelius' later map of Iceland, Islandia (1590).

I first learned of Olaus and Ortelius in the summer of 2013, and while drawing my own version of their sea monster maps a thought hit me: …

Fake News: Political Satire In The Age Of President Trump, D. Landon Graham

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Donald Trump's disruption of political satire. The history and format of the White House Correspondents' Dinner provides a framework for understanding the shifting relationship between the president's administration, the journalists who cover that administration, and political comedians. These three groups cross paths at the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner, which the president traditionally attends and where a headlining comedian entertains guests with a monologue. Trump's decision to skip the Correspondents' Dinner set the stage for a renegotiation of the traditional relationship between president, press, and performer. As President Trump continues to attack both journalists and late-night …

On The Mantelpiece For You: Letters In The Novels Of Thomas Hardy, Morgan Sanford

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Even as modern technology continues to introduce new modes of communication, people still write letters. Letters are a primary vehicle for written communication and have played a key role in forming, maintaining, and preserving relationships for centuries. Particularly in Victorian England, letters facilitated communication over a range of space and time, capturing the momentary and immortalizing the impermanent. At the height of the letter’s popularity, Thomas Hardy included letters in his novels to further plot, develop characters, and think critically about the function of written communication in society. Hardy’s exploration of this medium changed over the course of his career. …

Much Ado About Acting, Claire Louise Harlan

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

To be an actor, one must have an understanding not only of theatrical craft, but also of the world that surrounds and informs theatre. During my undergraduate training, I have pursued a variety of diverse academic skills and extracurricular talents, all of which I have been able to relate back to my primary field--the performing arts. I am particularly interested in the intersection between studies in Theatre Arts and studies in English, as those are my two majors. Literary analysis, research, and reflective writing can unlock an actor's interpretation of a role. The actor who combines these two fields is …

The Revival Of America's First Genre: Exploring The Panther Narrative's Feminist Principles In Post-Revolutionary War America, Abigail Bentley

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

America’s victory in the War of Independence posed new challenges for the men who drafted the Constitution. Gender roles shifted dramatically during the war, creating a new attitude about women’s roles in the new republic. Before the Constitution was ratified, women like Abigail Adams advocated for women to have a more active role in the new nation. Radical literature regarding women’s roles also became a driving force in the movement. The Panther Narrative used the resurgence of America’s first genre, the captivity narrative, to combine the new republic’s obsession with personal freedom and radical ideas about gender spheres. The anonymous …

Running In Rem Cycles: Escapism In The French Postwar Films Le Silence De La Mer And La Vache Et Le Prisonier, Danielle Green

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis compares two postwar critiques of escapist entertainment that appear in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Silence de La Mer (1949), and Henri Verneuil's La Vache et le Prisonnier (1959). Their directorial choices acknowledge the power, even shortcomings of escapism through entertainment. Overall, Melville and Verneuil's films argue that escapism creates a "dream" cycle in which the audience, in an attempt to escape reality through entertainment. The films' cyclical narrative structures symbolize their characters' psychology, a tactic that frames Le Silence and La Vache into France's postwar culture. In a side-by-side comparison, the repetitive narrative structure of Le Silence and La …

Under Cover: An Exploration Of Book Cover Design And Reader Perception Of The Text, Maria Williams

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

I am double majoring in graphic design and English and in doing so, am interested in studying the view of book cover design in both disciplines. This is partly a continuation of an Honors contract I did with Bob Winward in Fall 2015 when I designed multiple book covers. In this contract, a major aspect that determined whether a cover design was successful or not was whether the design was "true" to the text in the book. A literary critic, as opposed to a graphic designer who creates the cover, is given a book (and therefore a cover) and thus …

A Triangular Bargain: Narration And Power In Margaret Atwood’S The Blind Assassin And Alias Grace, Alyssa Michelle Quinn

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes reader-writer relationships in two novels by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace. The plots of both these novels revolve around scenes of storytelling, in which tensions arise between the narrator and her audience. In The Blind Assassin, the elderly protagonist tells her granddaughter the truth about their family's past in an effort to achieve redemption. In Alias Grace, a convicted murderess tells her story to a psychiatrist who hopes to prove either her guilt or innocence. In my thesis, I examine how each of these narrative relationships reflects the relative …

Graffiti Art And Professional Communication: Where Art And Communication Conventions Converge And Diverge, Rebekah Miner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis describes professionals in the areas of art and professional communication and their text and interview discussions of the professional presence of graffiti art influence in social media, marketing, and advertising. A review of these interviews coupled with field research creates a third space of professional communication where graffiti art becomes it's own genre of art and communication when used professionally. I will describe the contexts of art, professional communication, and graffiti art; their differences and discourse from professional interviewees on the subject, and the explanation of a new third space-or genre-of professional communication through graffiti art.

A Book Of Conversations: Trauma, Representation, And Reconstruction In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Rachel Telfer

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For over 150 years, critics and readers have struggled to understand the meaning of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Through Alice, Carroll asserts that a focus on conversations in Wonderland will illuminate the use, or value, of his novel. The conversations between Alice and other characters reveal that Alice experiences a breakdown of her reality that mirrors the symptoms of trauma. Thus, looking through Alice's deconstructive process through the lens of trauma can provide insight into the value of Carroll's novel. Yet the novel does not describe a known source of trauma. Instead of emphasizing the traumatic event …

Graphic Memoir As A Tool For Imaginative Leaping, Shay Larsen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The idea for this capstone was sparked in the last semester of my third year of undergraduate research at Utah State University. I had been researching the ways in which creative nonfiction writers approached the realm of surreality in their work with my honors contract advisor, Dr. Jennifer Sinor. Sinor herself had written a piece ("Holes in the Sky") that dealt heavily in abstractions paralleled with the works of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe. While discussing the difficulties of expressing surreality in writing I made an offhand comment along the lines of "makes you wish you'd been a painter instead of …

Online Credibility Testing In Small Organizations: A Case Study Of The Global Village Gifts Website, Natalie Cheney Homan

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A visitor's perception of the credibility of a website and the organization behind it is a matter of great importance to any business. A theory known as prominence-interpretation theory suggests that users make credibility judgments through a two-step process: "1. The user notices something (Prominence), and 2. The user makes a judgment about it (Interpretation)" (Fogg, et al., 2003). With this theory as a basis for support, Heidi Everett (2012) developed a credibility test for small businesses to assess the credibility of their website through a focus group.

Global Village Gifts (GVG) is a not-for-profit fair trade store in Logan, …

Reforming The Performance Of Masculinity: Stephen Crane's Critiques Of Riis's And Roosevelt's Civic Militarism, Cambri Mcdonald Spear

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Progressive Era (1890-1920) marks a unique period of social change in American history not only because of reformists' muckraking attacks against political machines and other corrupt social practices, but also because gender permeated every aspect of reform. The doctrine of separate spheres, which had been such a mainstay of Industrial Revolution-era America, was blurring rapidly, as many reformists, like suffragists, pressed for greater gender equality. However, an extremely fascinating characteristic of this period that is often overlooked is the inevitable way in which the performance of gender became essential for reformists to be successful.

Exploring The Potential Of Video Games As Educational And Story-Telling Tools, Kelsen Amy Kitchen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For my honors thesis, I have attempted to explore the potential of video games as educational and storytelling tools. The central questions I formulated before beginning this project are twofold:

1. How can video games be used as tools to educate players?

2. How can video games be used to tell stories, and how are they unique from other storytelling methods?

In pursuit of the answer to the first question, I conducted a literature review of articles that explored the educational and cultural potential of various video games. The articles that I surveyed were diverse, ranging from studies of elementary …

Educating Wonder Away: Charles Dickens' And Lewis Carroll's Attack On Victorian Education, Kolbie Astle

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Charles Dickens lived during a time when great change was occurring for both the lower and upper classes in Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution brought on new technologies that made it possible to mass-produce products of all kinds, effectively eliminating the need for great amounts of independent workers and farmers. Children's education, too, was a controversial topic that underwent much consideration in Parliament, especially because many of the country's children were working alongside the adults in the factories. Beginning in 1833, new legislation gave government-funded grants to schools and allowed children breaks during work hours specifically for their education, and …

Best Practice Recommendations For Publishing A Student Anthology, Ariel Peterson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This document describes the publication process for student anthologies and provides a list of specific, actionable recommendations for students and instructors publishing student anthologies. These recommendations are based upon a literature review of anthology concepts and my own experience publishing a student anthology, Voices in Print, for Utah State University's Intermediate Writing classes. I will introduce the topic of student anthologies with a brief description of their uses and benefits and then describe the publication process with a list of specific recommendations.

Connecting To The Community: Service-Learning Methods In An Esl Classroom, Chelsey Sara Funk

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

High school English as a Second Language (ESL) students often feel separated from their schools and communities. These feelings of separation can lead to low engagement and low achievement despite the students' desire to do well in school. One method used to counter low engagement in mainstream classes is service learning, but there is little research on service learning with ESL students. In this study, an existing group of 9th grade ESL students was taught and observed to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of using service-learning methods. The project endeavored to tie academic work to community involvement and therefore increase …

Sports Literature In The Secondary Classroom, Hannah Thompson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

When I first began thinking about focusing my thesis on sports literature, my initial research was not promising-many of the studies that have been done in the past focused on using sports literature to encourage reluctant readers. Reluctant male readers in particular were encouraged to try sports literature as a ploy to get them to read. Professor Linda Purdy Carter examines the reasons why reluctant readers tend to connect with sports literature. Overall, Carter concludes that sports literature can be a viable and valuable part of a classroom, but continues to emphasize the use of sports literature for students who …

The Face Of Bedlam: Madness, Gender, And Social Mores In Jacobean Drama, Amelé Welliver

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Spectacular images of madness and villainy characterized the Jacobean stage. Amidst the grief of losing beloved Queen Elizabeth I and the turmoil of James I's early years as king, the spirit of drama shifted so that, as Una Ellis-Fermor explains, Elizabethans' love of life transformed into a Jacobean preoccupation with death. Her book The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation examines this transition, exploring Jacobean playwrights' heightened dramatic presentations as social commentary. During this period, Machiavellian villains became standard on the stage; dramatic plots became overtly violent, even satanic. One of the most striking and well-studied developments during this time was the …

Deconstructing The Supernatural In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Britney Marler

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth is by far the most supernaturally charged. The play opens with three witches who give Macbeth and Banquo a prediction that lays out the plot of the rest of the play. Macbeth sees a phantom dagger, hears voices, and is haunted by the ghost of his murdered comrade. The vast amount of supernatural events comes as no surprise considering that Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the play as a tribute to King James I, the British monarch whose belief in the power of witchcraft ran so deep that he led several witchhunts throughout Britain, in addition …

Corporate Style Guides: Understanding And Construction, Riley Ann Ashcroft

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Style guides have existed for many years and yet there is almost no information concerning how to write one. Since corporations are so different from one another, each could have its very own style guide. Most, however, use an existing style guide and fill in any gaps with customer specific information. One such corporation is the Utah State University Research Foundation (USURF). To answer the question “how to write a style guide,” this paper compares five style guides with similar content to what would appear in a USURF guide. The paper then discusses interviews from USURF’s technical writers to determine …

Rising Metaphors: Bread And Christianity In Contemporary Short Fiction, Marleah Callie Jacobson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Although my thesis centers on the use of bread metaphors to represent Christian themes in fiction, it became important that my thesis explored and examined a variety of food writing. Broadly defined, food writing has existed since the beginnings of literature. Because food encompasses all five senses, writing about food is a rich metaphorical tool. Bread is an excellent example of a prevalent food metaphor that largely involves all five senses. Early examples using this metaphor are found frequently in the Bible. My thesis also examines how this metaphor is present and used in contemporary fiction. Consideration is given to …