Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Facing Catholic Antisemitism In Post-War France, The Finaly Affair: 1945-1953, Elizabeth Jane Spaide

Theses and Dissertations

In February 1944, Dr. Fritz and Anni Finaly, Jewish Austrians who had fled the Nazi regime for France in 1939, made a desperate decision. To protect their sons Robert and Gérald from persecution, they placed them in the care of others. The boys were eventually confined to a municipal nursery run by Antoinette Brun in Grenoble, France. After the war, Brun’s refusal to return the children to their relatives led to protracted court proceedings, rendering what came to be called the Finaly Affair, the most highly publicized post-war custody case in France. This thesis will analyze how the press coverage …

Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the tension and conflict between conceptions of the natural law and the ideal of radical autonomy in the work of the antebellum American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. This tension and conflict was brought to the fore by the modernization of American society in the antebellum period. Modernization is here understood as the social process through which increasing recognition is given to individual autonomy, elevating the individual self, as the creator of meaning and value, above the standard provided by nature, including human nature, according to which one ought to live. This …

Appropriating The Past: Looking At Visual Evidence In The Twenty-First Century Archival Documentary, Zachariah Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Film and documentary scholars have long debated links between images, history, and truth. The field recently began addressing epistemological questions emergent when visual sources are circulated as evidence in an age of rapid image appropriation, manipulation, and circulation. To contribute to debates about images’ digital-era evidentiary roles, I study twenty-first century archival documentaries. By archival documentary, I mean a film that primarily comprises extant images (from government archives, home movies, surveillance footage, Hollywood films, etc.), rather than footage shot for the documentary. Films scholars and critics have applied many labels to these kinds of films: compilation, found footage, remix, etc. …

Pillars Of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention: Parents, Police, And Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), Jonathon Stuever

Theses and Dissertations

In 1983 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officials teamed with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) health curriculum specialist, Dr. Ruth Rich, to redesign an anti-tobacco curriculum, Project Self-Management and Resistance Training (SMART), into Project Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). In the first four years of Project DARE, local, state, and, federal government branches endorsed the program as an efficient tool in the local and national fight against youth drug abuse. Early program evaluations, conducted by the Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI), demonstrated DARE’s ability to change attitudes of students, school faculty, and parents concerning social tolerance of underage drug …

Max Arthur Cohn's Serigraphs And The Progressive Legacy Of The New Deal, Mirel Crumb

Theses and Dissertations

Max Arthur Cohn (American, b. England 1903-1998) was among the first artists to create “serigraphs,” a type of silkscreen print that gained popularity in the 1940s in New York City. Cohn was a founding member of the Silk Screen Group which later became the National Serigraph Society. This thesis contextualizes Cohn’s serigraphs within the history of the medium’s development and the broader history of mid-twentieth century American art. I analyze how Cohn’s serigraphs made for demonstration democratized access to the medium, Cohn’s experimentation in serigraphy expressed the diversity of style encouraged by Popular Front, and Cohn’s serigraph prints and greeting …

Daughters And Fathers In Memoirs: Najla Said And Fatima Bhutto, Yasmina Bakry

Theses and Dissertations

The father-daughter relationship has always been crucial in shaping the identity of the daughter. Daughters inevitably inherit their fathers’ personal trauma, and in the case of the daughters of activists, national trauma as well. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, daughters struggle to depoliticize their famous fathers, as well as assert their individuality amidst the overshadowing activism of their fathers and conflictual history of their nations. To heal the daughters’ identity fissures, they embark on a journey to chronicle memories of their fathers throughout their lives and critically assess their fathers’ cultural, social and political heritage and identity. This thesis will …

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam

Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly literature on Roma is scarce compared to other racial groups as a lack of academic interest, financial limitations, and other social and political factors has constrained it. This resulted in a cross-cultural circulation of misinformation about Romani people and the reproduction of Romani myths and stereotypes in fiction. This project aims to analyze selected literary works on Gypsies from three Eastern and Western European countries and two periods to unpack the cultural and political roots of Romani literary misrepresentation. This research employs a range of theoretical frameworks chosen to put the Gypsy protagonists under maximum spotlight without unnecessary repetition, …

From Victorian Doubt To American Deconstruction: Exploring Faith Crises Across Time And Geography, Bailey Anne Melton

Theses and Dissertations

This research consists of a comparative analysis of faith crises in two distinct historical periods: the Victorian era (1830s-1914) and modern America. Through examining the Victorian crisis of faith and the contemporary American deconstruction movement within Protestant Evangelicalism, this study explores the common themes, diverse responses, and enduring relevance of faith doubt within Christianity. The Victorian crisis emerged amidst scientific advancements, theological debates, and shifting societal norms, prompting intellectuals to grapple with doubts about traditional Christian beliefs. Prominent figures publicly challenged religious orthodoxy, while evolving scientific theories, particularly evolution, further fueled skepticism. In contrast, the American crisis of Evangelicalism is …

The Power Of Law Codes, Legal Tradition, And Administrative Institutions And The Rise Of The Kingdom Of Sicily From Norman To Aragonese Rule, Joseph Mancuso

Theses and Dissertations

The Kingdom of Sicily, founded in 1130 by Roger II de Hauteville, is an example of a medieval European kingdom with an advanced understanding of law, judicial processes, and administrative offices that developed from its creation by the Norman kings to its incorporation into the Crown of Aragon. A state rarely focused on in medieval European studies, its advanced understanding of law is reflected through the law codes of Roger II, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and the Aragonese kings James II, Frederick III, and Peter II of Sicily. These kings knew that in order to effectively grow the …

Sense Make Before Book, Bradley Sinanan

Theses and Dissertations

“Sense Make Before Book” is an Indo-Caribbean turn of phrase which refers to common sense being more important than book smarts. My sister sent me a post the other day on Instagram of an Trinidadian woman using this phrase, saying it was one of Indo-Caribbean origin. I was interested and asked my mom about it. My mom says that when she was younger my grandpa said it often around their house in Princes Town, Trinidad and Tobago. This adage feels charged thinking about the history of indenture and its effects on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora.

The written word of archival history …

The Incoherence Of Orientalists, Sarah Zaid Alafifi

Theses and Dissertations

Orientalism, the Western practice of fetishizing cultures, extends beyond mere misrepresentation of the “other;” it epitomizes the underlying structures of colonialism and imperialism, infiltrating everyday life and eroding the moral fabric of Islamic society.

This thesis analyzes colonial control through the exercise of political power and the production of knowledge, investigating key events related to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and the narratives of resistance that emerged in opposition to it.

Through the lens of this 18th-century expedition, the study examines how Western knowledge systematically contributed to the dismantling of Islamic systems of knowledge. Select phrases from Colonial-era printed proclamations are extracted …

Unfolding Remembrance: Folding Islamic Principles Into Pondering Machines, Hind Al Saad Al-Kuwari

Theses and Dissertations

Principles of early Islamic art can be surveyed as a precursor to Western computational art. Though produced in different historical and cultural contexts, Islamic art and computational art are connected by underlying structures—arithmetic, harmony, and the concept of the Infinite.

Islamic developments in knowledge, like algebra, contributed to mathematics and mechanics—the building blocks of contemporary technology. Returning to Islam’s traditional harmony between religion and science, my creative practice constructs machines as an act of worship (ʿibadah), folding Islamic principles into the medium of computation.

Selected verses from the Quran are used as the core of each automaton (self-operating machine). Their …