Victim Impact: The Manson Murders And The Rise Of The Victims’ Rights Movement, Merrill W. Steeg

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Setting The Stage And Building Homes: Architecture Metaphors And Space In Donne's First Caroline Sermon, Alexander S. Laws

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through his use of "foundation" and "house" metaphors in his "First Sermon Preached to King Charles at St. James, 3 April 1625," John Donne discreetly presents his ideologies and principles before the new king, while simultaneously criticizing his contemporaries' misguided bickering over religio-political factions. This essay seeks to unpack the history surrounding, as well as the casuistical logic found within Donne's first sermon preached during the Caroline period, which both explicitly and implicitly addresses the foremost anxieties of the people of the changing age.

Do We Make A Sound? An American Morality Play, Bennett A. Kirschner

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …

Towards A New Paradigm In Psychiatry, Jennifer Lin

Senior Honors Theses

The reductionist tenets of the biomedical model of mental illness generate research methods and clinical practices that neglect significant cultural elements of mental illness. The biomedical model is reductionist because it assumes a view of the mind that lends itself to biological reductionism. Developing a more holistic model of mental illness requires replacing the accepted view of mind with a new one. In this paper, research demonstrating the significance of culture to mental illness will be reviewed in order to illuminate the flaws of the biomedical model. The extended mind theory will be analyzed and discussed as a potential basis …

Stasi Brainwashing In The Gdr 1957 - 1990, Jacob H. Solbrig, Jacob Hagen Solbrig

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the methods used by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, or East German secret police, for extraction of information from citizens of the German Democratic Republic for the purpose of espionage and covert operations inside East Germany, as it pertains to the deliberate brainwashing of East German citizens. As one of the most efficient intelligence agencies to ever exist, the Stasi’s main purpose was to monitor the population, gather intelligence, and collect or turn informants. They used brainwashing techniques to control the people of the GDR, keeping the populace paralyzed with fear …

The Horse's Ass: A Survey Of Comediology, William M. Fisk

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

What is comedy? Can someone learn to be funny? Are there rules or guidelines for the production of laughter, the universal language? This paper, which outlines an investigation of successful comedians and the production of a short film, determines to aggregate as many of the relevant prerequisites of inducing giggles as possible, especially as they relate to the audiovisual medium of cinema.

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Negative Dialectics And The Aesthetic Redemption Of The Postmodern Subject, Franklin Fehrman

Senior Honors Theses

The last half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, in the West, has been referred to as postmodern. Postmodernity represents a stage in a society after having passed through a nihilism, itself produced by the universal commodification inherent in late stage capitalism. Here we explore the progress of devaluation through Adorno’s negative dialects to ascertain the potential for truth and authenticity in the object. Informing Adorno’s negative dialectics, were Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Through their dialectics, Adorno postulated the effect of commodities, as objects, within the first part of the 20th century, and how the lack of potential …

It's Always Better With A Good Dm, David Colannino

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It’s Always Better With A Good DM is about our relationship with objects and maps as a vector for fantasy. Beginning from the premise that humans understand the world via narrative, I am concerned with the loss of imagination in adulthood in lieu of ideology, which is no more real than stories of future and fantastic places.

The Failings Of Foreign Aid And Our Obligation To Consume, Gaetano Venezia

Senior Honors Theses

In his well-known 1972 article, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," and in subsequent books, Peter Singer argues that we can and should prevent the needless suffering and death of the global poor by giving to foreign aid. This call for charity and assistance is mostly uncontroversial. However, foreign aid's effectiveness is highly contested among the aid literature. As the first part of this paper shows, all aid encounters inefficiencies, with the major problems being diversion of funds and perverse incentives. I look at each of these in turn, concluding that most aid is ineffective and sometimes even harmful—with the possible exception …

Lisbeth Salander Lost In Translation - An Exploration Of The English Version Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Kajsa Paludan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States by examining the substantial changes made to Men Who Hate Women, including the change in the book’s title in English to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. My thesis focuses in particular on changes in the depiction of the female protagonist: Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately we do not have access to translator Steven T. Murray’s original translation, though we know that the English publisher and rights holder Christopher MacLehose chose to enhance Larsson’s work in order to make the novel more interesting for English-speaking …

Reference And Presupposition, Jeffrey N. Bagwell

Senior Honors Theses

The topic of this paper is the logical analysis and translation of definite descriptions (structures of the form ‘the F’), in particular Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Descriptions, as put forth in “On Denoting” (1905). I argue in favor of an opposing theory, a presuppositional analysis of definite descriptions that fits in the tradition of Frege and Strawson, building upon the recent work of Heim and Elbourne. I argue that a definite description has a referential function that is supported by presuppositions of existence and uniqueness located outside of the analyzed sentence. Using a series of example sentences, I show that …

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

In Between The Dots And Dashes: Telegrams And The Mediation Of Intimacy In The Golden Bowl, Sean Jemison

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using a poststructural and reader-response theoretical framework, the author explores competing ideas of interpretation, epistemology, and the problematic nature of truth and meaning in Henry James’s novel, The Golden Bowl. The author analyzes the ways in which emergent nineteenth century communication technologies, specifically how telegraphy both mediates and facilitates intimacy in a modern landscape. James anticipates modern forms of social media by exploring the nuances and the potential erotic nature of mediated communication and knowledge.

A Semantic Conception Of Truth, Jonathan Lumpkin

Senior Honors Theses

I explore three main points in Alfred Tarski’s Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundation of Theoretical Semantics: (1) his physicalist program, (2) a general theory of truth, and (3) the necessity of a metalanguage when defining truth. Hartry Field argued that Tarski’s theory of truth failed to accomplish what it set out to do, which was to ground truth and semantics in physicalist terms. I argue that Tarski has been adequately defended by Richard Kirkham. Development of logic in the past three decades has created a shift away from Fregean and Russellian understandings of quantification to an independent conception …

Language, Technology And The “They Self”: How Linguistic Manipulation Of Mass And Social Media Distract From The Authentic Self, Edith M. Talley

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concepts of being and time, the role of language in being, and ways of authentic being through the lens of modern media practices in the Information Age. It relates Heidegger’s philosophy to the media ecology theory introduced by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s by exploring McLuhan’s themes of tribal, typographical and electronic man. In addition, this thesis considers the role of mass media in information dissemination. The goal of this report is to explicate the shaping effects of mass media, especially social media, on individual perceptions and societal culture and identify ways in …

Subversive Art And Institutional Vulnerability, Kathryn A. Hanzalik

Senior Honors Theses

George Dickie’s Institutional Theory of Art satisfies necessary and sufficient conditions for definition, but by leaving evaluation open cannot address artistic capacities to outstrip the usefulness of the theory for appreciating the concept of art comprehensively or meaningfully. Artworks that are known to members of the central and peripheral artworld seep into the general purview of the population at large as known “great works” of art. Upon examination of works that garner significant cultural influence, works broadly appreciated as great works, we find that their resistance to Dickie’s concept of “the artworld” and its associated behaviors is that which makes …

Perceptions Of Loss And Grief Experiences Within Religious Burial And Funeral, Hyacinth C. Okafor

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore perceptions of loss and grief experiences within religious rites and rituals vis-à-vis the context of counseling. Literature indicated the need for a better understanding of grief and loss experiences from bereaved individuals’ perspectives and the context within which loss and grief experiences occur (Dillenburger & Keenan, 2005; Stroebe, Hansson, Schut, & Stroebe, 2008). Participants for this study included 10 purposefully selected Catholic members from two Catholic Church parishes in Nigeria, Africa. All participants had experienced loss and grief, had participated in Catholic burial and funeral rites and rituals, and were …

Extending Human Compassion By Implementing Legal Rights For Animals, Lindsey Childers

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this essay is to critically examine the current legal status of animals in the United States and offer possible alternatives to the current legal rights for animals. This essay examines the failures of the legal system in protecting animals that have abilities very similar to our own. With an examination of these types of animals, this essay will explain why some animals merit the status of legal personhood to protect them from being carelessly used by others. Ultimately, this essay is an attempt to open the field of legal protection for many animals starting with a few …

When Bird And Fish Fall In Love, Matthew C. Mackey

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A work of poetry that offers a new method of poetics. By examining translation as a means of understanding relationships, this work offers a nuanced manner for the writing and experience of poetry. When Bird and Fish Fall in Love is a close examination of language, relationships, translation, and the intimacy of conflation.