Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Through The Eyes Of The Homeless, Aisha M. Soto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When reviewing the entire project from start to completion, I can honestly say, Through the Eyes of the Homeless is a play about ten women and their plight. It illustrates their dealings with everyday issues of hurt, disappointment, abuse, love, and hope. I believe the true impact of this play is the undeniable prayer for help and hope within each monologue. Despite the horrors that are unveiled and released through hidden secrets, the undertone of betterment is truly resonating. My own expectation for this play is simply to strike awareness and understanding in the eyes of the people. It is …

Millennials: The Unreached In Our Midst. A Practical Theology Of Reaching Millennials Through Organic Church Principles And Repurposing The Church, Janelle Anderson

Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership (MAML)

There is an unreached people group in your community--you interact with them on a consistent basis, but they are beyond the reach of the Church right now. The Church has missed her opportunity to reach and disciple Millennials as children and is now struggling to connect with them at all. The first step to reaching this people group is understanding them. This thesis presents the three major longings of generalized Millennial culture, in hopes of highlighting ways to interlace individual lives with faith and Christian community. Each of the three cries of this generation has varied implications for the world, …

The Queer And The Bodily: Explorations Of Power In Women's Visionary Writing In The Book Of Margery Kempe 2014, Jayne Emerson Stacconi

Master's Theses

The provocative Book of Margery Kempe is a seminal text in the history of female authorship. Claiming to be the first written autobiography, The Book serves as a literary representation of womanhood during the late fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries when Margery was writing, and also speaks to circulating medieval discourses of religion, pilgrimage, and sexuality. Participating in medieval women’s visionary writing as a genre, Margery’s visionary power is a tool by which she is able to emancipate herself from the limiting roles of wife and mother. Additionally, by working within the conventions of visionary writing, Margery is able to …

Modeling Scenarios Of Sea-Level Rise And Human Migration: Rita Village, The Republic Of The Marshall Islands, Donna Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between sea-level rise and human migration from Rita Village in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). As one of only four low-lying atoll countries at the forefront of risks associated with climate change, examining the extent to which sea level will rise and displace residents in the Marshall Islands is of timely importance. The approach to this research is a scenario-based, case study and it examines loss of home, human displacement and subsequent migration in Rita Village as a result of varying levels of sea level rise. The scenario-based approach is based on the …

"So, Are We Good?" The Emerging Sensitive New Man Movement In The Boys' Club Of Stand-Up Comedy, Stephen Kohlmann

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the emerging new man comedic persona in contemporary stand-up comedy. The new man comedian eschews the hypermasculine and heteronormative traits that were common among male stand-up comedians during the boom era (1980s-1990s). The new trend of a feminized and feminist comedic persona will be analyzed through case studies of two comedians: Louis C.K. and Marc Maron. Their comedic personae transcend their on-stage comedic routines and are augmented through transmedia texts. In the case of Louis C.K., he challenges the audience's perception of his persona through his semi-autobiographical and sometimes surrealistic television series, Louie. Maron's comedic persona is …

Against The Grain : The Challenges Of Black Discourse Within Intercollegiate Policy Debate., Tiffany Yvonne Dillard-Knox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research uses the speech community model of analysis to illustrate how language is used to determine inclusion into and exclusion from Debate. This has been done by examining the use of four Black discourse types in Intercollegiate Policy Debate: signifying, call and response, tonal semantics, and narrative sequencing to show the ways in which current debate practices (un)intentionally exclude Blacks. Upon examination, one can see that there is educational value to the methods used by majority of the Black student population within Debate. In addition to being a tool of empowerment for this student population, these students can also …

Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis's Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It proposes that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. Its review and study of related primary and secondary sources determines that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of the film medium through time, this thesis demonstrates a strong connection between documentary film and …

The Triple Double: Racially Ambiguous Afro-Latino Identities In America, Yen Rodriguez

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Historically, racial identities in the United States of America have operated on a binary platform of ethno-racial consideration. In turn, this system has classified most racially ambiguous members of society into categories that fail to acknowledge the complexity of their ethnic and racial identities. These pre-determined classifications have lasting effects on the accessibility of opportunities and the social spaces available to ethno-racially unidentifiable members of society. These groups of racially ambiguous Americans, however, challenge the efficacy of an 'either/or' binary system. This piece outlines a learning community for first year students, exploring the ethno-racial ambiguity of Afro-Latino identities in America. …

A Movement Tool Kit For The Divergent And Convergent Cps Guidelines: Instruction Cards And Activity Floor Mats, Adela Vangelisti

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

A Movement Tool Kit for the Divergent and Convergent CPS Guidelines:

Instruction Cards and Activity Floor Mats

Movement is as natural to humans as breathing is, and, yet, passivity starts early in schools. We are taught to sit still and in silence for long periods of time. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workforce, we have almost forgotten our sense of embodiment. This lack of movement is counter-productive, not only to learning but to the development of creativity as well. For this project, I designed a tool to recapture the joy and playfulness of movement. Furthermore, the …

No Prejudice Here: Racism, Resistance, And The Struggle For Equality In Denver, 1947-1994, Summer Marie Cherland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study chronicles a story of civil rights that has been left untold until now. Recent scholarship contributing to the history of the "long civil rights movement" has reframed our understanding of civil rights beyond the years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition, it has also demonstrated that civil rights activity occurred in regions other than the South. However, most work on the long civil rights movement demonstrates that activism among blacks began much earlier than the Brown v. Board Supreme Court case and instead, was a part of a longer freedom struggle that, in many ways, …

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …

Client Selected Music Based Effects On Marital And Couples Therapy, Kevin Matthew Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study was designed to examine the interaction of music-based interventions in the therapeutic process of Martial and Couples Therapy. The use of pre-recorded music was found to be under researched within the literature and created a void within the knowledge that clinicians have about how music might enhance effectiveness of treatment. The inclusion of music in this process is not currently known, which led to this study being conducted. Through a phenomenological lens, the awareness and understanding of how clients react and experience pre-recorded music during the therapeutic process, while still having a selection of options to preserve autonomy, …

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …

Beauty Through Control: Forming Pro-Anorexic Identities In Digital Spaces, Kay A.S. Mccurley

Masters Theses

Pro-anorexia is a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that exists only online. The women who participate in these websites are learning to negotiate how to manage an identity that is normalized within the group but stigmatized within larger society. Using an open-ended survey, distributed online directly to pro-ana website users, I aim to illustrate pro-anorexic experience. After a brief demographic sketch of typical pro-anorexic spaces, I examine pro-anorexia in depth by asking three primary research questions: 1) how do pro-anorexics craft their online identities within the community; 2) how do individuals interact with one another in a highly contested and heavily policed …

Culturally Responsive Engineering Education: A Case Study Of A Pre-College Introductory Engineering Course At Tibetan Children's Village School Of Selakui, Marisol Mercado Santiago

Open Access Dissertations

Culturally responsive teaching has been argued to be effective in the education of Indigenous youth. This approach emphasizes the legitimacy of a group's cultural heritage, helps to associate abstract academic knowledge with the group's sociocultural context, seeks to incorporate a variety of strategies to engage students who have different learning styles, and strives to integrate multicultural information in the educational contents, among other considerations. ^ In this work, I explore the outcomes of a culturally responsive introductory engineering short course that I developed and taught to Tibetan students at Tibetan Children's Village of Selakui (in Uttarakhand, India). Based on my …

Politics As A Sphere Of Wealth Accumulation: Cases Of Gilded Age New York, 1855-1888, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines political wealth accumulation in American political development. Scholars have long understood the political system selects for "progressive ambition" for higher office. My research shows that officeseekers have also engaged in "progressive greed" for greater wealth. I compare the career trajectories of four prominent New York political figures during the Gilded Age: William Tweed, Fernando Wood, Roscoe Conkling, and Chester Arthur. Using correspondence, census, tax and land records, government reports, investigations, and newspaper coverage, I explain why each political figure chose to either seize or pass up opportunities for political wealth accumulation. I also examine the principal sources …

When Wives Migrate And Leave Husbands Behind: A Jamaican Marriage Pattern, Elaine B. Douglas-Harrison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For over a hundred years Jamaicans have been migrating to make the proverbial `better life' for themselves and their families. In the early 20th century husbands migrated, leaving wives behind. As economies of the United States and Canada have become more service-oriented, wives migrate leaving husbands behind. The experiences of Jamaican immigrant women are documented in Caribbean migration studies, but the marriages of Jamaican legally-married immigrant wives and their husbands left behind in Jamaica are so far unstudied. The main research question of this study is what maintains these transnational marriages over time, sometimes for decades, when spouses see each …

Birthing, Blackness, And The Body: Black Midwives And Experiential Continuities Of Institutional Racism, Keisha La'nesha Goode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within the last decade, historical and contemporary accounts of midwives, along with the efficacy of the Midwives Model of Care for pregnancy, childbirth and general women's health, have become increasing popular in mainstream publications and documentaries. Yet, very few of these accounts represent historical or contemporary black midwives (and midwives of color, more generally). Despite a long history of midwifery in the black community, black women currently represent less than 2% of the nation's reported 15,000 midwives. Relatedly, black women and infants experience the worst birth outcomes of any racial-ethnic cohort in the United States.

In the early 20th century, …

Confucius, Yamaha, Or Mozart? Cultural Capital And Upward Mobility Among Children Of Chinese Immigrants, Wei-Ting Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the determinants of upward mobility among children of Chinese immigrants. While most studies emphasize ethnic cultural capital as a primary determinant of Chinese upward mobility, this study proposes three new concepts to illuminate understudied processes promoting mobility. Specifically, this study argues that Chinese immigrants' interactions with classical music schools in the Chinese community help generate globalized cultural capital (resources from immigrants' participation in transnational networks), navigational capital (the ability to connect social networks together to facilitate community navigation through higher-status educational institutions) and aspirational capital (the ability of parents to acknowledge the barriers to upward mobility). These …

Millennial Libertarians: The Rebirth Of A Movement And The Transformation Of U.S. Political Culture, Kaja Tretjak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the contemporary resurgence of libertarianism in the U.S., exploring a rapidly expanding, transnational network of hundreds of thousands liberty movement participants connected through student groups, community organizations, and established institutions, as well as through social media and a vast array of online forums. Grounded in 32 months of ethnographic fieldwork and over 200 interviews, it documents the rise of a profound disenchantment, particularly among millennials, with state-based solutions to pressing contemporary problems and, more broadly, with the nation-state project itself. Drawing on first-hand accounts ranging from elite boardrooms and think tank conference rooms, to political demonstrations and …

The Second Generation's Homeland Trips: A Parental Expectation For The U.S.-Born Children Of Mexican Immigrants In The South Bronx, Alexia Raynal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New deportation policies in the United States are making it harder for undocumented immigrants to return home periodically (Dreby 2013a). This has a direct impact on their children. Because parents can't travel, thousands of foreign-born minors have recently been forced to travel alone in hopes of reunification. Their U.S.-born counterparts face a similar challenge: immigrants' lack of mobility places a new expectation on them to visit relatives that were left behind. Unlike their parents, these children can move freely across borders and maintain family ties. This project explores the second generation's homeland trips as experienced by a small group of …

The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst The Ruins And Beyond In Testimony, Literature And Film, Aviva Atlani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

ABSTRACT

Jewish humour sheds a crude light on the social, political, and historical realities of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, contentiously, doses of levity during this period were very much a reality, and even a psychological necessity. The purpose of my thesis is to explore the historical, social, and political ramifications of such laughter provoking manifestations. In doing so, the nuances are highlighted which are found within the laughter of the ghettos, the transit camps, and the concentration camps. Furthermore, some of these jokes, and their subsequent variations, reappear within the discourse of children of survivors. The dissertation explores how some of …

Between Men: A First-Person Documentary Video, Thomas C. Prutisto

Masters Theses

ABSTRACT

BETWEEN

MEN:

A

FIRST

PERSON

DOCUMENTARY

VIDEO

May

2014

THOMAS

C.

PRUTISTO,

B.S.,

ROCHESTER

INSTITUTE

OF

TECHNOLOGY

Directed

by:

Professor

Susan

E.

Jahoda

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Robber Barons And Humbuggers: The Rise Of Philanthropic Museums In Nineteenth-Century New York, Meaghan O'Connor

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

New York City's most recognizable museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the support of wealthy benefactors. At the same time, social reformers, mostly Protestant and middle or upper-class, were combating the vice and poverty that they saw in the diversifying city with a moralizing rhetoric of character building. This paper will show that these two movements, the rise of Philanthropic Museums and the Social Reform movement were connected and that the large temple-like museums that thrive to this day …

Racism, Heterosexism, Depression, And Hiv Risk Behaviors Of Native Men Who Have Sex With Men: Findings From The Honor Project, Matthew Alan Town

Dissertations and Theses

Racial minority men who have sex with men (MSM) experience greater levels of discrimination and higher rates of HIV infection. However, little is known about the associations between racial and heterosexist discrimination and HIV risk behavior. Further, little is known about the mechanisms of the association between racial and heterosexist discrimination and HIV risk behavior. There is some evidence to suggest that depression may be a mechanism that mediates the relationship between racial and heterosexist discrimination and HIV risk behavior. Thus, one purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which discrimination based on both race and sexual …

The Influence Of Religion On Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use In Jewish Adolescents, Toby R. Levin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Historically, the Jewish faith has used alcohol in rituals and religious holidays in which adolescents are permitted to fully participate and this exposure to alcohol may influence attitudes and beliefs about underage drinking among Jewish adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between the Jewish religion and attitudes toward alcohol among Jewish adolescents. The theoretical frameworks, on which this study was based, were the social bond theory and the social development theory. Each of these theories indicates that community is important to the individual. Using a cross sectional study design, 160 adolescents participated …

Peace Under Pressure: Portraits Of Christian Leadership In College Basketball Coaches, Charles Henry Wilson Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

NCAA Division I college basketball coaching is a high-stakes, high-reward profession. This study is based on three premises: (a) there is increasing pressure on college basketball coaches to win immediately and win consistently; (b) coaches are expected to maintain their integrity; (c) the pressure to win immediately and win consistently can influence some coaches to compromise their integrity. Given that context, the purpose of this study was to investigate and illuminate the lived experience of Christian head men’s and women’s basketball coaches at public, NCAA Division I institutions. This study was guided by two guiding research questions: (a) What is …

La Supervivencia Del Acompañado: Reflexiones Y Debates Sociológicos En Cuatro Novelas De Benito Pérez Galdós, Mariana Roxana Segovia

Doctoral Dissertations

Using the novel as a forum for debate, Galdós presents a whole array of intellectual themes that were of great interest in the latter part of the 1800s. One of the areas the famed Spanish novelist paid more attention to is that of sociology. This dissertation deals precisely with Galdós’s interest and participation in discussions about sociological matters -- for instance, social darwinism, anomie, and anarchy-- being carried out in Spain’s intellectual circles in his time. The term galdosismo social is introduced to refer to Galdós’s literary articulation of his sociological reflections about the formation of different communities structured inside …