Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Desire And Fantasy Between Commercialism And Personal Room, Yukimi Otagiri

Theses and Dissertations

I apply two aspects of my life history to my art; my childhood experiences and my advanced studies in sociology. My work therefore combines a highly personal reading of my experiences of social interactions and my ongoing analysis of the nature of capitalism and socialism, commodification and media, especially in regard to the experiences of women in particular and consumers in general.

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

Catering Hall Harbors Immigrant Families Through Underground Employment, Kimberly J. Avalos

Capstones

A catering hall in Queens serves as a hub of work for immigrant families and holds a collection of Latin American migration stories and insights into illegal immigration in the United States.

The stories of the catering hall workers—younger and older, longtime residents and new arrivals—reflect the different struggles of immigration across the different generations of immigrants who work there. Their stories also show the common bonds for the different generations and the longstanding dreams of America.

immigrantworkers.kimberlyjavalos.com

“Mexico, Public Policy And Obesity In A Global Context”, Daniela Carina Bermudez

Master's Theses

Mexico has one of the most obese populations in the world. A country known for its diversity of rich flavorful food is drowning in low nutritional food products. This thesis examines Mexico’s obesity epidemic within the larger global context of international economic trade policies, public policies and Mexico’s health policies. The key research questions are 1) why is there an obesity epidemic in Mexico? and 2) what remedies should Mexico implement to control it? This thesis contributes to a viable policy strategy for the Mexican government to control and prevent the further increase of this obesity epidemic. Reviewing both the …

Emigration, Repatriation And The Reality Of Returned Youth In El Salvador, Isabel C. Duarte Vasquez

Master's Theses

According to US Customs and Border Protection, over 59 thousand unaccompanied minors from the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) have been detained at the US border, of those 59 thousand, 17 thousand are from El Salvador. El Salvador is home to some of the most dangerous and ruthless gangs of the twenty-first century. Their ruthlessness comes from 1980s guerrilla warfare experience. In addition, El Salvador serves as a transshipment point for illicit substances from South America into Mexico. These dynamics fuel the homicide rate of the region as local gang members must protect their territory by any means …

Beyond The Edge Of The Planted Field: Exploring Community-Based Environmental Education, And Invisible Losses In Settler And Indigenous Cultural Contexts, Samantha Da Rosa Holmes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Walpole Island Land Trust and the Sydenham Field Naturalists came together for a focus group at the Walpole Island Heritage Centre and spoke of the relevance environmental education plays in the awareness of a shared history between communities from separate cultural contexts. From the focus group this research is able to contextualize the conversation between a non-Indigenous and an Indigenous community-based environmental organization, and their focus on the relationship between people, place, and history. The context of the conversation being the colonial legacies of land use management and educational practices and how these institutions prolong the effect of invisible …

Fortaleza's Immigrant Song: Portrait-Narratives And An Identity Needs Analysis Of Recent Immigrants' Lived Experiences, Carl Weitz-Santiago

Capstone Collection

This inquiry sheds light on the personal stories and lived experiences of a group of recent immigrants currently living in Fortaleza, the sprawling capital of the Northeastern state of Ceará, Brazil. Utilizing a theoretical framework guided by “Epistemologies of the South,” ethnographic principles, and constructivist grounded theory, this capstones presents five first person portrait-narratives highlighting intimate details of project participants’ lives prior to immigrating, and uncovers four persistent and recurrent themes expressed by project participants: (1) language and communication, (2) professional opportunity, (3) personal growth, and (4) “saudade” and belongingness.

Through the lens of Johan Galtung’s Basic Needs Approach, …

Eveleth, Minnesota: A Portrait Of My Home Town, Judith I. Luna

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This 30-minute documentary film provides snapshots of the small northeastern iron mining town of Eveleth, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range. It uses a two-pronged approach: 1) a first-person return to the town by the filmmaker almost 50 years after graduating from high school to see how the town may have changed, 2) a look at some historical and cultural factors which made the town what it was when the filmmaker was growing up and what continues to animate the town in the face of iron mining’s decline and rebirth. The latter include the immigrant experience and influence as the …

A Dollar A Day: Child Sponsorship And The Marketization Of Human Development, Taylor Hallett

Capstone Collection

Child sponsorship as a method of international development offers child sponsors a personal connection to the process of alleviating poverty in the global South. As a form of human development, child sponsorship is constituted by neoliberal principles of marketization and social entrepreneurship. How does child sponsorship, in this context, require us to rethink the ethics of international development in light of ongoing debates about neoliberalism? In this research, I argue that child sponsorship reifies the binary of the “developed” and “undeveloped” worlds. Through undertaking a content analysis of three organizations (Compassion International, World Vision, and UNICEF) and applying post-structural critique …

Songs From The Willow Tree: Staging Collective Inspiration For Creative Songwriting, Aubrey W. Carpenter

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The songwriting process, inspiration to song, can take many forms. This project explores a highly structured approach, using themes derived from reported individual experience to direct the creation of musical ends addressing common experience.

Heritage Tourism In Washington County, Tennessee: Linking Place, Placelessness, And Preservation, Chad F. Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the formation of spatial theory and the linkage between space and place and their relationship with historic preservation and heritage tourism. First, this thesis analyzes the terms space and place, and how scholars define each term. Second, this thesis focuses on the concept of placelessness. Third, this thesis examines historic preservation as a strategy to help alleviate placelessness and as a crucial link to heritage tourism. This thesis also will use regional examples of preservation and tourism as exemplified by the preservation efforts of private organizations, citizens, and government officials in Jonesborough,Johnson City, and Washington County,Tennessee. This …

Secular But Not Superficial : An Overlooked Nonreligious/Nonspiritual Identity., Daniel G. Delaney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since Durkheim’s characterization of the sacred and profane as “antagonistic rivals,” the strict dichotomy has been framed in such a way that “being religious” evokes images of a life filled with profound meaning and value, while “being secular” evokes images of a meaningless, self-centered, superficial life, often characterized by materialistic consumerism and the cold, heartless environment of corporate greed. Consequently, to identify as “neither religious nor spiritual” runs the risk of being stigmatized as superficial, untrustworthy, and immoral. Conflicts and confusions encountered in the process of negotiating a nonreligious/nonspiritual identity, caused by the ambiguous nature of religious language, were explored …

A Performance Analysis Of Dorothy Rudd Moore's Sonnets On Love, Rosebuds, And Death, Cordelia Elizabeth Anderson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this document is to evaluate Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death through a performance analysis, and to discuss the significance of the Harlem Renaissance in relation to the song cycle. Moore used seven reputable poets from the Harlem Renaissance to compile this song cycle. The poets are Alice Dunbar Nelson, Clarissa Scott Delany, Gwendolyn Bennett, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, and Helene Johnson. A few of them were a part of the core group that spurred this powerful movement. The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing time in American history when African Americans felt …

Image, Narrative, & Concept Of Time In Valerie Capers's Song Cycle Song Of The Seasons, Lillian Channelle Roberts

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Once I was a classical pianist, then I was a jazz pianist, but now I’m a pianist – No label. And in my writing, I’m not concerned with any particular style. I’ve found that if you have musical groundwork and some idea of the emotional impact the music should have, the musical style will hang together.

—Valerie Capers

Primarily known as a renowned jazz pianist, Valerie Capers is a blind, African-American woman composer who defied all odds by becoming the first blind graduate of The Juilliard School. Dr. Capers also became valedictorian of the New York Institute for the Education …

Cultural Diversity In Artificial Societies: Case Studies Of The Maya Peoples, Roberto Ulloa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The existence of cultural diversity in a connected world is paradoxical given that all individuals constantly interact and share information, and that individuals are all part of one giant network of connections. In the long term, it seems logical to assume that everybody should hold the same cultural information and, therefore, the same culture. Yet cultural diversity is still manifest around the globe. Cultural diversity as a phenomenon becomes even more puzzling when we take into account how it survives catastrophic events which regularly befall societies, such as invasions, natural disasters, and civil wars. In this thesis, agent-based computer simulations …

Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1969, militant factions within both Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) began to form the United States’ first clandestine revolutionary urban guerrilla organizations: the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). These groups carried out bombings, police ambushes, and other attacks throughout the country, prompting responses from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Several historians have analyzed U.S. leftist guerrillas’ motives, and much has been written on FBI operations against the Black Power movement and New Left, including the Bureau’s covert counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) …

A Community Engaged Approach To Address Intimate Partner Violence Among Sexual Minority Women, Rachel Marie Smith

Dissertations and Theses

In response to a dearth of empirical literature concerning the mechanisms underlying female same-sex intimate partner violence (FSSIPV) perpetration, the purpose of this research is to inform intimate partner violence intervention and prevention strategies specific to sexual minority women. The research responds in particular, this research aims to inform a working intersectional model predicting FSSIPV perpetration, and to evaluate the face validity and construct coverage of existing survey measures related to gender, minority stress, and violence. Fourteen lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer women recruited from the greater Portland, Oregon area participated in a series of in-depth, semi-structured, open-ended one-on-one …

Alleged Insanity: Frank Johnson Sr., Racial Injustice, And The Failure Of The Mental Health Care System In South Carolina, Jonathon P. Johnson

Senior Theses

This thesis is about Frank Johnson Sr. and the circumstances that led to his downfall as a farmer and father of six, to his tragic death in the isolation of a racially segregated mental institution 18 miles away from his home. Using his life and incarceration at the South Carolina State Park mental health facility, I argue that racial injustice contributed to his tragic death and the woefully inadequate treatment thousands of African Americans in South Carolina received during Jim Crow. Additionally, I argue that the tragic circumstances around my great grandfather’s institutionalization and death were part of an enduring …

In Plain Sight: Changing Representations Of "Biracial" People In Film 1903-2015, Charles Lawrence Gray

Dissertations (1934 -)

Rooted in slavery, the United States in both law and custom has a long history of adhering to the one drop rule–the stipulation that any amount of African ancestry constitutes an individual as black. Given this history, decidedly mixed race people have been subjected to a number of degrading stereotypes. In examining the three broad themes of the tragic mulatto, racial passing, and racelessness in cinema, this dissertation asks to what extent film representations of mixed race characters have had the capacity to educate audiences beyond stereotypes. Although a number of film scholars and critics have analyzed mixed race characters …

Jules Verne Constructs America: From Utopia To Dystopia, Dana L. Radu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I examine visions of the United States in Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) Voyages extraordinaires (1863-1905). Of the sixty-four novels that make up that series, twenty-three, over one-third, feature American characters or take place on American soil. I demonstrate that in his early novels (1863-1886), he presents the United States in an optimistic and utopian light, while in his later novels (1887-1905), his depictions of the United States take on a pessimistic and dystopian aspect. In also showing that Verne had been influenced by utopian socialists Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Étienne Cabet (1788-1856), I provide …

A Comparative Perspective Between Farc Guerrilleras And Chechen Black Widows, Denise Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will explore the similar and different characteristics between Colombian female combatants who are members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and the Chechen female suicide bombers who joined the Chechen insurgency movement. It shall provide a brief historical background of how the FARC, a leftist guerrilla group, and the Chechen insurgency movement ascended into prominence during civil conflicts in Colombia and Chechnya respectively. It will discuss how many women in both countries would pursue a different form of activism and defy patriarchal norms by engaging in acts of violence in the name …

The Anxious Shadow Of A Coldwar: Affect, Biopower & Resistance In Fiction & Culture In The Period Of Intra-Anxiety 1989-2001, Kate Adler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld stands as the framing text for this study of fiction, cultural affect, and resistance in the later part of the 1980’s – the exhausted, waning years of the Cold War – and the 1990’s, the period immediately following its collapse. DeLillo’s book is situated in the 1990’s, a period of what I term “intra-anxiety” following the Cold War and prior to the attacks of September 11^th and the ensuing “War on Terror.” The Cold War had provided an organizing myth for America and American culture, absorbing and structuring anxieties and governing affect. “The Cold …

Discourses Of "Cruelty-Free" Consumerism: Peta, The Vegan Society And Examples Of Contemporary Activism, Andrea Springirth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper draws upon the principles of critical discourse analysis in order to examine the production of capitalist and consumerist discourses within contemporary nonhuman animal rights activism. The analysis presents evidence to suggest that the discourses being produced via the websites of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society are consistently being constructed through market-centric ideologies that treat activists mainly as middle-class consumers. This paper argues that the consistent presence of neoliberal discourse signals an instructive entanglement with broader sociopolitical issues. Specifically, there are concerns as to how this discourse relates to what is thought …

Ethnic And National Identity Of Third Generation Koreans In Japan, Haruka Morooka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite Japan’s emphasis on its ethnic homogeneity, there actually are ethnic minorities in Japan. Most of foreign residents in Japan came recently, but a group of Koreans, which is called Zainichi, has been living in Japan before World War II. “Zainichi”, literally means “residing in Japan,” with a connotation of impermanence. It could be Zainichi Chinese or Zainichi Americans, but the term almost exclusively refers “to a population of colonial-era migrants from the Korean peninsula that settles in the Japanese archipelago and their descendants” (Lie, 2008, x). After decades of living in Japan, over 90% of the Zainichi population is …

Coastal Louisiana: Adaptive Capacity In The Face Of Climate Change, Tara Lambeth

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Extreme weather events can result in natural disasters, and climate change can cause these weather events to occur more often and with more intensity. Because of social and physical vulnerabilities, climate change and extreme weather often affect coastal communities. As climate change continues to be a factor for many coastal communities, and environmental hazards and vulnerability continue to increase, the need for adaptation may become a reality for many communities. However, very few studies have been done on the effect climate change and mitigation measures implemented in response to climate change have on a community’s adaptive capacity.

This single instrumental …

Surviving In The Land Of Opportunity: Outcomes Of Post-Crisis Urban Redevelopment In The United States, Brianna D. Foster

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

How we develop cities in the twenty-first century remains a subject of contentious debate worldwide. As neoliberal strategies are implemented in redevelopment projects, public safety nets are reduced and low-income communities of color in declining urban neighborhoods become particularly vulnerable. This multiple case study seeks to understand the experiences of post crisis urban redevelopment for low-income communities of color in 5 major U.S. cities. The data I analyzed include 101 short videos from the interactive documentary platform Land of Opportunity, documenting the process of post-crisis urban redevelopment in New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco. In doing so, …

Women In Gaming: A Study Of Female Players’ Experiences In Online Fps Games, M Allison Mcdaniel

Honors Theses

Existing literature has long been divided over whether the gaming world fosters violence and misogyny or provides a space for people to explore diverse identities. Not enough is known about how women experience videogames, especially the hypermasculine environment of first-person shooter (FPS) games. Competition, violence, and war, are dominant features of these games. The following thesis explores what harassment and discrimination women playing FPS games face, how they respond, and in what ways they find games to be empowering. A survey was distributed online to an international sample of 141 female FPS gamers. This research finds that women who play …

Young Adult Authors, Readers, And Feminized Social Media, Margaret R. Kohlmann

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at YA literature, a feminized genre that continues to gain momentum in publishing and popular culture. Specifically, I look at YA authors and their readers’ interactions on social media and the manner in which these conversations are gendered. I argue that YA authors are expected to utilize feminized traits on social media with their readers and fellow authors, but they use same traits to create social change in the genre and industry. This project analyzes three different types of readers: Readers, Reader-Creators, and Bloggers and their interactions with YA authors on social media. My interviews with five …

Still Waiting: An Analysis Of The Permeation Of Racial Stereotypes In Top-Grossing Black Romance Films From The 1960s To The 2000s, Jasmine Boyd-Perry

Honors College Theses

In this study, I compare how films portray relationships involving Black people, over the course of 5 decades. I do this by analyzing the characters and relationships in the top-grossing film from each decade (1960’s through 2000’s), that have a focus on Black love. I started this journey curious about how the silver screen portrayed how Black people loved romantically. As a person who regularly frequents my local major movie theatre, I had become tired of only seeing Black actors in comedies, Black men in drag and buddy dramas. I also grew tired of the sappy love stories featuring White …

How The City Of Indianapolis Came To Have African American Policemen And Firemen 80 Years Before The Modern Civil Rights Movement., Leon E. Bates

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores a series of events that occurred in the spring of 1876. The relationship between the Indianapolis city government, the Marion County Courts, the Indianapolis Police Department, and the African American community came together to usher in changes never before envisioned. The Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) was formed in 1855, then disbanded 12 months later in a political dispute. From 1857-to-1876, the IPD was all white. These changes took place as the Reconstruction era was coming to a close. The first Ku Klux Klan was at its apex, terrorizing black communities, and Jim Crow was coming into its …