Movement As Medicine: Dance/Movement Therapy For Individuals With Autism, Parkinson’S Disease, And Cancer, Alessia Zanobini

CMC Senior Theses

Dance/movement therapy (D/MT) is the psychotherapeutic use of expressive, creative movement to support holistic well-being. D/MT views the human being as a single body-mind unit and movement as a manifestation of life experiences. While typically practiced as a mental health intervention, D/MT can be adapted for a variety of populations. This thesis evaluates scientific data for the non-traditional use of D/MT for three conditions: autism, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. For individuals on the autism spectrum, D/MT can strengthen attunement skills, provide creative communication outlets, and relieve harmful physical manifestations of autism. For individuals with Parkinson’s disease, D/MT can simultaneously ease …

Ecodrama And Sustainable Theatre: A Handbook For Creating Remarkable Change, Gigi Buddie

Pomona Senior Theses

The climate crisis is not new to us, nor are the art forms that have taken shape as vital components of the many activist movements that seek to save the planet. Yet, for the first time at Pomona College, a play about environmental devastation and our hand in it finally graced the stage of this progressive institution this past year. This mini handbook is a call-to-action (of sorts), one that stems from the idea that this should not be the last ecodrama performed at Pomona College. These chapters are structured and supported by both experience and research – formulated from …

Choreographing The Line: Exploring The Art/Obscenity Paradox Of Feminine Sexuality Within The Context Of Recreational Pole Dance, Cameron Boucher-Khan

Scripps Senior Theses

This project seeks to explore the relationships between pole dance and pole fitness, art and obscenity and respectability as it relates to work, class, and social systems. It analyzes the way female sexuality is accepted or rejected within society and explores the boundaries between the two through the staging of pole and contemporary dance. The dichotomy between art and obscenity is explored in the relationship between stripper pole dance, and the fast-growing pole fitness community. Within this relationship, strippers are demonized as obscene, while pole fitness dancers' labor is viewed as artistic, despite the sexuality present in both. The difference …

Put On Your Dancing Shoes: Boosting Divergent Thinking In Older Adults, Megan Itagaki

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis will explore the influence of two dance modalities (dance improvisation and Zumba dance) on divergent thinking (i.e., an aspect of creativity) in older adults using a quasi-experimental design. Given the existing research on dance as a creativity intervention in the younger half of the population, this study may address a gap in the literature by extending these findings to older adults. Once prescreened to ensure cognitive competence and adequate physical mobility, participants will complete a divergent thinking task before their designated 20-minute dance intervention. After the intervention, participants will complete a divergent thinking task. It is hypothesized that …

“Send Me No Husband” How Succession Anxiety In Elizabethan England Influenced The Marital Politics In Shakespeare's Comedies, Olivia Silva

Scripps Senior Theses

While revered and idolized, Queen Elizabeth I’s unmarried status throughout her reign increased anxieties surrounding succession amongst the 16th century British public. Amidst a continental debate surrounding the Querelle des Femmes, or “the woman question", that attempted to label female roles within societal and political spheres, Elizabeth was infamously defined by her unconventionality as both a monarch and a woman. These succession and patriarchal anxieties not only influenced but were actively played out in Shakespeare’s canon, particularly in his comedies. Shakespeare used the Unconventional Woman trope within his comedies in creating certain female characters, all of their endings concluding in …

La Evolución De La Masculinidad En Las Películas De Alfonso Cuarón, Daniel Martinez

CMC Senior Theses

El cine de Alfonso Cuarón representa una oportunidad nueva y emocionante para entender mejor la identidad mexicana y todas sus implicaciones. En esta tesis, analizaré las representaciones diferentes de la masculinidad a lo largo de la carrera de Alfonso Cuarón en México ya que estas películas tratan con el tema de manera directa. Desde sus principios en Sólo con tu pareja hasta Roma ( su proyecto más reciente), el estilo de Cuarón ha llegado a definir la nueva era del cine mexicano y sus películas representan a la masculinidad con un enfoque en el impacto que ha tenido en la …

Ending America’S “Endless” Wars: Is A Left/Right Coalition On Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy Feasible?, Blaise Malley

CMC Senior Theses

Ever since the end of the Cold War, American exceptionalism and militarism have been ascendant, often resulting in a government that is eager and able to engage in military interventions across the world. This reality has been upheld by a strong bipartisan consensus of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives that, while it often disagreed on means, ultimately shared the same worldview. However, a number of recent global and national trends have led to growing voices on both sides of the aisle—progressives on the left, and populists on the right—to question the assumptions driving this consensus. This growing coalition has convergence on …

Aristotle And Mutual Accountability: A Just Theory Of Punishment, Dina Rosin

CMC Senior Theses

How can citizens of a moral community both be held accountable and be accountable for their actions and their character? What is the role of both the state and the citizen in restoring accountability? In this thesis, I apply Aristotle’s conception of virtue to Stephen Darwall and William Darwall’s mutual accountability framework for punishment. I present a theory of punishment that creates an obligation on both the state and the citizen to uphold virtue and be accountable, and posits rehabituation of character as a necessary component of maintaining mutual accountability. I then apply this theory to a paradigmatic case that …

Populism: An Exploration Into The American Case Through The Academic Literature, Data Analysis, And Fiction, Maxwell Knowles

CMC Senior Theses

The twenty-first century has seen a rise in populist leadership and rhetoric throughout the globe, with the United States standing as one powerful case. This thesis hopes to develop the “story” of populism from multiple perspectives, attempting to not only inform but change the way we approach the populist movement in America, and perhaps, the world. In Part I, I summarize and blend much of the core literature written on populism and economic change, developing the story that populism in America today has its roots in the significant techno-economic and cultural paradigmatic shifts of the 1970s. Social media and an …

The Future Self: Promoting Prosocial Decision-Making Through Motivated Episodic Simulation, Su Young (Kevin) Choi

CMC Senior Theses

Vividly imagining the future self can help inform our present decisions. Given that most attempts aimed at understanding the prosocial effect of imagining future episodes have focused on sensory properties, little is known about how prosocial motivations can explain the link between episodic simulation and helping intentions. Here, the current research investigated whether altruistically and reputationally motivated simulation of helping behavior promote a willingness to help a person in need. The study found that imagining helping episodes increased willingness to help relative to a control manipulation, especially when reputational concerns were made salient. Path modeling analyses revealed that the prosocial …

Examining Protein-Protein Interactions Within The Esx-4 Secretion System Of Mycobacterium Smegmatis, Sophie Boerboom

CMC Senior Theses

Bacteria use secretion systems to export proteins from inside of the bacterium into the periplasm, extracellular space, or host cell. Within the Mycobacterium genus, the type VII secretion systems (T7SS) transport products across the unusually thick and waxy mycobacterial envelope. T7SS are of particular importance because they are involved in the virulence of pathogenic mycobacteria. Mycobacteria have as many as five distinct T7SS called ESX systems. ESX-1, 3, and 5, have demonstrated roles in viability and virulence in certain pathogenic species like M. tuberculosis and M. marinum. Our research focuses on the ESX-4 apparatus, the ancestral system that gave rise …

Effects Of Sleep Deprivation And The Link To Alzheimer’S Disease In Night Shift Workers, Aracelia Aldrete

CMC Senior Theses

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a degenerative neurologic disorder that is often defined by beta-amyloid (Aβ) plaques. These Aβ plaques are formed from protein pieces that are incorrectly cleaved from an amyloid precursor protein (APP). These protein segments, cleaved from APP, are toxic due to increased “stickiness”. They cling together to create protofibrils that eventually mature into neuronal plaques. Aβ plaques lead to neuronal cell death causing classic AD symptoms: memory loss, a decline in speech and motor control, and personality changes. One connection between high Aβ plaques levels and AD is chronic sleep loss or disruption. Night shift workers, even …

The Mediating Role Of Positive Emotion Socialization On Maternal Alexithymia’S Detrimental Impact Towards Child’S Adaptive Regulatory Capacity, Madeleine Ding

CMC Senior Theses

The current study examined the relations between maternal alexithymia and child’s negative outcomes in the form of behavioral problems and adaptive regulatory capacity, as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). It also explores the main and mediating role of positive emotion socialization. Participants consisted of 155 mother-child dyads within a 25-mile radius of a college in Southern California (Mothers M_age=33.1 years, SD=5.5; Children M_age=42.01 months, SD=4.68; 51% male children). The Toronto Alexithymia Scale-26 (TAS-26) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) were given to mothers to report on alexithymic traits and their child’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors, …

Frobenius Problem, Geometry And Number Fields, Yingqi Shi

CMC Senior Theses

We introduce the classical Frobenius Problem in Mathematics.

Cruzando La Frontera: Choreographing The Mexican-American Identity, Chloe Vich

CMC Senior Theses

This dance project explores the consequences of assimilation on immigrants’ cultural practices and identity specifically for Mexican-Americans in Southern California. The dance project explores the crossing of borders through mixed contemporary and Mexican ballet folklorico dance styles in order to tell a story of immigrants trying, failing, and succeeding in crossing the U.S. and Mexico border. By exploring the integration of Western dance styles with Mexican ballet folklorico, this paper will analyze how Mexican identity, as expressed through dance or song, is maintained by immigrants to remain connected their culture, but is changed through the process of assimilation.

Mexican ballet …

Where Do We Go From Here? A Semi-Autobiographical Performance Exploration Into The Therapeutic Benefits Of Theatre, Emma Elliott

Scripps Senior Theses

My intention in this performance is to create a therapeutic theatrical process for myself and engage the audience with intense emotional vulnerability regarding the combination and validation of the nobody and performative self. I utilized both my vocal and acting training to work through emotional trauma that I have experienced and created a musical performance to demonstrate my journey of therapy and emotional reconciliation within myself and my family. I focused my research on using autobiographical performances to solidify and validate the identity of the performer to an audience. In doing so, this allows the performers to become the …

Josephine Baker & Me: Black Femme Identity In Performance, Meghan Gwinn

Scripps Senior Theses

The paper explores the complicated intersection between Black womanhood and performance by considering Josephine Baker as a site to engage the concept of “performing identity.” It discuss both the development of burlesque and the history of Josephine Baker to provide a foundation for the investigation of her early-career movement and visual practices. Then, the paper explore these hallmarks through Sherril Dodds’ “critical components of neo-burlesque striptease” writ into her book, Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. The second half of this document includes a script of CATHARSIS, a self-devised solo show created to process one’s personal …

Myrrha Now: Reimagining Classic Myth And Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses In The #Metoo Era, Claire A. Pukszta

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper represents the final culmination of a theater senior project. The project consisted of an analytical research paper, performance in a mainstage department production, and supporting process documentation. I portrayed Myrrha, Hunger, Zeus, and others in a production of the play Metamorphoses.

Through research on Mary Zimmerman’s 1998 play Metamorphoses, adapted from the works of Roman poet Ovid, this thesis grapples with the historical meaning of the myth of Myrrha. A polarizing figure, Myrrha was cursed to fall in lust with her father. By exploring of portrayals sexual assault onstage, I tackle themes of audience relationships to …

The God Collection, Namaste Rosas

CMC Senior Theses

I’m all strung out on Klonopins in the drug store trying to pay for Advil but my card keeps getting rejected.

The Use Of Personality Testing In Personnel Selection, Riya Kumar

CMC Senior Theses

Research has shown that more than 45% of American companies are opting to integrate personality tests in their recruitment processes. Given this surge in personality testing, this thesis examines whether personality testing is a valid predictor of job-fit and performance in the context of personnel selection. A large proportion of this paper is focused upon the Big-Five factor model, its limitations, and derivative tests of the model. The impact of technology upon personality testing is also discussed as an emerging field. By tracing and examining the history of personality testing to current day, I have found that personality tests are …

An American Myth In The (Re)Making: The Timeless Fantasy Appeal Of 'The King And I', Lina Purtscher

Scripps Senior Theses

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom …

Disparities Between American And Chinese Perceptions On Chinese Foreign Policy, Zijia He

CMC Senior Theses

There has been a dangerous gap between American and Chinese perceptions of Chinese foreign policy, a gap contributing to acceptance of the Thucydides Trap. With the help of a theoretical framework and empirical evidence, this paper aims to summarize and understand the differences, in an effort to help overcome them and prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy. The author identifies five variables that shape perceptions and then categorizes Chinese foreign policy along several dimensions. Using the South China Sea and the Belt and Road Initiative as case studies, the author finds that US and Chinese interpretations of Chinese behavior along these dimensions …

Predicting The Current Season's Win Percentages In The National Hockey League Using Data From The Previous Season: Can Game-Level Data Help?, Suyash Sharma

CMC Senior Theses

Researchers have tried to predict winning percentages for the National Hockey League (NHL) teams based on their performance in the previous seasons. However, these predictions have not been very accurate. This study hypothesizes that incorporating pair-wise game-level data with season-level data can be useful in improving the prediction of a team’s win percentage. Season-level data and pair-wise game-level data from the 2005-2006 season to the 2015-2016 season has been used to predict winning percentages for the pairs in each of the following seasons. Significant results were not found for any of the pair-wise game-level data variables except for two pair-wise …

Choreographing Conflict: Inspiring Change Through Visual And Physical Representations, Rachel Nayer

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how art can support and stimulate personal and social change. It addresses the natural and ever-present existence of conflict and analyzes how using the body as a tool for communication can viscerally represent themes of disagreement and resolution. The work of Israeli choreographers Yasmeen Godder and Hillel Kogan are analyzed in a case study to explore different methods of choreographing conflict. Both works successfully, yet contrastingly, demonstrate how the body adds power and emotion to an idea. Parallel to the research component of this thesis is the original choreographed work, Ecotones. The creative method behind Ecotones …

Physical Miseducation: How Public Schooling In The Us Is Harmful To Students’ Bodily Well-Being, Rachel Fredericks

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the history of physical education in the United States, as well as a general look into how public schooling affects how kids learn about and come to view their bodies. Theory and research by Michel Foucault, Elias Norbert, and Katy Bowman form the theoretical framework for this essay, and accounts of visits to a local elementary school to observe PE also grounds the work in present-day experiences. The work concludes that public schools in the US improperly teach students about how to listen to and care for their bodies.

Walking In The City: Koji Nakano’S Reimagining And Re-Sounding Of The Tale Of Genji, Isabella Ramos

Scripps Senior Theses

Imagined Sceneries is a work written by composer Dr. Koji Nakano of Burapha University, Thailand for two sopranos, koto, light percussion, narrations, soundscapes recorded in Kyoto, Japan in December 2015, and digital projections of Ebina Masao’s 1953 print series Tale of Genji. Imagined Sceneries’ reimagining and “re-sounding” of Heian Kyoto relies on a balance between what is imagined and what is experienced in performance. Its many elements collectively explore multiple layers of Japanese histories, soundscapes, environments, and sensibilities. Using Michel de Certeau’s concepts of the city, this thesis journeys through Nakano’s imagined spaces.

Reflections On Here: A Choreographic Thesis, Maile Blume

Scripps Senior Theses

This choreographic thesis describes the conceptual foundations underlying the development of the dance, Here. Here uses text and movement to explore the challenge of locating of locating oneself in this particular institution. It asks the questions: what happens when our personal needs conflict with the structure of this institution? How do we use our limited capacities to exist / resist / care for each other in this place? Reflections on Here describes the choreographic inquiries and discoveries that contributed to the development of Here. It includes research on desire and mourning, as well as reflections on the power …

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

Playing The Fool: Feste And Twelfth Night, Brooklyn D. Robinson

Scripps Senior Theses

Twelfth Night does not end with the acceptance and consummation of these “alternative couples.” Instead, the reveal of the twins has a clarifying effect and the characters are returned to the partner who is considered socially acceptable. The final relationships are heterosexual matches that do not stray from class or any other societal confines. Indeed, the story serves to reinforce common standards equating alternative love with madness and proper love with lucidity. Standing outside of the couplings are only bachelor men: Antonio, Sir Andrew, Feste and Orsino’s pages. In effect, these men are desexualized without romantic counterparts. While they are …

What You Will: An Endeavor In Adapting Shakespeare To New Media, Terese C. Briggs

Scripps Senior Theses

These scripts are the attempt to take three of Shakespeare's plays, Coriolanus, All's Well that Ends Well, and Much Ado About Nothing, and adapt them to create a type of video game called a visual novel.