Arts and Humanities Commons^™

From Serbia To Xinjiang; A Comparative Analysis Of Genocidal Regimes, Drake Mitchell Olson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Rather than seeking to give a causal explanation of genocide and ethnic cleansing, I ask the more pointed question “are there patterns present at the societal level that signal the potentiality of genocide in a given cultural context?” Through examination of two socially and temporally distinct instances of genocide, the Bosnian genocide and the Uyghur genocide, I argue that there exist certain patterns which precede historical instances of genocide and that these antecedent phenomena contribute to the potential for genocide in those societies. I identify three broad trends that contribute to the potential of genocide: the cultivation of ethnic nationalism …

What We Need: A Poetic Study In Struggle And Self-Healing, Grace Anne Calabria

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, …

From Madness To Medicine: How Nazi Medical Experimentation Morphed Into Today’S Medical Field, Alexandria Daughn Kerby

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

It is no secret that many of our current scientific and medical advancements stem from a long history of research, trials, and experimentation, but not enough is known about the origins of our routine practices. The Holocaust enabled Nazi doctors to explore countless victims in search of the ultimate answer to the Jewish question. The answer: to alleviate the burden that those deemed “unworthy of life” placed on the greater society. The mass extermination practices which highlight the atrocities of the Holocaust are the end result of constant scientific developments disguised as medicine. Tiergarten 4 (T4) serves as the beginning …

Federal Funding For The Arts & Developmental Success In Western Nations, Sophia Ciokajlo

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Culture is undeniably a vital part of any society. To preserve and develop their culture, a majority of modern states allocate some part of their annual expenditure to the arts. The amount of money and system through which it is distributed varies from country to country, but the principle remains the same. Not only do countries value the contribution of culture to their common well-being, but it is also widely accepted that participation in the arts, as a performer or viewer, holds benefit for the individual. All of this considered, I sought to investigate whether or not the size of …

The Heart Of The Problem: An Art Gallery Installation To Foster Dialogue On Heart Disease And The Privilege Of Prevention, Olivia Eileen Heinecke

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

We are cautioned constantly about various harmful diseases. However, the deadliest disease tends to be overlooked. Heart disease takes the lives of more than half a million people in the United States every year, yet there is a lack of discussion to address the epidemic at hand (Hill). This is largely due to the “blame the victim” stigma surrounding the generally preventable range of complications. While 80% of cardiovascular disease is avoidable, not every individual has the means of achieving a lifestyle necessary in averting the conditions and their symptoms. For this creative art project, I want to encourage education …

Look To Your Own: Human Limits And The Danger Of Overambition In Herodotus’ Histories, Alex Christopher Brinkman

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The final clause of the proem to Herodotus’ Histories promises that the work to come will, among other things, set out “the reason for which [the Greeks and the Persians] fought against one another” (δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι), a story which will be told through the gradual expansion of the Persian empire, its encounters with foreign lands and their peoples, and its eventual conflict with the Greek states. Throughout this narrative, a key theme becomes that of the rise and fall of arrogant kings who, driven by past successes and overconfidence in the course of future events, go a …

Reshaping The Canon: How “Insta-Poets” Are Creating A New Literary Space For Readers Using Social Media, Hannah Salsbery

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Reading and analyzing poetry can be an equally beautiful and frustrating experience. Interacting with a poem allows a reader to access untapped emotions through the words on the page; yet, when not given the tools to understand canonical poetry, young readers are often left at a loss. The rise of “Insta-poetry” gives younger generations of readers access to poems that are both relatable in experience and language. Using Rupi Kaur as a vehicle towards unmasking the importance of the rise of poetry on Instagram, this thesis highlights the importance of reshaping the literary canon to become a more inclusive, diverse, …

Deconstruyendo Narrativas Coloniales En Relatos Cortos Latinoamericanos, Olivia Gabrielle Bradley

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Este artículo investiga cómo los autores de América Latina deconstruyen las narrativas coloniales en sus cuentos. Los cuatro relatos analizados son "Chac mool" por Carlos Fuentes, "Coatlicue" por Elena Poniatowska, "La noche boca arriba" por Julio Cortázar y "La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas" por Elena Garro. Mediante un estudio del uso del realismo mágico para promover críticas coloniales junto con una aplicación de la teoría de la descolonialidad, este artículo describe cómo los autores abordan los conceptos de la conquista española de México, la naturaleza dualista de la identidad mexicana y las estructuras de poder y opresión que persisten …

Into The Streets: The Residuality Of 'Otherness' And Material Representation In The Cityscape, Addison Elizabeth Mckown

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout history, the ideology of ‘Othering’ has taken precedence in our capacity to connect with people outside of our home borders. The layers of history evoked within the German streets; the commemoration of persecuted others; the mediated expressions of socially ignored out-groups; are constitutively shaping the receptive responses of the modern refugee crisis. The residuality of this otherness is represented in the material cityscape, and I argue that it is in the space of the urban streets where belonging is contested. The cityscape is a constant mirror between the past and the future as the cyclical dynamics of social power …

Optimizing The Use Of Digitization Technologies In Museums, Emma Gunst

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Digital technologies are used mostly for artifact preservation, but they can also be used for educating people about those artifacts in a museum context. This paper investigates the way various age groups react differently to distinct kinds of digitization technology. By using different technologies with certain age groups, adolescents can learn more from the artifacts or objects they are interacting with. This project aims to explore which technologies work with what age group in order to optimize adolescent education and artifact accessibility in museums. Accessibility for this study is defined as a museum making their collections available to a variety …

“Idol”: Examining The Intersection Of Race, Gender, And Sexuality In Boybands, Grace Maynard

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In response to the socio-political climate of recent years, there has been a growing category of socially-engaged pop music. These works can be explicitly connected to their ideas about gender, race, and age. While boybands may not be perceived to create activist works of art, they do often have large public platforms with potential to reach out to a mass population of dedicated fans. They are given the power and privilege of a life in the limelight. As such, their messages may carry deeper meanings than at first glance. This thesis explores the impact of successful boybands by examining The …

Securing Equal Relations: An Addition To Elizabeth Anderson's Democratic Equality, James Richard Ewing

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Within social and political philosophy, egalitarianism entails some social theory of equality. In this paper, I will focus on a contemporary relational form of egalitarianism, a theory of Elizabeth Anderson which she calls "Democratic Equality." Through Democratic Equality, Anderson promotes a vision of egalitarianism which seeks to give individuals the capacity to stand in equal relations with one another in society. Although equal relations is a fine goal for egalitarianism (and perhaps the best goal for any egalitarianism), I will argue that Democratic Equality as Anderson describes it is not sufficient to achieve these relations. Ultimately, her theory is insufficient …

The Dark Side Of The Moon: Unpacking Civil Rights And Student Antiwar Criticism Of The Apollo Program, Victoria R. Combs

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

July 20, 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of man landing on the moon. To commemorate this historic anniversary, NASA held festivals, and people published books and released movies that reflected the triumph of the Apollo 11 mission. However, this celebratory media fails to illustrate the dissent against the program that existed during the 1960s. This era marked a contentious decade in American history, and the world at large, with a rise in protests and civil unrest fueled by the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam. At this same time, the United States was engaged in the space race …

Subversion Of Form: Mixing Poetry And Prose, Darby Alexandria Brown

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

My honors thesis project is called Subversion of Form: Mixing Poetry and Prose. The purpose has been to research how writers have interwoven poetry and prose, to write a creative nonfiction piece that uses both genres, and to improve as a writer through committing myself to this piece and solidifying writing as a daily practice. In my introduction, I outline the research I conducted on poetry and prose and my takeaways from the writers I read. I conclude that the purpose of prose is to tell, while the purpose of poetry is to search.

The piece that I have worked …

Two Pandemics - Making Meaning Of Illness Through The Works Of Thomas Mann And Thomas Glavinic, Samuel Stucky

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

By March 2020, most of the world had gone into varying levels of lockdown to try to prevent further spread of what was proving to be a deceptively deadly disease: COVID-19, commonly referred to as “the Coronavirus.” One way to gauge the effect that a massive, traumatic event such as a global pandemic has on individuals is to analyze how those people write about their experiences. In this study, I examine what the German body of discourse contained and what it can teach regarding two major pandemics that fell one hundred years apart via Thomas Mann’s novella Der Tod in …

The Vulnerability Of The Acetabulofemoral Joint: Examining Acetabular Labral Tears In Classical Ballet Dancers, Rebecca Tschan

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The acetabulofemoral joint, more commonly referred to as the hip joint, is an extremely important mechanism of the human body. It plays a crucial role in a person's ability to sit and stand, walk and run, jump and crouch, and more. Not only this, but the hip joint bears most of the weight of the body, making it necessary for the joint and surrounding anatomical structures to be strong and stable. Fortunately, hip joints are built in such a way that allow for an extreme range of motion while simultaneously providing support for the rest of the body. Additionally, the …

Gary, Indiana And The Us Steel Corporation: An Examination Of Race, Class, And Environmental Injustice In Early Twentieth Century Urban Planning, Laura Rose Allaben

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Gary, Indiana was widely regarded as one of the most successful and promising industrial American cities of its time. Gary was founded by the United States Steel Corporation to be a "model" industrial city created by a private corporation. Gary is unique in that the city was conceptualized, planned, and constructed by a private entity, with little public or governmental input, for the purpose of serving the US Steel industry. As "groundbreaking" and "innovative" as the urban planning of Gary was supposed to be, conditions of segregation in the city caused by a divide between the premiere steel mills and …

The Student Experience In A Covid-19 World: An Ethnographic Inquiry Into The Experience Of Butler University Students During A Pandemic, Ben Christopher Martella

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

With the abrupt closing of colleges across the United States in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent reopening in the fall of 2020, students in higher education were among some of the most affected group of individuals. In this ethnographic study, data was collected and analyzed based on student experience with COVID-19 at Butler University. The study aims to answer the research questions: How are students at a small midwestern university experiencing COVID-19? What impact are the university’s mitigation efforts having on students? How do students understand and describe University public health measures? Participant observation, …

Cultural, Political, And Choreographic Developments Of Feminism In Classical Ballet, Lydia Mariya Wirth

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This thesis was an exploration of how the female ballerina can be better represented in the culture, aesthetics, and politics of ballet. Despite the patriarchal and misogynistic traditions that this artform is steeped in, women have made significant strides in reclaiming ballet as a tool of female empowerment, rather than of suppression or objectification. A disparity of leadership positions, a traditionally disempowering training system, misogynistic ballet narratives, and patterns of abuse and harassment all combine to create a world which disempowers female dancers on multiple levels. Despite these realities, women have been at the forefront of narrowing wage and opportunity …

The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: A New Radio Play, Sarah Michelle Ault

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

"If we could turn back the clock, where should we go back to? Once we reach that place, can all our mistakes and errors be undone? Will happiness be ours to stay?"

Adapted from the Bangtan Universe created by South Korean music group BTS, this work features a new theatrical script that explores the hardships of young adulthood and the pressing need for perfection in one's life. The story centers a group of friends, once inseparable, who now find their companionship fractured by the passage of time and the unexpected tragedies of life. Desperate to pull them together again, the …

"An Advocate And Exponent Of The Common And Equal Rights Of Humanity": Defining And Assessing The Values Of North Western Christian University, 1855-1880, Allison Lindsay Griffin

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

“An Advocate and Exponent of the Common and Equal Rights of Humanity”: Defining and Assessing the Values of North Western Christian University, 1855-1880.

Terrible Am I, Child?, Camille Arnett

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The modern period of intergenerational strife between the aging-out Baby Boomers and the Millennials who have come forth to replace them in an infrastructure that cannot support them is a struggle that carries with it unique psychological implications ripe for literary exploration. Understanding these conflicts in a profound way is an important challenge to take on, and one which can, in my belief, be best achieved through literature. My work, a draft of a novel entitled Terrible Am I, Child?, is a family drama which takes the symbolic generational divide and uses it as a framework for exploring issues of …

Reitz Or Wrong: An Industrial, Environmental, And Political Analysis Of Evansville’S “Lumber Baron”, Jarrod Koester

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

For nearly two centuries, the history of Evansville, Indiana has remained incomplete as historians and the general public have not recognized some of the key factors responsible for the city’s famed past. The generally accepted history of Evansville, the state’s third-largest city, conveys valiant tales of industrialization, transportation, and successful entrepreneurs who overcame insurmountable odds and left everlasting impressions on the people of the region. While the once-prosperous city was a significant national port and participated heavily in transatlantic and transcontinental trade, Evansville’s historical significance has diminished over the course of the twentieth century. What were once bustling factories, streams …

"Becoming-Pite: An Application Of Deleuzian Theory To Crystal Pite’S Choreography, Kyra Laubacher

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Art destabilizes the human, rupturing the concept of the individual as primary universal organizer. The artist recognizes infinite potential in the virtual as expressed through intensity, something semantically inarticulable but nonetheless accessible via artistic production. Chrystal Pite, contemporary dance choreographer, is one such artist in whose creations the workings of affect make themselves perceptibly clear. We may turn to poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his theories of multiplicity, repetition, and nomadism in order to further understand the work that she has put forth. Pite, through art and affect, reminds us of the human condition of the de-centered individual, and Deleuze’s …

Paternalism And Autonomy In Transgender Healthcare, Charles Finley

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Transgender healthcare has made considerable advancements in the quality of patient care and gender confirmation surgical technique throughout the past several decades, which has led to a significant increase in patient satisfaction and overall physical and mental wellbeing. However, there are still several issues that remain to be addressed, many associated with excess paternalism by physicians and violations of patient autonomy. These problems can be mitigated by improving LGBTQ+ and transgender-related medical education for physicians, updating healthcare insurance coverage requirements to be more in line with current care standards, developing appropriate guidelines for lifelong primary care and geriatric care, and …

A New Happiness?: Reading Literature With Deleuze And Guattari In 2020, Fiona Connolly

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Gilles Deleuze is one of the most influential French philosophers of the twentieth century. He collaborated with political activist and radical psychoanalyst, Felix Guattari to create Anti-Oedipus (1972), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and What is Philosophy ? (1991), among other works. At the center of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought was the belief that philosophy is the production of concepts, such as territorialization/deterritorialization, lines of flight, and rhizomes. In this thesis, I will use Deleuze and Guattari to examine three seemingly unrelated literary texts: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and John Green’s Paper Towns. By …

Women’S Rights As Human Rights: A Study Of Muslim Women’S Reproductive Justice In Contemporary Saudi Arabia And Egypt, Sophia Harris

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Muslim women’s reproductive justice has been formulated through strict applications and interpretations of religious and spiritual texts as well as the legal opinions of Islamic jurists and other trusted members of the Islamic community. I examine a conservative nation’s interpretation of these texts (Saudi Arabia) in comparison to a more liberal nation’s interpretations (Egypt), which are utilized to form policy on Muslim women’s reproductive justice. I also discuss research provided by the United Nations and other international organizations on the subject in each country. The question of justice has been an ongoing and controversial one, especially so for women. When …

The Battle Of Representation: Analyzing The Role Of The Senate In The Late Republic Of Rome And The United States, Gracie Munroe

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Late Roman Republic was divided into two political factions, the Populares and the Optimates, who quarreled on whether the voice of the people through votes in popular assemblies should have greater weight in government than the opinions and wisdom of the Roman Senate who, being composed of elite Roman aristocrats, believed were more qualified than the average Roman citizens to govern. A parallel idea of representation exists in the United States, in which two schools of thought emerge, the Trustee Model of Representation versus the Delegate model. In this project, I analyzed the language and rhetoric utilized by ancient …

An “Often Formidable Sting”: Chinese American Female Aviators In The Wasp During World War Ii, Claudia Vinci

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Pearl Harbor was one of the most shocking, devastating events in American military history. However, upon the entry of the United States into World War II, opportunities arose for Chinese American men and women. For Chinese American women, Pearl Harbor marked a pivotal transition as they were finally recruited by the United States military. More generally, American women expanded their noncombat roles and Asian Americans served in a number of capacities. I explore the related experiences of Hazel Ying Lee and Maggie Gee, the only two Chinese American Women Airforce Service Pilots. Lee and Gee dealt with and observed the …

“The Policy Of Intimidation Had Been So Successfully Managed That Many Colored Men Kept Away From The Polls”: Violence In The Reconstruction Era South, Marykatherine Klaybor

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States entered an era known as Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. In this postwar period the federal government faced pressure to reincorporate the former Confederate States back into the Union. In addition, Southern political, economic, and social systems needed to be transformed in the wake of emancipation and the country grappled with the question of political rights for newly freed people. Throughout the era, the Republican Party favored policies that secured the rights of black Southerners while facing opposition from many Southern white Democrats. This opposition often manifested in unchecked …