Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Making Sense: Rhetoric, Perception, And Materiality, Aaron P. Donaldson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation dwells on the intersections of language-use and perception. The premise is that language makes literal sense and this reality has profound implications for those Burke called "symbol-using/mis-using animals." Communication scholars have long accepted a model of communication that positions language as "constitutive articulate contact" as opposed to a discrete means of transmission (Stewart, 1994), but a great deal of work remains to be done in terms of developing the implications for individuals and their language-use.

Chapter One explores the stances embraced by rhetorical materialists struggling to describe how language matters. The first chapter fields a series of critiques …

Beware Of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelics And Literature, Roger K. Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the discourse of Political Theology as a mode of enquiry we can overcome a longstanding tension between aesthetics and history that characterized much of twentieth century thought. Focusing on literary and occasionally musical works from the mid twentieth century, my aim is to show how works displaying psychedelic aesthetics are important venues for political deliberation with regard to citizenship. Through affective means, psychedelic aesthetics reimagine the boundaries of liberal subjectivity through a consciousness expansion and return from that expansion. The subject who returns from a psychedelic “experience” – which can be attained in various ways – comes to ethically …

House Of Cards, Matthew R. Lieber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to approach adapting a comic book into a film in a unique way. With so many comic-to-film adaptations following the trends of action movies, my goal was to adapt the popular comic book, Batman, into a screenplay that is not an action film. The screenplay, House of Cards, follows the original character of Miranda Greene as she attempts to understand insanity in Gotham’s most famous criminal, the Joker. The research for this project includes a detailed look at the comic book’s publication history, as well as previous film adaptations of Batman, …

The Nature Of Authentic Governance: A Treatise On Democratic Rhetoric And Rhetorical Democracy, Daniel L. Foster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Democracy is a form of governance that allows for the flourishing of human potentiality. Unfortunately, democracy has become less of a means of governance and more of a rhetorical device to secure the consent of the people to be ruled by the elite few. Thus the current study seeks to disrupt this hegemonic means of control through an explication of authentic governance and democracy in order to demonstrate that the current manifestations of governance associated with democracy are inauthentic. To begin, authentic democracy -direct or as it is constituted here, rhetorical democracy- can foster a citizenry of active and empowered …

The Nazi "Church": Nazism As Ersatzreligion, Carol Mckinley Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"German Christianity is a distortion. You are either a German or you are Christian."

~ Adolph Hitler

In the last decade, scores of religious scholars have dissected the concept of the Third Reich as a religion. Their theories depict a vast range of extremes from National Socialism portrayed as a secular or political religion to painting the Nazis as anti-Christian pagans. The "Nazi Church" was neither a political religion nor was it simply paganism; instead, National Socialism became its own religion which replaced traditional German Christianity at a time when a nation, ripe for questioning God, was suffering from the …

Miracles And Militancy: The Evental Origins Of Religious Revolution, Timothy J. Isaacson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing the theoretical framework of philosopher Alain Badiou, this paper will examine the force and movement of religiously fueled, revolutionary politics. Badiou’s definition of event is read through the theological concept of miracle, put forward by jurist Carl Schmitt in order to elucidate the inauguration of new order. The theological concept of miracle radicalizes Alain Badiou’s definition of event by manner of divine authorization. While Schmitt uses miracle to explicate sovereign preservation of the State, and Badiou’s interest lies in its erosion, reading both thinkers through miracle, and through each other, conceptualizes the theo-political militant, authorized by event to interrupt …

The Organic Beauty Industry: A Gendered Economic Review, Brianna D. Connelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organic beauty has grown to a $6 billion dollar industry supplying consumers with products that align with unique social consumption preferences. This thesis explores the historical economic perspective of the traditional beauty industry and the development of the organic beauty industry. Capitalism influenced the traditional beauty industry during the pursuit for profits that lead to jeopardizing customer and environmental safety. Consumers responded to this behavior by founding an organic beauty industry that not only considered social issues, but negated gendered beauty standards in the process. Organic product efficacy has emerged as an issue that must be dealt with by regulation …

Penning The Shipper-Worthy Screenplay: Exploration Of Network Television Situational Comedy And The Crime Procedural, Kacie Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Network television writers often utilize ongoing romantic turmoil as a plot device to form loyal fan bases called "shippers," viewers who become deeply invested in the romantic relationships between their favorite television couples. For my thesis, I explored the shipper paradigm and the differences between network sitcoms and crime procedurals by creating one spec script The Big Bang Theory and another for Bones. I used research and my own personal experiences to analyze both series and write episodes that could fit within the established canons of both programs. Through the writing process I came to understand something very important …

"As Our Elders Taught Us To Speak It": Chinuk Wawa And The Process Of Creating Authenticity, Kylie N. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chinuk Wawa (also called Chinook Jargon) began as a trading language of the Pacific Northwest in the late eighteenth century. As it developed, it became the major heritage language of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, an intertribal nation located in Oregon. Now, as older speakers of the language pass on, there is an effort by the Grand Ronde to revitalize this language not only on the Grand Ronde Reservation, but also in nearby Portland, Oregon. However, revitalization can be a complicated process, as tribal leaders attempt to define Chinuk to maintain its traditions while adapting its vocabulary for …

Remembering Dearfield: A Study Of An Early 20th Century Black Community, Mary Connell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the different meanings of Dearfield, an early 20th Century black farming colony in northeastern Colorado, from the way the settlers’ conceived of their community, to the way that it was portrayed by the founder, to the way that it is remembered today. Through analysis of archival data and government records I show that there were two sides of Dearfield, that remembered by most of the settlers, and that portrayed by the founder O.T. Jackson. A magnetometer survey shows that the townsite was not as densely occupied as the common narrative of Dearfield would suggest, indeed many homesteaders …

Editorial Collaboration And Control: Laura Riding And The Seizen Press Years, Christina Cain Whitney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the founding of Seizin Press in 1927, Laura Riding began a new epoch in her career as poet and literary theorist. Along with her partner, Robert Graves, Riding worked among and with important literary tastemakers of the Modernist era, such as Gertrude Stein, Len Lye and James Reeves. Riding's demanding and intense editorial and collaborative style resulted in some unique and fascinating works, such as the bizarrely beautiful Life of the Dead and the egomaniacal The World and Ourselves. Beyond close literary examination of the above works, this study looks at the pressures both within the Seizin Press …

Eruv, Eryn Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Eruv is a collection of poems exploring the interstices between the Judaic concept of Eruvin and the poetic traditions of dictation, field and personist poetics. The poems that represent the body of this work are explorations of the ways in which poetry empties and fills a space, and what might be implied for our shared conceptions of ‘Home’ and ‘Self’ by these tendencies.

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition Of Female Satire In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, And Muriel Spark, Jaclyn Andrea Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate …

'Everything Looks Different Up Close': Perception In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Jennifer Leora Nessel Cassidy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the first two books of her MaddAdam series (a projected trilogy), Margaret Atwood explores a series of events from three very different perspectives. A close reading of the two texts suggests that the specific focalizers chosen, and their very different ways of perceiving the world around them, are central issues in the novels. In Oryx and Crake, Atwood establishes the apocalypse as a problem of dystopian vision through the book's deeply flawed focalizer. In The Year of the Flood two alternative visions are offered in order to rehabilitate the perceptual problems of the first text. In the three …

Thuggin' With The Oldies: Successful Professionals Who Continue To Listen To Gangsta Rap And The Professional Identity Conflict That Arises, Tarhonda Thomas Mckee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rise of explicit rap music in the 1990's brought with it a challenge that has not been seen until today: what becomes of listeners who, once past their adolescent years, become responsible, successful adults yet choose to keep explicit rap music in their lives? This thesis examined that question to find that some high-achieving adults continue to listen to the controversial form of music, while simultaneously separating themselves from the images associated with the music. Furthermore, their musical tastes can present a conflict with their professional images which may cause them to conceal their preference for explicit rap music, …