The Reconquista And Crusading In The Late 11th And Early 12th Century, Catherine Hill

Capstone Showcase

The purpose of this project is to recount the historiography and literature of the Crusades and the Reconquista and then offer some commentary on their relationship in Spain in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Both of these fields have a tremendous amount of scholarship to understand these phenomena in medieval history. Therefore, the scope of this project is to compile the main scholarly debates surrounding the connection between the Crusades and the Reconquista and consider the evidence for the various approaches. The relevant background history of the Reconquista contextualizes the literature of the two fields. The main debates …

The Pink And Blue Problem: Altercasting In Gendered Advertising, Abigail Benn

Capstone Showcase

When you meet a baby for the first time, and you don’t know its sex, if its wearing pink clothes, most people will automatically assume it’s a girl; or if they’re wearing blue clothes, it’s automatically a boy. The pink and blue problem is the enforcing of gender stereotypes through color, associated roles, and imagery. The root of this problem is that many people are unaware of the difference between “sex” and “gender”, and that they can be mutually exclusive. Your sex is the body you’re born with, and all the parts that come with it, while your gender is …

The Cultivation Theory And Reality Television: An Old Theory With A Modern Twist, Jeffrey Weiss

Capstone Showcase

George Gerbner, a Hungarian-born professor of communication, founded the cultivation theory, one of the most popular and regarded theories in the communications world. Developed in the mid 20th century, the theory focus on the long-term effects of television on people. Longer exposure to signs, images and people on television cultivates their perception of reality in the real world. The television became a household staple during this time. Families often spent time together watching programming together, however, it played out different effects for each person. Television's constant visual and auditory stimulation on a person made it easier to cultivate certain messages, …

Luce Irigaray, Radical Feminism, & The Me Too Movement, Allie Nye

Capstone Showcase

Luce Irigaray, a French feminist theorist, used her writing as a tool to further the postmodern feminist movement and her theory of sexual difference. Her work highlights the divergence from traditional, modernist thought and the dream of a well rounded western society that is grounded in the recognition of sexual difference. The #MeToo Movement, the defining feminist movement of present day, proves Irigaray’s point of a need for the recognition of sexual difference. The importance of women being able to speak their mind is one the foundations of Irigaray’s work and a pillar of the #MeToo Movement. Moving beyond the …

Richard Dyer's Star Theory Applied To Musician/Actress: Lady Gaga, Allora R. Lee

Capstone Showcase

Richard Dyer’s Stars and general studies analyze the unusual phenomena surrounding influential film stars and their unmitigated power to compel and amaze those outside of the spotlight. His studies separate the theory into three intermingling parts: stars as a social phenomenon, stars as images, and stars as signs. There are many components in Dyer’s studies that can be extracted and used in analyses of particular actors and actresses. However, this does not solely revolve around film stars. In this analysis, I will be examining the famous pop music icon and recent actress, Lady Gaga. Through an analysis of her style, …

The Rise Of The Far-Right In Italy, Justin Lewis

Capstone Showcase

The rising influence of far-right extremism in mainstream politics has been an issue the world over. From the U.S. to Brazil, this phenomenon is causing a shift in the ways in which governments are run. There may not be a better example than in Italy, where far-right parties have come to power democratically and continue to gain popularity. This thesis aims to explore and explain the underlying reasons behind the surge of the far-right to power in Italy. An emphasis is placed on going beyond superficial reasons such as rising levels of immigration to give a more complete story.

The People’S Princesses: Feminist Theory And Uk Media Representations Of Lady Diana Spencer And Meghan Markle, Mackenzie Myer

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This paper analyzes how Lady Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle were and are treated by members of the UK media force through the lens of feminist theory.

Chernobyl, 1986, Morgan Keller

Capstone Showcase

Nuclear energy became an important part of the Soviet Union’s history with the creation of the first every nuclear plant to generate electricity in 1954: Obninsk. With its massive success, the Soviet Union had determined that nuclear energy would be an effective resource to power the nation. Due to this belief, the creation of a plant called Chernobyl was established. This plant was intended to be the largest source of power to date and was believed to put the Soviet Union back on the map, as they were afraid to appear as though they were falling behind the rest of …

The Cultivation Of Materialism In The Fashion Community On Instagram, Emelie Vasquez

Capstone Showcase

Cultivation theory, proposed by George Gerbner, suggests that patterns across the media are used to warp viewers perceptions of reality, slowly creating beliefs and changing habits of frequent viewers. The theory was originally only applied to the study of television in the 1960s because it was the first medium of its kind to be accessible to anyone; there are no age or literacy restrictions for television. However, as media had evolved, cultivation theory has expanded. The theory can now be applied to other mediums such as social media. This paper explores the relationship between Instagram’s fashion community and materialistic values. …

A Treacherous Transformation: 1968 And The Collapse Of The Liberal Consensus, Michael J. Costigan

Capstone Showcase

1968 was a year of upheaval in America--especially in politics. The year featured a presidential election between Richard Nixon (R), Hubert Humphrey (D), and third-party candidate George Wallace. This election was one of the closest in American history. It marks a significant transition, coming four years after a Democratic landslide, and four years before Richard Nixon's landslide re-election. The 1968 election uniquely captures four important trends in U.S. Politics. The American public had grown increasingly dissatisfied with President Johnson and the war in Vietnam, illustrated by Eugene McCarthy’s campaign. The South, a longtime bastion of Democratic support, accelerated its transition …

Murder,Mayhem,Manson, Jack Shoplock

Capstone Showcase

Charles Manson was one of the most horrifying, yet alluring figures to emerge in recent history, in part due to his crimes and their nature, and his strange behavior displayed during his famous trials in the early 1970s. Born in a small town in 1934 Charlie took to criminality from a young age, being institutionalized for over half his life before he was finally released in 1967 during the heyday of the summer of love in San Francisco. Once back on his feet, he began a quest for musical superstardom, gathering a harem of unstable, broken and misused runaway teens …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

Enduring The Unendurable: Examining Cultural Trauma In Postwar Japanese Film, Joseph Worstall

Capstone Showcase

WWII and its aftermath fundamentally changed the collective consciousness of the Japanese people. For the first time in history, and at a tremendous cost, the country was vanquished. By the end of the war, sixty-seven cities had been firebombed, three million people had been killed, and millions more found themselves suffering from poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Most controversially, the USAAF dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—two acts which have been so universally condemned that they’ve never been repeated. For the next seven years, the U.S. armed forces occupied the country and charted its course, effectively operating …

The Cyprus "Problem": How Civil Society Has Found A Path To Peace In A Decades Old Conflict, Marisa Gonzalez

Capstone Showcase

Cyprus, at a crossroads of civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean, has been heavily shaped and formed around third-party influences. The divisions that today have resulted in a de facto partition of the island with seemingly no solution, the “Cyprus problem,” can be traced back to not only the deep-rooted ethnic conflicts between the majority Greek Cypriots and the minority Turkish Cypriots, but to the various conflicting international influences fueling them. Since its 1960 independence, Cyprus has been framed in the context of unresolvable ethnic differences that foreign powers have capitalized on. As the conflict developed around the threat of making …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And Wikileaks: The Public Sphere And The Right To Know, Mary Murray

Capstone Showcase

Jürgen Habermas, a German theorist, coined the public sphere as a place where citizens could interact, study, and debate issues together outside the realm of the home or family, which was defined as the private sphere. The public sphere can also be seen as a “manifestation of citizen sovereignty”. At its core, Habermas centered the public sphere around feudalism and the shift of one all-powerful individual reigning and representing the public to those citizens under the control of the state. Some critics argue voices encouraging the minorities were actually private voices leaking into the public sphere, while others argue the …

Edward Said’S Orientalism: Trapped In Time, Samantha Glass

Capstone Showcase

Edward Said developed his theory of Orientalism in 1978. His theory looked at how Western cultures have treated the East, which includes Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. There is differentiation on what parts of the Occident view the Orient, as the United States has become more tied with the Middle East. In contrast, Europe’s vast history of trade and colonization has connected them with Africa and Asia. The image that has been created has belittled cultures, taken away their meaning, and risks the people in the culture from abandoning it altogether. When power becomes a significant part …

Encoding, Decoding, And The End Of Game Of Thrones, Kaitlin Jock

Capstone Showcase

Stuart Hall, a cultural theorist who helped develop what we understand as modern media theory, defined reception theory as a sort of reader response implying that all media texts are encoded and decoded with messages. A producer of a media text encodes a message which is meant to be decoded by the consumer. They might accept the message, negotiate their own reading, or completely reject it. After spending a decade as the biggest show in the world, Game of Thrones came to a close in 2019 and after months of anticipation leading up to a final season completely fell out …

The Codification Of American Federalism: An Analysis Of Events Preceding The Ratification Of The United States Constitution, Timothy Spangler

Capstone Showcase

The focus of my project is American Federalism, a cornerstone of American political thought for centuries. American Federalism is a political system where power is divided between federated states and a central government, and the federated states retain a large portion of their original independence and police powers. The question this project seeks to answer is: How and why did the idea of a federated system, where the states retain their own sphere of sovereignty, become codified in American political thought? Scholars have attempted to answer this question, but their arguments look at American Federalism in a vacuum and ignore …

“We’Re Here, We’Re Queer, We Will Not Live In Fear!”: A Content Analysis Exploring Gender Disparity In The Public Reappropriation Of Lgbtq+ Slurs, Nicolas Hall

Capstone Showcase

As minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community have faced many hardships throughout history, such as the use of language as a weapon against them. However, this research explores the public display of linguistic reappropriation of LGBTQ+ derogatory language and terms within the community. Throughout history, the use of slurs (e.g. faggot and dyke) and their social definitions have shifted from having no connection to the community to directly affected these individuals. These terms have been used to demonize members of the LGBTQ+ community for decades. Despite this reality, there are some scholars who suggest that these terms are being reappropriated, …

We Live In A Society: Violence And Radicalization In The Internet Manosphere, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

In a world of incels, pick-up artists, and other Men’s Rights Activists, friction between the so-called Manosphere and contemporary feminist thought has led to documented violence with regards to American mass shootings. Starting with the violent outbursts of disaffected young men, I will work backwards to the point of contact between the man and the Manosphere. This piece seeks not to draw a connection between radical MRAs and violence – the mass shooters draw that connection themselves in their manifestos by outlining their dissatisfaction with society as it is, and particularly with what they perceive as a politically correct and …

The Grizzled Wolf And The Mauled Lamb: An Interpretation Of Animal Language In Melville’S Translation Of Ovid's "Tereus, Procne, And Philomela", Dylan Rossin

Capstone Showcase

An analysis of animal language in Ovids's "Tereus, Procne, and Philomela" shows that the women have power in this story despite what an initial reading might show.

Of Fire And Stars And Queer Desires: What A Queer Ya Fantasy Novel Represents About Queer Experiences, Savannah Munholland

Capstone Showcase

This paper analyzes the queer YA novel "Of Fire and Stars" by Audrey Coulthurst within the framework of queer theory and representation theory to find what a novel written by a queer author says about queer desires and experiences.

The Evolution Of Revenge: Genre, Feminist Theory And Jennifer’S Body, Sophia Birks

Capstone Showcase

The representation and proliferation of violence against women in media, when applying genre theory, reflects the social climate of rape culture and the social response to sexual violence. Looking at the Rape-Revenge genre through the scope of Feminist Theory, the only way to reintroduce female agency into a trauma led narrative is to reclaim the tropes used to perpetuation female exploitation and a popular culture ambivalent to male on female violence. Within this subversion and deconstruction, a genre benefiting from female trauma finally includes an honest artistic retelling of that female experience. With the intention of the creator in line …