Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Why Do Rich People Not Retire?, Xiya Li

Scripps Senior Theses

Work and leisure are central to the human condition. Scholars from many fields have tried to understand why Americans work so much. Many people believe that when they have enough money, they will retire. However, many people are not willing to retire even if they have enough money to do so. Most people who do not have enough money to retire do not even get any amount of leisure from their jobs. If the view that enough money directly leads to retirement is wrong, then it is time to reconsider using this logic to think of the possibility of retiring. …

Men Who Conquered & The Women Who Mov'd Them, Nikita Chinamanthur

Scripps Senior Theses

Considering John Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, this thesis examines how drama shaped popular ideas of the Indian subcontinent in Renaissance England. This thesis engages in a comparative analysis of formal choices such as doubling, tripling, and etymology to assess the efficacy of two incomplete portrayals of South Asia configured as women.

Ἔπος: A Musical Concept Album Adaptation Of Homer’S Iliad, Blaike Cheramie

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis project is a musical concept album adaptation of Homer’s classical epic the Iliad. Inspired by musicals like Hadestown, Les Miserables, and Hamilton as well as movies like O Brother Where Art Thou and musicians like Bob Dylan, this album seeks to enter the genre of Classical Reception Studies. The album consists of seven tracks all referencing moments within the poem, written from the perspective of the characters to inspire empathy within the audience. The content of this thesis includes detailed chord charts and audio demos of each song, as well as analyses of the lyrical, musical, and thematic …

"All That Remains Of Husband", James L. Kleerup

Scripps Senior Theses

Within Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid, the question of marriage is repeatedly raised. Specifically, it is debated whether or not Dido and Aeneas are married. This question is hotly debated by both the characters and scholars, as the answer is not definitively given within the text. This paper seeks to provide an answer, as the contemporary Roman reader would likely have interpreted their relationship, and also address why Virgil remained purposefully vague. Within Book 4, three key scenes are examined: the discussion between Juno and Venus where Juno proposes the wedding, the cave scene, and Dido and Aeneas’ argument …

The Tree Of Life: Observations From The Olive Grove, Kendall Lowery

Scripps Senior Theses

Scripps College is famous for its olive trees and the award-winning olive oil that they produce. However, despite the considerable age of the trees, the campus community has only harvested the annual crop of olives for the past decade. In this thesis, I set out to learn why the trees were planted on the campus in the first place. To this end, I immerse myself in the history, culture, and commerce of the olive oil industry, and ultimately use the fruit as a lens through which we can explore the colonial history of Scripps College and Southern California. In order …

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 …

#Mentalhealthmatters: Mental Health Awareness Campaigns In Media And Its Effectiveness On Stigma Reduction In Third Culture Kids, Airi Sugihara

Scripps Senior Theses

The recent amplified attention towards mental health and overall wellbeing has been accelerated by awareness campaigns in media, which are culturally and regionally tailored to encourage efficacy and positive attitude changes. Some of these mental health awareness campaigns are disseminated on the social media platform Instagram, which is contradictory to Instagram’s corporate lack of acknowledgement towards its addictiveness and negative impacts on user mental health. The aesthetic and influencer culture surrounding social media empowers its systemic problems, which is exacerbated by modern society’s media dependency. Within its discriminatory and oppressive algorithm, mental health awareness campaigns created by Instagram represent corporate …

Making The Invisible Visible: Mapping Chronic Pain Through Art, Caroline Young

Scripps Senior Theses

This Studio Art thesis explores how I use my art practice as a chronic pain healing process. It draws on the fundamentals of the neuroscience behind pain and the implications of this science for people with chronic pain. People with chronic pain often turn to alternative healing techniques in their search for relief; my own alternative healing approach comes from my art practice of “pain mapping."

The artistic healing process that I have developed takes inspiration from chronically ill artists such as Frida Kahlo and Anna Cowley Ford. The artistic mapping of my pain that I have developed primarily uses …

Aus Deutschland Nach Westen: Eine Analyse Der Westen-Abenteuerliteratur Von Friedrich Gerstäcker, Ruby Hoffman

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the construction of masculinity and its role in the construction of the image of America in two books by Friedrich Gerstäcker (Flußpiraten des Mississipi and Streif- und Jagdzüge durch die Vereinigten Staaten Nord-Amerikas). The portrayal of men in these books reflects a largely traditional and hegemonic masculinity, but it contains a number of nuances that complicate that model. With particular attention to the interaction of this masculinity and nature in the American backwoods, a particular image of a successful, real, American man becomes visible. This thesis analyzes how Gerstäcker’s outsider (German)—but immersed—perspective produces a familiar …

The Making Of The Classic Period Of The Long Black Power Movement In Los Angeles, California, Sherwin Keith Rice

CGU Theses & Dissertations

It is often believed that the Black Power Movement started after civil rights/black power activist Stokely Carmichael declared, “We want Black Power” in Greenwood, Mississippi on June 16, 1966 and ended in the 1970s. Similar to the Civil Rights Movement the Black Power Movement is often examined through a dominant narrative short movement view. Some scholars suggests that “Black Power” stood for a change in direction away from the nonviolent civil rights approach. But Black Power is an enigma and it means different things to different people. It is just one element of the Black Freedom Struggle. Black Power uses …

Towards A Philosophy Of Least Violence, Daniel Whitcomb Ambord

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Gianni Vattimo is often regarded as a purely negative, eliminativist thinker, defined by the weak thought that he articulated over the course of his storied career. Our temptation to read him in this way is encouraged, not only by an extensive and growing body of secondary literature in the Anglophone world, but by Vattimo’s own consistent focus on weakening as represent an alternative to the strong and violent metaphysical systems that have defined much of the philosophical legacy of the Christian West. What often go unacknowledged, therefore, are the positive elements in Vattimo’s work. Indeed, weakening is, from the start, …

The Carceral Death Machine: Savagery, Contamination And Sacrifice In The Contemporary Prison, Timothy Malone

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I develop a convict epistemology that interweaves two elements: 1) a deep engagement with the works of particular philosophers and scholars investigating questions of punishment, violence, biopolitics and political philosophy 2) with some specific, publicly-reported incidents within California prisons in the late 20th and 21st centuries and my own detailed narration of events and the structural and quotidian dynamics of the prison yard as I experienced them as inmate #K73299 from 1997 to 2005. Diverging from Foucauldian theories of disciplinarity, I argue that under neoliberalism, the primary punishments that any inmate is subjected to within the carceral …

A Theology Of Divine Calling In Light Of Karl Barth, A.N. Whitehead, And Meister Eckhart’S Theological Forms, Kin Ting Caleb Cheung

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to show how divine calling can be considered a multifaceted reality. The theory of divine calling includes God, humans, the content of the call, and the interaction between God and humans. It embraces a wide range of data: theology, anthropology, metaphysical considerations, and subjective experience. As this dissertation wants to understand divine calling in a multifaceted way, this dissertation examines it from three different perspectives. The theology/philosophy of Karl Barth, A. N. Whitehead, and Meister Eckhart is utilized. They represent three distinctive theological forms: revelational, metaphysical, and experiential. This dissertation studies their theology/philosophy according to their forms …

The Autodidactic Process Of Hugo Wolf And The Fourfold Learning Equation, Frank L. Strnad

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation investigates and discusses the self-study process of the Austro-Slovene composer Hugo Wolf. A fourfold learning equation consisting of imitation+emulation+invention =results will be presented, discussed, and applied to the musical compositions of Hugo Wolf, who learned how to compose music mostly by self-study, and minimal formal conservatory level training. Standard methods of analysis of musical construct, harmony, and orchestration will be used to evaluate each musical work. The selected musical works and their musical qualities were chosen to illustrate the effectiveness of the use of the fourfold learning equation by Wolf, both with and/or without instructional resources. This dissertation …

First Year College Experiences Of California’S Central Valley Latina/O/X Students, Alonzo Campos

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Making the decision to attend and pursue college as a means of social mobility is an option students in the state of California make every year when graduating high school. Scholars have contributed extensively to understand how students prepare and transition into their first year of college, as well as the benefits and outcomes that allows students to acclimate and succeed. The multiple factors that contribute to students’ acclimation into higher education has been a central point. The aim of this study was to explore how Latina/o/x students from California’s Central Valley navigated their college transition in the first year …

Learning From History: Real And Perceived Threats To National Security, David Dupont

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Significant changes in American domestic security policies were generally associated with periods of military conflicts. Laws that would pave the way for legalizing the surveillance and internment of civilian populations have their origin in the Quasi-War. Likewise, the practice of state property seizure under the Office of Alien Property Custodian and limited internment programs were first established during WWI. Mass civilian internment came into existence leading up to WWII. This trajectory continued in modern times with the extensive system of domestic surveillance post-9/11. In this paper, I argue for gaining a historical comprehension of these issues by exploring their origins …

Fallible And Malleable, I Have Made It This Far, Fern Bailey

Scripps Senior Theses

This project is a culmination of lived years. Included are poems of a Confessional sort. The poems work together, thematically and through recurring images, to illustrate a progress: the progress inherent of living, making it this far.

Tradition, Pedagogy, And Internet Open-Access Music Libraries, Erin Tallman

Pomona Senior Theses

In this paper I take up the topic of open-access digital music libraries, specifically the ways performance and pedagogical traditions interact with and are impacted by open-access or public domain sheet music libraries on the internet. I first consider how traditions of performance and pedagogy have become misaligned in the case of viola repertoire and its historical context. I then turn to questions of copyright on the internet and copyleft practices as they relate to internet open-access libraries such as IMSLP, finding that they often are simply a new medium through which to uphold existing patterns, despite their apparent potential …

Mieczysław Weinberg: Music Transcending Tragedy, Ilana Shapiro

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis examines the music of Mieczysław Weinberg, a prolific Jewish Holocaust-era composer whose compositions remain in relative obscurity through the present day. I begin by investigating the musical expression of Weinberg’s Polish and Jewish identity under Soviet state persecution via close analysis of selected works: the Cello Fantasia, Op. 52 and Cello Concertino, Op. 43bis. Through context of composition and allusions to Jewish music and Polish folksong, these works reveal Weinberg’s identity as a Jew and a Pole, his connection to his homeland and youth, and his musical expression beyond the demands of the state. Subsequently, I explore qualities …

Concentrated Exploration: Reconstructing The Professional Life Of Lucille Paris, Noor Tamari

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis uses archival sources to track the artistic trajectory and professional life of American abstract expressionist artist Lucille Paris.

Post(Al) Apocalypse: A Letter About Virginia Woolf's Fictional Letters, Ethan Widlansky

Pomona Senior Theses

I set out to write about eating distress in Virginia Woolf. I wanted to write about mothers, too, in her fiction and essays, because, as Chris Kraus puts it, “Mother is Food.” I began by investigating one of Woolf’s fictional letters, written in Jacob’s Room. There, the letter arrives at breakfast. This coincidence followed me into my other readings on mothering and food, so I decided to discuss Woolf’s fictional epistolary form for an entire chapter. And then, after winter break, an entire chapter became an entire thesis.

How Epistolary Novelists’ Literalizations Of Moral Sense Philosophy Dramatize The Long-Eighteenth Century’S Gender Battles, Melissa Stacey Bishop-Magallanes

CGU Theses & Dissertations

While some might consider epistolary novels of the long-eighteenth century as the sentimental purview of women readers, this research proposes that many of these epistolary novels serve as powerful markers in the gender wars of this era. While an overall sense of optimism pervaded Britain’s long-eighteenth century, people still grappled with foundational moral questions. These questions came to be addressed in increasingly secular ways by moral philosophy. As these philosophers occupied influential government, law, and publishing positions, their ideas and works greatly influenced the public imagination. The publications of moral philosophers—such as John Locke, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Joseph …

Carnivalizing The Nation: Reassessing The Trinidad And Tobago Carnival As An Inclusive Platform For Local And Diaspora Cultural Identity, Shari Bissoondatt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Trinidad and Tobago's 2020 National Cultural policy ostensibly seeks to build the twin islands’ cultural confidence through the development of a unifying and empowering national cultural identity. However, this research asserts that the current policy undermines these national goals by approaching its community through problematic colonial, nationalist frameworks and through centralizing the annual carnival festival. This positioning poses several key problems. First, it reinscribes the colonial cultural identity of the island. Second, this nationalist, Christian colonial approach reinforces a binary of belonging and non-belonging that excludes minoritized, diasporic, and non-conforming gender communities. Third, by centralizing carnival in cultural policy, the …

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 …

The Subtle Distinctions Of Memoir: Reclassifying Jeannette Wall’S The Glass Castle, Anna Cornelia Salvati

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I will begin by exploring the history of memoir, the rise of the “misery memoir,” and I intend to challenge the generalized use of the term. Though the cultural rise of trauma memoirs is real, the genre cannot be a blanket term for memoirs that discuss trauma. I have selected The Glass Castle as my evidence because although it includes disturbing details, Walls effortfully tries to reorient the reader’s focus. The term misery memoir is inadequate to describe The Glass Castle because it is not about misery. It obscures Walls’s message that in order to achieve self-acceptance …

Virginia Woolf And The Consolations Of Abstraction, Ella Murdock Gardner

Scripps Senior Theses

Woolf believed that there are “two spheres: the novel; and life,” and her “great difficulty is the usual one—how to adjust the two worlds” (A Writer’s Diary 203, 208). But with this “great difficulty” comes great possibility; by pointing to the separation of these two spheres within and throughout her works, Woolf finds ways to create meaning from this border. Even as Woolf’s novels deal with the tragic restrictions of social conventions, the insurmountable barriers to communication and intimacy, the petty insignificance of human life and death within the context of an uncaring universe, the abstraction of both their …

Little Sun: A Poetry Collection, Lillian Aff

Scripps Senior Theses

N/A

Intimacy, Unity, And Shared Consciousness In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Meghan Rose Condas

Scripps Senior Theses

In the novels of Virginia Woolf, the difficulties of deep intimacy are troubled by the limitations of language and the fear of shame and vulnerability. What can characters express, and do words have the ability to appropriately describe their feelings of love and desire? Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves grapple with the penetrability of the mind and the potential for shared thought between characters. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf utilizes Clarissa and her relationship with men to highlight how eroticism and affection are inhibited by shame. To evade the anxieties of articulating romantic feelings and …

The Political Implications Of The Evangelical Right’S Anti-Critical Race Theory Rhetoric, Elizabeth Howell-Egan

Scripps Senior Theses

Critical Race Theory (CRT), once an abstract principle used in academic circles, has exploded onto the national stage as parents fight against their children supposedly being taught its tenets. Through an analysis of key political and religious leaders, I discuss the right’s obsession with CRT in schools, where it came from, and its political implications.

Seaglass: An Animated Rejection Of Narrative Permanence, Alejandra Louise Blackmore

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how popular narrative structures imply that our reality should be stagnant, thereby leaving us as viewers unprepared for the notion of change. I introduce the term “narrative permanence” as a story structure that assumes the foundations of a narrative are absolute. These stories therefore consider structural change as a threat or abnormal. I analyzed examples such as The Simpsons and news coverage of the BP oil spill to demonstrate how popular media frames change as an unnatural occurrence that must be neutralized. My thesis then culminated in an animated short about a person living in a seaside …