Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This research examines how farmers in Pennsylvania between 1785 and 1870 were persuaded by georgic agrarianism to take social, economic and even moral risks to abandon a semi-subsistence mode of production in favor of commercial production. The georgic rhetoric is derived from Virgil’s poem “The Georgics.” It discusses agriculture and man’s labor in nature. Virgil discusses the relationship between man, nature and his ability, or inability, to control nature to ensure his own survival. Beginning in the late 18^th century, supporters of improved agriculture, mostly wealthy and upper-class gentlemen, tried to persuade common yeomen farmers to produce for the …

Prohibition In Rockingham County: Exploring A Digital Archive, Craig Schaefer

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Prohibition in Rockingham County: Exploring a Digital Archive, is a digital prehistory thesis project that preserved and made select Prohibition-era records publicly available from the Rockingham County Courthouse. The records are now part of Exploring Rockingham’s Past (ERP), an ongoing collaboration between James Madison University’s (JMU) History Department, JMU Libraries, and the Rockingham County Circuit Court. These digital documents have been released into the public domain as keyword searchable and fully described PDFs at https://omeka.lib.jmu.edu/erp/. A digital exhibit is used to showcase the records: https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/prohibition/. The website introduces the reader to Prohibition but mainly strives to put the records …

The Private Navy Of The United States: The Effects Of Privateers On The War Of 1812, Anthony Green

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The declaration of war in June of 1812 brought more questions than it did answers for the United States. Economically, the government was not prepared to fund a war with multiple fronts. To make matters worse, the government’s primary source of income was through import duties, which they expected to decrease drastically as the war progressed. Militaristically, the United States Navy was too small to offer the protection that was needed from Britain, who possessed the world’s strongest navy at the time. Luckily for the United States, Congress in conjunction with President James Madison authorized privately owned ships to participate …

Crm Software Interface Use In Mba Program Email Recruitment Messaging, Tracie Esmaili

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Competition for university applicants has pushed MBA programs to recruit broadly by taking a more marketing focused self-promotional approach. To grow their applicant pool, many turn to customer relationship management (CRM) systems to manage email recruitment campaigns. CRM systems are efficient communication managers that consistently deliver promotional email content to vast online audiences. However, writing and rhetoric scholarship promote the idea that interfaces, such as CRM systems, are more than mere tools; instead, they impact the purpose, content, and form of communications. This study explores a CRM software interface along with the emails generated from such systems. The first part …

White Noise, Chris Cohen

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

White Noise investigates moments when white supremacist ideology injects itself into the conversation about American Identity and American History in an attempt to co- opt those definitions and control the conversation. The exhibition considers the effects of this identity crisis on American identity, white identity, American history, and family unity. The exhibition looks at these issues through the lens of the Virginia Historical Markers program, Civil War Re-enactment, contemporary white identity politics and supremacy, monuments, educational history museums, and the artist’s personal narrative about white supremacy as it relates to his own sense of loyalty and connection to his family. …

Unintended Consequences: U.S. Interference In El Salvador, The Salvadoran Diaspora, And The Role Of Activist Community Organizations In Establishing A Salvadoran-American Community In Los Angeles, Blake Bergstrom

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The U.S. intervention in El Salvador had a number of unintended consequences, some negative and some positive, that still have a great impact on the U.S., El Salvador, and the international community as a whole today. Although the focus of the mass media is on the negative unintended consequences, the positive really outweigh the negative. These so-called unintended consequences began with a massive increase in immigration to escape the violent human rights violations and political persecutions of El Salvador’s Civil War. This migration to the U.S. in the 1980s is referred to as the Salvadoran Diaspora, which led to an …

A Rhetoric Of Coupons: Analyzing Fsis And Fsi Coupons Through Rhetorical Lenses, Blake Lubinski

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis consists of two journal articles that examine newspaper coupon booklets called free-standing inserts (FSIs) through feminist and visual rhetoric lenses. The first article attempts to identify the “ideal couponer,” or the audience suggested by the product categories, visuals, and language appearing in FSIs. Through content and textual analyses using a feminist rhetoric lens, the article argues that FSIs evoke the idea of an audience of mothers who conform to gendered cultural assumptions about womanhood and parenthood. The article concludes with theoretical and business implications of these findings, contending that more rhetorical research is necessary to understand how FSIs …

A Collective Case Study Of The Personal Practice And Meanings Of Mindfulness To Music Educators, Jennifer M. Hoye

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The practice of mindfulness, defined as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4), may be an effective form of self-care for music educators suffering from stress. Stressors that music educators may encounter in their professional lives include such issues as role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, the underutilization of skills, resource inadequacy, non-participation, professional isolation, and Music Performance Anxiety (Scheib, 2003; Sindberg, 2011; Kenny, Davis, & Oates, 2004; Kenny & Osborne, 2006). The purpose of this collective case study was to explore the personal mindfulness practices of the three …

Learning New Tricks: Teacher Self-Improvement In Kodály Solfege Study And Its Relation To Student Growth, Jeffrey Alan Ryman

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Music literacy and its acquisition are vital components of all high school choral programs. Chief among the skills necessary and developed at the high school level are audiation, sight-reading, and the acquisition of age appropriate choral literature. Over time, research has informed best practices in choral pedagogy to include specific implementation of audiation and sight-reading programs based on the developmental hierarchy of student music learners. The Kodály system, developed by Hungarian music educator and composer Zoltán Kodály in the ’40s and ’50s, and researched and documented in studies from the ’60s through ’80s, is based on the foundation that only …

Memorializing Men Of The Lost Cause: Public Opinion Of Confederate Monuments In Virginia 1900-Present, Morgan Brittany Pendleton

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Prior to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017, there has been debate about what should or should not be done with Confederate monuments that dot the Southern landscape. The debate continues as to what these monuments mean to those in the communities they are located. Many individuals see them as a symbol of heritage and history, while others see them as racist and glorifying men who fought to maintain slavery. Public opinion and memory surrounding these monuments has not always been negative however. During the time of their creation Lost Cause ideology played a large part in …

Documenting Fifth-Grade Band Students’ Experiences In A Kodály-Centered Beginning Band Curriculum, Elisabeth Henderson Dhillon

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

ABSTRACT

Based on the work of Hungarian composer and educator Zoltán Kodály, the Kodály method, a sound-to-symbol approach to music-making and literacy stemming from an aural and auditory entry point, forms an integral aspect of many elementary level general music curricula in the United States. In this process-oriented, experiential approach, students hear and explore music kinesthetically, aurally and through folk and art song before visual concepts in the form of notes in formal notation are introduced.

In contrast, traditional beginning band methodologies tend not to incorporate a sound-to-symbol approach, teaching the intricacies of a complex new instrument in conjunction with …

Arab Nationalism In Interwar Period Iraq: A Descriptive Analysis Of Sami Shawkat’S Al-Futuwwah Youth Movement, Saman Nasser

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Abstract

Historiography of Iraqi Arab nationalism has studied the Iraqi Futuwwah Youth Movement of the interwar period in relation to the European fascist youth model of the post-World War I era. Moreover, the futuwwah is limited by linking its objective to training high school students of Iraq in the area of paramilitary exercises. By re-reading the futuwwah lectures of Sami Shawkat, the Director General of Education and founder of the futuwwah in Iraq, this thesis demonstrates how the movement was rather at the core of Iraqi Arab nationalism. The lectures appear in Shawkat’s book Hadhihi Ahdafuna (These are Our Goals), …

One Great And Noble Source: The Development Of Democratic Thought In Early America, 1776-1787, Kelly Coats

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

It had been a long summer, filled with hot and muggy forecasts with temperatures ranging from the low 60s to the high 90s. One can imagine what it must have felt like, anywhere between forty and fifty men crowded into the small chamber at Independence Hall in Philadelphia over the course of the summer which was described by many to be “hot and oppressive.” For the past four months and change, delegates to the Federal Convention had come together to accomplish what, at the beginning of the summer, seemed to be an impossible task: to form a new government. Perhaps …

Where No Fandom Has Gone Before: Exploring The Development Of Fandom Through Star Trek Fanzines, Jacqueline Guerrier

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Where No Fandom Has Gone Before: Exploring the Development of Fandom Through Star Trek Fanzines is a digital archive and exhibit project centered around a collection of forty earlyStar Trek fanzines. The website serves two functions: primarily to archive these fanzines, and secondarily to showcase their viability as research tools which can provide valuable data. Through the use of several digital exhibits, this project supports the argument that fanzines had an integral role in the development of early Star Trek fandom and served as a primary means of communication between fans. The website project can be found at: https://guerrijd.wixsite.com/wherenofandomhasgone

Rhetoric In Film: Three Explorations Of Influence In Documentaries And Digital Stories, Emily Knapp

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis is made up of three distinct articles, two written with the intention of publication while the third consists of a digital story and subsequent reflection on the process of creation. The first article serves to answer the question “Do documentary films inspire activism?” by analyzing data gained after surveying 266 members of the James Madison University community. The results suggest that viewers are moved to emotion when witnessing struggle but that they are moved to action when said action directly impacts their own life. The second article is a rhetorical analysis of the 2013 documentary film Blackfish. …

Consolidation: Race, Politics, And Suburbanization In The Newport News-Warwick Merger, David Le Moal

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia changed dramatically during the 20^th century as it transformed from rural farmland to suburban sprawl. Two cities in the region, Newport News and Warwick, employed a policy known as consolidation. While many cities throughout the United States utilized consolidation in the post-war era, the merging of Newport News and Warwick illustrates how consolidations manipulated and altered the landscape of the city. The modern city of Newport News is split between a large, prosperous, suburban area mainly populated by whites, and a small urban, declining, urban area mainly populated by blacks. The Newport News/Warwick …

Music Making, Teaching, And Learning In Chiptune Communities, Jon M. Stapleton

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Music education has long identified “life-long and life-wide” musicianship within community contexts as a primary goal of formal music instruction in and outside of public schools. In music education research, scholars often seek out (and study) musical communities to inform formal curricula and pedagogy, with the goal of better preparing students to participate in musical communities outside of formal institutions.

In this study, I explore music learning practices at play in one corner of contemporary musicianship—chiptune. Chiptune is music that references videogame sounds and videogame music. Some chiptune artists make music for videogames, others release albums and play live shows. …

(In)Visibility And Meaning In Food Labor: A Feminist Autoethnography, Kathryn Shedden

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

My graduate thesis project entitled “(In)visibility and Meaning in Food Labor: A Feminist Autoethnography” illuminates the gendered experiences of female food laborers and how women make meaning through their labor in this context. Gendered experiences do not stand apart from classed and raced identities, which I also reflexively analyze throughout this thesis. Women working within the food chain have been historically marginalized and made invisible, though they make up an increasingly significant portion of this workforce, a trend known as the “feminization of agriculture.” The discussion of the work that women do when discussing food in the academic literature also …

Morpho: Expectations & Mutations, Lynda Bostrom

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Morpho: Expectations & Mutations is a written document accompanying the culmination of my three years painting at a graduate level. The result of which is an autobiographical body of work navigating the tension of being a human with an invisible disease, while straining to understand Western societal constructs of women. I simultaneously reject these fairy tales as a standard recipe for happiness, yet identify with its visual language that is rooted in the vernacular of my generation. Redefining the elements I reject or embrace helps me to look beyond the boundaries of these constructs, and adopt an attitude of curiosity …

Music In Unconventional Spaces: The Changing Music Scene Of Great Depression America, 1929-1938, Rachel Carey

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The world of the Great Depression was in massive transition as the economy crumbled and people sought an escape from their ordinary and troublesome lives. The expanding and remodeling cultural forms of this time worked to provide this diversion for all people. One of these forms in particular adapted to fulfill the need of the American people: music. While music was a popular form of culture throughout the American past, it went through a large transition beginning in the Gilded Age through the Great Depression in order to survive. With the beginning of the Great Depression, professional and amateur groups …

So Small, So Sweet, So Soon, Katherine Burling

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis provides a conceptual framework for So Small, So Sweet, So Soon, an MFA body of work by Katherine Burling. The document interweaves personal narrative, creative influences, historical references and political commentary that explore the work’s relevance to America in the 21^st century.

The Art Curriculum As A Model Approach For Cultivating Higher Order Thinking Skills, Nicole Ross

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

As a life-long learner, I am fascinated by the abyss of knowledge that characterizes and composes a life of consciousness. As a teacher and mentor, I am committed to igniting this quest for knowledge in others and developing effective practices in doing so. The curriculum functions as an invitation to knowledge—or what can be seen as the crux of an education. The question I am most interested in answering is: “how can we most effectively approach curriculum in a way that inspires higher order thinking?” Throughout this study, I examined the factors that go into the formation of curriculum, the …

Pop-A-Washington, Sam Posso

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This paper discuses the idea generation that lead to the MFA exhibition: Pop-A-Washington. The visual aspects and multi-sensory interactive installations mimic the coin operated automatons, video and sound displays, and wearable costume components of an obsolete roadside attraction. While new directions for the myths of George Washington are created based on believable lies, the concept of manmade time and the repetitive action associated with what we understand as mechanized time works against an age where the audience expects to experience all aspects of the exhibition as briefly as possible.

Middle-Class Millions: The Creation Of Atlantic City's "Modern" Image, 1890-1910, Trevor Cooper

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

By the end of the nineteenth century, vacationing became more accessible to middle-class Americans than ever before, resulting in the growth of tourist destinations on the New Jersey shore, particularly in Atlantic City. Between 1890 and 1910, government officials, railroad companies, and hotel owners advertised Atlantic City’s technological and cultural modernity to middle-class Americans particularly in Philadelphia, creating an image of Atlantic City as a modern middle-class utopia.

This thesis further examines the relationship between consumerism and American middle-class identity. While we often consider the link between consumerism and identity to have been solidified in American culture following the Second …

The Land Beyond The Mountains: The Trans-Appalachian Frontier And The Formation Of Appalachian Identity, Joshua Goodall

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The field of Appalachian history often discusses the existence of an identity quintessential to Appalachia. In the opinion of many scholars, this identity, typically characterized as a sense of “otherness” compared to the rest of the nation, dates back to the post-Civil War period when the authors from outside the region began to write about the people of the mountains as inherently different and strange compared to other regions of the United States. However, the sense of otherness in Appalachia dates far before this period and even predates the establishment of the United States as a sovereign nation. Combining present …

The Ku Klux Klan In Early Twentieth Century Virginia, James Lamb

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Over the past one hundred years or so, interest in the Ku Klux Klan has ebbed and flowed. The Klan was founded after the Civil War as a reaction to the imposition of Reconstruction on the former Confederate states. The target of the Klan was primarily African-Americans. The second phase of the Klan took place in the early twentieth century and was a response to immigration which followed World War I. The targets of the early twentieth century Klan expanded beyond just African-Americans to include Catholics, Jews and immigrants. The third phase of the Klan arose in the 1950s and …

The Devil In Cartagena: Slavery, Religion And Resistance In Seventeenth-Century Caribbean Colombia, Daniel James Dawson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examines the role of religion in African communities in seventeenth-century Caribbean Colombia, and the tensions between the system of racial and religious hierarchy imposed by the Catholic Church and Spanish authorities and the everyday religious life of free and enslaved Africans and their descendants. It will examine interactions between African religion and Christianity and African resistance to Spanish Catholic authority. It will examine Spanish-Catholic thought on African spirituality, and investigate the relationship between African subjects and Catholic authorities in the Spanish Atlantic. It explores the goals of Catholic authorities in relation to African subjects, and the various methods …

The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The Confluence Of Evangelical And Enlightenment Thought In British America, Brandon S. Durbin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the …

“‘Bere We Þe Cros’: The Persistence Of The Cross In English Ritual And Religious Practices From Bede To The Reformation”, David Black

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Long before Christian missionaries arrived in England in the 7^th century, the pagan population recognized the cross as a potent magical symbol. As a result, proselytizers shrewdly used the population’s familiarity with the cross, and their understandings of its power, to encourage converts to the new religion. Over the ensuing centuries of English Christian dominance, the magical aspects of the cross continued to develop both mythologically and theologically, without ever losing connection to their pagan origins. The Crusades, both through the propaganda of preachers and the massive influx of True Cross Relics, contributed in a substantial way to new …

Forced Upon The Account: Pirates And The Atlantic World In The Golden Age Of Piracy, 1690-1726, Nathan Ray

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis discusses an observed phenomenon of ordinary sailors being forced to serve on board pirate ships in the eighteenth century Atlantic World. The main argument is that when pirates lost their connections to land-based communities in the Caribbean at the end of the seventeenth century they attempted to establish the same connections to communities along the North American coast. Pirates in the early eighteenth century ultimately failed to establish lasting connections with colonies in the north and had to force more ordinary sailors to server on their crews in order to survive. Colonial and British trial records were the …