Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Facilitating Social Support Systems For Adults In Assisted Living Communities, Kathryn Marie Detwiler

Theses - ALL

This thesis project seeks to unpack how older adults living in assisted living facilities

maintain and deepen their social connections. According to established research, social support systems and active lifestyles are major factors in improving quality of life. By sitting down with residents in the assisted living division of Menorah Park in

Syracuse, and conducting a series of research activities, a better understanding of how older adults live in assisted living facilities.

One potential design solution currently being explored to keep older adults socially engaged could be the design of a social hub terminal that encourages residents to congregate daily …

Wifely Figures: Gender, Marriage, And Biblical Typology In Early Modern England, Melissa Welshans

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation illuminates how the hermeneutic of biblical typology influenced the conception of the female life cycle in early modern English literature, especially the social roles of maid, wife, and widow. Reading texts from a variety of genres and by both male and female authors, this dissertation argues that a typological understanding of marriage gave additional, spiritual import to those social roles, thus further upholding ideologies that defined women by their proximity to marriage. However, this dissertation also demonstrates how a typological understanding of marriage and the female life cycle could also be used to critique gender norms. After providing …

Rereading Mircea Eliade: Some Myths And Truths About The Sacred, The Historical, And The Wwii, Cong Fu

Theses - ALL

This project grows out of my dissatisfaction with a number of popular critiques against Mircea Eliade’s approach to religious phenomena, in particular the charges along the lines that his academic writings are crypto-theological, ahistorical, and fascist. The set of questions I ask are as follows: Does Eliade assume the existence of a transcendent, autonomous entity in his explanation of religion, as his critics claim? Is “ahistorical” accurate to capture Eliade’s sense of the relationship between religious phenomena and history? Why does Eliade not take advantage of the more “historical” or “scientific” tools of analysis of his time, such as Marxism …

The Post-Neoliberal Citizen: Immigrant Identity As The New Service Learning Center, Michael Lasley

Dissertations - ALL

In my dissertation, The Post-Neoliberal Citizen: Immigrant Identity as the New Service Learning Center, I analyze the language of service-learning initiatives, particularly the language these initiatives use regarding global citizenship, through the lens of the rhetorics of neoliberalism. Much of service-learning scholarship has, I argue, taken for granted the idea of citizenship; that is, the political subjectivity of participants in these programs has been articulated from the perspective of American citizenship. I begin the dissertation by tracing the early conversations about citizenship within service-learning scholarship, and I then note how these conversations shift when second-wave service-learning scholars reframed service-learning to …

Contentious Coexistence: The Function Of Material Exchanges In Venetian-Egyptian Relations On The Eve Of The Ottoman Conquest (1480-1517), Jesse Jacob Hysell

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies cross-cultural exchanges of material goods in order to better understand early modern encounters between subjects of Venice and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. It focuses on the period 1480 to 1517, when the ascendant Portuguese and Ottoman empires began to alter the balance of power in both the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Venetian merchants had by this time established communities in Egypt and the Levant in their search for pepper and other spices, and periodically called in ambassadors to intervene with the Mamluk sultans on their behalf. An examination of gift giving and other exchanges of …

How Can We Enhance Elderly Health And Well-Being Through Various Forms Of Game-Based Activities?, Shaojia Chen

Theses - ALL

The health of an aging population is gradually turning into a topic of focus not only domestically but also internationally. The target group of this study is older Americans who are 65 and older. More specifically, elders who lack the motivation to exercise. Currently, related research has shown regular physical exercise is critical for elders to keep fit. However, participating in regular exercise can be challenging for older adults with physical limitations, and it’s often difficult to motivate oneself. There has been an expanded focus on the game design intended to motivate elders to contribute to their overall well-being.Through qualitative …

"Staying Alive" - The Plight Of Our Older Homeless In Syracuse, New York, Yuying Wei

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this project is to explore the services needed by elders

who first became homeless in later life. The U.S. Census Bureau projects

the elderly homeless population will increase by 33 percent by 2020.

Compared with younger counterparts, older homeless people are more

isolated and refuse to use traditional services. Findings from surveys,

observations and interviews suggest mobile outreach is an efficient

strategy to reach out to homeless people. For my design, I focused on

creating a mobile service system to help later life older homeless persons

to connect to the housing and services and then assisting them …

Can The Qualities Of Intrinsically Motivated Individuals At Diverse “Life Stages” Be Harnessed To Create Social Change?, Donna Lynne Greene

Theses - ALL

For my thesis investigation, I researched the intrinsic motivational qualities of individuals at diverse “life stages”. I’m trying to develop a method or system of solving problems that tapped into these main things: First the idea of intrinsic motivation, Second the knowledge and understanding of diverse life stages, Third the methods of design thinking, Fourth the cooperative nature of community and collaboration.

I explored these things to develop an intergenerational system of collaboration and thought exchange toward the goal of helping to solve societal issues on many levels, (personal, local, regional, internationally). My design is a collaborative social innovation community.

How Could We Transform Eating Alone Into More Of A Social Experience?, Ran Jing

Theses - ALL

Studies have revealed that living alone and eating alone lead to negative psy- chological impacts on older adults such

as feeling of loneliness, and nutrition problems such as apathy about the food and decreases in food consumption. I am studying the behavior of elders’ to- ward food by comparing their behavior while eating alone vs eating in groups. Elders living alone in an independent housing facility were interviewed and four of them completed surveys on food choice, dietary patterns and food related activities. Research results have shown that elders are less motivated to embrace food activities when they eat alone. …

Spreading Structures, Li Kang

Dissertations - ALL

Spreading Structures defends and develops structuralism, a currently underappreciated framework in metaphysics. Structuralism treats entities like intersections of spider webs: an entity doesn’t exist in itself, and its existence depends on how it relates to other entities. While integrating insights from the philosophy of science and Buddhist philosophy, this dissertation challenges familiar positions and concepts in analytic metaphysics, including foundationalism, Humeanism, dependence, and grounding.

Forging Titans: The Rise Of Industrial Capitalism In The Northern Forest, 1850-1950, Jason Lee Newton

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation describes the historical processes that made farmers and rural laborers into a coherent class of wage working lumberjacks and it tracks how this class became an iconic symbol of masculinity in twentieth-century America. "Forging Titans" argues that, as rural America industrialized, the built environment and bodies of workers became parts of nature and these natural forces were mobilized to increase the scale and efficiency of production to reach industrial levels. Because lumberjacks were seen as part of nature, they became masculine icons for self-diagnosed, overcivilized, urban, corporate elites who were looking outside the city for examples of natural …

Elementary Reading Specialists' Perspectives Towards Their Work, Wendy Woods Bunker

Dissertations - ALL

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to explore the narratives of 22 elementary reading specialists about their work. It asked: What were reading specialists’ narratives about their work and their influences? The study looked at reading specialists’ day-to-day functioning within an institution and at reading specialists’ interactions with students and colleagues. It considered how these mostly White women teachers were influenced by personal, professional, political, and social contexts they encountered within the institutions where they worked and the communities in which they lived.

This study was grounded in sociocultural traditions associated with inquiry into narrative. These perspectives …

Schooled: Hiphop Composition At The Predominantly White University, Tessa Rose Brown

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation asks what hiphop is doing in predominantly white higher-educational contexts, specifically in composition classrooms. Using ethnographic, autoethnographic, and historical methods, it finds that hiphop’s work in composition classrooms at PWIs is contradictory. This mixed-methods investigation suggests that the contradictory relation of white fans, students, and institutions to hiphop is shaped on the one hand by white listeners’ increasing identification with the historical struggles of African Americans under capitalism, and on the other hand, by disidentification or abjectification of African Americans in an effort to “win” the zero-sum game of capitalism. This contradiction results in a paradoxical situation where …

"Don't Try And Play Me Out!": The Performances And Possibilities Of Digital Black Womanhood, Latoya Lydia Sawyer

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation explores the practices and possibilities of Black women’s identity performances on social media. Despite claims that the United States is now “post-racial,” in recent years there have been several examples of negative perceptions and hostile receptions to Black women’s discourse and literacy practices on- and offline. Simultaneously, we have seen hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName) and user-generated videos created by Black women spark movements and create change. This dissertation extends the theoretical framework of online identity performance (Grabill and Pigg) by looking specifically at ways in which Black women perform their identities online and its outcomes. In chapter one, …

The Prism Of Violence: Private Gun Ownership In Modern China, 1860-1949, Lei Duan

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines private gun ownership and its sociocultural and political implications in modern China from 1860 to 1949, a period characterized by foreign invasion, constant military conflicts, and political decentralization. During this period, foreign guns, along with their Chinese imitations, flooded society. In response to the social disorder, many Chinese civilians turned to this new class of weaponry for self-defense. While historians have understood the gun in China in terms of military modernization, this dissertation sets the privately-owned gun in its social and political context, and studies why Chinese civilians chose to arm themselves with guns and how governments …

A Metaphysician's User Guide: The Epistemology Of Metaphysics, James Soo Lee

Dissertations - ALL

In my dissertation, I focus primarily on the justification for beliefs in the sorts of propositions that are the focus of scrutiny and debate in contemporary analytic metaphysics. I develop a theory of justification that revolves around the explanatory fit between a metaphysical theory and its evidence. I go on to defend the view that beliefs in contemporary analytic metaphysics are justified against skeptics, many of whom identify with the logical empiricist tradition. Finally, I offer some suggestions as to how metaphysics as a discipline can progress by examining the methodology of metaphysics and arguing how empirical work can potentially …

A Portfolio Of Lesson Plans For A High School Spanish Classroom With Critical Reflection, Jasmyn Chacko

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This Capstone projects features a portfolio of lesson plans along with assessments of these lesson plans, written by a site supervisor, and journal entries, written personally after teaching the lesson in the classroom. After reviewing and analyzing all of these documents, general reflections were written to show the changes I made over time and to consider what future improvements I commit to make. These general reflections will be supplemented with current research in the field of second language pedagogy and the critique written by my site supervisor. Overall, the goal of this Capstone project is to produce useful materials in …

Designing For Humanity's Growing Disconnect From Nature, Hadley Allen

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The Industrial & Interaction Design 5th year thesis project process began with an exploration of our personal passions. I started by researching mental health and outdoor activity. After realizing the fact that the two have been very closely connected in

Girls Inc. Of Syracuse And Onondaga County: A Career Readiness Center On The Nearwest Side, Jourdann Borski

Honors Capstone Projects - All

"In Syracuse, New York, there is a need to help young women develop skills that will prepare them for the workforce and help create an emotional, physical and financial independent lifestyle. Girls Inc. of Syracuse and Onondaga County is an affiliate non-p"

The Aryan- And Polish-Passing Women And Girl Couriers Of The Jewish Resistance Movements In Nazi-Occupied Poland, Farrell Brenner

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In the fight against Nazi occupation, underground Jewish movements in Polish ghettos sought to mount resistances through illegal educational and cultural activity, trafficking individuals and families to safety, and armed resistance. Key to these efforts

Felicita - An Animated Feature Film Script With Art Concept Book And Pitch Deck, Charlotte Balogh

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Felicita is a complete 90-page screenplay written for an animated feature film that is based equally on the lives of my Nanu Judith Balogh, and my great-great-great-great grandmother, Countess Felicita Anna Murari. Because I envision Felicita as an animat

In Bold: A Digital Publication, Marlena Ahearn

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In Bold is a millennial-targeted digital publication that discusses and critiques body positivity, fat activism, and how mainstream media presents and talks about bodies. The website is a destination for women seeking resources, inspiration, and entertain

Exploring "Gezi Ruhu" Activism: Seriality And The Rhetorical Study Of 21st Century Protest, Avi Luce

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract Exploring "Gezi ruhu" Activism: Seriality and the Rhetorical Study of 21st Century Protest is an examination of three case studies using contemporary uptakes of seriality—a social arrangement that specifically considers passive relationships engendered by the physical environment—and rhetorical theory as combined analytic lenses. Examples of 21-century protest, specifically Gezi Protests in Istanbul, Turkey, “Free CeCe” activism in Minneapolis, Minnesota and “Faces of Pride” in Syracuse, New York point to collective arrangements as vital components to understanding activism, particularly how individuals come to and engage in collective protest rhetorically. Seriality additionally can guide methodological practices that foreground activists’ experience and …

The Desire For Utopia In The Critical Study Of Religion, Holly A. White

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation argues that the critical methods developed by and used within the field of religious studies can be reimagined as an expression of the modern desire for Utopia. It investigates how applications of critical social theory occlude the category of experience either deliberately or through methodological slight. Utopia addresses this problematic of representing the existential dimension of social life through its particular formulation of social contradiction. Analyzing Utopia's own representational situation within modernity affords scholars in religion a means to consider their investments in and desires for representing society as a totality that creates the conditions for and anticipates …

Thomas Aquinas On The Metaphysical Nature Of The Soul And Its Union With The Body, Kendall Ann Fisher

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation I examine Thomas Aquinas’ account of the metaphysical nature of the rational soul and its hylomorphic union with the body. Aquinas simultaneously holds that the rational soul is the substantial form of the human being and that it is an incorporeal subsisting thing that survives death. This particular pairing of views is notoriously difficult. On the one hand, Aquinas argues that because of the soul’s role as substantial form, it informs prime matter so as to compose a single unified substance—the human being. Unlike aggregates or accidental unities, the human being is something unqualifiedly one, that is, …

What Counts As Desiring The Actual Good?, Sean Clancy

Dissertations - ALL

Here is a simple observation about moral character: Moral virtue apparently consists, at least in large part, in caring about the right things. When we imagine a virtuous agent, we find that she cares about particular considerations, and that her caring is at least part of what makes her virtuous. One cannot be fully virtuous, for example, unless one cares at least somewhat about the welfare of others. Here is a corollary: At least sometimes, agents are morally vicious because they do not care about the right things. An agent who just doesn't care whether others live or die should, …

Literacy And Labor: Archives, Networks, And Histories In Working-Class Communities, Jessica Michelle Pauszek

Dissertations - ALL

Literacy and Labor: Archives, Networks, and Histories in Working-Class Communities explores the significance of The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP), a network of writing groups that existed between 1976-2007 and self-published thousands of texts focused on working-class life, immigrant experience, and educational development. The FWWCP emerged in London and eventually spread throughout the United Kingdom and, then, transnationally. Circulating close to one million chapbooks, this network represents years of social history, testimony, and cultural conditions described through the voices of working-class people. I begin by unpacking the historical and social conditions of the FWWCP’s tenure and explain …

Sporting Bodies: The Rhetorics Of Professional Female Athletes, Lindsey Banister

Dissertations - ALL

In my dissertation, “Sporting Bodies: The Rhetorics of Female Athletes,” I interrogate how female athletes are represented in the media, trace the dominant cultural images and discourses associated with these representations, illustrate how female athletes use venues such as ESPN The Magazine as a vehicle to represent themselves even as they are represented by ESPN in ways that are not entirely within their control, and examine how female athletes’ self-presentation in the Body Issues can be interpreted as strategic, rhetorical acts. This project begins by investigating how historical discourses have influenced women’s athletics and female athletes. Rhetorically examining historical discourses …

On The Cusp Of Invisibility: The Lower Rio Grande Valley, Marginalized Students, And Institutional Spaces, Romeo Garcia

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation considers the potential for decolonial possibilities for and democratic participation of students in three rhetorical and institutional spaces: the writing center, the classroom, and the archives. The Lower Río Grande Valley, the site of the study, is located at the Southernmost end of Texas, and is situated between the almost 2,000-mile-long geopolitical border spanning from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California and the internal checkpoints that run parallel to and 70 miles north of the border. The Lower Río Grande Valley has remained a Mexican American cultural province and zone despite six phases of colonization. Little is known …

The Spock Paradox: Permissiveness, Control, And Dr. Spock’S Advice For A New Psychology Of Parenting For Democracy In The Mid-20th Century U.S., Namhee Lee

Dissertations - ALL

“The Spock Paradox: Permissiveness, Control, and Dr. Spock’s Advice for a New Psychology of Parenting for Democracy in the Mid-20th Century U.S.” examines the paradoxical aspects of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s childrearing ideas. From its publication, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care in 1946 received immensely positive reactions from readers with its unbreakable sales record, next to the Bible. But, at the same time, especially in the 1960s onward, Spock’s advice was stigmatized as permissive by the conservatives and oppressive and male-dominated by feminists. Considering this, this dissertation focuses on a central paradoxical trait of Spock’s childrearing advice, …