Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Baby Girl Z : A Novel, Kathryn Bradley

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The novel Baby Girl Z examines the worlds of fertility treatment, neonatal intensive care, and early motherhood. The critical introduction highlights the connections between Baby Girl Z and contemporary fiction, autofiction, and memoirs about motherhood while exploring how the traditional tools of literary analysis and creative writing, when paired with feminist rhetorical analysis, promote a new reading of these texts as the literature of lived, traumatic experience. The theoretical underpinnings of the novel can be found in works that explore the intersections of the fields of creative writing, feminist rhetorics and maternal theory, such as Leigh Gilmore’s Autobiographics. The novel’s …

The Summer 2019 Uprising: Building A New Puerto Rico, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

The summer uprising of 2019 in Puerto Rico was a repudiation of politics as usual and revealed that Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) dominance of the island’s political system is no longer assured. The political landscape has been transformed by the popular uprising, and new actors and forces are emerging that may cause Congress to rethink the terms of Puerto Rico’s colonial subordination.

Robert H. Pruyn: An Albany Yankee In The Tycoon's Court, Susanna Fessler

Campus Conversations in Standish

Robert H. Pruyn (1815-1882), a "good Dutchman" of Albany, served as the second American foreign minister to Japan, 1861-1865. This was a time of civil war in the States, and a time of great civil unrest in Japan. Pruyn prided himself both on his diplomacy and his appreciation of Japanese culture. This talk will focus on some of the lesser-known details of his experience as revealed in his many personal letters home, held by the Albany Institute of History and Art.

Dark Networks And Pathogens Undermining Democracies: Guillermo Del Toro And Chuck Hogan’S The Strain, Carmen A. Serrano

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

As economies and cultures morph due to technoscience, vampire entities also mutate so as to still provoke fear ‒their bodies change, their populations grow and their networks expand; yet the way to annihilate them becomes less obvious. Responding to these modern day changes, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s television series The Strain (2014-2017) uncannily echoes, or perhaps foreshadows, the social realities under an informational, networked, and epidemiological paradigm. The filmmakers here present viewers with hybrid monsters and environments that are highly interconnected and pathogenic, reflecting contemporary social fears regarding failing democracies and global pandemics. Drawing from Guillermo del Toro’s …

Crossing Boundaries, Drawing Anew : Exploring The Treatment Of American Indian Land With A Penobscot Lens Through The Life And Traditions Of The Red Man By Joseph Nicolar, Andrea Guerrero

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The relationship between the Wabanaki and the land informs their creation myths, their cultural expertise, and individual and communal identity. The connection is so integral to their identity that when privatization of property usurps their connections to the land, an entire

Dynamic Duos: Interrogating Latin American Curricula Through Faculty-Librarian Partnerships, Jesús Alonso-Regalado, Daniel Arbino, Pamela Espinosa De Los Monteros, Marisol Ramos, Christine Vassallo-Oby, Charles Venator-Santiago, Lisa Voigt

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

The ever-changing education and information landscape has brought with it an increased focus on teaching pedagogy and curriculum design. In response, Latin American Studies faculty are pursuing creative pedagogical directions and approaches in areas such as digital scholarship and information literacy in partnership with librarians and archivists. This roundtable will explore faculty-librarians practice-based initiatives focusing on issues related to the Global North and South. The uniqueness of this roundtable is that both the teaching faculty and the librarian representing each academic institution will be present. The University at Albany will discuss the redesign of a Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. …

To Speak Ghosts And See Echoes: Longing In Lolita, Emily Aucompaugh

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

Underneath the plot of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which focuses on the musings of a pedophile and murderer who attempts to “confess” actions and impulses of which he feels no guilt, a secondary motif emerges of a man motivated, guided, and consumed by longing, which he cannot assuage due his fixation of desire on a subject that does not exist. Longing embodies Humbert’s greatest joy and deepest pain, a feeling of anxiety and anticipation which eclipses the necessity of completion. Lolita invokes longing, the desire towards absent things, in two ways. Firstly, Nabokov alludes to a cornucopia of other poetic, …

“Queen Of The Underworld And Mistress Of The Labyrinth;” An Exploration And Critique Of Females In The Bildungsroman, Melissa Aucompaugh

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

I explore the female bildungsroman expressed as a Counter Bildungsroman, the coming of age through a singular sexual event, coupled with a “a fall” and the Contra Bildungsroman, a more complex entrance into womanhood that reconfigures the female coming of age as rebirth instead of a fall. The first chapter, The Counter Bildungsroman, exposes how the Counter Bildungsroman’s coming of age scenario portrays the problematic expression of sexuality (or lack thereof) and entrance into womanhood in the film Labyrinth and the poem “Goblin Market.” Symbols emerge as supplements for the denied sexuality: the consumption of fruit …

“A Life Stripped Of Humanity”: Using The Buffalo Department Store Strike Of 1913 As A Case Study Of Abused Pre-World War I Female Department Store Workers, Kyle Thaine

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

When one considers the movement of women into the labor force, images of Rosie the Riveter, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, or New England textile mills are often conjured. But many women entered the workforce through retail employment, seemingly a much better work environment. Considering awful workplace conditions, these retail women workers are often overlooked. This paper argues that pre-World War I era female department store workers were an abused class that suffered as much as many of their female contemporaries. The paper begins with a general discussion of women’s labor history up until 1913, with a focus on women in …

The Equal Rights Amendment: Why All U.S. States Have Not Ratified, Gina Tan, Mirren Galway

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

Currently, enacted legislation for the equality of men and women in the United States does not exist. Despite many advancements, as of 2018, the equality of men and women is not explicitly stated in the U.S. constitution. There is a long history of discrimination against women in the U.S., and for some time now, there have been pushes toward constitutionalizing equality based on Sex. One such push came in 1923, shortly after women were granted the right to vote and The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced. This amendment mandates that the “Equality of rights under the law shall not …

The Masks Of African Identity: Understanding Displacement In We Need New Names, Kemi Kehinde

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

Two discourses have sculpted conceptualizations of the African continent and its people, most predominantly after colonization: Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism. Afro-pessimism asserts that Africa is incapable of succeeding in the global climate due to African’s futility and inability to self-govern and repair damages due to colonization. Hence, the African continent is a lost cause to these theorists, and subsequently its people are subject to demise. This discourse has two sides primarily, one coming from the Western point of view and the other coming from the African themselves. In reaction and contention to this ideology, different forms of Afro-optimism have developed, the …

The Transformation For Chinese Americans From Political Apathy To Activism: A Case Study On Manhattan Chinatown Tenants In 1970, Shouyue Zhang

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

This presentation will introduce the political participation of Chinese tenants in Manhattan Chinatown in the era of post-Civil Rights Movement. To strive for the self-determination of their communities, the “Model Minority” unprecedentedly participated in social movements named as “Asian American Movement” across the United States in the 1970s. This case study will describe the background, mobilization, and process of a demonstration against the telephone company‘s requisition of land located in Manhattan Chinatown from 1969 to 1970. Consequently, the telephone company was no longer mighty as real estate developers in the early stage of urban renewal, even making a concession to …

A Sign Of The Times, Zoe Roswell

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

I drafted this short story for an assignment in my Creative Writing 102z course based on techniques we learned in class including estrangement but also it was inspired, in part, by Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams’ play touches on certain familial mental health struggles in each character that were deep rooted and I wanted to communicate the same effect. My story revolves around the present life and childhood of Charles, an underground boxer, who was orphaned at a young age due to both of his parents’ struggles with mental illness. Charles experienced his mother’s mental deterioration before and following …

The Need For Autonomy Promoting Sex Education, Mackenzie R. Darling

Philosophy

This thesis examines the current state of sex education in the United States and

how our society is failing students by not providing them with the knowledge and tools needed to be fully autonomous and healthy sexual beings. By exploring what it means to be a holistically healthy sexual being, and what is meant by ‘sexual health’ in general, a criterion for a good sex education can be established. This criterion enables a critique of America’s two primary sex education programs in use: Abstinence-Only Sex Education and Comprehensive Sex Education. After fully examining what comprises each, as well as their …

Blackface At The Met: An Exploration Of The Casting Of Performers Of Color In The Roles Of Aida And Othello From 2007-2017, Kaeli Groenert

Music

In the early to mid-nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy was a common practice seen throughout the United States, as white performers would paint themselves with cork paint and create a caricature of black society at the time. The art form lost popularity with the dawning of the American Civil Rights movement in the mid-twentieth century, but aspects of this have continued in our more modern performing art forms, with people of color not being cast in roles that are written for them. In 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African-American performer to play a lead role at the Metropolitan Opera, breaking …

Nuclear Families For The Nuclear Age: Disney's Part In Creating Gender Roles In The 1950s, Carlee T. Litt

History

The 1950s was a revolutionary period for American youth culture. The Walt Disney Company played an important role in forming and conveying a new image and set of ideals associated with childhood. My paper examines the Disney Company’s messages about growing up, in particular, the gendered expectations surrounding love that revolutionized the way Americans viewed family life. For both ideological and business reasons, Disney promoted an idealized concept of the nuclear family to children. My paper pays close attention to the conversation occurring between Disney and the American public by analyzing both 1950s Disney storylines, disseminated in multiple mediums such …

Decentering The Dictator: ‘In The Time Of The Butterflies’ And The Mirabal Sisters’ Outspoken Challenge, Elise Coombs

English

Julia Alvarez’s portrayal of the Mirabal sisters from In the Time of the Butterflies centers the novel around the sisters’ speech and humanity. This decenters the dictator, a figure who was often central to Latin American dictator novels. The first chapter will provide background on the dictator’s characteristics to demonstrate how the Mirabal sisters’ speech draws attention away from his power. The four times the sisters encounter the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the novel, their speech decenters him because Alvarez emphasizes their experience. In the second chapter, I examine the gaps between each encounter, focusing on Minerva’s speech development towards …

Undone By Adaptation? : Tracing Desdemona And Emilia In Othello And Otello(S), Emily Buckley-Crist

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis explores the characters of Desdemona and Emilia in Shakespeare’s Othello and productions of Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito’s operatic adaptation, Otello (1887). Shakespeare structures the play’s meditation on the limitations of feminine agency in early modern England with Desdemona and Emilia’s detached acts of defiance. When both women succumb to the parasitism of their marriages, Shakespeare illuminates the unjust danger defiant women face under the unyielding power of early modern patriarchy. Surprisingly, Verdi and Boito diminish the agency of these female characters in their opera, instead favoring male characters while adapting Shakespeare’s play to the form and audience …

A Good Education For All? Desegregation And Educational Reform In Albany’S Schools, Joshua Levine

History Honors Program

Public and private schools throughout American history have been segregated due to policies crafted and implemented by local school boards. The Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case said segregated public schools were inherently flawed and that the idea of separate-but-equal had no place in public education. But how were school boards to integrate the schools? Cities such as Albany had neighborhoods that had a majority black proportion, meaning that the schools within these neighborhoods were going to be segregated. Policies pursued by the Albany School Board of Education did not provide a solution and The …

United States V. Dennett:The Battle For Sex Education In The Early 1900s, Hannah Breda

History Honors Program

The 1873 Comstock Act outlawed the production and distribution of any materials that were deemed to be obscene or capable of arousing adolescents. Mary Ware Dennett, a women's rights activist and pioneer in birth control and sex education, was one of the many who fell victim to this law. Dennett was arrested in 1929 for distributing her sex education pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life, written for her teenage sons after finding the sex education materials produced by the government to be insufficient. This paper argues that Dennett's pamphlet was scrutinized in United States v. Dennett because it …

What Goes Up Must Go Down: Denunciations In The Great Terror, Cassidy Griffin

History Honors Program

The Soviet Union of the 1930s was marked by fearmongering, denunciations, and a series of show trials that rocked the Communist Party. The Great Terror started officially in late 1934 and continued until 1938, entangling millions within its web of imprisonment, forced labor, and executions. The general consensus has been that the Terror was a result of government influence and citizens’ actions. A lot of the research done on this era has focused on why the average citizen would willingly participate in the government’s reign of terror. By examining a series of memoirs written during and about this time and …

Liberalism And The Lessons Of Weimar Arnold Brecht, Hans Speier, And Mid-Century America, Alexander Mckenna

History Honors Program

In 1933, the people Germany elected Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party into power. This occurred under what had previously been a liberal democracy, the Weimar Republic. In the months following this event, the Nazis passed legislation that transformed what was once a bastion of free thinking, into the totalitarian empire. This event sparked an ideological crisis for the liberal intellectuals of Germany, and proposed an urgent question to the world: how can you, if at all, safeguard democracy without compromising its principles? This thesis follows Arnold Brecht and Hans Speier, two liberal intellectuals who came to the United States …

Roger Bacon: The Christian, The Alchemist, The Enigma, Victoria Tobes

History Honors Program

This paper explores the life and work of 13th century English Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon in light of the spiritual-religious practice of alchemy. Bacon’s works in pertinence to alchemy reflect his belonging to a school of intellectual thought known as Hermeticism; which encompasses the practice of alchemy. Bacon can be placed among other philosophic practitioners of alchemy throughout history; allowing for expanded insight into the life of this medieval scholar. Throughout history, Bacon’s most well-known work, the Opus Majus, has been interpreted in a variety of ways. However, when considering what the practice of alchemy is at its Arabic …

The Invention Of Frederick The Great, Matheson Curry

History Honors Program

Frederick the Great is a titanic figure in European history. During his nearly half-century reign he transformed the miniscule territory of Brandenburg-Prussia into a formidable European power, and in the 1860s (about eighty years after Frederick died) Prussia eventually led the charge to form what we now know as Germany. Despite what Frederick may have actually thought about the idea of a purely "German" nation his contribution to the creation of the country, albeit unintentional, has been relentlessly lauded in the years after his death by many in Germany. Even today Frederick amazingly enough retains a large degree of his …

Language Contact Phenomena In Three Aljamiado Texts: Religion As A Sociolinguistic Factor, Juan Antonio Thomas, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Aljamiado literature, composed in Romance and recorded in Arabic script by Moriscos before their final expulsion from Spain, represents a valuable resource for the linguistic study of the contact situations between Arabic and Romance varieties in the Iberian Peninsula. By examining Arabic insertions in Romance texts, we are able to probe the degree of bilingualism that these communities exhibited and the factors that led to a continued use of the Arabic language in the face of religious and linguistic persecution between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a previous work (Thomas 2015), occurrences of lexical insertions and instances of codeswitching …

A Renewed Call For Feminist Resistance To Population Control, Anne Hendrixson, Ellen Foley, Rajani Bhatia, Daniel Bendix, Susanne Schultz, Kalpana Wilson, Wangui Kimari

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Scholarship

We are feminist advocates for reproductive, environmental and climate justice who are deeply concerned about rising sea levels and rising inequalities. We are troubled that population numbers, composition and movements are often seen as causing or worsening climate change, environmental degradation, poverty, war and conflict. For instance, the United Nation’s 2019 World Population Prospects says that rapid population growth will stand in the way of accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty, equality and hunger.

Stonewall’S Parallel Queer Latinidad, Kassondra Gonzalez

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Honors Program

The Stonewall Riots in New York City marked the official beginning of the U.S. gay rights movement in 1969. Following a police raid, the intense fight between officers and LGBTQ+ bar goers at Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn developed into a series of organized uprisings over the following days. Despite the bar’s predominantly white population, people of color were on the front lines of most physical incidents during the riots as well as other forms of activism (Gan 2007, 131). According to scholar Jessi Gan, the legacy of black and brown activism during this time period has historically been glossed over, particularly …

Dear United States Of America, We Are Children: Unaccompanied Minors At The U.S./Mexico Border, Briana Dominguez

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Honors Program

The United States government creates policies that have systematically excluded nonwhites from being legally recognized as members of U.S. society. Immigration laws have historically been influenced by the cultural construction of race and racism in the United States.

Barbados’ Debt Crisis: The Effects Of Colonialism And Neoliberalism, Noel Chase

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Honors Program

This research project explains the correlation between the tourism sector and Barbados’s cycle of debt. Barbados has continuously incurred debt, from international financing institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, since its independence from Great Britain in 1966. As of 2017, the estimated national debt of Barbados is $7.92 billion (USD).[1] Sir Hillary Beckles, Michael Howard, and other economic experts and professors at the University of the West Indies, believe the country has gone into debt for a variety of different reasons. Barbados incurred such a staggering debt due in part to its violent history of chattel slavery, the …

A Missed Opportunity: Post-Revolutionary Mexican Murals And Incomplete Historical Narratives, Jesus Gandara Ortega

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Honors Program

This research project investigates the sociopolitical factors that contributed to the lack of Afro-Mexican representation in post-revolutionary murals and how the erasure of Afro-Mexicans in government-commissioned propaganda has affected Afro-descendant communities today in Mexico. The post-revolutionary struggles for power to unite the country have all but erased the representation of Afro-descendants in murals, historical records, and among its citizens. The absence of Afro-descendants in post-revolutionary murals contributes to continued stigma and discrimination against Afro-descendants in Mexico.