Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 71

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Queen Dido And Empathy : A Different Perspective On An Ancient Epic., Rachel E Kelley Dec 2017

Queen Dido And Empathy : A Different Perspective On An Ancient Epic., Rachel E Kelley

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This project investigates the relationships between gender, emotion, and madness in a range of pre-modern literary texts. It is evident that extreme emotion is gendered female in early literature. Moreover, violence against women—even sexual violence—is nearly ubiquitous in this literature as well. Associating the female with motive shows that such depictions have contributed to misogynist or masculinist viewpoints. However, this project will instead investigate the role of readers’ emotional responses, from identification to sympathy and even empathy, that such writing might hope to produce in readers. That is, these texts, in their depictions of female characters suffering extreme distress, might …


Winds Of Courage A Mallet Concerto For Solo Mallets And Wind Ensemble., Ross Elliott Dec 2017

Winds Of Courage A Mallet Concerto For Solo Mallets And Wind Ensemble., Ross Elliott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Winds of Courage is a motivically-driven composition based on a repeating chordal pattern. Although being written out, the solo mallets parts sound somewhat improvisatory, which is a key element to the part. In a way, the concerto illustrates what it is like to have a crush on someone; where the first movement is getting up the courage to talk to them; the second movement, crying from failing to say what you need to say or not getting up the courage to talk to them, or getting rejected; and the final movement, when things work out in a positive manner, or …


The Art Of Silence., Lydia Anne Kowalski Dec 2017

The Art Of Silence., Lydia Anne Kowalski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the role of silence as essential to experience the full aesthetic beauty of art in a museum setting. Museums have changed their focus due to socio-economic and financial pressures. They have changed from silent “temples” for art conservation and exhibition to places for interactive art education, entertainment, and social gathering. The results of these changes have been both positive and negative. Attendance has increased, enhancing the museum experience, engaging more diverse audiences in museum activities, and dispelling the “elitist” image of the museum. These changes, however, have resulted in the loss of a silent space to …


Trinity Part One : Food Of The Gods., Thomas Edward Olges Dec 2017

Trinity Part One : Food Of The Gods., Thomas Edward Olges

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A novel of supernatural horror, Trinity begins in the wake of a catastrophe. A young woman, divinely pregnant, has lost both her life and her son in the process of delivery. Three people dear to her—her fiancé, her brother, and a close friend—have found themselves irreparably altered by the experience. Their bodies changed and reality warping around them, the three set off across the country in an attempt to prevent other incursions of the miraculous into our reality. This thesis includes the novel’s introductory scene and its first principle section, “Food of the Gods.”


Challenging The Self : An Examination Of The Media's Role In Creating Idealized Bodies And The Artists That Challenge Them., Jessica Oberdick Dec 2017

Challenging The Self : An Examination Of The Media's Role In Creating Idealized Bodies And The Artists That Challenge Them., Jessica Oberdick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Seeking to understand the media’s influence over society, and the way the media motivate us to conform to specific ideals, this thesis focuses on how female bodies in particular are consistently idealized and objectified in mainstream media. Through television, print, and the internet, the media serve as our world’s main means of mass communication. Noting this, this text seeks to understand the female body’s historical objectification through art history and genres of the nude, how this has transferred to contemporary media, and finally states that these stereotypes and norms can be challenged through the work of contemporary artists. By reclaiming …


Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico Dec 2017

Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Leche League International (LLL) is the oldest and largest breastfeeding support group in the world. This thesis examines how, beginning in 1956, seven Catholic housewives from suburban Chicago built up the institutional knowledge to sustain a cohesive global network of breastfeeding mothers. It also explores how LLL managed this knowledge over time in response to developments in scholarship and changing social conditions. Based on a narrative analysis of LLL publications, this thesis argues that the League’s founders drew selectively from existing bodies of knowledge and from their own cultural perspectives to establish a sense of community among breastfeeding women. …


James Franklin Bell : Hard War In The Philippines., Daniel Michael Dec 2017

James Franklin Bell : Hard War In The Philippines., Daniel Michael

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis surveys the military history of the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. In particular, this thesis looks at that war through the lens of hard war as a way of war. It begins with an introduction to hard war as a concept and a historiography of the Philippine-American War and continues with an overview of the events leading up to the war. The first two chapters deal with the wider role of the U.S. Army during the war, while the third chapter examines the role of James Franklin Bell, and American officer, and his command of the Third Separate Brigade …


The Otaku Phenomenon : Pop Culture, Fandom, And Religiosity In Contemporary Japan., Kendra Nicole Sheehan Dec 2017

The Otaku Phenomenon : Pop Culture, Fandom, And Religiosity In Contemporary Japan., Kendra Nicole Sheehan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation centers on the otaku subculture and their subsequent incorporation of Japanese religious elements into their consumption of Japanese popular culture. This phenomenon highlights the intersections of popular culture and religion in Japan, which is emerging in religious sites. Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples are incorporating popular culture as a means to maintain relevancy, encourage growth of parishioners, and raising revenue by capitalizing on the popularity of manga and anime. The relevance of this research connects to the continued impact of Japanese popular culture through globalization. The first chapter provides a theoretical background examining this socio-religious …


Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel Dec 2017

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …


Lgbtq+ Nondiscrimination Laws In Kentucky., Christopher M Wales Dec 2017

Lgbtq+ Nondiscrimination Laws In Kentucky., Christopher M Wales

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the political and demographic obstacles facing the Fairness movement in Kentucky in regards to local employment protection ordinances for LGBTQ+ persons (Fairness Ordinances). Using case studies on recent Fairness debates in Berea and Bowling Green, this thesis explores the concern some Kentuckians have about LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination ordinances in their communities. From these cases studies, it can be concluded that many of the concerns espoused by opponents of Fairness are simple scare tactics with no evidence supporting their claims. This thesis then utilizes a logistical regression to uncover what demographic characteristics increase the odds of a municipality possessing …


Farmscapes : Picturing Land Transformation In Nineteenth-Century America., Eileen L Yanoviak Dec 2017

Farmscapes : Picturing Land Transformation In Nineteenth-Century America., Eileen L Yanoviak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines American farmstead imagery of the nineteenth-century and how those images reflect the environmental history of the North. In this study, images of farms illustrate, through the landscape, the transition from subsistence farming to agribusiness that fundamentally changed American life and the land over the century. By comparing the actual ecological and economic conditions of the farm and farmer to the images depicted by artists, it is possible to see both representations of change and the persistence of the agrarian myth in spite of dramatically different realities. This study focuses on the process of change in the American …


“She’S Definitely The Artist One”: How Learner Identities Mediate Multimodal Composing, James S. Chisholm, Andrea R. Olinger Nov 2017

“She’S Definitely The Artist One”: How Learner Identities Mediate Multimodal Composing, James S. Chisholm, Andrea R. Olinger

Faculty Scholarship

Multimodal composing can activate literacy practices and identities not typically privileged in verbocentric English classrooms, and students’ identities as particular kinds of learners (e.g., “visual artist”) may propel—or limit—their engagement in classroom work, including in multimodal composing. Although researchers have studied the ways multimodal projects can evidence literacy learning and have argued that identity is negotiated, improvisational, and hybrid, they have offered few sustained analyses of the processes by which identities evolve during and across multimodal composing tasks. By examining how students position themselves and one another as particular kinds of learners over time, researchers can better understand the ways …


Having A Feel For What Works: Polymedia, Emotion, And Literacy Practices With Mobile Technologies, Bronwyn T. Williams Sep 2017

Having A Feel For What Works: Polymedia, Emotion, And Literacy Practices With Mobile Technologies, Bronwyn T. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Articulating The New Normal(S) : Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, And Rhetorical Action., Andrew Wesley Holladay Aug 2017

Articulating The New Normal(S) : Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, And Rhetorical Action., Andrew Wesley Holladay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Articulating the New Normal(s): Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, and Rhetorical Action” studies the writing of people diagnosed with autism and post- traumatic stress disorder within online discussion boards related to mental health and outlines their unique rhetorical strategies for interacting with biomedical ideologies of psychiatry and activist discourses. The opening chapter situates this dissertation in relation to previous scholarship in Rhetoric, Disability Studies, and other fields. I also provide a summary of the set of mixed methods I use to gather and analyze my data, including rhetorical analysis, corpus analysis, and qualitative interviews. In Chapter 2, “Medical Terminology and Discourse …


New Perspectives On The History Of The Ohio Valley Frontier, 1750-1838 : Connecting Recent Scholarship With Public Interpretation., Ellen Rich Aug 2017

New Perspectives On The History Of The Ohio Valley Frontier, 1750-1838 : Connecting Recent Scholarship With Public Interpretation., Ellen Rich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to interpret for the public both the native and white perspectives of the conquest and colonization of the Ohio Valley frontier by Anglo-Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Its focus is a planned museum exhibition, “Conquering the First American West: The Ohio Valley Frontier, 1750-1838,” which explores interactions between American Indians and Anglo-Americans on the Ohio Valley frontier and their consequences. The introduction justifies the need for the exhibition and outlines its major arguments. The second section examines the historiography of the conquest of the Ohio Valley and shows why stronger public interpretation is needed. …


The Mark Of The Devil : Medical Proof In Witchcraft Trials., Sarah Dunn Aug 2017

The Mark Of The Devil : Medical Proof In Witchcraft Trials., Sarah Dunn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of physical evidence to prove the identity of witches in witchcraft trials from approximately 1300 to 1650 in Western Europe. Throughout this period, trial records for accused witches and witchcraft texts include references to Devil marks. According to contemporary texts, these were physical marks on witches, which were visible to the human eye. Doctors and midwives verified these marks upon examination of the accused witch’s body. In this instance, medical proof in the courtroom verified supernatural powers. This thesis will analyze the intersection between medical and religious beliefs in the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries to …


Traces Of The (Un)Familiar : Family, Identity, And The Return Of The Repressed In The Photographs Of Ralph Eugene Meatyard., Hunter Martin Kissel Aug 2017

Traces Of The (Un)Familiar : Family, Identity, And The Return Of The Repressed In The Photographs Of Ralph Eugene Meatyard., Hunter Martin Kissel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways in which photographs by Ralph Eugene Meatyard provoke the uncanny—or Das unheimlich as Freud originally wrote in 1919—by breaking from conventions of mid-twentieth century family photography often utilized to establish and maintain genealogical unity. Meatyard’s photographs of his family and friends are accentuated by blurring techniques, prolonged exposures, and the incorporation of dime-store masks, and as a result depict moments when reality is disrupted by the return of repressed material from childhood. For a multitude of reasons, Meatyard’s photographs elicit comparisons to Surrealist photography as well as certain American modernists who also explored the notion …


Intergenerational Music Therapy : Bridging The Generational Gap Through Community-Based Music Making., Michael R. Detmer, Petra Kern, Jill Jacobi-Vessels, Kristi M. King Jul 2017

Intergenerational Music Therapy : Bridging The Generational Gap Through Community-Based Music Making., Michael R. Detmer, Petra Kern, Jill Jacobi-Vessels, Kristi M. King

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


"The Only True American Republic" : Vermont Independence And The Development Of Constitutional Government In The Early United States., Jacob Michael Abrahamson May 2017

"The Only True American Republic" : Vermont Independence And The Development Of Constitutional Government In The Early United States., Jacob Michael Abrahamson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Vermont’s declaration of independence in 1777 created a unique and unprecedented situation in the brief history of the United States. Individuals in the newly independent New York and New Hampshire each claimed portions of present-day Vermont as part of their own state, and while Vermonters wished to become the fourteenth state in the brand-new country, the Continental Congress was in no hurry to take action. This paper analyzes how the Vermont issue affected the broader debate over the nature and limits of American federalism and the channels and limits of congressional power.


Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley May 2017

Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This paper analyzes how Caitlyn R. Kiernan in her novel The Drowning Girl characterizes gender identity, particularly in regards to women, both transgender and cisgender. The book's characterization of gender roles for cisgender men, cisgender women, and transgender women, while seeming on the surface to subvert sexist stereotypes, reproduces the pitfalls of feminist literary criticism popularized in the 1970s and 1980s. Notably, such themes include viewing women's madness as a method of transcending masculine rationality, a dichotomized essentialism of masculinity and femininity, and universalizing women's experience without regards to race, class, and nationality. Transgender autobiographical and literary archetypes employed in …


Stories At Work : Restorying Narratives Of New Teachers' Identity Learning In Writing Studies., Rachel Gramer May 2017

Stories At Work : Restorying Narratives Of New Teachers' Identity Learning In Writing Studies., Rachel Gramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rhetoric and composition has a long, robust history of studying how we train new writing teachers in our graduate/writing programs; yet we lack in-depth inquiries that foreground how new writing teachers learn. This dissertation traces five graduate students learning how to be and become writing teachers, using narrative as an object and means of analysis to study the tacitly internalized process of newcomer professional identity learning. In this project, I enact narrative as a feminist, interdisciplinary methodology to restory new writing teacher research narratives away from implicit deficit or explicit resistance and toward a more generative focus on newcomers’ motivated …


"What To Inspect When You're Expecting" : Critically Examining Constructions Of Women In What To Expect When You're Expecting., Kirsi Lancaster May 2017

"What To Inspect When You're Expecting" : Critically Examining Constructions Of Women In What To Expect When You're Expecting., Kirsi Lancaster

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This paper critically analyzes and draws out harmful implications of the language used around pregnancy and women's bodies in the 2016 edition of What to Expect When You're Expecting, using a close reading of the text and multiple interdisciplinary sources. Themes include gender norms and essentialism, heteronormativity, surveillance of women's bodies, and the reduction of women to mere fetal environments.


Making Sex Work For The State : The Policing Of Sex Work In The United States., Madeline A Clabough May 2017

Making Sex Work For The State : The Policing Of Sex Work In The United States., Madeline A Clabough

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the ways that sex work is regulated within the United States, and analyze the ways that regulation is shaped by contemporary feminist discourse. To do so, it analyzes the ways in which sex workers have been and pathologized since the 19th century, and address the ways that these conceptualizations have been incorporated into the legal regulation of sex workers. Finally, this thesis will look to contemporary practices in the state regulation of sex workers, and argue that the relationship between neoliberalism, the carceral state, and what has come to be termed “carceral feminism” operate in conjunction to …


"Y'All And All These Assessments Is A Little Bit Too Much" : The Effects Of High-Stakes Testing On Critical Literacy Pedagogy., Diana Lalata May 2017

"Y'All And All These Assessments Is A Little Bit Too Much" : The Effects Of High-Stakes Testing On Critical Literacy Pedagogy., Diana Lalata

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

As the United States of America becomes increasingly diverse, there is a need for teachers to embrace multiculturalism within the classroom. Shifting away from the traditional “banking model” of teaching, educational researchers call for a more critical approach—one in which teachers and students challenge dominant beliefs and practices of education. Foregrounded in those aims of cultural competence and critical consciousness, “critical literacy pedagogy” addresses the politicization of literacy education and employs conscious curriculum and teaching strategies to empower marginalized voices. Although a number of case studies on critical literacy pedagogy show considerable promise in disrupting dominant discourse and developing cultural …


The Problem Of Luck And Free Will : How Counterfactuals Can Help., Zach Smith May 2017

The Problem Of Luck And Free Will : How Counterfactuals Can Help., Zach Smith

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

For free will theorists, the problem of luck has been a constant source of consternation. Peter van Inwagen presents a version immune to even agent-causal conceptions of free will. However, van Inwagen’s version of the problem can be avoided if there are true propositions taking the form of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. There are good reasons to think that there are, and no comparably good reasons to think that there are not. This defense is also resistant to common attacks based on foreknowledge and the grounding of the truth of these counterfactuals.


Vonnegut's Composite Work : The Importance Of Illustration In Breakfast Of Champions., Blake Schreiner May 2017

Vonnegut's Composite Work : The Importance Of Illustration In Breakfast Of Champions., Blake Schreiner

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel, Breakfast of Champions, in the context of word-image theory and multimedia publication. Drawing from the critical discourse surrounding the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake, the paper discusses Vonnegut's experimentation with a "composite" work and re-evaluates the significance of the novel in light of this innovation.


Greening Gawain : Connecting Environmental Damage And Masculinity In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight., Austin Putty May 2017

Greening Gawain : Connecting Environmental Damage And Masculinity In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight., Austin Putty

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This paper explores medieval environmental attitudes through a historical reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the study of which provides a blueprint for what may be a method of combating climate change denial at its cultural roots, which I will argue in this paper links to an outdated mode of European warrior masculinity. This paper will demonstrate the connections between hegemonic masculinity and environmental degradation at work as a discourse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through chivalric behaviors, as well as a burgeoning environmental conscientiousness at play that undermines it. The conflict between Gawain and …


A Fly Has Died A Splendid Death In A Pool Of Strawberry Ice Cream., Miranda L. Becht May 2017

A Fly Has Died A Splendid Death In A Pool Of Strawberry Ice Cream., Miranda L. Becht

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans have evolved an overwhelming awareness of self, other, life, and death. We have learned to selectively process information and to replace dissociated memories with less disturbing ones. We have evolved this ability to deceive ourselves, thus producing a personal reality that is innately false. As a society we tend to idealize our vision of the past, particularly our vision of home. Our idealized notion of home presents itself as a supposedly traditional form of domestic life, but bears little relation to the way people actually lived. This concept of a cozy home full of family love is an invented …


A Curriculum Of Civic Responsibility : Transitioning Black American Students To College-Level Writing., Jamila M. Kareem May 2017

A Curriculum Of Civic Responsibility : Transitioning Black American Students To College-Level Writing., Jamila M. Kareem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers how racialized differences educational experience transition with Black students as they perform the expectations of college writing curriculum. I address the question: in what ways can a first-year writing curriculum centered on civic responsibility aid in smoother transitions from secondary to postsecondary academic writing for Black students at predominantly White institutions? My study applies racial and critical race methodologies framed within the tenets of critical race theory, institutional whiteness, and the absent presence of race in composition studies. I apply the methodologies in three key ways: analyzing transition practices through racialized perspectives; evaluating general education writing curriculum …


Thomas Merton : Evil, Suffering, Zen And The Purified Soul Theodicy., David Edward Orberson May 2017

Thomas Merton : Evil, Suffering, Zen And The Purified Soul Theodicy., David Edward Orberson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Thomas Merton was one of the most important Catholic writers of the 20th century. Hundreds of scholarly books and articles have been written about various facets of his life and work. However, one area of personal interest that has not been adequately addressed in Merton’s work is the theodicy question. Merton never wrote a book or even an article dedicated to the problem of evil. In this project, I examine Thomas Merton’s work to determine if he espoused any kind of theodicy. More specifically, I review Merton’s entire canon, i.e., books, journals, correspondence, articles and talks he gave to novice …