Arts and Humanities Commons^™

On The Edge Of Freedom: The Re-Enslavement Of Elizabeth Watson, Franco Paz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Elizabeth Watson was a Boston-born slave in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a brutal assault at the hands of master-shipwright Elias Marshall, she petitioned the Halifax Inferior Court of Common Pleas. Watson won her freedom on 23 March 1778. Thirty-one days later, she was seized by Halifax butcher William Proud, who claimed Watson was his runaway slave known as Phillis. The ensuing trial is the object of this thesis, which will survey the historiography of slavery in the Maritime provinces, explore the development of slavery in New England and Nova Scotia, and provide an account of Watson v. Proud.

Elizabeth Watson’s …

Effects Of Natural And Social Environments On Psychological Development Of Main Characters: A Study Of Three Nineteenth-Century German Novellen, Justin Hueckel

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to address the underlying psychological influences on main characters in three German Novellen: Ludwig Tieck’s Der blonde Eckbert, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche, and Gerhart Hauptmann’s Bahnwärter Thiel. The motivation for my work comes from my deep interest in German as well as German literature. My many years studying in this field paired with a strong interest in the field of psychology have inspired me to write this thesis, which will more specifically address the environmental influences which shape behavior of main characters. While there is an innate, inherited aspect to an individual’s disposition, …

Who Really Controls Haiti's Destiny? An Examination Of Haiti's Historical Underdevelopment, Endless Poverty, And The Role Played By Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos), Patrick Scheld

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The presence of NGOs and development agencies is often considered an apolitical phenomenon, and that the very presence of NGOs within a country is a symbol of a global humanity in action; in short, NGOs equal charity which equals good work. Unfortunately, the reality is often much more complicated as NGOs can also be found to be self-serving, anti-democratic and strictly in pursuit of their next funding source. In this thesis I advance the central hypothesis that the international community’s continued pursuit of an NGO-led neoliberal economic development model has systematically failed to contribute to the sustainable development of Haiti …

Writing Gets Personal: Listening At The Intersections Of Creative Writing And Writing Tutoring, Zoe Nicole Mcdonald

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis, I investigate the extent to which creative writing impacts the ways writing tutors work with student writers on their academic writing. In doing so, I interview five writing tutors with creative writing experiences for their personal definitions of creative writing, and the extent to which drawing on, or ignoring, creative writing impacts their writing tutoring.

Through combining the interviews with reflections into my writer identities, I find creative writing focuses on self-expression and narrative features which strengthen disciplinarity and conventions. Additionally, focusing on creative writing’s influence in the writing center allows tutors to engage as fellow writers …

From There, To Here, Now Where? My Journey Of Vulnerability Toward Interdisciplinary Teaching, Jennifer Lyn Way

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Few words have the power to make people both cringe in fear and lean forward, fascinated to know more. This thesis focuses on one such word: vulnerability. Through the Scholarly Personal Narrative writing format, I explore what vulnerability means to me and how my understanding has changed. I examine how vulnerability in my life helped refine me into a wiser, more compassionate, teacher.

Teaching requires vulnerability, a willingness to risk failure and accept mistakes for what they really are: lessons to create a connection among other humans. This thesis portrays how I have come to understand and accept vulnerability as …

Simulacra Of The (Un)Real: Reading Margaret Atwood’S Lady Oracle As A Feminist Text Of Bodily Resistance, Kimberly Michelle Dean

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project is centered on the female body, specifically body image, in relation to Western, cultural images of women. This is a problem that has been around, essentially, since the beginning of Western art. While different scholars argue whether or not this problem has become worse, it is nonetheless problematic that we are still, in 2018, fighting patriarchy’s control of our bodies via body image. Grounding my project in Susan Bordo’s 1993 text Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, this thesis explores Bordo’s argument that the female body is culturally produced through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s …

Between Extermination And Child-Rearing: The Foreign Child-Care Facilities Of Volkswagen And Velpke, Lauren Elizabeth Fedewa

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

During World War Two, approximately 400 to 450 Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten, or foreign child-care facilities, were established across the German Reich as collection centers for the infants born to Polish and Soviet civilian laborers employed in the German war economy. My thesis examines two such foreign child-care facilities, the Volkswagen and Velpke children’s homes, where over 450 Polish and Soviet infants perished. Three themes provide the framework for an analysis of these two facilities: the conflict between two of the main goals of the Third Reich—racial cleansing and the exploitation of forced labor; the question of whether the establishment of the facilities …

A Par/Ergon For Poe: Arthur Rackham And The Fin De Siècle Illustrators, Jessica M. Slayton

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This project began in Dr. Anthony Magistrale’s graduate seminar focused on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. It is the result of our common interests in Poe’s textual canon, and furthermore in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustrative works that were inspired by it. After performing significant research, the conclusion was reached that despite the extensive collection of visual works, catalogued by Burton Pollin, little work had been done that actually explored the relationship between these works and the text. I found myself asking what role this canon of illustrations played in shaping the public understanding of and reception towards the …