Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Greenbroke: Stories, Sarah Jean Rains

Graduate Theses

In my collection Greenbroke: Stories, I explore the underbelly of the equestrian world. On the surface, the equestrian community is viewed as a world for the wealthy. It is viewed as a community of extravagance and excess. Additionally, there are few pieces of fiction that actually take the reader beyond the glamor of the surface. My stories do just that. Throughout my collection it was my aim to allow readers into a world that is different from the stereotypical equine community they thought they knew. In my stories, horse people watch their worlds collapse around them. My characters exist …

Updating The South Carolina Dance Association Governing Documents For The 21st Century, Ashlee Pitman Ratigan

Graduate Theses

No abstract provided.

The Catholic Church, Catalyst For Change: Taking The Black Community Of Rock Hill, Sc From The Twentieth To The Twenty-First Century, 1946-2016, Sandra Ludwa

Graduate Theses

The Roman Catholic Oratorians came to Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1935 with the mission to minister to the poor, underprivileged, and disadvantaged of all races and creeds, and to spread the good news of Catholicism. During the past eighty-one years, the Catholic Church has had a tremendous effect on where the community stands today. It was, and remains, significant because it improves economic, social, educational, and vocational conditions for the black community in particular. The church is ever changing, growing, and evolving to meet the needs of its congregation and community, and is quite different from the Catholic Church …

Til Death Did Us Part, The Story Of The Health And Death Of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mary E. Edgecomb

Graduate Theses

The awe of celebrity, including presidents, creates the impression of beings who are larger than life, without the problems of the common man. Franklin D. Roosevelt, unbeknownst to many Americans, had significant health issues. These health issues predate his paralytic illness and worsened during his presidency. Efforts to maintain his image as the unconquerable president of the United Sates led to concealment of these problems and, in turn, negatively impacted his medical care. While most previous studies focused on individual health issues, this research will show a continuum of medical problems that not only impacted his presidency but also were …

Combat Psychology: Learning To Kill In The U.S. Military, 1947-2012, Patrick Mckinnie

Graduate Theses

In his 1947 work Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, historian S. L. A. Marshall convinced the U.S. government and military of the critical need for improved techniques in combat psychology. However, his more fundamental assertion that soldiers needed to be trained to overcome an innate psychological resistance to killing would prompt some in the military as well as scholars and medical experts to examine the heart and mind of the soldier in combat. As a result, an emergent science called killology became a critical component in the U.S. military’s quest to better train soldiers for the …

The Temple Character Of Early Christianity, Matthew Higdon

Graduate Theses

I will argue that early Christianity more or less comprehensively envisioned itself, across varying traditions, to be a human-temple community, or a series of such communities; and that this word picture, this symbol, to a certain extent ordered their social life and aspirations. I propose three interlocking aspects to this priestly sociology. First, there is the element of unity. From the beginning, the temple model promoted unity, and it became particularly important later among very disparate groups of people within the church Second, the cultic motif generated a fresh kind of priestly ethics appropriate to the self-understanding of the movement. …

People Sitting In The Dark: Stories, Trent Chabot

Graduate Theses

In my story collection, People Sitting in the Dark: Stories, I explore the ever troubling theme of how to cope with loss, and occasionally, how to cope with not losing when one is so accustomed to it. Though some of my stories are connected with reappearing characters, they are not all written in such a way. Characters in the background of one story may be given the narration of one later in the story, thus changing how the reader views the character through difference perspectives. I wanted to explore how point of view can drastically change the sympathy and empathy …

Are We In The Clear? : A History Of Military Treatment Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder From The Civil War Until The Wars On Terror, Susanna O. Lee

Graduate Theses

Post-traumatic stress disorder is known as a common element of warfare. However, it has only gained significance during the last century. The Civil War was the first time that the military began to record soldiers who were diagnosed with “nostalgia.” With every conflict that followed, the name of the disorder changed. Along with changing the name, new treatments were implemented.

The goals of the paper are to show depictions of the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder beginning with the Civil War until the present Afghan/Iraqi conflicts and how it was dealt with by military organizations. This paper will also cover …

Playing A New Tune: Breathing Life Into Winthrop University’S Academy Of Music, Megan Fleagle

Graduate Theses

Since the Academy of Music was founded in 1975, the organization has provided music lessons to pre-college students in the York County, SC area. It is the objective of the Academy of Music to rebuild its music program, and eventually expand to once again include instruction in the other artistic areas lost since 2008. To help achieve this goal, the Academy of Music will need a strategic plan to act as a compass to help guide the organization as it navigates the challenges it will face along the way. By following the method outlined in this thesis, organizations similar to …

Fragmentation Of Thought, Thomas Seay

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement expounds on my thesis exhibition, a series of four sculptures that explore the contemporary expanding field of sculpture through the fusion of non-traditional or unmonumental materials with portrait painting and collage techniques. The works are built on questions of form, and references historical art movements: Renaissance and Baroque, Cubism, and Post- Modernism. The first is present in the classical portraiture I include in the pieces; the second, in the fragmented style; the third, in the multiple narrative voices of viewers, in the use of non-traditional or unmonumental materials, and in the unexpected groupings of objects, both made …

Restoring Voice To The Mute Clay: Sumer And The Magoffin Collection Cuneiform Tablets, Benjamin Robertson

Graduate Theses

This thesis contains a history of Sumer from the earliest known periods through the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, a detailed investigation into the lives and careers of Sumerian scribes, a history of modern Mesopotamian archaeology, and the results of eighteen months' research into the cuneiform tablet component of the Magoffin Collection at the Columbia Museum of Art. It finds that the latter documents are Sumerian in origin, with most published during the late twenty-first and early twentieth centuries BCE, based on assessments from cuneiform specialists at institutions across the United States. It includes the first full translation …

Vita Via Dolorosa, Vivianne Lee Carey

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement accompanies my MFA project entitled Vita via Dolorosa, which features a glass and steel horse-drawn carriage sculpture that metaphorically depicts a woman’s journey through life, from childhood to death. Supporting the carriage, which is the primary sculpture in this exhibit, is a performance piece that addresses the transformation of this woman by means of sculpture, music and drama. This largely autobiographical multidisciplinary exhibit uses the metaphor to explore the passage of time symbolically through the dark, aged-color palette, the iconic imagery, and the combination of animate and inanimate sculptural resources such as horses, steel and glass. …

Stories Of Otherness, Lee Ann Harrison

Graduate Theses

The thesis exhibition Stories of Otherness is an interactive installation created using dance, music, photography, video, ceramic figurative sculptures, and armatures of found objects to create a voyeuristic and physically participatory experience of situational art. Many artists from various art and literary genres influence my research and art, including Petah Coyne, Mona Hatoum, Pina Bausch, Mia Michaels, and Jeanette Winterson. The multi-faceted combination of art mediums and artists inspires me to create a mixed media, multi-dimensional installation for an immersive participant’s experience as a source for awareness, empathy, reflection, and ultimately as a “call to action” evoking change.

This thesis …