Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Creating Community In A Space Of Strangers: Sea Shanties In Theatre, Cassandra Merena

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Theatre is more than watching actors in the present. It can bring a magic into the room that connects us to a tangible ride of emotions. Sea shanties, a widely known variety of maritime singing, is purposely meant to bring its singers together. I wrote and directed an original one-act play structured around its repetitive beats, to create a communal feeling that will deem a sea of strangers a community for that day. The songs curated were specifically chosen to achieve that sense of community–songs that allow moments of reflection, toe-tapping, humming, and recognition. Phantom Pains is about a captain …

Does "Good" Mean White?: Understanding The Complexities Of Refugee Resettlement In Bowling Green, Kentucky, Molly Shaddix

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Bowling Green, Kentucky is a relatively small town comparable to its counterparts across the South. However, Bowling Green has a significant population of refugee inhabitants that have resettled in waves since the late 1970s. This paper describes the lived experience of refugees resettling by analyzing community action and troubles faced while working for independence in their new homes. Some factors explored are access to affordable housing, language barriers, and trouble in education. In addition, this paper contextualizes their lived experiences with other resettlement communities across the United States to understand how Bowling Green fits into patterns of societal xenophobia, racism, …

Transcendence: An Elegy To Transgenerational Systematic Adaptation, Nicholas Struck

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

When major tragedy occurs, it tends to strike grief in the minds and hearts of people throughout the world. When we engage in conversation about our individual vulnerabilities, we discover a realistic, but often beautiful mundaneness to life that is often lost. Channeling the mundane into art and community helps us to better understand the nuances of humanity. This gives the opportunity for us to connect through storytelling— using narrative as an outlet to express our feelings of grief, hope, and sacrifice. This project is a devised performance piece that explores how tragedy affects community, how people respond to major …

Sustainable Messaging In Film: A Survey Of A College Community, Chelsea Faught

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of sustainability encompasses environmental, social, and economic issues. A sustainable approach encourages a balanced earth in both well-being and resource conservation for the sake of future generations. Unfortunately, awareness of and participation in various dimension of sustainability are currently inadequate given the current projections of the negative impact of climate change to humanity. Therefore, this project was designed to research if there was a relationship between viewing sustainably themed films and becoming more sustainably-conscious as a way to explore a potential avenue for mental and behavioral change. Furthermore, this project examines audience perception of sustainable messaging and content …

Gather, Katie M. Meek

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food is both basic and multifaceted. It nourishes satisfies, levels, defines and gathers us. Food unifies and brings people together as part of the human experience. When people embrace food and make it their own, it can shape and define their lives in big ways.

Food can cultivate a lifestyle, preserve cultural identity, foster a small business, nurture relationships and serve a community.

This project is a documentation of five different groups of people that experience food in uniquely different ways. Through photo essays and written stories I strive to capture what how food brings people together in specific ways …

Measuring Empowerment: A Program Evaluation Of The Youth Organization Sal Y Luz In Medellin, Colombia, Ashley D. Fitzsimons

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of empowerment is critical to the development of youths' ability to recognize themselves as stakeholders in their community and as participants in civic engagement (Kohlfeldt, 2011; Langhout, 2010). However, programs or groups with goals to foster ideals of empowerment face myriad challenges, such as the social and environmental context of the youth, and the status that the youth maintain in their communities (Kohlfeldt, 2011; Langhout, 2010; Zimmerman, 2004). To measure empowerment, the current study draws observations from a focus-group affiliated with a youth-centered community group known as Sal y Luz located in a disadvantaged comuna of Medellin, Colombia. …

Jesus, I Trust In You: St. Thomas Aquinas' Jubilee, John A. Sohl

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of “Life Reporting” is a completely new idea, at least in terms of how I have experienced it. In today’s world of blogs and social networking, it is essential for broadcast journalists to embrace their own lives in the same world of professional and ethical reporting. As I describe my experience of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Jubilee, I have no choice but to provide the context and build-up of this intense passion toward my overarching point. Working through all the communities of which I have been a part, from attending St. Luke Catholic Church all the way to the …