Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Yone Noguchi And Miss Morning Glory: American Humor, Identity, And Cultural Criticism In The Works Of Yone Noguchi, Evan Connor Alston

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Yone Noguchi’s novels, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl and The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid, both published with the first decade of the twentieth century, have been the subject of study for scholars in the humanities for the past few decades. The research examines both novels in historical context and against his personal communications and his subsequently published works, understanding Noguchi not just as a Japanese immigrant but also a member of an American literary community. I compare the larger structing of the Diary to the works of his literary peers and mentors and demonstrate that understanding …

The Memorialist, Lindsey Houchin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Memorialist is a work of creative nonfiction. In this long-form essay, the author digests the memories and secondhand stories unearthed while exploring the junked, rusted, and wrecked life of an eccentric uncle who was preceded in death by his sister, the author’s mother. Through its associative and slippery structure, it follows the author as she untangles two histories halted—connected, contrasting lives disrupted by death. Meditative and metaphorical, the narrative explores both the beauty and burden of death through the eulogy form in a quest to determine how to memorialize a life defined by what death leaves behind.

"O Lost Moon Sisters" : Feminist Revisions In Diane Di Prima's Loba, Chelsea Megan Mathes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In her master work, Loba, Diane di Prima revises a variety of traditionally malecentered narratives from a feminist viewpoint in the long tradition of feminist revision that is a cornerstone of Second Wave Feminism. This thesis examines five of the revisions of Christian, Jewish, and Greek stories present in Loba: The Virgin Mary, Eve, Lilith, Helen of Troy, and Persephone. Di Prima revises these stories to include the full— physical, spiritual, and emotional—experience of the woman, often from her own point of view, to give the woman agency over her own story and subvert the woman-as-object tradition present in male-authored …

Sadie Jane, Esther French

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Sadie Jane is a novella set in the town of Gypsum, a fictional location in rural Kentucky. The introduction covers the inspiration for the novella, which is based on Southern storytelling traditions and features the adventures of Sadie Jane, an independent octogenarian who returns to her hometown after many years. Sadie experiences the internal challenges of regrets and grief as well as the external challenges of busybodies and car thieves before finding her place in the community.

Things Cis People Say: Mechanisms Of Moral Disengagement In The Justification Of Anti-Queer Communication, Jonathan M. Sahlman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Despite advances gained by LGBTQIA+ people the issue of discrimination against the queer population continues. Recent events surrounding comments made by alt-right leaders have continued the conversation regarding homophobia and transphobia. The followed study built on previous understandings of moral disengagement theory and communication. 15 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with queer students were conducted in order to explore the role of self-cognitive mechanisms and their potential justifications for anti-queer communication. Findings suggested that not only were mechanisms of moral disengagement present in incidents surrounding anti-queer communication, but the carried with them a range of personal and societal implications. This study offered …

Kentuckiana, And A Dash Of Cambodia: A Collection Of Short Stories, Brodie Lee Gress

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The following is a collection of five short stories set in regions familiar to me: “Dewberry Park,” “YouLead,” and “The Color Violet” in Indiana; “Mens Rea” in Kentucky; and “Tory Ride” in Cambodia. Gay identity plays a role in many of these stories, and other themes explored include family, region, socioeconomics, gender, mentality, and change. These stories are concerned with people on the brink, failing and surviving all the same. Some of them are intended to weigh, and some to satirize. I hope they all nick their readers.

Fistful Of Shovel, Marcee Wardell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

My thesis project is a draft of a novel. It is literary/realistic fiction telling the story of a single father of a young daughter who struggles with navigating complicated relationships and building a meaningful life for himself and his daughter in their small town. In this draft, the protagonist, Clint, deals with developing new romantic relationships while managing his relationships with his daughter’s mother, her family, and his, as well as recognizing his portion of the blame in the dissolution of his romantic relationship with his daughter’s mother and the biases and expectations that prevent his healing and development.

Mule Nation, Polina Konokh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis project is a TV pilot and the second episode of the show. There is also a critical essay that serves as an explanation of the creative work.

There are multiple problems addressed in the text, such as growing up, living in the modern world, countries not working properly for their citizens and other important issues of our modern life, with a thorough explanation of some of them in the critical essay.

The screenplays are formatted according to the current industry standards.

The result of this thesis is two first episodes of a potential TV show.

Hypha, Emily Ruth-Diehl Brooks

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

For hundreds of years, Ona and her people have been unknowingly enslaved. Ona has given everything she is to the spiritual people on the mountain, including her own son. So when rumors spread through the swamp’s magical mycelium that she and her people are slaves, Ona must find the truth and, if possible, reunite with her son before he becomes as evil as those who raised him. Meanwhile, her son has his own doubts after his people leave his friend to die. As he and Ona journey separately to save the people they love, they find everything they believed to …

The Sad Kitchen And Song Of Neon: Two Novellas, John Paul King

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Sad Kitchen, a work of magical realism, tells the story of a saintly woman named Helen. She opens an underground kitchen where people who feel guilty can come to be comforted and nurtured in the middle of the night. The story is, at its heart, a reflection on forgiveness. Song of Neon, also of the magical realist genre, is an existential work about a nurse named Avery and her husband, an owl house maker, named Saul. Their town, Milliard, is under a trance. Avery and Saul struggle with their respective identities in the quiet, vacuum the town has become.

The Impact Of Musical Components On Retrieval Performance, Adkins Franklin Dane

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Many students claim that they can study well while listening to music (Anderson & Fuller, 2010; Patton, Stinard, & Routh, 1983), but how does listening to music affect students’ ability to encode and recall studied information? Previous research on background music and attention has revealed mixed results, with some studies indicating that background music can help reduce inattentional blindness (Beanland, Allen, & Pammer, 2011), while others suggest that music may hinder the attention of the listener (by Shih, Huang, & Chaing, 2012). Additionally, individual differences in working memory capacity impact one’s ability to store and retrieve information, as well as …

Theravāda “Missionary Activity”: Exploring The Secular Features Of Socio-Politics And Ethics, Christopher Scott Brugh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to comprehensively explore Theravāda missionary activity. The philological, textual, theoretical, and ethnographic methods used to investigate the historical, sociopolitical, religious, and ethical aspects of early Theravāda, the U.S. Vipassanā (Insight) meditation movement, and modern Burmese Theravāda revealed nuanced meanings in the descriptions of these adherents’ endeavors with respect to proselytizing, converting, and the concept of missionary religions. By exploring the secular features that contributed to their religious appearances, a more developed contextualization of Theravāda “activity” reshapes understandings of the larger concept of missionary religions. I argue that what has been maintained in the establishment …

Nidoto Nai Yoni "Let It Not Happen Again": The Effect Of World War Ii And Mass Incarceration On Japanese American Women's Gender Roles, Laura Bohuski

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis analyses the experiences, memories, and events of the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans to determine what changes this traumatic event engendered in the gender roles of Issei and Nisei women. The events of incarceration separated families and broke down traditional societal norms leaving a deeply emotional and psychological scar upon the Japanese American community. Ironically, new opportunities arose for Issei and Nisei women as both a result of the effects of the mass incarceration upon the Japanese American community and because of governmental pressures such as labor shortages and the cost of housing over one …

Symmetrically Significant: Essays, David Stephen Haydon

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This collection of personal essays explores the use of symmetry as a metaphor of normality in contemporary American culture. These essays use formalistic exploration to enter into a conversation with the reader regarding the body, sexuality, gender, and mental illness. Each piece aims to dismantle and explode the metaphorical significations of symmetry through the use of interdisciplinary research combined with memoir.

Yugoslav Revolutionary Legacy: Female Soldiers And Activists In Nation-Building And Cultural Memory, 1941-1989, Maja Antonić

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While women are often excluded and/or portrayed as victims in the historical scholarship on war, this research builds on recent scholarship that shows women as active agents in warfare. I focus on Yugoslavia’s WWII Partizankas, female soldiers and activists, who held visible positions in the war effort, public consciousness and, later memory. Using gender as a category of analysis, my thesis explores Partizankas’ legacy and their contributions in the National Liberation Movement (NLM) in WWII (1941- 1945) and post-war nation building. I argue that the organizational framework of the Anti-Fascist Women’s Front (AWF) under the guidance of the Communist Party …

Azimuth, Leslie Fox

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a book-length, creative nonfiction collection of essays with a critical introduction. These essays are illustrating the conflict of fitting within socially-formed identities. In theme, this collection explores class, gender, and sexuality of the self. Each section is introduced with a brief reflection which links the essays together.

Cultural And Narrative Shifts Of Nineteenth Century Children's Literature In Hawthorne's Wonder Book For Girls And Boys, Kristen Clark Brandt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Both folklorists and literary critics have been drawn to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s body of work because of his distinctive style and incorporation of folk motifs. Such motif-spotting presents no challenge in Hawthorne’s juvenile literature like his retellings from Greek mythology in Wonder Book for Girls and Boys; however, contemporary folklore redirects the focus of this scholarship to “how particular literary uses of folklore fit into a larger, more fundamental concept of what folklore is and how and what folklore communicates” (de Caro & Jordan 2015:15). Hawthorne’s work interacts with other forms of cultural expression in the nineteenth century such as dominant …

Run Me Dusk, Zane Truman Dezeeuw

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a full-length novel with a critical afterward. Run Me Dusk is a falling-out of love narrative about twenty-seven-year-old Milo who, after being broken up with by his boyfriend Red, flees from Illinois back to his hometown in southwestern Colorado to meditate on his place and purpose in life. The themes covered in this book are gay relationships, family relationships, mortality, and the natural world.

The Earth, The Moon, The Stars: Stories, Cameron Jay Moreno

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a book-length, hybrid collection of short stories and poetry with a critical introduction. The narrative of these stories and poems are told through the perspective of Xavi Muñoz and various characters related to him. In theme, this collection explores machismo and Xavi’s attempt at overcoming it by discovering the intersectionality between masculinity, sexuality, gender, and gender roles. In addition, the introduction theorizes about masculinity by relating it to water.

Break Us Beautiful, Elizabeth Upshur

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The problem addressed in this thesis is cultivating an answer to the question: what creates or comprises the sum total of my Blackness as a modern American woman living in our current political climate? I primarily use a read/call and response methodology, responding to both lived and hypothetical experiences that explore or demonstrate the ways that identity, race, gender, sexuality, regionality, religion, and the historical thumbprint intersect. The results are this collection of poems that is at times mythological, at times irreverent, both abstract and formal as it seeks to fit these pieces into a singular mosaic. The conclusion drawn …

Mindfulness Of Minnows, Will Hollis

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Literature is a deeply personal and interpersonal act from the author to the reader. In some way the author is attempting to capture their interpretation of space and time inside the vehicle of language. Through metaphor and enjambment, syntax and imagery, this thesis attempts to render the contemporary experience of the artist as he is grounded in location and interpretation. The lens used in inspecting the world is biological and philosophical, seeking and hiding from the truth.

Nature and science are used as linking languages in the collections of poems, seeking to be united with emotion based in the bedrock …

On Being Trans: Narrative, Identity, Performance, And Community, Chloe Jo Brown

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis focuses on various topics related to transgender identity and culture. Through a combination of ethnographic and secondary research, I studied transgender coming out narratives, trans media representation, transgender performance and identity, and conceptualizations of group and chosen family in a community of trans students, the WKU Transgender and Non-Binary Student Group.

The three chapters of my thesis address some of the traditional milestones of a trans person’s acculturation: coming out, constructing one’s newly discovered trans identity, and finding community. Chapter 1 explores coming out as transgender, and the way in in which coming out is valued and discussed …

Temporal Context-Specificity In Predictive Learning Produced With Visual, But Not Musical, Primes, Catherine Woosley Luna

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this study we investigated whether a musical prime would produce a contextspecificity effect in predictive learning. Participants were divided into six conditions of a spy-radio predictive learning task. The six conditions were comprised of a combination of three primes (i.e. visual, music, or both) and two learning phase groups (i.e. retrieve, default). The primes indicated the type of stimulus used to prime the temporal context for the test cue-outcome association. The learning phase groups indicated which temporal context would be primed. In the retrieve group, learning Phase 1 was primed; in the default group learning Phase 2 was primed. …

After Vatican Ii: Renegotiating The Roles Of Women, Sexual Ethics, And Homosexuality In The Roman Catholic Church, Kenneth Brian Nauert Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Vatican II was one of the most seminal councils in Roman Catholic Church history, having far reaching effects on the universal institution.¹ One of the most important outcomes of Vatican II was not the reforming of orthopraxy, but the dialogue that developed regarding three specific issues – the transforming of women’s roles in Church life, Catholic sexual ethics, and the Church’s relationship with LGBTQ+ individuals.² The decades following Vatican II became a new era of religious dialogue among Catholic scholars and theologians, which established new discussions on women’s ordination, sexual ethics, and attitudes towards homosexuality in the contemporary …

"Turn In Your Bible To...": Examining Rhetorical Agency In Sermonic Discourse, Marshall Thomas Covert

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Rhetorical agency is an ideologically contentious facet within communication and rhetorical research. While its importance in scholarship can be traced back to early works by Kenneth Burke and Pierre Bourdieu, debate continues regarding the source of agency, how it is enacted in rhetorical application and communication, and who/what can claim responsibility for the communication practices one may utilize in enacting their respective levels of agency. Thus, the ways in which the rhetoric of popular, influential individuals/antecedents affects the rhetorical agency and invention practices of those without significant levels of influence must be examined. American Christianity, in particular the culture created …

An Adventure Concerning Identity: The Use Of Folklore And The Folkloresque In Murakami’S Hitsuji Wo Meguru Bōken (A Wild Sheep Chase) To Construct A Post-Colonial Identity, Jessica Alice Krawec

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis examines the use of folklore and the folkloresque in Haruki Murakami’s novel Hitsuji wo meguru bōken, or, as it is translated by Alfred Birnbaum, A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami blends together Japanese and Western folklore to present a Japan that has been colonized by a post-national, global capitalistic force. At the same time, Murakami presents a strategy to resist this colonizing force by placing agency onto the individual and suggesting that it is still possible to craft a meaningful identity within the Japanese/Western blended, globalized society in which these individuals now exist.

Alongside examining the use of folklore …

Diversity, Identification, And Rhetoric In Tech: On The Analysis Of Satirical Conference Talks, Bryan Knowles

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this thesis, I examine the rhetorical strategies in Jenn Schiffer’s satirical conference talks in which she comments upon her own tech community. In part, I consider her arguments under the theoretical lenses of Burke, Epicurus, and Camus, theories placed alongside the reflective writing of Ullman as a queer woman in that selfsame community. I also discuss the pedagogical opportunities of such an analysis–of tech conference talks in general–to the modern student in our technologically-connected age. Finally, in the long term, I plan to connect the outcomes of this project to a larger project in partial fulfillment of a doctorate …

The Solid South: The Suffrage Campaign Revisited, Abby Lorraine Crenshaw

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This examination of the southern suffrage campaign focuses the movement through the eyes of three prominent southern women within the political movement: Kate Gordon, Sue Shelton White, and Josephine Pearson. The merged National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) planned and organized a focus on the South during the second half of the suffrage campaign, which presented new challenges. The Nineteenth Amendment passed through Congress in 1918 and consequently set the stage for a raging political battle between suffragists and anti-suffragists. The suffrage campaign prompted women to question how the political platform of suffrage should be addressed. Women argued over the …

You Don't Talk About It, Brittany Lee Cheak

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

I am a poet. As an undergraduate, I explored the other genres of writing—I wrote short stories, attempted a novel-length piece, and crafted essays. While I found plays interesting, I could not write one satisfactorily. But poetry fit like an extension of myself. I could fuse my voice and my ideas in stanzas and images, and I found myself weighing words and sounds as I constructed the lines. It was only natural that I pursue mastery in poetry when I returned for my Masters of Fine Arts.

The material presented in this document is the culmination of two years of …

Woman Standing, Allison Adams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a feature-length screenplay following Farren Cane, a young woman living in a rural Appalachian town, as she struggles with the intersections of gender, class, and the tension between her own ambition and her familial obligation.