Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“My Purpose Is To Assist”: How Chatgpt Can Push Liberal Arts Institutions To Think Critically About Themselves, Clare B. Martin

Scripps Senior Theses

Since its release, ChatGPT, a chatbot specialized in writing content and answering questions in response to user prompts, has posed an unclear threat to liberal arts institutions. Can it serve as an effective tool for cheating? Can its responses replace work done in the liberal arts? This thesis argues that ChatGPT’s limitations—particularly its inability to think critically—prevent it from replacing real liberal arts work, which involves questioning, critique, and re-examination. If anything, this thesis suggests, ChatGPT can push liberal arts institutions to better promote critical thinking by serving as a litmus test for liberal arts-level work.

Cultural Perceptions Of Janissaries In The Ottoman Empire And Beyond, Meghana Garcia

Scripps Senior Theses

The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were a group of Christian slave soldiers. They had political and social control in the imperial court and were also formidable soldiers who were successful in battle due to their highly organized structure. They were subjects of many travel journals, memoirs, accounts, and works of art that originated both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire. This thesis argues that in accounts originating from both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire, Janissaries are described as ruthless and powerful. Further examinations reveal that these accounts, despite their frequent negative connotations, are rooted in admiration and envy …

Internal Outsiders In The Domestic Cold War: The Impact Of Engineering U.S. Culture And Citizenship In Early Cold War America On Black And Jewish Identities, Helen A. Landau

Scripps Senior Theses

In the decade following World War II, movements for social change and Cold War paranoia grew simultaneously and were both reflected in popular culture. However, as the United States attempted to combat Soviet propaganda and present a very specific image of Americanism to the world, federal scrutiny focused on minority groups and individuals whose work drew attention to the complexities and inequalities within American society. In the shadow of the threat of communism, containment measures within the United States attempted to hinder flourishing new movements for social change and solidified a restrictive definition of Americanism. Frances Stonor Saunders explored the …

Wine, Culture, And Economics: The Barolo Model For Small Historical Wine Regions, Ravenna June Lee

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the resurgence of the Barolo wine industry as a paradigm for small historical wine regions seeking to revitalize and assert their independence in the face of corporate domination. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the study blends economic analysis with cultural preservation, focusing on the unique circumstances of the Barolo region.

The Italian section of the thesis delves into the preservation of wine culture, emphasizing the role of tradition in maintaining the passion for wine among future generations amidst the threats of globalization. This section contributes to the broader discourse on regional identity, economic sustainability, and the intricate interplay …

The Unwatched Pot, Grace Lyde

Scripps Senior Theses

From the inside out:

The staff of the Gell-Mann Zweig Library are going through it. Edith, who had been transferred to another branch has just been transferred back and promoted, bumping their ex, Augustine, down a step. On their first day back, Edith ends up turning their contentious ongoing flirtationship with Heidi, a different co-worker, into… something else. Meanwhile, both Green and Heidi’s chronic nightmares have taken a turn for the strange devolving into encoded messages and countdowns.

And Felix is there. Doing his best.

Slowly but surely the five of them are going to have to grapple with the …

Translating "La Parola Ebreo": Rosetta Loy And A Child's-Eye View Of Italian Fascism, Amelia Muniz

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a translation of an excerpt from the 1997 memoir of Italian author Rosetta Loy, La Parola Ebreo, and an accompanying paper which explains my translation process, gives historical context and provides an argument for the continued relevance of the text. La Parola Ebreo recounts Loy’s memories of growing up in Rome, Italy, under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist rule. This translation is not meant to be an official English version of the memoir, as it is only a short excerpt, and was not done in collaboration with Loy’s estate or publishers. Instead, it is intended to bring attention to …

Dementia And The Fragility Of Self: Navigating Ethical Considerations In Medical Decision-Making, Grace Sauers

Scripps Senior Theses

As the global population ages, the incidence of degenerative memory disorders such as Alzheimer's and dementia is expected to rise. The frequency of complex medical decision-making challenges for these patients will subsequently increase. It is now common practice for patients to provide advance directives outlining the care they wish to receive; in the case they are deemed incompetent to perform adequate decision making. However, patients with dementia occasionally express wishes contrary to those stated in their advance directives. This divergence creates ambiguity about which wishes should be honored and for who those wishes are being honored for. I aim to …

How To Build A World: Stereoscopes, Tourism, And Land In Zion National Park, Emma Duggleby

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis fundamentally questions how representations of the environment and land impact how we relate to and live in it. By examining a set of 1925 stereoscope images of Zion National Park, it considers how use-based perceptions of place – structured by the entertainment of tourism and mass media – become part of the mundane practices of consumption. By revealing how these capitalist-colonial relationships to the land have been built through time, an analysis of these stereoscope slides reveals that these stories are anything but natural in hopes of making room for other stories to be built instead. The second …

Hearth And Homefluencers: Aesthetics Of Digital And Domestic Labor In #Slowliving Content, Lena Kohls

Scripps Senior Theses

Slow Living is a philosophy that has grown in popularity as a social media “aesthetic” in recent years due to the growth of TikTok as a global platform and the increase of home-based content during the Covid-19 pandemic. Female creators following the trend, which promotes the rejection of high-speed capitalist life in favor of a slow, minimalist lifestyle, have documented their transition from career to homestead through highly aestheticized and romanticized content. This paper analyzes the slow living trend with focus on the gendered dynamics of both digital and domestic labor. It observes the ways in which “feminine” labor is …

How To Rebuild Home: Lessons From Loss, Amelie Lee

Scripps Senior Theses

“How to Rebuild Home: Lessons from Loss” is a memoir that tells the story of my loss of my mother to cancer the summer before my senior year of college. In the piece, I utilize epistolary and creative nonfiction styles to grapple with what it means to grieve a mother both before and after she’s gone and what a daughter’s duty is to her parents in a Chinese American family. Through letters to my eighteen-year-old self and memoir-style storytelling, I've tried to create a coming-of-age story that dives into an emotional and nuanced relationship with family, love, and grief.

“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont

Scripps Senior Theses

Virginia Woolf was particularly interested throughout her career in writing about war, ranging from the perspective of a depressed World War I veteran and his wife in Mrs. Dalloway, a dinner party held during an air raid in 1917 in The Years, an argument for the connections between patriarchal society and war in Three Guineas, and a pageant of British history held before World War II in Between the Acts. Woolf specifically writes of war as it impacts spheres away from the battlefield, in a way that is inherently gendered to her experience as a woman …

Doris Stevens: A "Fascist" Feminist? Stevens, The Inter-American Commission Of Women, And The Unión Argentina De Mujeres, 1936-1939, Jeannette Hunker

Scripps Senior Theses

Doris Stevens (1888-1963) was a U.S. feminist, suffragist, and member of the National Women’s Party. After the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920, Stevens, among other U.S. feminists, involved herself in Latin American politics, working to pass women’s suffrage legislation in multiple countries. Stevens was chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) from 1928 to 1939. Eventually, a number of Latin American feminists, as well as members of the Roosevelt administration, sought to remove her from the IACW when her political tendencies posed a threat to both. Accused of being a “fascist,” Stevens was voted …

Why Have There Been No Rich Women Artists? Examining The Gender Price Discount In The Contemporary Auction Market For Early Twentieth Century Mexican Avant-Garde Art, Lucy P. Bloomstran

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper examines the gender price discount for early twentieth-century Mexican avant-garde art in the contemporary auction market. A premium for art by men is established through the econometric analysis of a dataset of auction transactions taking place at major American and Mexican auction houses between 2000 and 2022. After this price discount for women’s art is established, a deep delve into gender discrimination in the creation and exhibition of Mexican Muralism and Surrealism is presented to provide possible art historical explanations for the results of the regression analysis.

True Love Waits: A Barthesian Reading Of Desire And Delay In Flaubert And James, Yasmin Patel

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the theme of amorous waiting in the literature of Gustave Flaubert and Henry James. Roland Barthes' definition of waiting, as articulated in A Lover's Discourse, is used as a tool to examine the waiting conditions of characters in Madame Bovary, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Ambassadors. By using the Barthesian framework, this thesis identifies and analyzes different forms of gender-based waiting and their distinctive consequences. However, it also notes that the primary texts further complicate the relationship between romantic waiting, gender, and autonomy. Ultimately, this analysis shows us that amorous waiting goes beyond a simple …

An Autistic Spine: The Importance Of Disability Representation In Theatre, Ella S. De Castro

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to discuss the ways in which the current theatre industry is alienating disabled actors and creatives. The stigmatization around disability in any field is contributing to the added misunderstanding and misrepresentation of disability on stage and in film. This is done through a dramaturgical exploration of the history and present of disability representation in theatre; followed by the summary and analysis of a live theatrical recital with scenes from plays with psychological themes. To add to the message, the recital was also performed and run entirely by people with cognitive or physical disabilities.

(Re)Constructing National Memory In Neoliberal Chile Through Patricio Guzman's The Cordillera Of Dreams (2019), Mica Barrett

Scripps Senior Theses

One of the most renowned Chilean exile filmmakers is Patricio Guzmán. Best known for his documentary work regarding the Allende years, Guzmán has continued to make films regarding his homeland in the decades following his initial exile.

The Cordillera of Dreams is the concluding film in a trilogy exploring the natural lands of Chile and their relationship to physical remnants of the human past. The initial and most renowned film in the series, Nostalgia for the Light, centers the Atacama Desert and Chileans’ relationship to the geography as a gateway to revealing artifacts of Chile’s recent history of genocide …

Desalination And Development: Locating The Missing Masses In Dakar’S Water Network, Marina Riad

Scripps Senior Theses

The introduction of desalination technology to the water network in Dakar, Senegal marks a monumental change in how state and commercial interests aim to solve systemic problems using novel technologies. Desalination aims to transform the ocean surrounding Dakar into potable water, a vital resource in the growing metropolis. However, this desalination project must integrate itself within a network of social, historical, political, commercial, and ecological influences shaping the role of desalination in urban Dakar. With millions of dollars and an entire ocean mobilized towards solving Dakar’s water problems, it may come as a surprise that this project will only provide …

Topographies And Counter-Topographies Of Social Reproduction At People’S Park, Sarah Weaver

Scripps Senior Theses

Created at a key moment in New Left political rebellion and organizing in 1969, the mythic People’s Park still stands today between Dwight and Haste St. in Berkeley as open multi-use green space made of and for community development on lawful University of California Regent property. Despite repeated attempts by UC to take back the land, the insurgent space continues to pull defense from various parts of the local community, students and not, have accessed forms of self-determined social reproduction and created material critiques of UC as a vehicle for capital. For 54 years, the park was maintained significance as …

The Culture Of Resistance Featuring Pleasure, Leisure, And Joy, Gabriella Osifo

Scripps Senior Theses

Black students within predominantly white institutions (PWIs) have a unique experience due to the fact that they reside in higher learning institutions that were never meant to hold Black, queer bodies. Residentially, academically, and structurally PWIs display a quality of lacking which consists of failing to provide appropriate resources, acknowledge structural barriers, and address complaints made by students of queer identities, namely Black students, in meaningful and effective ways. Through examining the history of Black student-led movements within the five Claremont Colleges (5Cs) using a Black Existentialism lens, this paper seeks to understand the positionality of this quality of lacking …

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun): Exploring Memory And Language Through Animation, Elaine Yang

Scripps Senior Theses

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun) explores the themes of reconstruction, evocation, and memory through my childhood in Taiwan. Inspired by other Asian American animators, I aim to tell a simple story of connection through my grandfather and I's daily swimming ritual. The film is a 3-minute animated short film following our language barrier and how we engage with each other's differing backgrounds.

A Wrath That Remembers: A Feminist Companion To Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Mary Iris Allison

Scripps Senior Theses

This project is a feminist translation and companion to Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which includes detailed footnotes and references to secondary authors that provide a feminist reading of the text.

This Is How I Heal: Reclaiming Pleasure And Safety In The Body After Trauma, Rosalie Weber

Scripps Senior Theses

I’ve used this project as an opportunity to continue my personal healing journey in the wake of a sexual assault a number of years ago, using the guiding question: how do I reclaim pleasure and safety in my body after trauma? My work explores the process of healing through experiences of joy, playfulness, and connection, asserting that pleasurable experiences are possible in the same body that has experienced trauma. My work involves and celebrates the relationships that have supported me in my healing journey.

These tapestries were created in intimate events between myself and one other person, chosen for the …

"Witness For Her": The Vanderbilt Variant Of "Further In Summer Than The Birds" And The Stakes Of Transcribing Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts For Publication, Isabel Evans

Scripps Senior Theses

For more than eighty years, scholars believed that the earliest version of Emily Dickinson’s “Further in Summer than the Birds,” a major mid-career poem often regarded as “one of Dickinson’s finest” (McSweeney 155) and “best-known poems,” had been lost (Franklin, “The Manuscripts” 552). Yet, against all odds, the manuscript survived, resurfacing miraculously at Ella Strong Denison Library, the special collections library at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 1986, exactly a century after Dickinson’s death. Known as the Vanderbilt Variant of “Further in Summer than the Birds,” this poem continues to be misprinted, overlooked, and under analyzed by Dickinson scholars …

The Burden Of Artificiality: Always The Servant, Never The Patron, Alia Biswas

Scripps Senior Theses

I examine three robots in Science Fiction, Data from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, David from the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Deckard from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to examine how they are analogous to marginalized bodies. I analyze how the marginalization of robots works to disorient robots so their labor can be extracted, as I focus through their embodiment of a happy object, and how their desire is directed towards the narrative of the good life, the myth that a happy life is achieved through adhering to heteronormativity. I use heteronormativity as …

What Lies Beneath, Eleanor Harrison

Scripps Senior Theses

In What Lies Beneath, I explore legacy, family dynamics, and the nature of exploration.

The Role Of Porn Literacy In Comprehensive Sex Education To Reduce Endorsements Of Gendered Sexual Violence And Support Healthy Adolescent Development, Kiana Harnish

Scripps Senior Theses

Due to stigmatization of sex and insufficient sexual education, modern-day adolescents rely on free online pornography as a source of education about sex and relationships. This thesis provides a review of the connections between adolescent porn use and the socialization of sexual violence (SV) and coercion against women, comprehensive sex education (CSE) and healthy adolescent sexual development, and porn literacy (PL) and sexual attitude or behavior changes. Porn literacy aims to equip adolescents with tools to critically analyze sexualied media and messages, to empower them to make informed decisions to engage or disengage with porn and their sexuality in a …

Baba Yaga: An Ecofeminist Analysis Of The Witch Of The Woods, Maya Lozinsky

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I will argue that Baba Yaga’s prevalence in Russia’s culture and media provide a unique opportunity to gain insight into the junctures between the climate crisis and gender inequality in Russia. Despite the persistent gender inequities present in current Russian society, ecofeminist frameworks and ideologies are already deeply embedded in Russian culture. Women, as a group, have always been politically active in Russia, from resisting the introduction of Christianity in the 9th century, to the feminist resistance group Pussy Riot founded in 2011. I will examine Baba Yaga’s history, her role in the Russian folktale, and her …

From Prison Zooms To Hospital Rooms: Unmasking The Positives Of Remote Education, Molly Chao Yeselson

Scripps Senior Theses

From Prison Zooms to Hospital Rooms: Unmasking the Positives of Remote Education is the culmination of a seven-year battle for my life and my education. Remote and hybrid education are perpetually identified as the cause of pandemic-era learning deficits. My project seeks to challenge such rhetoric by detailing the positive educational experience I, a student with a disability, along with my incarcerated peers, have had thanks to distance learning. I argue that as the world shifts from a pandemic to an endemic approach to COVID-19, higher education must keep its virtual doors open to nontraditional students.

Picture Me Like This: A Short Story Collection, Anna Jones

Scripps Senior Theses

Picture Me Like This is a short story collection that explores our racialized imaginations surrounding Blackness and whiteness, and the implications those have for our intimacies with each other.

Of Monsters And Men: Deconstructing Patriarchal Relationships While Redefining "Family" In Seville, Annika Johnson

Scripps Senior Theses

After growing up with an abusive, alcoholic, narcissist for a father, I did not realize how abnormal my perception of family was until I studied abroad in Spain at age 19. The healthy family dynamics of my hosts–a Sevillan family of five who mirrored the structure of my childhood family unit of Mom, Dad, my sister, brother, and me–challenged my notion of home as a place of survival and of paternal figures as monsters. This experience led me to the questions: Do patriarchal societies inherently create monsters that we have to face or are the monsters the exception? How do …