Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Building Bridges For Women Through Service-Learning: Bringing Students And Communities Together To Combat Domestic Violence In Honduras, Darlene Metcalf-Bergeron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis defines service-learning and domestic violence, while describing how bringing students and communities together through service-learning courses can build and has already built bridges for victims of violence against women. Collaboration is essential in the quest to raise awareness about domestic violence through education. This thesis will demonstrate through data and photojournalism this collaboration between students of SPA/MLC Service-Learning Classes of UMaine from 2006 through to and including 2011.

As the themes in this thesis develop the reader will also begin to question what lies just beyond our borders and behind closed doors for women of the twenty-first century. …

Framing Of Business In China: East Vs. West, Xueyi Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China is one of the largest and most promising markets for new global business ventures. This exploratory research investigates the current news-related themes regarding business in China by comparing news originating from eastern countries to western countries. This study applied agenda-setting and framing theoretical frameworks. A mixed-method approach of both qualitative and quantitative content analyses was used to generate key themes and their related concepts. The results indicate some thematic similarities as well as differences in agenda and news framing between eastern and western news samples. This exploratory study contributes to agenda-setting and framing literature as well as by creating …

Fire On The Prisoners: An Autoethnographic Study Of Ethics In Historical Storytelling, A. Trae Mcmaken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During field experience as a storyteller constructing a performance based on the Battle of Kings Mountain on behalf of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association and the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, I encountered ethical and philosophical dilemmas. This challenge centered on ethical and spiritual convictions that put me in potential conflict with the task of creating a performance about war. This experience forms the basis of an autoethnographic approach to the art form, revealing the critical role played by personal ethics and a functioning engagement with historiography and narrative theory in producing effective performance stories. Historical performance storytelling has little …

Can I Get A Yee-Haw And An Amen: Collecting And Interpreting Oral Histories Of Texas Cowboy Churches, Jake R. Mcadams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With more than 850 Christian cowboy ministries worldwide and approximately 160 individual cowboy churches in Texas, the cowboy church movement is an immensely important religious movement that speaks volumes about contemporary culture. Cowboy churches' "Low Barriers Model" Christianity attracts many disenchanted with traditional evangelicalism's assumed sterilized and feminized religion. Despite the cowboy church movement's exponential growth since the late-1980s, few outside the movement understand the complexity cowboy churches envelop. Using Cowboy Christians' oral histories, Jake McAdams argues that the cowboy church movement is a suburban seeker church movement centered around the mythic cowboy identity in which participants have a sincere …

Women, Feminism, And Aging In Appalachia, Sherry Kaye Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aging has become a problem for men and women in Western societies where youth is touted and revered as a standard of success by which individual value is measured and esteemed. Older women in particular find that as they age they face discrimination in the form of ageism and social diminution. The purpose of the study is to remedy a lack of scholarship on aging in Appalachia and to establish a precedent for future studies. A liberal, feminist approach is used to analyze the results of recorded interviews and to interpret transcripts of relevant data. The results of the analysis …

“Between The Dream And Reality”: Divination In The Novels Of Cormac Mccarthy, Robert A. Kottage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse.

My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the …

Native American Empowerment Through Digital Repatriation, Michelle L. Fitch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Following the Enlightenment, Western adherence to positivist theory influenced practices of Western research and documentation. Prior to the introduction of positivism into Western scholarship, innovations in printing technology, literary advancements, and the development of capitalism encouraged the passing of copyright statutes by nation-states in fifteenth century Europe. The evolution of copyright and positivism in Europe influenced United States copyright and its protection of the author, as well as the practice of archiving and its role in interpreting history. Because Native American cultures practiced orality, they suffered the loss of their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions not protected by copyright. By …

Universal Goals & Local Application: Theological Field Education At St. John Vianney Seminary, Germaine Bruno

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a curriculum history of theological field education at Denver's Roman Catholic seminary, St. John Vianney. The study utilizes archival material and the historical method to construct an educational historiography of the evolution and development of theological field curricula from 1910-2010. The research questions focus on two areas: the role of the Catholic Church in shaping seminary curricula and the adaptation and application of these Church guidelines by practitioners in the local context.

The study utilizes the conceptual tools of Kelly Ritter (2009) to analyze the findings in the light of socio-historical forces which shape curricula. According to …

Making Sense: Rhetoric, Perception, And Materiality, Aaron P. Donaldson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation dwells on the intersections of language-use and perception. The premise is that language makes literal sense and this reality has profound implications for those Burke called "symbol-using/mis-using animals." Communication scholars have long accepted a model of communication that positions language as "constitutive articulate contact" as opposed to a discrete means of transmission (Stewart, 1994), but a great deal of work remains to be done in terms of developing the implications for individuals and their language-use.

Chapter One explores the stances embraced by rhetorical materialists struggling to describe how language matters. The first chapter fields a series of critiques …

Beware Of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelics And Literature, Roger K. Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the discourse of Political Theology as a mode of enquiry we can overcome a longstanding tension between aesthetics and history that characterized much of twentieth century thought. Focusing on literary and occasionally musical works from the mid twentieth century, my aim is to show how works displaying psychedelic aesthetics are important venues for political deliberation with regard to citizenship. Through affective means, psychedelic aesthetics reimagine the boundaries of liberal subjectivity through a consciousness expansion and return from that expansion. The subject who returns from a psychedelic “experience” – which can be attained in various ways – comes to ethically …

House Of Cards, Matthew R. Lieber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to approach adapting a comic book into a film in a unique way. With so many comic-to-film adaptations following the trends of action movies, my goal was to adapt the popular comic book, Batman, into a screenplay that is not an action film. The screenplay, House of Cards, follows the original character of Miranda Greene as she attempts to understand insanity in Gotham’s most famous criminal, the Joker. The research for this project includes a detailed look at the comic book’s publication history, as well as previous film adaptations of Batman, …

Barbary Pirates: Thomas Jefferson, William Eaton, And The Evolution Of U.S. Diplomacy In The Mediterranean, Patrick N. Teye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes U.S. relations with the Barbary States from 1784 to 1805. After the American Revolution, the young nation found its commerce menaced in the Mediterranean by North African pirates sponsored by the rulers of Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli. As the U.S. sought to find a solution to end piracy and the practice of paying tributes or ransom to free Americans held captive, Thomas Jefferson proposed several solutions as a diplomat, vice president, and as president when he authorized the Tripolitan War (1801-1805). Thus, this look at U.S. relations with the Barbary States focuses on Jefferson’s evolving foreign …

“The Price Of A Woolworth’S Burger:” The Importance And Overshadowing Of The Nashville Sit-Ins, Aaron M. Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the sit-in demonstrations that used direct action and civil disobedience to target segregation at store lunch counters. The Nashville demonstrations were the last sit-in protests to occur that are discussed in this thesis, which also examines the protests in Wichita and Greensboro. Historians argue that the Wichita and Greensboro sit-ins were the most important demonstrations of their kind. The movement in Wichita was the first protest to end segregation policies at targeted stores, and the Greensboro protests led to a direct action movement in over fifty other cities targeting lunch counters. However, the Nashville based sit-ins surpassed …

The Grass-Roots Challenges With Administration: Conscription Evasion, Contraband, And Resistance In Napoleonic Europe, Julia A. Lyle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The French model of the nineteenth century led the way to modernity in establishing centralized administrative governments throughout Continental Europe. Several Napoleonic policies that led to the establishment of a modern centralized state were not positive in their effects on the local communities. Research widely categorizes resistance to the Napoleonic program as either militarily or economically based. This study uses the French court cases from the Court of Cassation dated 1804 to 1820 to provide a different interpretation to the discussion of local resistance to Napoleonic authority on an international level. Conscription fraud, contraband, and resistance to government officials reveal …

The Nature Of Authentic Governance: A Treatise On Democratic Rhetoric And Rhetorical Democracy, Daniel L. Foster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Democracy is a form of governance that allows for the flourishing of human potentiality. Unfortunately, democracy has become less of a means of governance and more of a rhetorical device to secure the consent of the people to be ruled by the elite few. Thus the current study seeks to disrupt this hegemonic means of control through an explication of authentic governance and democracy in order to demonstrate that the current manifestations of governance associated with democracy are inauthentic. To begin, authentic democracy -direct or as it is constituted here, rhetorical democracy- can foster a citizenry of active and empowered …

The Nazi "Church": Nazism As Ersatzreligion, Carol Mckinley Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"German Christianity is a distortion. You are either a German or you are Christian."

~ Adolph Hitler

In the last decade, scores of religious scholars have dissected the concept of the Third Reich as a religion. Their theories depict a vast range of extremes from National Socialism portrayed as a secular or political religion to painting the Nazis as anti-Christian pagans. The "Nazi Church" was neither a political religion nor was it simply paganism; instead, National Socialism became its own religion which replaced traditional German Christianity at a time when a nation, ripe for questioning God, was suffering from the …

An Evaluation Of The Potential Impact Of Community Oriented Policing In Latin America, Gabriella A. Ippolito

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the potential impact of community oriented policing in Latin America through a series of case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and El Salvador dating from the early 1990’s to the present. They are analyzed through a typology that organizes community oriented policing strategies according to costliness to the police. Costliness is defined as the amount of power that the police have to renounce to the community to implement a certain strategy. The thesis concludes that community oriented policing is an improvement over militarized policing strategies as it has the possibility to enhance both human security and …

Miracles And Militancy: The Evental Origins Of Religious Revolution, Timothy J. Isaacson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing the theoretical framework of philosopher Alain Badiou, this paper will examine the force and movement of religiously fueled, revolutionary politics. Badiou’s definition of event is read through the theological concept of miracle, put forward by jurist Carl Schmitt in order to elucidate the inauguration of new order. The theological concept of miracle radicalizes Alain Badiou’s definition of event by manner of divine authorization. While Schmitt uses miracle to explicate sovereign preservation of the State, and Badiou’s interest lies in its erosion, reading both thinkers through miracle, and through each other, conceptualizes the theo-political militant, authorized by event to interrupt …

"Wee Women's Work": Women And Peacebuilding In Northern Ireland, Amanda E. Donahoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

International norms on intrastate conflicts, such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, call for women to participate in peace processes in countries emerging from conflict and civil strife, including those divided by identity-based conflict. However, scholars of post-war recovery in international relations and comparative politics have raised questions about the extent and effect of women’s participation in peace processes, and in politics more generally, in divided societies given underlying social, economic, and political barriers that impeded access to decisive or authoritative political decision-making. A critical question in the literature on women’s participation in post-conflict reconciliation-related dialogue and joint action …

Evil Becomes Her: Prostitution's Transition From Necessary To Social Evil In 19th Century America, Jacqueline Shelton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nineteenth-century America witnessed a period of tremendous growth and change as cities flourished, immigration swelled, and industrialization spread. This setting allowed prostitution to thrive and professionalize, and the visibility of such “immoral” activity required Americans to seek a new understanding of morality. Current literature commonly considers prostitution as immediately declared a “social evil” or briefly mentions why Americans assigned it such a role. While correct that it eventually did become a “social evil,” the evolution of discourse relating to prostitution is a bit more complex. This thesis provides a survey of this evolution set against the changing American understanding of …

Witness: An Artist’S Journey Into The Past, Quanuquanei Alfred Karmue

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis as a social documentary, using images to provoke awareness of the emotions of children, their lives during the 15-year old Civil War that was in Liberia, West Africa. This thesis will visually explore different timelines, the past, the present and the future of children depicted. In depicting the past, the images capturing specific moment of what a child had to witness during the war. In depicting the present images showcase the aftermath of the war for children who have survived, and finally, for the future, images showcasing how the lives of some of the children have changed because …

The Organic Beauty Industry: A Gendered Economic Review, Brianna D. Connelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organic beauty has grown to a $6 billion dollar industry supplying consumers with products that align with unique social consumption preferences. This thesis explores the historical economic perspective of the traditional beauty industry and the development of the organic beauty industry. Capitalism influenced the traditional beauty industry during the pursuit for profits that lead to jeopardizing customer and environmental safety. Consumers responded to this behavior by founding an organic beauty industry that not only considered social issues, but negated gendered beauty standards in the process. Organic product efficacy has emerged as an issue that must be dealt with by regulation …

Penning The Shipper-Worthy Screenplay: Exploration Of Network Television Situational Comedy And The Crime Procedural, Kacie Henderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Network television writers often utilize ongoing romantic turmoil as a plot device to form loyal fan bases called "shippers," viewers who become deeply invested in the romantic relationships between their favorite television couples. For my thesis, I explored the shipper paradigm and the differences between network sitcoms and crime procedurals by creating one spec script The Big Bang Theory and another for Bones. I used research and my own personal experiences to analyze both series and write episodes that could fit within the established canons of both programs. Through the writing process I came to understand something very important …

"As Our Elders Taught Us To Speak It": Chinuk Wawa And The Process Of Creating Authenticity, Kylie N. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chinuk Wawa (also called Chinook Jargon) began as a trading language of the Pacific Northwest in the late eighteenth century. As it developed, it became the major heritage language of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, an intertribal nation located in Oregon. Now, as older speakers of the language pass on, there is an effort by the Grand Ronde to revitalize this language not only on the Grand Ronde Reservation, but also in nearby Portland, Oregon. However, revitalization can be a complicated process, as tribal leaders attempt to define Chinuk to maintain its traditions while adapting its vocabulary for …

Remembering Dearfield: A Study Of An Early 20th Century Black Community, Mary Connell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the different meanings of Dearfield, an early 20th Century black farming colony in northeastern Colorado, from the way the settlers’ conceived of their community, to the way that it was portrayed by the founder, to the way that it is remembered today. Through analysis of archival data and government records I show that there were two sides of Dearfield, that remembered by most of the settlers, and that portrayed by the founder O.T. Jackson. A magnetometer survey shows that the townsite was not as densely occupied as the common narrative of Dearfield would suggest, indeed many homesteaders …

"Queen Of All Islands": The Imagined Cartography Of Matthew Paris's Britain, John Wyatt Greenlee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk's works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe. Historians have long considered the version attached to the monk's Abbreviatio Chronicorum – the Claudius map – as the last and most thorough of Paris's images of Britain. However, scholars have focused on the document's limitations as an accurate geographic representation and have failed to consider critically Paris's representation of Britain with an eye towards …

Godself, Kyle S. Darnell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition at the Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, from February 11th through February 15th, 2013. The exhibit is divided into two sections: Reflecting and Remembering. Reflecting is composed of eleven relief woodblock prints depicting a story of the artist as God. Remembering is composed of multi-media pieces that are interpretations of Reflecting. The show Godself explores the influence of memory and self-confidence told through an allegorical tale of the birth and death of Jesus Christ. The discussion of memory and the effect it has on one’s present is told from …

Other: Poems, Catherine Pritchard Childress

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis is a collection of original poems entitled Other. The poems in Other reflect my study of the aesthetics of poetry as well as that of how women are represented as poets and as the subject of poems. Some of these poems are the product of my particular interest in the use of persona. Most reflect my desire to achieve self-reflection, to write from my experiences and perception, while still maintaining the universality that is an essential element of successful poems.

The critical introduction situates my poems within the framework of the poetic mode Personal Classicism—poetry that …

Surface, Sherry M. Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition at the Tipton Gallery, East Tennessee State University, from January 28th through February 8th, 2013. The exhibit is comprised of two hundred fifty-three porcelain objects and lines created with naturally colored porcelain slips used as paint. SURFACE presents my exploration of the natural world; the experiences and memories created during this process compelled this exhibition. Topics discussed are the influences, concepts, techniques, and methods used to create the work. Included are process images, detail images, and images of selected works from the exhibition.

A House Not Of Our Choosing, Melisa D. Cadell Ms

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores our existence through the confinement of the human body. The exhibition of “A House Not of Our Choosing,” was presented at the Tipton Gallery, 126 Spring Street Johnson City, Tennessee, from March 1, 2013, to March 8, 2013. It will visually describe Cadell’s thoughts regarding the figure as a fragile vessel. The installation is designed to require the viewer to closely examine the work from multiple perspectives.

The exhibition consists of sculpted paper, etched, painted, manipulated glass slides, and projection. Research discusses the work produced over a three-year period. Exploration and reflection in the areas of religion, …