Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Individual Thought Patterns: Women In New York's Extreme Metal Music Scene, Joan M. Jocson-Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Extreme metal music (EMM) is both an umbrella term and a sub-category of heavy metal. Although women have a small but steady presence in heavy metal, this number shrinks when applied to the EMM scene. Using ethnographic research, participant-observation and interviews, this study surveys women in New York's EMM scene to address participation, gender performativity and feminist musicology.

Surfing The Revolutionary Wave 2010-12: A Social Theory Of Agency, Resistance, And Orders Of Dissent In Contemporary Social Movements, Athina Karatzogianni, Michael Schandorf

Athina Karatzogianni

Power And Privilege: An Exploration Of Decision-Making Of Interpreters, Debra Russell, Risa Shaw

Journal of Interpretation

This article presents the findings of a study conducted with Deaf and hearing American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters from Canada and the United States who interpret legal discourse and legal interactions. This qualitative research study was designed to explore constructs of power and power dynamics that emerge in interpreted interactions. Sixteen interpreters, with at least fifteen years of experience in legal interpreting participated in an on-line survey; nine also participated in focus groups. This study found intersections among power and privilege, interpreters' sense of agency, their conceptualization of the task of interpreting, and their training. Participants reported situations where the …

The Book Of Feral Flora By Amanda Ackerman & Skeena By Sarah De Leeuw, Emily Mcgiffin

The Goose

Review of Amanda Ackerman's The Book of Feral Flora. Review of Sarah de Leeuw's Skeena.

Thin Skin, Jason Stovall

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis contains two distinct chapters as well as a section of photographs of my paintings. The first chapter is a comprehensive artist statement that outlines my approach to image making using Heewon Chang’s autoethnographic method. This approach emphasizes cultural analysis and interpretation of the researcher’s behaviours, thoughts, and experiences in relation to others in society. Chapter two is a case study on the artist, John Brown. In addition to being a significant influence on my practice, Brown and I are both deeply concerned with representations of the body in contemporary painting as well as the formal capabilities of paint. …

Insects Have Agency But Probably Not Sentience Because They Lack Social Bonding, J. H. Van Hateren

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) argue that insects have sentience because of functional similarities between the insect brain and vertebrate midbrain. Based on a recent theory of agency and consciousness, I argue that the functional similarities merely point to an advanced form of agency. Insects presumably lack the capacity for social bonding that may be required for subjective experiencing.

The Dark Side Of Reactive Attitudes: From Persons To Compatibilism, Mallory A. Parker

Open Access Theses

This thesis contains two independent papers that both address the problems associated with the reactive attitudes. The first paper, presented in Chapter 2, discusses the negativities of the reactive attitudes in debates regarding skepticism about the moral notion of persons. The second paper, presented in Chapter 3, presents the negativities associated with the reactive attitudes in debates concerning compatibilism about moral responsibility. Neither chapter deals solely with presenting the negativities associated with the reactive attitudes. More than present these, both chapters undermine the non-realist or compatibilist philosophical arguments that attempt to save either the moral notion of persons (Chapter 2) …

Agency In The Anthropocene: Goethe, Radical Reality, And The New Materialisms, Heather I. Sullivan

Heather I Sullivan

Our current era has been termed the Age of the “Anthropocene,” or the human- inflected geological era. This essay addresses the implications of human impact on the Earth as a form of “radical reality” by addressing the broad spectrum of human and non-human agency. The analysis follows a three-step process: it begins with an introduction to the new materialisms and distributed agency in contrast to Howard Tuttle’s notion of “radical reality” based on human consciousness. It then explores the agency of nature’s “vibrancy” in the debate occurring early in the Anthropocene (during Goethe’s lifetime) between “vitalism” and “mechanism.” Finally, I …

Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira

Doctoral Dissertations

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification.

"Man's Greatness": Steinbeck's Evaluation Of Nature And Nurture In His Epic Novel East Of Eden, Courtney Smith

Student Works

In his epic novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck explores the ideas of agency and morality. He presents the idea of timshel, or “thou mayest,” to show that every person makes their own choices. He expands on this idea by evaluating the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture throughout the novel as the characters interact with their “nurtures” or environments and respond based on their natural personalities. Steinbeck shows that our choices are our own, but they are influenced more by our natures than our nurtures. This is seen poignantly in his characters Cathy Ames and Caleb (“Cal”) Trask …

Marriage, Legitimacy, And Intersectional Identities In The Sixteenth-Century Spanish Empire, Jennifer Brooks

History Honors Projects

This project explores the intersections of gendered, classed, and racialized identities in the sixteenth-century Spanish empire, focusing particularly on their elaboration within the institution of marriage. Through an analysis of transatlantic Spanish, and Spanish-Indigenous unions in Mesoamerica and the Andes, this thesis considers how intersectional identities interact with dominant narratives and both limit and expand the opportunities available to individuals.

Entrenching African Pentecostalism In The United States Of America: A Study Of A Ghanaian Founded Charismatic Church In South Florida, Raymond K. Awadzi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the past three decades, there has been a rapid growth of African Pentecostal Christianity on America’s Christian religious scene. In general, researchers in Christian mission studies have concluded that the flow of Christian religious currents from Africa and other Third World countries to the West is something of a Christian mission in reverse process. Using agency and invention of tradition as the theoretical leads, this study explores the roles lay immigrants played in the rooting of the Christian Restoration Ministries International (CRMI), a Ghanaian founded charismatic church, in Miami, as a case study of how African Pentecostal churches originate …

"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study Of Place, Writing, And Tutors' Constructions Of Writing Center Work, Christopher Joseph Dibiase

Doctoral Dissertations

This project questions the relationship between place, writing, and constructions of writing center work. Applying a case study methodology, I investigated how and why writing center tutors draw upon experiences of writing in non-writing center spaces in the course of their tutorial work. Participants completed a survey (Appendix D) detailing their contemporary spatial usage with respect to writing, tracked their writing practices for a two-week period, were observed tutoring in multiple writing center sessions, and participated in a series of interviews exploring their experience of writing in multiple spatial contexts as well as their approaches to writing center work. Using …

Speaking Of Consequences: Contemporary Music For Political Discourse, Elizabeth Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reads politically works by Georges Aperghis, Rick Burkhardt, Mark Enslin, and Elizabeth Hoffman. Chapter 1 argues that suspending intelligibility stimulates the audience to imagine alternative meanings and ways the music might go, in an orientation that is politically desirable. Synthesizing theorizations by Herbert Brün, Joseph Dubiel, Shoshana Felman, and Enslin, it catalogues four techniques for suspending intelligibility, and analyses Enslin’s Sonata Quijada. Chapter 2 suggests that we read politically metaphors of agency and power sharing in chamber textures, and translate those metaphors into our social and political lives. It draws on Elisabeth Le Guin’s reading of Boccherini, …

Leadership And African Agency For Development In Post-Fifty Africa, Chikwendu C. Ukaegbu

Journal of Retracing Africa

The year 2010 was a model year for the celebration of fifty years of political independence among African countries. Assessments of the human condition in Africa show that the continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has lagged behind other regions of the world in terms of development. Based on the analysis of the constants of development, this paper argues that effective development is fundamentally driven by the maximum deployment of organized endogenous human agency defined as the capacity of individuals or groups to think, act, and impact their social environments. Because African agency was not properly shepherded in the first fifty years …

The Search For Agency: Female Sexual Desire In U.S. Sex Education And Coming-Of-Age Cinema, Mckenzi A. Vanderberg

Honors Program Theses

The following essay provides an analysis of the gendered ideologies present in coming-of-age cinema, as well as a critique of heteronormative, patriarchal concepts that hinder female sexual agency and adolescent empowerment. More specifically, this essay will critique the harmful portrayal of female puberty as romantic, passive, and emotional in comedic coming-of-age cinema. This essay will be split into three primary segments. The first segment will consist of a literature review discussing the correlation between sexual desire and autonomy, as well as the importance of portraying female sexual agency rather than passivity in media and sex education curricula, in order to …

Illustrating Adolescent Awareness: Teaching Historical Injustices And Promoting Agency Through Picture Books In Secondary Classrooms, Melissa Hoak

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Picture books, often marketed to and written for young children, are typically thought of only as tools to inspire early literacy. They rarely make their way into secondary lesson plans, and with their seemingly simple illustrations and text, they are mostly deemed (socially, if not academically) inappropriate for accomplished readers. This thesis explores the advantages of including picture books when teaching four young adult texts: Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising (2000), Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2005), Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2003). Picture books can serve as valuable companions to anchor texts such as …

Healing The Social Body After Assisted Reproduction, Cvetana Cindy Golusin

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the lived experiences of ten women after having children with In Vitro Fertilization. I examine the reshaped subjectivities that emerge within the women’s everyday life experiences to deepen understandings of human agency by exploring the intersection of assisted reproductive technologies, cultural ideologies, and social interactions as components in the transformation of the women’s identity. The experience of in vitro fertilization offered a fertile place in which to examine the roles that social and interpretive practices play in constituting the subjective experience in recasting a women’s identity. The study design consisted of informant interviews and case …

Responsibilist Virtues And The ‘Charmed Inner Circle’ Of Traditional Epistemology, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

In Judgment and Agency, Ernest Sosa takes “reliabilist” virtue epistemology deep into “responsibilist” territory, arguing that “a true epistemology” will assign “responsibilist-cum-reliabilist intellectual virtue the main role in addressing concerns at the center of the tradition.” However, Sosa stops short of granting this status to familiar responsibilist virtues like open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual humility. He cites three reasons for doing so: responsibilist virtues involve excessive motivational demands; they are quasi-ethical; and they are best understood, not as constituting knowledge, but rather as putting one “in a position” to know. I elaborate on and respond to each of these …

Grassroots Activists And Movements Against Female Genital Mutilation And Cutting Bridged With Political Alliances : Agency Power And The Potential To Bring About Change, Aisha Kearney

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In this thesis I highlight grassroots activists and social movements/mobilization against FGM/C throughout some of the regions where it's concentrated, and consider the political alliances that have aided these activists and their movements towards declines in the prevalence of the practice. I consider the recent outlawing of the practice in the Gambia (last year) which was strongly motivated by grassroots activists originally from the Gambia and the transnational political alliances they were able to form. I examine activists and movements in Senegal, paying particular attention to the approach of NGO TOSTAN. I also highlight long standing histories of grassroots activism …

Agency And Anxiety: Delusions Of Control And Loss Of Control In Schizophrenia And Agoraphobia, Shaun Gallagher, Dylan Trigg

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

We review the distinction between sense of agency and sense of ownership, and then explore these concepts, and their reflective attributions, in schizophrenic symptoms and agoraphobia. We show how the underlying dynamics of these experiences are different across these disorders. We argue that these concepts are complex and cannot be reduced to neural mechanisms, but involve embodied and situated processes that include the physical and social environments. We conclude by arguing that the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of agency and ownership cannot be considered in isolation from one another, but instead form an interdependent pairing.

Agency From A Stone: Shelley’S Posthumanist Experiments In "Mont Blanc", Betsy Bolton

English Literature Faculty Works

This article reads Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ as an extended exploration into possible modes of relationship linking the human mind to the material world. The modes of relationship considered by Shelley anticipate many of the structures and strategies developed by posthumanist theory, including structural coupling, strategic anthropomorphism, imagistic translation, and human-nonhuman assemblages. After summarizing Kantian and post-Kantian readings of ‘Mont Blanc,’ the essay works through an extended close reading of the poem to elucidate its proto-posthumanist elements.