Arts and Humanities Commons^™

More Than A Game: Baseball And Southern Textile Communities 1880-1935, Aaron Perch

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

While labor unrest itself is no stranger to American history, the strikes across the Piedmont textile industry in 1934 present a curious case. Throughout the conflict, a sizeable portion of the workers remained loyal to their companies and those who protested returned to the factories within a short period, often to the same management and conditions. Historians Daniel Singal and Trent Watts – in attempting to explain the workers’ willingness to return to work – have offered that the textile industry deliberately recreated the South’s traditional master-slave labor relationship. They suggest that mill management’s paternalistic efforts and persistent attempts to …

The “Americanization” Of Global Education: A Comparative Study Of American And Italian Students At John Cabot University In Rome, Italy, Chiara Evelti

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

With the turn of the century, the rise of globalization has greatly impacted, and continues to impact, the development of nation-states’ economies and native cultures. This international phenomenon generates the idea that countries are now on a similar playing field, whether that be culturally, economically, or politically. While it is hard to defend the latter, globalization has seemingly “flattened” the world by way of bringing individuals of different cultures, ethnicities, races, genders, and nationalities closer together. Moreover, as citizens of this internationalized community, we see a specific type of cultural globalization through increased opportunities in travel, the rise in number …

Governmental Funding Of K-12 Arts Programs, Elizabeth Abbick

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Among the significant political debates of our time is how to dedicate resources to different programs, and what types of ideas will be funded and subsidized by the government. Unfortunately, even the United States is not a nation of unlimited resources. In general, arts programs are one of the first to be cut from schools, as they are not seen to be equal to math, reading, or even sports. However, arts programs could be an integral part of the successes of the elementary, middle, and high school student. In my thesis, I will explore the differences between students who have …

The Correlation Of Classical, Jazz, And Pop Music To A Reduction Of Dental Anxiety Experienced By Adult Patients, Heather Wright

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study explored whether passive music listening caused a decrease in dental anxiety experienced by adult dental hygiene patients and whether there was a difference between genres of music: classical, jazz or pop. This study also looked at the effect of song familiarity and patient music preference on any decrease in anxiety. I worked with sixty adult patients, who were randomly assigned to listen to classical, jazz, pop, or no music at all. Each patient took a dental anxiety survey before and after their teeth cleaning. These surveys were based on the Modified Corah Dental Anxiety Scale. Music was selected …

Narrators Of Change: A Contemporary Study Of Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Malala Yousafzai, And Emma Watson, Evan Davis

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Though they champion different social movements—race discrimination, gender inequality, and girls’ education—Patrisse Cullors, Emma Watson, and Malala Yousafzai are each extremely effective activists. Patrisse Cullors is a self defined Artist, Organizer, and Freedom Fighter, but most importantly Cullors is a theatre artist. Cullors uses her agency as an artist to give theatrical life to issues of race discrimination, creating a virtual reality in which her audience can see and understand issues that are new to them. Malala Yousafzai shares her story because such stories of girls being denied their basic right to education are ubiquitous in third world countries and …

Der Sonnenwirt -- Fakt, Fiktion, Held Und Verbrecher, Marissa Schoedel

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Die Zwecken dieser BA-Arbeit sind drei verschiedene Analysenarten aus der Literaturtheorie am Beispiel Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre (1786) von Friedrich Schiller anzuwenden: Hermeneutik, Strukturalismus, Dekonstruktion. Ich interpretiere den Text Lebensgeschichte Fridrich Schwans (1787) von Jakob Friedrich Abel als Vorläufer von Verbrecher und erstelle dabei einem möglichst anschaulichen Überblick der wandelnden Verhältnisse des Krimibegriffs. Unter diesem Krimibegriff werden sowohl Texte als auch TV-Serien und Filme als Krimi verstanden.

“While The Imagination Strains / After Deer”: William Carlos Williams’S Interrogations Of The American Transcendental Imagination And The Proto-Suburban Scene, Tyler Wagner

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Oftentimes the American suburbs are considered through the lens of architecture, economics, fiction, and visual media. And, typically, the conversation centers on their cultural zenith in the 1950s. One literary form is neglected in this conversation: poetry. This omission is peculiar, as a fascination with the vastness of the continent’s landscape—and its significance—pervades the history of the American verse. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, the apparently endless expanses of space and rejuvenative qualities of the American landscape provide the poet’s ideal inspiration, and Walt Whitman, in perhaps the most important collection of poetry of the nineteenth century, Leaves of Grass, is …

Women At The Helm: Rewriting Maritime History Through Female Pirate Identity And Agency, Wendy Vencel

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The subject of Atlantic-based Golden Age (1650-1720) piracy has long been an area of historical and mythical fascination. The sea has historically been a realm outside the reaches of mainland society, where women could express any aspect of their personal identity. Women at the Helm: Rewriting Maritime History through Female Pirate Identity and Agency queers the history of Golden Age piracy while placing the colonial period’s seafaring women within a longer historical tradition of female maritime crime and power.

Notable female pirates of this era, including Ireland’s Grace O’Malley and the Caribbean’s Anne Bonny and Mary Read, through the act …

A Cakewalk Through History: The Evolution Of Cake And Its Identity In America, Rachel Overby

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This thesis is a historical timeline of American cake and its evolution between the late 1700s and now. This timeline addresses the resource availability, cultural and historical changes, and innovations that have influenced its evolution. Cakes are a reflection upon the time they were popularized, and this paper will reveal several perspectives on the interplay between cake and the relevant cultural and historical climates. Supplementing this timeline, cake’s identity and how it has changed over the centuries is discussed. The cake of 1780s America holds a much different meaning than the cake of the 21st century. Cake has now become …

Anxiously Awaiting: A Novella, Alexander Bartlow

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout my childhood and secondary education growing up in rural Indiana, I found that, in a town of less than 2,000 people, mental illness and teenage suicide were all too common. Upon researching the sad state of mental healthcare in rural America, I felt obliged to bring light in my Honors thesis to the overlooked and under-treated thoughts that plague the minds of adolescents experiencing depression, anxiety, and suicidal contemplation. In this fiction novella, I follow the life of Lincoln Phillips, a 14-year-old boy who lives with anxiety in an unchanging, inescapable town that stigmatizes mental illness. He experiences the …

Narrative Technique In The Works Of The Pearl Poet, Karl Agger

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the fourteenth century, the so-called Pearl Poet created such masterpieces as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. Though his surviving body of work comprises only four poems, these are enough to have him considered among the greatest medieval English writers. Much scholarship has focused on the poems’ sources, style, symbolism, and thematic content, but comparatively little has approached these works as narratives. The Pearl Poet was a masterful storyteller who employed a consistent yet flexible set of narrative techniques. Borrowing the theories developed by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction, I present an analysis of …

National Dances Of The Nutcracker : A Study Of Racial, Cultural, And National Depictions In A Classical Ballet, Meredith Hunter-Mason

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Character development is a large component of ballet performance that is integrated into each rehearsal process leading up to the show. In this year’s production of The Nutcracker, I danced the role of Chinese Soloist. As I began my character development, I asked myself, “How does a Chinese girl dance?” When the question is asked about other roles, it is easy to respond; however, when the character is tied to a specific nationality it becomes much more difficult. Generalization and cultural misrepresentation become possible risks. Alastair Macaulay explains in his article Stereotypes in Toeshoes¸ “The ranks of ballet companies contain …

10 Pieces For Vincent: A Suite For Mixed Chamber Ensemble, Cade Leinbach

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This suite consists of 10 different pieces of music, for a mixed chamber ensemble of flute, clarinet, tenor sax, trumpet, horn, bass trombone, violin, viola, cello and Percussion. Each movement is based on a specific painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). In the short time span of a decade, this incredibly misunderstood man created some of the most iconic pieces of art in our culture. As a whole, this suite is meant to depict both the art and life of Vincent, while paying homage to this man who is still relevant in modern society, despite having died …