Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Diasporic Strangers In The Mirror: Ever-Evolving Identity And The Immigrant Experience, Meriam Metoui

Theses and Dissertations

This text explores the disparity between immigrant parents and their American born or raised children and show the chasm of misunderstanding between generations navigating different national and cultural contexts found in novels such as The Joy Luck Club, The Namesake, Americanah, and Everything I Never Told You.

Tomb Of The Unknown Marxist, Anna Ozbek

Theses and Dissertations

Tomb of the Unknown Marxist tracks a journey of uncovering an individual’s past as a leftist revolutionary in late 1970s Turkey. In doing so, the project explores the political movements of that turbulent period and asks what remains of the revolution in the revolutionary once these moments are well in the past.

Shared Resources (Contractual Obligations), Jordan Lord

Theses and Dissertations

Shared Resources (Contractual Obligations) is a feature-length documentary that seeks to understand how various kinds of debt––emotional, historical, moral, social and financial––are entangled in my family. After my dad was fired from his job as a debt collector, my parents declared Chapter 13 bankruptcy––a 5-year debt repayment plan. The film follows my parents over the course of their bankruptcy, joining observational footage of their day-to-day lives with essayistic voiceover narration, my parents’ reactions to an early edit of the film, my family members’ and my own audio descriptions of what is visible in the film, and open captions of the …

Interface Of Glass And Topology, Travis Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Interface of Glass and Topology is a supportive statement for a collection of blown glass sculptures that employ principles of continuous surface topology along with line and color applications to create a perceptual visual experience. These forms address issues of balance and continuity as well as space relationships of both inside to outside and object to self. This supportive statement will discuss topology as a basis for composition and larger questions of interconnectivity with our environment that serves as a guiding theme of my work.

Hero Baby, Elizabeth J. Harney

Theses and Dissertations

With fiction and theory, the following pages give context to my most recent body of work called Hero Baby. The work in Hero Baby embodies an aesthetic of cuteness, as highlights the relationship between: aggression and protection, power and submission, war and commodity, nationalism and desire for love.

^A Weather Of Her Wake—Should Something Be Missing?, Chip Chapin

Theses and Dissertations

Conciliating an economics of care, support, and desire through the languages of state control, commodity, and shared resources ^A Weather of Her Wake confronts unspoken exchanges endemic to relationships in capitalist society, choreographing relationships that invites both performer and audience to negotiate architectures charged with intimate memory.

Composition Portfolio, Alexander J. Juhan

Theses and Dissertations

A selection of works. Includes contemporary pieces, as well as music scored to picture.

Measuring L2 (Russian) Reading Proficiency Across Various Levels Using Eye Tracking, Anastasiia Nikol Rybakova

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years interest in L2 reading research has focused largely on word frequency, sentence level, word recognition, and several researchers have begun to use eye tracking to better study reading behaviors. Parshina et al. (under review) have found that high proficiency heritage speakers of Russian read faster in terms of gaze duration and total time and had fewer regressions than low proficiency heritage speakers. The current study focuses on the establishment of benchmarks for L2 Russian readers in terms of first fixation duration, gaze duration, and total time when reading a complete passage, and compares these variables among different …

The Performing Female Body: The National Theatre Frankenstein As Performance Art, Hannah Mahrii Gunson

Theses and Dissertations

The National Theatre's Frankenstein is not the first time Shelley's novel has been adapted for the stage, but it is the first time a stage adaptation has returned the popular story to its source material's feminist themes. Departing from the iterations that portrayed Victor Frankenstein as a Byronic hero, Nick Dear's adaptation has re-designed Frankenstein to be misogynistic and calloused. His new nature is best observed in the scene wherein Frankenstein presents the Woman-Creature he's built for his first Creature. She is naked, silent, submissive, and viciously dismembered at the end of the scene. While such submissiveness might justifiably be …

Humans And The Red-Hot Stove: Hurston's Nature-Caution Theorizing In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Heather Sharlene Higgs Randall

Theses and Dissertations

This paper gives critical attention to the nature versus caution porch conversation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, arguing that this is a legitimate addition to the anthropological discussion of nature versus culture. Addressing literary critics as well as scholars of the environmental humanities and of multispecies studies, I argue that Hurston's nature-caution discussion is a helpful epistemology which Hurston employs throughout her novel to suggest a single, unified way of understanding the human and nonhuman.

Heirloom And Hybrid Corn In The American Corn Belt: An Ethnography Of Seed Saving Practices, Rachelle Halaska

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study examines the practices and context of contemporary heirloom corn seed saving practices and projects in the American Corn Belt. It examines heirloom corn conservation and hand pollination practices at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa in 2015. From there the study extends to interviews with heirloom farmers, breeders and gardeners in Wisconsin and Illinois. The findings indicate that the lines between the mainstream and the margins of corn production are highly blurred, and that there is a considerable amount of cross-pollination of ideas and practices between alternative corn farming and dominant industrial hybrid production in the American …

Challenging The Architecture: A Critical History Of The Wisconsin Prison System, Jacob Glicklich

Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation I explore the history of the Wisconsin prison system, with an emphasis on 1970 to 2019, Waupun Correctional Institution and Taycheedah Correctional Institution. From this study, I explore the nature of the Wisconsin system and how it has developed. Across this work I argue that the core priority for the WI Department of Corrections has been to maintain and expand its bureaucratic infrastructure, imposing limited recourse on prisoners, and maximizing its own disciplinary flexibility. There have been significant human costs to this system, and my work helps to document these costs, contextualize why they happened, and look …

Coming To An Understanding: Daoist Rhetoric As Dialogue In Composition Studies, Veronica Anzaldua

Theses and Dissertations

Monological argumentation, based on Aristotelian principles, dominates composition pedagogy in the United States. With this model, students construct arguments in which they advocate for their own viewpoints. To make argumentation more dialogic, there exist various discourse models, including Daoist rhetoric, based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of Daoism. Its tenets have the potential to generate dialogic discourse in composition due to Laozi’s, Zhuangzi’s, and Sunzi’s principles. The recent cultural turn in composition studies opens space for the exploration of dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic pedagogies based on Daoist philosophies, with other recent pedagogical innovations, have the potential to promote deep, interconnected dialogue …

To Love The Birds And The Places They’Ve Made Their Home: Poems From The Magic Valley, Alyssa B. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The theme of the collection could be summed up in these lines written by Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God, “body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing...Christ laid hold of the world with His human hands...He wed Himself to it. Our life is the response of the bride” (66–67). Our loving connection to every human person is our loving connection to Christ—charity is our bride-ness. The poems follow one bride through her journey, with the author’s environment (the Rio Grande Valley) coloring the verses, as …

Shattering Taciturnity: The Use Of Visual Arts As A Method Of Communication And Expression, Jesmil M. Maldonado Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

Silence an action that conceals a person’s memories, thoughts, emotions, fears, and insecurities, making them crave a method of expression. In this case, the Visuals Arts serves as an approach to investigate, create, understand, accept, and confront the darkness within the artist's psychological and emotional state. Inspiration taken from vibrant colors and insects found within Puerto Rico's natural sources, how these interact, relate, and consume the human within. By creating a series of artworks, the artist starts to comprehend how silence has taken over her life. Taciturnity has become the flame that ignited the artistic flow that leads to the …

Detention, Virginia Murray-Torres

Theses and Dissertations

A novel-in-verse about a teenage girl's detainment in an immigration center, separation from her family, and removal proceedings hearing with a 360 degree point of view from the people she interacts with, as well as her own.

Glorious Indignities, Benito Salinas Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this creative work is to illustrate the relationship between the identity of the Rio Grande Valley as a whole, corporate control, immigration status, and interpersonal connection. This illustration is achieved through a series of interconnected short stories that culminate in a telling of a real-life event, the prison riot in the Willacy County Correctional Facility. This event has ramification for every character in the novel and for an entire county. This work attempts to simultaneously take a birds-eye view and microscopic examination of the events that lead up to the riot over the course of two and …

Gulf Trade Networks And Family Ties: French Migration Via New Orleans To The Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1848-1881, Kristen D. Kline

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers economic and social aspects of French immigration to the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas during the mid-nineteenth century, with special emphasis on a small group of merchants who left France during the 1850s. It synthesizes the work of several scholars who have focused on French presence in the LRGV with others who have analyzed various economic facets of the LRGV during different periods between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This study attempts to situate five families into the context of nineteenth-century European migration to the Americas, as well as into the Gulf maritime economy on …

How Teachers Plan For And Implement Strategies That Motivate Adolescent Students To Engage In Literacy Experiences, Chelsea Faase

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative comparative case study sought to demonstrate how exemplary teachers motivate their adolescent students to engage in literacy experiences. The objectives and the themes of this research looked at what teachers understand about how adolescents are motivated, how they plan for that motivation, and how their planning emerges in their classrooms. Four exemplary teachers studied demonstrate multiple similar beliefs, while maintaining the unique ways these motivational practices emerged in their classrooms. This study shares each individual story, while generalizing common themes across the cases. While additional work can be done to find how exemplary teachers and motivation impact more …

Oblivion, Angela V. Scardigno

Theses and Dissertations

I believe I am drawn to work with wood because of genetic reasons. My grandfather was a carpenter. I remember him as a hardworking and busy man. As something inseparable and equally inspiring, I remember his studio which was a small house that was full of creativity and great memories. My grandparents’ house is one of my first memories where I learned to create art and collage. I have started to notice, as I get older, that I am constantly trying to bring back an atmosphere that resembles that warm and safe place of childhood. I have also noticed that …

Understanding College Readiness Through The Framework For Success In Postsecondary Writing: An Analysis Of Algebra Writing In High School, Gabriel Cerda

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of college readiness in the United States has become increasingly important as the number of students entering post-secondary institutions has continued to increase. Along with efforts to increase college readiness for students in K-12, calls have been made to better define what it means to be college ready and understand what factors play a role in preparing students for a postsecondary education. This study uses the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing as a critical lens and method of analysis to understand how the Framework can broaden our understanding of college readiness. This is a mixed methods study …

Architecture As As Act Of Transfer: Framing Denise Scott Brown's Architectural Practice With Performance, Kelsey Kuehn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the architectural practice of theorist, planner, architect, and activist Denise Scott Brown. Existing scholarship about the architect’s work is sparse and typically situates her as a significant figure due to her status as a woman working in a male-dominated field. To address this gap in scholarship, this thesis analyzes Scott Brown’s intellectual formation relative to her work on the Crosstown Community Advocacy Planning project carried out in Philadelphia in 1968 through the lens of performance theory. Her practice is considered a mediation between the archive and the repertoire as they are defined by performance studies scholar Diana …

The Time Is Now: Embodiments Of The Hyper-Present In Contemporary American Literature, Robert Bruss

Theses and Dissertations

For many years, writers have argued the predominant temporality of contemporary experience is an intensified present. David Harvey and Fredric Jameson argued that such an intense emphasis on the present was one of postmodernism’s principle features. Harvey argued that new communication technologies resulted in a "time-space compression” that created the sense that “the present is all there is.” Similarly, Jameson argued that postmodernism reflected the logic of late capitalism, resulting in a society that “has begun to live in a perpetual present” that obliterates one’s awareness of the past or future. Although many consider we have moved beyond postmodernism, our …

Looking For Group: Sociality, Embodiment, And Institutions In World Of Warcraft, Christopher J. Cooley

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines the varying degrees of conflict between multiple stakeholders involved in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The game’s designers, like many software developers in the contemporary world, tend to be guided by an ideology influenced by classical liberalism, but also inspired by a utopian view of technology in general. That ideological position has directly affected many aspects of the game, from the largely unregulated in-game economy, to the strong emphasis on individual mastery of the game’s systems to progress through the complete content of the game world. World of Warcraft advertises itself not …

An Entangled History: Native American And Euro-American National And Cultural Identities (1768-1833), Paul Edward Jentz

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines political and cultural interactions between Native Americans and Euro-Americans during the transition from imperial colonialism to settler colonialism. It employs the concept of entanglement to convey the inextricable linkages that arose between the two groups over time, linkages also marked by the dissimilar effects of contact between them. As such, this study adopts a world history lens, arguing that no culture has historically existed in isolation, so no culture can be effectively studied in isolation. Five case studies explore accelerated tensions between Indians and Whites that resulted through the shifts in negotiations of power between them as …

Guides And Guidance: Subverting Tourist Narratives In Trans-Indigenous Time And Space, Shanae Aurora Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is a study of the ways in which Indigenous writers and theorists suggest we decolonize the sites of knowledge production through our pedagogical and methodological practices. Ultimately, my dissertation is about the power of story and finding the necessary strategies to change the narratives that do harm in our daily lives. I focus on the sites of knowledge production because these are the institutions and practices with which I am the most familiar. The purpose of this work is beyond metaphorical as I strive to forefront the narratives that change the ways in which settler-Indigenous relationships are formed …

Fbi Investigations Into The Civil Rights Movement And The New Left, Meredith Donovan

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines how the FBI investigated civil rights organizations and social movements from the 1950s through the 1970s. It compares the reasons for the investigations, the investigative methods, and the extent of the investigations. The paper uses FBI files as the basis for the information and to form the argument that the FBI chose its targets based on who posed a significant threat to the status quo. The FBI had a social and political motive to suppress dissent against the government and to suppress the people who challenged laws to advance their rights. The movements examined are the civil …

Non-Space: The Perception Of Reality, Carlos Limas

Theses and Dissertations

This is a formal study of real-world images that try to convey a clear approach to the way we look and relate to unexpected places that at first glance don’t exist in a metaphorical way or just don’t strike us as interesting or attractive. There’s no particular story to tell only the need to expose a different kind of beauty through my own personal subjective view and sensitivity expanding the criteria of my own esthetic values and context of a captured image in a particular scenario.

The perception of Non-Space relates directly to a well establish photography technique called Deadpan, …

The Ascension Of Jesus Christ: Its Role In Redemption From A Latter-Day Saint Theological Perspective, William Perez

Theses and Dissertations

Mosiah 18:2 lists the ascension of Jesus Christ as one of the atoning acts that brings about redemption. Although many faith traditions have developed a theology about the significance of the ascension, the topic has not been covered at length within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This thesis explores the ascension of Jesus Christ and its implications for humanity from the perspective of Latter-day Saint beliefs.The ascension of Jesus Christ can be considered the culmination, even the capstone of His atonement. There are sufficient sources within Latter-day Saint canon and the teachings of general authorities to support …

Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay: Uses Of The Archaic, Biblical Yea In The Book Of Mormon, Michael Edward De Martini

Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the word yea in the Book of Mormon, the Earliest Text and enumerates the usages found therein. Already recognized definitions in addition to new definitions are given with examples. Also included are textual variations from the Earliest Text and the current Book of Mormon used generally as scripture in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.