Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Course Design As Critical Creativity: Intersectional, Regional, And Demographic Approaches To Teaching Asian American Literatures, Thomas X. Sarmiento

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay offers a theoretical and reflective exploration of critically informed acts of creativity expressed in my course design for and teaching of Asian American literatures at a predominantly white, public land-grant, Midwestern university. I argue that teaching is both a creative and critical activity as it generates new ways of knowing and being through an assessment and curation of extant literary texts and scholarly discourses. Given my geographic, scholarly, and personal orientations, my course features intersectional, regional, and ethnically diverse perspectives that aim to queer what “Asian America/n” signifies. I hope my situated pedagogical insights inspire other scholar-teachers to …

Phantom Shootings, Allan Ambris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a website designed to critique NYC Open Data reporting with respect to shootings through a series of visualizations and discoveries. The NYPD Shooting Incidents datasets (Historic and Year to Date) introduce themselves to the user by claiming to be a “list of every shooting incident that occurred in NYC.” The supplied documentation reveals that this is not the case.

After understanding the supporting materials, there are still undisclosed truths. My exploration of the data revealed that a single victim may be represented across multiple entries. Additionally, multiple victims may be represented by a single entry. It is …

A Standardized Approach To Analyzing Multi-Cultural Presentations Of Christian Worship, Kevin Michael Segner

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

With the growth of the internet, worship pastors can share fine art presentations of the gospel message from cultures worldwide. Since all cultures belong in the kingdom of God, pastors may struggle to validate fine arts performances according to scriptural standards. One of the concerns is the range of interpretations that come from a lack of formal analysis in the literature. Some critics write about fine arts performances based on their own experience and opinion. This may indicate a gap in literature where there is no uniform standard for evaluating those works. Rather than take time to research presentations, a …

Museums & Environmental Sustainability: Are They Doing Enough?, Alexandra M. Dwyer

Museum Studies Theses

As the world continues to be affected by the rapid rates of climate change, institutions from every sector are transitioning to become more sustainable by reducing or eliminating their harmful habits on the ecosystem. Whether by their own accord or external pressure from current legislative action to cut carbon emissions, institutions are shifting towards a sustainable future. For museums there are additional unique reasons to adopt sustainability into various aspects with their institution. The most influential reason is that museums have a responsibility as community leaders and change makers. However, looming questions remain: Are museums doing enough? Are these cultural …

Balance, In All Things, Justin S. Straughan

be Still

This poem is a vent for the inherent frustration felt from trying to find a career in and bridge the transition between politics and medicine. It reflects a stubborn determination to not give in to critics' "never-enough-ism" while also trying to be open to improvement and not give in to pride nor cynicism.

Critique Assemblages In Response To Emergency Hybrid Studio Pedagogy, Christopher Wolford, Yue Zhao, Shantanu Kashyap, Colin M. Gray

Learn X Design Conference Series

Studio education focuses on active learning and assessment that is embedded in students’ exploration of ill-structured problems. Critique is a central component of this experience, providing a means of sensemaking, assessment, and socialization. These critique sessions encompass multiple types of interactions among students and instructors at multiple levels of formality. In most design programs, these practices have been situated in a physical studio environment—until they were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a group of educators and design students, we used this disruption as an opportunity to reimagine means of critique engagement. In this paper, we document the creation, piloting, …

New Materialism’S Second Phase, Tobias Skiveren

Criticism

Influx and Efflux. Writing up with Walt Whitman by Jane Bennett. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 224 pp. $25.95

Critical Thinking As A Pedagogical Approach: Using Critical/Cultural Studies To Analyze Music Videos, Lukas John Pelliccio, Timothy Brown

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Teaching undergraduate students how to critically analyze a text is an important experience. However, it is not easy to do this because readings are often dense, and the process of writing and presenting a critique can be challenging for some students. In light of this, we have developed an assignment where students critically analyze music videos for their ideologies. In the assignment, students select three specific overt or latent content pieces from a music video and explain how those manifestations influence a particular ideology in a paper. Then they are asked to show the music video to their peers and …

Analysis And Critique In The Secondary Art Classroom, Sarah Nott

Masters Theses

This paper is a study of analysis and critique in the secondary visual art classroom setting. I begin by examining the purposes these two practices can serve, and then document some of the positive outcomes of analysis and critique as well as their inherent flaws. The flaws are subcategorized into examinations of the risks of formal analysis or Formalism, the unintended emotional impacts critique and analysis can have, effects of teacher behavior, a survey of critique-caused trauma and notes on implicit bias. For the purposes of my literature review, I analyze analysis and critique through phases and writing exercises specifically, …

Critical Reviews & The New York Times Assignment, Thomas L. Rothacker

Open Educational Resources

What is the role of criticism in any art form?

What is the purpose? Is it to enlighten the artists involved? The audience?

Using sample Plays and Playwrights from this term, students will go on a deep dive into the archives of the New York Times theatre reviews. Comparing reviews on the same play with different productions shows different points of view.

Critiques Of Christianity From Savarkar To Malhotra, Chad Bauman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Featured in this chapter are a number of prominent Indian critics of evangelism and conversion to Christianity over roughly the last one hundred years. After briefly covering early twentieth-century figures like Savarkar, Hedgewar, and Golwalkar, the chapter focuses primarily on postcolonial leaders of the last few decades, especially Mohandas Gandhi (who survived just barely into the “postcolonial” era), Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Ashok Chowgule, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and Radha Rajan. Finally, at the end, to demonstrate the multinational scope of these polemics, I briefly discuss the views of the Hindu American Foundation and Rajiv Malhotra. It is …

Contemporary Handicraft, Textile Art, And Feminist Social Critique, Kaitlynn Blow

Honors Theses

My thesis looks at the work of female contemporary artists who use what has historically been considered “women’s craft” such as embroidery, knitting, stitching and other various textile arts. Since the Women’s Art Movement of the 1970s, women have used these creative outlets to express discontent and injustice in their lives revolving around gender and identity. In my research, three main themes emerged as addressed in each chapter. The first theme addresses the topic of domesticity and memory including unseen female labor, such as domestic chores and motherhood, and how fabric holds memories. Chapter two covers gender politics- specifically the …

An Emergent Literary Theory: The Darker Haptic Counterpart, Micala Nitz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Victorian society viewed physical appearance and internalized habit as direct manifestations of a person’s shame, history, and identity. This makes any attempt to understand a Victorian literary character a simultaneous attempt to understand their body’s habitus. Wilkie Collins, a prominent serial novelist from the era, capitalized on habitus’ importance by using it as a central plot tool throughout his novels The Woman in White (1859), Armadale (1864), The Moonstone (1868), and Poor Miss Finch (1872). Each of these works reveals his affinity for writing fictional characters whose bodies’ habitus link them to a double, or an alternate self, leading to …

Where Do We Go From Here? An Analysis And Critique Of The Current Physicalist Theories Of Mind, Noah Perrault

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

As naturalism continues to dominate academia it naturally flows into philosophy of mind. Physicalist theories of mind reduce the mind to only what is material. Philosophers like Jaegwon Kim and Daniel Dennett present forceful arguments against mental states of mind holding causal power at all. This paper will critique arguments from Kim and Dennett regarding physicalist theories of mind and show that the philosopher who does not hold to a naturalist worldview need not be frightened by arguments like Kim or Dennett's.

Recent Objections Of Ontological Arguments, Devonte Narde

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

This paper summarizes a few recent objections to various ontological arguments (OAs). I do not weigh one argument against another, nor offer defenses of OAs. This paper only highlights some objections to OAs to synthesize the information in one place. Opponents of the OA argue that despite the many attempts to strengthen Anselm’s original argument it can be shown that OAs fail to offer a theistic proof for God. It has been argued that OAs either offer premises that atheists do not accept, yield invalid results, or have conclusions that have no religious significance.

Scattered Forms: Affect And Critical Writing, Sam Kiley

Senior Projects Spring 2020

There is a moment I like in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you.” Sedgwick opens with an anecdote about a conversation with a friend, which results in the simple and elegant question of “What does knowledge do”? This project, jumping off of Sedgwick’s question, is an attempt to wonder about the possibilities of the most common form of knowledge creation in literary studies: the critical essay.

The project reads a variety of critical works from writers like June Jordan, Lauren Berlant, and Sedgwick, all of …

The “Step-Child Of Scholarly Investigation”: Preliminary Observations About The Origins Of Academic Jewish Law Scholarship, David Hollander

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lukácsian Reification In The Twenty-First Century, Dominic Kenneth Mario Pizzolitto

Major Papers

This paper examines Lukácsian reification in order to assess its relevance for contemporary critical theory.

Critique Of A Hegemonic View Of Feminism: A Reflection, Elsa Muñoz-Garcia

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

This article gathers the critiques of “Western feminisms” that came up in conversations with Kurdish women during an ethnographic study of Kurdish women in Europe. The purpose is to build a conceptual foundation for a stronger coalition that is key to a transnational feminist discussion. In order to that I define a framework receptive of the criticism. I review some key elements in the existing conversation on hegemonic Western feminisms, such as eurocentrism and individualism. I also comment more features that I extracted from my study during my interactions with Kurdish women, such as institutionalized way of operating that keeps …

An Education In Sexuality & Sociality: Reflections & Critiques, Frank Karioris

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

The opening editorial of this volume speaks to Dr. Frank Karioris's recently released book, An Education on Sexuality and Sociality: Heteronormativity on Campus. The outline of this piece is in conversation with the complementary book review in this volume, highlighting the strengths, areas for growth, and future implications for research and practice in higher education.

“Introduction: Theory, Practice, And Critical Agency In Andrew Marvell’S Poetry, Ben Labreche, Ryan Netzley

English, Linguistics, and Communication (Legacy)

An introduction for the special issue on theoretical approaches to Andrew Marvell.

Bastard Reasoning: A "Preposterous" History Of Walter Benjamin's Ideas, Vladimir Cristache

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents the theory of ideas developed by Walter Benjamin in the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” of his Trauerspiel book and thereby seeks to fill an existing gap in English-language Benjamin literature. On the one hand, it performs its task by closely reading this thinker’s early, epistemo-linguistic writings up to and including the “Prologue”: most prominently, “On Language as Such,” “The Program of the Coming Philosophy,” “The Concept of Criticism,” and the theoretically inclined sections of “Goethe’s Elective Affinities.” On the other, it does so by positioning Benjamin’s theory of language within existentialist philosophy and by applying his theory of …

Elizabeth S. Anker And Rita Felski, Eds. Critique And Postcritique. Duke Up, 2017., Maïté Marciano

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski, eds. Critique and Postcritique. Duke UP, 2017.329 pp.

The Park Is Open: An Ecofeminist Critique Of Universal's Jurassic World, Nichole R. Mchugh

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

This paper explores an interpretation of Universal Pictures,’ Jurassic World (2015), to identify naturalized representations of human relationships and human relationships to the environment. Using the concepts of scholar, Noel Sturgeon, the ideological significance of these representations comes down to what she defines as “Politics of The Natural”. Through this avenue, this analysis examines Jurassic World as a text and reflection of normalized environmental worldviews, attitudes and values; as well as how these determine where humans place in this “naturalized” hierarchy. This essay will discuss environmental themes in the film, first, through Jurassic World as a symbol for the western …

"What Do The Divils Find To Laugh About" In Melville's The Confidence-Man, Truedson J. Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

The failure of identity in The Confidence-Man has confounded readers since its publication. To some critics, Melville's titular character has seemed to leave his readers in a hopelessness without access to confidence, identity, trust, ethical relationality, and, finally, without anything to say. I argue, however, that Melville's text does not leave us without hope. My argument, consequently, is inextricably bound to a reading of Melville's text as deeply engaged with the concepts it inherits from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, an inheritance woefully under-examined by those critics who would leave Melville's text in the mire of hopelessness. In examining …

A Collaboration Of Poetry And Art: The Krill Kill Project, Diane Guichon, Sarah Melanie Harrill

The Goose

Artist Sarah Melanie Harrill interrogates poet Diane Guichon's poem "Krill Kill" in this project of interwoven, creative representations and musings on the connectivity between nature and humanity. This project formed part of the Calgary People's Poetry Festival in the fall of 2017.

Betty Friedan And Juliet Mitchell: Critiques Of Ideology And Power, Jennie Eagle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My thesis attends to a common thread of critique in two founding documents of “second-wave” feminism: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Juliet Mitchell’s “Women: the Longest Revolution.” I am interested in the ways in which both foundational texts de-naturalize male supremacy by defining it as ideological. The concept of ideology as employed by three notable social theorists – Marx’s concept of a social mythology disseminated by ruling elites to uphold various forms of hierarchy, operating through internal contradictions; French communist Louis Althusser’s concept of a social practice disseminated by the institutions of civil society; and Michel Foucault’s identification …

An Unapologetic Feminist Response, Bidisha Banerjee, Mindy Blaise

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the spirit of reformulating notions of critique, this response builds on the creative research experimentation that the authors enacted to consider air differently. The authors continue to be lured by generosity, curiosity, surprise, and wonder and suggest two feminist responses that relate to and generate knowledge in alternative ways. Two experimentations (collective experimental story writing and erasure poetry) are offered to readers with the aim of activating new thinkings, doings, and relations with air.

A Review Of John Rists' "Augustine On Free Will And Predestination", Caleb H. A. Brown

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

In this paper I seek to summarize and critique John Rist’s article “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination.” Rist treats Augustine with honesty. When someone is as prominent, loved, and recognized as Augustine, when someone has as much authority as he does, the temptation to manipulate his writings into saying things which agree with one’s own position is strong. Rist resists this temptation, even concluding that Augustine holds a position on free will and predestination which Rist finds highly objectionable. But in his objections to Augustine’s position, Rist does not do justice to the whole system of Augustine’s thought. In …

The Other Side Of Fun, Dan Forkapa

ETD Archive

"The Other Side of Fun" is a collection of creative non-fiction essays that examine the relationship between several cultural pastimes and our society as a whole. The thoughts, feelings, and observations made throughout these essays are reflections of my time spent working various jobs pertaining to some form of entertainment. "Mayflies" explores my time as a game-day security worker for the Cleveland Indians, examining the relationship between unionized labor and the lifestyle that encompasses it. "Spiders" chronicles my time spent as a Resident Assistant at Cleveland State, investigating the deep web and the potential dangers that technology can bring. "House …