Arts and Humanities Commons^™

What Might The Humanities Mean To You And Your Life?, Thyra Knapp

AI Assignment Library

This assignment contains an in-class discussion and brief follow-up (at home) reflection. It is intended to prompt students to consider their personal relationship to the Humanities--how Humanities artifacts (art, literature, music, architecture, etc.) impact one's understanding of the world and their place in it.

Bridging Disciplines With Ai-Powered Coding: Empowering Non-Stem Students To Build Advanced Apis In The Humanities, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The integration of AI-powered coding assistants, such as Cursor AI, GitHub Copilot, and Replit’s Ghostwriter AI, represents a transformative shift in programming education, particularly for non-STEM students. These tools democratize coding by enabling natural language code generation, intelligent error correction, and context-aware assistance within familiar coding environments. This article explores how these technologies empower educators across disciplines to introduce basic and advanced coding concepts to humanities students, a demographic traditionally underserved in programming education. By leveraging AI, instructors can teach non-STEM students the foundational principles of coding and guide them through the development of sophisticated projects, such as building APIs …

The Infinite Corridor, Houyar Moghaddas

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

This photograph was chosen as a visual representation of the poem "Theory of a Well Mind" to capture the essence of the poem's exploration of the human psyche and the journey toward mental wellness. The corridor, with its repeating arches and vanishing point, symbolizes the cyclical nature of thoughts, emotions, and actions that the poem delves into. Just as the corridor seems to stretch into infinity, the poem reflects on the seemingly endless and challenging process of personal growth and self-discovery. The contrast between light and shadow within the image mirrors the poem's themes of introspection, uncertainty, and the pursuit …

Theory Of A Well Mind, Joan S. Hyland

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

In psychiatry residency, we have a didactic within our curriculum that focuses on psychotherapy. This subject culminates in our third year when our program’s psychotherapy supervisor asks each of us to create our own personal theory. It allowed us to explore and apply what we had learned up until this point and formulate our own understanding of why people are the way that they are, how people change, and how to facilitate that growth through our theory. Each of us chose to represent our theory in unique ways, reflective of our personalities. One tech-savvy resident used AI and images. Another …

Turmoil, Derek Kent

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

I painted this picture after tearing up over the phone with her parents. "I think she's passing away," I had told them, "You'd better come up to the hospital." Inexperienced as a brand new physician, I felt like I was drowning in my responsibility over the care of my patients. Real people, with real lives, with real consequences to my decisions. It has gotten easier to feel okay while helping other humans pass away. And it sounds a little dramatic, but I've found ways to help myself cope without being stranded by the waves.

Increasing The Efficiency Of Lifestyle Medicine Counseling: A Visual Approach, Kayla A. Hinton, Ryan Smith

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

Too much to counsel on, too little time? We would like to present a unique and innovative perspective on lifestyle medicine counseling through the lens of a homemade flyer, designed to bridge the gap between conventional health care practices and personalized, holistic well-being. In the promising field of health care humanities, the homemade lifestyle medicine flyer serves as a tangible manifestation of individual agency in promoting health and vitality. The flyer encapsulates a diverse range of self-care practices, dietary insights, and mindfulness techniques, emphasizing the inherent connection between mind, body, and spirit in one’s health journey.

This double-sided document highlights …

Biblical Literacy And The Creative Mind, Michael Farrell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Biblical Literacy and the Creative Mind will explore interpretation tracing the history of English literature back to biblical aspirations and its continued profound influence on Western human perspectives. It will examine the decline in adults reading literary texts and the diminishing number of English majors among prospective students. I am arguing for poetic interpretations over hermeneutic ones, which analyze what is structurally in a sentence to make a reader feel a certain way. I will use the theory of intertextuality, meaning a text comprises the consumption of past texts, to aid my argument. This theory underscores the importance of celebrated …

Review Of On The Digital Humanities: Essays And Provocations, By Stephen Ramsay, Michelle Lyons-Mcfarland

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations by Stephen Ramsay.

Texas Gothic, Taryn Uribe Turner

Art Theses and Dissertations

The emotional and the ecological combine to create my body of work titled, “Texas Gothic.” My thesis tells the stories of my oil paintings created through personal connections to a variety of landscapes, animals and experiences that share the setting of Texas.

Desire and regret take shape as animals and figures not fully formed or real. Unreliable narratives of the past are entangled with present tensions to create a painting that haunts and stalks.

And yet, there is hope!

Through nostalgia and sweetness and burdens, my paintings confront a shrouded future. The contradictions of time passing are explored in my …

Fragmented Bodies, Lauren Careese Alexander

Art Theses and Dissertations

Through Memory Webs and fragmented ceramic vessels, I express what it feels like to grow up living in a biracial body. I utilize mixed media to emulate a mixed-race experience. My Memory Webs are fashioned by painting on scraps of canvas and attaching them with crocheted wire and ribbon to speak to how my memory has impacted my identity. My fragmented ceramic vessels are cut up and stitched back together to represent disjointedness and un-belonging. All of my work is contextualized through the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and what the Monster may represent for people of color. I also …

Radical Explorations Of Radical Empiricism: William James’S Transmissive Theory Of Mind In The Context Of Visionary Experience, Rita Spellman

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

The dominant ontology in science is a form of materialism and it filters down into the social sciences in ways I will touch on throughout this paper. The influence of the current dominant ontology is especially apparent when it comes to experiences and phenomena that challenge its underlying assumptions which is why I will primarily focus on visionary experience and psi phenomena as studied by radical empiricists throughout the ages.

The philosophical position of William James challenges materialist assumptions by championing the idea that the only world we can speak of is the world of our experience. William James affords …

The Humanities And Interdisciplinarity: Borderless Sympathy And Global Citizenship, Lianne Gabrielle Sauvage

Honors Thesis

In an era marked by capitalism, rapid globalization, and technological advancement, the humanities, and interdisciplinary studies have been pushed aside for the sake of profitability. Drawing on insights from scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Stuart Hall, this paper explores the crucial role of a humanities-based and interdisciplinary education in fostering skills and sensibilities necessary in navigating the increasingly interconnected world. Through an examination of various interdisciplinary courses at Loyola Marymount University, this paper demonstrates the nuanced ways in which the humanities enrich our understanding of human experience, cultural diversity, and sociopolitical dynamics, ultimately developing a borderless sympathy that is necessary …

“The Scepter Shall Not Depart From Judah”: Jews And Imperial Power In Benjamin Of Tudela’S Book Of Travels, Azriel Elul

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This paper, written as a final project for Professor Shay Rabineau's class “Walking the Land,” examines the relationship of medieval Jews to the imperial powers to which they were subject, as expressed in Benjamin of Tudela's Book of Travels. It focuses on the two imperial cores of Rome and Baghdad, and contextualizes the representation of these two cities within the world of imperial power in which the text was produced. As a work of medieval travel literature, I analyze the Book of Travels not as a factual account of history, but rather as a discursive and imaginative text which …

India Needs To Value Academic Freedom, Research In Humanities To Emerge As Power Centre, Karthick Ram Manoharan

Popular Media

"Why should academic freedom be of any concern to the public?" This piece advocates for strengthening spaces for rigorous intellectual conversation in India. Focusing on the role of humanities research, it argues that "critical and independent research augments democracies."

Criticisms Of Evidentialism:A Critique Of Jonathan Way’S Solutions To The Issues Of Evidentialism, Kailey Echeverria

Global Tides

This paper will begin with a brief introduction of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee’s definitions and examples ascribed to their original argument for Evidentialism in order to provide context for the remainder of the paper. The paper will turn to Jonathan Way’s concerns surrounding the original argument for Evidentialism, and break down his revamped definitions of Evidentialism and what Way calls “incentives”. Then, the paper will turn to Way’s solutions to the concerns he addressed, where he introduces the “argument from good reasoning” and the Link principal, a modified and refreshed version of Feldman and Conee’s “argument from reasoning”. Further …

The Ethical Motive As Counter To Benatar’S Anti-Natalism, Eliot Cox

Global Tides

In multiple works, David Benatar defends the view that it is immoral for parents to have children under any circumstance due to the suffering inherent in human life. This essay argues that Benatar’s anti-natalist argument is not successful because of its misidentification of the proper motive humans should have if they are to exist. Instead, I argue, the benefits of an ethical motive, if such a motive is properly instilled within a child by their parents or guardians, can surmount the suffering caused by existence. An ethical motive is characterized by the goal of alleviating suffering for others before oneself. …

Does Ai Ask Good Questions? A Discussion Activity, Katherine Tilghman

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students will prompt ChatGPT to generate discussion questions about a course text or artistic work, then evaluate the questions and modify them to make them more engaging and thought-provoking.

Bloom Or Bust: An Interdisciplinary Exploration Of Flowering Plants And How Climate Change Impacts Them, Carolyn Schmode

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Plants are vital to both natural ecosystems and human society. As climate change progresses, more frequent extreme weather events threaten the biodiversity of the Pacific Northwest. Plant responses to flooding, drought, temperature, and light involve signal transduction pathways that alter flowering times. As flowering times shift, plant/pollinator interactions decrease, limiting the plants' ability to survive and reproduce. My capstone is a literature review synthesizing how plants respond to changes in their environment related to climate change. I also explore plants as art, highlighting the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the way we interact with plants.

Spring 2024

The Alembic

The Alembic - Spring 2024. 143 pages including covers and advertisements.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Note, vii

Poetry

S. Yarberry

Catherine’s Poem, 3

Looking at Robert Blake, 4

The Tyger , 6

Ethan Cunningham

Woman Under Water, 7

William Heath

A Bar in Santa Cruz, 8

In Asturias, 9

Joan Barker

Hometown, 10

Ella Bloom

Loneliness, 12

The Fog/A Lighthouse, 14

Found, 16

Tom McFadden

Where the Light May End, 17

If It Were Spring, 18

Bruce McRae

Daydreamers, 20

Does Your Dog Bite?, 21

A Strained Affair, 22

Erin Bolger

19 reasons, 23

Richard Dinges

Thunder, 24

Mulberry Trees …

Strategic Plan For The Flannery O'Connor Institute For The Humanities, Dan Lavery

Graduate Research Showcase

Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1963) is the most prestigious alumna of Georgia College and State University (GCSU). On March 25, 2025, GCSU will celebrate the Centenary of her birth. In the period leading up to that time there are many activities and events to commemorate this significant occasion. One of the most significant is the renaming of the now Andalusia Institute at GCSU to the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities with a new mission, vision and goals. My proposed Capstone Project is to create a new strategic plan for the rebranded Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities so that it …

Understories: A Queer Rewilding Of Ecology And Literature, Aina Zabinski

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This capstone project metaphorays into rewilding contemporary climate conscious literature and biology research related to forests. It situates (under)stories as firmly rooted in the context of queer ecology, pointing to a non-essentialist and anti-colonialist view of the world that strongly endorses the significance of environmental humanities in liberation work. Climate change and its connection to systems of social oppression necessitate a breakdown of the divide between arts and sciences in hopes of sustainable futures in the Anthropocene. Storytelling plays an important role in this. Queer eco-literature will not save the world on its own, of course, but it does hold …

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

Ideas Of Judaism In The Jew Of Malta And The Merchant Of Venice, Matthew Wilson

Development of Western Civilization Student Scholarship

The colloquium marks the culminating semester of the DWC experience. Over four semesters, students have achieved a grounding in major texts of the western tradition, engaged in deep reading and reflection, improved their communication skills, and are ready to make connections with their majors and careers. The colloquium allows them to utilize these skills and make the transition to their future academic work. In light of this, the Development of Western Civilization Program Committee has selected 5 DWC colloquium culminating projects that demonstrate excellence in communication and critical thinking skills. We are grateful to these students for their hard work …

Reclaiming The Symbol: Ethics, Rhetoric, And The Humanistic Integration Of Gai - A Burkean Perspective, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This study delves into the intersection of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and the Humanities, guided by the critical insights of Kenneth Burke, a seminal figure in the study of rhetoric and a vocal critic of scientism and positivism. The skepticism of the American literary theorist towards an uncritical embrace of science and technology, and his concerns over the inclination of the Humanities to adopt scientific methodologies at the expense of traditional forms of inquiry, provide a critical framework for examining the new role played by GAI within the Humanities. By framing these tools in the context of Burkean rhetorical theory, …

Todo Sobre América Latina, Kayla Madeline Schwartz

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to inform a Spanish-speaking audience about the humanities of Latin America. The format is a blog which solicits more engagement with the embedded research and written text. Colorful photos and informative videos attract the attention of a general public that may otherwise not be interested in learning extensively about history and culture. Such focus is important because Latin American past has great bearing on the lives of much of the Latinx community today—in many regions.

Specifically, this blog contains articles about history, literature, movies and shows, dance, and travelling. The audience can learn about a broad timeline …

Quiet, Thashali Anthony

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

According to theatrical superstition, saying “Macbeth” in the theater when you aren’t actively performing or rehearsing foreshadows impending doom. In a similar way, in the hospital, its own production of sorts where medical staff is under pressure to perform, it’s the "Q" word. We all dread the "Q" word and are vexed with anyone who dares say it. Yet sometimes wandering the hospital during night float, I often feel a profound sense of "Quiet." The word is typically associated with a lack of it, but I find there is a certain peace with being alone with one’s thoughts. Residency can …

Collaborative Teaching To Impact: Embedding Wikipedia Editing In An Asian Studies Curriculum, Angie Chau, Ying Liu

Journal of East Asian Libraries

The use of A.I. tools in learning and research introduces significant challenges to conventional essay assignments in Humanities, necessitating the exploration of alternative teaching and evaluation methods.

In many academic libraries, subject Librarians are often invited by instructors to teach one-shot library research skills workshops as guest speakers. The one-shot library instruction model is “not sufficient to convey the depth and breadth of information literacy concepts to students”, however, it remains in use “in part because of the sheer practicum of the model.”

In response to the identified need for change, the instructor and the librarian undertook a case study …

Libraries And Changing Humanities Fields, Peter Hesseldenz

2024 R&I Day

A description of a project which explores how Humanities fields are changing as they grapple with diversity and inclusion issues, focusing particularly on curricula and teaching methods. The project also seeks to understand how well libraries are working with and supporting these changes with particular emphasis on the role of Academic Liaisons.

Narrative World Building: Creative Applications For Gamification In Study Abroad, Ashley Lear

Publications

This study examined a cohort of 12 study abroad participants taking a course on video game topography and narrative in Salamanca, Spain, to determine how inhabiting and co-creating narrative worlds as part of the coursework might impact the experiences of the students inside and outside of the classroom as they engaged in mandated and optional cultural engagement activities, such as museum tours and excursions to historical sites. Students completed two gameful learning activities: 1) they co-created their own narrative game world in a group game proposal assignment drawing upon research from storytelling through game environments, and 2) they created independent …

2024 Humanities Symposium: We The People, Messiah University

Humanities Symposium

The 2024 Humanities Symposium took place at Messiah University from February 19-23, 2024. The Keynote speaker was Philip S. Gorski, Ph.D.