Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Living In Untranslatability--Performance Art In China And Usa, Ziyun Ma

Masters Theses

This thesis embodies discontinuities in performance art and its non-equivalent Chinese term “行 为艺术” between language and cultural context into a migrating journey. A comparative analysis on the disciplinary history of performance art studies in the US and China laid a foundation in exploring the dynamics of marginality in two contexts. Extracting from the narrative mechanism and body view of Chinese performance art, I demonstrate how the philosophy of living (生) inspired many artistic creation, which also echoes my research journey. And from our mutual living experience, I pose the concept of constructive untranslatability that applies positionality and situated knowledge …

“And God Blessed The Seventh Day And Sanctified It”: The Sabbath At Creation, Dedications, And Christ’S Theophany In 3 Nephi, Dan L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

The Creation narrative, found in various places within the canon of scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, describes the institution of two different types of time. The first type of time is established in the “fourth day” with the placement of the astronomical bodies, which act as markers “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years”—that is, common time (Genesis 1:14; Moses 2:14). The second type of time is established in the “seventh day,” when the Lord rests from his labors. Situated as it was at the conclusion of the physical creation and …

Dismantling Dualisms: Jane’S Liminal Agency In Charlotte Brontë’S Jane Eyre, Nicole Baniukaitis

Masters Theses

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a complex and, at times, seemingly paradoxical novel. Through Jane’s journey, I argue that Charlotte Brontë offers possibilities that can be explained and understood through Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist lens of dismantling or escaping dualisms in order to make these crucial changes and rewrite the traditional story. Jane’s liminality throughout the novel empowers her, offers her access to alternative modalities, and allows her to notice the oppressive dualistic structures governing all aspects of life. Due to her unique liminal positioning, Jane is aligned with nature and fights against oppressive dualisms to shape her life in a …

Ego Liminality, Sof Dubois

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A short film portraying the experience of liminal feelings and space through the lens of the suspense horror genre. The film shows what it feels like to be trapped within one's own perception of one's place in the world by interpreting the feeling as literally as possible. Whether or not what is shown is up to the viewer.

The Flight Attendants Of Academia: Liminality, Emotional Labor, And Feminization In Graduate Student Writing Program Administrators, Laura Vidal Chiesa

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Writing Program Administration (WPA) is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the management and development of writing programs in educational institutions. WPA entails writing instruction pedagogy, curriculum design, assessment, and faculty development pertaining to the teaching of writing. Graduate students in Humanities and English-based programs typically fill this position which can offer a career trajectory. However, the position is often experienced as demanding, unrewarding and does not deliver on the career-enhancing experience it seems to promise. Historically, this is unsurprising given that the position has been a subordinated role occupied by women in composition. And yet, the troubles besetting contemporary graduate …

Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach To Commentaries On The Drake-S Equation For Survival, James Houran, Adam J. Rock, Brian Laythe, Patrizio E. Tressoldi

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators’ input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that …

Route 666: A Guided Tour Through American Road Trip Horror, Grace Fiser

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Each culture has its folk landscape. In the folklore of Europe, there are the deep dark woods where fairies and hungry wolves lurk in between the trees. For Americans, there is the frontier, the unknown expanse of wide open space waiting to be conquered. Today that frontier is criss-crossed with miles and miles of roads that we spend hours driving to get from one place to another. It's no wonder our imaginations begin to wander. Road trip horror is a sub-genre defined by horror stories set for the majority of their duration on the highway or on one of its …

The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn

All Theses

This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to …

Inhabiting Suspension: Neoliberalism And The Public Servants In Ismailia's Radio Canal, Mayar Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

To be a public servant in 2021 is to endure many sociopolitical and financial hardships as well as many stereotypes. Between living in dire straits and lacking any motive to work, the public servants and their behavior are almost always rendered indolent. Yet, this ambiguous/all-inclusive category needs to be pinned down, shaped in a sociopolitical landscape in which change is analyzed, documented, and conveyed. In the journey of uncovering what it is like to be working in a service governmental institution, Radio Canal in Ismailia allowed me to delve into a segment of the public servant category in a moment …

Concept Mapping To Identify Threshold Concepts Of The Missional Church Paradigm, Andrew M. Causey

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Bus Line 163: A Public Pilgrim Bus To Rachel’S Tomb In Jerusalem, Mustafa Diktaş

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Buses are networks for both physical and social mobility. They permit people to become part of temporary communities of individuals whose goal is to travel along linear routes, which connect multiple stops and reach certain destinations. Through an ethnographic case study of Bus No. 163, which is designated for Jewish pilgrims traveling to Rachel’s tomb in Jerusalem, this paper focuses on the interactions between travelers that took place on this bus during December 2019 and February 2020. The interactions of people on Bus No 163 helps us better understand this liminal phase of pilgrimage. The findings of the research, as …

Reflections From The In-Between: Visualizing The Mental Thresholds Of Dissociation, Katherine Virag

Theses - ALL

I am fascinated by the state of being in-between; by the mental spaces that are somehow neither here nor there, but also somehow both here and there. At a young age, I began to experience depersonalization and derealization, and this dissociated state left me feeling trapped somewhere on the threshold of reality and non-reality. My artistic practice is concerned with the psychological antitheses of dissociation – comfort vs discomfort, safety vs danger, and reality vs non-reality, and the continuum of space between these polarities. Often through large-scale installations, I create a physical space for the viewer to enter. These spaces, …

Reflections From The In-Between: Visualizing The Mental Thresholds Of Dissociation, Katherine Virag

Theses - ALL

I am fascinated by the state of being in-between; by the mental spaces that are somehow neither here nor there, but also somehow both here and there. At a young age, I began to experience depersonalization and derealization, and this dissociated state left me feeling trapped somewhere on the threshold of reality and non-reality. My artistic practice is concerned with the psychological antitheses of dissociation – comfort vs discomfort, safety vs danger, and reality vs non-reality, and the continuum of space between these polarities. Often through large-scale installations, I create a physical space for the viewer to enter. These spaces, …

Wish In One Hand, Amber John

English Honors Theses

In confessional genre-blending poems, prose, and poetic essays, Wish in One Hand probes the reality of living in liminal spaces, and how that reality changes perceptions of identity and the home. Crossing three physical spaces that separate the works, the idea of home is shown to be fluid and multifaceted, frequently interweaving with ideas of childhood, memory, and the passage of time. From meditations on mice in the walls to visceral descriptions of swamp creatures, Wish in One Hand reflects the personal struggle to reconcile liminality with the concrete nature of our worldly experiences.

State, Transnational Citizenship And The Transformative Power Of Art: The Nsk State In Time, Barbara Orel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article deals with one of the most intriguing art projects at the intersection of art and social experiment—The NSK State in Time. This is a paradigmatic transnational state that does not have a territory and whose citizenship can be obtained regardless of one’s nationality, citizenship, race, religion or political convictions. It was established in 1992 by the Slovenian art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst—the NSK, and has seen continuous manifestations in various sociopolitical contexts worldwide. The most prominent one in recent time took place in 2017, when the NSK State opened its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale—a …

Wayfinding: Spiritual Resilience For Global Servants, Joyce Reed

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation proposes that mission agencies who develop a spiritual formation paradigm that incorporates the principles of wayfinding to navigate personal, vocational, and spiritual shifts enhance cross-cultural resiliency for missionaries (also known as global servants). Section One highlights the problem: mission agencies are not adequately addressing the numerous stressors that global servants constantly manage resulting in less healthy, unhealthy or toxic behaviors. In addition, organizational and historical mission culture often creates untenable expectations that contribute to the global servant's stress. Section Two analyzes how stressors might alternatively be addressed via pre-assignment counseling, sending churches, corporate support structures, or enhanced self-care. …

S-21 As A Liminal Power Regime: Violently Othering Khmer Bodies Into Vietnamese Minds, Daniel Bultmann

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The article analyzes the structure, scripts, and procedural logics behind the violent practices in S-21, the central prison of the Khmer Rouge, as a liminal power regime. The institution’s violent practices and operations served to reveal a “Vietnameseness” and/or otherness within the victims and to prove not only their guilt regarding a singular crime but also a long history of treason and collaboration with the Vietnamese, as well as a moral shortcoming that put them outside their own imagined Khmer moral universe and made them part of a larger scheme. The initial and—for the ideology of the revolution—problematic sameness of …

Relocated Pilgrimage: An Artistic Via Dolorosa In The Heart Of Amsterdam, Lieke Wijnia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The route of the iconic Stations of the Cross is not only connected to physical locations of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, but is also manifest in Catholic churches, processions, and passion plays, as well as heritage sites and shrines around the world. A twenty-first-century relocation of this pilgrimage is the international project Art Stations of the Cross. With the aim to offer artistic reflections on social injustice, each station is represented by an artwork especially located in a heritage site. Presented as a journey of contemplation, the 2019 edition took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In this article, participant …

Symbolism Of Temple Gates In Ancient Israel, Talitha Hart

Studia Antiqua

The gates of the city and the temple establish boundaries between inner and outer space, while also allowing access to an area that is clearly separated from its surroundings. Throughout ancient Israel, the city gate was seen as representing economic activity, belonging, justice, and strength. I would argue that the gate of the temple represented many of the same things and was seen in a similar way. I have decided to include the tabernacle, as well as both Solomon’s and Herod’s temples, in this analysis, as they seem to have been seen in a similar light even if they were …

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …

Connections: Life, Memories, And Metaphors Through The Window, Cindra Lyn Ross

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

Abstract

Photographic imagery can transport a person mentally and emotionally to another place or another time, and create connections to people, memories, or experiences. A photograph can also conjure emotions or serve as a metaphor for something wholly unrelated to the image but triggered in our minds by our own history and impression of the image. Photographs can capture transitions and expanses of time by showing the movement of light, or via comparison in a series of images taken over periods of time.

My work has evolved to incorporate a series of images that focus on windows. Throughout the history …

Liminal Space And Minority Communities In Kate O’Brien’S Mary Lavelle (1936), Amy Finlay-Jeffrey

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite blatant references to homoerotic desire in Kate O’Brien’s oeuvre — two of her novels Mary Lavelle (1936) and As Music and Splendour (1958) contain lesbian characters, whilst gay male characters appear in Without my Cloak (1931) and The Land of Spices (1941) — it is only in recent years that scholarship has considered O’Brien as a writer of homosexual themes. There are obvious reasons as to why the lesbianism in O’Brien’s work and others who wrote about it during the mid-twentieth century has suffered from such neglect. It is only since second-wave feminism that an academic critique of sexuality …

Leaping Streams: A Postmodern Epic And An Evaluation Of Becoming And Being, Allura Stevens

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Leaping Streams explores the ways in which an epic poem form can be revived and repurposed to subvert traditional vampire narratives and mythology. I have experimented with writing in the genre of epic poetry, and I will highlight an unnamed, ungendered vampire protagonist. In an attempt to stretch the boundaries of the classic epic, I strayed from the typical heroic journey plot in a way that the protagonist is unaware that they are on a quest to become a different version of themselves. I also subverted the traditional epic meter in favor of free verse. Similarly, through attempting to recreate …

“The Poem Is What Lies Between A Between”: Mahmoud Darwish And The Prosody Of Displacement, Ayelet Even-Nur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish grew up in Israel as an internal refugee living under Israeli military rule, legally classified as a “present-absentee alien.” This article focuses on his 1995 volume of poetry, Limādhā tarakta al-ḥiṣān waḥīdan? (Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?), to study the manner in which Darwish’s cultivation of the musical and aural aspects of poetry serves as a means of poetically attending to the effects of dispossession and displacement. Through a discussion of the poems in the collection’s fourth section, Ghurfa l’il kalām maʿ al-nafs (A Room to Talk to Oneself …

The Permanent Liminality Of Pakistan's Northern Areas- The Case Of Gilgit-Baltistan, Hamna Tariq

Senior Theses and Projects

Since Pakistan’s inception, Gilgit-Baltistan, a sprawling region in Northern Pakistan, has not been granted provincial status due to its colonial association with the disputed region of Kashmir. Gilgit-Baltistan refutes its forceful integration with Kashmir, an unfortunate remnant of British divide-and-rule strategy, and demands provincial recognition and constitutional rights. Pakistan unfairly claims that it awaits the UN-sanctioned plebiscite in Kashmir to determine the region’s status. However, the likelihood of a plebiscite is little to none, since the Indian government officially annexed Indian-held Kashmir in August 2019, breaching the UN resolution on the plebiscite. A region that has been at the mercy …

Creating A Place For Monstrosity: The Forced Liminality And Limited Mobility Of Codified Monstrosity In Leigh Bardugo's King Of Scars, Kaylee Brooke Lambert

Online Theses and Dissertations

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) outlines the purpose of young adult (YA) literature as addressing the unique needs of adolescents, which are “distinguished by unique needs that are – at minimum — physical, intellectual, emotional, and societal in nature” (Cart “Value” para. 8). This unique period in life is liminal, a time between childhood and adulthood. Adolescents search for meaning in the world around them, with literature as one avenue for self-discovery and affirmation. Mental health is one area teenagers seek answers, and YA literature has attempted to provide spaces to navigate those questions in popular contemporary works …

Living With A Liminal Mind, Yoriko Gillard

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Learning to be an educational storyteller entails using every creative skill I learned since my childhood and has allowed me to connect with others especially those in pain. This paper is a reflection of my emotional past. My tears are coming from the ocean and rivers in my liminal space. In this space, I contemplate my hopeful future and seek its contemplative challenges to discover what I still do not know and could learn as an educator. My sincere contemplation to serve society shall be a poetic reflection of who I am becoming each step of my life. Creative writing …

"We Are Strangers In This Life": Theology, Liminality, And The Exiled In Anglo-Saxon Literature, Nathan John Haydon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In “‘We Are Strangers in this Life’: Theology, Liminality, and the Exiled in Anglo-Saxon Literature,” I analyze the theme of exile in the theological literature of the Anglo-Saxon era as a way of conveying the spiritual condition of eschatological separation. The anthropological theory of liminality will be applied in this dissertation as a way of contextualizing the existence of the exiled, and the multiple ways in which exile is enacted. The intervention of the theory of liminality in this dissertation offers a methodology and vocabulary for assessing what exile means in terms of a spiritual identity, how it operates in …

‘Bloodwood’ And ‘Liminal Spaces, Timeless Places: Abjection, Liminality And Landscape In Australian Gothic Fiction’, Karleah Olson

Theses : Honours

This creative honours project comprises a work of fiction titled ‘Bloodwood’ and an accompanying exegetical essay, exploring the concept of liminal space within the Australian landscape. It investigates the anxieties and consequences of past trauma that linger within the landscape of modern Australia, exploring themes such as time, connection to nature, trauma and grief. Using Julia Kristeva’s abjection theory, particularly her ideas on liminal space, this work addresses the contentious issue of postcolonial theory within the field of literary studies, as well as the concept of grief as a liminal process. These ideas are explored through the storylines of three …

From Borderlands To Border Islands: Intersections Between Anzaldúa's Chicana Feminist Theory And U.S. Latina Literature From The Hispanic Caribbean, Cristina Gonzalez Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies three texts by three U.S. Latina authors from the Hispanic Caribbean through the lens of Chicana feminist border theory. The works analyzed are How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican author Julia Alvarez, Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban-American novelist Cristina García, and the memoir Almost a Woman (1998) by Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago. The theoretical framework used is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. The objective is to show how these texts manifest the formation of a hybrid, diasporic, in-between identity that corresponds with Anzaldúa’s definition of mestiza consciousness or la …