History Commons^™

Timeless Teachings & Unbridled Possibilities, Ruijie Tai

Masters Theses

I am looking at is process of TRANSLATING AND BRIDGING.

Qi, traditionally understood as the vital force that flows through and animates living beings and the environment, lies at the edge of our perceptual capabilities.

The notion that what we cannot "see" holds significant influence over our world suggests that there are aspects of reality and forces at play beyond our direct sensory experience. AI, with its capacity for analyzing vast amounts of data and recognizing patterns beyond human capability, offers a unique tool for exploring these unseen forces.

The potential of AI to perceive and understand Qi could open …

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Stop Making Sense: Hegel’S Critique Of Common Understanding, Daniel A. Burnfin

Masters Theses

This thesis presents Hegel’s account of abstract ‘understanding’ (Verstand) and asserts that his thought is to be read as primarily presenting a critique of abstract understanding. Verstand involves the methodological supposition of a self-subsistent fundament of what it speaks of, and hence the critique of understanding is the critique of the supposition of self-subsistent fundaments. Grasping his account and reading him in its critical light yields a very different image of Hegel than the caricature of ‘totalizing systems’. The dimension of the Verstandeskritik has been relatively neglected in Hegel-reception and misunderstandings result from trying to ‘understand’ Hegel, by …

Troubles At Coal Creek: Rhetorics Of Writing, Research, And The Archive, Sumner Stevenson Brown

Masters Theses

Digging through the past can uncover painful truths. As such, historiography that does not acknowledge negotiated spaces, cultural erasures, and flexible frameworks may fall short. It may limit both breadth and depth of the past, thereby (re)producing erasures, whereas a reflexive theoretical framework delivers not only depth and breadth, but it also adds texture and dimension to historical writing and research processes. It is for these purposes that the value of alternative methodologies is not situated at the margins of the rhetorical canons. Instead, it is embedded in the very core of the canons, defined as an element that works …

The Life And Death Of An American Block: A Dialogue With Entropy, Micah Daniel Antanaitis

Masters Theses

My goal in this thesis is to frame, through design, an existing environment in a manner that fosters the witness and embrace of the reality and beauty of decay—which acts as a marker of the passage of time. My intent is to engage in a careful renewal of a neglected, and largely forgotten, urban landscape, which does not ignore its temporal context. My hope is to explore the full potential of the life cycle of buildings and discover the lesson of mortality in modern American ruins.

Things fall apart. This is a simple truth about the physical world that humanity …

A Study Of The Social And Political Implication Of Friedrich Schlegel’S ‘Comedy Of Freude’, Manjit Singh Bhatti

Masters Theses

Generally speaking, scholarship in the field of Germanistik has taken an interest in Friedrich Schlegel’s early publication, “Vom aesthetischen Werte der griechischen Komoedie” (1794), either because of its perceived influence on German Romantic Comedy [(Catholy 1982), (Kluge 1980), (Holl 1923), (Japp 1999)], or else because of its relevance as an example of Schlegel's still inchoate aesthetic philosophy [(Dierkes 1980), (Behrens 1984), (Schanze 1966), (Michel 1982), (Dannenberg 1993), (Mennemeier 1971)]. As a theory of comedy in its own right, Schlegel’s essay has garnered little attention, in part because of its supposed inapplicability to comedic praxis and at times utopian implications, in …

Victorian Philosophies Of Useless Work Versus Work For The Mind: Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, And Marx, Marlaina Easton

Masters Theses

In my Thesis, I will investigate the dominant perceptions of work that spanned the Victorian Period. One of the most important authors of criticism dealing with work in the early part of the Victorian Period was Thomas Carlyle (1845). John Ruskin then became a counterpoint to Carlyle throughout the middle of the century (1862). And although he agreed with much of what Carlyle said, he brings new notions of work to the Victorian Period. William Morris then offered a completely different point of view on the issue of work at the latter part of the Victorian Period (1885). I will …

James Tyrrell, John Locke, And Robert Filmer: Ideas On Property In Late Seventeenth Century England, Christopher Chatlos Strangeman

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I examine the political theories of Sir Robert Filmer, John Locke, and James Tyrrell and, in turn, compare their respective conceptions of property which are at the foundation of their political theories. This political debate about property must be set amongst the political circumstances of the exclusion crisis. Arising from the Whig-Tory division, which arose in part from the Popish Plot, Filmer, Locke, and Tyrrell reveal the ideas of the parties they represented. Locke and Tyrrell, as Whig representatives, refuted the patriarchal theory of Filmer's Patriarcha, representative of the Tory party. In refuting Filmer, Locke and …

Rescue As Imperative For The Preservation Of Integrity: A Study Of Gentile Rescuers During The Holocaust And Their Motivations, Lynn M. Osborn

Masters Theses

When Nazi policies dictated the gradual and continual reduction in the liberties and rights of those deemed undesirable, most did nothing. Most continued to do nothing when these policies were extended to include mass sterilization and extermination. In spite of this, there were a few who acted. They gave of their own meager resources of food, money, and space, to help those who needed it. They risked their very lives as well as the lives of their loved ones to protect and save fellow human beings from the Nazi reign of terror.

Research into rescuers and their motivations have shown …

Inside Or Outside The Whale: George Orwell's Art And Polemic, Richard H. Walker

Masters Theses

This chronological study of the evolution of the works of George Orwell is helpful for the futurist, the citizen awash in groupthink, scholars of standpoint epistemology, of mind and nature, of radical humanism, and others. A former British officer and Spanish revolutionary, he became a Democratic Socialist who believed in intellectual freedom above all and was a champion of the common man. Described as the leading exemplar of the public intellectual, he focused on activism vs passivism (and pacifism), and transforming art and politics into cultural power with mind and nature as the foundation. Like few others, he understood cultural …

Robert Grosseteste's De Ubero Arbitrio, Andrew L. Pearson

Masters Theses

De Libero Arbitrio of Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1170-1253) represents his primary exploration of that aspect of man's relationship to nature, to other human beings, and to God, known as free choice. This thesis explores the relationship of his treatise De Libero Arbitrio to his treatises De Veritate, De Veritate Propositionis, and De Scientia Dei. It also offers an outline and summary of De Libero Arbitrio and presents an English translation of Ludwig Baur's edition of the first recension of this treatise with updated notes.

Human Inspirations As The Connecting Links Of History: Demonstration Through Contrasts Of Imaginative Literature And Historical Record, Glenn W. Sunderland

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to resolve three propositions. The first concerns the continuity of history. It maintains that the continuity of history is ensured by certain universals, or abstract human traits, pertaining to the history of civilization, and that particulars, or in this case, human inspirations, provide the connecting links that bind together those segments of history involving people, places, things, and events.

Secondly, it contends that all historical events result from the actions of people, and that no matter how large or small the event, each individual involved makes a purposeful historical contribution to it.

The third purpose demonstrates that …

The Experience Of God In The De Contemplando Deo Of William Of Saint Thierry, Patrick H. Ryan

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.