Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Music As Influence: How Has Society Been Shaped By Musical Genres Throughout History?, Cody Poulin

Senior Honors Projects

Musical genres have been an integral part in all societies, ancient and contemporary. As time has progressed, so too have the styles and methods of making and consuming music. Modern music presents us with an enormous amount of variety, allowing us to choose which genres we prefer based on our own ideologies and preferences. In order to understand how these genres came to be, one must look at the context through which they were formed. The context includes a variety of factors, such as time period, cultural and social factors, familial influence, and the geographical location where the music emerged. …

War And Video Games, Nicholas A. Perry

Senior Honors Projects

War has been a subject of many different mediums. Through the portrayal of war, great movies have given insights on human conditions in wartime. War has also been the subject of several video games that are incredibly popular in mass culture. The difference between war movies and war games are that war games are interactive, requiring the players to act out violence in a digital form whereas movies are passive and reiterative in outcome.

There have been many criticisms of war video games ranging from their ability to condition players to violence to their role as propaganda for recruitment, but …

Persuasion In Contemporary Presidential Campaigns, Dylan Moore

Senior Honors Projects

Persuasion has been the foundation and objective of political campaigns since the first contested presidential election in 1796. While this foundation has not changed, the methods of persuading have undergone many changes over the years. Persuasion tactics of past presidential campaigns have used mediums such as print and television but it was not until the last two presidential elections that voters had the internet to supplement their decision-making process.

It is with the rise of the internet that we can see the greatest shift in contemporary campaigns tactics. Candidates’ websites serve as a “one stop shop” for voters to attain …

Modern Leonidas: Spartan Military Culture In A Modern American Context, Samantha Henneberry

Senior Honors Projects

His tomb is pointed to with pride, and so are his children, and his children’s children, and afterward all the race that is his. His shining glory is never forgotten, his name is remembered, and he becomes an immortal, though he lies under the ground... (excerpt from Tyrtaeus 12) The Spartan national war-poet Tyrtaeus wrote the above hymn in the seventh century BC as a dedication to the brave hoplites who gave their lives for Sparta. Its words are startlingly relevant to a modern American society currently at war; a society full of families who take great pride in their …

The Convenient Alliance: President Reagan And Pope John Paul Ii, Cold Warriors, Tighe P. Flatley

Senior Honors Projects

Historians and non-scholars alike have long regarded the work of President Reagan and Pope John Paul II to be a tremendous force in helping to end the Cold War. In 1992, Time Magazine cited the relationship as a “Holy Alliance”, a political partnering of two men who, after surviving separate assassination attempts merely six weeks apart, saw their role in global politics as a divine signal to promote the free world and take down communism internationally. By the time the President and the Pope first met at the Vatican in 1982, the two were privately discussing Cold War politics. They …