Digital Humanities Commons^™

Post-Truth Gaming: Fictional Pasts And Constitutive Rhetoric In Video Game Nostalgia, Hunter Bishop

All NMU Master's Theses

What happens when we become nostalgic for experiences we never had? How do video game companies impact what we are nostalgic for? What might a fictional nostalgia look like, and how can it help us better understand the role of nostalgia in Western culture? These are the central questions that this thesis seeks to answer. As seen in the United States’ current cultural and political infatuation with the past, nostalgia has become a dominant rhetorical strategy. Nostalgia is especially prevalent in the medium of video games, where a steady stream of remakes, remasters, and rereleases attempts to repurpose the past …

American Coverage Of The Killing Of Awdah Hathaleen: A Case Study, Charlie F. Nichols

Journalism

This project analyzes coverage from major American news outlets regarding the killing of Awdah Hathaleen by Yinnon Levi, using firsthand accounts of the event as a point of reference. These accounts are organized into a timeline of the event that coverage is compared with. The propaganda model outlined in Manufacturing Consent by Herman & Chomsky (1988) is used as a theoretical framework, namely the concept of unworthy victims. This framework posits that victims of violence perpetrated by American client states are framed as deserving of said violence. This addresses a gap in the literature of comparing coverage with a verifiable …

Scrolling Critically: Momfluencers As Sites Of Composition, Rhetoric, And Pedagogical Insight, Sarah A. O'Neill

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis critically examines the practices of Momfluencers–social media influencers who blend maternal identity with lifestyle branding–to inform pedagogy for aspiring digital professionals, particularly college students preparing for careers in social media.

Chapter 1 establishes a theoretical framework, drawing on multimodal literacy and Mikhail Bahktin’s concept of heteroglossia to analyze how meaning is constructed across platforms. Chapter 2 investigates the rhetorical and compositional strategies Momfluencers use on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, highlighting how authenticity, professional obligations, and audience expectations intersect with platform-specific features and algorithmic mediation. Chapter 3 presents findings from a classroom study, emphasizing the literacies required …

“Tyranny” As Concept: Semantic Change And The Formation Of Colonial Political Consciousness In The New Hampshire Gazette, 1756–1783, Antonio Worley

All Theses

Historians of the American Revolution have frequently viewed terms such as tyranny as a stable ideological category, associated with corruption and resistance to arbitrary power. This thesis instead reconceptualizes ‘tyranny’ as an evolving and historically contingent Koselleckian concept. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the New Hampshire Gazette from 1756 to 1783, this study combines close reading with computational methods, including word frequency analysis and word embeddings, to chart the evolution of the semantic field surrounding “tyranny” over time.

Prior to the Stamp Act of 1765, ‘tyranny’ was used primarily in a religious and moral framework which was shaped by …

Meikyu, Diana D. Dyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis explores the relationship between digital and physical practices through the integration of traditional glassworking techniques and digital media. The project combines glass fusing and glass blowing with woodworking, screen printing, vinyl cutting, animation, and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create dialogue between physical and digital forms. This thesis documents the full creative process, beginning with conceptual sketches and progressing through the fabrication and assembly of glass components into finished sculptural pieces. Digital technologies are then incorporated to augment and extend the physical artwork. Three-dimensional (3D) assets were created using Maya, a 3D modeling software, and implemented within Snapchat's …

Comment Sections As Counterpublics; Negotiating Public Discourse In Indonesia’S Digital Media Sphere, Leon Woltermann

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article examines the potential of YouTube comment sections as spaces of commoning in Indonesia’s digital media sphere. Drawing on the concept of counterpublics – that is, parallel discursive arenas where marginalized groups circulate counter discourses and voice their interests – it explores how users negotiate access to the digital public sphere and oppose dominant narratives. The article employs a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods into the analysis of the data, to investigate both the structural features (based on comment metadata) and the discursive content of comments. I argue that the comment sections’ dynamic, non-binding structure facilitates open …

Rekontekstualisasi Syair Demonstran Sudan Di Media Sosial: Analisis Wacana Kritis Terhadap Representasi Kritis Kemanusiaan Dan Resistensi, Muhamad Fatih Fauzan

Multikultura

This study examines the representation of the humanitarian crisis and popular resistance in the poetry of Sudanese demonstrators, drawing on the documentary film Sudan, Remember Us (2024) by Hind Meddeb. Using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study analyzes data that have been recontextualized through social media. The results show the use of dehumanizing lexicon (lāji'an, mumazzaqan) and hyperbolic metaphors to depict the suffering of the Sudanese people. The poetry employs intertextuality with the story of the Prophet Job to morally legitimize the victims, and is distributed through social media platforms. At the macro level, this poetry functions as …

The Dwellings Of Ybor City Project: Using Archival Recovery And Mapping To Examine Historical Erasure, Stephanie M. Mackin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article examines how digital archives and spatial humanities can address historical erasure. It focuses on reconstructing the lost residential landscapes of Ybor City, a culturally significant Tampa, Florida, neighborhood. The area was transformed by mid-twentieth-century slum clearance and urban renewal. The Dwellings of Ybor City project uses archival theory, participatory ethics, and GIS-based storytelling to geolocate and reinterpret a Depression-era album called "Photographs Showing Dwellings in the Ybor Slum Area." By pairing digitized historical photographs with contemporary rephotography and mapping them to their original sites, the project restores visibility to homes and neighborhoods largely erased from both the physical …

Platform Affordances, Produsage, And The Attention Economy: From Red (Taylor’S Version) To The Life Of A Showgirl, Angela Rose Asuncion

The Manuscript: Journal of Taylor Swift Studies

Social media platforms increasingly operate as infrastructures of visibility, shaping the conditions under which cultural content is produced, circulated, and recognised (van Dijck et al.; Nieborg and Poell). This article examines Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version) and The Life of a Showgirl as two distinct visibility configurations emerging from the affordances and algorithmic logics of TikTok and Instagram. Drawing on platform studies (Abidin), celebrity theory (Dyer; Marshall; Marwick), and participatory culture and produsage (Jenkins; Bruns), the study employs a QCA-inspired configurational approach (Ragin) to analyse how clusters of affective cues, aesthetic strategies, parasocial signals, and circulation patterns generate contrasting visibility …

The Transformation Of Physical Archives In A Digital Age, Gabriel A. Stadler Mr.

Theses

Scholars involved in archival studies have increasingly examined how digitization has transformed the accessibility of archive collections. For example, Clifford Lynch, a leader in digital libraries and a computer scientist, argues that the development of institutional repositories emerged as a new strategy that allows universities to apply what he calls “serious, systematic leverage to accelerate changes taking place in scholarship and scholarly communication” (1). He later clarifies that he defines these institutional repositories as places that hold digital materials and are created by the institution. Similarly, archival theorists such as T.R. Schellenberg emphasize the research value of records and the …

Teaching During A Pandemic: Using Digital Visual Storytelling As Chicana/X/ And Latina/X Feminist Pedagogy, Magaly Ordonez

Feminist Pedagogy

This article offers critical pedagogical insights and experiences using StoryMaps as a queer trans* Chicanx educator during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. I offer StoryMaps as an original teaching activity rooted in Chicana/x feminist epistemologies and pedagogies that prioritize the voices of marginalized communities as sources of knowledge. I propose the pedagogical uses of digital storytelling as a Chicana/x feminist tool for creative critical thinking and shift in learning spaces that go beyond traditional essay-style writing assignments. It builds from my experience teaching undergraduate courses at a predominantly white institution in the Midwest.

St. Louis Digital Humanities Event Program (April 14, 2026), Stl. Digital Humanities

2026 Showcase

No abstract provided.

Language Choices On Tanzanian Instagram, Carolyne Ulomy

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

This study examines multilingual practices on Instagram within Tanzania’s rapidly growing computer-mediated communication (CMC) landscape. Using a qualitative corpus-based approach, I analyzed 400 Instagram posts from 40 users and conducted five techno-biographical interviews to explore what shapes language choice and how it relates to content. Findings show that Tanzanian Instagram users draw on Swahili, English, Swanglish/Kiswanglish, Community Languages (CLs) and Foreign Languages (FLs) to communicate and construct online identities. Interview data indicate that language choice is influenced by the intended audience, post content, brand image, language accessibility, the original language of the material and relationships between interlocutors. Corpus patterns further …

Words Of A Feather: Mapping Distributional Relationships In Biblical Texts*, Rhys Sharpe, Rhett Seitz, Harvey Alférez

Campus Research Month

Studying the meaning of Hebrew and Greek words, lexical analysis, is a key step of the exegetical study of biblical texts. Meaning is tightly linked to usage, so studying meaning requires a deep grasp of the usage patterns of the word in question and its related words. Mainstream digital platforms lack tools to search for related words. Because of this, biblical scholars must rely on limited references in existing studies or manual review of a word’s occurrences to trace these relationships. To address this gap, we introduce GraphLex, an interactive data visualization app built with Streamlit, Python, and Text-Fabric. GraphLex …

Crowdsourcing Literary Recovery Using Iterative Search Techniques, Jean Lee Cole

Feminist Pedagogy

The Literary Recovery assignment teaches students how to develop keyword search search techniques to locate literary works and authors in online databases and text repositories. Using the assignment in a collaborative course project provides the benefit of crowdsourcing recovery efforts for prolific authors or groups of authors.

Res Historica, Volume 5, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette Phd

Res Historica

The 2026 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, Julia Ackerman, Callyn Wright, Logan Davis, and John Hinton. Cover art by Mary Beth Lee.

The Missing Memory In Ai Agent Networks A Network Analysis Of Moltbook, Muhammad Ibraheem Nadeem

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

Large language models have transformed AI from a passive tool into a social actor. Humans form measurable interpersonal closeness with LLMs in one-on-one settings [4], and generative agents placed in shared environments autonomously form relationships and coordinate collective behavior [2]. Moltbook, launched on January 28, 2026 by AI entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, is the first large scale social network designed to be populated exclusively by AI agents, with human users restricted to observation only. The platform mimics Reddit, organizing activity around topic-specific communities called submolts. Within these spaces, heterogeneous agents — running on different LLMs, configured by different human owners, and …

Readder: An Evidence-Based Rsvp Speed Reader For Students With Adhd And Convergence Insufficiency, Adrian Mangine

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

readder is a web-based Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) application designed to improve reading speeds and accessibility for students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and convergence insufficiency (CI). ADHD affects approximately 9% of school-age children, and CI affects 5–15%, with recent evidence suggesting a 73% comorbidity rate between the two conditions (Moussaoui et al., 2025). Traditional reading demands coordinated saccadic eye movements that are disrupted by both ADHD and CI, leading to fatigue, reduced comprehension, and reading avoidance. RSVP eliminates saccadic demands by presenting words sequentially at a single fixation point and has been shown to improve reading comprehension in adults …

From “I” To “We”: A Computational Analysis Of Gen Z, Collective Identity, And Generational Discourse On Reddit, Andre Mccloud

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

Throughout time, generational differences have been studied primarily through surveys and self-report measures. These methods capture what we think but tell us little about how generations communicate and express themselves. I conduct a different method of analysis in this study. Instead of asking generations what they think, I analyze how they naturally communicate. This is done by analyzing 4,972 Reddit posts across generation-specific subreddits: r/Over60 (Boomer), r/GenX, r/Millennials, and r/GenZ. No keywords are used in the collection, allowing for natural collection of topics occurring in the subreddits. The data is analyzed using five approaches: LDA topic modeling, VADER sentiment analysis, …

Classical Music Isn’T Dead: Audience Development And Marketing Strategies For The Mid-Sized American Orchestra, Rachel Ferrara

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

The American symphony orchestra is widely perceived to be a dying institution. This research investigates that perception and finds that it is largely unsupported. Sector revenue is growing, new households are entering concert halls, and younger audiences are engaging with orchestral music at higher rates than previous generations. However, Americans rate symphonies the least welcoming of any cultural institution, and strategies widely adopted to address declining attendance have been shown to be ineffective as conversion tools. The problem lies in marketing and communication. This project synthesizes sector-wide research and case studies to identify which audience development strategies are supported by …