Philosophy Commons^™

Polynomial Invariants For Classical Invariant Groups, John Diller

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The classical invariant theory of matrix groups plays a fundamental role in modern algebra and geometry, with origins in Hilbert’s Fourteenth Problem concerning the finite generation of rings of invariants. In this thesis, we study polynomial functions on spaces of matrices and investigate their invariants under natural actions of classical groups. After recalling the geometric and algebraic motivations behind Hilbert’s question, we focus on invariants for several complex Lie groups, including the general linear group GL(V), the symplectic group Sp(V), the orthogonal group O(V), and the special orthogonal group SO(V). Building on foundational work of Hermann Weyl and a modern …

Learning To Teach For Inclusion: A Professional Learning Community Of Elementary And Middle School Educators Collaborate For Inclusion, Laurie Summer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This qualitative research study examines how eighteen elementary and middle school educators within a feminist professional learning community, grounded in a book study, developed inclusive understandings, practices, and actions. My first research question was: How do elementary and middle school educators, working within a feminist PLC, make sense of and enact inclusive teaching practices?, and the sub question was: How did using a shared text act as a catalyst for exploring inclusive practices? My second research question was: How do I enact feminist pedagogy in my facilitation of a professional learning community for inclusive teaching? I constructed and collected data …

Eros And The Sublime: Tools For Reaching Toward An Altered Ecological Consciousness, Aineka Carlson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores connections between the Kantian sublime and Anne Carson’s ideas regarding “eros.” Since Kant’s Critique of Judgement was published in 1790, the Kantian sublime has grown in popularity and been utilized by theorists and creative writers alike. While the Kantian sublime is often associated with nature in popular culture, there are certain egocentric and phallocentric elements of this mode of thinking that might inhibit a biocentric mindset. Through a character study of Oryx from Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, this thesis draws relations between the subjugation of women, nature, and the ways in which the popularized …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …

The Mythic Seeds Of Human Rights, Joshua Mackenzie Luna

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose a causal relationship between ancient societies’ mythic corpuses and their law codes. I begin by presenting the histories and historiographies of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia to highlight important themes in their development. Then, I place their creation and flood myths side-by-side for comparison, yielding key differences in the way each group conceptualizes human form, value, and purpose. Once these key differences have been established, I compare each group’s set of slave laws to demonstrate how each law code remains philosophically consistent with its respective set of myths and diametrically opposed to the set from the …

Scholarly Inquiry And Practice In Mathematics Teacher Education Through Intimate Scholarship, Signe E. Kastberg, Elizabeth Suazo-Flores, Melva Grant, Olive Chapman

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Historically scholarly inquiry and practice in mathematics education has responded to societal values and questions. Drawing from the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education’s description of mathematics teacher educator (MTE) work as in solidarity with and alongside mathematics teachers, we turn to mathematics teacher education research as a series of paradigm shifts. MTEs committed to supporting teachers and transferring knowledge attempted to influence mathematics teachers’ work by exploring and understanding teachers’ behaviors. MTEs have also used insider’s perspectives to report the particular of MTEs’ work by describing it beyond behavior and knowledge. These scholars fulfill the call for theoretical eclecticism …

Dwelling Deeply With Less: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Ipa) Of Urban Minimalism, Joyce Y. Li

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of minimalists residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, focusing on their motivations, lifestyle practices, and perceived impacts on wellbeing and human flourishing. In response to the growing popularity of minimalism and the limited research in the Canadian context, this research addresses the question: What are the lived experiences of minimalists residing in Toronto and how they make sense of it? Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with nine highly educated participants of diverse gender identities and ethnic backgrounds. Findings reveal that participants were initially motivated by practical concerns …

Exploring The Shadows: How Taylor Swift's Music Embodies Dark Sound As A Popular Music Artist, Kristyn E. Cole

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

To challenge the conceptual matter of “dark sound”, this major research paper centers around the popular music artist, Taylor Swift to demonstrate an overarching feminist wisdom in an alternative style of music to identify how Taylor Swift presents and embodies qualities of “dark sound”. Research done by D. Ferrett, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes and Paul C. Jasen are used to examine her popular music, and its intersections and influence on our culture and society. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, this research paper discusses three of Swift’s songs; “willow” (evermore, 2020) for her sound, All Too Well: The Short …

I'M Trying To Love Garbage (2021) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea

Picture Books

Bethany Barton writes great books for kids about how minds change. In this one, the character’s arc is from thinking about garbage as just smelly icky stuff through empathizing (a little) with the creatures that feed on garbage, to eventually coming to see that all garbage is not equal; some needs special handling or it will clutter life up for a long time. The conclusion: I want to act like someone who thinks more about garbage, about what trash I create and where it ends up.”

Walk In The Woods (2023) By Nikki Grimes, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

An unnamed Black boy walks in the woods near his home a week after his father’s funeral. Because the boy knows how to be mindful in nature—to move slowly, step carefully, and pay close attention—he becomes more connected to the woods and the creatures in it. Rediscovering is his father’s legacy of ecstatic, aesthetic reverence for nature begins to assuage the boy's anger-tinged grief.

How To Be A Nature Detective (1966) By Millicent E. Selsam, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

Coming up with the most reasonable explanation of the available clues is something we all do on a daily basis. This book describes animal tracks as clues from which children can make inferences about what kind of animal left them and what they were doing when they did.

How Beautiful (2021) By Antonella Capetti, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

The question of what is and isn’t beautiful occurs to the caterpillar in this elaborate picture book when a giant Unknown Thing (human) lifts him out of his familiar leaf bed world and tells him, “You’re so beautiful.” The caterpillar wonders, “But what does beautiful mean?” The question leads him on a day-long trek through the forest, where other animals offer a variety of perplexing answers.

Grasshoppers, Ants, And Philosophical Fables, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

Aesop contrasted the ant’s virtues of industry, forward planning, and group loyalty with the idleness of a cicada interested only in merry-making and music-making. That contrast is challenged in many picture book versions of his fable. What does it mean to work? What is the value of making music and art? Can finding delight in an occupation be as important as denying gratification? When is it right to refuse help to someone who asks for it? This review compares six picture books—Ant and Grasshopper by Luli Gray (2011), The Ant and the Grasshopper by Amy Lowry Poole (2000), The …

Sidewalk Flowers (2015) By Jonarno Lawson, Samantha Piede

Picture Books

JonArno Lawson's Sidewalk Flowers centers on a little girl accompanying her father on a morning walk across a grey landscape. On the way, she spots dandelions sprouting out of the pavement. The protagonist's attention to this tiny, beautiful detail catalyzes her expanding appreciation for the rest of her environment, spurring her to notice beauty in unexpected places. This review suggests that Sidewalk Flowers richly introduces children to the philosophical theme of attention not with words, but with color.

Possum That Didn't (1950/2016) By Arthur Frank Tashlin, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Peter Shea

Picture Books

The possum ‘that didn’t’ is a very contented animal who smiles in sunshine and rain, but when a group of human picnickers spot him hanging by his tail, they read his smile as a frown and call him stupid for insisting that he is happy. They decide to take him to the city to find amusement and, because he won’t climb down from the tree, they excavate it and transport tree and hanging possum together. Frank Tashlin's book goes philosophical in two different directions. One is the direction of satire: We laugh at humans taking a possum to a nightclub, …

I'M Going To Make A Friend (2025) By Darren Chetty, Peter Shea

Picture Books

Philosopher Darren Chetty’s first picture book playfully explores a sort of language-accident: we say we make drawings and machines–and also that we make friends. Chetty shows us a child who tries to construct a robot-friend. As the child thinks about the elements that go into a friendship, we’re reminded of the contradictory desires of childhood companionship: for space and comfort, adventure and familiarity, a private connection and an opening to the wider world. What would one put into an artificial companion? The problem is as old as Pinocchio and Pygmalion. As the construction proceeds, the other kind of “making friends” …

One Day This Tree Will Fall (2024) By Leslie Barnard Booth, Maughn Gregory

Picture Books

Can a tree live a life worth living? This picture book makes the case that trees have lives that are at once intriguingly similar to human lives and just as intriguingly – and importantly – different. It nudges us to consider the meaning of our own lives and our place and our role in the natural world. But trees are quite mysterious. The more we learn about them, the more fantastical they seem – these ordinary inhabitants of every human city and village. This book invites young people and older people to think more about trees; but there is just …

Embodied Mythology Of Rhetoric: The Dialectic Of The Gender Binary Logos, Isaac A. Lacap

Honors College Theses

Gender is often described as a social construct. This description usually contrasts social construction with other unchanging, unambiguous concepts. Through Chiara Bottici's analysis, I argue the concept of myth breaks us from this dichotomy. By understanding myth as the persistent creation of significance through narratives, we no longer leave myth to the ambit of untruth and unreality. Instead, we see myths as a way to direct people’s actions by giving them a way to see the world. By integrating Bottici with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, I argue the significance of myth occurs through embodiment by organizing gestures. These gestures form a system …

The Body Is On, Kitty F. Davies

Theses and Dissertations

THE BODY IS ON is a visual art exhibition that considers queer embodiment, pervert as political identity, the arriving climate catastrophe, and difficulty in artmaking. I make use of various concepts from Deleuze and Guattari to interconnect my own with the primary goal to ask: what does futurity look like or mean in these climates (in both a literal, warming sense and an increasingly fascistic, political one), and how do we actualize that future?

The Tender Flesh: Dwelling In Soft Wounds And Visceral Bodies, Madelyn Irene Turner-Havens

Theses and Dissertations

Within my painting process, I explore bodily interiority and exteriority in relation to the surface of painting, evoking a discomforting sense of corporeal (dis)embodiment, where haunted flesh becomes palpable. Indexing conversations with the body into the painting is a way to understand my body and create an experience of what happens when language fails to capture the complexity of sensation. Painting becomes a mediation with the canvas, a constant discovery of what can give shape to the intangible: how it feels when my skin folds into itself, bodily urges, and the soft texture of fatty tissue.

I let the parts …