Digital Commons Network^™

Embodied Apologetics As Pragmatic Evidence For Christianity, Peter F. Grett

Masters Theses

Embodied apologetics as pragmatic evidence for Christianity: how the lived experiences, visible practices and demonstrated values of believers serve as a compelling defense of the faith in a post-Christian society.

1930 Chicago, Irish American Life, And Its Adaptation Into Historical Fiction: The Ups And Downs Of Percival Dooley, A Novella, Katy Leigh Foster

Masters Theses

The thesis examines and explains literary techniques of historical fiction. Observations and studies of historical photographs and handwritten letters, along with qualitative research through studies, journals, historical fiction pieces, and Chicago info-maps, provided accuracy for the historical fiction and a clear reflection of humanity, which is significant in understanding the argument.

Ultimately, the historical fiction shows not just 1930 American society, but where it is today. The thesis argues and proves that whimsical tones are appropriate and effective despite the uneasy time and setting and the foreboding conflicts during 1930.

The story is set in Chicago in the year 1930. …

Funding Allocations Concerning Composition Creation Standards, Garrett L.H. Robertson

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to provide applied research data showing either a correlation or no correlation between the amount of school funding allocation for music education programs in various elementary, middle, and high schools and pedagogical approaches associated with elementary, middle, and high school student’s ability to carry out composition creation relating to the Nation Coalition for Core Art Standards. Additionally, it provides applied research data on how music educators should perceive their effectiveness regarding the quality of school funding. By examining historical evidence through multiple studies, the research data will be able to help conclude if a …

The Creative Writing Pedagogy Of Black Mountain College, Bethany Gareis

Masters Theses

This essay relies on archival evidence and first-person accounts to study the development of creative writing pedagogy at black mountain college. Early accounts of creative writing at Black Mountain College reveal that it was initially an extracurricular activity driven by student interest, but over time, creative writing became a central part of the curriculum, aligning with the broader philosophies of art education at the college. I examine the pedagogical practices of key figures like Richards, Olson, and Wunsch alongside the progressive educational ideals that underpinned Black Mountain College's approach to learning, drawing on the philosophies of thinkers like Porter Sargent …

Lizzie: A Work Of Historical Fiction, Sandra Rouse

Masters Theses

This thesis was completed as a part of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Liberty University. The critical paper covers the genre of historical fiction. The creative piece contains the opening chapters of Lizzie, a novel of historical fiction covering the life of Elizabeth Evelyn Wright.

Call And Response : Experiments In Storytelling, Deanne Fernandes

Masters Theses

Being part of RISD's inaugural Masters of Illustration cohort has been an immense honor. This journey has been nothing short of transformative and healing, as it has allowed me to unearth layers of self-discovery through my creative practice.

In my thesis, I introduce a fresh research methodology rooted in the principles of call and response, with adaptability, creativity, and storytelling as its foundational pillars. Through the lenses of visual storytelling, experimental animation, graphic journalism, and fictional world-building, I demonstrate how these techniques can effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice. This dynamic approach fosters meaningful connections among diverse perspectives …

This Is For You: A Handbook For Design Students, Gabriel Drozdov

Masters Theses

This Is For You is a handbook for design students. It is a collection of stories, projects, and conversations on the subjects of design, code, and teaching. The book’s first part, “Learning,” contains stories about the experiences that shaped me as a designer. The second part, “Making,” summarizes the projects that taught me how to design. The third and final part, “Sharing,” is a series of conversations with the people that helped me along the way. In collecting and publishing these resources, This Is For You is an attempt to create an open-source example of what a career in design …

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

Building The Body, Jasmine Flowers

Masters Theses

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

Half Dawn, Catherine Ashley

Masters Theses

By presenting these words on paper, I have given entry into a microcosm of recent research, questions, and creative explorations. There is potential for disconnection when trying to turn your head inside out and present it in a way that feels beautiful for other people. I’m trusting the moments of authenticity I’ve found in my wandering. Segue. Relationship. Gesture. Illusion. My musings all stem from notions of temporality. Time dances on the farthest ends of both immensity and desolation. I’ve spent stretches of time asking the people, texts, and experiments around me to define time in a way that I …

Perform—Produce, Rebecca Wilkinson

Masters Theses

Perform — Produce defines graphic design as a discipline rooted in work rather than a process that springs forth spontaneously from the creative imagination.

Perform — Produce is driven by strict constraints and machine-like craft, employing outdated tools and the physical body in processes of making that are stubbornly slow.

Perform — Produce deploys performance as a tactic to expose the otherwise invisible labor of design, and to reveal the ways design acquires value.

Perform — Produce proposes a new organizational model that integrates live happenings, cross-disciplinary exchange, and self-publishing to consider not just the product of design but also …

Repair Rolodex: Exchanges, Changes, And Patchwork Parables, Ethan Howard

Masters Theses

This book is an index of nine exchanges with strangers whom I met online through email Listservs or by word of mouth. In these transactions, I offered to repair broken things for a trade-in-kind payment. Through the brief relationship between owner and designer, each interaction suggests that an object is almost never entirely obsolete despite its perceived obsolescence.

At the core of these trades is a grassroots protest of the landfill and a critique of our global capitalist commerce system. The apparent desire for and nature of these trades demonstrates that stories make our objects meaningful. Each interplay studies peoples’ …

Umbrales (Thresholds), Maureen Scally

Masters Theses

Umbrales is Spanish for Thresholds.

Thresholds are by nature ambivalent spaces, inviting two distinct realities into play. As an artist, I materialize my experiences as a migrant into an architectural form. A series of textile walls shape a space that is simultaneously interior and exterior so that the audience circulates in the negative space in between. It is in the construction of this threshold condition — a simultaneous placement, neither here nor there — that a complex narrative of place unfolds.

The Impact Of Creative And Performing Arts In The Chicago Public School System, Lashanda Holts

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the importance of creative and performing arts through the multifaceted production, “Mop and Bucket Blues”. This thesis was also created to bring awareness to Chicago’s inner city gun violence, poverty, absentee fathers’, and the lack of funding for the creative arts in public schools, in high crime areas. By analyzing the thematic elements, artistic techniques, and socio-political impact of the play, this study seeks to shed light on the potential of theater as a powerful medium for social change and educational reform.

Watch, Follow, Sabotage: Themes Of Stasi Surveillance In The Queer East German Films Coming Out And Die Andere Liebe, Julia Goncalves

Masters Theses

The Ministerium für Staatsicherheit, Stasi, conducted constant and relentless surveillance on the citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), whom it perceived as political threats to the regime’s stability. After organizing and pushing for public visibility, gay East Germans quickly attracted the attention of the Stasi. Even though the East German state regarded homosexuality as a taboo topic, it became the subject of a 1988 documentary, Die andere Liebe, and a 1989 full-length feature film, Coming Out. These films focus on the hardships that gay East Germans faced in a society of compulsory heterosexuality. Existing scholarship on the …

The Event, Michael R. Ray Sr

Masters Theses

In completion of my thesis project for a master’s degree in music composition, I will be writing, recording, videoing, and editing an original 60-minute musical. The musical, entitled “The Event,” is a musical and philosophical exploration of humanity’s relationship with its home planet. Through a series of thematically related vignettes, the musical orbits a single question: if humans were trapped on Earth, would our behavior change?

Giving us a throughline in the discussion of the ensuing questions is our narrator, a kind of “every man” representing different facets of the human/planet relationship. Through his involvement in each song, we aim …

From Screen To Classroom: The Role Of Televised Narratives In Enhancing Educational Belongingness For Black American Students, Feyi Oshinyemi

Masters Theses

This creative thesis examines the influence of televised narratives on shaping the educational experiences of Black American students, exploring the interplay between media representation and educational belonging. It proposes how televisual narratives can better reflect and support the educational identities of Black American students, aiming to foster a greater sense of belonging and representation in educational media. This document serves as an accompaniment to the center of this work, a twelve minute pilot episode that explores the challenges and triumphs of students navigating their educational journeys. This work not only provides a detailed breakdown of the episode's narrative and production …

Alienation In Life And Film, Chase A. Hawkins

Masters Theses

The thesis begins by detailing the philosophy motivating the plot of the screenplay, which is the majority of the work. A short critical paper explores the way Wes Anderson uses dialogue to create or avoid emotional moments in some of his more complicated works.

Healing Artists Through Art, Corey Aaron Cundiff

Masters Theses

Men die by suicide nearly four times more than women, with higher rates among artists. There has been an increase in the rate of suicide over the years, primarily linked to depression and mounting societal expectations imposed upon men. The prevalence of social media and the awareness that comes with indicates that the issue of suicide may never disappear unless action is taken. This paper examines the need for art therapy to counter depression among male artists. No longer do we need to rely strictly on medication and talk therapy to treat depression. Many art therapy techniques have proven quite …

Traditional Vietnamese Music And Its Incorporation Into Christian Worship, Elijah Khang Chau

Masters Theses

The thesis addresses the concern of incorporating traditional Vietnamese instruments into Christian worship. Most worship done in Vietnamese churches in the US is primarily westernized, and it lacks cultural elements to reflect the Vietnamese culture. Another concern is that the younger generation does not know much about Vietnamese culture; this is an issue because many Vietnamese descents do not know which culture they belong to. The idea behind traditional Vietnamese instruments incorporated into Christian worship will encourage Vietnamese churches to use Vietnamese traditions to further God’s Kingdom so that the Vietnamese congregation can worship and glorify God in their native …

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 …

Postmortem Objectification: A Spectacle Of Human Remains In German Museums, Helen Martin

Masters Theses

The net of scientific entitlement is woven from a single thread that extends from German colonialism to present-day exhibits like Körperwelten. The work of physical anthropologists in Germany and the development of the field from the late 1800s offers insight into the creation and continuity of scientific entitlement to the body of individuals deemed to be ‘others’. Museums and their exhibits embody the intentionality of the curators and researchers, and communicate these intentions to the visitors through curation and exhibit design choices. The inclusion of human remains in exhibits should be considered carefully as to be respectful of the individuals, …

The Internet Isn’T Forever: Early Internet Fan Archives, Their Stewards, Lifespans, And The Political Nature Of The Deaths Of Their Queer Communities, Grey D. Mangan

Masters Theses

The concept of a “forever Internet” has been pervasive in the modern digital age, but the degradation of fan archives from the late 1990s and 2000s seems to tell a different story; as such, we find ourselves in the midst of a Digital Dark Age and we are losing independent digital fan archives quickly- what is happening and how can we save this digital cultural memory, particularly queer cultural memory? To lose these fan archives is to lose valuable insight into the lives and communities of the individuals who interacted in these spaces. By utilizing the lenses of play, theft, …

A Game Of Hazard, Per Chance: Reading Dice Games And Predestined Action In Troilus And Criseyde And Troilus And Cressida, Emma O. Corbin

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the references to the dice game Hazard in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and the Folio version of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida as means to expand the understanding of Troilus’s ability to act as an agent of change within his predetermined story. Utilizing Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens as the foundation for game and play, this work focuses on Hazard as a game of chance present in both works. As a dice game that relies entirely on chance, Hazard is a game and a place of moral and religious anxiety as demonstrated through a survey of dice-based divination and …

Thesis Proposal And Manuscript, Peter Muer

Masters Theses

The aim of this thesis paper is to illustrate a key topic in the study of fictional literature within the context of envisioning, researching, planning, and writing a literary paper and fictional literary novel. In this, a thesis will be argued that literary themes are the most important literary element in fiction works (poems, stories, plays, novellas, novels…) and will be a core part of the serious manuscript (fictional novel; The Mulberry Tree) written by this writer (Peter Muer). In addition, a sound view of great writers and great literature will be presented, as well as a look at literary …

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

Soul Furnace / فرن الأرواح, Isa Ghanayem

Masters Theses

“This is the good washing, this is (the washing) which separates the dirty body from the pure body. This is like silver mixed with lead, it is separated from it by this (process): one makes for it a cupel of bones, which is what is called the “head of the dog” and of which the common name is kūja-which is the crucible—and this must be made of burnt bones. One melts the silver in it, one gives it a strong fire: the cupel will absorb and receive the lead, the fire will make its subtle (part) fly away and extirpate …

Saving The Superheroes, Jeffrey Lawrence Nickles

Masters Theses

Normal Man is a screenplay about Freddy, a below-average underdog who changes the world with the power of his positive thinking. The thesis briefly explores the psychology of how a person’s perceived self-image could stop a highly qualified individual from achieving their dreams, while an underqualified person with a positive self-image can go on to greatness. Other underdogs are compared against Freddy in order to provide a relatable yet successful protagonist. The Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount are also analyzed to show how the supposed “backward” attitudes of Christianity can save the day.

From The Paper To The Stars, Morgan Jefferson Smith

Masters Theses

The document “From the Paper to the Stars” is a concise Thesis evoking the powerful art of literature. The first section is constructed to a minimal recount of the author's past when the spark for writing began in a preschool classroom, followed by inspiration from great authors (J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, to name a few) instilling a purpose to write as a commission to the Lord. The critical evaluation showcases the research of certain fiction, or fantasy, is rooted in mythological ideological reputation. However, such a genre is shown to be a tool for Christian writers to illustrate the …