Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Connection: The Value Of Art History In Early Childhood Development And Education, Sara Ashley Turner

Theses

This thesis focuses on the utilization of art historical inquiry to improve the relationship and narrative of culture within appropriate settings. Although this thesis will prove the beneficial and important role that the subject matter of art history can have in early education, the subject matter will also show the specific possibilities of using such inquiries in art therapy, museum education, and in general education classrooms. The aim of the thesis is to present these practical and useful employments of art historical inquiry, within subject matter for young children, to be a tool for finding cultural identity and inclusivity in …

Strategic Social Media For Small Congregations, Heather R. Sparkman

Theses

Utilizing social media to draw and build a community of followers is the typical work of the modern Influencer and large organizations. But for a small church, using social media may seem like a wasteful or exasperating experience due to the sheer work that is involved in the enterprise and inconsistency brought on by a lack of strategic thought. The development of this assessment and philosophical metric focuses less on statistical metrics and more on stable principles that relate to values, context, and culture.

“From The House Come Everything”: Macler Shepard And Jeffvanderlou, Inc’S Effort To Rebuild A North St. Louis City Neighborhood, 1966-1978, Mark Loehrer

Theses

This thesis charts the course of the JeffVanderLou (JVL) organization between the pivotal years of 1966 to 1976, using the life of a man named Macler Shepard as the primary lens of exploration. Born in Marvell Arkansas, Macler Shepard followed in the footsteps of tens of thousands of other Southern migrants to cities like St. Louis, hoping to find a new life in the industrial North. However, no sooner had he settled in, he was displaced by the construction of Pruitt-Igoe, one of St. Louis’ first large-scale urban renewal programs. In response, Shepard became involved in neighborhood organizing, focusing on …

South To South: Connections In The Ordinary, Fostering Empathy By Encouraging Travel Through Design, Bethany Wetzel

Theses

South 2 South: Connections in the Ordinary, explores similarities between South Korea and Alabama through a designed sensory experience that allows users to engage in cross-cultural information in an inviting and familiar way with the use of recognizable motifs in order to reduce fear, foster empathy, and encourage travel. The creation of South 2 South was informed by research on travel fears, empathy, and transnational relations between the two regions. South 2 South helps facilitate the beginnings of these interactions by presenting new cultural information directly to the more insular communities of northeast Alabama. My hope is that South …

Where Are The Women? A Feminist Field Guide To The Museum, Taylor Weaver

Theses

Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” was at the fore of the great battle cries of many feminist scholars that drew attention to the limitation’s that female artist’s face in the art world. Women have systematically been left out of the art historical narrative while their male counterparts remain at the forefront.

There are many women that are very prominently represented in museums. They are largely nude and have been represented by male artists. While I do not argue that nudity in paintings should not exist, I do insist that museum goers become …

Game-Based Learning: Building Competence In Visual Literacy Through Simulation, Carol Record

Theses

Game-based learning is an ideal experiential learning framework for introducing the critique process to reduce student anxiety and create competence in visual literacy and self-assessment. Critique, the assessment, and analysis of one’s work is an essential step in any creative process. It is an integral part of art school. However, it can also be a source of high anxiety for new students. This paper discusses the importance of critique, the challenges associated with teaching critique, and the benefits of utilizing game-based learning. Examples of game-based learning solutions are explored, including the development of, and response to, Lumen, a card game …

Birth Of A Nation Effects – Effective Use Of Multimedia To Present Content, Brittae Gray-Ross

Theses

This project will investigate the effective use of multimedia, spanning back to 1915, with the film Birth Of A Nation. The final deliverable is an interactive web application. The web application will include modern day interactive web graphics. The web application will also include research and effective media that can be applied to any subject or thing.

Cannibalizing The Popular Work Of Barbara Wagner, Beatriz Arcoverde De Oliveira

Theses

This project offers an analysis of the appropriation of popular culture aesthetics and imagery in contemporary art through a critical examination of the work of Brazilian artist Barbara Wagner. Wagner’s work contributes to an understanding of this increasing tendency, and also fosters the possibility of a discussion about its consequences in the social world, in creating a paradox of both challenging colonized sensibilities, and also working to maintain a structure of social inequality. Her work is also a good way to discuss the expanding contemporary definitions of popular culture

Visual Communication – A Designer’S Guide To Reaching Target Audiences, Timothy Lerch

Theses

Visual communication is the cornerstone of graphic design. All graphic design projects communicate a visual message. As with all forms of communication, visual communication is a two-way street. For a message to be effective, a designer must understand how to reach their audience. Scholarly design programs focus primarily on visual cues, while marketing programs focus on in-depth audience analysis and consumer behavior. This creates a problem for designers as they complete their degree program and enter the job market, particularly if they intend to seek freelance work. This guide is innovative because it presents components of visual communication from perspectives …

Representational Enactivism, Zhexi Zhang

Theses

In the literature on enactive approaches to cognition, representationalism is often seen as a rival theory. In this paper, I argue that enactivism can be fruitfully combined with representationalism by adopting Frances Egan’s content pragmatism. This representational enactivism avoids some of the problems faced by antirepresentational versions of enactivism. Most significantly, representational enactivism accommodates empirical evidence that neural systems manipulate representations. In addition, representational enactivism provides a valuable insight into how to identify representational content, especially in brainless organisms: we can identify representational content by investigating autopoietic processes.

The Dutch Atlantic And American Life: Beginnings Of America In Colonial New Netherland, Roy J. Geraci

Theses

The Dutch colony of New Netherland was one of the earliest attempts at a non-indigenous life on the east coast of North America. That colony, along with the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Dutch Atlantic as a whole, played crucial roles in the development of what would become the United States. This thesis project examines the significance New Netherland held in American history as well as explores topics which allow for new and inclusive narratives of that history to reach further exploration. Similarly to how individuals from various cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds all come to exist amongst one another …

The Great Southern Buy-Back: The Colony Of Western Australia And The Great Southern Railway 1880-1897, Thomas Goode

Theses

This thesis examines the circumstances surrounding the building of the Great Southern Railway as a land-grant railway in the colony of Western Australia in the 1880s and its purchase by the government in 1896. In the early 1880s the steamship companies bringing mail and passengers from overseas and the eastern colonies, preferred Albany to Fremantle, adding an uncomfortable three to four day journey to the capital Perth. To overcome this difficulty, the government proposed to build a railway from Albany to the existing network at Beverley. This railway was to be funded by grants of land to the private company …

Conformed To The Image Of Christ: An Intertextual Study Of The Significance Of Pauline Image-Vocabulary Passages For Paul And The Gentile Problem, Errol Lobo

Theses

To investigate Paul’s thought on the Gentile problem is to ask how, in Paul’s understanding, the Gentiles have come to be included as the recipients of the blessings promised to Abraham’s descendants when, in fact, they are not Abraham’s descendants. Constructing a satisfactory response, however, is fraught with difficulty. Paul’s theological assertions concerning his Gentile mission do not always fit neatly together and the variegated nature of Pauline scholarship has made his thought on the Gentile problem appear differently across many perspectives. Is Paul’s Gentile mission best understood through the Jewish “eschatological pilgrimage” tradition, as some scholars suggest? Or is …

Together | Apart: Printmaking And The Space Between, Monique Bosshard Curby

Theses

In this practice-led creative research, being both artist and identical twin, I examine sameness and difference in the relationships between two people and between multiple objects/creative works. Through the inherent ability of printmaking processes to produce multiples and the attendant installation opportunities created by punctuated space, I unfold and re-tell a doubled and ambiguous understanding of being in the world. Martin Heidegger’s notion of Being-in-the-world (Dasein) underpins and situates my understanding of being in the world, thrown into a world as an individual, and my existence as a double: being in the world with others. I relate his thinking through …

Material Engagement Theory And Extensive Enactivism Within The 4e Cognitive Debate: A Phenomenological Approach To Material Agency And Application To Current Technology, Israel Quirit

Theses

4E Cognition is a fairly new field of study within cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and cognitive philosophy. The various approaches to cognition namely embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition; provide multi-faceted approaches to cognition. A common claim of these approaches is that cognition may have various contributing factors such as the role of the brain, body and its environments. Thus challenges the traditional idea that cognition exists purely mentally within the confines of the brain and skull. However, even within the 4E Cognition family, some nuanced arguments are hotly debated, particularly among the proponents of Embedded Theories (EmT) and Extended …

Villains To Heroes: Celebrity Criminals In 1960'S Britain And Their Subsequent Rise In Popularity, Richard Nixon

Theses

This thesis sits at the intersection of history, media and cultural studies, and will undertake a study into the emergence of criminal celebrities in Britain in the 1960s and their subsequent rise in popularity. It will seek to explain the reasons for and cultural impact of this emergence and rise against an ever-changing social, cultural, political and media landscape, including changes in social and cultural attitudes. In doing so, the study will seek to establish the extent to which criminal celebrities are a product of their time.

The thesis will essentially comprise two main strands with reference to criminal celebrities, …

Is There A Catholic Theology Of Masculinity?, Peter Holmes

Theses

In recent times Catholic theologians have begun to speak of a ‘feminine genius’. Yet relatively little attention given to the unique and positive contribution of masculinity and manhood to relationships, the Church and society. This thesis aims to answer the question, “Is there a corresponding ‘masculine genius?” It attempts to synthesise a specifically Catholic understanding of masculinity from the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church, to determine a basis for development of the Catholic understanding of masculinity and to propose some lines of development for Catholic theology in this area.

Chapter One will establish the need for and purpose of …

Catholic Agency In International Society: An International Relations Analysis Of The Santa Marta Group, Marianne L. Rozario

Theses

This research examines the issue of Catholic agency in the academic discipline of International Relations (IR). Situated in the IR discourse on religion, its investigation is based on a select Catholic initiative in the international anti-slavery realm named the Santa Marta Group (SMG). It is a transnational Catholic-initiated and led coalition of predominantly Catholic and state actors collectively working together to eradicate modern slavery and human trafficking. I specifically analyse dimensions of the SMG from April 2014 to May 2018. Methodologically, a mixed-methods approach is adopted, combining a desk review and key informant interviews. This thesis has two interrelated questions …

Prisoners, Power And Panopticon: Investigating Fremantle Gaol, 1831-1841, Emily Lanman

Theses

The history of crime and punishment is intertwined with Australia’s colonisation, including the foundation of the Swan River Colony in 1829. It can be demonstrated that Jeremy Bentham’s writings on criminal reform, specifically through his work on the panopticon model prison, influenced the development of punishment and prisons in the colony. This is evident in the construction of Fremantle Gaol (1831), which was built on the principles set forth by the panopticon and provides an interesting insight into what was deemed important in the penal system the colony continued to establish between 1831 and 1841. While Fremantle Gaol conformed to …

Australian Literary Fascists, 1905-1945 : A Comparative Case Study Into The Development Of Fascist Ideology In Australia, Adrian Keri

Theses

Historians of fascism and the far-right in Australia have generally focused on the role of material factors to the neglect of the role of ideas. Certainly, the history of ideas can never be divorced from the ‘concrete’ factors of politics and economics. But in the case of William Baylebridge (1883-1942), William Hardy Wilson (1881-1955), and Randolph William Hughes (1889-1955), ideas played a definite and decisive role in their embrace of fascism as the solution to society’s ills. They were artists and intellectuals in the so-called ‘vitalist’ tradition, drawing on the ideas of such thinkers as Hegel, Bergson, and Nietzsche, among …

A Study Of Paragraph Five In Caritas In Veritate: Re Understanding Relationality, Self Gift And Love, William Corbishley

Theses

Along with Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate provides a Christological response to the suffering in the world. In Paragraph 5 of CIV is a particular call to Christians to meet their responsibilities to love God and their neighbour in the broader human community. CIV 5 embeds the task for each Christian to accept the logic of truth of God's Love for their lives and build a relationship with God through the Person of Jesus Christ. Accepting this truth generates responses where people in self-gift love the other and constitute instruments of grace …

On 'Synderesis' And Moral Imagination: An Inquiry Into The Beneficence Of ‘Imaginative Prudence’ In Moral Development Via The First Principles Of Natural Law Of Saint Thomas Aquinas And The Imagination Ethic Theory Of Darcia Narvaez, Pierangelo Dela Cruz Repuyan

Theses

he Thomistic habit of synderesis innately inclines moral agents to the first principles of natural law which state that good is to be done and pursued and evil to be avoided. Serving as an ethical foundation in moral development, these primary moral principles direct practical reason to those acts that actualise the essence of human nature. Since the act of synderesis involves pre-cognitive (intuitive) and cognitive (apprehensive) processes, moral formation is necessary for the formal knowledge of the primary moral principles to inchoately foment through virtue habituation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, virtues are habitual acts that form moral agents …

The Art Of Fiction: Fact, Myth And New Knowledge On The North Australian Expedition, 1855 - 1857, Stevie Cole

Theses

This thesis determines the degree to which the North Australian Expedition, 1855–1857, contested established European fiction of the Australian frontier by systematically collecting new knowledge. It analyses the outcomes of one of the most forgotten expeditions in Australian history by interrogating the journals, charts and artworks of the explorers. In 1855, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Colonial Office sent an expedition into northern Australia under the command of Augustus Gregory. It was a region that Britain hoped would hold lucrative resources to support further economic and population development. The artist-explorer, Thomas Baines, was made second-in-command of the expedition. …

Understanding The Relationship Between Income And Voting: Are One Nation Voters Influenced By Economic Factors?, Glenda Bourne

Theses

While economic voting has been analysed in detail in international studies, the phenomenon has been under-studied in the Australian context. This dissertation investigates the link between economic voting and the minor party vote in Australia by analysing the vote share for One Nation in Queensland at the 2016 Senate election and 2017 state election. Using linear regression, the relationship between income, unemployment and the One Nation vote proves to be statistically significant, but the relationship does not apply to areas with large populations of Indigenous people or voters from non-English speaking backgrounds. This study offers broad insights into the link …