Digital Commons Network^™

Convergencias Y Divergencias: Un Estudio Comparativo De Lenguas Y Literaturas Española Y Portuguesa En España Durante La Temprana Edad Moderna Europea, Eduardo A. Rodrigues D'Abruzzo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study examines the literary and linguistic relationships between Spain and Portugal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through literary works and their translations. A period characterized by the Iberian Union, vernacularization, and the consolidation of early modern literary systems. It explores the interaction of Spanish and Portuguese texts within a shared yet asymmetrical cultural space shaped by translation, genre adaptation, and hierarchies of linguistic prestige. The research employs comparative textual analysis grounded in historical sociolinguistics, philology, and translation studies. Key works analyzed include Alfonso X’s historiography, Francisco Rodrigues Lobo’s Corte na aldeia and its Spanish translation, and Luís de …

Being-Online: Towards A Phenomenological Account Of Virtual Place And Narrative Selfhood, Ben Runey

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to explore and explicate a phenomenology of virtual place by investigating how environments motivated by computers and smart devices appear within lived experience as well as how these virtual places found and mediate interpretative narratives of self-identity. Many individuals today spend vast portions of their waking hours concerned with or engaged within virtual domains. While contemporary scientific research aims to uncover the effects of this on human psychology, physiology, and social structures, phenomenology must be utilized to reveal the existential, lived dimensions of virtual places. This investigation will be founded upon, but not limited …

“Mother Earth” Faces Sexism” (The Relationship Between Gender, Sexism, And Politics To Climate Change Recognition), Sierra E. Nichols

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Climate change is a prominent scientific and political issue today. Research has shown women to be uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and subject towards political opinions that can be rooted in sexism. This study aims to draw a correlation between these factors. It provides an overview of the topic of climate change and women’s linkages with the environment through the topic of ecofeminism. It analyzes the topic of sexism and analyzes research surrounding different types of sexism: hostile, benevolent, and modern sexism. It discusses how studies that have categorized climate change as a gendered issue, climate change …

To Print A Remake: An Analysis Of Hollywood Remakes And Their Cultural Value, Connor F. Seaton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, audiences and movie critics have expressed concern that Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, sequels, franchises, and similar adaptations has led to a broader worry that originality is fading from modern cinema and that the industry is instead focused on using adaptations to maximize profits. Although adaptation is often seen as a commercially driven framework for reproducing existing intellectual property in a new media format, this thesis argues that it should be recognized as an autonomous cultural category with its own artistic, historical, and social significance and merit. By analyzing adaptation scholarship and reviewing its complex historical development, …

Designing Rhetorical Education For Online Audiences, Nicholas Dixon

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This project demonstrates a multimodal education for online audiences through the creation of a YouTube video, What is Rhetoric?   The literature from composition, education, and media asserts that online multimodal media is useful for idea production, civic discussion, and learning. This project follows the idea that online multimodal digital media are valuable forms for meeting audiences with access to rhetorical knowledge, both within academic institutions and in the education of public audiences. In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins highlights the challenge online participants face in recognizing the ways media shapes perceptions of the world (xii). Rhetoric is …

Mycoethics: Reverence For Life In Light Of Modern Science, Charis E. Meyers

Honors Undergraduate Theses

There is a 21^st century wave of passion surrounding fungi and mycology, and it’s becoming louder and louder. The mycoenthusiasts themselves have a uniquely inspired ethical system born out of their science, and my aim is to both formally introduce their position, including many unspoken foundations, and defend its potential. I call this position mycoethics and attempt to collect it from the scattered tidbits in mycological media. I first identify its historical precedent, then spend a length of time establishing where its sense of goodness comes from, postulating it as a utilitarian offspring of Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life. …

The Divine Feminine Reframed: Dogma And Doctrine, Icon And Flesh, And The Sacred Embodiment Of Reclamation, Natasha Keckley

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis interrogates Marian iconography and its role in constructing a moral binary that marks female bodies as either sanctified or sinful. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial theory, iconographic analysis, and historical case studies, the research analyzes how Christian symbology established the Marian Mold: a theological aesthetic apparatus that exalts feminine sanctity through ideals of virginity, obedience, and maternal receptivity while constraining feminine expression. This paradigm, propagated through the British Empire’s colonial regimes, shaped the regulation and reinterpretation of embodied traditions. The thesis investigates these dynamics through two case studies: the Devadasi tradition and Bharatanatyam’s reformulation in South India, and …

“Ora’S Deep Lament”: Inspired By Mk Rawlings And My Persevering Pioneer Great-Grandmother, Kathlyne Mcdonald Walkup Sheppard

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

Contributor Biographies

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Rhythmic Gymnastics Gesture Animation, Tyriana White

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

The Confidence-Man Goes To The Moving Panorama: Herman Melville’S Confidence Narrator And United States Imperialism, Bradley J. Lee

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis argues that Herman Melville fashioned his novel The Confidence-Man; His Masquerade (1857) after the moving panorama, a popular entertainment technology contemporary with the novel. More specifically, the thesis argues that the novel recalls Banvard’s Mississippi Panorama (1846). Using Jay Leyda’s The Melville Log and John Hanners’ record of Banvard’s performances, I establish beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that Melville saw this painting, or, at the very least, was aware of it, its content, and its social position. Tracing the novel’s engagement with this panorama reveals what seems at first to be its imperialist, Manifest Destinarian undertones. The novel’s …

An Indigenous Sovereign Approach: Developmental Strategies And Guidelines For The Berger-Patawomeck Preserve Trail Network, Lauren N. Usher

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This planning document serves the Patawomeck Tribe's cultural, environmental, and sovereign needs by providing research and recommendations to sustainably steward ancestral lands through integrated Indigenous and Western practices. The plan adapts sustainable design strategies to guide trail maintenance and activities within the Berger-Patawomeck Preserve, examining Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) alongside Western practices. A decolonized, sovereign lens guided the mixed research methods drawing on legal, regulatory, planning, and ethical frameworks to strengthen tribal health, education, and sovereignty. The research explores local ecology, Indigenous culture, and implementational strategies. The ecological findings document the Preserve's sensitive resources, including the Coastal Piedmont transition zone, …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …

Science Fiction Cinema And The Technological Sublime: Spectacle And The Infinite From Early Cinema To Digital, David Jackson Dr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how science fiction cinema constructs and reimagines the technological sublime in the twentieth century: the experience of awe, terror, and admiration provoked by human-made power and scale. Drawing on the philosophical foundations of the sublime in Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant and extending through Leo Marx’s and David E. Nye’s theorization of the technological sublime, I propose an aesthetic mode in which representation inflected with affect translates technological spectacle into examinations of humanity’s role and agency in the face of overwhelming technologized worlds and in some cases, even the universe itself.

Through three distinct historical periods …

A Tribal Hermeneutical Reading Of The Creation Narrative In Genesis 1:26-28, Enolyne Lyngdoh

The Asbury Journal

No abstract provided.

Eldad And Medad’S Effusive And Momentous Worlds: A Diachronic View, David J. Zucker

The Asbury Journal

In Numbers 11, Eldad and Medad, two of the seventy chosen elders of the people of Israel remain in camp, while their counterparts join Moses at the Tent of Meeting. At the Tent, God takes some of the divine spirit that is on Moses and puts it on the elders, who then speak in ecstasy (others: prophesy, have a vision). Suddenly and simultaneously Eldad and Medad also speak in ecstasy (others: prophesy, have a vision). This article addresses how the text has been received and interpreted in the postbiblical world, largely in rabbinic writings, but also in religiously based homilies …

Booking “Uncle Bud”: Reflexive Communication Scholarship In Writing A Religious Life, Abram J. Book

The Asbury Journal

Originally presented at the Nazarene Historical Society Annual Meeting on 19 March 2026 at Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, this paper examines the scholarly writing process of exploring the popular Nazarene holiness preacher “Uncle Bud” Robinson from a communication studies approach. It reflects on how religious lives are sustained through communication rather than preserved through record alone. Uncle Bud Robinson’s influence endures because his story continues to circulate as cultural memory, shaped by narrative repetition, identification, and mediated remembrance across generations. Writing his biography thus becomes an extension of the same communicative process that once sustained his ministry—an act of …

John Wesley And The Jews, Nicholas Railton

The Asbury Journal

This article focuses on John Wesley’s attitude to Jews and his understanding of their place in the divine plan of salvation. Wesley attended some synagogue services and got to know Jews personally. His understanding of biblical prophecy was expressed most clearly in the explanatory notes on the Bible that were once the standard guide for Methodists. Wesley’s eschatology encompasses a belief in the future conversion and restoration of the Jewish nation in the Holy Land. British Methodism has drifted from these moorings, and this is reflected in the resolutions it passes on the State of Israel.

Why The New York Conference Was “An (Ineffective) Auxiliary Of The Colonization Society In Everything But Name”: Rejection, Apathy, (Lack Of) Funding, And (Its Own) Abolitionists, Philip Hardt

The Asbury Journal

Several years after the founding of the American Colonization Society (hereafter, ACS) in 1816, Methodist clergy and laymen in the New York Conference and especially in New York City began to support its twin goals of evangelization and emigration of free blacks to Africa. Of course, they did not expect the entire black population to emigrate. Instead, they (mistakenly, for the most part) thought many free blacks would prefer to leave the racism of America and start a new life in Africa. Their efforts, however, met with little success because of nearly unanimous black opposition, general white apathy, chronic financial …

Positive Cosmology: On The Good Creation Into Which Christ Incarnated, Jason Horstman

The Asbury Journal

This article argues that a positive cosmology has been the majority report in the Christian tradition, which is to say that creation is good. Evidence of this report is highlighted from scripture, from the contemplative tradition, and from the hospitality tradition. Sin as a complicating factor in understanding creation as good is engaged, and a solution to this complication from the Christian monastic tradition is considered.

Encountering Angels In The Hebrew Scriptures, The Christian Scriptures, And The Qur’An, David J. Zucker

The Asbury Journal

Angels appear in the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian scriptures, and the Qur’an. They are very different from the contemporary “popular” view of angels. Sometimes in these three scriptures angels are acknowledged as simply being, other times they appear with, or interact with people. They generally have benevolent roles. At times, in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures they are recognized by humans, at other occasions they appear to be in human form and are not, at least immediately understood to be angels. In Hebrew, the most common word for angel is mal’akh, but a mal’akh can also be a human messenger. …

"It Can't Just Be One": Canadian Black Youth Perspectives On Representation And Belongings In Public Libraries, Amber Matthews, Sandie Thomas

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This study employed narrative inquiry and critical race approaches to explore Black youth's perceptions and experiences of Canadian public library programs and materials. In response to calls in Canada's Anti-Racism Strategy (2024) and Ontario's Anti-Black Racism Strategy (2025) for social service institutions to address anti-Black racism, the research examined Black youth experiences in public libraries and how these experiences relate to anti-Black racism in education and social service settings. The study was conducted in London, Ontario, with Black youth aged 13 to 24 and parents of youth using a community-based participatory research approach in partnership with the Where We Are …

Puppet Lab: Investigating Digital Technologies In Creative Learning, Harrison Lorenz-Daniel

Theses : Honours

This study interrogates the impact that digital technologies and digital mediation have on creative learning workshops run by arts organisations and delivered by teaching artists. It responds to a wave of new creative learning initiatives supported by arts organisations, state governments, and schools following the COVID-19 pandemic. Situating the research primarily in the investigation of Puppet Lab, a new digital workshop developed by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Walyalup (Fremantle), qualitative data was collected over a series of 5 semi-structured interviews with Western Australian teaching artists. The study found that digital technologies did not meaningfully impact the standard delivery of …

Mad Or Uncontrollable? Reading Female Madness In Three Gothic Texts, Amy Marie Bueno

Dissertations and Theses

My thesis employs comparative close reading framed by disability studies to analyze representations of female madness in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Isabel Allende’s “If You Touched My Heart.” Drawing on theories of socially constructed disability, it argues that Bertha, Antoinette, and Hortensia are framed as “mad women” not through inherent pathology, but through patriarchal violence, colonial domination, and institutional power. By integrating the social model of disability with feminist theory, this thesis examines how women are rendered disabled within societies influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenic ideologies.

This thesis further incorporates Gothic theory and …

Who Bears The Cost? A Module For Researching The Intersection Of Technology, The Individual, And Climate Change, Jonathan Auyer

Climate Change and the Individual, 2025-26

Who Bears the Cost? A Module for Researching the Intersection of Technology, the Individual, and Climate Change is a multi-day writing and research module designed for first-year composition courses. Using the ongoing controversy surrounding the Science, Technology & Advanced Manufacturing Park (STAMP) in Genesee County, New York as a central case study, students investigate the ethical, environmental, and social dimensions of artificial intelligence and climate change. The module guides students from initial inquiry, exploring the philosophical question of whether technology is value-neutral or value-laden, through source research, collaborative discussion, and persuasive writing. Drawing on the rhetorical framework of They Say …

Aligning The Culi Test With Cefr Illustrative Scales, Sasithorn Limgomolvilas

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Models Of Emulation: Representations Of Foreign, Indigenous, And Accented Speech In Early American Literature, Elaina A. Frulla

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

“Models of Emulation: Representations of Foreign, Indigenous, and Accented Speech in Early American Literature” explores how American writers used depictions of “nonstandard” English and accented English language speech, traditionally described as “literary dialect,” as a way to negotiate identity, power, and political belonging in the formative years of nation building after the American Revolution. Beginning with Noah Webster’s mission to establish a standardized pronunciation of the English language that would simplify and purify spoken American-English and definitively differentiate it from what he saw as the corrupted, cosmopolitan British-English model, each of the three chapters examines literary representations of nonstandard emulated …

As If It Were Food: A Prose Translation Of The Old English Genesis B, Kane R. Malone

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The anonymous Old English poem known as “Genesis B” comes down to us as one of the most inherently human retellings of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Despite this, the piece is seldom read by the average twenty-first century middle-school learner. The poem, originally penned in Old English, has been translated into modern English numerous times, yet as I read through a variety of these translations, they all seemed to downplay the human element which I found intriguing. Thus, I created my own translation of “Genesis B” with a more general audience in mind, looking to create something that …

German Science, American Manufacturing: Ethnic Capital, Transnational Technology, And Corporate Development At Bausch & Lomb, 1853–1953, George L. Grobe Iv

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines the first century of the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, founded in Rochester, NY in 1853 by German immigrants John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb. It argues the firm’s success was driven by leveraging of management’s German ethnic identity as “ethnic capital” to access resources like financial liquidity, immigrant labor, and technical expertise. These resources allowed for the transformation of the firm from a small optical retail shop into a major manufacturer of advanced optical instruments. However, as later generations of the family Americanized, the ability of the firm to leverage ethnic capital eroded until breaking completely …

Creating A Social Media Campaign, Alexa Capeloto

Open Educational Resources

Students research an issue related to social good and apply visual, news, and digital literacy skills to design an original image and a proposed social media campaign.