Digital Commons Network^™

Openings, 2025, Trinity Christian College

Openings

Literary Arts: Where I'm From by Kaylee Santiago - 2 / Desk by Luke Rotman - 3 / A Final Word by Njoki Mukuria - 8 / there's no going back by Sam Nonhof - 9 / Oranges by ren amador - 11 / DESTINY vs. AGENCY by Chase Hadley - 13 / Freely Give, Freely Receive by Mia Musick - 17 / Like a Child by Kaylee M. Santiago - 20 / The Poetry of the Body by John Terpstra - 21 / Carl's Secret by Kaylee M. Santiago - 23 / My Father's Hair by John Terpstra - …

The Bridge, Volume 22, 2025, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Editor-in-Chief

Katie Johanson

Managing Editor

Andrew Chermesino

Editors:

Tom Beaudry

Anna Connor

Jayce Elliott

Daniel Manning

Allison Marchand

Kristiana Nogueira

Giana Wigmore

Kaia Young

Faculty Advisor:

Professor Jessica Melendy

Design Advisor:

Professor Alain Blunt

Lead Designer

Vanessa Greaves

Designers

Nia Alvarado-Rodriguez

Robert Barove

Matt Curley

Matthew Fountain

Michelle Green

Grant Hall

The Paradox Of Survival: Gendered Food Insecurity, Labor Inequalities, And Coping Strategies During The 2023/4 Drought In Eastern Ethiopia, Meron E. Lemma

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In drought-prone regions of Eastern Ethiopia, recurring droughts profoundly reshape everyday life in ways that deepen existing gendered inequalities. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Fedis district, including semi-structured interviews with women, project implementers, and government officials, as well as group discussions with community members, this study explores how women experience, navigate, and resist the gendered impacts of drought. By attending to the sociopolitical dynamics of drought and the development interventions that accompany it, I analyze how these forces restructure labor, land, food systems, and authority in ways that reproduce and exacerbate existing inequalities. Women’s coping strategies, ranging from begging and …

The Application Of 4e Cognition To Counseling And The Intersectional Experiences Of Black Individuals With Disabilities, A. Albright, Clarence K. Bumpas, Jeff Moe

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Black Americans with disabilities experience a range of inequities including barriers to access, social stigmatization, and health outcomes that are greater than both their White and their nondisabled peers. This conceptual article explains in detail these inequities. The authors provide an overview of the existing models of disability used in counseling, healthcare, research, and educational settings, as well as a rationale for why they are limited. The authors then suggest a 4E cognitive framework rooted in cognitive sciences, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience. The authors explain why a 4E cognitive framework may be better suited than existing models to conceptualize …

At The Farm In Battery Park Assignment, Karen Williams

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The History Of Urban Life Textbook, Samuel Finesurrey

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Tawny, Tyrannous Dr. Francia And Carlyle’S Confused South America, Marisa Palacios Knox

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications

Scholars have highlighted Thomas Carlyle’s “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” (1849) as a point of no return for Carlyle’s descent into a full-throated advocacy of racism, imperialism, and proto-fascism. His 1843 article “Dr. Francia” on the late Paraguayan dictator has garnered much less critical attention than the provocative “Occasional Discourse,” but it simultaneously anticipates the latter essay and offers an alternative representation of Carlyle’s ideas—and Victorian ideas more generally— about shifting categories of race and imperialism before they congealed. Instead of positioning himself as the authoritative interpreter of Francia, Carlyle highlights his own uncertainty, taking as a central premise …

Unveiling The Wilis: Exploring Giselle's Slavic Folkloric Origins And The Ramifications Of Essentialized Femininity, Antonia R. Dougherty

Dance (MFA) Theses

Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli’s choreography of Giselle’s wilis continues to influence the essentialized femininity in Ballet Blanc. The folkloric víla origins of the wilis create a direct contradiction to the archetypal ballet woman. The celebrated story of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle conflates the Slavic origins and wili characteristics, while simultaneously abandoning key characteristics of the Slavic víla. Antonia Dougherty’s thesis endeavors to unify these distinct components of the víla and their symbology so that a gender critical analysis of the essentialized femininity of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle may be explored. Perrot and Coralli used the Slavic folkloric víla origins …

Mapping Entanglements: Un-Nesting The Myths Of My White Identity, Kayla C. Brown

Dance (MFA) Theses

This braided research-performance thesis uses personal narrative, critical theory, and live performance to investigate how whiteness is sustained and embodied. Grounded in the work of bell hooks, Ibram X. Kendi, Tema Okun, Diana Taylor, Catrice M. Jackson, Miguel Gutierrez, and Narcissister, I interrogate whiteness not as a static identity, but as a system of power that shapes perception, behavior, and social value. As a cisgender white woman, I move through the world with unearned ease—my presence normalized, my advantages often unquestioned.

Identity is performance—layered, like the Russian nesting dolls I once played with at my grandmother’s house. Peeling back these …

Waking The Witch: Exploring Gender, Magic, And Power Dynamics In Ancient Rome, Diana Gibson

Honors Theses and Capstones

This thesis explores the presence of witches and magic in the literature of the Roman Empire. The study ranges from the 1st century BCE to the 6th century CE, and relates the prevalence of female witches in the Roman literature to particularly turbulent social contexts, such as the fall of the Republic and the rise of Christianity. The piece considers the rhetorical nature of accusations of witchcraft, and how the concepts of magic and witchcraft themselves were defined and shaped by those in power to uphold imperial hegemony and structures of patriarchy. The project seeks to highlight a distinction between …

Clouds Running Out Of Juice: A Special Podcast Episode Featuring Tim Winton’S Climate Fiction, Rumen Rachev, Jo Pollitt, Emma Nicoletti

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper presents a pedagogical experiment in the form of a fictional podcast episode that “aired” in January 2025, featuring Tim Winton’s climate fiction novel Juice (2024). Emerging from a dialogical reading collaboration between three interdisciplinary “scholars, resisters and ordinary grafters” (Winton, 2024, p.116) — Rumen Rachev, Jo Pollitt, and Emma Nicoletti — the paper and podcast operate together through a method we term papercast, centring on three key themes: clouds, atmospheric frictions, and the significance of critically engaging with climate fiction, specifically Juice, amid ongoing climate instability. Simultaneously paper and podcast (papercast), we invite the reader to “listen” visually …

Ebony Patterson’S …Things Come To Thrive…In The Shedding…In The Molting… (2023) As Intervention, Renee Mcgarry

Publications and Research

This paper examines the use of horticulture and botany in Ebony Patterson's 2023 exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden, …things come to thrive…in the shedding…in the molting… as it relates to the history of NYBG, the Bronx, and the populations that historically and currently reside in the borough. Using plants, blown glass, and glittering styrofoam forms, Patterson productively intervenes in the relationship between an historic, prestigious institution and a changed borough that, since the 1990s, has been walled off from the Garden. The exhibition highlights the tension between community and institution and offers up a new way of understanding …

Xi: Dwelling Writing Thinking: Traces Of Being Songs Of Elduvík Hölderlin’S “In Lovely Blue…” Remembrance The Ister, Charles S. Taylor

Wine Journey: Tasting Dwelling Learning at The Kitchen Table

Lieblicher Cousin Holz / Beloved cousin Holz, welcome once again to my Gehäus! 1 2Please make yourself comfortable on this bench beside me. Remembered conversations bring us back here. New questions to share. Neither of us has a guess where we will ramble during the adventure. Thinking about your beloved Ister / Donau / Danube flowing through the Schwarzwald / Black Forest we found our way, unexpectedly, to Kant’s Erhabene / Sublime. Only after making a visit north of Norway to Svalbard. Der Ister, begins with you calling for daylight allowing you to carefully, reverently observe what will present itself …

The Key Revolutionary Element: The Development Of Russia’S Military And The Vitality Of The Russian Soldier To Revolution, Max C. Jones

Tenor of Our Times

This paper looks at the substantial role the Russian Military played in the events leading up to and during the February Revolution in 1917 in Russia. It looks at the military history of Russia prior to the February Revolution (from Peter the Great-Nicholas II) and how certain decisions and events in that timespan created a military that was completely unprepared for the total war of WWI. The paper takes closer looks at the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War/1905 Revolution, in which significant changes in the military occurred but, as is seen in the outcome of WWI, were not enough …

Male Fantasies: The Search For Female Sexuality In Ancient Greek Thought, Sophie J. Guthrie

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Feminine sexuality has often been viewed through the lens of male desire. There are many paths one may take to analyze this issue. In this essay, I turn to ancient Greek texts to search for the meaning of a feminine sexuality. I will analyze various scientific, philosophical, and poetic ancient Greek works to better understand the prevalent beliefs at the time. I will begin by looking at the ancient Greek medical explanation of women’s bodies, particularly their sexual organs. Then, I will turn to female sexuality through the lens of a male narrative in ancient Greek texts. In the end, …

“Single Girl, Married Girl:” Female Perspectives On Marriage, Maidenhood, And Motherhood In English-Language Folk Music, Avery Schanbacher

Libraries Award for Undergraduate Scholarship

In 1928, the Carter Family released “Single Girl, Married Girl.” The recording featured only Sara and Maybelle Carter, and in three short stanzas, highlighted the vastly differing lives of the single girl, who dressed fine and went where she pleased, and the married girl, with a baby on her knee, who rocked the cradle and cried. Sara and Maybelle Carter weren’t the only people who knew this song – before they recorded it for Ralph Peer at the famous Bristol sessions, it was alive as a part of musical traditions not just in their home in Scott County, Virginia, but …

Revising The Nation: Tribal Sovereignty And The American History Textbook, 1929-2002, Grace R. Ellis

Library Map Prize

This thesis examines Indigenous representation in twentieth-century American history textbooks. Chapter One contends that the most popular U.S. history textbook of the late twentieth century, The American Pageant, erased tribal nations from its narrative and its maps. Across twelve editions (1956-2002), The Pageant taught generations of students that “Indians” served only as barriers to building the modern American nation-state. While Indigenous erasure can be traced back to specific passages in The Pageant, erasure can better be understood as an iterative process, both textual and cartographic in nature. Beginning in 1983, The Pageant added new maps that depicted tribes …

Indigenous Technology Futurisms: Reclaiming Mackinac Island In Virtual Reality, Madeline A. Gupta

Library Map Prize

In Indigenous Technology Futurisms: Reclaiming Mackinac Island in Virtual Reality, Madeline A. Gupta introduces a place-based digital storytelling project that uses interactive mapping as the foundation for cultural reconnection and community wellness. Centered on Mackinac Island—ancestral land of the Anishinaabe people—the project features a custom-designed map by an Anishinaabe artist, allowing users to navigate a VR website by selecting specific locations across northern Michigan. Each map point opens into a spatial video experience paired with traditional audio content, including oral histories, poetry, and songs.

The project reframes digital cartography through an Indigenous lens, challenging Western colonial mapping practices that …

La Atmósfera Del Horror: Un Análisis De Los Elementos Visuales En Tomie De Junji Ito, Leslie T. García Cabrera, Edgar Meritano

STEM for Success Showcase

INTRODUCTION

New Perspectives on Horror Manga

The primary objective of this study is to analyze Japanese horror comics, known as manga, through the works of Junji Ito, particularly Tomie. This author has become a central figure in the genre, and his work is essential for understanding how horror in manga achieves an impact that goes beyond its graphic elements, utilizing a distinctive visual and narrative style that creates a unique atmosphere and evokes profound emotions in its readers.

The analysis begins with a comparison between sequential horror media, such as happenings, and editorial media like comics, where …

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 …

Rompiendo La Cultura Del Machismo A Través De La Música: Bad Bunny Y La Nueva Era Del Reggaetón, Bianca Rodriguez

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how Benito “Bad Bunny” Antonio Martnez Ocasio, a groundbreaking artist in the reggaetón and Latin music industry, uses his music to challenge machismo norms in Latinx culture. Historically, reggaeton has perpetuated hypermasculine ideals, emphasizing dominance, aggression, and rigid gender roles. In contrast, Bad Bunny disrupts these conventional stereotypes of machismo behavior by embracing vulnerability, advocating for gender equality, and rejecting toxic masculinity. Through his lyrics in “La Canción” y “Haciendo que me amas”, Bad Bunny normalizes emotional expression and critiques societal expectations of men. Additionally, in tracks such as “Yo Perreo Sola” …

Should Students Pull The Plug?: How Ai Redefines Creativity In The Classroom, Labiba Hassan

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how artificial intelligence (AI) tools, specifically ChatGPT as a tutor for students (ChatGPTt), reshapes creativity in the classroom. Does AI undermine or enrich creativity by altering its relational and self-disclosive dimensions? Engaging with Lindsay Brainard’s critique that AI erodes creativity by disrupting human connection and self-expression, I argue for a redefinition of creativity as a dynamic process sustained by emotion, intention, novelty, risk, and spontaneity — conditions adaptable to AI-mediated contexts. The paper challenges the premise that creativity depends on interpersonal connection, showing that self-disclosure can emerge through meaningful engagement with external systems, such as ChatGPTt. By …

Six Faces Of Love: A Collection Of Short Stories, Anna Werts

CMC Senior Theses

Six Faces of Love is a collection of six original short stories that explore love in its many variations. Set across time periods and perspectives, these narratives examine the quiet, complicated ways love persists through grief, memory, distance, and change.

Faltered States: The Rise, Fall, And Containment Of Psychedelic Science In The United States, Baxter Brew

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis traces the history of psychedelic science in the United States and its implications for policymaking. In the postwar period, psychedelic researchers were enabled by a unique convergence of optimism in medical science and structural flexibility. But their hope blinded them to the deeper tensions of their field. As institutions grew increasingly rigid and risk-averse, the space for psychedelics began to close. Some scientists responded by fortifying the walls around them, developing socially and professionally acceptable research methods. Others tried to escape these walls entirely. But neither approach could prevent psychedelics from being squeezed out of formal inquiry. Yet …

Robert Frost And The Myth Of Adam And Eve, Theo Johnson

CMC Senior Theses

What exactly it is about the story of Adam and Eve that fascinated Robert Frost is hard to say. Of course, he is not the first to engage with it in writing – for much of recorded human history, the Genesis account of man’s creation has held a place of unparalleled importance in our understanding of what it is to be human, provoking innumerable exegetic responses. In popular literature, too, it has served as inspiration for some of the most celebrated English and American poems. From the “bloodless myth” of Geoffrey Hill’s “Genesis” to the great theodicy of John Milton’s …

Exporting Culture, Building A Nation: South Korea’S Use Of Pop Culture As A Soft Power Tool, Nathaniel J. Kim

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the multiple governmental plans, policies, and actions by the South Korean government to support and globalize their pop culture products. After the crumbling of its economy and global image due to many external factors in the 1900s, South Korea found itself in poverty with very little global influence. To rebuild their nation, the government implemented many actions to help grow and strengthen their pop culture products to make them more desirable, domestically and internationally. This thesis analyzes three of the major pop culture exports for South Korea, television, movies, and music, and demonstrates how the government has …

High Tech Touts, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

This essay has three interrelated aims. First, it articulates a set of capacities I call virtues of attention—capacities for intuitive discernment, good judgment about what is worth sustained focus, and the ability to engage deeply with worthwhile things. These are eudaimonist virtues in that they help us live well, not merely act rightly. Second, the essay explores what I call poisonous persuasion: the idea that rhetorical appeals, especially those used in marketing, may not only succeed by appealing to certain desires or habits of mind but may also deepen and entrench them. Third, I bring these insights together to examine …

Epilogue: Every Þrose Has Its Thorn On Poison, The Cure, And Other Pharmacological Prickles; Or, Why Are You So Far Away?, David Ben-Merre Ph.D., Manu Samriti Chander Ph.D.

English Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Generative Ai (Gan & Vae) In Motion Sickness Research, Harigovind Harikumar, Tomojit Ghosh

Celebration of Undergraduate & Graduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Materials

No abstract provided.

A Systematic Study Of Freezing Behavior In Earthworms In Response To Auditory And Vibratory Stimuli, Navjot Singh, A. Burton, Dragana Ivkovich Claflin

Celebration of Undergraduate & Graduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Materials

While earthworms have largely been studied for their role in eliminating toxic metals from soil, less is known about their behavior overall. Previous work from our lab found that a predator-like auditory stimulus (grunting) reliably induced fear-related freezing behavior (Worthen et al., 2024). The present studies further explore earthworm behaviors in response to audio-vibratory stimuli. In Experiment 1, we manipulated amplitude levels and speaker location to examine the parameters needed to reliably induce a freezing fear response to the grunting sound. It was hypothesized that when the speaker was touching the apparatus and producing an added mechanical vibration, there would …