Digital Commons Network^™

A New Understanding Of The Tension Between Evil And Divine Greatness: An Application Of Existential Ontology To Christian Apologetics, William A. Blea

Masters Theses

This thesis is an examination of the potential integration of existential ontology into classical Christian apologetics. Pulling from philosophers like Nietache, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger to construct a framework that understands greatness as the overcoming of a being's context and evil as the relational, moral, and cosmic opposition to the order established by the divine Logos. This framework then allows for an identification of Christus Victor as God’s decisive response to evil. This thesis argues that a properly integrated framework may work to collapse the problem of evil from its metaphysical foundation: the contradiction between God's greatness and the existence of …

Visualizing Equity: A Design Framework For Global Mental Health Communication For Generation Z, Jose Pena

Masters Theses

There is a lot of information about mental health available today. However, for Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, the information proves both challenging to find and difficult to understand. The World Health Organization and other global groups publish a lot of information about mental health inequality, treatment gaps, and workforce shortages. However, this information is usually presented in dense, technical formats that are not meant for young people who are not experts. Many digital mental health tools, on the other hand, don’t give young people the emotional connection, cultural relevance, and visual clarity they need to deal …

Music Educators’ Perceptions And Implementation Of Multiculturalism In The Classroom, Kennedy Mae Smith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of the study is to determine teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and its potential benefits in Sumter County. The purpose of this research is to understand the perspectives and approaches to preparing for the implementation of multiculturalism among public school music programs in Sumter, South Carolina. The rationale for this research is that there is a gap in the literature on multicultural implementation in music education in South Carolina. With proper technological implementation, multiculturalism could help prepare music educators to teach a culturally diverse group of students. As a result of the study, the researcher aims to gain …

Character Driven Architecture: Authentic Characters In Imitation Worlds, Gabriayle Stapf

Masters Theses

This paper is an introduction to the manuscript of my creative writing thesis that includes my own impetus and background, my process for my writing, my vision for that creative fiction piece, what the literary context for my fiction writing is, and what I believe the meaning of being a Christian scholar amounts to. Various other authors’ works are referenced as inspiration and motivation for my creative works and desire for contributing to the field of literature.

How The African American Contribution To Early American Literature Aided In Shaping The American Literary Identity, Jennifer E. Thompson

Masters Theses

This study argues that Jupiter Hammon’s early African American literature actively helped shape American literary identity rather than just mirroring it. By blending Christian morality with human rights, Hammon challenged Eurocentric narratives, validated Black humanity, and established a foundational tradition for anti-slavery writing. Traditional theories often contest this national inclusion through critical viewpoints. These views treat slavery as a distinct model, arguing that these texts represent separate responses to bondage rather than unified contributions to a shared national canon. This research redefines the American literary canon by showing how Hammon's historic publications dismantled eighteenth-century racist ideals about intellectual capacity. His …

Wayang 3d Interactive E-Book: Development And Classroom Evaluation For Javanese Traditional Drama Learning, I’In Dwi Susanti, Afendy Widayat

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

Javanese traditional drama (wayang) is a key element of Indonesia's cultural heritage, yet classroom instruction remains largely text-based and low in engagement. This study developed and evaluated Wayang 3D, a cloud-based interactive e-book integrating Canva, Heyzine, and H5P to support traditional-drama learning. Using the ADDIE model, the product was validated by content and media experts and tested through a quasi-experimental nonequivalent pretest–posttest control-group design with 62 ninth-grade students. Content validity was Feasible (79.5%) and media validity Very Feasible (83.0%); teacher and student practicality ratings were also Very Feasible (85.01%). The experimental group achieved a significantly higher normalised learning gain than …

Moral Ecology In Shakespeare's Tragedies: Nature, Animals, And Conscience As Ethical Agents In Hamlet, Macbeth, And King Lear, Md. Abu Bakkar

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

Shakespeare's tragedies repeatedly dramatize a universe in which moral transgression produces consequences that extend beyond individual psychology to affect society, nature, and the non-human world. This study examines how Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear construct a system of moral ecology, understood as a framework of ethical causality in which human actions generate interconnected consequences across psychological, social, and natural orders. Using qualitative close reading informed by moral criticism, ecocriticism, animal studies, and early modern cosmology, the study analyzes selected passages representing natural disturbance, animal imagery, and conscience as forms of ethical response. The findings show that the three …

Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The massive destruction and social dislocation wrought by capitalist crisis has culminated, historically, in the brutal cataclysms of fascism and other forms of authoritarian rule. Today, across the globe, we are confronted with the aggressive advance and entrenchment of a variety of such authoritarian political projects. Anxious discourses about ascendant fascism have become perfectly mainstream. These developments command our acute attention and critical analysis. This essay addresses these dire questions and the conceptual vexations surrounding the concept of fascism, particularly as it has been elaborated in various Marxist analyses.  Specifically, much of the debate around fascism as an analytical category …

"The Canal Building Genius", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

George Washington Goethals, the engineer who constructed the Panama Canal, was also employed to construct the Muscle Shoals Canal in North Alabama. During the construction of the canal, Goethals lived on Wood Avenue near the University of North Alabama. Multiple historical markers commemorating Goethals' time in North Alabama exist, including the one designating his home, the Florence Walk of Honor, and his mention on the Muscle Shoals Canal Marker.

Three-Dimensional Transformable Textiles Woven With Hygromorphic High-Twist Linen Yarn, Kathryn Walters

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Shape-changing textiles woven using high-twist yarns offer the potential of a diverse design space of three-dimensional morphologies without the need to cut the textile or to modify the loom. High-twist linen yarn has moisture-responsive – hygromorphic – properties, with the orientation of the transformation changing with yarn twist direction. Used to weave transformable textiles it offers an alternative to synthetic active yarns or non-textile actuators. The material intelligence of the high-twist linen yarn is non-linear, and S- and Z-twist yarns may be combined to increase the diversity of textile morphologies. Developed through practice-based research, a series of experiments have been …

Bacterial Cellulose As Biofabricated Textile Material: Biotinkering And Trajectories Of Textile Materialisation, Ziqian Yu, Valentina Rognoli

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is increasingly studied in material design and biodesign as a biofabricated material shaped through cultivation, harvesting, and processing. In fashion contexts, however, BC is often identified as a leather alternative, particularly in sheet form. While this framing has supported its integration into design practices, it constrains BC's textile potential. This paper investigates how BC becomes textile material through multiple materialisation trajectories rather than through a single substitute material form. The study is a comparative analysis of sixteen cases, framed by Material-Driven Design (MDD) approach. Fourteen external design and interdisciplinary cases provide the comparative basis, while two hands-on …

Strain-Sensing Auxetic Knit With Embedded Elastomeric Optical Fibers, Rashmi Mohan, Jeyeon Jo

Textile Intersections Conference Series

This study presents the development and evaluation of a novel strain-sensing electronic textile that integrates elastomeric optical fiber within an auxetic knitted structure. Conventional wearable sensors often suffer from motion artifacts due to the mechanical mismatch between human-joint movements and the positive Poisson's ratio of standard fabrics. To address this, a log cabin knit pattern combining knit and purl stitches was designed to induce an out-of-plane buckling effect, resulting in a negative Poisson's ratio. A stretchable elastomeric optical fiber with a diameter of 1.2 mm was embedded within a 1×1 rib channel to ensure stable electromechanical coupling without hindering the …

Including The Hybrids: The Thread Arrangement As A Lens For Manifesting Textile Designers' Agency, Juri-Apollo Drews

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Current textile classification systems often divide fabrics into mutually exclusive categories such as weaves, knits, and nonwovens. While useful for distinguishing basic structural differences between textiles, such taxonomies frequently fail to account for hybrid structures and may inadvertently discourage research into them. This paper proposes the notion of the "thread arrangement" as a conceptual lens to nuance such rigid classifications and to manifest the creative agency of the textile designer. By synthesising insights from textile design, creativity, and classification theory with potential-focused perspectives from textile archaeology, the term is developed as a meta-category that emphasizes the duality of the textile …

Textile Digital Drape Definition - Td3: Comparing Digital To Physical Design Considerations, Alexandra Kuijpers, Troy Nachtigall, Maarten Van Bommel

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Fashion design is, by nature, a very hands-on activity in which the touch and feel of a textile are considered vital to the design of the garment. Yet when designers work with digital fashion design software, they rely on digital textile definitions that are visual instead of tangible textile swatches. In this research, we created a new Textile Digital Drape Definition (TD3) that is heavily informed by textile drape properties. We compared the TD3 to traditional tangible textile interaction, via an intense workshop examining eleven textile sample swatches. The digital drape of the TD3 follows standardized textile science drape methods, …

The Impact Of Differentiated Post-Consumer Textile Waste Sorting On The Homogeneity Of Recycled Yarns, Magdalena Kohler, Holger Cebulla

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) is increasingly characterized by complex multi-fibre blends, posing significant challenges for fibre-to-fibre recycling. This study investigates the influence of sorting, cutting, and tearing processes on nep formation and the resulting yarn quality during mechanical recycling. A three-stage sorting approach based on fibre composition and stitch density was developed and combined with systematically varied cutting and tearing processes. The results show that both input material characteristics and recycling parameters affect nep formation. In particular, thermally melted cut edges from garments containing polyacrylonitrile were identified as a potential source of neps. The findings highlight the importance of differentiated …

Designing With Evolutive Colors: A Proof Of Concept For Bio-Based Dye Integration In Textile Design Digital Workflow, Clarisse Barbot, Camille Fuzier, Bertrand Loïc, De Visscher Emile, Panayotis Mavros

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Current industrial textile production relies on petrochemical dyes. This dependence has led to growing interest in bio-based alternatives, although their adoption remains constrained by technical and cultural factors. In particular, bio-based dyes do not meet typical industrial standards for stability, diversity of colour choices, and reproducibility. Textiles dyed with bio-based colourants tend to exhibit colour changes under light exposure. Current design software systems were built with the conventional expectation of stability of petrochemical dyes in mind, making them ill-adapted to bio-based dye behaviour and thus hampering their industrial adoption. To address this gap, we propose the prototype of a novel …

Beyond Softness: Examining How Vocabulary Marginalises The Material Narrative Of Native British Wool, Zoë Fletcher, Nicci James

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Softness has become the dominant metric through which wool is evaluated in knitwear design. This paper argues that such language privileges fibres associated with Merino and marginalises native British and regional wools with distinct breed-specific qualities. Drawing on practice-based research, material experiments with native British wool yarns, and literature on wool fibre and supply chains, we examine how existing terminology fails to support design engagement with these materials. In response, we propose a five-part framework, Place, People, Process, Properties and Practice, to support a more nuanced wool literacy. Developing richer vocabulary for native British wool is not simply a matter …

Shaped Circular Knitting For Zero Waste Design: A Material-Driven Approach To Knitted Textile-Forms, Sem Janssen, Holly Mcquillan

Textile Intersections Conference Series

While 3D knitting is proposed as part of a solution to the fashion industry's waste problem, circular knitting is primarily used in wasteful cut-and-sew manufacturing processes and is rarely explored for its shaping potential. Using material-driven design, this research investigates the dimensional and material properties of knit stitch patterns within defined rectangular artworks, enabling the shaping of circular knitted textiles for zero-waste design. To exemplify this approach, we developed a design method that addresses several aspects of the shaping process, highlighting the possibilities for zero-waste shaping and exploring potential applications. Finally, we discuss the implications, limitations, and opportunities of shape-change …

Textile Intersections 2026: Material Intelligence Exhibition Catalogue, Afroditi Psarra, Liza Stark, Sasha De Koninck, Larissa Kunstel-Tabet, Katharina Sand

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Catalogue of the Textile Intersections 2026 exhibition, Material Intelligence, presenting textile design research that explores intelligence through material behaviour, textile structures, more-than-human agency, material cycles, computation, craft and material commons.

Newsclipping, Does Your Chin Line Suggest Age?

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

News clipping: Advertisement for Dorothy Gray Preparations available at Gayfer's Toilet Goods Department. Undated. 

A Lament For Readers (Of Landscape), Howard Schaap

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Maybe what I lament is the lack of readers of the landscape, that as we drive through the countryside, we so often fail to get out of our cars to actually see “the beguiling nooks and crannies” of the world."

Posting about appreciating nature from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

A Lament for Readers (of Landscape)

Tolkien's Philological Imagination - On Aelfwine's Spelling, The Ab Language And The Inner Consistency Of Philological Reality, Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

This is a paper that was given and refined at the 2026 Tolkien at Kalamazoo, Tolkien and Leeds and Oxonmoot conferences.

The Ignored Insights Of An International Student, Anonymous ,

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

This anonymous student writer is a Political Science major and Philosophy and Law minor from Mumbai, India. As a freshman, her inspiration for writing this essay was her recent experience with the college application process. She says that “coming from a high school in India, multiple factors in the application process were not in my favor and would have been different if I had received my high school education from the United States.” This essay was special because she “learned how to inculcate the art of actively responding with my own voice in terms of academic writing rather than merely …

The Language Of Science Is Questioned, Cooper Wilkinson

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Cooper is a Biochemistry major and a Cognitive Science minor who moved to Boston from Kansas City, Missouri. Cooper has always loved science, and has recently gained an interest in linguistics and the overlapping subjects of science and language. He wrote this essay during the Spring remote semester, and was proud to be able to “overcome the challenges of remote learning and grow even while the world was at a stand still.” Cooper says that he was grateful to be able to choose his writing topic and to no longer be “forbidden to write in the first person”. In addition, …

“And When We Wished We Would Drive Away The Night”: Preventing The Disneyfication Of Aglarond, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

It is well-known that two trips to the Cheddar Gorge Caves formed the basis for the “Glittering Caves of Aglarond” found in Helm’s Deep and described in The Two Towers. Tolkien explained a 1971 letter how that “the passage was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge and was written just after I had revisited these in 1940 but was still coloured by my memory of them much earlier before they became so commercialized. I had been there during my honeymoon nearly thirty years before.” In April 1940, the Tolkiens and their three youngest children took an extended holiday …

'A Hundred Times A Man': Chastity, Martial Culture And Manhood In Franco's Spain, Ava M. Golde

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Using the military as a case study, this essay seeks to understand how chastity became a symbol of complete regeneration for Spanish society, both in terms of a physical revival of a soldier’s health but also a moral and spiritual reawakening of the Catholic soul. In analyzing military magazines, instructional pamphlets, and the memoirs of soldiers, this paper unpacks the relationship between enforced male chastity and Francoist military masculinity, demonstrating how ideas of manhood were deliberately altered to fit a nationalist project of regeneration. Finally, I place this conception of the “New Spanish Man” within the broader context of militarized …

Archives # 2 -- Thirty-Third And Third Degrees (1908), Editorial Board

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Part Iii. Uncanny Spaces And The Trauma Of The Misplaced: Revisiting Psychological Athetosis As The Ecogothic, George Conesa

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

After climbing mount “Ktaadn” [Katahdin] in Maine, Thoreau observed that not all of nature was a one size-fits-all walk in the friendly woods with foxes cavorting and butterflies a-fluttering. While revisiting ecogothic perspectives (Conesa, 2024), a topical turn is made toward understanding interconnected fear responses to uncanny landscapes as a factor of previous and new traumatic events. A deep historical and comprehensive appraisal of organisms in their natural and newly found umwelten suggests that the ecogothic uncanny is a common experience of organism-territory accommodations to “place.” During these place-mind interstices, past traumatic events are amplified into newly …

Trauma Work With Horses: Compassion And Connection, Olivia Sagan Prof

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

New ways of working with trauma survivors are being sought with the case being made that dominant trauma therapies have relied too heavily on verbal narration and cognitive processing.  Evidence suggests that traumatic experiences are often encoded in sensory, emotional, physiological, and relational systems that may be difficult to access through language alone. This has led to interest in the potential of body-oriented, movement-based, and experiential interventions alongside traditional talk therapies. There are also calls for exploring nature-based therapies as these have shown that engagement with natural environments may help aid the process of healing. Within this context, equine-assisted therapies …

From Combat To Congregation: A Guide To Moral Injury For Everyday Ministers, Kristyn Demers

School of Theology and Seminary Graduate Papers/Theses

Veterans often receive inadequate ministerial care for their unique and complex spiritual needs. Therefore, everyday ministers need training in trauma-informed spiritual care and practices of moral healing. These practices need to be implemented within parish and church communities to aid in the care and reintegration of veterans into our communities. In this paper, I will: a) introduce and distinguish moral injury as a particular concern for veterans; b) offer theological and scriptural evidence of the need for proper ministerial responses to moral injury; and c) list a set of tools and resources for ministers who interact with veterans