Digital Commons Network^™

Would You Listen, If I Could Speak?, Jordan Heaviland '29

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Jordan Heaviland is a first-year Creative Writing major and Prindle Scholar, with a keen interest in Philosophy. He primarily writes poetry and short-fiction. His favorite books are House of Leaves and Oryx and Crake. Jordan has previous publications in Muncie Voice, Perspicacity Magazine, and The Lavender Journal.

Untitled, Kisa Tamai '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Kisa Tamai is a Communication and Global Health double major at DePauw University. She enjoys traveling and capturing memories in photographs.

Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards A Composition Pedagogy Of Place, Dax Gove

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

“Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards a Composition Pedagogy of Place” proposes that place—one’s immediate locale—is an essential element of ecocritical writing pedagogy. There are constant interacting rhetorical constructions of meaning within any given place across texts from the different groups who have lived there. In these local texts, the evidence of a rhetorically mediated reality is evident in the stark differences between natures and cultures—meaning is rhetorically constructed, down to the meaning of place and people. This project reads texts local to the author’s immediate locale, Cache Valley, Utah, from white LDS settler and Indigenous Shoshone rhetors in order to …

From Stuckness To Sustainability: Tailoring A Conflict Management Framework To Support Emotional Processing In English Teaching, Isabelle Scott

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Nationally, teachers are struggling to simply stay in the career, let alone thrive in it, and many education researchers are recognizing that teaching has become a largely unsustainable career for an increasing number of educators. There are many complex challenges that English Language Arts (ELA) teachers face that contribute to this dissatisfaction and the unsustainability of the career, including the demanding human and relationship-focus of the work, the emotional intensity in this type of caring, intense debates and controversies occurring in national politics that then play into the classroom, and an overarching disillusionment with teaching. This thesis explores such problems …

The Fourth Skill Revisited: A New-Ish Approach To Latin Pedagogy, Tyler Perry

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis examines a new way of teaching Latin that combines Gareth Morgan’s The Fourth Skill method with the traditional grammar-translation approach. Latin teaching has often moved between two extremes. Grammar-translation focuses heavily on analyzing grammar, while modern immersion-style approaches focus more on understanding the language through exposure. Each method has strengths but also clear limitations. Morgan’s The Fourth Skill (1968) tried to balance these approaches by focusing on reading real Latin texts, but it relied heavily on Morgan’s personal teaching and included little direct grammar instruction.

To address these problems, this study tested a revised version of the method …

Where Were Women?: Women In The United States Intelligence Organizations From The Office Of Strategic Services To The Central Intelligence Agency, Madison Harris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

United States intelligence historians have largely neglected the importance of women’s intelligence labor as well as the centralized intelligence organizations that existed from World War II to the early years of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – including the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Strategic Service Unit (SSU), and Central Intelligence Group (CIG). While assumptions about women in intelligence work during this period are usually drawn from stereotypical portrayals in popular media, such as books and movies, this thesis utilized statistical data and other agency sources to build a broader understanding of women’s actual labor.

This thesis demonstrates that women …

When “Voice” Becomes Law: A Caution Against Emancipatory Complacency In Anti-Sexual Violence Feminism, Samantha Lillian To

LL.M. Essays & Theses

This Essay destabilizes a feminist project that seeks to emancipate sexually violated women in the United States through a rhetoric of voice. There is a body of feminist literature that imagines voice as unconstrained self-expression through which sexually violated women resist patriarchal oppression and heal from trauma. When projected onto the courtroom, however, this framework becomes an ideal that the legal process, by its structure, cannot fully accommodate. This Essay presents three claims. First, despite the emergence of a legal promise of “voice” after the enactment of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, feminists should not treat it as the culmination …

Making As A Method For Knowledge Production, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Camilla Groth

DRS Summer Meetings

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Use Of Extended Reality Technology To Improve Marching Band Conducting Patterns, Nathan R. Fuhrman

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Conducting pattern consistency is an essential skill for marching band drum

majors, yet developing this consistency through individual practice remains diffi-

cult without real-time feedback. This thesis investigates if the use of extended

reality technologies can be used to enhance the conducting skills of novice drum

majors. Using the Meta Quest 3’s passthrough capability, the system overlays vi-

sual feedback elements — including a 3D pattern guide, path visualization, tempo

cues, and a real-time score — onto the user’s physical environment. A within-

subjects study with seven participants evaluated eight combinations of three binary

feedback variables: pattern guide visibility, tempo …

Enhancing Corporate Prayer Of The Clearwater Church Of Christ, Lyle Hinsdale

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation was designed to enhance corporate prayer in the Clearwater Church of Christ. The dissertation explores the formative role of corporate prayer in congregational life and how intentional engagement with the Psalms can deepen the theological and spiritual practice of prayer within a local church. Corporate prayer can slip into habitual practice with limited theological range or emotional depth. This project investigates whether structured use of the Psalms as a model for prayer can expand the language, theological imagination, and engagement in the prayers of a worshiping community. The study used participatory action research methodology and was conducted within …

Redesigning The Welcome, Lauren Ogrin

Interior Design Capstones

Airports serve as the first and last impression of a city, yet they are often remembered by stress, sensory overload, and a lack of cultural representation. This project explores how storytelling can be intentionally integrated into airport design to improve the overall human experience and create a more meaningful sense of welcome. Through the frameworks of user-centered inquiry, phenomenology, and narrative design, this research examines how materials, spatial sequences, sensory cues, and cultural narratives can influence traveler emotions, cognitive clarity, and feelings of belonging. By understanding how people move through and interpret transitional public spaces, this project proposes design strategies …

Let's Play A Lovegame: How College Hookup Culture Came To Be, How It Functions On A University Campus, And The Greek Organizations That Perpetuate It At Butler University, Ella Gray Tucker

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

“Let’s Play a LoveGame” examines how hookup culture functions, is perpetuated, and impacts students on a college campus. By understanding the historical context of its creation, I analyze the multitude of factors that aided it to evolve into what it is today. Although hookup culture is considered part of the undergraduate “college experience”, it is negatively impacting students' mental well-being and their understanding of romantic relationships. With Butler University as my case study, I have come to find that Greek Organizations within the National Panhellenic Conference and Interfraternity Council hold events that enable hookup culture to permeate Greek row which …

Red, White, And Quahog: An Analysis Of Political Satire In Family Guy, Kendall Swaim

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This study examines how fictional television shows use satire to portray politics. Specifically, it analyzes irony, exaggeration, and humor styles identified by Martin et al. (2003) in the television show Family Guy. Additionally, this study explores how references to real political figures and events contribute to the show’s satirical framing of politics. The qualitative content analysis of 10 politically centered Family Guy episodes to address the question: "How does the fictional television show Family Guy use satire (humor, irony, and exaggeration) to portray politics?" The analysis revealed three key themes: the portrayal of politics as idiotic, the use of timely …

Incorporating Ai Within English Composition Courses To Promote Ai Literacy And Decrease Academic Dishonesty, Damaris Rodriguez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The rapid adoption of the program ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) by the public has caused tension and concerns among educators and higher education as they struggle on finding a middle ground among the practices of artificial intelligence (AI) within education that will continue to ensure that the instructor stays on top of the AI as the main educator for students. It is argued that the incorporation of AI within in-class assignments, for example, will assist students to develop an ethical awareness and their critical thinking skills to be able to recognize that there are limitations in regards to the …

Beyond The Dice Roll: Investigating Character Creation In A Pokemon-Inspired D&D Game, Alberto S. Rendon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

For this study of Pokémon Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) I study gameplay as a way to capture how players use character creation and performance in role-playing games as a form of social identity expression. I provide a rich description of how players construct a game persona and relate it to their social identity.By engaging in an ethnographic study wherein I analyze the players’ game character, their style of play, the decisions they make during the game, and the small group dynamic that emerges as a result, I want to show how mixing these two fandoms can promote ways for players …

Towards The Publisher-Function Of The Independent Press: Authorship And Experimentation In The Semiotext(E) Oeuvre, Gilbert Aguirre

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project is a contribution to debates on authorship, expanding Foucault’s theorization of the author as a function of discourse into the field of creative production by proposing my theory of the publisher-function. Here, I highlight the role of the publisher in shaping literary discourse using avant-garde publishing house Semiotext(e). I analyze two experimental publications to illustrate how this publisher’s role in editing and curating their booklist—or, as I propose we call it, their oeuvre—compounds with the fact of publication to create a new kind of authorial role. This is done through emphasizing the paratexts, elements of design, and literary …

Against Despair: Hope As Rhetorical Practice In Chicana Theatre, Esperanza Arreola

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Chicana theatre functions as survival pedagogy—a rhetorical practice that teaches communities to name structural violence, transform bodily trauma into collective power, and rehearse liberation as a precondition for enacting it. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s concept of literature as “equipment for living,” Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and Cynthia M. Sheard’s reconceptualization of epideictic rhetoric as community formation, I analyze three plays that exemplify this pedagogy: Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992) and The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001), and Josefina López’s Real Women Have Curves (1990).

These works address distinct but interlocking forms of …

Nonbinary And Transgender Representation In Media: How Scripted Media Impacts And Shapes The Identities Of Communities Outside The Gender Binary, Makenna Dykstra

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The lack of, and otherwise poor, representation of nonbinary and trans communities contributes to the societal othering of these communities. However, nonbinary and trans representation holds importance to these communities. Trans and nonbinary communities, like other communities, use media to help them negotiate their identities (Hall, 2005). However, current representation in scripted television is small and contentious, with the ability to have just as much of a negative impact as a positive one. LGBTQ+ television has a history of favoring moderate depictions of queerness, like that in nonbinary and trans characters, as a means of defining these identities to cisgender …

Echoes Of Becoming - K. Morrell, Kole K. Morrell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I work sculpturally, exploring presence, transformation, and emotional weight that is not inherently visible. My forms are recognizable yet unsettled, existing between familiarity and distortion. Meaning is not fixed or declared, it reveals itself slowly through texture, material, and time spent in observation.

I approach making as a form of therapeutic ritual. Through touch, I shape and alter the material, imbuing it with the story of emotions I want to convey to the viewer. I am most connected to the work in its “in-between” states, when the form is still shifting and unresolved. In these moments, it mirrors my own …

Echoes Of Becoming, Michelle D. Young

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I create illustrative works that deal with criticism and appreciation in parallel ways; addressing facets of society, government, the self, and the influence of social media. My art ranges from digital illustration to narrative paintings, fluctuating to the flow and response of a piece. A blend of cheekiness and empowerment, I play around with uncomfortable subjects and heavy topics to bring attention to those that are misrepresented or overlooked. I am interested in the intersection of consumable media, its history and the disregarded context behind it all.

Rooted in my experience as a descendant of generational immigrant-refugees, my work reflects …

Humor And The Politics Of Belonging: Race, Gender, And Radicalization In Online Spaces, Reese Chatman

Master's Theses

This thesis argues that post-ironic and meta-ironic humor acts as an affective gateway to far-right radicalization within online masculine subcultures. Examining incel forums and Groyper spaces, it traces how humor operates as the architecture through which extremist ideology is introduced, normalized, and internalized. Drawing on a synthesis of meme studies, digital rhetoric, and theories of irony and affect, and using digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis, the study examines recurring meme figures, especially the Wojak and its NPC variant, as portable diagnostic devices that sort participants into the "awake" and the unconscious regardless of ideological content. Case studies include incel …

The Reframing Of An Ancient Tragedy Within A Contemporary Context, Samuel Ofosu Danquah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines, explores, and explains the costume design process for a contemporary production of The Trojan Women by Euripides performed at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The production concentrates on the play’s violent upheaval and its relationship between historic, present, and future significance. The Trojan Women by Euripides is recognized as a leading anti-war tragedy inspired by the Melian Massacre, which occurred circa 415-416 BCE. The Melian Massacre was a war between Sparta and Athens that occurred on the eastern mainland of Greece. The Trojan Women presents a distinctive challenge, visually depicting the immediate consequences of a city’s downfall …

Athena: A Study In Directing, Keean E. Enriquez-Sexton

Honors Theses

A step-by-step look into the directing process at the collegiate level, following a production of Athena by Gracie Gardner from show selection, through rehearsals, all the way to performance. This thesis serves as a case study in directing, detailing the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures throughout the process.

The Journey Of Accompaniment: Pastoral Care Education For The Laity At The University Church Of Christ In Abilene, Tx, Alejandro Ezquerra

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This Doctor of Ministry project addresses the need for intentional pastoral care formation among lay members at the University Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas, with particular attention to its bilingual ministry context. Grounded in the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers as articulated in 1 Pet 2:9, the project argues that pastoral care is not the exclusive responsibility of ordained clergy but a shared calling within the body of Christ. In response to congregational interest in chaplaincy and caregiving, a five-session curriculum titled The Journey of Accompaniment: Forming Hearts for the Ministry of Care was developed to equip …

Developing And Mobilizing A Ttrpg Experience: Season D6, Jacob Woodrow Horne

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

Season D6 is a game that will be developed as an attempt to refine certain issues seen in popular games. These shared problems include allowing players to become self-sufficient in a way that clashes with a team-based mindset, and a lack of flexibility and accidental antagonism placed upon the storyteller. To remedy these issues, Season D6 will break up the statistics that players use to calculate their in-game abilities into three separate groups, employ an experience system used to purchase abilities at a controlled, exponential rate and to calculate encounters, and uses a “Dabble” system intended to specify the roles …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #3, The Year 1591, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This tour guide is the third in Victoria Weston's An Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys. To access the full book, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining sections, visit:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #2, The Year 1230, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the second of three tour guides connected to Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art. For the full guidebook, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

The remaining sections can be found at these links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #1, The Year 748, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This book is chapter one of Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys, which can be found in full at https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining chapters, visit:

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. …

The Southwest Black Artists Collective: Afro-Modern Ecology, Kinship, And Collectivity In The Desert Southwest, Bradley L. Petty

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Southwest Black Artists Collective (SBAC) as a site of

Afro-diasporic kinship, artistic production, and spatial intervention within the Desert

Southwest. Operating within a region where Black populations are comparatively small

and institutional support is diffuse, SBAC emerges as both a response to and a

reconfiguration of the regional artistic landscape. The Collective constructs an affirming

community through shared artistic practice, exhibitions, and the maintenance of The

Projects/Space in Tucson, Arizona, where public engagement and private creative

exchange coexist.

Drawing on theories of human ecology, this study expands existing frameworks

by introducing the concept of Afro-modern ecology, …

Faith Under The Führer: Protestant Pastors In Nazi Germany, Katie Cassady

Senior Honors Theses

This research examines Protestant churches in Nazi Germany and their varied reactions to Hitler’s Third Reich, tracing the Nazi rise to power, the Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle), the Confessing Church’s resistance, and figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, and Karl Barth. Hitler campaigned on a platform purporting to support religious freedom, but the state-sponsored persecution of Christian churches later revealed such promises as a facade. The Kirchenkampf exemplifies the reactions of Protestant German churches to Hitler’s rule: The German Christian Movement (GCM) endorsed Hitler’s radical racial theories, while the Confessing Church confronted the unbiblical rhetoric used by the GCM.