Digital Commons Network^™

Treatment And Recovery Of Mucoceles In Brass Musicians: The Performance Trap And Its Consequences, David D. Torres

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines the treatment and recovery of oral mucoceles in professional brass musicians through a qualitative case study combining personal narrative, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of medical and pedagogical literature. I interviewed four professional trumpet players who experienced mucoceles and lip trauma, and three medical professionals with relevant expertise. My own case serves as the primary study, documenting 15 years of scar tissue management following surgical excision and an immediate return to demanding performance. Medical literature treats mucocele excision as a routine procedure with recovery measured in weeks. Brass pedagogy literature assumes healthy lips and offers no guidance for …

Exploring A Boxing Community Exercise Porgram For Women With Parkinson's Disease, Emily Truong

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objective: The purpose of this capstone project was to explore the lived experiences of 10 women with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who participate in the Rock Steady Boxing (RSB) program, an exercise community-based non-contact boxing program. Because women remain underrepresented in PD research and exercise-based interventions, this project aims to better understand how women perceive the physical, emotional, and social impacts of participating in RSB.

Methods: This qualitative case series included 10 women diagnosed with PD that participate in RSB at the Tony Cress Training Center. Data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews and audio recordings. Interviews were consented, transcribed verbatim, …

Addressing Sexual Health For Older Veterans By Healthcare Providers: A Mixed Method Study, Andrew James White

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Background: Older adults remain sexually active, yet sexual health is frequently under-discussed in healthcare settings, particularly within veteran populations. Sexual health is essential to overall quality of life, and prior studies have shown that older patients value these conversations. However, veterans often face unique factors such as military-related trauma, including military combat exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder, in addition to compounded stigma from these topics in regards to open discussions about sensitive health issues to their healthcare providers. This study is significant in its potential to uncover systemic, cultural, and interpersonal influences that shape these dynamics, with a particular emphasis …

An Authentic Key To Universality: The National Sound Of Tajčević And The International Sound Of Milojević In Serbian Piano Music, Nikola Šćepović

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis argues that the authenticity of the works of Marko Tajčević and Miloje Milojević arises from their deep artistic response to the cultural and historical environment in which they lived and created, while their universality lies in their ability to articulate this authentic language within established artistic forms that resonate with a broader international musical community. It situates these works within the broader cultural context of Serbian music between the two World Wars, a period marked by the negotiation between national identity and European artistic integration.

It also explores the two formative directions of Serbian piano music, the music …

Read The Fine Print, Kayla Lockwood

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

read the fine print is a two-floor art installation that investigates how midcentury domestic ideology structured bodies, behavior, and perception through visual, spatial, and material systems. Rather than recreating a home interior, it examines how domestic order was engineered across the United States through color coding, planning diagrams, model environments, controlled decoration, and institutional messaging. The two-floor arrangement mirrors the operation of these systems across registers, moving from overt structures of order to quieter, often obscured consequences. By rendering policy, hierarchy, and expectation materially, the installation invites viewers to consider domesticity as a designed system: a set of practices, forms, …

Unknowing Sacrifices: Public Health And Radiation Illness In New Mexico And Nevada, 1940s-1960s, Beatriz Avila-Marquez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The detonation of the first atomic bomb in the early morning of July 16, 1945, in New Mexico welcomed the atomic age that forever changed the world. After that day, thousands of lives were lost due to nuclear weapons, and hundreds of thousands more continued to suffer from the effects of atomic testing. The Atomic Energy Commission, fueled by the arms race of the Cold War, chose Nevada to continue the United States’ nuclear weapons testing. Knowledge of the dangers of radiation exposure, the effects of radiation, and techniques to prevent exposure are now available in part due to the …

“A Land No One Would Want”: Environmental Activism And The Rejection Of ‘Wasteland’ Narratives In Southern Nevada, Steven Butler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This paper traces events within the history of environmental activism in Southern Nevada. The first chapter discusses the proposed high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The second chapter examines the closure of the Reid Gardner Generating Station in Moapa, Nevada. The third chapter details the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s Groundwater Development Project. Each of the three chapters is linked by common themes within the history of Southern Nevada environmental activism, including dedicated coalition-building and the refusal of “wastelanding” of the region.

And Now It Blooms And Sings: The Music And Poetry Of Noël By Clémence De Grandval, Nicholas Stephen Carozza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document presents a historical background with poetic and musical analysis of Noël for voice, oboe, and piano by Clémence de Grandval (1828–1907) to contextualize the work within the lives of the composer, performers, and poet. Noël occupies an important period in Grandval’s life as one of the few pieces composed after 1900, and features a unique instrumentation of voice, oboe, and piano. The work is a musical setting of poetry by Nobel laureate Sully Prudhomme and was dedicated to oboist Louis Bleuzet and baritone Paul Daraux. This document presents biographical information, compositional background, records of performances, and analysis to …

Developing Vocal Technique Through The Canción Ranchera In The Middle School Mariachi Classroom, Perry Chacon Jr.

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mariachi is taught in more than 500 public school programs across the United States, yet current scholarship on the mariachi voice primarily focuses on defining and analyzing performance practice, offering limited guidance for classroom instruction. This study provides a methodology for developing healthy vocal technique in the middle school mariachi classroom. Grounded in established vocal pedagogy and informed by teaching practice, this approach first builds student confidence through participation in group vocal exploration that encourages active vocal participation. Instruction progresses from foundational skill development, including aural skills, breath coordination, and healthy vocal projection, to the application of these skills through …

Volume Cxlv, Number 22, May 15, 2026, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Within Melbourne: Landscape, Labor, And Material Culture In A Derbyshire Parish, 1650-1750, Mia Powell

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

In May of 1695, a group of inhabitants walked the grounds of the English locality of Melbourne (Derbyshire) and collected demographic data from every household within the parish boundaries. From this perambulation came a uniquely detailed census-type listing. Combining that listing with other available sources, including probate records, criminal litigation, property disputes, financial papers, antiquarian accounts, maps, and enclosure agreements from across seven record offices, this project uncovers the complex social and economic developments experienced by those who lived in Melbourne from 1650 to 1750. To analyze this well-documented parish, this thesis utilizes various methodologies. Nominal record linkage connects Melbourne’s …

Miss Ogilvy Does Not Find Herself: The Repression Of Queer Expression Post World War I, Kennedie Krieger

2026 Symposium

World War l was a historical period of intense societal change, and although it brought upon a lot of devastation, there were also groups of people that experienced liberation because of the war. Radclyffe Hall’s short story “Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself” is an example of the ways in which the war offered relief for queer women who had previously been expected to exist within rigid gender roles. Through an uncommon perspective, readers are able to get a sense of the ways in which gendered societal expectations shifted during the war and the positive outcomes this brought about. Although these hopeful …

The Purpose Of Life: An Analysis Of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty As A Cinematic Guide To Eudaimonia, Eric W. Stroud

The Confluence

This paper examines the moral formation of the protagonist of the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) through the framework of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Though extensive research has been conducted on the use of film as a vehicle for moral education and a tool for ethics pedagogy, there exists a demonstrable gap in research which applies the principles of virtue ethics to character analysis in film. This paper presents a scene-based, qualitative analysis comparing the actions of the main character to the model of habituation of virtue as presented in The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. In observing the …

Satire And Sentiment: Dickensian Characterization In Hard Times, Helen R. Ball

The Confluence

Readers of Charles Dickens both celebrate and criticize his characters, who are paramount among the quintessential aspects of his writing. His industrial novel Hard Times bears particularly the weight of such criticism in its portrayal of Stephen Blackpool, one of the Coketown factory Hands. Scholars have complained that Blackpool exemplifies, in too boring or didactic a manner, the typical virtues of the Victorian era, such as saintliness, humility, and long-suffering (Spector 365), and that his character lacks the necessary traits to compel and inspire readers.

Such a critique has prompted the following research and analysis. Using formalist observation of diction …

The Politics Of Literature In Dider Eribon’S Returning To Reims: An Emancipatory Review, Noa De Kievit

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This paper examines Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims (2009) as a model for understanding how literary and autobiographical writing can enact ''the politics of literature.'' While Eribon is widely recognized as a sociologist, his “autosociobiography”—tracing his trajectory from a working-class upbringing to an academic career alongside his coming out—blends personal narrative and sociological insight to illuminate structural inequalities and social marginalization. Reading the text through Jacques Rancière’s concept of the politics of literature, I argue that Eribon simultaneously expands the scope of what is visible, sayable, and thinkable, while reflecting critically on the interpretive authority he exercises. Building on Caroline …

Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope As B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet, Cullen Whisenhunt

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In 1927, a letter by then-professor at the University of Oklahoma, Roy Temple House, was published in the Ada Evening News complimenting Ada, OK, poet Welborn Hope and suggesting Hope get in touch with folklorist and literary scholar BA Botkin, also an OU faculty member. That same year, Botkin published “Oklahoma Poets, Inc.,” in which he detailed what he believed to be the three stages of a state’s literary development: the pioneer stage, the popular rhymesters stage, and finally, the union of art and life (30-31). In 1935, Botkin presented a lecture in Tulsa in which he cited Hope among …

A Weeping Willow, An Original Script Enriching The Canon Of Deaf Plays, Tyler Furzland

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This creative writing capstone project presents A Weeping Willow, an original play script that explores themes of resilience, mental health, human connections, and acceptance. A teenager wakes up with no memory of the past year. Through fragmented glimpses of the past and the future, he struggles to piece together what happened on the most important day of his life. The play does not revolve around a Deaf-thematic storyline, a story that highlights the auditory aspects of the Deaf experience. This play is influenced by a study of scripts written by Deaf playwrights or plays featuring Deaf characters. This research examines …

Silent No Longer: Pedro Albizu Campos And The Fbi, Noah D. Dubroff

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores the Puerto Rican revolutionary, Pedro Albizu Campos, and how he evolved from a typical independence-minded young man into a radical who actively rebelled against the colonial rule of the U.S. because of the pressures applied by law enforcement agencies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The United States annexed Puerto Rico in 1898 at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Ever since, many Puerto Ricans have strongly advocated for their independence from the continental U.S., shaping the relationship into the present day. This article argues that the pressure and strain of such an imperial relationship influenced Albizu …

Local And Indigenous Knowledge, Innovation, And Sustainable Development: Creating Sustainable Futures Amidst Crisis Conditions At The Community Level, Carlos Andrés Arias

Dissertations and Theses

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future (1987) made clear the need to reject longstanding development processes and focus on sustainable development. The Commission stressed that actual sustainable development integrates three elements: social development, economic development, and environmental protection. Though developed nations have achieved economic growth through conventional and extractive development practices, these practices have intensified natural disasters driven by climate change, increased food insecurity, and deepened poverty. This has acutely impacted Indigenous and local communities, many of whom face crisis conditions, such as war, terrorism, civil disorder, and their aftermath. Even so, many of these communities successfully implement …

Identity And Ideology: Dolores Ibarruri's Reconciliation Of Motherhood And Communism, Marvin Black

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Spanish Civil War remains a significant cornerstone of the historical narrative of the early 20th century, as it served as the political and military precursor to World War II. The war was far more complex than a simple conflict between two ideologies, with many political and military leaders often overlooked. One of these individuals was Dolores Ibárruri, a leader of the Spanish Communist Party, who called on her experiences as both a mother and a communist to galvanize support for the Second Republic. How these two facets interacted and were shaped by Ibárruri’s personal experiences is often overlooked. Through …

Sanctuary And Disappointment: Jewish German Refugees In The United States Army In World War Ii, Zachary P. Watts

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This paper examines the experiences of German-Jewish refugees who became intelligence soldiers in the United States Army. They are frequently called the Ritchie Boys, for their training in Camp Ritchie, Maryland. The paper focuses mostly on a single Ritchie Boy named Frank Adler, who came to the United States as a teenager from Austria in 1938 and ended up returning to his hometown as a soldier. The Ritchie History museum holds a large collection of Adler’s letters which form the most important source for this project. I have found a duality of experience from German and Austrian Jews in the …

The Culinary History Of Korean Immigrants 1903-2025, Eun Soo Han

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This paper is an exploration into the role that Korean dishes like Kalbi, Korean marinated or grilled meat, and Kimchi, a fermented vegetable or fruit dish played in the development of the Korean Immigrant community and the cultivation of cultural identity of Korean immigrants. This paper offers a brief overview into the history some of the major dishes that forms the core of the three sections of this article with Kalbi being the main theme for the section on Korean immigration to Hawaii in 1903 and Kimchi being the main dish discussed in the second to third section that explores …

Remembering Carlo Ferarai: Life, Community, And Death In Industrial London, William W. Wilder

Masters Theses, 2020-current

During the 19^th century English medical schools relied on resurrection men to provide dead bodies for anatomical dissection. While resurrection men typically took bodies from graveyards, there were also those who committed murder in order to sell the bodies of their victims. Carlo Ferarai, an unhoused immigrant child, was the victim of just such a murder, and his death contributed to many legal and social changes which have been studied by historians. This paper recontextualizes Carlo’s death by exploring his life as a social history. Using court transcripts, newspapers, and other sources, alongside insights drawn from urban history, and …

Multilingual Meaning Making In Zambian Social Media Discourse: Rhetorical Framing, Identity Construction, Persuasion And Digital Writing Practices On Facebook, Mwesah Mpundu Kapesa

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This study investigates how language choices in Zambian social media discourse construct identity, frame narratives, and influence audiences. Although major social media platforms are predominantly English and Eurocentric, Zambia is a highly multilingual society, creating tension between global linguistic norms and local language practices. Despite growing scholarship on digital discourse, limited research examines how Zambian users navigate multilingual communication online, particularly regarding identity construction, rhetorical framing, and audience engagement. Using a qualitative research design grounded in discourse analysis and informed by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and sociolinguistic theory (Gee, 2014), the study collected two weeks of Facebook data. User‑generated …

The Coffee Crisis: What Starbucks Coffee Company Teaches Us About Exploitation, Chloe Baker

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The average American consumer associates the coffee shop with an earth-toned color pallet, a comfortable seating arrangement, and a delicious beverage. American popular culture mimics that imagery, in television shows like NBC’s Friends and Frasier, and movies like You’ve Got Mail. Coffee shops are one kind of third place, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe tertiary spaces to work and home where people commune and form community. But a darker side of coffee shops exists relatively unnoticed. This thesis demonstrates how popular cultural portrayals of coffee and coffee shops—small businesses and Starbucks Coffee Company—have both …

On Paper, Dallas Spears

MFA in Visual Art

I create sculptural works from discarded copy paper that I combine with found objects, all sourced from my immediate environment. The associations of paper such as writing, tearing, stacking, folding, and scribbling echo through my formal gestures. Found objects mimic these gestures, while adding unexpected textures and colors to the compositions. These machine-made objects are intertwined with the handmade to form displays of exchange. I am interested in the tension between the manufactured and the hand-formed, and how these tensions inform our daily lives. Objects that surpass the human lifespan, products alienated from us via opaque networks of exchange, especially …

Temporal Ubiquity, Brittni Mosby

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.

By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by …

Grounding In Place And Space, Levi Anthony Walker

MFA in Visual Art

The foundation of Levi Walker’s artistic practice relies on the use of natural materials that reference the landscape. The materials within his sculptures, in combination with sculptural processes, create a conceptual language that is in conversation with the land and the ways that we engage with it as a community. As a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, his work addresses the relationship that Indigenous tribes have with the federal government, and the ways the tribe must navigate colonial systems in order to support their communities without erasing their identities or beliefs. Influenced by his upbringing, a strong …

Care As Method: Sound, Duration, Relation In Contemporary Art Practice, Violet L. White

MFA in Visual Art

Abstract Care as Method: Sound, Duration, and Multispecies Relation in Contemporary Art Practice

This thesis proposes care as a method of artmaking, not a subject, theme, or aesthetic position, but the actual structural logic through which a body of work is built, sustained, and understood. Working at the intersection of ecological art practice and relational aesthetics, it asks what happens when the encounter at the center of the work is not between two people but between species, infrastructures, and histories of use and what obligations that encounter generates.

The argument is developed through six interconnected works: installations, sound compositions, sculptures, …

Alive In Translation, Shiyao Fu

MFA in Visual Art

Alive in Translation explores in-between cultural conditions through my process of working with materials metaphorically, focusing on how they interact and intersect. By using paradoxical pairings—organic and synthetic, fluid and rigid, liquid and solid, flux and suspension—my sculptures and installations simultaneously hold multiple conditions. My process is grounded in my own negotiations with materials. By embracing both the material limitations and my own frustrations, I allow the materials to act as active agents in my process of making. The resulting forms exist in between the materials’ own tendencies and my own intentions. My thesis project, We twist, extend, and accrete …