Digital Commons Network^™

The Moral Imperative Of Public Service Design, Federico Vaz

DRS Summer Meetings

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming Suppressed Symbols: Yoruba Iconography And Nuyorican Identity In The Art Of Nitza Tufiño, Ariana Williams

Theses

This thesis examines the work of Afro-Puerto Rican artist Nitza Tufiño through Yoruba iconography, diasporic memory, and gendered Nuyorican identity. Grounded within the cultural and political context of the Nuyorican Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and, this study argues that Tufiño’s visual practice reframes suppressed African spiritual symbols through a woman-centered perspective, positioning Black femininity and spiritual labor as sites of resistance to colonial erasure and racial marginalization. Drawing upon Yoruba-derived cosmologies, Santería, and processes of visual syncretism, Tufiño integrates African, Indigenous Taíno, and Caribbean traditions to articulate a gendered visual language rooted in care, ritual, and collective memory. …

User-Centered Design For Public Financial Services: A Federal Student Loan Management App Case Study, Carmen River Christopher

Theses

Researchers have studied several facets of federal student loans, such as the impacts it has on borrowers’ finances, mentality, and life goals, plus the history of the federal student system and potential changes. There has been little research conducted on how borrowers make decisions regarding repayment, including choosing plans, navigating the repayment system, and understanding the long term implications of their choices. Since this research largely does not exist, there are few tools and resources to help guide borrowers as they manage the large, complex, and dynamic landscape that is navigating the federal loan system and repaying their debt. I …

Analyzing Comparisons Of Seascapes By Caspar David Friedrich And Fitz Henry Lane Through A Digital Gallery Show, Adrianna Murphy

Theses

This project focuses on a comparative digital exhibition and analysis between Caspar David Friedrich and Fitz Henry Lane’s seascape artwork. Both artists have not been shown together in a gallery; thus this research into common themes in their works reveals a new perspective on early- to mid-19th-century seascape art. This perspective shows how their different geographies and historical contexts converge through the shared visual language of contemplation, morality, and reflecting in the mystery of life through nature. The project aims to create a digital gallery that showcases an ideal layout and a comparison of the artists, with curated works that …

An Introduction To World Art History: Course Curriculum, Skyler M. Bancroft

Theses

Art history as a field has inherent biases that are primarily rooted in Western traditions. A majority of the content which students are exposed to focuses on regions such as Europe and the Americas, with less focus on Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The purpose of this thesis project is to develop a secondary school curriculum that approaches art history from a world perspective to foster students’ sense of cultural awareness and empathy, as well as the development of skills such as critical thinking and visual literacy. Students will leave this course with a greater understanding of art from various …

Ai And The Ethos Of Education: Reflections On Human Learning Past And Present, Melanie Trotochaud

Yale Divinity School Theses

This thesis reflects on contemporary issues of “Artificial Intelligence” (AI), while also bringing into conversation 12th century Christian mystic and polymath Hildegard Von Bingen and 18th century Humanist philosopher Giambattista Vico. Hildegard’s and Vico’s contexts philosophically and historically share similarities to our present moment: reassessing our humanity and learning in times of technological, economic, and social shifts. Holding up their writing to various conversations about our contemporary world helps illuminate the present. Key aspects of the discussion include what constitutes tools or technologies, the agency we have in choosing to use or not to use them, and how we make …

“The Thorns Of The Most Severe Virtue”: Education, Religion, And Cultural Power In Michigan, 1798–1855, Kyle Christopher Vanderwall

Dissertations

This project seeks to demonstrate the centrality of education and religion as cultural power levers used by Americans, Odawa, and Catholic missionaries. Though the power of each culture was uneven, efforts to create educational institutions imbued with different denominations of Christianity, as well as continued contestation over land, remade the cultures of all involved. Americans privileged state-building practices, the Odawa acculturated to remain in Michigan when removal policies were enacted throughout the United States, and the Catholic church attempted to proselytize Indigenous communities.

Although the ethnohistorical method needed to be understood in order to write this project, it is not …

The Course Of Empire Causes Us Much Grief: Imperialism, Slavery, And Genocide In The Theological Education Of Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary At Yale, Alden Fossett

Yale Divinity School Theses

The history of Berkeley Divinity School, the Episcopal seminary at Yale, traverses centuries and thousands of miles between Ireland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Abundant institutional narratives concerning Berkeley Divinity School’s origin and development over time rehearse a mythology connecting the Anglo-Irish philosopher and bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) and the establishment of Berkeley Divinity School in 1854 by Massachusetts-born professor and bishop John Williams (1817–1899). This thesis intervenes in the historiography of Berkeley Divinity School by situating John Williams’s allusion to George Berkeley’s unfulfilled dream to establish a college training Anglican missionaries on the island of Bermuda within a British imperial …

The Personality Of Place: Physical Geography And The Shaping Of The Nineteenth-Century German Immigrant Ethnic Identity, Abigail Ward

Honors Theses

In the nineteenth century alone, approximately five million German-speaking immigrants arrived in America. However, the motivations of these individuals for moving to America, far from identical, were nearly as numerous as the individuals themselves. The German ethnic identity in America was not uniform, but the expression of many factors having to do with both the Vaterland and the new land. These factors ranged from the timing of emigration, which was largely influence by religious, political, and economic upheaval in Europe, to each German’s system of values, which dictated the kind of future he saw for himself and therefore where he …

No Place But Here, Dillon Bryant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The writing in this document is a dovetailing of fragments ranging from critical inquiry, analysis, scripts, and other observations that relate to the body of work in “No place but here”. It is an accompanying document attempting to enrich the visual work rather than a direct illustration. The installation of “No place but here” at the Rogers Creamery is an investigation utilizing collage, text, and other constructed photographs, images, and objects to play with and against familial and broader narratives of power, control, and ambiguity associated with the American West. Underpinned and intersected by interior questions revolving around artifice, connection, …

Catalyst, David Steck

Theses and Dissertations

Catalyst is a short documentary that explores why Hip Hop happened much later in Chicago than in other cities. It focuses on the story of Duro Wicks, a young Black music lover who overcame the city’s segregation to launch the first weekly Hip Hop open mic night. At the weekly $3 Sunday Hip Hop Show held at the Lower Links, young people came together from across the divided city to create a community. Though more successful than anyone could have imagined, Wicks’ dream proved unsustainable. However, it forever transformed the lives of the people it touched and launched a sustainable …

Nhạc Vàng And Historical Consciousness: Affect, Memory, And The Vietnamese Diaspora, Bryan L. Le

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines nhạc vàng as a cultural form shaped by war, displacement, and diaspora. It analyzes how the music carries historical experience through lyrics and performance, and how its meanings shift across contexts. The study shows how music shapes memory, identity, and historical understanding beyond fixed political or archival frameworks.

The Earth Holds What I Cannot, Satabdi Tripathy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores memory, landscape, identity, and gendered silence through painting, video and film. Inspired by glaciers, volcanoes, and Arctic landscapes, my work transforms personal memory into environmental memory and investigates silence, trauma, and renewal.

Notes On Rhythm, Maya Lee-Parritz

Theses and Dissertations

Line meets impulse, association meets sign. I weave the eye towards the smudge and sublime—a fractal lineage flowing through the brush, my body, space itself. I walk toward reality in serial successions, allowing what is fragmentary to move me, to cohere in shards, murky and strange inside of me. My body is a repository of images, of broken rhythms and dissonant ideologies. All of these flow and stutter onto the surface, dripping and blurring over each other. Through all of this, I always try to make something whole, perfect, and true.

The Storyteller: Concealment, Memory, And The Architecture Of Exile, Dylan Hirsh

Theses and Dissertations

The Storyteller is an expressive documentary investigating the life of Francis Kalnay (1899–1992). A Jewish-Hungarian intellectual, Kalnay lived as a socialist, an X-2 Counter-espionage chief for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, an architect in Mexico, and a celebrated children's book author. The film's central conflict lies in his hidden identities and exploring how, despite his position as a high-level spy, he failed to save his sister and mother from death at the hands of the Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross government. As a filmmaker investigating a lost part of my own Jewish-Hungarian heritage, I believe Kalnay …

They Returned Fighting: World War I, Disillusionment, And The Remaking Of African-American Political Life In New York City, Michael Frank

Theses and Dissertations

They Returned Fighting examines how Black New Yorkers used World War I service, wartime activism, and postwar protest to press claims to citizenship and democracy, even as racial violence, discrimination, and contested public memory exposed the limits of that belonging in New York City and the United States.

Transient Landscapes, Selena Lozano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores a technical shift from studio to plein air observation and contextualizing urban landscapes through art history and memory. By investigating the tension between permanence and erasure amidst rapid gentrification, the work utilizes painting and photography to mirror the physicality of El Barrio in East Harlem.

Public Art And Military Technology At The Mexico-U.S. Border: Disrupting Boundaries On Battlegrounds, Anna Luise Kaunert

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary artists Rubén Ortiz Torres, Chico MacMurtrie, rafa esparza, and Cassils transformed military technologies into powerful artworks that interrogate the Mexico-U.S. border as a battlefield. Together, their works illuminate militarization and surveillance technologies at the border and the violent enforcement of U.S. immigration policy.

Signs In The Landscape: Authenticity, Ambiguity, And The Work Of Richard Long, Heather Green-Gulez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Richard Long’s walking-based practice as a sustained and direct engagement with lived experience, tracing his development through walking landscapes, marking, and documentation. It negotiates tensions between reductive and hermeneutic readings, ultimately arguing that Long gestures toward pre-agrarian land ethics, raising broader questions of authenticity in modern life.

A Preliminary Study On A Variant British Recension Of De Excidio Troiae, Kailee M. Rowe

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Troiae (“On the Destruction of Troy”) is a fifth or sixth century historical account of the Trojan War that gained significant attention during the medieval period in western Europe. Surviving in over 200 manuscripts, De excidio Troiae had been widely disseminated, developing different traditions in Latin as well as inspiring translations and adaptions in vernacular languages, such as Irish, Middle High German, and Old Icelandic. Dares was considered one of the most reliable sources on the Trojan War, partly because of the decline of Greek in Western Europe, but also partly because of its claim to …

The "Evil Forest" As Threshold: A Computational Eco-Feminist Study Of The Forest In Nigerian Fantasy, Cynthia O. Mbagwu

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the representation of the “evil forest” in Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker and Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name, arguing that the forest functions as a liminal threshold that catalyses female transformation. Combining close reading with computational tools like TF-IDF keyword extraction in Ruby and sentiment analysis using VADER, the project investigates how pre-colonial and colonial connotations of the “evil forest” are re-imagined in contemporary Nigerian fantasy fiction. By segmenting each narrative into pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal phases, the study tracks shifts in sentiment toward the forest and correlates them with thematic developments …

Munificence: The History And Legacy Of The Munson Steamship Line, 1865–1955, Nicholas C. Benda

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper provides an overview of the Munson Steamship Line, an American steamship company founded by Captain Walter David Munson. A veteran of the American Civil War, Captain Munson visited Cuba following the war’s conclusion and became involved in Cuba’s oil and sugar industries, gradually becoming involved in the international sugar shipping trade. An 1890 innovation in shipboard technology and its impact on the Cuban American molasses trade was a moment that established a multi-generational maritime empire, officially incorporating the Munson Steamship Line shortly after the American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and expanding throughout the Atlantic. His …

“The Distance And Time Difference Aren’T Helping”: Family Communication Practices Of African Graduate Students Adapting To A New Country, Hummuh Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how international graduate students maintained long-distance communication with family members while adapting to life in the United States. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven international students, the research explored how participants sustained emotional closeness, manage disclosure, and select communication media across geographic distance. Guided by Communication Privacy Management Theory and Media Richness Theory, the study analyzed how students regulated private information and strategically used video calls, voice calls, and messaging platforms to meet relational and emotional needs. Findings revealed four primary themes: reliance on digital communication technologies; the emotional and psychological functions of family communication; structural …

Building Collaborative Capacity For Coexistence With The Montana Beaver Working Group, Shane Randle

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

Despite beavers’ recent surge in popularity, prevailing negative attitudes and the persistence of beaver removal practices remain obstacles for those advocating living with beavers. The Montana Beaver Working Group (BWG) advances beavers’ role in ecological and community resilience through members’ collaborative efforts, including beaver-related restoration and conflict resolution projects. Bringing together people with diverse values and perspectives, the BWG builds collective understanding, develops a holistic vision for beavers in Montana, and supports members in pursuing it. As the group’s impacts and membership have grown, so too has their need to adapt. For my Civic Engagement Project, I strengthened the BWG’s …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

Between Chronicle And Legend: A Two-Scene Environment And Visual Effects Examination Of Physical Accuracy And Emotional Exaggeration On The Honey Creek Bridge Collapse, Alison R. Gaddy

All Theses

This thesis explores how truth and dramatization intersect in digital storytelling by comparing realistic and stylized simulations of the Honey Creek bridge collapse within the context of the Kate Shelley animated short. At the core of storytelling lies a tension between factual accuracy and dramatic stylization. We investigate that tension by examining how narrative truth is conveyed, distorted, or enhanced through visual dramatization by focusing on the psychology of audience perception and the motivations behind creative embellishment. The practical contribution of this research is the development of two distinct digital scene setups depicting the same Honey Creek bridge collapse event. …

“Tyranny” As Concept: Semantic Change And The Formation Of Colonial Political Consciousness In The New Hampshire Gazette, 1756–1783, Antonio Worley

All Theses

Historians of the American Revolution have frequently viewed terms such as tyranny as a stable ideological category, associated with corruption and resistance to arbitrary power. This thesis instead reconceptualizes ‘tyranny’ as an evolving and historically contingent Koselleckian concept. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the New Hampshire Gazette from 1756 to 1783, this study combines close reading with computational methods, including word frequency analysis and word embeddings, to chart the evolution of the semantic field surrounding “tyranny” over time.

Prior to the Stamp Act of 1765, ‘tyranny’ was used primarily in a religious and moral framework which was shaped by …

Desert Ghost, Jessica Downs

All Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.

I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate …

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, …

Advertising The Noble Savage: Blackfeet Exploitation And Erasure Through Glacier National Park, The Great Northern Railway, And The Bureau Of Indian Affairs From 1900-1920, Edward D'Angelo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Blackfeet Native Americans have lived in and around Glacier National Park and their current reservation boundaries for thousands of years. They previously lived a nomadic lifestyle, but were forced onto a reservation by the American government in the nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Blackfeet sold more land to the federal government at the same time the Great Northern Railway was building its railroad through the Rocky Mountains. In order to increase travel demands on its railway in the area, the Great Northern Railway lobbied the federal government …