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(Re)Claiming Homeplace: Dance As Embodied Resistance & Healing For Health & Spatial Justice, Preeya G. Kannan

University Honors Theses

This thesis argues that dance functions as both an upstream public health intervention and a form of radical spatial resistance; creating healing, agency, and belonging among historically marginalized communities. Drawing on bell hooks' concept of homeplace, Jasbir Puar's assemblage theory, Nancy Krieger's eco-social theory, and Katherine McKittrick's Black geographies, I position the body as both an ecological and political landscape shaped by histories of colonialism, racial capitalism, displacement, and resilience.

Through this community-based participatory research study, Homeplace, I explore dance as a form of social prescription that centers liberation rather than pathology. Movement is often reduced in public health discourse …

De La Domination Masculine Et Coloniale À La Résistance Féminine : Le Bordel Colonial Comme Espace De Subversion Dans Ussan Indryen Sadu Lalla Turtut De Kadawi, Mohamed El Jarari

Journal of Amazigh Studies

This article examines how Kadawi's novel Ussan Indryen Sadu Lalla Turtutest transforms the colonial brothel from a site of oppression into a space of resistance and emancipation. While colonial powers in North Africa established regulated prostitution systems to control indigenous women and enforce racial segregation, Kadawi subverts this historical reality by reimagining the brothel as a Foucauldian heterotopia where traditional power structures are dismantled. Through the relationship between protagonist Yettu and brothel keeper Mamma, the narrative challenges both colonial and patriarchal authority while rewriting women into North African resistance history. Our analysis primarily draws on Foucault's spatial theory alongside feminist …

Making A Phrenological America: How The Science Of The Skull Influenced Reform Movements In The United States, Nathan C. Tamkin

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

So You Didn't Write The Next Great Novel (And How To Move Forward Knowing You Probably Won't), Adriana Stanzione

University Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the relationship between creative ambition and the paralyzing effects of perfectionism within the writing process. By analyzing this relationship via a lens on philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and personal experience, it argues that the obligation and pressure to produce "good" work can often prevent sincerity and creative momentum. Divided into several sections, it also delves into ideas like inspiration and the revision process, tying in my own experiences with drafting my first manuscript, which resulted in years of writer's block and cynicism. The thesis also considers how cultural conditions contribute to creative stagnation, and deconstructs the concept of …

"But Oh, What Harm Those Basics Would Cause": How Journalists Can Better Interview Vulnerable Sources Utilizing An Ethic Of Care, Noah Carandanis

University Honors Theses

Traditional journalistic ethics have emphasized detachment from sources and objectivity guiding journalists' practices. In this thesis, I explore the contribution of care ethics to the field of journalistic ethics, emphasizing care in relation to interviewing vulnerable sources. I claim that the traditional objective, detached ethical status quo in journalism is insufficient in the context of reporting on mass shootings. This thesis argues that caring journalistic practices should be utilized when interviewing traumatized, vulnerable sources. In the first part, I present the issue of traditional journalistic practices through my personal experiences. I also discuss the philosophical underpinnings to journalist's objectivity criterion. …

Navigating Prose, Poetry And Criticism: An Interview With Nasir Abbas Nayyar On His Contribution To Urdu Literature And Literary Criticism, Nasir Abbas Nayyar, Inayat Ullah

Critical Humanities

Navigating Prose, Poetry and Criticism: An Interview with Nasir Abbas Nayyar on His Contribution to Urdu Literature and Literary Criticism 

Submitted: May 24, 2026

Accepted: June 1, 2026

An Interview With Mohammed Bennis, Mohammed Bennis, Amine Oudghiri-Otmani

Critical Humanities

An Interview with Mohammed Bennis

Submitted: April 4, 2026

Accepted: May 24, 2026

The Possibility Of Post Binary Reflexivity: A Genealogy Of Binary Logic In Western Philosophy, Vaughan A. Bidois

Critical Humanities

This article traces a genealogy of binary logic within Western philosophy, from its origins in Platonic metaphysics through to its deconstruction in poststructuralist theory. Drawing on the genealogical methods of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, it critiques how oppositional structures, such as mind/body, reason/emotion, and truth/error, have persisted through shifting intellectual paradigms while shaping knowledge, power, and subjectivity. Structuralist and linguistic theories are examined for their role in reinforcing binary meaning-making, while poststructural critiques (notably Derrida and Foucault) are explored for their attempts to subvert such hierarchies. However, the article argues that these critiques remain paradoxically ensnared within the same …

Human Wisdom And Artificial Intelligence: Role Of Liberal Arts Education In A Neoliberal World, Purna Chandra Bhusal

Critical Humanities

Neoliberalism is an economic and political ideology that originated in the 1930s and 40s, gained momentum in the late 70s and 80s, and peaked in the 90s and 2000s. Since its inception, neoliberalism has promoted a free-market economy with minimal state intervention, granting individuals the freedom to compete and succeed. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, the neoliberal system has invested in, incorporated, and promoted Artificial Intelligence (AI), valuing an AI-enhanced corporate ethos. As a result, the success of higher education is generally measured by the quantity of technologically sound, market-ready, AI-trained human capital it produces for industry. …

Why Literature Matters: Perpetrator Portrayal, Cultural Imaginaire And Poetry Of The Taliban, Inayat Ullah

Critical Humanities

The question of how perpetrators of violence are identified, represented and understood has become a central concern of Perpetrator Studies, an interdisciplinary field that emerged in the early twenty-first century. This article analyzes The Poetry of the Taliban in a bid to examine how the selected poems construct and negotiate multiple figurations of the perpetrator rather than presenting it as a singular or fixed category. While the poems frequently identify perpetrator through recognizable political, military and ideological structures, they also reveal the complexities involved in reducing the perpetrator to a clearly identifiable form or kind. In exploring these tensions, the …

Literature Carries Philosophy’S Open Secret: On Derrida’S Reading Of Romeo And Juliet, Rajesh Sampath

Critical Humanities

This paper attempts a close reading of Derrida’s texts, particularly with a focus on his brief but significant reading of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in “Aphorism Countertime” (originally published in French in 1986). We compare this short work with his more sustained engagement with the philosophy of death in Aporias (1993), which itself is an attempted critique of Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927); the latter is, arguably, the most influential work of twentieth-century continental European philosophy, particularly on issues of time, death, and authentic life. The paper tries to show that a fruitful engagement between philosophy and …

Representasi Pendidikan Karakter Dalam Film Berbahasa Jerman Ich Bin Dein Mensch, Jovita Syahyananda, Desti Nur Aini

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This study aims to describe the representation of character education dimensions, namely knowing the good, loving the good, and doing the good, in the German-language film Ich bin dein Mensch, as well as its implications for German language learning. This research employed a qualitative method using interpretative content analysis of dialogues and scenes in the film that represent the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. The findings show that the dimension of knowing the good is reflected in the characters’ moral awareness in understanding the boundaries of human relationships with technology. The dimension of loving the good appears through emotional …

Platonic Affection, Philia, And Trans-Philosophy, Kai Parker

McNair Research Journal SJSU

In this article, I review the heteronormative social conventions of cisgender

men and women's abilities to build and maintain friendships vis-.vis

traditional Western gender roles. It divides the philosophical concept of

Plato’s “platonic love” as fully realized Eros from the basic social

interpretation of “platonic” relationships as connections devoid of sexual or

romantic feelings. Aristotle's definitions of friendship, divided into the three

categories of pleasure, utility, and virtue, are compared to friendships

cisgender men and women form with others of the same orientation. Men's

friendships are found to more often fall into friendships of utility and

pleasure, while women's friendships …

Neoliberalism & The Care Economy: Exploring The Gendered Impacts Of Social Protection Systems, Rachel Carruthers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how neoliberal transformation of social protection policy influences gender dynamics within the care economy. Care is necessary for well-being, but traditionally excluded from economic thinking. This thesis completes a historical overview of how care has been incorporated or excluded by different economic paradigms and is anchored in feminist political economy that emphasizes care as a central consideration. A comparative analysis across California, Texas, and Sweden demonstrates how social protection, specifically access to paid parental leave, varies across regimes and results in inconsistent care outcomes. The findings suggest that social protections can reduce some inequalities, but inadequately address …

Otherness And The Trinity: Toward A Critical Reimagining Of Christian Divinity From A Postcolonial Ethos, Taylor Muma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I address the Trinity’s potential as an emancipatory relational archetype in the philosophy of religion, while at the same time recognizing the complicity of Christian doctrine in colonial conquest. My dissertation will be a reimagining of trinitarian theology as an ecotonal paradigm of multiplicity and alterity that provides a generative means of moving beyond the enmeshment of divinity with constructs of mastery.

The post-structuralist and postcolonial methodologies in this project emerge from the work of such scholars as Homi Bhabha, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Gloria Anzaldúa. They foreground critical ideations of otherness and multiplicity in ways …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

She Believed She Could, So She Did: A Lifecycle Approach To Understanding Leadership And Self-Efficacy Development In Women Astronauts, Savanah Faith Sellars Bray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how women leaders develop and sustain self-efficacy, and develop as leaders, throughout their lives. Although decades of research document the barriers women face navigating leadership journeys, including the challenges described in the Women’s Leadership Labyrinth of prejudice, discrimination, and childcare issues, existing literature offers limited insight into how women actively build belief in their capacity to lead and accomplish their goals. Further, research consistently shows that women report lower leadership self-efficacy than men, even with comparable experience, yet the developmental processes that shape this gap, beginning in childhood, remain underexplored. Guided by self-efficacy research and its four …

Becoming The Phoenix: Black Women’S Experiences And Leadership Growth Through Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, Jovan Keith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the workplace learning experiences of Black women professionals in corporate leadership contexts. Leadership development programs often rely on standardized models that overlook the lived realities shaping Black women’s professional experiences. In response, this study introduced Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, a leadership development intervention that integrates Black feminist scholarship, humanizing pedagogy, and critical action learning.

Using a qualitative case study design, the research examined a cohort of midcareer Black women professionals who participated in four facilitated learning sessions structured around workplace dilemmas. During these sessions, participants engaged in reflection, dialogue, and action as they examined workplace dynamics …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Navigating Filipino-American Identity Through Philippine Foodways, Jenelle Kirsten De Leon

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the complexity of Filipino-American identity and investigates how Philippine foodways can function as a meaningful pathway for cultural understanding, identity formation, and intergenerational connection. Shaped by colonization, cultural hybridity, generational divides, and limited representation in Western education and media, Filipino-American identity is often difficult to define and navigate, leaving many individuals without accessible entry points to explore their culture, history, traditions, and more.

Through an analysis of existing literature, primary research, and a survey of Filipino-American youth, this study finds that Filipino cuisine operates as a powerful site of cultural and historical knowledge. The narratives embedded within …

A Narrative Study Of The “Religious Dones” And Their Religious Identity, Relationship To God, And Social Connections, Michelle Suh

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This qualitative study aims to learn about how religious dones — those who were formerly religious but no longer identify as religious — have constructed their life narratives in light of their religious deidentification, with particular attention on the evolution of religious identity, perceived relationship with God, and social connections across the lifespan. A narrative methodology was employed to capture participants’ experiences in a story format to understand the subjective meaning-making process of their lived experiences, and six young adults between the ages of 23-29 participated in the study. Data collection consisted of a life-story portion of the interview with …

Will Beauty Save The Brain? Exploring The Relationship Between Eudaimonic Reels Exposure And Egyptian Gen Z'S Mind And Motivations, Petra Zaky

Theses and Dissertations

Social media entertaining content includes a mixed bag of the meaningful and the trivial. For Generation Z, whose favorite daily entertainment is shallow yet funny short-form videos (reels), there is often an invisible price paid. The loss of ability to watch long meaningful videos, distractedness from self, “Brain Rot”, glamorizing of hedonism are among the maladies left behind the attractive rabbit hole of their daily media diet. This study explores the relationship between exposure to meaningful reels, in contrast to pleasurable reels, and Gen Z’s reflective thinking, “Brain Rot” symptoms, motivation to watch long meaningful videos and life motivations between …

Women And Wars: Understanding Women’S Political Empowerment Post- Conflict In France, Lebanon, And Sierra Leone, Alaa S. Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to discusses how conflict can be a time of change for women and how conflict can be a crucial aspect for change and improvement. Conflict provides a chance for the women to witness and experience the disruption of gender roles, which was a common practice during wartime, as women were placed in roles that were not officially theirs, according to what society adheres to or ascribes as acceptable roles for women. The conflict is presented as a “window” of opportunity. However, the reality of the situation of this “window” is not uniform across all post-conflict societies; the …

The Case For The Exclusion Of Exclusion: Intellectual Property, Masculine Legal Reason, And The Ethics Of Care, Ragya Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that current legal ideals of objectivity and neutrality are historically gendered and inseparable from the development of capitalist property relations and imperial expansion. It traces origins that begin with early modern witch hunts and Francis Bacon’s empiricism, where a new “scientific rationality” emerges alongside intensified patriarchal violence. The thesis then examines John Locke’s labour-based justification of property and the figure of the rational individual, showing how this framework legitimizes enclosure, dispossession and colonial appropriation under the guise of improvement and development. Building on this foundation, the analysis turns to moral psychology and how its allegedly universal stage …

Breaking The Silence: A Content And Expert Analysis Of The 2025 Ramadan Series Lam Shamseya's Framing And Subversion Of Child Sexual Abuse Discourse In Egypt, Maya Abouelnasr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how the 2025 Egyptian TV series Lam Shamseya served as a sociocultural intervention and awareness platform for reframing and subverting the typical child sexual abuse (CSA) discourse in Egypt. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study triangulates framing theory and two complementary tools of the critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the circuit of culture model through a scene-level content analysis of 304 scenes across all 15 episodes of the series and ten semi-structured interviews with media experts, media practitioners, and psychologists. Key findings include reported corroboration of subversion of traditional tropes and archetypes, as well as reframing of …

Lack Of Effects Of Autistic Traits On Adjunct Control Processing, Alyssa Crezee

Theses and Dissertations

Autism has effects on social, communication, and information processing factors (American Psychological Association, 2022; Happé & Frith, 2006). Sentence processing is a type of information processing that synthesizes both discourse and local information (e.g., syntactic and morphological). This thesis explores potential effects of autistic traits on sentence processing in the context of adjunct control structures. In a two-part study, adult English L1 participants (n=118) were administered a self-paced-reading (SPR) task with comprehension and acceptability questions for task 1. Task 2 consisted of an online survey containing three standardized autism questionnaires: the Autism Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen et al, 2001), the Broad …

Forced Dependency: The Subjugation Of Women Through Medicine In Ancient Greece And Rome, Evelyn J. Polovich

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique …

Showing It! Art Matters. But Why? How?, Holly Edwards

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article addresses the agency of art with reference to an exhibition entitled “The Nature of Spirit”.  That show appeared in the local public library, resonating strongly with notions of “heartwork”.  My first Artizein publication was written in response to 9/11, and this one maintains comparable urgency, seeking solace in art precisely when the world seems to be sliding into lunacy. The prose explores the powers of art in traumatizing times with words, while the images offer the reader insight and support energetically.

Attending The Way Of The Crane: Centring Our Lives Through Creative-Centred Work, Alexandra Fidyk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

A dreamscape using pastiche is used for reflecting upon the value of creative-centred practice and research. Attending to the image through reflection and circumambulation offers entry to a centring practice. In holding both, a new image emerged. The dreamscape—an unexpected scene of cranes in joyous dance—unfolds as actual dream and offers a metaphor for understanding an arc within the dreamer’s life. In this condensed yet nuanced rumination, personal and professional, poetic and haptic, participating and witnessing blur. This practice, the way of the Crane, is timely because it introduces relational pedagogy and testimonial teaching for our times—while touching the pulse …

Sermon On The Spectrum, Jan A. Wozniak

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

No abstract provided.