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The Language Of Rats: Unwelcome Animals And Interspecies Connection In Contemporary Anglophone Fiction, Kieran Leigh Lyons

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Language of Rats: Unwelcome Animals and Interspecies Connection in Global Contemporary Fiction consists of three essays examining the representation of what I call unwelcome animals in contemporary Anglophone novels from the United States, Nigeria, and India. These animals often live alongside humans yet are perceived as threats or annoyances. Literary depictions of this fraught relationship reveal, and sometimes critique, the intellectual structures that shape how we understand and represent interspecies connections. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the interspecies dimensions of contemporary fiction by bringing together the fields of environmental criticism, animal studies, postcolonialism, and U.S. Southern studies. …

The Found World: The Role Of Findability In The History Of Botany, Douglas Tuers

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

This study will investigate how a community of botanists used the findability inherent in botanical localities to rediscover species that were previously lost to botany. This article will look at the literature that announced the rediscovery of three species in the vicinity of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. These species are Heuchera hispida, Phlox buckleyi, and Gaylussacia brachycera. These three plants were rediscovered over a short period of time, about 13 years from 1919 to 1932. This study will draw from the announcement of these rediscoveries. In each of these cases there was a surrounding literature that …

Silence Is Golden: Eschewing Medicine And The Marine Corps, James Ross Finds A Contemplative Path To Fulfillment, Maeve Dolan

Colby Magazine

"There are many translators but not many businesspeople in Buddhism, because it's not often seen as a compatible path with a contemplative lifestyle." -James Ross '18

Ecuador’S New Water Legal Framework (Lorhuya, 2014): An Assessement Of The First Five Years Of Implementation Through The Lens Of Plurinationality And Campesino’S Buen Vivir, Martina Nebbiai

Latin American Studies ETDs

A preliminary assessment of the first five years of implementation of Ecuador’s new Ley Organica de Recursos Hidricos, Usos y Aprovechamiento de Agua (LORHUyA, 2014), exlploring its impact on small irrigators communities, through the lens of Buen Vivir. A communication-based action research and political ecology of water in Ecuadorian marginalized Campesino communities, elucidating the repercussions of state-centralized water policy on the customary water management systems, and the disconnect between policy as determined nationally vs implemented locally. This research investigates the gap between Ecuador’s plurinational recognition of cultural rights, epistemic diversity, citizens’ participation and community control outlined by Buen Vivir, …

Kin(A)Esthetic Paper Play: A Community Engagement Project Offering A Therapeutic Experience By Exploring An Emergent Method Of Expressive Arts Therapy With Clinicians Who Studied Expressive Arts, Bed Hermin

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

For this community engagement project, I explored an emergent practice of Kin(a)esthetic Paper Play with expressive arts therapists. This practice aligns with Buddhist philosophy and practice in the West and its benefits can be explained through the theory of Embodied Simulation. The literature on Buddhism and Embodied Simulation highlights the positive benefits of abstract meditative processes done in groups. My goal was to explore the therapeutic elements of K(a)P within a community group setting. When elements of Kin(a)esthetic Paper Play were introduced to a group of alumni from Lesley’s Expressive Arts Therapy graduate program it was received well. I learned …

Orientation: Seeing And Sensing Rhetorically, Megan Poole

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Many visual terms exist in Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical schema, yet the optical implications of such terms remain largely unconsidered by rhetorical scholars. This study presents Burke’s orientation as both a method of seeing and a way of uncovering rhetoric’s relationship to sensation. Burkean orientation—deriving from ophthalmology and Gestalt psychology—brings into focus three practices of studying the senses in rhetoric: attending to lived experience, considering sensation as elemental to rhetorical work, and practicing rhetorical criticism attuned to the entrenchments and slips of the senses. Engaging the biology of vision reveals sensation as connective tissue between nonsymbolic motion and symbolic action.

Bridging The Gap: Exploring Indian Classical Dances As A Source Of Dance/Movement Therapy, A Literature Review., Ruta Pai

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Indian Classical Dances are a mirror of the traditional culture in India and therefore the people in India find it easy to connect with them. These dances involve a combination of body movements, gestures and facial expressions to portray certain emotions and feelings. There are seven major Indian Classical Dances- Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Manipuri and Mohiniattam. These dances possess three common aspects - Natya, Nritta and, Nritya. These aspects include several other elements which are at the core of these dances. This literature review focuses on three of those primary elements – Abhinaya, Gestures and Navarasas because they …

Lyric Analysis And Songwriting With Adolescent’S Processing Complex Trauma, Peyton Mayzel

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This study examines how lyric analysis and songwriting can aid adolescents processing complex developmental traumas. The use of music, lyric analysis, and songwriting can provide a space for adolescents to express themselves and process their struggles they have encountered in their lives. Music, lyric analysis, and songwriting can also be used as a way for adolescents to build their self-identity and help them to make important life decisions. These concepts are all related to the attachment, self-regulation, and competency (ARC) model created by Blaustein & Kinniburgh in 2005. This model is used in treatment with children and adolescents who have …

Argo Ergo Sum - I Perform, Therefore I Am: An Art-Based Community Engagement Project, Emily Eckel

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This community engagement project set out to explore how the musicianship identity impacts a musician’s overall sense of self through participation in a mental health focused community orchestra. Currently, in the field of music therapy there is little emphasis on using orchestral music in active music making or connections between music and musicianship identity. This researcher combined the theories of community music therapy and resource-oriented music therapy to develop approaches to this investigation. Phase one consisted of researcher journaling and visual art making prior to and following orchestra rehearsals and one concert. Phase two consisted of a group mandala with …

Psyche And Planet: Multiplicity Of Systems Mirroring Modes Of Being And Bonding Via Eco Arts Therapeutic Practices, Amber Nolli

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Through discerning the art of life, this thesis is a review of literature which looks at how psyche and planet processing systems mirror one another and merge through eco arts therapeutic practices. It is an inquiry into philosophic ideas behind the nature of sensibility, perceptibility, and experience. As art mirrors the self and nature mirrors the self, a twofold entry-point opens, where one travels into accordance with all planes of consciousness. The literature investigates relationships amongst the arts, science, biology, and interspecies and ecological sentience to address collective conditions of deception, displacement, etc. It examines how directing attention to self …

Expressive Arts Therapy In Performance As Trauma Work For Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities: A Community Engagement Project, Lucy Farmer

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

People diagnosed with an intellectual disability (ID) are at a substantially higher risk of experiencing trauma than typically abled individuals. In addition, the nature of ID makes it especially difficult to cope and access treatment. The goal of this research was to examine how expressive arts therapy can support treating this population for trauma. Information was gathered on Trauma-Informed Care, Psychodrama, Drama Therapy, Interactive Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and The Storytelling Method. This investigation led to a community engagement project between August 2019-February 2020 that involved the researcher meeting one-on-one with nine individuals diagnosed with ID. A …

Lived Experience Of Music Therapists As Musician-Therapists, Kotoe Suzuki

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

The dissertation research explored the lived experiences of music therapists who are performing musicians. A conceptual foundation of music therapists as musicians, a “musician-therapist” who is deeply versed in the unique properties of music can be identified in the literature (Ansdell & Verney, 2008; Nordoff & Robbins, 1973). The objectives of this study were to explore three topics: 1) deeper understandings of music therapists’ musical improvisation both in clinical and nonclinical settings, 2) the connection between music therapists’ personal and professional musical growth, and 3) identity formation. A qualitative method was chosen for this research including reflexive/embodied/interpretative phenomenology, and arts-based …

Art Therapy, Mass Media And Self-Acceptance With Adolescents: A Literature Review, Samantha Leary

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This literature reviews provides a synopsis of art therapy its potential benefits in combating negative effects associated with social media and adolescents’ sense of self-acceptance. Using art therapy as a mode of self-expression is found to help negate negative effects of social media and provide adolescents with healthy tools to help them develop and grow. Social media provides a wealth of information that can be detrimental to the emotional growth of young adults. In this literature review lack of face to face connection, idealized beauty standards, instant gratification and social comparisons are correlated to depressive symptoms in adolescents. Through the …

The Queer Expansion Of Role Theory: A Drama Therapy Intervention With Lgbtq+ Adults, Abigail Truax

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

There is currently a lack of information in understanding LGBTQ+ specific needs in mental health care, thus creating a marginalized space in which queer people are significantly more dissatisfied with mental health treatment as opposed to heterosexual and cisgender people seeking treatment (Avery, Hellman & Sudderth, 2001). This thesis will focus on the development of a method in which I will expand upon Robert Landy’s role theory and create a drama therapy role intervention crafted specifically for the queer population and their needs. Because of oppression within the LGBTQ+ community my focus will be on expanding role theory and its …

How Dance And Music Stimulate Therapeutic Change In A Personal Movement Ritual, Cassidy Bingham

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis investigates the therapeutic effects of the researcher’s own arts practice or personal movement ritual, which is based in her tacit knowledge and intuition. The researcher is also the participant of this study. Her personal movement ritual, which was formalized as the method, was conducted before the literature review in order to prioritize tacit knowledge before introducing the influence of other scholars. In the literature review, Ellen Dissanayake’s and other scholars’ rationale for the emotional and cognitive changes that take place during rituals through music and dance are explained. These rationales, or the five constructs of entrainment, “ …

The Effect Of Melody And Rhythm In Music-Based Therapy For Nonfluent Aphasics: A Literature Review, M. Abraham Kimball

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The aim of this review is to examine studies which explored whether melody or rhythm played a more integral role in the facilitation of music-based speech and language rehabilitation for the population of individuals with nonfluent aphasia. This paper is intended to serve as a succinct synthesis of the myriad articles covering the efficacy of the treatment program called Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) and the impact of its primary musical mechanisms. Secondarily, it may assist in a deeper examination into speech and language-based music cognition and neurologic music therapy research. The speech and language disorder of aphasia; the relationships between …

Mental Associations And Music Therapy: Including The History Of Associationism And The Neurology Of Associations, Dianna Rose

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Associations are formed in our minds based upon three elements: sensory experience, emotions, and memories. These associations, unique to each individual, dictate thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and actions. Some are necessary and supportive, while others can be maladaptive. Established associations can be changed, and new associations can be formed, to align with a client’s goals. The literature presents a strong history of associationism, as well as a body of research that demonstrates the neurological processes of how mental associations are formed. There are also studies showing how music activates the brain. However, there is a lack of research which draws direct …

A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights, Jordan Cymrot

Student Theses and Dissertations

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847 at a point of collision between Romantic thought and Victorian ideals. Her novel exemplifies a developed and deliberate effort to represent a world ruled by forces out of one’s control, the most evident example of this being the supernatural force that overtakes the novel. In her precise focus on the language and natural landscape that bind this novel together, her characters emerge as representative of the psychological complexity produced by the coexistence of the mundane and the extraordinary. My thesis focuses on the effects of the natural landscape and the forces that …

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet, Or @The_C_U_R_B, Candace B. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet (The C.U.R.B.) is an interdisciplinary art project consisting of citizen science experiments, community events, and social media storytelling that collectively examine critical issues of environmental, social, and food-based justice as we face oncoming climate crisis. The project explores lessons learned about/with/from Brooklyn's feral edible plant and animal species, many of whom have long and complicated relationships with humanity. Artist Candace Thompson of The C.U.R.B. forages and processes these beings into food and medicine, and conducts DIY remediation experiments with them in an attempt to mitigate any contamination found therein. She shares her fndings via an …

Forgotten: A Study Of The Long-Term Economic Ramifications Suffered By Survivors Of Violence Against Females Sustained During State-Terror Such As Genocides, Natasha Holmark Andersen

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to answer the question: What are the long-term economic ramifications of sexual violence against females in state terror such as genocide? This paper explores the thematic elements, conducive factors and the effects of the existence of sexual violence in state-terror genocides.

To do this, the paper first explores the elements of terrorism and apply them directly to state terror. The notion that states are immune from the blame of terrorism is acknowledged and debunked, furthering the association between terrorism and acts of state terror. Next, genocide is defined as the most atrocious act of state terror, and …

Imperial Subjection And The Orientalist Gaze: Turning Asian Women’S Bodies Into Entertainment, Miriam Ahn

Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the structural factors that provide meaning and space to performances where violence is served as entertainment. What are the structural conditions that turn gendered and racialized violent forms of display into enjoyment? By exploring the sex tourism in Thailand, particularly ping-pong shows, I will analyze aspects of international political economy and feminist studies to address forms of display based on the abjectness of the other. I argue that sex tourism in Thailand is not part of local culture but is upheld by imperial hegemonic perceptions of the colonized and gendered bodies. The perspectives of Orientalism, patriarchal systems, …

Parameters Spring 2020: Full Issue, Usawc Parameters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Parameters Summer 2020: Full Issue, Usawc Parameters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Hinduism As A Political Weapon: Gender Socialization And Disempowerment Of Women In India, Aindrila Haldar

Master's Theses

There is a growing use of religion as a political tool to control Hindu women in India, contributing to a rise in gender inequality. Immediate authoritative patriarchal domains such as household and politics, continuously speak of “protecting” Hindu women by disregarding their voices and needs. Consequently, potentially creating a loss of agency among women. This research will use inductive reasoning to understand the position of Hindu women in modern Indian society. Particularly, through the understanding of the involvement of religion in the political and household sphere. Hindu women are highly influenced by the expectations of what being an ”ideal” woman …

Making Nebraska: The Pawnee, The United States, And The Transformation Of Space, 1803-1854, Ethan Reavis Bennett

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Making Nebraska is a history of foreign relations and power politics between the Pawnee confederacy and the United States over the control and governance of the greater Platte Valley between 1803 and 1854. These groups never fought a war, but struggled over the meaning and use of power to control space at a transitional moment of North American history. While nominally part of the United States post-1803, the region remained outside the federal territorial system. Yet, this space was central to larger strategic and policy concerns over Indian Removal, territorial expansion, and the survival of the Pawnee as a nation. …

From The Papers Of One Still Living: Kierkegaard And British Literature, 1932-1995, Asher Gelzer-Govatos

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the impact of the life, work, and thought of the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on British authors of the mid-twentieth century. Following the translation of Kierkegaard’s writings into English in the mid-1930s, British intellectual life underwent a Kierkegaard boom, but Kierkegaard’s impact lingered long after his initial introduction in the build up to World War II. In sketching Kierkegaard’s importance to a handful of midcentury authors – Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Flann O’Brien, W. H. Auden, and R. S. Thomas – I show that Kierkegaard remained connected to a sense of “crisis” in British …

Feeling Women's Cuir Cultural Production: Reparative Criticisms, Temporal Displacements, Francesca Dennstedt

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In Feeling Women’s Cuir Culture: Reparative criticisms, Temporal Displacements I identify cuir moments, that is instances scattered through time when heteropatriarchal structures are troubled to later use that troubling either as a political force or an epistemological moment. I argue that women’s cuir cultural production uses negative feelings to unmake normative structures; therefore, keywords in this production are able to reorient us to empathetic practices of cultural criticism. Throughout a diverse corpus that ranges from the analysis of canonical literary figures such as Inés Arredondo to visual culture and fashion, from a Brazilian graphic novel to drag performances in the …

Agreeing To Disagree: Diversity, Political Contractualism, And The Open Society, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Political contractualism is important in societies characterized by substantial moral and political disagreement and diversity. The very disagreement that makes the social contract necessary, however, also makes agreement difficult. Call this the paradox of diversity, which is the result of a tension between two necessary conditions of political contractualism: existence and stability. The first involves showing the possibility of some agreement, while the second involves showing that the agreement can persist. To solve both of these problems, I develop a multilevel contract theory that I call the “open society” model of political contractualism that incorporates diversity into the contractual model …

Crystal Queer: Fracturing The Binaries Of Matter, Creation, And Landscape, Sarah Knight

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis, I compile a series of fragments consisting an analysis of my artwork in the gendered contexts of landscape, self-identity, mythology, and philosophy. I develop my concept of a “queer mark” in my art that serves as a form of queering, a disruption of visual and conceptual cohesion. I form a picture of how our contemporary selves are influenced by our gendered understanding of the landscape through the analysis of philosophical, artistic, and mythological concepts of creation. I see my sculptures as an atlas to an alternative means of understanding identity, a queering of these historical and exclusionary …

The Darkness Needs To Cry, Damaris Dunham

Graduate School of Art Theses

I construct large-scale, layered, three-dimensional paintings that symbolically allude to both body and landscape. I attempt to use my hands and embodied self to form a space of contemplation for the viewer as she walks alongside the work, experiencing it. The work exists in the realm of the sensed and the sensorial and creates both spaces of excess and of lack that correlate with my thinking of philosophical notions of the grotesque and the void. In a way, I blend elements of psychoanalysis and art making together. I discuss the origins of the term, uncanny, as one of the few …