Digital Commons Network^™

You Must Really Love Your Mother, Eliet Lee Williamson-Diaz

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis, You Must Really Love Your Mother, is a documentary that explores the relationship between my mother and grandmother living together on my grandmother’s factory pig farm in rural North Carolina. I was motivated to create this project to document and memorialize a unique chapter in my mom’s life—leaving her career and community in New York City to spend invaluable time with her mother. This documentary takes place a year after both my mom’s step-mom and biological mom were in the ICU at the same time. My mom’s step-mom, Carol, passed away, while her biological mom, Judy, survived …

“Ignorance Is No Excuse”: Reproducing The Normative Female Body Through Mass Consumerism In Post-Wwii Women’S Magazines, Hannah E. Lorenz-Meyer

Scripps Senior Theses

In the Post-War era, women’s magazines took on a key role in cultural production, publishing literature, non-fiction articles, and advice on everything from marriage to fashion. Women’s magazines served a a form of propaganda, promoting a specific form of femininity that upheld the status quo. And that form of femininity was overwhelmingly affluent and White. By establishing magazines as a solution to women’s personal problems, editors served to shape the image of the post-war American woman. Nowhere is this vision more intimate than the way it was applied to the female body and reproduction. In this thesis, I analyze how …

Find My Friends: Location-Sharing Ideologies And Peer Surveillance Practices, Nayla Dayal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the use of Find My Friends in the context of the Claremont Colleges. Students choose to location-share under initial rhetorical justifications of social reciprocity, and community-orientedness, and peer-safety. Drawing from ethnographic interviews conducted with users at the colleges, I argue that the infrastructure of Find My Friends in conjunction with the social and physical proximities of the Claremont environment creates a distinctive condition where users are subject to what I term as a “virtual, neoliberal, and participatory panopticon.” Here, users are seemingly empowered through the application’s neutralizing collapse of reciprocity and hierarchy that are seen in conventional …

Representing Childhood: Abstraction And Aesthetics Of Simplicity In Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day, Elle Propp

Scripps Senior Theses

The central question driving this project is not “Is The Snowy Day art?”—a question that risks reifying the very hierarchies this thesis seeks to trouble—but rather: What might it mean to treat this picturebook as an art historical object? What must be addressed in the discipline’s practices, priorities, and self-conceptions to engage such work with rigor and care? How can we analyze the picturebook as an art object?

Let's Talk About Sex: Investigating Radical Feminist Theories On Prostitution In The United States, Anna E. Peterson

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the feminist debates surrounding prostitution through an analysis of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s abolitionist theories, juxtaposed with critiques from Wendy Brown, Janet Halley, Susie Bright, and Marxist feminist abolitionist Esperanza Fonseca. The text examines the systemic forces of patriarchy and capitalism that commodify women’s bodies and the challenges of legislative approaches to the sex trade. While MacKinnon and Dworkin identify the structural inequalities underpinning prostitution, their legislative proposals often fail to address the stigma and systemic conditions that perpetuate the marginalization of prostituted people. Critics like Brown and Halley highlight the limitations of punitive measures, calling …

Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision, Sandra M. Alba Jimenez

Student Papers (English)

No abstract provided.

Unveiling The Vulnerability Of Return Migration: A Feminist Embeddedness Perspective On Bangladeshi Women Workers, Faraha Nawaz, Tania Afrin Tonny

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study explores the vulnerability of migrant workers returning to Bangladesh through the lens of van Houte and Davids’ (2008) embeddedness framework. Centering women’s narratives offers a feminist method of embeddedness, focusing on the economic, social, and psychosocial dimensions of returning migrants’ experiences. This paper addresses the vulnerabilities experienced by women upon their return, particularly those returning from the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 30 Bangladeshi women domestic workers, this study identifies two primary causes for their return from the Middle East to Bangladesh: coercion by family members and coercion by employers. The findings indicate …

Critical Discourse Analysis Of Metoo Activism Representation In Nepalese News Coverage: Privileged Bodies, Masculine Gaze, And Absentees Others, Grisha Mainali

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Alongside other women of the world, Nepalese women have been fighting against gender violence and sexual harassment to create a violence-free society for decades. In 2017, the MeToo movement took a turn by becoming a transnational digital movement with 85+ countries adopting and localizing the movement. Despite hundreds of women participating in the movement, the documentation of the MeToo movement in Nepal has primarily been limited to a few newspapers and news articles. This research addresses a gap in scholarship in documenting the Nepali movement and focuses on the case study of the MeToo movement in Nepal to explore how …

Queer Life In Nineteenth-Century America: A Historical Literature Review, Vivian Wright

SURF Posters 2025

In recent political discourses, queerness has often been treated as a modern phenomenon, and many people tend to think of queerness as a twentieth-century invention. Historians, however, have shown this to be false; an extensive amount of historical work details the lives of those who did not conform to sexual or gender norms in nineteenth-century America. This review surveys such works, analyzing nearly twenty different works spanning the course of nearly fifty years. By examining these works chronologically, the development of the field of queer history can be understood in the context of social and political developments occurring in the …

Seahorsedad: A Study Of Metaphors In Transmasculine Birther’S Instagram Posts, Alexa Anne Runnion

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dominant notions of pregnancy frame gestation as a solely female process. However, the experiences of transmasculine birthers challenge this assumption, demonstrating that pregnancy is not inherently tied to womanhood but is instead shaped by social and cultural narratives and representations. This paper explores the unique pregnancy and parental exercises of transmasculine birthers by examining public social media posts under the hashtag #seahorsedad on Instagram. Utilizing metaphorical criticism, I aim to uncover how transmasculine birthers, known within the community as “seahorse dads,” both uphold and resist traditional notions of gender, pregnancy, and parenting through a combination of textual and visual metaphor. …

From Curiosity To Controversy: American Perception Of Japanese Immigrants, 1853-1924, Chloe Elizabeth Curbelo

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid-nineteenth century, as the United States reached the Pacific through westward expansion, Asia emerged as a new stage for commerce and power. Japan, long isolated under the Tokugawa shogunate, became an object of American fascination when forced into relations. While early depictions cast Japan as an exotic yet uncivilized nation in need of Western guidance, Japan’s rapid modernization and the growing number of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast transformed curiosity into anxiety. My paper traces this evolution of perception from 1850 to 1924, arguing that shifting views of Japan and its people reflected America’s ethnocentric notions of …

The Anatomy Of Efficiency: Changes In British Military Medicine On The Western Front, 1914-1918, Ricky Mather

Open Access Master's Theses

The Western Front of the First World War was a theater of tragedy and unprecedented loss. As thousands of mangled British bodies were evacuated from the front lines, medical officers, surgeons, nurses, orderlies, stretcher-bearers, and other staff worked tirelessly in an efficient and technical manner to restore soldiers’ fitness so they might be redeployed into the chaos, and continue servicing the war machine. This thesis looks at changes in medicine driven by the war. First, it examines the evolution of medical theory and practice as reflected in three medical manuals. The first was published in 1911, before the war, and …

Masc Affect: Affective Masculinity In Video Games Research, Joshua Foust

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Toward A Combine-Style Approach To Predicting Future Esports Success, Nicholas David Bowman, Kevin Sweeney, Aaron R. Seitz, C. Shawn Green

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

Historically, there has been a great deal of interest in using basicmeasures of individual difference factors to predict future success in traditional sports. For instance, the National Football League (NFL) holds a scouting combine each year prior to the NFL draft during which a host of attributes about players are measured, from basic height and weight, to sprint speed, to jumping capacity, to strength. Even among an already highly selected group of individuals (i.e., individuals skilled enough to even be considered for the NFL), such measures have been seen to have some degree of utility in predicting future performance. The …

A Change In Climate: Inclusion And Menopause Experience At Work, Janie D. Stuart

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

Inclusion within workplace environments is increasingly important as workforce diversity continues to expand. Despite anti-discrimination laws, women and other underrepresented groups often face exclusion in the workplace, which negatively affects their professional growth, health, and well-being. This research focused on how menopause, a natural biological transition, compounds workplace exclusion for women. Specifically, the study investigated the relationship between Menopause Experience and two workplace outcomes, Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intention, and assessed the moderating effects of Inclusion in organizations, teams, and non-gendered workplace cultures. There were strong positive relationships between all three dimensions of Inclusion with both Organizational Commitment and Turnover …

To Be Or Not To Be Controlled: The Making Of Thespians In Nineteenth-Century Asylums, Olivia Kurylo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Throughout the 1800s, superintendents of insane asylums incorporated the works of Shakespeare into their medical practices. Shakespearean plays became a conduit of power for the asylum superintendents, providing them with a literary model of sanity that they imposed on patients while simultaneously becoming a mode of communication for asylum patients to perform as ‘sane’ in accordance to the superintendents’ definitions. While the superintendents imposed a Shakespearean model of social normalcy onto the patients, the asylum patients used Shakespeare’s plays as a conduit for verbal expression. Essentially, asylums became Shakespearean plays as both the medical staff and the asylum patients employed …

Dividing Paradise: A History Of Land In Hawai'i, Lacy Nicholas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper acts as a biography of Hawaiian land, using multidisciplinary sources to construct a timeline of how land has been conceptualized and used by the people who live there. It analyzes Hawai'i as a settler colony. I begin with the first Polynesian settlers in Hawai'i, focusing on the feudal-like division and redistribution of land by the king in the pre-colonial era. Then, I discuss the attitude of the American settlers in Hawai'i and how those ideas were manifested in the privatization of land and the age of sugarcane plantations. Next, I focus on how the United States military has …

Unveiling Legacies: Exploring And Analyzing Cultural Artifacts In The Higbee Collection, Samantha Staller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Anthropology and the Cummings Center to find ways to properly analyze an archaeological collection's artifacts to understand the overall significance of everything better. Before starting my research, I came up with the following questions: Can any artifacts be considered culturally affiliated? Is everything in the collection authentic? What is the overall background of the collection? Does this collection have any connection to Ohio history? Can anything in the collection be dated? Throughout the research, I will create an Excel inventory list to include qualitative and quantitative data from the artifacts to give insight into what is included in the Higbee …

Thanksgiving Prayer Walk, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Best Practices Of Vietnamese Catholic Priests Leading Vietnamese Community Parishes In Orange Diocese, Phuc Viet Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

The Catholic Church is the largest church all over the world and is also the largest one in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2013). Over the past decades, great crises inside the Catholic Church have raised significant concerns for its leadership practices, especially for its governance and administration on the diocese and parish level. Moreover, the issue of immigrants also compounds the problem when there are different ethnic communities inside one single parish. In some dioceses like Orange County, which is one of the most culturally diverse dioceses in the United States (Diocese of Orange, 2018), the urgency of …

Volunteering And Spiritual Practices: A Cross-Country Analysis In The Seventh-Day Adventist Context, Elbert Kuhn

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Problem

Although the number of Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) volunteers worldwide has increased dramatically, the Church continues to face challenges in engaging people, particularly young adults, in volunteer and mission projects on a global scale. While interest in volunteering is growing, especially in countries within the southern hemisphere, the percentage of participation remains disproportionately small in comparison to the global church membership. Given this disparity, there is a pressing need to research the impact of the volunteer experience on spiritual practices and discipline. Understanding how volunteering influences young adults’ spiritual growth is critical to developing strategies that can effectively engage more …

The Mordecai-Esther Mentorship Initiative: A Cross-Gender Mentorship Model For Commissioned Female Pastors In South Central Conference, Latina Carriger

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Problem

In the South Central Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (SCC), while male pastors receive formal mentorship through the ministerial internship program leading up to ordination, female pastors—who are only commissioned and not ordained—often experience a lack of continued mentorship beyond commissioning. This absence hinders their professional development, limits leadership opportunities, and contributes to feelings of isolation. The current mentorship framework does not adequately support the ongoing growth of female pastors in a context where ordination is not extended to women, thereby creating a gap in pastoral leadership development and equity.

Method

This project utilized a qualitative case study design to …

Lives And Lessons Of Zoo Animals, Nicole Emlen

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This project was an interdisciplinary museum exhibit that was displayed at the Montana Natural History Center between April 4 and May 12, 2025. It displays my photographs that I took of some of the animals I worked with during my summer 2024 internship at ZooMontana. In this project, I educate the public about three main functions of zoos--rescue, conservation, and education--through the stories and lives of four species. These animals all have unique stories that are important to share to improve public knowledge of why zoos are important and how we can improve relationships between humans and wildlife. Photography is …

Faith In Small Things: The Rlds Church, The New Left, And The Global 1970s, David J. Howlett

Religion: Faculty Publications

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Interdependence And Identity: Moral Relation In An Historical World, Bennett B. Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The twin concepts in the title will be introduced in the contexts of the philosophy of history and of philosophical personalism, as distinct from (though related to) their uses as logical and metaphysical categories. Overviews of varieties of philosophy of history and of basic principles I employ are foundations of the argument. Concepts, or ideas, in general have, I argue, real existence through the way that personal agents use them in creating the histories of human relations. I introduce a Personalist account, which has a more thoroughly diachronic character. Further remarks on the power of ideas to create relations expands …

Wiring Attachment, Alexander K. Bacon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis began with a question: can diagrams create understanding, or only reflect it? Through paintings that layer automotive wiring schematics with family photographs, I explore how the human attachment system resists easy mapping. Using digital tools like Photoshop and scanning, alongside analog methods such as papier-collé and photo transfer, I examine how systems built for clarity—like wiring diagrams—contrast with the layered, often messy realities of human relationships. Drawing from attachment theory’s empirical foundation, rather than the metaphorical leanings of psychoanalysis, my work investigates how emotional bonds form, falter, and repair over time. Material loss and layering are not flaws, …

Healing Through Art: An Exploration Of Art History Influences On Contemporary Art Therapy For Practices In Oncology Care, Nicole Van

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Art therapy has emerged as a vital practice in oncology, offering patients a means of emotional expression and healing during their treatment journey. This project will explore how integrating art history into therapeutic settings, particularly through virtual classes, enhances the emotional well-being of cancer patients. By examining the impact of engaging with historical artworks, this research aims to illustrate how these artistic narratives can facilitate self-consciousness and foster flexibility in individuals facing significant health challenges. Research indicates that exposure to art can evoke emotion and promote psychological healing, serving as a therapeutic outlet for patients. This study will synthesize therapeutic …

The Swiping Desire: Intimacy, Libidinal Capitalism, And The Digital Subject In The Tinder Swindler, Chanif Ainun Naim

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

This article examines how dating applications operate as libidinal infrastructures that restructure and commodify intimacy within platform capitalism, using The Tinder Swindler as a cultural case study. Employing a visual-narrative approach within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the film is analyzed to reveal the structural exploitation of user affect and desire. Grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis and Baudrillard’s simulation theory, the study argues that these platforms capitalize on the subject’s ontological lack (manque) which fuels desire as the desire for the Other’s desire. This psychic lack sustains a perpetual pursuit of recognition that can never be fulfilled. The swindler’s hyper-curated …

Threading The Needle: Chinese American Adoptees And The In-Between, Annalee Johnson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Threading the Needle is a short documentary that investigates the relationships between Chinese American adoptees, their families, and their heritage. The film features two primary participants, Mia Nails and Annalee “AJ” Johnson as they reflect on their Asian American identity, experiences with racism, and their struggles with cultural estrangement. The similarities and differences in their perspectives shed light on both the wonderful and the heartbreaking circumstances of adoption. The contemporary value of the film lies in how it challenges popular representations of the Asian American experience: Though in recent years, Asian American media has become more present in popular culture, …

“Some Small Kiss From Your Sweet Lips”: Navigating Hierarchy In Eastern Roman Letters, Nicholas Elijah Raffington

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The presence of homoeroticism in the letters of elite Byzantine men was both the product of long-term literary developments and was employed for many purposes. As a medieval society which saw a unique level of social mobility, an individual’s connections and how they managed and negotiated them within the competitive elite milieu was of utmost importance to their relevance. Letters naturally emerge as a suitable literary genre to affirm and recognize relationships, to ask for favors, or introduce a new member to the group. As the evidence suggests, homoeroticism was employed within the male-centered world of business and politics as …