Digital Commons Network^™

From Mono To Object: A Contextual Evolution Of R&B And Soul Vocal Production Techniques With Emphasis On Object-Based Audio In Dolby Atmos, Samuel W. Slape

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The human voice is the central element in much of recorded commercial music, and in R&B it serves as the primary vehicle of expression. Across the evolution of reproduction formats, including mono, stereo, surround, and Dolby Atmos, engineers have adapted strategies to preserve vocal clarity while exploring new spatial possibilities. This thesis examines how these shifts in technology and perception have shaped vocal production, using R&B as a lens for the relationship between format and artistic practice. Psychoacoustics provides a foundation for understanding how listeners perceive localization, masking, and vocal prominence. Analytical approaches are introduced to distinguish direct and indirect …

Bass And Drum Grooves In R&B: Analysis And Composition, Hugh Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term “R&B” has existed within the musical lexicon for nearly eighty years. It was first introduced in 1949 to replace the label “race music,” and was a combination of blues, jazz, gospel, and rock. Since then, the genre has transitioned from swing-based, live instrumentation toward straight-eighth backbeats and electronically produced sounds. Despite these shifts, contemporary R&B continues to borrow from its ancestral roots while maintaining a modern aesthetic. A primary feature that has persisted through this landscape is the “groove,” specifically defined here as the rhythmic layer created by the drums and bass. In R&B, the bass provides both …

Pedagogy Of Immersive Audio In Music For Collegiate Application, Nathaniel Q. Stansbury

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Academia has always struggled to keep up with the fast-changing audio industry. Recent developments in immersive audio have further widened this gap, and comparatively few pedagogical materials exist to assist in addressing the problem. This manuscript proposes a three-course curriculum designed to prepare undergraduate engineers for immersive music production. Course I introduces the history and terminology of immersive audio. Course II explores DAW signal flow, production procedures, and major immersive formats. Course III focuses on applied mixing, giving students hands-on experience. The curriculum acts as an opportunity for universities and educators to better equip students going into the music industry. …

House Of Ill-Fame: A Historical, Cartographic, And Archaeological Study On The Spatial Evolution Of Commercial Sex Work In New Orleans, 1875 – 1925, Austin Roebuck

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the historic spatiality of commercial sex‑work in New Orleans by analyzing targeted addresses associated with the trade across three census years. Using the establishment and closure of Storyville (1897–1917) as a temporal frame, it compares demographic patterns in dwellings labeled as “houses of ill fame” in 1880, 1900, and 1920 to trace changes in household composition and social identity. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, newspapers, and city directories contextualize these patterns within three ten‑year intervals (1875–1885, 1895–1905, 1915–1925), revealing how sex‑work spaces were regulated, represented, and embedded in the urban landscape. The study also incorporates an archaeological assemblage …

Designing Voice Tracks As Pedagogy: Recording Technology, Musicianship, And Rehearsal Practice In Choral Education, Brandon J. Damiani

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This study examines the pedagogical role of part-dominant Voice Tracks in choral education, with particular attention to how recording design influences rehearsal efficiency, musicianship development, and student independence. As recording technology becomes increasingly integrated into classroom and ensemble practice, Voice Tracks are often used to support learning outside of rehearsal. While these tools can improve preparedness and reduce time spent on note acquisition, questions remain regarding their impact on foundational skills such as audiation, sight-reading, and ensemble awareness.

Drawing on existing scholarship in music education and a practitioner-led case study, this project documents the creation of Voice Tracks for Look …

Somatic Healing And Social Choreography For Peacebuilding: Since When Did Efforts For World Peace Become A Cheesey Notion . . . ? . . . A Public Space Performance Ritual, Reese Johanson

Senior Honors Theses

Somatic practice in performance can transform culture, politics, and society. Dismantling social systems that spread systemic trauma can be achieved by repatterning our social choreography, replacing old systems with mutual aid and community support.

This paper touches upon a decade of personal and communal somatic practice and research. I experienced and witnessed a universal struggle between humans and the oppressive forces embedded in societal norms and was driven to restructure these norms in honor of self and the world through art. The “Since when…?” project culminated in 7 research laboratories where participants engaged in open and guided forms of somatic …

Anastasis: Slow Fashion, Barbara Bultman

Theses

This thesis explores how slow fashion principles contribute to the longevity and cultural significance of iconic garments. Using qualitative research methods, including historical analysis, literature review, and practice-based design research, this project analyzes and recreates six iconic garments: the little black dress, trench coat, wrap dress, shift dress, wide-leg trouser, and women’s suit. The research investigates couture-level construction techniques, sustainable materials, and timeless silhouettes, demonstrating how these strategies can extend garment lifespan and foster emotional attachment between consumers and clothing. Ultimately, the research concludes that slow fashion provides a practical framework for creating durable, meaningful garments that support both environmental …

Leveraging Generative Artificial Intelligence To Launch An Independent Game Studio, Douglas Evans

Theses

This project report examines how Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) can be integrated into the early formation and operations of an independent/indie game studio. Using a qualitative, practice-based single-case study approach, the project focused on Boar’s Head Studio, LLC. A human-in-the-loop approach was maintained with Generative AI used to support company formation, ideation, planning, documentation, analysis, coding assistance, marketing preparation, and community-building preparation

The report concludes that Generative AI can serve as a meaningful system integrated into the studio pipeline when used with structured, repeatable, human-in-the-loop processes. The project contributes a practical, case-based framework that may be useful to other …

The Whaler’S Empire: Industry, Environment, And American Expansion In The Pacific Ocean, Andrew J. Hiner

All Theses

The American whaling industry reached its peak in the mid nineteenth century, numbering over seven hundred vessels and reaching from the South Atlantic to Arctic Oceans. The rise of this maritime trade coincided with the emergence of the nation’s industrial revolution at home, a revolution which employed the product of whaling—namely whale oil—as a lubricant for machinery. Historians have often overlooked the use of this commodity in manufacturing, focusing instead on whale oil’s use as an illuminant. Examining the relation between the whaling and manufacturing industries offers new insights into how ocean environments played a role in domestic production. It …

Good Life Automobility: Cultural/Rhetorical Resistance And Persistence Of Us Car Hegemony, Trinity O. Thompson

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project takes the car as a historical signifier of a rhetorical racialization process that enables a hypermobile white, masculine, neoliberal identity that pervades conceptions of mobility in the West. I locate these overlapping social formations under a cultural logic of good life automobility (GLA) that positions cars, a quintessential form of private property, as a motivator for a contemporary “good life” citizenship identity that cultivates neoliberal subjectivities of free movement and market consumption in contempt of socialized and racialized public transit futures. The introduction chapter elaborates on the boundaries of GLA while also contextualizing the two analysis chapters through …

Good People, Abby Stinar

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Conversation Made 'Easy' In The Classroom: The Problem With Women's Education In Nineteenth Century New Jersey, Rebecca Bienskie Jackson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Born in 1877, Rose McDonough grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. She learned French in a local school inside a Congregational Church, and by 1920 was a private teacher. This thesis recovers information about Rose McDonough’s life through a single archival object: Easy Conversations In French, by Gustave Choquet and published by New York’s George R. Lockwood & Son, in 1854. Housed in the Montclair History Center, Rose’s penciled marginalia is scattered throughout. Using book history as the primary methodology, this thesis reads the material object of the schoolbook, marks left by its reader, along with Census records, historic maps, …

An Invasion Of The Intimate Sphere: The Manipulation Of Libido Under Totalitarian Regimes, Elyssa Lucero

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper examines the temporal nature of libidinal control in the totalitarian systems represented in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Arguing that the most enduring forms of domination operate through the reorganization of desire, the essay explores how regimes intervene in familial, romantic, and social attachments to redirect affective energy towards the state. Orwell depicts a primitive, reactive phase of control in which attachments are violently ruptured, whereas Huxley imagines an advanced system that operates through preemption, never allowing attachments to form. Drawing on Freud’s theory of redirected libido, Berlant’s theory of Cruel Optimism, Marxist …

Hitler's Foreign Legions: Non-German Recruitment And Formations In The Waffen Ss, Jacob O'Bannon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Nazi regime, the armed bodyguard of the National Socialist Party the, the SS grew rapidly and eventually recruited foreign manpower. This thesis analyzes the rapid expansion of the SS as an armed military force and traces their forays into non-German states to recruit as the demands of World War II increased. The SS fielded thirty-eight divisions by the end of the war with hundreds of thousands of members not being from Germany. This rapid expansion, undertaken with soldiers from a variety of backgrounds, created a series of fractures between the ideological tenets of the SS and their practices. …

Blood, Steel, And Stone, Jennifer Camplair Hassell

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis, Blood, Stone, and Steel, explores the intergenerational impact of trauma, memory, and history through a unique blend of poetry, photography, and personal family narratives. Drawing on archival materials, family photographs, and the tradition of documentary poetry, the work investigates how the legacy of war and immigration shapes identity across generations. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory, the author examines inherited memories and their affective transmission, focusing on the experiences of her great-grandfather - a German immigrant and WWI veteran - and the subsequent effects on her family. The narrative is structured in three parts: BLOOD, reflecting loss …

Use And Awareness Of Online Resources In University Libraries, Rudraksha Gouridevi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study of the use and awareness of online resources in university libraries. The study used a survey to collect primary data. A questionnaire was used to collect primary data from library users (undergraduate, postgraduate students, and research scholars) in selected university libraries, both public and Deemed University libraries, in Andhra Pradesh. The study covered four university libraries. Out of the total number of students and research scholars (25266) from the four universities. In this study, only 10 percent of the respondents were selected as the survey sample. The study indicated that the highest rate of users are accessing the …

Unpacking American Reception Of Glocalized Non-English Content In The Netflix Era, Sur Govindarajan

Dissertations

The swift growth of streaming services has revolutionized the worldwide distribution of media, making it possible for non-English and non-English-adjacent content to reach American consumers on a never-before-seen scale, which is sometimes perceived as an indication of increasing cultural tolerance. However, while a lot is known about what audiences see, far less is known about how they really understand and assess these stories. There is a fundamental vacuum in our understanding of audience reception as a lived, meaning-making process because previous research has mostly focused on consumption patterns. In order to close that gap, this study examines how American audiences …

Katie In-Between, Savannah Rae Sarabia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Katie In-Between is a contemporary young-adult fiction piece that follows the protagonist Katie as she learns about and reclaims her cultural identity. In her process, she learns the importance of embracing her identity, which refutes biases and ideals about who is and who is not part of her community. This story draws on personal experience navigating cultural identity and confronting histories and events that suppress that minority community's expression in American society. Through narration, poetry, and journal entries, readers are exposed to the confrontation of languages and histories to support ideas such as Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of nepantla, which refutes …

Asunto Familiar, Paolo Velazquez Angeles

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Asunto Familiar is a project told through short stories. Set in the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez community, it tells the story of one family and their ever-changing lives after a death derails their entire trajectory. Informed by queer perseverance in the bilingual communities of the Chihuahuan Desert, Asunto Familiar aims at exploring the subtle ways family can inflict violence on each other, specifically on their queer members. This in turn, revealing the transitional power of queerness, allowing the characters to uphold love and move away from their predetermined societal roles.

Rationalizing Atrocity: Vindicatory Careerism And Mass Murder As A Career Path, 1939-1943, Bethany G. Bare

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines members of the Nazi Schutzstaffel from an occupational perspective, focusing on how professional roles shaped their participation in systematic mass murder. As National Socialism gained influence in interwar Germany, it coincided with the rise of a generation of ambitious and embittered men eager to distinguish themselves. The transition from the T4 Program (1939-1941), the involuntary euthanasia of disabled Germans, to Operation Reinhard (1942-1943), the extermination of Polish Jews, demonstrates how mass murder evolved into a career path, as each of the men examined served as T4 personnel before transferring to Poland to assume positions as extermination camp …

Agent Orange: The Effect Of The Herbicide In Peripheral Neuropathy, And Assessing The Adequacy Of Veterans Affairs’ Presumptive Healthcare Policy For The Condition With The Input Of Physical Therapists And Physical Therapy Assistants, Danielle Coon

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Agent Orange exposure has prolonged the suffering of Vietnam War veterans to this day (Peripheral Neuropathy and Agent Orange, 2025). Research has been conducted to discover different medical conditions with a possible linkage to the herbicide (Peripheral Neuropathy and Agent Orange, 2025). One condition is peripheral neuropathy; however, to qualify as a presumptive condition and gain compensation and benefits such as monthly payments and enrollment in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare in a more efficient manner, the condition must be at least 10% disabling within one year of the last exposure to Agent Orange (Peripheral Neuropathy and …

Florence Normal College Quarterly, Faculty Of Florence Normal College

Documents

The first edition of the Florence Normal College Quarterly

Fractsynth: Exploring Glitch Timbres With Chaos Theory, Aidan Roach

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

In this paper, I explore how chaos theory can be used to design a new kind of synthesizer with the primary focus of producing glitchy, unpredictable sounds. Glitch music embraces abstract sound design, malfunctioning electronics, and randomness as the main compositional elements. However, most synthesizers rely on stable, repetitive oscillators that often sound too controlled. To challenge this, I developed FractSynth, a real-time synthesizer that uses chaotic attractors–including the Logistic Map, Henon Map, and Lorenz System–as modulation sources for frequency, amplitude, and tone. The software also features real-time Lyapunov Exponent Tracking, which gives users a direct visual of how …

From Vibration To Visualization: Building An Real-Time Audio Visualization System For Learning And Exploration Using Pyqt5, Aidan Roach

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This paper presents the design, development, and analysis of my real-time audio visualization system created entirely in Python using PyQt5, called WaveCatcher. The system captures live audio input from a microphone and provides simultaneous visual feedback through multiple signal representations: including a time-domain waveform, a frequency-domain FFT spectrum, a scrolling spectrogram, harmonic peak visualization, dynamic range, amplitude envelope, spectral centroid, and spectral bandwidth. These features offer insight not just into the raw structure of sound, but into how humans perceive its qualities–like timbre! This terminology may seem intimidating—it certainly was when I first began learning it—but I’ll explain all of …

Witness Beyond Technique: Gospel, Conversion, And The Moral Formation Of The Church, Christopher Flanders

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

Technique, efficiency, and measurable outcomes typically govern contemporary Western approaches to evangelism. Such approaches presume a thin account of the gospel, a punctiliar understanding of conversion, and an instrumental view of the church’s witness. This article argues that these assumptions represent not merely pragmatic missteps but theological distortions. Drawing on Scripture, historical theology, missiology, and practices of Christian initiation, I contend that evangelism is best understood as ecclesial witness oriented toward the moral formation of persons and communities under the reign of God. Conversion, on this account, is not a discrete decision secured through persuasive technique but a transformative journey …

Artificial Light: A Conduit Of Human Productivity Through The Ages, Elias M. Henkle

Young Historians Conference

This paper takes a sharp look at three innovations in artificial light, examining their impact on human productivity through history, and on our global society today. It posits that light technology has played a pivotal role in human productivity. From conversation around campfires, to handheld lighting technologies (such as candles, oil lamps, and other such crude— yet compact— lighting devices), to fiber-optic cables that carry information across oceans through the power of light— humanity’s productivity has been massively impacted by innovations in light technology.

The Kraken Wakes: Myth, Science, And The Rise Of A Maritime Sensation, From 1750-1900, Leif G. Crockett

Young Historians Conference

Since the 1800s, the legend of the Kraken has pervaded literature, but this creature is much older, figuring in Norwegian myths as early as the 13th century. The modern understanding of the Kraken can be traced back to the 1750s writing of Bishop Erik Pontoppidan, who described the monster with fantastical and analytical detail. An interrogation of Pontoppidan’s text, as well as novels, poetry, and other media sources from the 19th century—many of which reference the Bishop by name—uncovers Pontoppidan’s influence on later stories of the Kraken. Coupled with an analysis of secondary scholarship on the changing dynamics of science …

Dementia Detection In Low-Resource Languages: Evaluating Translation-Assisted Transfer Learning For Multilingual Clinical Assessment, Kylar A. Deloach

Honors Theses

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a growing global health concern, with millions of people affected worldwide and cases expected to rise significantly in the coming decades. Early detection is critical for patient treatment and care, and recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) have shown promise in identifying linguistic markers associated with AD. However, most existing work has focused on English, leaving speakers of other languages with limited access to such tools. This study investigates how effective AD detection models trained on English data are at transferring to Greek, a low-resource language with limited dementia-related speech data available. We propose a …

Appreciative Commoning; Musical Knowledge-Sharing In Earhouse Songwriting Club, Arya J. P. Adyuta

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article develops the concept of “appreciative commoning” to focus on the importance of appreciation in musical community practices. By examining the practices of musical knowledge-sharing in the Earhouse Songwriting Club (ESC), a songwriting community, this article argues that greater attention should be paid to the roles of appreciation and support in facilitating media and cultural commoning in Indonesia. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Earhouse, an initiative space located in Pamulang, South Tangerang, established by the musician duo Endah N Rhesa. Exploring three main activities of the community: weekly meetings, monthly showcases, and afterparties, I show how embracing …

Prototyping For Game Design With Unlv Libraries, Silvey Benson, Amber Sewell

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Involving students in a hands-on creative way to implement ideation, design, and prototyping skills gives students the opportunity to apply the theory of iterative design. Students analyze and reverse engineer current game designs prior to beginning their own innovations. They are then encouraged to apply innovation and creativity to their own game designs, test the games’ effectiveness through having others play their game and provide feedback, and fail safely in a controlled environment. Students will ideally increase their tolerance for failure through the implementation of the iterative design process while gaining a variety of skills that will serve them outside …