Digital Commons Network^™

Progress, Poetry, And Peace: Romantic Ideals And The Present Day, Kristen Dawn Morgan Hess

Masters Theses

In the busy, technologized, and mechanized life that most people live today, it can be difficult to find true rest, comfort, and peace because the very technology and machinery that is marketed as providing these 21st-century amenities often fall short in their delivery. Taking a look backward at the Romantic era ideals presented in the poetry of William Wordsworth can offer people today the chance to gradually improve their mental, physical, and emotional health by slowing down, minimalizing, and moderating their lifestyles. This thesis talks about the historical background of three of Wordsworth’s poems— “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “The …

"I Will Not Hear The Melody Of Thy Viols": Opposition To Instrumental Music In Historic Presbyterian And Puritan Worship, Sean Patrick Michael Mcdonald

Masters Theses

The parallel movements of Presbyterianism in Scotland and Puritanism in England began and developed in the 1500s. Early on, both of these movements established their opposition to musical instruments in the public worship of God. This was not merely incidental to their worship, as though instrumental music could be added without any significant alteration to Presbyterianism or Puritanism as such. Rather, the rejection of musical instruments (usually organs) was essential to their worship, and inseparably tied to key theological principles.

Visualizing Equity: A Design Framework For Global Mental Health Communication For Generation Z, Jose Pena

Masters Theses

There is a lot of information about mental health available today. However, for Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, the information proves both challenging to find and difficult to understand. The World Health Organization and other global groups publish a lot of information about mental health inequality, treatment gaps, and workforce shortages. However, this information is usually presented in dense, technical formats that are not meant for young people who are not experts. Many digital mental health tools, on the other hand, don’t give young people the emotional connection, cultural relevance, and visual clarity they need to deal …

How The African American Contribution To Early American Literature Aided In Shaping The American Literary Identity, Jennifer E. Thompson

Masters Theses

This study argues that Jupiter Hammon’s early African American literature actively helped shape American literary identity rather than just mirroring it. By blending Christian morality with human rights, Hammon challenged Eurocentric narratives, validated Black humanity, and established a foundational tradition for anti-slavery writing. Traditional theories often contest this national inclusion through critical viewpoints. These views treat slavery as a distinct model, arguing that these texts represent separate responses to bondage rather than unified contributions to a shared national canon. This research redefines the American literary canon by showing how Hammon's historic publications dismantled eighteenth-century racist ideals about intellectual capacity. His …

Teaching French Horn: A Review Of Literature For The Beginning Horn Student And Best Methods For Application, Anna M. Schmitz

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There are many beginning French horn method books available to students and teachers today, divided into two main categories: whole-band integration and private-lesson instruction. There is little agreement between the methods on which elements of playing to emphasize and how to sequence instruction. Some whole-band method books start in an uncomfortable range for the beginning horn player, either too high or too low, in order to accommodate the fundamental harmonics of the majority of the other concert band wind instrumentalists. To mitigate this problem, some method books offer a “horns only” option with the same exercise transposed either up a …

Stigmatic History: The Advancement Of Accessibility In U.S. Museums, 1960-2010, Misty A. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation represents an overlap between disability history and public history by examining how museums in the U.S. became more accessible between 1960 and the early twenty-first century. Utilizing an expansive cross-section of primary and secondary sources, this study unravels the complexities of social and legal pressures that resulted in accessibility becoming a priority in museums. Changes in social expectations, new legal measures, and activism contributed to a shift in the status and treatment of people with disabilities. With these changes came a need for public spaces to adapt and provide disabled peoples with the same access and experiences as …

Tongues In 1 Corinthians 12–14: Their Role In Gospel Proclamation And Unity, Adam Rimmer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The gifts of the Holy Spirit have been controversial throughout the ages. Many theologians, apologists, and church fathers have tried to clarify glossolalia. This dissertation is an exposition of 1 Corinthians 12–14 that argues that glossolalia is an actual human language that supports the gift of prophecy for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, but was being misused within the church at Corinth as ecstatic speech, which was not the valid biblical gift of glossolalia. It will demonstrate that this gift served as a divine means to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who spoke different languages before …

A Study On Online Romance Fraud And National Security: A Ghanaian Perspective, Osmond B. Kabah

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

One of the most prevalent cybercrimes is online romance fraud, where the perpetrators prey on individuals looking for love on various platforms. The crime, widespread on dating apps and social media, is typified by scammers starting a relationship and then defrauding the gullible victims of their money. Ghana is one of the countries whose citizens have been victims of these swindlers, and the national security apparatus is increasingly receiving reports of online financial victimization. This qualitative study aims to explore the issue in the country from a national security perspective. This study investigates what motivates the perpetrators of this crime …

The Sword And The Pen: How America’S Way Of War Escaped Constitutional Restraint, Daryl Lee Posey

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation examines how changes in military technology and institutional design shifted practical control over war initiation from Congress to the presidency between the founding era and the end of the Cold War. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, and the framers rejected proposals to give that authority to the president alone. This study argues that advances in communication, transportation, weapons lethality, and government secrecy compressed the time available for congressional deliberation, concentrated war-relevant information inside executive institutions, and made presidential initiative the default rather than the exception. The study traces this pattern across six chapters, …

Exploring Burnout, Isolation, And Support Among Middle School Music Educators In Georgia: A Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Study, Jameson T. Meadows

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological study examined the lived experiences of middle school music educators (MSMEs) in Georgia to understand how burnout, professional isolation, support, and advocacy influence their professional experiences and sustainability. These educators navigate instructional tasks, program administration, and responsibilities beyond the classroom. 10 MSMEs, including 5 band directors, 3 orchestra directors, and 2 chorus directors, participated in virtual semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed through an inductive coding process to identify patterns across participants’ experiences. 4 themes emerged from the findings: (a) relational and musical growth sustains the work, (b) burnout accumulates through role overload and personal investment, (c) discipline-specific professional …

A Framework For Teaching Maya Aspect System: Pedagogical Strategies For Maya Grammar, Quetzil E. Castañeda

Journal of Maya Heritage

Abstract. Maya, an Indigenous language spoken primarily in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, remains under-resourced in materials for second-language and heritage-language learners. Its agglutinative morphology, split ergativity, and aspect system pose particular pedagogical challenges, especially when Maya grammar is explained through Spanish or English tense categories. Based on a critical review of existing teaching resources and the author’s more than twenty years of experience teaching Maya, this article proposes a pedagogical framework for understanding its aspect grammar. Rather than organizing verbal morphology around tense, the framework distinguishes four principal conjugational forms: Ongoing Incomplete, Simple Past, Completed Present, and Subjunctive. It also introduces …

Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets As Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure, Raji Srinivasan, Maria C. Merino

Subsistence Marketplaces

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: …

Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The massive destruction and social dislocation wrought by capitalist crisis has culminated, historically, in the brutal cataclysms of fascism and other forms of authoritarian rule. Today, across the globe, we are confronted with the aggressive advance and entrenchment of a variety of such authoritarian political projects. Anxious discourses about ascendant fascism have become perfectly mainstream. These developments command our acute attention and critical analysis. This essay addresses these dire questions and the conceptual vexations surrounding the concept of fascism, particularly as it has been elaborated in various Marxist analyses.  Specifically, much of the debate around fascism as an analytical category …

Futurities: Human Extinction, Space Visualization And The Other Side Of Sustainability, Ioannis Galanopoulos Papavasileiou, Ioannis Kontos, Shane Hulbert

All Works

This paper explores how speculative practices engage with evolving ideas on human extinction, space cosmology, post-humanism, and sustainability through expanded photography. Focusing on two projects—Here There Are Lions by Ioannis Galanopoulos Papavasileiou and Alien Landscapes by Ioannis Kontos—it examines how these works reframe themes of planetary precarity, space migration, and ecological collapse. Using ‘verifictional’ methods, both series employ hybrid digital techniques and AI-generated imagery as visual provocations challenging anthropocentric views of survival and progress. Here There Are Lions envisions space as a site of human expatriation and cosmic hope, while Alien Landscapes depicts post-natural terrains shaped by AI and environmental …

"The Courtview Diary", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article offers an excerpt and overview of the diary of Sally Independence Foster, a young girl from Florence, Alabama who recorded her experiences during the Civil War. Foster lived in Courtview, now known as Rogers Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama. Additional photographs of Courtview (Rogers Hall) are available in the University Architecture and William Lindsey McDoanld Image Collections by searching the side bar located on the left.

Additional information about Sally Independence Foster, can be found in this LibGuide, the digital archival collection, or the finding aid to the physical collection.

"The Course Of The Tennessee River", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article describes the usual course of the Tennessee River and various geological theories for the direction of its course. In addition, it explores the specific geomorphology of the Muscle Shoals and its impact on North Alabama.

Uae Audiences' Reliance On Social Media As A Source Of Information On Complementary And Alternative Medicine: A Study Of Al Ain City Residents Based On Media System Dependency Theory, Abdul Rahman Al-Toum, Mohammed Al-Kaabi, Najoud Al-Mansouri, Ahmed Bin Ishaq, Amer Khaled Ahmad, Maram Manajrah

Middle East Journal of Communication Studies

This study examined the extent to which UAE audiences rely on social media as a source of information on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and the resulting effects of this reliance. Grounded in Media System Dependency Theory, the study employed an audience survey using a questionnaire administered to a sample of (132) Emirati citizens in Al Ain. The findings revealed that the combined medium and high reliance reached (53%). Regarding the effects, cognitive effects recorded the highest arithmetic means, followed by affective and behavioral effects at comparable levels. Hypothesis testing showed no statistically significant differences in the degree of reliance …

Three-Dimensional Transformable Textiles Woven With Hygromorphic High-Twist Linen Yarn, Kathryn Walters

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Shape-changing textiles woven using high-twist yarns offer the potential of a diverse design space of three-dimensional morphologies without the need to cut the textile or to modify the loom. High-twist linen yarn has moisture-responsive – hygromorphic – properties, with the orientation of the transformation changing with yarn twist direction. Used to weave transformable textiles it offers an alternative to synthetic active yarns or non-textile actuators. The material intelligence of the high-twist linen yarn is non-linear, and S- and Z-twist yarns may be combined to increase the diversity of textile morphologies. Developed through practice-based research, a series of experiments have been …

Strain-Sensing Auxetic Knit With Embedded Elastomeric Optical Fibers, Rashmi Mohan, Jeyeon Jo

Textile Intersections Conference Series

This study presents the development and evaluation of a novel strain-sensing electronic textile that integrates elastomeric optical fiber within an auxetic knitted structure. Conventional wearable sensors often suffer from motion artifacts due to the mechanical mismatch between human-joint movements and the positive Poisson's ratio of standard fabrics. To address this, a log cabin knit pattern combining knit and purl stitches was designed to induce an out-of-plane buckling effect, resulting in a negative Poisson's ratio. A stretchable elastomeric optical fiber with a diameter of 1.2 mm was embedded within a 1×1 rib channel to ensure stable electromechanical coupling without hindering the …

Including The Hybrids: The Thread Arrangement As A Lens For Manifesting Textile Designers' Agency, Juri-Apollo Drews

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Current textile classification systems often divide fabrics into mutually exclusive categories such as weaves, knits, and nonwovens. While useful for distinguishing basic structural differences between textiles, such taxonomies frequently fail to account for hybrid structures and may inadvertently discourage research into them. This paper proposes the notion of the "thread arrangement" as a conceptual lens to nuance such rigid classifications and to manifest the creative agency of the textile designer. By synthesising insights from textile design, creativity, and classification theory with potential-focused perspectives from textile archaeology, the term is developed as a meta-category that emphasizes the duality of the textile …

From Textility To Embodied Experience: A Practice-Led Generative Approach To Textile Ich Engagement, Mi Lin, Elif Ozden Yenigun, Anne Toomey

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Engagement with intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is increasingly framed as experiential rather than representational. However, textile ICH—particularly structurally complex forms such as Miao Piling Embroidery—is still often presented through documentation and visual display, limiting access to its embodied, processual, and perceptual dimensions. This paper develops a situated, practice-led generative approach that explores how textility can be translated into generative and embodied experience. Using Miao Piling Embroidery as a case study, textility is defined here as a conceptual construct that synthesises material, making, structural, and cultural connotations, understood as a system of relations including unit formation, layering, and repetition. These relations …

Textile As Ecological Index: Casting Domestic Food Waste Into Wearable Biomaterial Media Through A Domestic Biodesign Framework, Valerie Chua

Textile Intersections Conference Series

This paper introduces a domestic biodesign framework for transforming household food waste into wearable biomaterial textiles that function as ecological communication media. Through a practice-based case study, the MILES apron, it demonstrates how dehydrated kitchen residues embedded in an agar-based composite textile can materialise dietary and ecological patterns through sensory properties such as texture, colour variation, and material stratification. The paper contributes three advances. First, it proposes a six-stage design scaffold for domestic-scale biomaterial fabrication that integrates communicative intent, waste-stream analysis, material testing, and biosafety into a replicable process. Second, it develops the concept of biological constitution as a design …

Designing With Drafts And Cross-Sections: Reflections On How Representations Of Woven Structure Shape Design Practice, Deanna Gelosi, Laura Devendorf

Textile Intersections Conference Series

The draft, a grid of black and white squares used to specify where a particular warp crosses over or under a weft in woven cloth, is a common representation used to design and describe woven structures. The squares in a draft directly, or with a few modifications, translate to manufacturing instructions, which makes the draft a common representation used in weaving design software. In this paper, we describe how using a different woven structure representation, a cross-section, in a design tool that foregrounds different concerns. Specifically, we describe and reflect on our motivation, design, and initial testing of an interactive …

Textile Digital Drape Definition - Td3: Comparing Digital To Physical Design Considerations, Alexandra Kuijpers, Troy Nachtigall, Maarten Van Bommel

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Fashion design is, by nature, a very hands-on activity in which the touch and feel of a textile are considered vital to the design of the garment. Yet when designers work with digital fashion design software, they rely on digital textile definitions that are visual instead of tangible textile swatches. In this research, we created a new Textile Digital Drape Definition (TD3) that is heavily informed by textile drape properties. We compared the TD3 to traditional tangible textile interaction, via an intense workshop examining eleven textile sample swatches. The digital drape of the TD3 follows standardized textile science drape methods, …

Soft Shaping: Zonal Elasticity In Layered Woven Textiles, Ihab Jiryis, Arielle Blonder

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Body-shaping garments establish form through mechanical action at the textile-body interface: corsetry through rigid reinforcement and lacing, elastic shapewear through elastomeric recovery. This study shifts attention from how a textile acts on the body to how its form develops and is organised before application to the body. The Zonal Elasticity System (ZES) is a moisture-activated self-forming system based on differing moisture-responsive behaviour within bonded cotton-linen assemblies. Twenty-four specimens across three phases examined how grain orientation, cut topology, constraint geometry, bond routing, pre-stress, and interlayer coupling directed deformation towards a defined waist region. Connected cut units propagated deformation across the field, …

Reya: Reuse Yarn. Product, Process And Practice, Elizabeth Gaston

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Reya: Reuse Yarn is a practice-led research project that investigates scalable methods for reducing pre-consumer waste in commercial knitwear manufacturing. Positioned within a circular manufacturing framework, the study re-evaluates knit as product, process, and practice to generate new insights into sustainable production. The research addresses the environmental and economic impacts of deadstock yarn, particularly low-value synthetic blends that are typically discarded due to limitations in quantity, aesthetics, and material consistency. Drawing on interdisciplinary knowledge from knit and visual colour psychology, the project employs a Knit Thinking methodology, combining tacit material understanding with explicit technical knowledge through iterative, material-led enquiry. The …

Designing With Evolutive Colors: A Proof Of Concept For Bio-Based Dye Integration In Textile Design Digital Workflow, Clarisse Barbot, Camille Fuzier, Bertrand Loïc, De Visscher Emile, Panayotis Mavros

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Current industrial textile production relies on petrochemical dyes. This dependence has led to growing interest in bio-based alternatives, although their adoption remains constrained by technical and cultural factors. In particular, bio-based dyes do not meet typical industrial standards for stability, diversity of colour choices, and reproducibility. Textiles dyed with bio-based colourants tend to exhibit colour changes under light exposure. Current design software systems were built with the conventional expectation of stability of petrochemical dyes in mind, making them ill-adapted to bio-based dye behaviour and thus hampering their industrial adoption. To address this gap, we propose the prototype of a novel …

Warpform: An Accessible Loom Add-On For Weaving Non-Rectangular Textile-Forms, Savanne Klop, Manuel Carazo, Milou Voorwinden, Holly Mcquillan

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Textile-form Weaving, in which the fabric and form are created simultaneously on the loom, can support zero-waste, on-demand production of textile-based products. However, textile researchers and designers are limited in their ability to explore the full potential of Textile-form Weaving because most looms do not allow for all variables to be manipulated. In this paper, we present WarpForm, an accessible add-on for a standard hand-operated loom that opens up new possibilities for weavers. Specifically, through enabling the variable consumption of individual warp threads, WarpForm allows weavers to create 3D and non-rectangular forms directly on the loom. Through a description of …

Sketching Fast, Sketching Slow: Extending Sketchnoting Practices With E-Textiles, Anna Blumenkranz, Barbro Scholz, Irene Posch, Verena Fuchsberger

Textile Intersections Conference Series

As design researchers, we are often challenged to make sense of qualitative data without losing its nuances and situated character in the process. Sketchnoting is a widely used technique for transforming data into personal and memorable summaries. Typically practised with pen and paper, it involves a combination of drawings and text. However, what often remains underexplored is the formative role of materials in shaping sketchnoting practices, leaving open questions about the kinds of knowledge different materials enable to articulate. This paper explores e-textiles as a medium for sketchnoting, examining how their temporal, materially composite, interactive properties influence processes of data …

Towards Self-Powered Woven Triboelectric Textiles Using Commercial Yarns, Swarnalok De, Mithila Mohan, Matteo Iannacchero, Marie Vihmar, Jaana Vapaavuori

Textile Intersections Conference Series

Electronic textiles (e-textiles) are emerging as promising next-generation sensors with applications in sport, healthcare, defense, and human-computer interactions. On one hand, their soft interface with skin provides comfortable user experience and offers the advantage of tailoring the sensors to adapt to different body types. On the other hand, their dependence on external power sources such as electrochemical batteries for prolonged monitoring of physiological cues compromises these inherent advantages by incorporating bulky, rigid, and non-biocompatible components into the textile designing. In this context, textile-based triboelectric nanogenerators (T-TENGs) are gaining attention due to their ability to act as self-powering sensors. However, most …