Digital Commons Network^™

Half-Armenian, Fully Diasporic: Navigating Memory, Trauma, And Identity In Marcella Polain’S The Edge Of The World, Sebnem Nazli Karali

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This work of creative nonfiction employs a hybrid creative-critical methodology that combines autobiographical narrative and interview-based research within the framework of memory studies. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, the article examines how knowledge of the Armenian Catastrophe is transmitted, refracted, and contested across generations in the Armenian diaspora in Australia. It situates The Edge of the World, Marcella Polain’s semi-autobiographical novel, within broader traditions of diasporic and postmemory writing, arguing for its significance as a literary meditation on historical rupture and inherited trauma. Interweaving Karali’s personal diasporic narrative with a close reading of Polain’s novel and her in-depth …

Health Determinant Effects Of Audience Experiences At Live First Nations Music Events In Central Australia, Naomi Sunderland, Kristy Apps, Brigitta Scarfe, Ping Zhang, Darren Garvey, Rae Cooper, Brydie Leigh Bartleet, Phil Graham, Glenn Barry

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Objectives: First Nations musicians often describe live performance as a means of fostering social, cultural, and political change that shapes determinants of health (DoH) for First Nations Peoples. This study examined how audience experiences of First Nations live music events in Central Australia may influence those DoH–including intercultural understanding, social cohesion, and community wellbeing–and explored the durability of such effects over time. Design: Guided by an Indigenist mixed‑methods approach, we conducted a pilot survey at two arts festivals featuring diverse First Nations musicians, followed by optional six‑month “mini yarn” interviews to explore immediate and longer‑term audience experiences. Quantitative analyses included …

Competitive Dance And The Adolescent’S Body: Considering Pedagogical Approaches To Teaching Competitive Dancers, Catri E. G. Barba

Dance (MFA) Theses

Diving into the past and researching for the future, this thesis explores the development and perpetuation of hyper-sexualized adolescent bodies through the competitive dance scene. Drawing on dance theorists, educational theorists, and embodied research (i.e., the author’s body archive), this thesis explores how the competition gaze is performed for and by a capitalist patriarchy. Specifically, this thesis critically reflects on the author’s career as a young competitive dancer in the greater Los Angeles, California, area during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as a competition dance instructor and K-12 educator for two decades, and how those personal experiences have shaped …

Dancing With Ghosts: Memory And Melancholy In The Subversive Artist, Caley R. Vancil

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis examines how subversive artists use autonomy and memory to imagine new ways of existing beyond systemic violence. Through analysis of theory and performance studies, it highlights the efforts and risks these artists take to challenge representation and the political aspects of embodiment. The interconnected roles of language, power, and imagination are emphasized as essential to creating a more just and liberated world.

Accompanying this research is a dance piece that responds to the sorrows within American society. Developed as an improvisational score, the dance becomes a process of reinvention, employing movement and imagination to seek collective solutions. The …

Ibeji: Screendance As Living Archive, A Manuscript For Live Performance, Quentin W. Sledge

Dance (MFA) Theses

This work is a multimedia live performance that simultaneously moves through a live archival process which captures the essence of the work. It asks: how can dance archives evolve into participatory, user-centered repositories that account for the embodied and ephemeral nature of dance, and how might screendance expand archives into interactive, co-curated spaces that sustain liveness beyond preservation? Grounded in archival theory, Africana Aesthesis over Euro-Western Aesthetics, and auto-ethnographic practice, this project responds to the historic limitations of Euro-Western archival systems, particularly their inability to hold the spiritual, cultural, and embodied dimensions of dance.

The objective of this research is …

Theatre And Dance As Divine Purpose: Liberating The Christian Performer In Pursuit Of Artistic Worship, Abby Owen

Dance (MFA) Theses

This study examines the historical relevance of theatre and dance alongside religious forms of worship, with a particular emphasis on their integration into Christian churches of the Middle Ages, in comparison to the current Western era. Beginning with their origin, this research examines the creation of theatre and dance in Ancient Greece as a means of connecting with spiritual deities, tracing their recorded transition into accepted acts of everyday worship by Christian leadership. At the same time, this research scrutinizes contemporary congregations’ lack of artistic incorporation, denouncing the rise of restricted worship in response to present-day condemnation of the female …

Maternal Becoming: Reimagining Transformation Through Reverse Metamorphosis, Terese M. Cardamon

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis research investigates how pregnancy and early motherhood reshape identity, agency, and one’s relationship with the body and interrogates the narrative that frames motherhood as inherently joyful. Focusing on matrescence, meaning the process of becoming a mother, the project explores this transformation through the myth of Demeter and Persephone, the author's lived experience, and scholarly frameworks that center feminist perspectives, and includes an embodied exploration that integrates literature, poetry, and movement. Central to this inquiry is the unsettling experience of a transforming body and the visceral, horrific sensation of becoming unfamiliar to oneself. The concept of reverse metamorphosis, a …

My Body Is Bad, Daintry Tennapel

Dance (MFA) Theses

my body is bad is an integrative endeavor that critically examines cultural and theological teachings within the Evangelical Church, focusing on the rise of Purity Culture and its connections to a broader history of patriarchy and white supremacy in America. This work investigates the psychological, emotional, sexual, and spiritual impact on women raised within Purity Culture, analyzing its core teachings and the systems that perpetuate them. By exploring the intersection of political, societal, and religious ideologies, this work interrogates how these forces—manifested through Purity Culture narratives—shape women’s identities, self-worth, and sexual agency. This work combines scholarly research, survivor testimonies, and …

Reflecting Their Gaze: Resisting Distorted Perceptions Of Self And Other As Object, Francesca F. Harman

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis is an investigation into ways of seeing, constructions of otherness, objectification, influences on self-perception, and most urgently, how artists can resist objectification through the affirmation of their own subjectivity. Drawing from scholarship in feminist theory, performance studies, visual culture studies, and film theory, this thesis engages the writing of thinkers such John Berger, Jean-Paul Sartre, bell hooks, Rae Langton, Ann Pellegrini, Martha Nussbaum, and Coco Fusco. This thesis critically examines the way in which comparison, perceived lack, and fear of the Other contribute to constructions of identity. Distorted perception is at the root of objectification, and often leads …

Rediscovering The Hidden Nan Yumiao (Mysterious Rain), Katherine E. Nettles

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores complex themes of becoming, belonging, and how they shape identity through the perspective of transracial adoption. The investigation draws from personal experiences, cultural texts, and nature vs. nurture research. Combining self-reflection with scholarly sources allows for a broader picture of adoption trauma rather than a fixed bias. The author's research considers the circumstances surrounding adoption, including birth parents giving their child up due to social, economic, legal, or political constraints. This thesis examines finding a place of belonging in public, in community, in family, and in society. This concept of belonging has different meanings based on people's …

Shaping Shakespeare: How American Shakespeare Festivals Adapt Shakespeare’S Texts In The Twenty-First Century, Paul Jacques

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Shakespeare’s continued importance in American festival settings stems from adaptive and collaborative processes. In this study, adaptation refers to any reinterpretation of Shakespeare's works for contemporary contexts, while collaboration refers to the combined creative efforts among artists and institutions. These processes, including reinterpretation, modernization, and partnership, propel performance and underpin Shakespeare festivals. Such festivals play a central role, balancing cultural prestige with institutional sustainability by prioritizing long-term viability and financial health. At the same time, festivals respond to local audiences' beliefs and interests. Instead of presenting static versions, these institutions continually interpret, revise, and adapt the canon, the authoritative collection …

Creating The Role Of Passerby And Stationmaster In The Cherry Orchard, Selwyn Ofori

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper will serve as a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting. It is a detailed account of Selwyn Ofori's artistic process in creating the role of Passerby and Stationmaster in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard staged at Ted Paul at Minnesota State University, Mankato in Spring 2026. This thesis entails the actor's analysis from pre-production till performance in five chapters, namely: pre-production analysis, historical and critical perspective, journals, post-production analysis, process development, and appendix. The sources of my research are also recorded in the works cited.

The Early Slasher Villain And Depraved Sexuality, Teagan Fuller

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Early American slasher films (1979-1989) narrativize sexual deviance through the figure of the slasher. While the genre is realized through the trope of teenage sexual violence, my research shifts the focus onto the villain, analyzing how the monster often interacts with a form of sexual deviancy, either at a younger age or within sexual development, before submitting to their role as a slasher. In these films, the slasher monster encounters a form of sexual deviancy tied to their origin and behavioral development. These encounters can be realized through three categories: inappropriate sexual education, abnormal birth histories, or disturbed psychosocial development.

Experimental Diegetic Thresholds: A Study Of Adapted Carceral Narratives [The] Nickel Boys And Sing Sing, Leslie D. Muench

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The diegesis is the storyworld of a film, including all the characters, settings, events, and other elements. At certain times, though, that threshold is permeable, particularly when the fictional source material involves lived experiences. Two carceral films model an experimentation with adapted material and the palimpsestuous layering effect that is a result of real-life narratives being transposed into fictional ones. Nickel Boys, directed by RaMell Ross (2024), and Sing Sing, directed by Greg Kwedar (2023), endeavor to humanize a stereotypically ostracized community: Black boys and men who are incarcerated. Through the screenwriting, casting, producing, filming, and sharing of their films …

The Ones Who Watched: Technology, Proxy Warfare, And The Testing Ground Hypothesis, Sean J. Oliver

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Great powers need laboratories for war. This thesis argues that great powers find these laboratories in proxy forces. Proxy warfare is not just a tool for strategic influence. It is a machine for experimentation. This study posits a central testing-ground hypothesis. It contends that great powers deliberately use surrogates to vet emerging technologies, doctrines, and mobilization schemes under the pressure of real combat. The analytical methodology is historical. It traces patterns from the ancient world's proxy forces and the innovations of the Crusades to the Cold War and the digital age. The thesis examines enduring patterns, including the tension between …

Science Fiction Cinema And The Technological Sublime: Spectacle And The Infinite From Early Cinema To Digital, David Jackson Dr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how science fiction cinema constructs and reimagines the technological sublime in the twentieth century: the experience of awe, terror, and admiration provoked by human-made power and scale. Drawing on the philosophical foundations of the sublime in Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant and extending through Leo Marx’s and David E. Nye’s theorization of the technological sublime, I propose an aesthetic mode in which representation inflected with affect translates technological spectacle into examinations of humanity’s role and agency in the face of overwhelming technologized worlds and in some cases, even the universe itself.

Through three distinct historical periods …

You Can't Kill The Beat: Cult Musicals, Alexis T. Kinsey

SPARK Symposium Presentations

You Can't Kill the Beat: Cult Musicals

This paper examines how certain musicals achieve lasting popularity despite initial failure, in the eyes of critics, by developing cult followings. Drawing on theories of camp aesthetics and fandom, this paper explores how exaggerated, unconventional, and "campy" elements, often rejected by critics, become the qualities that attract niche audiences. Using examples of certain musicals, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Ride the Cyclone, Heathers, and Carrie, I argue that cult musicals survive and thrive because audiences actively participate in sustaining them. The revival of shows through social media illustrates how digital fandoms …

Voice Of The Frog: Found Poetry And The Revelation Of An Eastern Aesthetic In The Creative Works Of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Antoinette Libro

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

An Ideological Target Through The Archaeological Archive: The Islamic State’S Destruction Of Palmyra And Its Impact On Local Syrian Identity, Tristen A. Leone

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper investigates how Palmyra's multicultural archaeological archive incited ISIS's destruction of the site during the Syrian Civil War through an analysis of sepulchral and religious architectural structures and onomastic practices. In contributing the cultural heritage scholarship, this paper places the motives of Islamic extremist groups in conversation with intellectual discourse around the multicultural identities of the Ancient Near East during the Roman Imperial Period. Further, through anthropological methodological frameworks and the photographic archive of excavation efforts at Palmyra, I aim to center modern local communities' experiences of living on and near an archaeological site like Palmyra. In consulting modern …

Dear Vincent, James H. Stone Iv

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Dear Vincent is a play written for J. Harvey Stone’s MFA in Playwriting from Hollins University. The play is inspired by the life of Vincent van Gogh and his letters with his brother Theodore. The artist Vincent van Gogh was an avid writer to his brother Theodore. This play is inspired by, but not dictated by, the letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother. Connected by hymns in Act I and by the news of the 1980s in Act II, this Vincent lives through his letters as well but ultimately has to make a decision regarding this life in …

Human Resource Policy And Practice In The American Regional Theatre: The Intersection Of The Actors’ Equity Association And The League Of Resident Theatres, Kathleen Holland

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

Human resource management plays a critical yet understudied role in the American regional theatre, an industry characterized by project-based labor, mixed union and nonunion workforces, and deeply ingrained cultural norms that prioritize artistic production over worker well-being. This dissertation examines how institutional human resource policies intersect with the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) collective bargaining agreement and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), and the implications of these intersections for human resource practice in regional theatre organizations. While entertainment-industry unions predate the formalization of contemporary human resource management, little scholarship has examined how union agreements may shape or substitute for organizational …

Ai And Its Impacts On Modern Theatre, Micaiah J. Byrd

Theses and Dissertations

What do you think of when you type a question into a search engine, and the “AI Overview” pops up without your having to request it? What may happen if theatre students and theatre industry professionals have that same ability to type in a prompt into an AI generator, and it has the ability to produce an output of a theatrical design concept with that same level of ease. Is this even possible with the programs that we have now, or could it be anticipated that this could be possible in the future. Would this be a benefit or would …

Servant Leadership: A Directing Approach, Charles Hearn

Theses and Dissertations

When involved with traditional stage directing, the process may feel very hierarchical, and only a few voices are heard when decisions are made; such is the method of the directing approach. Servant leadership, ideals argue that it is more beneficial to rely on others and dismantle unnecessary hierarchies when available, to not just enhance the product but the people and the process itself. Stage directing from a leadership perspective can not only perform the task at hand, directing, but also enhance the people involved with the production using a process like that found in servant leadership. This thesis focuses on …

Centring The Audience: Attitudes And Behaviours In Australian Arts Organisations, Katya Johanson, Abbie Trott, Mark Taylor, Anne Kershaw, Hilary Glow, Tracy Margieson

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Many arts organisations seek to increase the diversity of their audiences. Recent literature suggests that this requires organisations to interrogate and change their ways of operating. This is a fundamental shift for a sector that has long considered the goal of diversifying audiences as a problem external to the organisation. Responding to this discrepancy, this article compares attitudes and behaviours among workers in arts organisations, to identify whether staff see the need to make change and practise the behaviours required. It identifies and uses three organisational capabilities–‘dynamic capabilities’, ‘social networks’ and ‘business improvement processes’–to frame an analysis of a national …

Fashioning The Body Politic: Explorations Of The Political Semiotics Of Fashion In France And England During The French Revolution, Annika F. Gauthier

Scripps Senior Theses

In the midst of the French Revolution, women’s fashion underwent a complete revolution, moving from the multi-layered elaborate gowns of the ancien regime, to light, form-fitting dresses. These gowns reveal the way clothing reflects the political positions of women and the ways the French and the British used clothing to construct national identity and politics. Following research on the political symbolism and role of clothing across France and Britain, this thesis reviews fashion’s overarching connection to politics, revealing its role in the early French Revolution’s conception of women and patriotism, women’s responses to political exclusions, and rival nations’ adaptations of …

The Purimspiel: A Compilation Play, Jordan G. Becknell

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis covers the process of researching, writing, and developing The Purimspiel: A Compilation Play. This playwrighting project explores the dissonance between the cultural memory of the Jewish holiday Purim and the holiday’s long-documented association with Jewish violence and vengeance as it connects to the modern questions of Jewish identity in the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

I Am Hookman: A Reflection, Fiona E. Larsen-Teskey

Scripps Senior Theses

I am Hookman is a reflection paper on my process, experience, and growth performing in the play, Hookman, as my senior thesis.

Lights, Camera, Aggression!: Exploring The Relationship Between The Horror Genre And Criminality, Taylor M. Wanke

Scripps Senior Theses

This proposed correlational study will examine the effect of exposure and involvement with the horror genre in media and the crime genre in media on one’s antisocial personality traits, criminal thinking, criminal behavior/aggression, and morality in the general population and those who are currently incarcerated. Data will be collected through a Qualtrics survey accessed online for the general sample and printed out for the incarcerated sample. Each participant will complete exposure checklists, involvement scales for each genre, and multiple measures to record their level of each dependent variable. Data will be analyzed using a correlational analysis, 1-sample t-tests, and a …

The Essence Of The Heart: Layered Human Experience In Eva Jessye’S My Spirituals, Jessica Brunet

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Much of the spiritual repertory has been transcribed as documentation of purely melodic and lyrical content, and many songs have been arranged by some of the greatest figures in twentieth- and twenty-first century music history, including Harry T. Burleigh, Hall Johnson, Margaret Bonds, and Jacqueline B. Hairston. On this roster of luminaries is Dr. Eva Jessye (1895-1992).

If Eva Jessye is remembered at all, it is typically in the context of her role as choral director for the original production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935). Among a litany of other accomplishments, however, Dr. Jessye also published a collection of …

Celebrating Faculty Scholarship 2026, Smith College Libraries

Celebrating Faculty Scholarship: Bibliographies

Bibliography of selected scholarly and creative work produced by Smith College faculty and submitted by faculty for the 2026 celebration in the Neilson Library Skyline Reading Room, Smith College on September 14, 2026.