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The Cartography Of The New World: Hernán Cortés’S Literary Mapping Of America, Sarah Tietz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Age of Discovery travel narratives from the fifteenth and sixteenth century, written by European explorers to the Americas, can be understood not only as narratives, but also as literary maps of the New World. Specifically, Hernán Cortés’s Second Letter in Cartas de Relación exemplifies the ways in which literary cartography helped write the Americas into existence in Europe. Cortés’s map does not reproduce the land he encounters, it creates the space known as America. His letters become a map in three ways. First, Cortés deliberately included descriptions of features of the land and natives that would impress the Christian …

Righting America At The Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger, William Vance Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve.

In Righting America at the …

"To Dress It And To Keep It": Toward A Mormon Theology Of Work, Walker A. Wright

BYU Studies

In the controversial film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the protagonist, Brian, finds himself in the market square while being pursued by Roman centurions. In the speakers’ corner of the market, three different prophets are shown attempting to gain an audience with tales of Armageddon. One dust-covered wild man shrieks about “the beast . . . huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent.” Next to him, garbed in red, a more refined preacher boldly pronounces that “the demon shall bear a …

Abortion And The Right To Not Be Pregnant, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this paper I defend Judith Jarvis Thomson's 'Good Samaritan Argument' (otherwise known as the 'feminist argument') for the permissibility of abortion, first advanced in her important, ground-breaking article 'A Defense of Abortion' (1971), against objections from Joseph Mahon (1979, 1984). I also highlight two problems with Thomson's argument as presented, and offer remedies for both of these problems. The article begins with a short history of the importance of the article to the development of practical ethics. Not alone did this article put the topic of the abortion on the philosophical map, but it made 'practical ethics' in the …

Olympic Bids, Professional Sports, And Urban Politics: Four Decades Of Stadium Planning In Detroit, 1936-1975, Jeffrey R. Wing

Dissertations

Between 1936 and 1975, political and business leaders in Detroit tried to gain support for the financing and construction of a municipal stadium. The stadium plan originated as part of an attempt to bring the Summer Olympics to the city. The municipal stadium was to serve as the main Olympic stadium and be used for a variety of events after the Olympics were finished. Later, after Detroit leaders gave up on the Olympics after several failed bids, the stadium plan evolved into a domed facility on the downtown riverfront for the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions, the city’s professional baseball …

Bigger By The Dozens: The Prevalence Of Afro-Based Tradition In Battle Rap, Shingi Mavima

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

This paper interrogates the linguistic grounding of battle rap in Afro-based cultural practices, and the transformative power the understated art form possesses within the African American community. An integral part of hip-hop from the beginning, 'battling' has grown into a distinct subculture in recent years. Because of its oft-unmitigated rawness, it is often viewed as a lesser artistic form that embodies the worst of the violence, misogyny and other societal ills that hip-hop is accused of promoting. This paper argues that battle rap is not a corruption of Black culture: it is the modern incarnation of long-held oral, competitive, and …

Directing Time Stands Still, Michael Bradley Sheeks

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This document is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in theatre. It is a detailed account of author Michael Sheeks’s artistic process in directing Time Stands Still in the fall of 2015. The thesis chronicles the director’s artistic process from pre-production through performance in five chapters: a preproduction analysis, an historical and critical perspective, a process journal, a post-production analysis and a process development analysis. Exhibits and works cited are included.

"You Are All A Lost Generation" : The Wandering Soldier In The Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Denn

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

American involvement in World War I, although for only one year, wreaked havoc upon millions of young men, many never overcoming the horror and suffering. Although the men returned to America externally fit and physically intact, internally the war still raged. Drawn into a nightmarish world thousands of miles from home, the American World War I veteran endured the carnage, chivalrously defeating the evil attempting to permeate the world. Exposed to sophisticated weaponry, as well as incompetent leaders, these young men from American farms, cities and suburbs persevered and sailed home, welcomed and greeted as heroes by their homeland.

Upon …

Acts Of Courage In World War Ii: Reviewing World War Ii Through Medal Of Honor Stories [Lesson Plan], Thomas G. Connors

Open Educational Resources

Learning Objectives

• Understand the criteria for receiving a Medal of Honor
• Make connections between geography and chronology to grasp the evolution of World War II by organizing individual battles into the context of military campaigns and theaters of war
• Understand how an individual act of valor fits into the broader historical context of a war and how learning about veterans’ personal war experiences gives insight into military strategy and campaigns

Lesson Overview

• Students use the stories of Medal of Honor recipients to outline the battles and chronologies of World War II’s major military campaigns. Working individually or in groups, they …

Violence And Warfare In The Late Prehistoric Southwest : A Ritual Explanation, Nia Michelle Alecksynas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The last four decades of research regarding the late prehistoric American Southwest has produced abundant evidence for violence, warfare and cannibalism among the Ancestral Puebloan peoples. Most archaeologists attribute this rise in violence and subsequent abandonment of the Four Corners region to degrading environmental conditions. While ecological factors surely contributed, it is hard to accept that this alone led to the extreme mutilation of hundreds of human remains found throughout the Pueblo territory. It is proposed that increasing social complexity along with new ritual practices resulted in intense and violent attacks throughout the Pueblo expanse.

Poisoned Hope : Mias, Mythmaking, And Trauma In Defeated Nations, Patrick Gallagher

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines a postwar phenomenon that it describes as the secret camp myth. That myth arises from uncertainty about the fates of POWs and MIAs, and its advocates argue that the MIAs must survive in secret captivity after the war. This dissertation examines two historical examples of this phenomenon: West Germany following World War II, and the US after the Vietnam War. These two examples have been examined individually, but have not been compared extensively, and prior historiography has only examined each within the context of German and American histories of those wars. This dissertation argues that both cases …

Loyalty To God : An Earnest Word With Those Who Are Sincerely Seeking To Be Right With God And Man, William Telfer

Heritage Material

No abstract provided.

Native Milwaukee, Bryan C. Rindfleisch

History Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Now & Then (Volume 32, Issue 01, 2016), Center Of Excellence For Appalachian Studies And Services, East Tennessee State University

Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine

Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Volume 32, Issue 01, published in 2016. The theme of this issue is Cultivating Appalachia. This issue captures cultivation in Appalachia through reflections that focus on land, tradition, and community life as ongoing practices shaped by care, labor, and memory. Contributors describe relationships to place through stewardship, creative work, and the transmission of knowledge across generations, while also addressing change and uncertainty in rural life. Across the issue, preservation and adaptation appear in tension as communities negotiate continuity and transformation. Together, the pieces present cultivation as a recurring lens for understanding how people …

Chaucerian Imperfections: The Other And The Turbulant Self, Ahmed Seif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is interested in forms of “imperfection” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I define “imperfection” as an authorial gesture performed to narrate an idealized virwhile depriving it from its idealism. The imperfection of a virtue, however, does not happen absolutely. It is the character’s incomplete, distorted, or decadent command of a given virtue, rather than the viritself, that makes it imperfect. Consisting of three chapters, the thesis examines Chaucer’s imperfection of things idealized within two medieval spaces: a) the ecclesiastical institution of Church and b) the secular institution of Knighthood. This is why the thesis settled on the Prioress’s …

In Search Of Granby: A Colonial Village Of South Carolina, Kathryn F. Keenan

Theses and Dissertations

Granby was a thriving village in the middle of South Carolina from 1760-1830. Most histories of the Midlands of South Carolina generally begin with the establishment of the state capital Columbia in 1786 with some mention of Native Americans and backcountry settlers before that, but do not mention Granby. The reason it has been overlooked are twofold. When Columbia was built across the Congaree River from Granby, merchants and residents moved to the new city. As Granby fell into decline, most of its buildings collapsed or were moved and Granby ceased to exist as a town. Also, most of the …

Sounding Appalachian: /Ai/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, And Rootedness, Paul E. Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Appalachia, the mountainous region that stretches from northern Georgia to Pennsylvania (ARC, 2015), is a region that has been considered culturally and linguistically unique in the United States. There is a small but growing body of literature that has demonstrated that the language varieties of this region, collapsed under the broad heading of Appalachian English (AE), diverge from Mainstream American English and other Southern American English varieties (Wolfram & Christian, 1976, Montgomery & Hall, 2004, Labov et al., 2006, among others). Much of this literature has focused on vowels and morpho-syntax, but other linguistic aspects have not received much attention, …

Evil Men Have No Songs: The Terrorist And Literatuer Boris Savinkov, 1879-1925, Irina Vasilyeva Meier

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the works of the legendary terrorist mastermind Boris Savinkov (1879-1925), who planned notorious political assassinations at the turn of the twentieth century even as he took part in the leading literary circles of his day. This work situates Savinkov in what Mikhail Bakhtin defines as a “chronotope,” a time-space module that I label “Revolutionary Apocalypse.” I compare the development of revolutionary myths of martyrdom in Revolutionary Russia for both Savinkov and his contemporary Maria Spiridonova to analyze the redefined notions of love, truth, and sacrifice among the Russian intelligentsia that turned these Russian revolutionary terrorists …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2016

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editors, Kevin P. Lavery, Anika N. Jensen, Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Adult Influences In The Construction Of Youth War Diaries, Amanda Slater

Undergraduate Research Journal

In her article, “Youth Voices in the War Diary Business,” Susan Honeyman argues that interviews with children and youth – although influenced by the adult population – “resist being reducible simply to war propaganda or protectionist sentimentality” (74). This is especially true for award-winning author and peace activist Deborah Ellis, whose recent nonfiction – Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees (2009), Off to War: Voices of Soldier’s Children (2008), and Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children (2004) – tend to lack “imposing adult interpretation” (Honeyman 82). While this may be accurate within the work of Ellis as well as …

The Self Is A Moving Target: The Neuroscience Of Siri Hustvedt's Artists, Jason Tougaw

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Dijon, Burgundy, Elizaveta Strakhov, Jean-Pascal Pouzet

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Science Fiction, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

Science fiction (SF) emerges as a distinct literary and cultural genre out of a familiar set of world-famous texts ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (1966–) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–) that have, in aggregate, generated a colossal, communal archive of alternate worlds and possible future histories. SF’s dialectical interplay between utopian optimism and apocalyptic pessimism can be felt across the genre’s now centuries-long history, only intensifying in the 20th century as the clash between humankind’s growing technological capabilities and its ability to use those powers safely or wisely has reached existential-threat propositions, not …

The Two Witnesses Of Revelation 11:1-13: Arguments, Issues Of Interpretation, And A Way Forward, Ian R. Brown

Dissertations

The narrative of Rev 11:1-13 involves two prophet-witnesses. The question of the identity of the two witnesses of Rev 11:1-13 has been answered in a variety of ways. In the history of exegetical investigation, they have been seen as two actual people, a symbol for a larger group, or even a symbol for inanimate objects. Clearly, some proposals seem more plausible than others do; however, the debate remains open. Indeed, the possibility exists that a stronger case could be made for a previous proposal or that a new one could be found that is more agreeable to scholars of Revelation. …

Playbook, Jason Edward Harrington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From 2007 to 2013 I worked for the Transportation Security Administration. It was a Kafkaesque experience, rife with bureaucratic absurdity. This memoir is a chronicle of that experience, from the days leading up to my initial application, to the days following my letter of resignation. It is also the story of a man dealing with personal demons, and struggling to find his way through the morass of modern society.

“What The World Looks Like”: On Banality And Spectacle, Graham Macphee, Angela Naimou

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Tenor of Our Times

No abstract provided.

The Contest Of Marriage: Domestic Authority In The Victorian Novel, Morgan Richardson

Theses and Dissertations--English

In “The Contest of Marriage: Domestic Authority in Victorian Literature”, I argue that depictions of engaged and newlywed couples in the Victorian novel consistently dismantle the concept of marriage, depicting the process of two individuals attempting to become one couple as a tenuous and even dangerous project to be undertaken during the nineteenth century. By looking at works where the decision to marry comes at the beginning of the novel rather than the conclusion, I examine the ways in which different novelists document and anatomize the consistent failures in the theoretical underpinnings of domesticity and conjugality. Given that gender, separate …