Digital Commons Network^™

Jerry Day, Daniel Holzmna

Student Theses

The life and times of California's oldest erotic bakery.

Sweetly Somatic, Grace Edwards

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The delight of biting into something sweet. The freedom of getting lost in the movement of your own body. The sensation of being completely enveloped by color. The flutter that rises in your chest when surrounded by abundance. Sweetly Somatic traces personal sensory experience across time, transforming ephemeral moments of joy into forms that capture enduring perseverance. Sculpted from fluxing ceramic materials, piped grout, and glass adornments, the works examine the elasticity of memory, both bodily and retrospectively. My bodily sensations are my most accessible form of joy, and a filter that all experiences move through.

Belonging, Ver Ikeseh

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis explores belonging as the core of my artistic practice, developed through public murals and participatory installations in shared spaces. Grounded in a studio practice that engages directly with communities, the work positions art within everyday environments rather than separate from them. Through murals created across James Madison University and within surrounding communities, I examine how public art can generate moments of connection, visibility, and reflection. The thesis culminates in the participatory mural Belonging, created in the Duke Hall Gallery at James Madison University, where these ideas are brought together through direct public engagement. Developed through collaboration, the …

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 …

Meikyu, Diana D. Dyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis explores the relationship between digital and physical practices through the integration of traditional glassworking techniques and digital media. The project combines glass fusing and glass blowing with woodworking, screen printing, vinyl cutting, animation, and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create dialogue between physical and digital forms. This thesis documents the full creative process, beginning with conceptual sketches and progressing through the fabrication and assembly of glass components into finished sculptural pieces. Digital technologies are then incorporated to augment and extend the physical artwork. Three-dimensional (3D) assets were created using Maya, a 3D modeling software, and implemented within Snapchat's …

Advertising The Noble Savage: Blackfeet Exploitation And Erasure Through Glacier National Park, The Great Northern Railway, And The Bureau Of Indian Affairs From 1900-1920, Edward D'Angelo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Blackfeet Native Americans have lived in and around Glacier National Park and their current reservation boundaries for thousands of years. They previously lived a nomadic lifestyle, but were forced onto a reservation by the American government in the nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Blackfeet sold more land to the federal government at the same time the Great Northern Railway was building its railroad through the Rocky Mountains. In order to increase travel demands on its railway in the area, the Great Northern Railway lobbied the federal government …

That Song Sounds Familiar: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright Considerations In Popular Music, Jessica Johnson

Honors Theses

Much of popular music has started to bear resemblance to songs of the past as artists rely on techniques, including sampling and interpolations, to ensure their song is a guaranteed hit. But what are the legal implications behind that, and is the line between inspiration and copying getting blurred? This thesis aims to consider the precedent of copyright law as applied to modern musical works and how the landscape of popular music has evolved over time to raise more copyright concerns. It also looks at two modern case studies of musical inspiration that have resulted in legal claims: the song …

Visual Development For Descent To Paradise, Rowyn Porterfield

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis is a study in the process of concept development for video games within the format of a video game pitch. This includes concept designs for important characters, relevant settings, and other supplemental material deemed necessary within my research for a complete pitch. The content shown within this paper includes visual research, creative writing, 3D setting design, and 2D artworks for character, setting, and prop design. All of this is then put into context through two 2D illustrations of key art.

Reimagining The Cadenza: Bluegrass And Mozart, Linna Zheng

Honors Theses

The bluegrass-inspired cadenza for the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 is a parallel with the “Turkish” episode of Mozart’s composition. While introducing the bluegrass idiom into a Classical concerto may not be idiosyncratic, it can be understood and seen as an extension of Mozart’s own practice and approach to stylistic disruption. This approach can be understood through the concepts of Sonata Theory, revealing the cadenza as a site of productive deformation within a normative formal framework. Along with this, Robert S. Hatten’s concept of troping further supports the idea that the interaction between Classical and bluegrass idioms …

"Deadly Imports": Populism, Demagoguery, And The Contemporary Rhetoric Of U.S. Immigration, Summer N. Wolfe

Communication Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project examines former CNN and Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs’s meteoric success to understand his rhetorical choices and appeals surrounding immigration discourse in the United States. As the first rhetorical assessment of Dobbs’s immigration rhetoric, this project centers him as a key figure who defined how U.S. culture operates within immigration discourses. The project relies on Michael Calvin McGee's work on ideographs to perform a close textual analysis of news programs featuring Dobbs to understand how ideologies about immigrants and immigration are built, circulated, and maintained in the Right’s media ecology. The project advances three arguments about Dobbs’s anti-immigration …

Waring Library Society Newsletter, Spring 2026, Waring Library Society, Waring Historical Library, Medical University Of South Caroilna, Jude Arendall, Joann Livingston Zeise, Brooke Fox

The Waring Library Society Newsletters

In this issue, the Waring Library Society welcomes its new President and shares updates on recent and upcoming renovations to Waring Historical Library. Waring Historical Library's staff reflect on insights gained from a recent sabbatical, and highlight several events and engagements the Waring has been part of this season.

Analyzing Social Implications Of The Gender Wage Gap, Jessie A. Clarke

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The researcher seeks to understand the gender wage gap in the United States. The research question studied is “Why do women in the United States on average earn less income than men?” Women gain less power and resources as they earn less income than men. The researcher explores the phenomenon in this paper. This research proposal utilizes qualitative methods via interviews, and analysis through coding. In previous research, there is a lack of inclusion on the gender wage gap regarding various identities such as sexual orientation, other gender identities, and race/ethnicity. The researcher hopes to fill in these gaps in …

Incorporating Ai Within English Composition Courses To Promote Ai Literacy And Decrease Academic Dishonesty, Damaris Rodriguez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The rapid adoption of the program ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) by the public has caused tension and concerns among educators and higher education as they struggle on finding a middle ground among the practices of artificial intelligence (AI) within education that will continue to ensure that the instructor stays on top of the AI as the main educator for students. It is argued that the incorporation of AI within in-class assignments, for example, will assist students to develop an ethical awareness and their critical thinking skills to be able to recognize that there are limitations in regards to the …

Beyond The Dice Roll: Investigating Character Creation In A Pokemon-Inspired D&D Game, Alberto S. Rendon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

For this study of Pokémon Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) I study gameplay as a way to capture how players use character creation and performance in role-playing games as a form of social identity expression. I provide a rich description of how players construct a game persona and relate it to their social identity.By engaging in an ethnographic study wherein I analyze the players’ game character, their style of play, the decisions they make during the game, and the small group dynamic that emerges as a result, I want to show how mixing these two fandoms can promote ways for players …

Towards The Publisher-Function Of The Independent Press: Authorship And Experimentation In The Semiotext(E) Oeuvre, Gilbert Aguirre

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project is a contribution to debates on authorship, expanding Foucault’s theorization of the author as a function of discourse into the field of creative production by proposing my theory of the publisher-function. Here, I highlight the role of the publisher in shaping literary discourse using avant-garde publishing house Semiotext(e). I analyze two experimental publications to illustrate how this publisher’s role in editing and curating their booklist—or, as I propose we call it, their oeuvre—compounds with the fact of publication to create a new kind of authorial role. This is done through emphasizing the paratexts, elements of design, and literary …

Epiphanies, Loren Malul

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

"Epiphanies” investigates moments that inspire humanity to experience and enact change. Before we break through our egos threshold, our journey begins as a form of questioning, delving into the relationship between self and environment. When we take a moment to slow down and focus on our spatial awareness, we recognize that reality is a channel we get to tune into where our reaction determines our experience. Doing my own shadow work, recognizing trauma and questioning “the invisible”, are ways to analyze our internal self. Portals, voids, intersecting landscapes, and first person perspective are all visual translations that play with environmental …

Female Victimization In Intimate Partner Violence, Phileine Phan

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a widespread issue that disproportionately affects women, causing significant physical, psychological, and economic harm. Although research has explored IPV prevalence and risk factors, fewer studies address how race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and disability intersect to shape women’s experiences and access to support. Generalizing survivors’ experiences often leads to overlooked services and policies for marginalized women. This study addresses that gap through a qualitative systematic review of peer-reviewed research on IPV victimization among women in the United States. A thematic analysis will be used to identify patterns related to systematic inequalities, help-seeking barriers, and the …

Against Despair: Hope As Rhetorical Practice In Chicana Theatre, Esperanza Arreola

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Chicana theatre functions as survival pedagogy—a rhetorical practice that teaches communities to name structural violence, transform bodily trauma into collective power, and rehearse liberation as a precondition for enacting it. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s concept of literature as “equipment for living,” Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and Cynthia M. Sheard’s reconceptualization of epideictic rhetoric as community formation, I analyze three plays that exemplify this pedagogy: Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992) and The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001), and Josefina López’s Real Women Have Curves (1990).

These works address distinct but interlocking forms of …

Nonbinary And Transgender Representation In Media: How Scripted Media Impacts And Shapes The Identities Of Communities Outside The Gender Binary, Makenna Dykstra

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The lack of, and otherwise poor, representation of nonbinary and trans communities contributes to the societal othering of these communities. However, nonbinary and trans representation holds importance to these communities. Trans and nonbinary communities, like other communities, use media to help them negotiate their identities (Hall, 2005). However, current representation in scripted television is small and contentious, with the ability to have just as much of a negative impact as a positive one. LGBTQ+ television has a history of favoring moderate depictions of queerness, like that in nonbinary and trans characters, as a means of defining these identities to cisgender …

Echoes Of Becoming - K. Morrell, Kole K. Morrell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I work sculpturally, exploring presence, transformation, and emotional weight that is not inherently visible. My forms are recognizable yet unsettled, existing between familiarity and distortion. Meaning is not fixed or declared, it reveals itself slowly through texture, material, and time spent in observation.

I approach making as a form of therapeutic ritual. Through touch, I shape and alter the material, imbuing it with the story of emotions I want to convey to the viewer. I am most connected to the work in its “in-between” states, when the form is still shifting and unresolved. In these moments, it mirrors my own …

Echoes Of Becoming, Michelle D. Young

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I create illustrative works that deal with criticism and appreciation in parallel ways; addressing facets of society, government, the self, and the influence of social media. My art ranges from digital illustration to narrative paintings, fluctuating to the flow and response of a piece. A blend of cheekiness and empowerment, I play around with uncomfortable subjects and heavy topics to bring attention to those that are misrepresented or overlooked. I am interested in the intersection of consumable media, its history and the disregarded context behind it all.

Rooted in my experience as a descendant of generational immigrant-refugees, my work reflects …

Humor And The Politics Of Belonging: Race, Gender, And Radicalization In Online Spaces, Reese Chatman

Master's Theses

This thesis argues that post-ironic and meta-ironic humor acts as an affective gateway to far-right radicalization within online masculine subcultures. Examining incel forums and Groyper spaces, it traces how humor operates as the architecture through which extremist ideology is introduced, normalized, and internalized. Drawing on a synthesis of meme studies, digital rhetoric, and theories of irony and affect, and using digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis, the study examines recurring meme figures, especially the Wojak and its NPC variant, as portable diagnostic devices that sort participants into the "awake" and the unconscious regardless of ideological content. Case studies include incel …

The Reframing Of An Ancient Tragedy Within A Contemporary Context, Samuel Ofosu Danquah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines, explores, and explains the costume design process for a contemporary production of The Trojan Women by Euripides performed at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The production concentrates on the play’s violent upheaval and its relationship between historic, present, and future significance. The Trojan Women by Euripides is recognized as a leading anti-war tragedy inspired by the Melian Massacre, which occurred circa 415-416 BCE. The Melian Massacre was a war between Sparta and Athens that occurred on the eastern mainland of Greece. The Trojan Women presents a distinctive challenge, visually depicting the immediate consequences of a city’s downfall …

Athena: A Study In Directing, Keean E. Enriquez-Sexton

Honors Theses

A step-by-step look into the directing process at the collegiate level, following a production of Athena by Gracie Gardner from show selection, through rehearsals, all the way to performance. This thesis serves as a case study in directing, detailing the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures throughout the process.

Book Review: Protest And Pedagogy: Charlottesville’S Black Freedom Struggle And The Making Of The American High School, Cordelia Riley

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Psychological Principles In Writing Center Consulting & Ai, Ella S. Hansen

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

A third of those ages 18 to 24 have engaged with ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2025). The newest form, ChatGPT-4, is better at generating more plausible long-form essays and creative writing than ever before (Imran & Almusharraf, 2023), meaning that AI-assisted writing is prevalent at higher education institutions (Cardon et al., 2023) and in writing centers (Goulet, 2025). Limited research has investigated the impact of this on writing center consultants. This multidisciplinary study investigated how consultants feel about large language model artificial intelligence (LLM AI) and how it can impact the consulting process, through the lens of three psychological principles: empathy, social …

Rewriting The Boer ‘Slim’: Alice Stopford Green’S Reports On St. Helena’S Prisoner Of War Camp And Her Impact On British Views Of Boer Prisoners, Natasja A. Swanson

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Alice Stopford Green (1847 – 1929) was a prominent Irish historian and politician, known for her role as a political activist in the Irish Home Rule movement. Her lesser-known legacy is her investigative journalism on prisoner conditions in British prisoner of war camps during the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902). Her reports on Boer conditions in the Deadwood Prisoner of War Camp on the island of St. Helena reflected maltreatment and institutional abuse by the British Government. These discoveries supported the minority English opposition that thought that England was overstepping the rules of civilized warfare. Green was primarily concerned …

The Mysteries Of Postpartum Ocd: A Systematic Review, Taryn Shaffer

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Background: The research on postpartum mental health is growing, with most focusing on physical and sexual wellness, or well-known mental health symptoms such as psychosis, depression, and stress. However, as the research grows, so does the interest in lesser-known or under-considered postpartum mental health symptoms, including Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The focus of this research can be the exacerbation of already-present OCD symptoms, or the onset of them during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The purpose of this systematic review was to analyze research on OCD in pregnant and postpartum women. Specifically, the review included an analysis of measures used to …

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 …

Toni Morrison's New World Black Woman: Refuting, Deconstructing, And Redefining Black Women's Identity, Victoria L. Bell

Master's Theses

Abstract

Through critical analysis of media: literary works, performance, and television, this thesis explores the prejudices, silencing, dehumanizing, sexualization, and marginalization of Black women, their bodies, identity, and trauma inflicted by White-authored texts, specifically the American canon. I analyze the works of Black women authors, scholars, and activists, who counter the false representation of the patriarchy. Their literary works refute, deconstruct, and redefine the canon’s distorted, racial and gendered stereotypes, later to be named controlling images.  While narrating the Black woman’s authentic self, experience, body, and womanhood they reclaim space, authenticity, and agency.

In my research and analysis, the central …