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Best Integrated Writing Fall 2026 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

The Declaration Of Sentiments: A Womanist Perspective, Emmalee Layton

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This paper examines the Declaration of Sentiments, an influential document in the creation of the early feminist movement, through a womanist lens. This paper aims to address whether the formulation of the Declaration of Sentiments had Black women’s liberation in mind, and how feminist movements must approach misogyny and racialization as co-constitutive in order to create liberatory strategies for Black women. This paper examines specific grievances that are outlined within the Declaration of Sentiments which are then put into historical context to signal whether the Declaration of Sentiments addresses the nuances of misogynoir and effectively strategizes for Black women’s liberation …

Piercing The Veil In Sinners: Theological Insights From The Juke Joint, Antonio D. Sison Cpps

Journal of Religion & Film

Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, importantly, in its very audiovisual language and grammar, its stylistic strategies qua film. As reasoned in this essay, Coogler’s film is a rich locus theologicus, a nexus for theological discovery and insight.Sinners kindles the hermeneutical impulse to dialogue with African American/Pan-Africa theologies exemplified by the …

La Santa Muerte And The Characteristic Damage Of Canonization, Ellen Webber

Journal of Global Catholicism

Devotion to La Santa Muerte, a Mexican folk saint who personifies Death, has

been condemned by the Catholic Church for its affiliation with Mexican drug

cartels. This article challenges mainstream interpretations of La Santa Muerte

devotion using the theological framework of characteristic damage, as defined

by Lauren Winner and Paul J. Griffiths. This framework understands liturgy

as celebrated by sinners in a damaged world, and therefore necessarily damaged

itself. As much as liturgy and Christian practice form us for good, they also per-

petuate damage. I argue that the sins present in La Santa Muerte veneration are

an expression of …

Universalism And Exclusion: Immigrants Through The Lens Of French Law And Media, George Mikhael Taliak, Abellia Anggi Wardani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This research examines France’s Immigration Law LOI n°2024-42 du 26 janvier 2024 and its representation in three mainstream media outlets across the ideological spectrum: Le Figaro (right), CCFD-Terre Solidaire (left), and France Info (center). Using Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and Maurice Halbwachs’s theory of collective memory, the study explores how legal and media discourses construct symbolic and administrative boundaries of national citizenship. Findings reveal that integration is framed not as civic inclusion, but as the internalization of a singular national identity and memory. Media reinforce this framework through divergent but convergent discursive strategies. At the macro level, the law …

Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates

Graduate Masters Theses

The cultural and social history of America in the 90s is examined in this thesis by looking at the Disney Renaissance, a period of ten films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). This thesis illustrates how the animators were able to seamlessly incorporate important societal trends of the 90s into their films, portraying a changing world within their films. As they were creating a new style of the animated movie musical, they were creating works that connected to the audiences watching in new ways, by putting up a reflection of society within their films. The way that the …

Fashion, Lifestyle, And Symbolic Capital: Identity And Resistance In Eka Kurniawan’S Beauty Is A Wound, Dewi Meyrasyawati, Cysakaren Diva Pratiwi, Nisar Ul-Haq

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines how fashion culture and lifestyle, understood as modes of self presentation, social performance, and everyday practice, operate as tools of identity construction and resistance in Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty Is a Wound. The objective is to reveal how beauty, personal choices, and public perception function as symbolic capital in negotiating gendered power relations, class hierarchies, and political constraints. Using close textual analysis, the research explores how female characters, particularly Dewi Ayu, mobilize appearance, behavior, and life decisions to challenge dominant ideologies and redefine their roles in society. The findings show that fashion culture in the novel extends beyond …

“When I’M Not Heard, I Feel Like I Don’T Matter”: Advancing Equity In Disability Policy Through Critical Participatory Action Research With People With Intellectual Disability, Cris Marchionne

Student Theses

People with intellectual disability deserve a system that offers flexible, timely, and person-centered support — one that is innovative, sustainable, and holistic in enabling them to live fulfilling lives. This qualitative study, grounded in Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), examines how people with intellectual disability experience participation in decision-making within New York State's disability service system. By centering lived experience, the study identifies factors that facilitate or hinder participation in decision-making and examines structural, social, and policy-related barriers that limit agency. Through six focus groups and a Photovoice project with self-advocates receiving OPWDD services, participants described systemic barriers that limited …

Béla Király’S Tall Tale That Led To His Decoration As “Righteous” In Yad Vashem, Peter Pastor

Department of History Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In May 1993, General Béla Király was decorated Righteous among the Nations in Yad Vashem for protecting the lives of a Jewish labor company in the winter of 1943–1944 in the rear of the front in Proskurov, Ukraine. His recognition was based on false testimonies by veteran labor servicemen who were unaware that, during the winter of 1944–1945, Király, then a high-ranking official in the fascist Arrow Cross Ministry of Defense in Kőszeg, failed to respond to the suffering of 5,000 Jewish labor servicemen, of whom 2,500 died.

Keepers, Surfmen, Wives, And Daughters: A Gender And Kinship Study Of The United States Life-Saving Service In North Carolina, 1874-1915, Tammy M. Woodward

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is both a beautiful and dangerous place. Its region is filled with descendants of the Keepers and Surfmen who once manned the lifesaving stations that the federal government built along America’s coastlines. It is also home to one of the most dangerous stretches of American coastline known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. The United States Life-Saving Service, established in 1871, was a government solution to the growing public outcry over the staggering number of deaths by shipwreck during the nineteenth century. While the Life-Saving Service has fostered a small but detailed historiography, its …

The Legend Of The Bear Lake Monster, Melissa Anderson Asay

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Bear Lake Monster is a legend that has persisted for centuries. This monster is rooted in Shoshone oral traditions and hold the potential to be based off of fossils found in the Shoshone territory. This living legend was later amplified by Mormon settlers. One settler in particular, Joseph C. Rich, played a significant role in shaping its narrative. Though he eventually admitted to fabricating sightings to encourage settlement, belief in the creature remains alive today. The serpent’s presence in local lore has undeniably influenced the Bear Lake region, shaping both its identity and tourism industry. This legend serves as …

The Family As A Mechanism Of Civilizational Continuity: Absorption, Localization, And Rejection Of Modern Values In The Indic Case, Monika Monika

Comparative Civilizations Review

Contrary to the common view that the family socializes the individual into a given culture, this paper insists that the family performs a far more profound, indeed, a constitutive function. It is not simply the first school of civilizational values; it is the primary institutional site through which a civilization reproduces its symbolic order and, in so doing, acts as the gatekeeper of civilizational continuity and change. It is here that a civilization’s foundational principles are first internalized; and it is here, too, that modern values, or new norms thrust upon it by encounters with alien civilizations ⎯ are first …

Contested Borders And National Identity In Southeast Asia: An Analysis Of Thailand– Cambodia Dispute Through Nontawat Numbenchapol’S Documentary Film, Boundary, Mirwan Andan

International Review of Humanities Studies

Southeast Asia remains a region marked by numerous interstate border disputes. Among these, the Thailand–Cambodia border dispute surrounding the Preah Vihear Temple, located between Sisaket Province in Thailand and Preah Vihear Province in Cambodia, represents one of the conflicts with the greatest potential to affect regional stability and harmony in the region. This dispute extends beyond questions of territorial sovereignty, encompassing the construction of national identity, historical memory, and the domestic political dynamics of both countries. This article examines the representation of nationalism in Boundary (2013), a documentary film directed by Thai independent filmmaker Nontawat Numbenchapol. Drawing on perspectives interdisciplinary …

Fact-Checking In The University: The Experience Of The ‘Verificatón Electoral’ As A Model Of Teaching Innovation, Irene Larraz, Samuel Toledano, Jordi Rodríguez-Virgili, Félix Arias Robles, Ángeles Durán, Marta Pérez-Escolar, Rocío Zamora Medina, Rubén Ramos Antón, Óscar Espíritusanto Nicolás, Miguel Ángel Esteban Navarro, Marcos Bermejo Gil

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article analyzes the experience of Verificatón, a teaching innovation project based on a live fact-checking hackathon aimed at identifying and combating disinformation in the electoral context. The initiative, developed by the fact-checking media outlet Newtral in collaboration with nine Spanish universities, brought together a hundred journalism students. The results show that this experience facilitates the adoption of the fact-checking methodology in the students' professional practice and contributes to overcoming the competency gap in university journalism education. The case study validates this training proposal, which, framed within an electoral scenario, reinforces students’ learning of the role of critical thinking in …

Southern History Remixed: Conversation With Dr. Michael Bertrand1 On His Book, Southern History Remixed, (Gainesville, Fl: University Press Of Florida, 2024), 322 Pp., Sheri Bartlett Browne

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Myth, Spirituality, And Thought Patterns In Two African And Brazilian Ritual Dramas, Dele Layiwola

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

This essay conceptualizes and historicizes the phenomena of religion, custom, and belief systems by utilizing two celebrated dramatic texts and performances as practical illustrations of the complex roles they play in the social, political, and cultural lives of human beings, irrespective of their geographical locations. The arguments demonstrate that religion or spirituality is a given phenomenon in the personal and public lives of the denizens of various societies. It possesses its own logic and rules, which may not be mutually compatible, nevertheless constitute a constant universal principle. The paper employs dramatized examples to show that in classical or modern times, …

Situating Everybody Hates Chris (Ehc): The Appeal Of The Show, Elizabeth Johnson, Donald Culverson

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

"Everybody Hates Chris" (EHC) achieved critical success by employing comedy to address significant social issues, distinguishing itself in early-2000s television. Unlike earlier and contemporary series such as "Moesha," "The Hughleys," and "The Cosby Show," EHC offered a nuanced portrayal of Black family life, engaging an audience often overlooked or misrepresented by mainstream media. This article examines shifts in the television industry from the late 1990s to the early 2000s that facilitated EHC's innovative approach. The series departed from traditional family sitcoms, functioning not merely as entertainment but as a social commentary on the complexities of the family as a societal …

Editors’ Note: Introducing The Inaugural Edition

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Review Of "War And Remembrance: Recollecting And Representing War" Edited By Renée Dickason, Delphine Letort, Michel Prum And Stéphanie A.H. Bélanger, John R. Heckman

Canadian Military History

Review of War and Remembrance: Recollecting and Representing War edited by Renée Dickason, Delphine Letort, Michel Prum and Stéphanie A.H. Bélanger

Revisionist Policies And Practices: How Black Faculty Members Combat Pedagogy And Research Challenges At A Pwi, Larry J. Walker, Amanda Wilkerson, Lisa Jones

The Griot - Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc.

This autoethnographic study critically examines faculty well-being and leadership within a predominantly White institution (PWI) amidst intensifying curricular restrictions and perceived challenges to academic freedom. Guided by fugitive pedagogy, it investigates how faculty mobilize historically situated covert-overt strategies to preserve rigorous, culturally and civically relevant learning while mitigating psychosocial strain. Utilizing reflective memos and artifacts (2022–2025) from course design, mentoring, and departmental leadership, analytic vignettes trace three tensions: (a) compliance versus intellectual honesty; (b) productivity metrics versus humane pacing; and (c) risk management versus scholarly courage. Findings reveal quiet innovations, protected dialogue protocols, the erasure of special topics in diversity, …

A World Without Literature? Tagore’S Words For His Times And Ours, Salmoli Choudhuri

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In 1907, Rabindranath Tagore delivered a lecture on world literature to an audience in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. Amid powerful and intersecting forces—colonialism and nationalism, industrial modernity and mass poverty—Tagore’s position on literature was neither disengaged nor defensive, insofar as he related it to the human condition and the capacity for world-making. Far from staking a representational claim to world literature on behalf of Indian or Bengali literature, I argue in this article, Tagore reconceptualized the idea from its earlier canonical formulation by Goethe. He departed from dominant nineteenth-century philosophies that conceived the world as a spatial—and …

Reconsidering Karl Marx’S Concept Of World Literature, Kenneth Cheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

It is widely assumed that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded world literature as an epiphenomenal product of the capitalist world market, and therefore as a symptom of rather than potential cure to the crisis of modern society. However, this conflicts with the fact that they designated the Communist Manifesto itself as a world-literary production—the joint work of communists of various nationalities—and opposed it to the national limitations of German socialist literature. This article challenges existing interpretations by outlining how Marx and Engels incorporated the humanistic idealism of the Goethean Weltliteratur tradition into the theoretical framework of historical materialism. It …

[De]Constructing Jimmy's Grin: Doing Cultural Studies Through The Lens Of Boston Globe Editorial Cartoonist Paul Szep's Showcase Of Carter's White House Campaign, Lori Amber Roessner

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Heeding journalism historians Hanno Hardt and Bonnie Brennan’s call for inquiries that provide a new understanding of historical working conditions, this study explored the production of a sample of Szep’s editorial cartoons that surrounded Jimmy Carter’s campaign and presidency from 1976 to 1980. In particular, the manuscript considered the historical conditions and personal circumstances that influenced the cultural production of Szep’s body of work surrounding Jimmy Carter’s presidency; representations of Carter and his White House campaign in the sample of 20 editorial cartoons produced by Szep; moments of consumption by active Boston Globe audiences; the practice of identity [de]construction related …

"Your Problem Is Not At All An Uncommon One": Visibility, Black Men, And Sexual Orientation In The Anti-Apartheid And Civil Rights Movements, Wren Addison Weddell

Dissertations and Theses

The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement and the American Civil Rights Movement are two of the most well-known examples of racial liberation movements, but there are few scholarly works that offer comparisons between the two. Furthermore, the experiences of people who fall outside the bounds of heteronormative society are often overlooked in historical research on both movements. Despite the dearth in research, there are several key factors that are revealed when comparing the lives of Black non-heterosexual men among the activists for both of these movements, including the role of the global community, unique local cultures, and how the state polices …

Just Hillbillies: State Power, Private Militarism, Coal, And Constitutional Crisis In The West Virginia Treason Trials, 1919-1937, Ryan Gregory Fix

Masters Theses

In August 1921, roughly ten thousand armed coal miners marched toward Logan County, West Virginia, in the largest armed labor uprising in American history. When the fighting at Blair Mountain ended, the state prosecuted union leaders for treason against the state of West Virginia. This thesis examines that legal campaign of 1921–1923 and its long aftermath, arguing that the treason trials functioned less as a search for individual guilt than as an instrument for fixing the meaning of Blair Mountain before the miners could define it themselves. Where decades of gubernatorial proclamations and martial law had exposed the limits of …

Objects Of Atrocity: Material Culture And The Challenges Of Difficult Histories, Robert M. Ehrenreich, Jane E. Klinger, Gabriel H. Pizzorno, Caroline Sturdy Colls

Purdue University Press Books

The vast majority of people throughout history have left few written traces. That is especially the case for those who were brutally forced from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and swiftly imprisoned, enslaved, or murdered. Objects of Atrocity: Material Culture and the Challenges of Difficult Histories addresses how we return humanity to these people in order to avoid their erasure from history. Academics and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and cross-disciplinary approaches grapple with the challenges and possibilities relating to the collection, conservation, storage, and display of objects in the aftermath of mass atrocities. This collection confronts a …

The Possibility Of Post Binary Reflexivity: A Genealogy Of Binary Logic In Western Philosophy, Vaughan A. Bidois

Critical Humanities

This article traces a genealogy of binary logic within Western philosophy, from its origins in Platonic metaphysics through to its deconstruction in poststructuralist theory. Drawing on the genealogical methods of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, it critiques how oppositional structures, such as mind/body, reason/emotion, and truth/error, have persisted through shifting intellectual paradigms while shaping knowledge, power, and subjectivity. Structuralist and linguistic theories are examined for their role in reinforcing binary meaning-making, while poststructural critiques (notably Derrida and Foucault) are explored for their attempts to subvert such hierarchies. However, the article argues that these critiques remain paradoxically ensnared within the same …

Staging Reception / Perception: Transhistorical Bi-Directional Dialogues Between Etruscan Visual Cultural Objects And Giuseppe Penone's Contemporary Sculptures, Shelby Morgan

University Honors Theses

I use the occasion of the March 2024 exhibit,"Vulci. Goods for Mankind. Goods for Gods." at Milan's Luigi Rovati Foundation to consider how the museum's staging of Etruscan visual material cultural objects and contemporary sculptures by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone prompts viewers to perceive transhistorical bi-directional dialogues between the viewer and material culture as well as between the ancient and contemporary objects themselves.

Via a close reading of the exhibition while leveraging the three frameworks of aura, imprint and classical reception I analyze how the staging of the hypogeum creates a place of atmosphere. I argue this is done through …

A History Of The Underground Comix Scene: The Seriousness Of An Unserious Genre, Harris Darcie Shugart

Master's Theses

The Underground Comix Scene of the 1960s and 1970s was born out of an age of censorship. The Comics Code Authority, a regulatory body created by the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, established guidelines requiring publishing houses to self-regulate following a recommendation from the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953. Comix with an X, for their X-rated nature, represent an emerging counter-culture in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1970s, with an epicenter of San Francisco. These comix and their artists were not interested in obtaining the looming ‘Seal of Approval’ from the …

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration, Malak Ouammou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration is an interdisciplinary historical examination of a variety of intellectual and material cross-cultural interactions and connections between Asia and the Maghreb from 900 to 1492. It primarily revolves around agriculture, sericulture, and immaterial and material culture, with an emphasis on knowledge production and dissemination. In it, I focus on the Mediterranean endpoint of the Silk Road network, illustrating the Maghrebi Silk Road through an exploration of various case studies such as rice, silk, and storytelling that demonstrate the role of and the extent to which these “secondary” Silk Road routes existed and were …