Digital Commons Network^™

[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 …

Ion Channels As Targets For Parasiticides: A Brief Review Of Past, Present, And Future Directions, Josette V. Ricker, Mallory Mendenhall

Georgia Journal of Science

Scientists and healthcare providers have tried for decades to find parasite treatments that balance patient safety with efficacy in eliminating the pathogen. One approach is to target specifically the parasite’s important bodily functions while sparing the host. This brief review examines the historically significant antiparasitics - pyrethrins, picrotoxin, piperazine, and avermectins – all which specifically target parasite ion channels. We discuss the history of their discovery and use, which subsequently led to the development of new generations of parasiticides, and continues to inspire the search for safe and effective treatments.

Soft Korsi: An Embodied Spatial Interior System For Communal Warmth, Faezeh Panahandeh

Graduate Final Projects

ABSTRACT

Soft Korsi: An Embodied Spatial Interior System for Communal Warmth reconceptualizes the historic Iranian Korsi as an innovative textile-based interior system. Traditionally, the Korsi functioned not only as a heating device but also as a spatial, material, cultural, and embodied system, which brought people together around a shared warm focal point. The integration of a heat source, textile coverings, floor seating arrangements, closeness of bodies, and domestic traditions related to warmth made possible a collective experience, rather than an individual or environmental one.

This design project seeks to address the disappearance of the Korsi from contemporary domestic environments as …

Branding, Catalogs, And Institutional Identity: The Libraries Of Edfu And Alexandria In Historical Perspective, Patrick Roughen

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This article examines library catalogs as brand artifacts in the context of two ancient libraries: the Library of Alexandria and the library of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, Egypt. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital and brand theory, this research argues that the catalogs of these two institutions functioned as early branding instruments. The Pinakes, the catalog of the Library of Alexandria, projected a brand of universal knowledge and intellectual prestige, and the inscribed wall catalog at Edfu reflected a brand focused on sacred authority and the sustaining of cosmic order (Ma'at).  Together, they illustrate two opposing …

[2026 Honorable Mention] Impact Of Chicana Rewritings Of La Virgen De Guadalupe And La Malinche, Destiny Villarreal Quintero

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

This piece elaborates on the cultural significance of La Virgen de Guadalupe and La Malinche in Mexican/ Chicanx communities and how they impact women's gender roles.

Beyond Commemoration To Reparations: A Media Representation Analysis Of The Elaine Massacre Of 1919, Oyeronke Oyindamola Afolabi

Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the evolving public memory of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 through a critical analysis of media representation, commemorative practices, and descendant-led advocacy. Situating the massacre within the broader history of racial violence in the United States, the study argues that its significance extends beyond the events of 1919 to include the long-term processes of historical silencing, narrative distortion, and contested remembrance that have shaped its afterlife. Drawing on interdisciplinary frameworks from memory studies, critical heritage studies, and media discourse analysis, the research employs a qualitative thematic analysis of contemporary media publications from 2018 to 2024. Guided by …

Freedom In The Press: Black Print Culture And Antislavery Activism In The United States, 1772-1857, Bernard T. Baze

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Nineteenth century African American journalists employed the press as a political, legal, and moral instrument to challenge the legitimacy of the institution of American slavery and advocate for universal emancipation. Through an analysis of the Black press, including Freedom’s Journal, Colored American, North Star, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Provincial Freeman, and the Christian Recorder, the study highlights the agency of Black abolitionists in shaping antislavery public discourse. It contends that these writers advanced a multifaceted antislavery strategy rooted in moral suasion, constitutional argumentation, legal denunciations, and religious advocacy. Through these efforts, they revealed the contradictions between slaveholding and the nation’s professed …

"An Unusual Experiment:" The Women Of The Oss, Adaline Mae Brenning

Masters Theses

As the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established America's first centralized intelligence organization under the leadership of Major General William J. Donovan in June 1942. The Office of Strategic Services marked the beginning of an established American intelligence community, but it also served as an entryway for women to join the war effort through intelligence work. Through the study of the recruitment, assessment, and training processes and women serving both domestically and abroad, it is possible to establish a more comprehensive view of the true scope of OSS operations during the war. Additionally, the stories …

In Search Of Whitman's "Real War": Soldier Recreations During The American Civil War, Rebecca C. Felton

Masters Theses

When most people think of the American Civil War, they recall the agonies and ecstasies of combat, envisioning the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the glorious folly of Pickett’s Charge, or the ravages of Sherman’s March to the Sea. What gets left out of the history books is what the common soldier experienced more than anything else: camp life. This study sheds renewed light on what the soldiers of the Union and Confederacy did to pass the time between battles. It focuses specifically on what they did for fun, addressing three categories of recreational activities: sports, music, and literature. It finds …

Destined To Fail?: The U.S. Advisory Period And The Lost Path To Victory, 1960-1965, Alexander Patrick Fancher

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

South Vietnam experienced robust military and economic development between 1960 and 1963 under the leadership of President Ngo Dinh Diem. With the help of U.S. aid, the RVNAF improved its ability to wage war against the Viet Cong, while simultaneously pacifying the countryside. ARVN and VNN units developed new capabilities and trained officers to replace losses after the French Exodus from Vietnam. The introduction of U.S. advisors created the conditions necessary for the development of a young, inexperienced military. Acting as guides, these Americans were cautiously optimistic that South Vietnam was on the path to self-sufficiency by spring 1963 as …

“Courage, Sisters. Your Living Is The Stuff Of Freedom”: Women In The Camden 28, 1971-1973, Abbigail Madeline Ealer

Theses and Dissertations

This historical study investigated the role and experiences of the ten women in the Camden 28, which was a group of Catholic Leftists who raided the draft board in Camden, NJ in 1971 to protest the Vietnam War. In utilizing a myriad of sources from archival collections through scarcely seen personal ephemera to correspondence with individuals connected to this case, this thesis demonstrated the importance of these women to the planning and execution of the raid as well as their significance to the outcome of the trial in 1973. It also showed the need for targeted scholarship on them. Furthermore, …

Balancing Our Capacity To Serve: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Women Navigating Personal, Professional, And Community Leadership Roles, Shemeka K. Brathwaite

Student Theses

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of Black women community leaders as they navigate a balance between their professional, personal, and community leadership roles. The research design uses the theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist Intersectionality and Role Theory, specifically addressing the cultural burdens imposed by the Strong Black Woman archetype, which adds additional role strain. The study began with a questionnaire completed by 54 Black women community leaders, followed by 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews selected from this pool. The study’s key findings are illustrated in a Black Women’s Sustainable Community Leadership Framework. Black women community leaders exude high self-efficacy, …

The Flight Of The Purdue Owl: An Institutional History, Harry C. Denny, Vicki R. Kennell, Garrett I. Colón

The Founders Series

The Flight of the Purdue OWL: An Institutional History chronicles both the widely known Purdue OWL website and the lesser-known but much-celebrated on-campus writing center. Purdue University is renowned for its world-class STEM curriculum as well as its intercollegiate athletics. The university also receives considerable attention, however, for the OWL website, which is one of the most used educational resources in the world. The on-campus OWL is also a highly regarded collegiate writing center. This book tells the history of how the Purdue OWL grew out of decades of faculty working with students and their desire for a laboratory where …

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 …

Making A Phrenological America: How The Science Of The Skull Influenced Reform Movements In The United States, Nathan C. Tamkin

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Skeletons Vs. Mummies: Osteological Trauma On Bog Bodies As A Measure For Cultural Change In Ancient Europe, Miranda Hoodenpyl

University Honors Theses

Bog bodies are some of the most well known archaeological finds in the world, and are preserved human remains found in wetlands. Researchers use the information stored in the bones of bog skeletons and mummies to learn about cultural lifestyles, travels, diet, and diseases throughout time in Northern Europe and the British Isles. Through multiple cultural changes and migration, the "bog body phenomenon" has remained an unusual treatment displayed throughout time. This literature review looked at skeletal trauma on bog remains to identify cultural change over time in Northern Europe and the British Isles, spanning the Neolithic, Bronze, Iron, and …

The Thinnest Veil, Charles Butler

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The Thinnest Veil is a work of fiction set in a historical colonial world that traces the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. The main character, Anuli, is abducted from her home in Nigeria and is sold into deeper levels of the American slave system. I wanted to write from a woman’s perspective in this project and think about what power this character would have in this world. I also wanted to explore West African culture and origin, and the influence they have left in other places they have been. In August 2025, I traveled to Barbados to research the …

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 …

Welsh, British, And Argentine: Identities Of Convenience In The Welsh Colonies Of Patagonia, Benjamin Welch

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

In this thesis, I examine the Welsh colonies in Patagonia (in Welsh, Y Wladfa) and how the Welsh negotiated their complex identity. Founded in 1865 as a nationalist project intended to preserve Welsh language, culture, and religion, the colony faced extreme hardships and was forced to ask for help. Drawing on British, Welsh and Argentine sources, I argue that Welsh colonists adopted a pragmatic approach to identity, emphasizing their Welshness, Britishness, or Argentinity as needed. While this flexibility was necessary for the colony to survive, it undermined the original goal of a Welsh homeland free of outside influence. Ultimately, the …

Industrial Democracy: Unionization, Power, And Control In Rockefeller’S Southern Colorado, Ava Welty

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

By 1914, democracy was clearly connected to America’s political ethos, and Wilson and Frank Walsh only amplified the term. Against this backdrop, labor and CF&I sought to define their movement as aligned with the national project of industrial democracy, despite having divergent understandings of the term. CF&I and Rockefeller built upon decades of social betterment, in addition to new ideas of company unionism to create their definition of industrial democracy, while workers returned to union recognition as a tool of power to construct their definition of industrial democracy. This paper argues that conflicting definitions of industrial democracy after the Ludlow …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

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 …

Reseeding Relations: Comparing Museum And Indigenous Seed Sharing & Rematriation Protocols In The Midwestern United States, Madeline G. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) paved the way for the repatriation of ancestors and certain cultural objects to Indigenous communities, museums still struggle to address other forms of cultural returns. Heritage seeds, those which hold cultural significance to Indigenous peoples, held within museum collections perpetuates the colonization of Indigenous lifeways. This research examines rematriation as an Indigenous form of cultural return better suited to address these needs than limited repatriation models. I analyze how museums are working to create rematriation processes for their collections which reflect diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies through a three-tiered approach: …

Napoleon Iii, Bimetallism, And The Latin Monetary Union In The European Movement For Universal Coinage, 1865-1878, Jack Salerno

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Between 1865 and 1878, Emperor Napoleon III of France attempted to use the Latin Monetary Union (LMU) to attain power via a universal, bimetallic European coinage system, but ultimately failed due to the preference for the gold standard within the wider movement for a universal coinage. In my research, I examine the International Monetary Conferences of 1865 and 1867, and explore the political landscape of France in the years leading up to the creation of the LMU, focusing on the Napoleonic echoes of the Second French Empire as instrumental factors in the LMU’s design. I argue that Napoleon III’s Empire …

"Il-Lingwa Tal-Kċina": The Advocacy For The Maltese Language, 1930s–1940s, Elisabeth Fiorini

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In this project I investigate the understudied history of Malta and the Maltese language, focusing on the period of the Second World War. Going through newspaper archives and survivors’ accounts, I untangle the complex cultural shifts occurring in the British Colony of Malta, specifically with language. I argue that it was the intense bombing campaign of Fascist Italy––and later Nazi Germany––that led to the Maltese people to finally reject the Italian language and embrace their indigenous language along with British influences. This paper goes into the complex political and colonial history, looking at the British led breakdown of the diglossic …

Forced Dependency: The Subjugation Of Women Through Medicine In Ancient Greece And Rome, Evelyn J. Polovich

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique …

The Influence Of Gustav Holst's The Planets On The Music Of John Williams, Kara Lewis

Senior Honors Theses

Throughout his six-decade career in film music, John Williams has achieved incredible success. Yet, one of the most prominent criticisms of Williams’ work is that it borrows heavily from classical repertoire. It is common to read that Williams stole from composers such as Gustav Holst. This paper examines in what aspects and to what extent the music of Williams takes inspiration specifically from Holst’s The Planets. Overall style and specific excerpts will be compared to demonstrate that, while the two share some characteristics, there is not an overall sameness of style. It shall also be demonstrated that certain excerpts …

Stages Of Belonging: The Yiddish Art Theatre’S Search For Its Home In New York City, 1918-1934, Octavia Chudnow

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the main form of entertainment for the Jewish immigrant community was shund (trash) theater: popular and commercial theater. Although many immigrants enjoyed this kind of entertainment, playwrights, artists, and intellectuals critiqued its place in immigrants’ lives, especially since shund revealed the process of assimilation and was considered low-brow art. In 1918, Maurice Schwartz opened the Yiddish Art Theatre to create high-brow art for Jewish audiences. In my essay, I focus on the company’s history between 1918 and 1934, on the theater’s move from downtown to Midtown and back to the Lower East …

Pretty Much From Scratch: A Braided Essay On Autistic Diagnosis, Creativity, Identity, And Community, Jenée Stanfield

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This braided essay uses memoir and research to explore autistic diagnosis, creativity, identity, and community. It examines how the misinformation around these topics harm and “other” autistics: the fallacy of diagnostic objectivity/neutrality, the dual myths of autistic hyper- and hypo-creativity, and autism as an identity defined solely by medical professionals. The memoir sections play with point of view and genre.

Jenée is a late-realized autistic with ADHD and OCD, who identifies as neurodivergent and neuroqueer. She lives in Washington state with her spouse and dog. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and is currently a Master …

They, The People, Ammel Sharon

Socio-Legal Review

This essay engages with Rohit De and Ornit Shani’s Assembling India’s Constitution by situating it within a broader conceptual history of “the people.” While the book offers a compelling account of participatory constitution-making, the essay suggests that it opens up further questions about the conceptual and historical conditions shaping the people as a political subject. Drawing on contemporary political theory on populism, the essay explores how politics invokes the people through affective and performative practices alongside constitutional forms.