Digital Commons Network^™

Gender And Sexuality In The American West: Forgotten Queer Histories Of The Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Cassidy Marie Paulk

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The narratives of queer individuals are often overlooked in the construction of the history of the American West. This work focuses on the lives of queer individuals living in the American West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “The dearth of historical evidence should not be construed as the absence of it.”1 While finding sources that demonstrate queer historical experiences is difficult, nevertheless, their experiences significantly contribute to a more inclusive and accurate understanding of the history of the West. By examining a range of historical evidence through the lens of queer historical theory, this work reveals the forgotten …

Core Operating Manual, 2025-26, Butler University

Policy Documents

This Core Operating Manual is intended to 1) provide students, faculty, and advisors an overview of Butler University’s core curriculum requirements and the value of the core, 2) provide faculty teaching in the core information about what is expected in core courses in terms of content, activities, and assignments, and 3) provide guidance on how the core is and should be administered. It is primarily a practical document; those seeking to learn about the original philosophical undergirding of the core should consult the Appendix, which is taken from our core curriculum’s original guiding document.

Investigation Of Microgravity Grown Organic Crystals By Diffusion Techniques Over The Course Of Thirty-One Years, Ashley Wilkinson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The effect of microgravity on crystallization experiments has been a topic of interest over the past fifty years. The first microgravity crystallization experiments have been dated back to the early 1970s, and since then hundreds of crystals have been grown in microgravity. Crystallization experiments have been conducted on multiple flights and a variety of spacecraft, using an assortment of techniques, and funded by several different countries. Scientists have been and continue to examine how macromolecular crystals grow in microgravity and how the structures determined from crystals grown in microgravity compare to the structures determined from Earth grown crystals. Parameters such …

The 1945 Purchase Of The Indianapolis Motor Speedway: How World War Ii Changed Racing History And Culture, Samantha Louise Slentz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Indianapolis 500 did not occur from 1942 to 1945 because of World War II. And due to war efforts to conserve fuel and a suspension of all auto racing activities, Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner of the time, Eddie Rickenbacker, let the track deteriorate. The racetrack began to crumble, the infield became overgrown, stands began to fall apart, and many people thought that was the end for the legendary race course, and so to the Indianapolis 500. This thesis explores how the future of the track and race were secured through the efforts of two men, Wilbur Shaw and Tony …

An Analysis Of The Representation Of Black Men In Modern U.S. Television Commercials., Jackson Borman

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout the history of media, minority groups have been on the losing end of representation, with racist, stereotypical portrayals, or in many cases, no representation at all. This study analyzes the current representation of black men in modern television commercials. To answer the research questions posed about how black men are represented in commercials, a content analysis was conducted. A systematic sample of television commercials was taken from an online directory of television commercials, and the sample (N = 117) was analyzed using a coding instrument to determine the level of involvement and characterizations of the black male characters featured …

Reitz Or Wrong: An Industrial, Environmental, And Political Analysis Of Evansville’S “Lumber Baron”, Jarrod Koester

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

For nearly two centuries, the history of Evansville, Indiana has remained incomplete as historians and the general public have not recognized some of the key factors responsible for the city’s famed past. The generally accepted history of Evansville, the state’s third-largest city, conveys valiant tales of industrialization, transportation, and successful entrepreneurs who overcame insurmountable odds and left everlasting impressions on the people of the region. While the once-prosperous city was a significant national port and participated heavily in transatlantic and transcontinental trade, Evansville’s historical significance has diminished over the course of the twentieth century. What were once bustling factories, streams …

Exorcising Mythicism’S Sky-Demons: A Response To Raphael Lataster’S “Questioning Jesus’ Historicity.”, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Medical Rhetoric And The Sympathetic “Inebriet”: 1870–1930, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The modern view of addiction as a progressive brain disease originated in the second half of the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries. Historians attribute the shift from a moral to a medical concept to the efforts of a small but well-organized band of physicians forming what is known as the Inebriety Movement in the United States and Great Britain. Members aimed to distribute the disease theory to a disinterested and biased medical community, establish protocols for evidence-based treatments, and transfer the management of drinkers and drug users away from religious organizations and penal institutions to the care …

Space Invaders: Programmatic And Individual Il Efforts Within A Core Curriculum, Sally Neal, Amanda Starkel

Scholarship and Professional Work

Butler University librarians are “invading” their University’s core curriculum with information literacy integrated on multiple fronts, both at the administrative programmatic level and via a ‘grass-roots,’ one-class-at-a time approach. Butler University upholds an extensive core curriculum required of all of its students consisting of a first-year seminar, a sophomore global historical studies course, and six content areas. Librarians have been engaged with the University’s first year seminar for a number of years and have been looking at how to expand our reach into other areas of the core. While not abandoning an intentional programmatic approach, we are finding a “space …

Rudolf Bultmann On Myth, History, And The Resurrection, Brent Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The Christian faith stands or falls with the confession that Jesus Christ is risen. While that assertion itself is perhaps uncontroversial, precisely what this confession means has been a subject of profound significance and immense controversy for centuries. Central to this discussion is the role of myth and history in the biblical witness and in the church’s theological engagement with the confession that Jesus Christ is risen. This book traces key trajectories of German Protestant discussions of myth, history, and the resurrection from its earliest critical analysis in the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus and David Friedrich Strauss to contemporary …

The New Mechanical Philosophy, Stuart Glennan

Philosophy, Religion, and Classics

The New Mechanical Philosophy argues for a new image of nature and of science--one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that casts the work of science as an effort to discover and understand those mechanisms. Drawing on an expanding literature on mechanisms in physical, life, and social sciences, Stuart Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them. A key quality of mechanisms is that they are particulars - located at different places and times, with no one just like another. The crux of …

Interracial Cooperation And Strategic Framing In 19th-Century Southern Black Emigration Movements, Selena Sanderfer

Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences

Increasingly, scholars have begun to employ social movement theory to historical studies of the 19th century. This article uses political process, resource mobilization, and framing theories to examine black southern emigration movements to Liberia before and after the Civil War through historical-narrative analysis. It argues that the draconian racial environment in the South pushed black southerners to utilize strategies of interracial cooperation in order to minimize the number of whites’ repressive tactics against them and to accrue the support of white sponsorship when orchestrating territorial separatist movements. Elite individual whites, white colonization societies, and U.S. government organizations provided black southern …

Featured Herbarium: But—The Friesner Herbarium Of Butler University, Rebecca W. Dolan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Feature written by Rebecca Dolan on the BUT—The Friesner Herbarium of Butler University in the Vasculum.

Book Review: The Gender Of Caste: Representing Dalits In Print, Claire C. Robison

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book review of The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print. By Charu Gupta. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2016, 352 pages.

Book Review: To Be Cared For: The Power Of Conversion And Foreignness Of Belonging In An Indian Slum, James Elisha Taneti

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book review of To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum. By Nathaniel Roberts. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016, xv + 312 pages.

An Overview Of Assessment In The Core Curriculum 2011-2016, Butler University

Assessment Documents

No abstract provided.

Core Curriculum Operating Manual, Butler University

Policy Documents

This document serves as the companion to the Original Core Document (June 2005); it contains updated information about the mission of each area, the constitution and duties of advisory committees and provides implementation information for both curriculum development and assessment. Information of special importance to advisors, including policies regarding exemptions, variances and transfer credits are also included. The manual will be updated annually; substantive changes must be approved by the Core Curriculum Committee; minor changes (such as typographical errors, broken links, or changes to maintain conformity) shall not require the approval of the Core Curriculum Committee, rather only an annual …

What Has Coruscant To Do With Jerusalem? A Response And Reflections At The Crossroads Of Hebrew Bible And Science Fiction, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Modern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life And Thought Of BhaktisiddhāNta Sarasvatī, Michael Mclaughlin

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book Review of Modern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life and Thought of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. Ferdinando Sardella. Oxford University Press, 2013, xv + 342 pp.

Book Review: Hindu Christian Faqir: Modern Monks, Global Christianity, And Indian Sainthood, Stephanie Corigliano

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book Review of Hindu Christian Faqir: Modern Monks, Global Christianity, and Indian Sainthood. Timothy S. Dobe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 363 + xiii pp.

Searching For Their Real Home: Dependent Black Children In Indianapolis, 1910-1940, John D. Ramsbottom

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Concerns about the future for young people, reflected in contemporary headlines, were equally prominent in Indianapolis a hundred years ago. Then, as now, children whose parents neglected or abandoned them posed a special problem. In the midst of rapid social change that seemed to threaten traditional family stability, a small corps of professionals and volunteers worked to provide a nurturing environment.

“Did Jesus Die In Outer Space? Evaluating A Key Claim In Richard Carrier’S On The Historicity Of Jesus, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The attempt to use later sources, interpreted in ways that are at best open to dispute, in an attempt to argue against what generations of skeptical scholars have concluded to be likely with respect to the early Christian sources, is never going to make mythicism seem more probable than the hard-earned and intensely-researched consensus of historians and scholars, namely that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Gender Mainstreaming In Journalism Education, Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

In a time of swift technological changes in the news media, much of journalism education is focused on preparing students for careers in a new media landscape instead of focusing on gender or other diversity issues. For example, Pavlik (2013, p.213) argued in a recent article that a curriculum that ‘emphasized innovation and digital media entrepreneurship is one of the keys to a robust professional future for the field and students seeking a media career’. Even so, Pavlik (2013, p.217) recognised that most programmes in media education are holding on to an outdated professional model of journalism and mass communication, …

Upper Class Enclave Identity: A Case Study Of The Golden Hill Community, Bradley D. Vogelsmeier

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Urban enclaves play an important role in sociological theory and in overall community development. This project looks at the exclusivity of a particular enclave in the Indianapolis area, the Golden Hill Community, and through observation and interviews, examines the makeup of this isolated community. Considered by many to be an exclusive upper-class neighborhood, this research looks closely at the social interaction of residents with each other, as well as the outside community, in order to determine its strength and significance as an urban enclave. This paper suggests that Golden Hill, contrary to other upper class urban enclaves, exhibits a type …

Red Summer: The Summer Of 1919 And The Awakening Of Black America, By Cameron Mcwhirter, St. Martins's 2011, John Ramsbottom

LAS Faculty Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Book Review: "Staging The French Revolution: Cultural Politics And The Paris Opera, 1789-1794", Wayne C. Wentzel

Scholarship and Professional Work – Arts

Dr. Wayne Wentzel's review of Mark Darlow, Staging the French Revolution: Cultural Politics and the Paris Opéra, 1789-1794. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xi + 421 pp. Tables, illustrations, graphs, musical examples, bibliography and index. $ 65.00 (hb). ISBN 978-0-19-977372-5.

On Hearing (Rather Than Reading) Intertextual Echoes: Christology And Monotheistic Scriptures In An Oral Context, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

While recent studies of the New Testament have found the methods of intertextuality and orality studies to be fruitful approaches, there has been insufficient interplay between the two. This article explores the capacity of hearers of texts to pick up on echoes of familiar texts, stories, and songs. Using as an example Paul’s interpretation of Scripture in connection with the topics of monotheism and Christology, the article suggests that, in the absence of explicit and emphatic statements of the difference or distinctiveness of his views, Paul’s allusions to key monotheistic texts would have been understood to indicate Paul’s agreement with …

Immigration In France: How French Perception Affects Muslim Integration, Brittany P. Eisenhut

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In this paper I examine the process of Muslim immigrants' integration, probing into the negative French perceptions of immigrants and how these perceptions may affect the process of integration and assimilation. I begin with a brief overview of French history as related to Muslim societies and how French culture and policies have evolved to their current state, such as the new strict policy on identity card renewal and the promise to integrate if accepted into the country. Next I deal strictly with immigration in France, including the policies and procedures of the French government and the perceptions of the French …

Between Theory And Reality: Cosmopolitanism Of Nodal Cities In Paweł Huelle’S Castorp, Ania Spyra

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

FIVE YEARS BEFORE the publication of his novel Castorp, the Gdansk writer Pawel Huelle published a short piece of the same title in the essay collection Inne historie (1999), the title of which-translated as either "other stories" or "other histories"-consciously plays with the difficulty of writing a history of Gdansk, a theme to which almost all of the short pieces in this collection somehow return. The essay tells the story of a literary correspondence between a Lvov pastor and the writer Thomas Mann, in which Mann voices regret over some unelaborated ideas and abandoned storylines in The Magic Mountain. …

Mediating Disconnected Communities With A Liberal Arts Education, Jennifer Redmond

Kristi Schultz Broughton Liberal Arts Essay Contest

2012 Topic: Mediating the Disconnect: Liberal Arts as Inspiration for Activism

Virtually all news and media outlets frequently and urgently remind us that we are at a historic crossroads and that local and global societies and economies are facing extraordinary if not totally unprecedented challenges. Yet many of us tend to feel disconnected from these challenges, watching them as if they were a show that we are free to observe or ignore or as a set of problems others are responsible for solving, preferably without our involvement. In what ways has your experience at Butler moved you to and prepared …