Digital Commons Network^™

Five Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, Ann K. Vaught

Honors Theses

Operating under the assumption that the average college student knows little to nothing about the Supreme Court and significant cases in the field of American constitutional law, the author hypothesizes that this ignorance is due not to an inability to understand the material, but an unwillingness on the part of the average student to expend the effort necessary to decipher the "legalese" of an average Supreme Court opinion. The author also hypothesizes that it is the high and lofty language of the opinions that generally disenchants the reader, and not the information itself. Therefore, as a means of testing this …

Modern Sophistry: On The "Economization" Of Higher Education, Michael Mcshane

Honors Theses

The best way for one to begin approaching political philosophy is to do just that, not as a theorist or philosopher, but as a student who examines the various works of theorists in general and sees what is gainful in each of them. It is a thing said to be pleasant – to gain from those who possess knowledge that exceeds one's own. The theorists themselves are taxed with a kind of work that would not appear to the student pleasurable in the slightest, and he might be better off conceding the great labors and accolades that come with this …

Mary's Wedding, Amelia Gay Hammond

Honors Theses

As the market for actor training programs becomes more competitive, university theatre departments are attempting to generate the most production opportunities possible to attract the highest quality students. Crucial to this agenda‟s success is remaining cost effective while finding new conduits of artistic growth and production experience to enrich the students‟ development. Coastal Carolina University‟s Department of Theatre forged an answer to this departmental balancing act. With almost all budget and faculty resources pledged to the full mainstage season, smaller, student produced work had begun to supplement the production offerings. These projects can provide a much-needed venue for actively engaging …

The New Military History : General Jonathan M. Wainwright And His Experiences As A Prisoner Of The Japanese During World War Ii, John H. Chase

Honors Theses

This thesis applies the principles of the "new military history" to the experiences of General Jonathan Wainwright from his surrender to the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, until his liberation by the Russian Red Army three years, three months, and eighteen days later. At its core, the basics of this "new" historical methodology are seductively simple and direct. It is an effort to capture in research and writing the multiple layers of events, people, places and cultures to present a greatly enhanced, and more genuine, interpretation of the past.

Catholic Nationalism And Feminism In Twentieth-Century Ireland, Jennifer M. Donohue

Honors Theses

In the early 1900s, Ireland experienced a surge in nationalism as its political leanings shifted away from allegiance to the British Parliament and towards a pro-Ireland and pro-independence stance. The landscape of Ireland during this period was changed dramatically by the subversive popularity of the Irish political party, Sinn Fein, which campaigned for an Ireland for the Irish. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding this campaign alludes to the fact that Ireland was not inherently “British” because it defined itself by two unique, un-British characteristics – the Gaelic language and the Catholic faith.

As Sinn Fein’s hold on Ireland increased, …

The Metaphysical Underpinnings Contemporary Attitudes In Consumerism: An Pontification?, Jason Stigliano

Honors Theses

Contemporary philosopher and activist, John Zerzan, critiques modern civilization, and then in hindsight the history of civilization, on two central grounds, which form the basis for the rest of his criticism and theory. Firstly, we are alienated from existence in as much as our experience is, in various ways, mediated rather than immediate. Through language (or symbolic thought), a sense of measured time, symbolic ritual, technology and all the other constituents of civilized culture, we become alienated. His ideal existence might be something like the state of animals as described by John Gardner in his novel Grendel, “he stares at …

The Long Game: Hamas, The Ira, And The Politics Of Radicalization In Palestine And Northern Ireland, Dan O'Sullivan

Honors Theses

The value of a comparative study of the two conflicts stems from a remarkable similarity in the structural organization of political violence by its most influential practitioners: the IRA and Hamas. At the core, I have merely tried my best to approach a beguiling question in a fresh, dynamic way. The stultifying discourse of conflict that serves as lingua franca for the Israeli‐Palestinian issue has largely reduced strategic debate to how best the conflict can be managed – not ended. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus on “economic peace” and unwillingness to commit to a two‐state solution – the consensus that …

Avoiding The Fog Of Crisis: A Protocol For The Proper Domestic Use Of The Military, Brian Lynch

Honors Theses

Failure to contemplate and define an appropriate role for the armed forces of the national government in domestic crises of this sort is a serious problem. It is all the more serious now as these potential crises seem to multiply in character and scope. This thesis will explore the history of this problem and its recent implications. It will argue the need for a comprehensive, operational framework, codified in law, which defines the various alternative uses of all emergency services, both civilian and military, and is applicable to “all hazards.” I will attempt to provide a blue-print for what such …

Whose Right Is It? The Supreme Court And The Second Amendment Right To Bear Arms, Mary Mitchell Purvis

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I describe the history of debate surrounding the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, leading up to the United States Supreme Court weighing in on the issue in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2009). To find information for my study I examined many scholarly historical and legal journals Second Amendment interpretation. I chose to use as my sources journals which I felt were most representative of the oppposing sides in the debate. I also gained information from newspaper articles on the Heller case as it evolved, both to learn about …

Reconciling Southern Identity: Revising The Public Memory Of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, James Matthew Hopper

Honors Theses

This project explores the accepted historical narrative of white male Southern identity based upon L.Q.C. Lamar's public memory. My objective is to reinterpret some long held beliefs about Lamar s life, career, and politics, while analyzing the effect of those interpretations in fostering and challenging white male Southern identity. I found that Lamar was never fully reconstructed from his Confederate views and many of his pre-war principles made him popular and garnered loyalty among his constituency. In reinventing himself as a reconstructed politician, he used the death of Charles Sumner to offer a reconciliatory version of Southern masculinity in an …

A Few Good Women: Break Through Roles In Three War Plays, Bobby Ellis Pelts

Honors Theses

A Few Good Women: Break Through Roles in Three War Plays (Under the direction of Colby Kullman)

This thesis explores the roles played by women in three war plays: Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, and A Piece ofMy Heart by Shirley Lauro. The thesis describes the ways in which the characters of each of these plays defy traditional social expectations of women in wartime. These characters challenge the ideals of femininity and "proper" behavior while defying the typical roles of wife, mother, and nurse in war. The thesis argues that the context of war …

The Motivational Forces Behind China's Foreign Policy In Africa: A Historical Comparison Between The 1960s And Today, Tatiana Claire Sarasin

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

China's Role In The Darfur Crisis: An Inquiry Into Global Ethics, Katie Malone Swain

Honors Theses

As the rise of globalization allows for greater trade, communication, and information sharing than ever before, the way states interact with one another and the world as a whole is being redefined. The rapid economic development that has occurred globally in the last century has not necessarily been accompanied with improvements in human rights worldwide. Now more than ever, there is a need to consider a global code of ethics. Though the role of states in advancing and policing human rights has been explored in innumerable treaties, conventions and other documents, there is currently no clearly defined standard of conduct …

Competing Visions: The Cia, The Congress For Cultural Freedom And The Non-Communist European Left, 1950-1967, Scott Kamen

Honors Theses

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that by utilizing cultural influence and adopting Silone's vision, the CCF was able to pursue the support of left-leaning European intellectuals, writers and artists who were often alienated by the policies of both the US and the USSR. The ability of the CCF to reach out to these individuals made it an extremely valuable asset to the CIA and contributed to the CIA's emerging strategy of promoting the NCL as a reliable anti-communist force that would come to be the theoretical foundation of the CIA's political operations against communism over the next …

Narses And The Birth Of Byzantine Egypt : Imperial Policy In The Age Of Justinian, Marion W. Kruse Iii

Honors Theses

Late Antiquity has long been portrayed as a period of transition between the classical and medieval worlds. Its history, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, has been forced to fit the contours of a transitional model, and no figure has been as ill-treated by this interpretive schema as the Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565 AD).

Justinian is known both as the last Roman and first Byzantine emperor; in fact he was neither. It is true that he ruled an empire which was both physically and intellectually the heir of Augustus' Rome and that he introduced wide-ranging reforms which were maintained by …

The Interaction Of Nuclear Fiction And Leadership Studies, Kathryn Elberson

Honors Theses

This project is not solely a commentary on leadership studies, nor is its significance exclusive to the field of English. Rather, it is an effort to unite the two fields in a way that offers valuable contributions to both areas of study while pointing out the necessity of further interaction between the topics of leadership and literature. The few works which are traditionally regarded as having something to contribute to leadership studies are those which are either included in the canon of English literature, or those which directly demonstrate a leader-follower relationship and have a particular lesson to teach about …

Stranger In A Strange Land: The Struggle For Cultural And Personal Identity In Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World, Laura E. Smith

Honors Theses

In order to explicate Murakami's version of the official culture, I have analyzed the novel with the works of several different theorists. Primarily, I drew my own understanding of the official culture from Raymond Williams's examination of culture in Marxism and Literature. His terminology became helpful in writing about the operation of the System and the Town, though it did not define that operation precisely. Williams's work also introduced me to the theory behind the official culture's manipulation and exclusion of historical aspects in order to create their "official" version of history, from which the official culture draws its identity. …

Decisions To Abrogate Personal Liberty: Ethics Of Conscription In The United States, Jacqueline Shuttleworth Grady

Honors Theses

The military draft in the United States has been a controversial public policy in the past. Conscription has been used for six different wars; each draft has differed from the others because of the circumstances of the war for which it was enacted and because of the way in which it was implemented. Today, because of the wars the United States is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new public policy has developed, called stop loss. Stop loss affects only those people who have already served in the military, forcing them to remain in military service after the originally contracted …

Effects Of The Anticancer Agent Cloretazine On Human Apurinic Endonuclease-1 Activity, Jennifer L. Bushee

Honors Theses

The carbamolyating activity of Cloretazine, a novel anticancer prodrug, modifies protein function and acts synergistically with the choroethyalting species, which a1kylales DNA. The reactive subspecies responsible for carbamolylating activity is methyl isocyanate, which reacts with sulfhydryl groups and amines. DNA repair enzymes have been identified as potential targets for the modification by methyl isocyanate; in particular, base excision repair enzymes. Enzymes in DNA base excision repair include DNA polymerase beta (Pol ?) and apurinic/apyrimidic endonucease-l (APE/Ref-1). APE/Ref-1 hydrolyzes the 5' -phosphodiester DNA backbone from an abasic DNA template, where the base was excised by a DNA glycosylase. The entire nucleotide …

Military Reforms With Chinese Characteristics: Informal Decentralization In The Chinese Government And Its Effect On Party-Military Relations, Daniel John Hedglin

Honors Theses

A study that analyzes party-military relations in the People’s Republic of China during the 1990s and places this relationship within the context of decentralization.

Development Ethics: Ethical Questioning And Its Place In International Development, Miriam Elizabeth Abadie

Honors Theses

Development Ethics is a field of applied ethics that deals with the ethical questions involved in international development work. This study highlights one basic question that a development ethicist might tackle: Do we, a wealthy nation, have an obligation to help poor nations? To respond to this question, I consider and respond to Gairett Hardin’s Lifeboat Ethics analogy to argue that we do have this obligation. To further demonstrate that we do have an obligation to the poor, I highlight three different moral theories: Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, and Care Ethics. It is important to understand that Development Ethics, while based …

An Bhuil Gaeilge Agat?: Perspectives On The Irish Language In Ireland, Georgia Katherine Fyke

Honors Theses

The future of Irish as a living language is uncertain, and some fear it will vanish completely. In this paper I explore how the main language of Ireland shifted from Irish to English and discuss the perspectives of the Irish themselves toward the Irish language. Chapter 1 summarizes the history of the language from its introduction to the island by the earliest Celts to its current secondary role. Chapter 2 reviews the concepts of language death and revitalization both generally and as they apply to Irish, using models by David Crystal and Joshua Fishman. The final chapter is an analysis …

Constructing Muammar Al-Gaddafi, Kristin Kushlan

Honors Theses

Rhetoricians such as Robert Ivie and George Lakoffhave examined the use of language of opposition to create and control various enemies during the War on Terror, but they have also ignored or overlooked numerous cases. This paper will examine one such case, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose reciprocal violence eventually succumbed to the oppressor's global economic power. This case study will explore how the U.S. government rhetorically constructed Gaddafi in order to control both his identity within American society (as either an enemy or an ally), as well as the counter-violence that Gaddafi supposedly enacted against Western systems of power. …

The Post-Cold War Security Dialogue, Melanie Collins

Honors Theses

This paper attempts to explore the relevance of new security concerns in the post Cold War security dialogue. This project is split in to two parts. The first part is a brief summary of what have been termed new security concerns. The second part is an empirical analysis of whether these security concerns have made it out of academic discussion and in to the mass media and political dialogue. This was determined via two sources: The New York Times and Presidential State of the Union Addresses from 1949 - 2007. Using The New York Times, the time periods 1980-1985, 1990-1995, …

The Stones And The Bones: Contemporary Issues In Cultural Property, Christopher Michael Blocker

Honors Theses

Cultural property has recently become an important issue in the international community. Major museums across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, have been involved in litigation or settled out of court with foreign governments who claim objects in their museums' collections were looted or stolen from native soil. The topic of repatriation occupies one aspect of the thesis. Another section is concern with the philosophical framework within which people may think about cultural property and its implications, as well as about vital issues in ownership. The major part of the thesis …

Elusive Peace: A Comparative Analysis Of Civil Wars And Conflict Resolution In El Salvador And Colombia, Jessica Bryant

Honors Theses

This study compares the historical contexts of the rise of civil wars and their modem trajectories in Colombia and El Salvador. Through an analysis of the successful negotiation of peace in the Salvadoran case via a United Nations peacekeeping mission, it makes conclusions about the relevancy of such an operation for obtaining peace in Colombia. After a brief discussion of the United Nations evolving peacekeeping mandate and recent literature about this type of peace negotiation, this thesis examines each country’s history and its war’s termination (in the case of El Salvador) and transformation (in the case of Colombia). Recent literature …

Out Of The Agrarian Closet: Rereading The Velvet Horn By Its Queer Currents, Jacob W. Brasher

Honors Theses

Jacob W. Brasher: Out of the Agrarian Closet: Rereading The Velvet Horn by its Queer Currents This thesis begins with an analysis of Agrarianism and its effects upon the popularity of a Southern writer, Andrew Nelson Lytle, and his crowning work. The Velvet Horn. Agrarianism was introduced to society in 1930 through the volume. I'll Take Mv Stand, to which Lytle contributed an essay, “The Hind Tit,” and was immediately and summarily rejected as a viable economical philosophy for the South. The thesis concludes that Agrarianism's unpopularity combined with Lytle's devotion to it throughout his life ultimately damaged his popularity …

Environment, Behavior, And Internal Consciousness: A Study Of Space And Time In Dostoevsky, Laura Claire Bagwell

Honors Theses

Individual and public space creates the reality of daily existence for a human being. The ideological perspectives a person maintains are direct products of individual space experience because the larger societal context of a region constructs the norms for behavior and belief Dostoevsky writes concentration narratives that focus on the urban and rural space surrounding a protagonist, and contrasts between these two settings to illustrate the impact of environment on the human psyche. This study examines the use of external conditions to describe literary characters and the ideologies and behaviors they maintain. In researching space and time in the literature …

Gardening Programs In Schools: A Proposed Solution To Reverse The Consequences Of The Current American Food Culture, Charlotte Grace Blessey

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the problems with current food consumption and production practices, and proposes the implementation of school gardening programs as a possible remedy to these problems. Methods and procedures consisted of research on current publications, periodicals, internet sources and scholarly articles concerning these topics. It was found that current diet is a significant factor in widespread health problems facing populations today. This diet is intertwined with an environmentally destructive and vulnerable system of intensive industrial agriculture based on centralization, mass distribution, and standardization. School garden programs target children beginning at a young age and help to counter the culture …

Motivating Genocide: Indirect Colonial Rule As A Motivator Of Genocidal Ideology And Policy, Trevor Bruce Rockstad

Honors Theses

In this study I have explored indirect colonial rule as a motivation of genocide. I use case studies of the 1994 Rwandan and 1975 Cambodian genocides to illustrate the way that indirect colonially rule divided societies, creating colonially relegated and colonially elevated sections of society. Genocide becomes a more likely possibility if the colonially relegated group gains power after decolonization. If this group does gain power, it will pursue a policy of retribution for oppression suffered during the colonially period, repression of the colonially elevated group, and minimization of the return to the colonially order in which they were the …