Digital Commons Network^™

Unsung And Unheard: An Analysis Of The History And Impact Of Female American Vocal Composers, Shannon Marie Myers

Masters Theses

American female composers create music that is pedagogically valuable and should be included in the repertoire commonly used by undergraduate vocal students. The purpose of this research is to provide awareness of the existence and the contribution that American female composers have made to standard vocal repertoire and their pedagogical value. The essential question answered as part of this research is: how have the American women composers contributed to the development of standard vocal literature? Additional sub-questions addressed in this research include: 1) What historical factors (culturally, economically, etc.) have influenced the rise of female composers in America beginning in …

Unraveling The Living: Reframing Cramped Housing As A Social Living, Dong-Zoo Han

Masters Theses

In Seoul, people of the poorest economic status live in compressed units no larger than 32 square feet, known as “sliced housing.” The majority of these residents hope for better living conditions, but they are unable to move for multiple reasons. This is an interwoven sociological issue that requires intervention proposals that improve the physical and mental wellbeing of the people in these housing situations. This thesis demonstrates possible architectural interventions that will enhance the quality of life and support systems within Seoul’s “sliced housing” villages.

Other urban villages in Seoul in similar states of degradation have been destroyed, with …

Open Articulations, Matthew Bejtlich

Masters Theses

Open Articulations invites an exchange between human and environmental worlds through cycles of improvisation, reflection, and rebirth. It is a study of how exchanges emerge, what forms they can take, how they are mediated, and how we can sustain them with each other and with our surroundings. Through our coordinated immersion in landscapes and our spontaneous creation in them through frameworks encouraging play, we channel the spirit of a jazz drummer riffing with his midnight quartet, exchanging rhythms, images, sounds, movements, and textual fragments. A gentle breath, a flickering sensation, a gesture: expressions of a specific time rooted in a …

Refiguring Relations, Daphne Hsu

Masters Theses

Refiguring Relations sets conditions for interdependence and visualizes the affective relationships that people have with one another. Through scripts and participatory experiences, my work explores, challenges, and formulates expressions of collaboration. I extend spaces of overlap between individuals to encourage connection and alliance building, however temporary, slow, or small. In reading experiences, both print and digital, models of circulation and accessibility allow the audience to see and affect each others’ interactions. This thesis assembles methodologies and blueprints for reciprocal engagement, between designer and collaborators, designer and participants, and among participants themselves.

Future As Medium, Georgie Nolan

Masters Theses

FUTURE AS MEDIUM through critical examination develops a working premise for advancing designed visualizations of the future. In an effort to build new models of practice that consciously work towards the future, I undertake a set of delicate negotiations rooted in critical inquiry as well as creative production, all expressed across three temporal contingencies: yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I work the terrain of the past as an assembled archive of speculative worlds created by architects, designers, and artists, and problematize the mediation of futures through a close reading of their world-building tools. I use this archive to make sense of …

Jettisoning The Frame: Strategies For Designing At The Threshold, Will Mianecki

Masters Theses

Jettisoning the Frame: Strategies for Designing at the Threshold explores graphic design’s capacity for facilitating critique and understanding of accelerating systems of technological control and complexity. Working across archives, architectures, and infrastructures, designing at the threshold is an approach that takes the opacity of systems and subjects alike as a starting point from which new possibilities, configurations, and relations emerge. It is a loose methodology predicated on shifting, jettisoning, and reorienting the role and frame of the designer from objectivity to subjectivity. From neutrality to implication. From scientific to messy. From solutionism to something else.

Becoming A Precipice: The Liminality Of Queer Cruising, Chance Deville

Masters Theses

In “Becoming a Precipice,” I am analyzing queer cruising areas as psychological landscapes from a queer, non-binary perspective, counter to heteronormative conventions. These landscapes are important to me, as being a full participant in this culture is my main form of sexual interaction. My inquiry is prompted by the need to interpret how this specific form of desire molds itself into visceral responses and manifestations of performative masculinity. Entering the cruising landscape itself increases awareness and intensifies the senses, in a space where signals become critical in determining transactions with other individuals beyond spoken language. These somatic reactions are uniquely …

Loneliness / Togetherness : Interiority And Connection Under Isolation, Huaqin Chen

Masters Theses

Inhabitants’ perceptions can be greatly impacted when they are in an enforced space, a state of incarceration. That sense of confinement can cause mental or physical health issues on account of the loneliness, lack of interaction or confusion of time and space. Living through enforcement and isolation deeply affect human cognition and behavior. We can also easily find precedents of living through enforcement in the plots of films. By studying narrative, this thesis reconstructs domestic space by investigating the changes in our daily life after our current pandemic. A spatial sequence is created according to the relationwship among time, space …

Algal Alterity : A Study Of Florida's Algae-Crisis-Culture, Katelyn Flood

Masters Theses

This research critically engages with the ecology of media discourse surrounding Florida’s “harmful algae crisis” . It uses a content analysis of online news media articles to address how the presence and unique processes of aquatic algae organisms are entangled with people and cultural practices. Specifically, this work grapples with the dynamic relationship between algae organisms and the cultural production of meaning through visual imagery/stimuli. It examines both visual and textual representations of algae in mass media communications covering the harmful algae crisis or “red tide crisis” of 2017 and 2018: an extreme period of aquatic algae proliferation and hazardous …

Inside Out: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Art And Global Creative Economy, Tiange Li

Masters Theses

This thesis is to destabilize the Western dominant understanding of contemporary Chinese art when it circulates on the global art market, such as the all-to-common narratives only celebrating Chinese artists who are politically criticizing or resist the Chinese authority. Meanwhile, I also question the authority control inside of China, especially the mainstream criteria of aesthetics and art. Cultural anthropologist Aihwa Ong observes that some Western scholars believe contemporary Chinese art to be “crass opportunism with reduced aesthetic value.”Chinese American artist and art critic Chen Danqing criticizes contemporary Chinese art from the last ten years as too utilitarian: “During the Cultural …

Remembering Chinatown: A Fusion Of Food, Identity, & Memory, Robert Yang

Masters Theses

In 2016, the Chinese American Restaurant Association recorded a total of 50,000 Chinese restaurants operating in the United States, far exceeding the number of McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFCs, and Wendy’s combined. In the near two centuries that Chinese people have been a part of the American fabric, our food has become one of the country’s most popular ethnic cuisines. While these restaurants stand as testaments to the tenacity and entrepreneurship of the Chinese immigrant, they are also reminders of the centuries of adversity Chinese Americans have endured. The racial divisions triggered by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 have resulted …

Filmic Landscape: A Performative Space With Multi-Medium, Zhihong Ke

Masters Theses

This thesis explored the idea of interdisciplinary study between film media and landscape architecture. Through the study of film theory in narrative and cinematography, and experimentation with multi-medium, in order to discover the contribution of media study and film theory in landscape architecture, and further explored a way to drive and reshape the perception and focus of humans’ experience in landscape, in order to develop a new typology of performative space with filmic experience.

The project was divided into 3 phases and 6 chapters. It started with the study of precedent cases in the field of film and landscape. Through …

The Tek-Way: Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Catalyst To Building Resilient Communities, Smera Rose Jacob

Masters Theses

“In an era of both utopian high tech and unprecedented climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.^" The TEK-Way is a challenge to the long arm of globalization by looking into multi-generational wisdom, the hidden strength of every community but forgotten in the endless race for “modernization”. It inspires a new relationship of justice and coexistence by exploring and rebuilding an understanding of traditional ecological knowledge and spreading awareness of its importance and role in this era of climate change.

This thesis questions the band-aid recovery strategies of disaster mitigation through an exploration of long-term …

Finding Home In Merry Hill: Appalachia Beyond The Mountains In Arnow's The Dollmaker, Adrienne Oliver

Masters Theses

The migration of Gertie Nevels in Arnow’s The Dollmaker from Appalachian Kentucky to Detroit examines the tense relationship between two vastly different cultures forced together in the city. Gertie’s identity as a strong, capable Appalachian woman used to the agrarian lifestyle of 1940s Kentucky struggles to find roots in the mechanized world of Detroit. In the city, Gertie faces fervent rejection of her Appalachian culture. She finds that Detroit society encourages her to adapt to the cultural norms of the city and put away her Appalachian practices. However, Gertie’s ability to adapt to the social demands of the city does …

Bridging The Gap Between Secondary Writing Instruction And Post-Secondary Writing Needs, Elexcia S. Washington

Masters Theses

Secondary students across the United States often graduate without the prerequisite writing skills needed for post-secondary education and employment success. This thesis examines the history of U.S. writing instruction and the influential figures that have influenced writing instruction across secondary school classrooms. It also explores the effects of teacher education and legislation like the Elementary and Secondary Education and No Child Left Behind acts on writing outcomes. This thesis also identifies the most effective evidence-based writing interventions before concluding with recommendations and a teacher's guide.

The Prevalence Of Grammar In Virginia Higher Education, Caroline Nicatie Stimpson

Masters Theses

This thesis describes why the prescriptive grammar model should be implemented in public education rather than the descriptive grammar model. For the purposes of this paper, prescriptive grammar refers to how words ought to be used, while descriptive grammar refers to how words are used by native speakers in natural settings. The central issue I address in this thesis is how prescriptive grammar enables students to read and write properly, heightens their linguistic knowledge, improves their ability to express themselves, and teaches them useful skills for future educational and employment opportunities. Additionally, it outlines the flaws inherent in the descriptive …

Ritualizing Of Space In The 21st Century: Fostering Of Communal Identity Through Celebration Of Tamil Culture, Mridula Swaminathan

Masters Theses

South India is known for its traditional belief systems and the numerous architectural manifestations of these beliefs. The scale and extravagance of temples and the palaces for the kings are an example of how important culture and ritual were in the past. Now some of these structures, such as the Thirumalai Nayakar Palace in the city of Madurai, the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, stand in a modified societal context with no cultural or ritualized significance. Moreover, the host of this project, the Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal, situated in a city brimming with multiple sacred rituals performed along the city streets, …

I Think We Have Some Connection Difficulty: A Review Of Architectural Vocabulary And Representation In Our Condition Of Remote Communication, David Waite

Masters Theses

The distance required to slow this pandemic created a need for Zoom technology in maintaining our economies of mental production and social closeness. Just like scientists examined the COVID-19 virus globally in its petri under the electron microscope, Zoom exposed our domestic interiors. This platform stitched together our personal existence into an infinite interior. To some extent this places Zoom attendees into a new space of vulnerability where the platform turns passive observers into active participants in a hyper self-aware virtual world where all are forced to share their fragile environments of everyday life.

While videotelephony software thankfully facilitated communication …

“Venerated For Their Bloody Deeds” English Medievalism In Literature, World War I Aviation, And Memorials, Levy Walton Pait

Masters Theses

Aviators of World War I were trailblazers of the sky. That much is certain. However, there has been a historical debate about their reputation as “knights of the air.” During the war and for many years afterward, World War I aviators were compared to medieval knights battling in honorable duels amongst the clouds. This was an idea popularized by the pilots themselves. David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister during World War I, described pilots, “‘They are the knighthood of this war… they recall the legendary days of chivalry not merely by the daring of their exploits but by the nobility …

Loyalist Preachers During The American Revolution (1765-1783), Christena Renea Leaverton

Masters Theses

“Loyalists were those who remained loyal to the British Crown and did not support America’s fight for independence leading up to, and during, the American Revolution. Being loyal to the crown was the normal practice for all Americans prior to the increasing call for independence.” In the time leading up to and during the American Revolution (1765-1783), Loyalist preachers defended their stance on remaining loyal to Great Britain utilizing Bible themes and specific verses. Oftentimes, as with the Patriots, these Loyalist preachers took these themes and verses out of context or misquoted them. They also used Bible themes and verses …

Nossa Quadra, Nossa Historia: The Power Of Collaborative And Communal Outdoor Spaces As A Tool For Belonging & Agency, Rebecca Maria Pepl

Masters Theses

Brazil - a country with a history of colonization, slavery, precipitated industrialization, rapid urbanization, superimposed european modernism (architectural and ideological), unstable politics, growing inequity, socio-economic stratification and overpopulation combined with a lack of adequate housing for the wider population. The government has been trying to solve these issues with standardized, unsuccessful social housing projects along the periphery of the city, disregarding the population’s lifestyle and neglecting their visions. This perpetuates existing discriminatory divides, enforced through architecture and infrastructure.

This thesis attempts to improve the quality of life of the residents in the Cohab Neighborhood in Recife, which is one of …

Breaking The Mold: A Journey Of The Brick, Sumanth Krishna

Masters Theses

Around the world practitioners and researchers are working on new material systems and technologies that center new ways to build. In this age of information, there are countless design frameworks, tools, machines available to us. We are a part of the fundamental shift in architecture that involves new modes of production and new material systems that redefine our role as architects. We have a role in addressing the context of each project, using architectural elements as tools for negotiation and consensus to build stronger communities. How can architecture contribute to improving global labor conditions, instilling dignity in manual labor, dismantling …

Paperwork, Romik Bose Mitra

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the politics of identity and belonging. It is about the impact that practices of identification, government surveillance, and global systems of citizenship and nationality have on the people that live by them. Inspired by the various borders (both real and imagined) that I maneuvered around to get to Rhode Island, and enriched with perspectives gathered in conversation with theoreticians in the field, Paperwork is a set of documents and debriefs that details the work that I made in response to a migratory and investigatory journey. Through this thesis, I attempt to better understand various bureaucratic practices …

Balance The Conversations, Karen Kuo

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to examine the role environmental factors play in people’s experience of the built environment, with a focus on the ongoing debate between individual freedom and collective responsibility of masks in the COVID-19 era. This thesis will argue that a middle ground that balances the relationship between individual and collective pursuits is necessary and can potentially be enabled through design. The project will articulate these ideas by using the debate around mask-wearing as a starting point to develop a broader manifesto forshaping the built environment.

During this ongoing global pandemic, we can’t deny that human behavior has been …

Elsewhere: Impressions Of Sense & Nonsense, Madeline Woods

Masters Theses

I’m not going to give it all away up front, but here are a few things you’ll find inside: a flower that tastes like peppermint, a book that smells like sunscreen, a silver orb that purrs, a woman becoming a tree, a shy rainbow, and a hat that is also a disguise. There are lists, letters, dreams, and notes. I hope there aren’t typos, but I’m only human, after all. There is sense, and there is also nonsense.

If you decide to join me here, we will wander elsewhere — across different kinds of terrain, into sensory experiences, between mediums, …

Fossil Morphology, Leah Zhang

Masters Theses

Fossil Morphology is a multi-media art project based on my research on the coal mining area in East Pennsylvania. It consists of a film, a series of photographs, and a sound installation. Together, the three works form a dialog among each other about the ecology and aesthetics of the region’s coal mining landscape and its underground.

For a long time, coal, as an raw material for mass production, has been understood and examined from its economic values and social meanings. The gradual abandoning of this material by our industry therefore leads to the seemingly inevitable decline of the coal mining …

Insecurities: Tracing Displacement And Migration, Hammad Abid

Masters Theses

“Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Migration,” the title of both my thesis work and thesis book, calls attention to displacement and forced migration as a disruption in the continuity of place, relationships, identity, memory, and time. Through a collection of textiles, I try to capture the psychological, social, and physical effects of forced migration and communicate the impact of political violence on identity and coexistence.

In this book, I position myself within the context of how the current Indian government is attempting to rewrite the nation’s history and distort India’s pluralistic story. I tell a personal narrative of displacement in harrowing …

Inside The Bubble 2.0, Sunny Yuqing Ma

Masters Theses

As a designer, I use speculation to observe. I use design to express. I want to hit people's souls directly. I want to create unexpected sparks through relaxed storytelling.

A Family Game: Tell The Stories That Shape Us, Zhuoyan Xie

Masters Theses

There are a lot of books and theories on the market to help improve our communication skills and relationship with others. However, they hardly mention that the fundamental principle behind our relationship to others is how we understand and accept ourselves. The thesis aims to promote our understanding of our own identity and identities of our family members. It is worthy to mention that the thesis is conducted in a Chinese context. The thesis mainly learned from Non-violent communication and theories about identity, especially narrative identity. The deliverables are a set of narrative cards and prompts that can be played …

Rewilding Seattle: A Green Network For Both Humans And Non-Humans, Zhouqian Guo

Masters Theses

More than three hundred years ago, Seattle City was a place of wilderness, occupied by non-humans and the Duwamish Tibe and Suquamish. After the continuous human habitation of the village site, the dominance of Seattle has eventually shifted from non-humans to humans. While non-humans have been lived in the city all the time and seek a better living space.

The project proposes a multi-functional green network operating at different scales to cohabitate and reconnect between humans and non-humans. It restores natural habitat patches in existing locations of urban green spaces in Seattle City and connects them with co-habitation corridors in …