Digital Commons Network^™

Small Town Superfund: History Of The Vertac Superfund Site In Jacksonville, Arkansas, Margaret Frances Stone

Theses and Dissertations

The Vertac Superfund site in Jacksonville, Arkansas was a man-made disaster that affected the city in multiple ways socially and economically. It began with the start of World War II, and the construction of the Arkansas Ordnance Plant in 1942. After the end of World War II, Reasor-Hill bought and reused the area for chemical production. While the company created jobs, it also began to create the setting for an environmental disaster, as more chemical companies traded the site around for chemical production, including the components for Agent Orange. It is inextricably connected to the Arkansas Ordnance Plant, the reuse …

Tranisitioning From Film To Stage: Three Years Of Growth And Reflections, Ruihan Liu

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis delves into my journey as a Master of Fine Arts candidate specializing in Scenic Design within the Theatre program at the University of South Carolina.

Comprising seven chapters, this thesis provides a comprehensive exploration of my academic and professional trajectory. The introductory chapter offers insights into my transition from a background in Film Production to the realm of Theatre Arts, reflecting on the challenges and revelations encountered along the way.

Chapters 2 through 5 offer in-depth analyses of five stage productions wherein I served as a scenic designer during my graduate tenure. Each chapter delves into the creative …

Reflections Of Chinese Opera In Contemporary Chinese Piano Repertoire: A Cutural, Analytical, And Pedagogical Guide, Mengyu Song

Theses and Dissertations

Over 5,000 years, Chinese opera has been inspired by many imperial dynasties, regions, and ethnic cultures, making it a unique reflection of Chinese culture. Chinese composers have incorporated traditional Chinese opera in piano compositions to express cultural identity and artistic significance. This music has a broad and profound cultural significance, fostering cultural interchange and understanding and presenting a diverse and inclusive musical experience for non-Chinese students and musicians.

This research study provides a comprehensive overview of Chinese traditional operas, vocal technique and instrumentation, the development of piano music in China, and corresponding piano literature in progressive difficulty for early-intermediate to …

Sappho And Shakespeare: Aristotelian Views On Relationships, Catherine Corinne Reisinger

Theses and Dissertations

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he defines different relationships that people experience; youthful, incidental, and pure. Youthful relationships focus on strong emotions and intense passionate feelings between two individuals. Incidental relationships involve two individuals of drastically different ages, most notably mortals and deities. Pure relationships involve two individuals who are morally good and want nothing but the best for one another, showing their pure goodness. Though they lived several centuries apart, Sappho and Shakespeare display all three relationship types in their writings. Sappho showcases each type of relationship in her poetry, while Shakespeare most notably portrays all three relationships in …

Native American Nationalism: Chickasaw Identity And The Music Of Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Austin Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Native American nationalism in classical music has yet to be seriously researched and is not taught in music academia. One of the more well-known contemporary Native American composers is Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (b. 1968). Throughout his career, Tate has explored and expressed his identity as a Native American and Chickasaw citizen through his music. As a result, his compositional output is a rich resource for examining what Native American nationalism in classical music looks like and how it is utilized in his works.

In this document, I analyze three of Tate’s pieces written for orchestra: Tracing Mississippi, Ghost …

Sonic Data: Sonification In James Stephenson’S There Are No Words And David Kirkland Garner’S Red Hot Sun Turning Over, Nathan Lee Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

Sonification, or the transformation of data relations into sound, has inspired composers of orchestral and wind ensemble music over the past several years. Two of the resulting works included there are no words by James Stephenson and red hot sun turning over by David Kirkland Garner. Both works were analyzed, and their histories detailed in this study. Issues in American society and the American South such as gun violence, civil rights, and American Civil War monuments are revealed as inspiration for composers to map empirical processes onto sound. These musical protests against misinformation were shown to illuminate histories and correlations …

Echoes Of Heritage: Documenting Contemporary Works From Singapore Featuring The Cello, Eunice Koh

Theses and Dissertations

Multiculturalism is prevalent in many countries around the world, including Singapore, and music is used as a way to reflect and represent cultural influences in societies worldwide. Singapore is a multicultural nation renowned for its diversity, and the fusion of influences from Asian heritages and Western cultures. This study echoes the heritage in Singapore, showing a brief history and development of the country, cultural integration, and representation of musical identity. The artistic tapestry of the country is achieved with endeavors from government initiatives and various music ensembles that contributed to the vibrant musical ecosystem in Singapore. This is represented through …

A Conductor’S Guide To When We No Longer Touch: The World’S First Aids Requiem, Kevin Crowe

Theses and Dissertations

At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Kristopher Jon Anthony wrote his greatest work, When We No Longer Touch. This was a seven-movement requiem scored for flute, English horn, harp, piano, strings, percussion, tenor/bass choir, small tenor/bass ensemble, and soprano and baritone soloists. It draws on combined texts from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass and the self-help guide to grief How to Survive the Loss of a Love, featuring poetry by Peter McWilliams. These are grouped together and framed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ model of the stages of grieving. It all combines to make a work of exceptional beauty and emotional …

Queer Eye For Costume Design: An Insight Into The Creative Process From The Perspective Of An Lgbtq+ Designer, Andrew Simon Burns

Theses and Dissertations

From the page to the stage, the creative process manifests itself differently for every theatre artist. During my time in the Costume Design and Technology Program at the University of South Carolina, I have analyzed and adapted my design process through rigorous curriculum and experiential learning. This thesis explores my artistic and professional growth by showcasing my production designs in educational and professional practice. Through these experiences, I was able to acquire a well-rounded set of skills in construction, pattern making, draping, and costume rendering that aide and elevate my designs and ability to communicate effectively with production teams. My …

Histories Of Stress: A Life Course Approach To Population Health In Late Medieval And Early Modern Berlin, Emily Brennan

Theses and Dissertations

Given our current climate crisis and urban population increases, researchers are increasingly interested in the health outcomes at the intersection of climate change and urbanization. Since climate change and urbanization affects human health in a variety of ways, more work is needed in diverse cultural contexts to understand temporal and geographic variations of such phenomena more fully. Using skeletal individuals from 13^th – 18^th century Berlin (n = 387), this project analyses demographic and health trends from the founding of the city in the late medieval period (c. 1200 – 1500) to the early modern period, when the …

Planning And Adapting In The Design Process, Lindsay Kay Wilkinson

Theses and Dissertations

The costume design and technology program at the University of South Carolina requires that students extensively learn each area of the profession. The largest growth-inducing experiences and some of the highlights for me were the opportunities to adapt when challenging changes or unexpected twists and turns arose with each production or project. Through my time at the university, I have gained a better understanding of balance between time and stress management, a system for understanding and completing costume-based research, digital rendering, I have improved the communication of my ideas with a director, working out a cohesive look with a production …

Examining The Impact Of De-Escalation Training For Rural Mississippi Leos: Using Simulation To Assess Behavioral Outcomes, Deepali Manoj Dhruve

Theses and Dissertations

People with mental illness (PMI) are at a 67% greater risk of arrest and 16 times greater risk of being killed during a police incident than other civilians. Indeed, law enforcement officers (LEOs) report lacking expertise when addressing mental health calls, and existing trainings aimed at reducing violence in LEO encounters with PMI do not account for challenges specific to rural LEOs. Additionally, many trainings are severely lacking in assessing outcome changes pre- and post-training with more than half of trainings relying on survey-based knowledge subject to social desirability bias and inaccurate self-assessment. This study aimed to address limitations in …

Redefining Spaces Of Resistance Against Capitalism And Patriarchy: A Study Of Females In Society And The Family As Presented By Mrs. Warren’S Profession (1893) By Bernard Shaw And A Raisin In The Sun (1959) By Lorraine Hansberry, Jennifer L. Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

These plays show how conflicts concerning race, gender, and class stem from economic distress, racial discrimination, and patriarchal oppression. Within such intersections lie distinct realities of capitalism which simultaneously upholds patriarchal ideals that can only be best understood through a Marxist-Feminist lens. This thesis pays attention to how racism and discrimination functions to isolate certain groups of people from reaching social mobility. The first chapter analyzes Mrs. Warren’s Profession to demonstrate how Mrs. Warren decision to enter into prostitution cannot simply be reduced to a question of morality, but rather a question of society’s conditions that place women into certain …

Development Of Anti-Fibrotic Agents For Potential Use In Glaucoma Filtration Surgery To Prevent Scar Formation, Nikhala Shree S

Theses and Dissertations

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness with irreversible vision loss. It is marked by the degeneration of retinal ganglion cells, which results in optic nerve head damage. Intraocular pressure (IOP) is a prime risk factor of glaucoma controlled by various treatment regimens i.e., medication, laser, and/ or surgery. It is reported that longterm exposure to anti-glaucoma medications (AGM) may subtle the surgical success rate leading to postoperative fibrosis. Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) is a growth factor that plays an important role in the development of glaucoma and promotes fibrosis.

This study is aimed at developing peptides to …

Fight, Eduardo Daniel Guerra

Theses and Dissertations

FIGHT, is a story of a boxers mental health and his struggles before and after every fight. The protagonist, Eddy, is an anxious fighter who experiences a panic attack before his fight and in his panicked state, his mind runs wild as he imagines every possible scenario that can happen. Thus, when the scenarios come true, Eddy, becomes unsure of what is and isn’t true. Which begs the question, is Eddy brain damaged from the fight and stuck living in the traumatic memory that is replaying in his head or is he still in the restroom before the fight, paralyzed …

Scenic Design: Learning How To Think Outside The Black Box, Ashley Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

During my time in the scenic design MFA program at the University of South Carolina, the most important thing I learned is how little I knew before starting this journey. This thesis will explore the challenges I faced and the growth I experienced through the pain of it all. I will demonstrate what I learned by going through each design process step-by-step, and how I became a better artist for it.

Light Em' Up, Lorna Renee Young

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I will document and explore my process from researching the show to putting it on stage. Theatre is different from concert lighting which I have experience in but lighting in a theatre capacity is still new and through every show I was able to learn something new. Through this program I have learned how to successfully take a script from the paperwork to the stage.

Women Gaze Back: Affect And Apparatic Disintegration In Funeral Parade Of Roses And Perfect Blue, Jessi Ivie

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how films Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) by Toshio Matsumoto and Perfect Blue (1997) by Satoshi Kon subvert the male gaze of the camera by having the female main characters look back at the audience. The characters Mima (Perfect Blue) and Eddie (Funeral Parade) take control of the camera to subvert the hierarchical relationship between apparatus, audience, and characters. Through the lenses of apparatus and affect theory, these films show how the world of film includes the audience instead of precluding them. Experimental editing and heightened emotional situations unsettle the audience's voyeuristic position, bringing them closer to …

The Voice As Identity: How Opera Has Influenced Dubbing In Italy And The United States, Brynn Allison Staker

Theses and Dissertations

An enduring Italian tradition of celebrating the voice and the Italian language as seen by the Italian perception and interest in opera has created an environment of celebration for Italian dubbers. The long-established history of opera in Italy, as well as the modern reception of Italian opera, have effectively placed the voice at the forefront of the Italian entertainment industry. This can be seen through an examination of the careers of Italian dubbers and the success that they saw in their industry. The United States did not have a longstanding operatic tradition, and when opera was introduced it was under …

Perceptions Of Primary Grade Teachers About Reading Curriculum And Early Literacy Intervention, Melody Carr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the perceptions of reading curriculum and early literacy intervention of primary grade teachers. The purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions: How do primary grade teachers view early literacy intervention? How do teachers perceive the basal reading program, Reading Wonders? While there are studies that focus on teacher perceptions, research is limited in the area of teachers’ perceptions of reading curriculum and early literacy intervention. Data was collected using a qualitative approach using a survey, interviews, and a focus group discussion. Findings reveal that teachers feel that they need to be prepared when …

Understanding Policy On The Move: The Workings Of School Policy And Teachers’ Emergent Positioning Through Narrative, Ryan Kerr

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the ways that school policies are understood and taken up by teachers. A review of the relevant literature suggests that much school policy, even that which is explicitly designed to ameliorate inequities that exist within schools and school systems, often have an inverse effect. It is also established that teachers, for many reasons, often subvert school policies in their daily practice. Using a transliteracies framework, this study seeks to explore the intimacies of these disconnects for teachers through a close look at their narratives surrounding school policy and the ways that certain policies affect their identities. This …

Wayward Utopias: Time In Wilde And Goethe, Kafi Moghrabi Mr

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I study the dialectical relation between the Utopian imagination and a reality perceived in every way as antagonistic to hope. In the first chapter, I present Ernst Bloch’s Utopian vision, as presented in The Principle of Hope, which offers an exposition of the author’s Romantic Marxism. The second chapter engages Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, demonstrating how a life devoted to self-gratification only results in the constant deferral of Utopian longing, and how, undone, Dorian’s demise opens up Utopian possibilities as anticipated by Bloch. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s version of the …

Processing The Kaay Collection: Reeling In The Am Era, Dora L. Bradley

Theses and Dissertations

The KAAY Collection of reel-to-reel tapes was received at the Central Arkansas Library System at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and stored in the archives temporarily before being sent for digitization. The collection was not fully processed. This project was to include organizing and labeling the materials before cataloging descriptive information about each reel-to-reel tape. Further plans included digitizing and collecting metadata from each reel, as well as creating finding aides for the materials before they could be stored in the archive. Though a deed of gift was signed awarding ownership of the collection to the archive, interviews and …

Egypt’S Legal Modernism: Challenging The National Discourse, Mohamed A. El-Deeb

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt’s legal modernity is the story of the modern Egyptian state itself. Reforming the country’s judiciary in the late nineteenth century was meant to achieve ambitious aims beyond the functionality of a justice system. The utmost goal was the country’s independence from the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The judicial reforms modernized the Egyptian state and built a judiciary and legal community like no other place. Egypt achieved its independent judiciary before gaining its political independence. That was a remarkable achievement of the judicial reform. That rich part of Egypt’s modern history is negated and disregarded from public awareness. Not …

Communicating Politics Without Talking Politics: The Role Of The European Union In The Game Of Egyptian Culture., Mona Massoud

Theses and Dissertations

The European Union has provided various democracy aid programs to Egypt since 2013, yet the country’s democracy index has gone down since then[1]. Despite the stagnation in the trajectory of democratization, the EU expanded its democracy promotion aid programs in 2016 to encompass the independent cultural scene in Egypt. This thesis critically examines the reasons for the stagnation of democratization processes in Egypt, a MENA country that continues to be a recipient of the EU’s democracy promotion programs. It argues that there is a discrepancy between the EU’s stated democracy promotion rhetoric and its actions, a factor that …

An Exploration Of Power Relations In Select Plays Of Girish Karnad A Foucauldian Perspective, Srinivasa Yogananda Rao Netrakanti

Theses and Dissertations

The present study, ‘An Exploration of Power Relations in Select Plays of Girish Karnad: A Foucauldian Perspective‘ aims to study power relations among the different characters in the three plays of Girish Karnad viz., Tughlaq, Naga-Mandala and Tale- Danda through Foucault's three modalities of power viz., bio-power, disciplinary power and sovereign power.

Chapter 1, Introduction gives a bird-eye view of Foucauldian concepts of power followed by the three modes of objectification and dividing practices, subjects and power relations, inter-connectedness between power and knowledge, panopticism, bio-power and discourses, the application of Foucauldian theories of the three major powers. Next, a Girish …

Examining How Artistic Expression In The Classroom Can Increase Students' Academic Performance And Understanding Of Course Material, Jake Taylor Marrazzo

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study examined how artistic expression in the classroom can increase students’ academic performance and understanding of course material. This study consisted of graduate students in the Masters of Arts in Higher Education program at Rowan University, during the Fall/Spring 2023-2024 semesters, enrolled in at least one of the following courses: Crisis Management, Higher Education in America, and The College Student. The study utilized an artistic expression activity, painting, in connection with participants' course material and readings to understand the benefits of artistic expression on student success in the classroom. Some findings of this study show that artistic …

The J In Danger, Zachary Delamater

Theses and Dissertations

“The J in Danger” merges autobiographic and formal concerns in sculpture and installation to describe the existential hazards contemporary life poses to Queer and Disabled individuals. The paper utilizes silent letters as thematic device to connect notions of precarity to a broader sense of contemporary “doomerism.”

Édouard Manet’S Defense Of Modernity: Recontextualizing The Cat In Olympia, Rebecca Schiffman

Theses and Dissertations

The black cat in Édouard Manet’s seminal painting, Olympia, has often been relegated as a crude joke or symbol of reprehensible sexuality. This thesis argues that the cat plays a larger role in Manet’s representation of modernism, and functioned as a defense mechanism by the artist against his critics.

Human Experience In The Immersive Experience Economy, Beliz Yuksel Inal

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the growing trend of immersive experiences, examining how they are designed and experienced. It compares the artistic Machine Hallucination and the commercial Van Gogh Immersive Experience examples. Analyzing audience engagement and social contexts, the research aims to understand the impact of immersive experiences on individuals and society.