Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Belief, Unbelief, And Rebelief In Santa Claus: A Theory Of Cyclical Belief Or A Belief Cycle An Introduction, Steven G. Merrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Every single person, no matter who they are; what they look or sound like; where they are or come from in space and time; their sex, gender, and/or orientation; their age or maturity; their culture; and/or their background, has one or multiple belief(s) and/or belief system(s) of some kind. Such belief may be temporary, transient, fleeting, or long lasting. It/they may be superficial or deeply rooted. It/they may be (considered) or seem rational or irrational. It/they may be encouraged or discouraged, romanticized or pathologized. It/they may be conscious, subconscious, or unconscious; or, such belief(s) may exist somewhere in between. It/they …

"There Should Be No Tolerance For Intolerance": Internal Antagonism In Online Fan Communities, Michelle W. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis focuses on exploring cases of internal antagonism in fan communities, with a specific focus on the Steven Universe (2013 -) and Undertale (2015) communities present on Tumblr and Twitter. Internal antagonism is a phenomenon that occurs when a community targets a member within itself instead of outside itself, often as a way to mediate and regulate the community and reinforce its values. This thesis considers three case studies of internal antagonism with both physical and digital implications in order to better understand the role it plays in shaping and sustaining online fan communities as well as mediating the …

Self-Reliance, Social Welfare, And Sacred Landscapes: Mormon Agricultural Spaces And Their Paradoxical Sense Of Place, Anthony Ross Garner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

What is the sense of place of Mormon agricultural landscapes? That is to say, what makes an LDS Church-owned welfare farm or a Mormon family garden meaningful to those who interact with it? In formulating a partial answer to this question, this thesis demonstrates how religious ideals of self-reliance and social welfare explicitly define Mormon agricultural landscapes, providing a sacred sense of their purpose to those who work and benefit from them. However, these sacred landscapes are complicated by developments of industrial agricultural equipment, corporate institutions, and urban demographics, which tend to isolate people from each other and the land …

"Full On Toy Story": Exploring The Belief In Object Sentience In Western Culture, Amelia Mathews-Pett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis considers, from a folklorist’s perspective, the people in Western society who believe that everyday objects have feelings. It establishes these people as a cohesive group for study, referred to as “people to experience the belief in object sentience,” then analyzes their personal accounts of the experience to find both commonalities and differences. From this analysis and discussion of folkloristic perspectives on belief, the main argument is established: people in this group have generally been marginalized and could benefit from a more careful consideration of their beliefs.

Allowing The Untellable To Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, Ptsd And Stigma, Geneva Harline

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing …

From Eden To Dystopia: An Ecocritical Examination Of Emergent Mythologies In Early Los Angeles Literary Texts, Jaquelin Pelzer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In From Eden to Dystopia: An Ecocritical Examination of Emergent Mythologies in Early Los Angeles Literary Texts, ecocriticism and critical regionalism were utilized alongside other American Studies practices to analyze nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century depictions of nature in Los Angeles. Specifically, these tools were applied to travel guides and narratives of the 1870s and 1880s, the turn-of-the-century magazine The Land of Sunshine, Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (1926) and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939), and other non-fiction publications of the 1920s and ’30s to track an evolving narrative of Los Angeles as a paradise and later as a place perched …

The Same Ten People (Stps) Of Rockville: Volunteerism, Preservation, And Sense Of Community In Small-Town Southern Utah, Tori Edwards

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis examines the central role that volunteerism plays in creating a strong sense of sense of place and community within the town of Rockville, Utah, located 4.7 miles from Zion National Park. Rockville has no commercial businesses within its boundaries and relies heavily upon the volunteer efforts of its residents to carry out the majority of civil services within the town. Drawing from interviews of the STP’s (a group of Rockville residents who volunteer on a regular basis), this thesis highlights how the act of volunteerism helps residents feel membership within their community. This thesis also looks at how …

Anatomy Of A Rupture: Identity Maintenance In The 1844 Latter-Day Saint Reform Sect, Robert M. Call

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, managed dissent throughout his prophetic career. Most of the earliest dissenters came and went with little lasting impact on Mormonism—the church maintained a coherent structure despite attempted disjuncture. However, when Smith was assassinated in June 1844 (just fourteen years after he established the church), the Mormon community ruptured. Claimants to Smith’s ecclesiastical office competed for church-wide leadership. Brigham Young led thousands westward to the Rocky Mountains, but thousands of Mormons rejected Young and his version of Mormonism. This crisis over succession sparked the growth of schisms in …

West Point Of The West: A History Of The Department Of Military Science At Utah State University, Camon Davison

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Department of the Military Science at Utah State University was created in 1898 and is the oldest department at USU. Until the mid-1950s it was mandatory that all male students be enrolled in Military training at the school and, if they so decided, would finish up the last two years of military training to become officers in the United States Military. This program is known as ROTC. Fully implemented at USU in 1916 the ROTC program continued to grow and would help fund the growth of campus during the 1920’s and 30’s. Following World War II the program became …

Understanding Myth And Myth As Understanding: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Mytho-Logic Narration, Sandra Bartlett Atwood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

I wanted to see if there were points of overlap between the various accounts of creation found in folklore, philosophy and physics. In order to justify such a project, I initially considered literature from each of these disciplines regarding the necessity of interdisciplinary dialogue generally and specifically the need for both intuition and logic when considering how anything actually exists. Through my research and casual observation, I hypothesized that opposition seemed to be a universal characteristic of nature. I then looked at how each discipline has described fundamentally opposing pairs and created a list of primary features that those accounts …

Claiming The Best Of Both Worlds: Mixed Heritage Children Of The Pacific Northwest Fur Trade And The Formation Of Identity, Alanna Cameron Beason

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, a region encompassing Oregon, Washington, Idaho, the western half of Montana, and British Columbia, supplied the needed ingredients for the formation of a distinctive identity to form among the mixed heritage children born to indigenous women and men of the fur trade. This thesis examined how this identity formed in some the leading families of the time. The MacDonald’s, McKay’s, and the Tolmie’s all embraced both sides of their parental cultures and used them to create and defend their own sense of identity and community. Language was an important aspect of this new …

"Wires And Lights In A Box": Fahrenheit 451 As A Product Of Postwar Anxiety About Television, Christine V. Shell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project discusses the ways in which Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 functions as an indictment of media culture. While many analyses of the novel focus on the text’s sweeping themes of literary censorship, this study instead centers on Bradbury’s depiction of media—particularly television—culture and the ways in which Bradbury feared it could be harmful. Although Bradbury wrote about a future society a century beyond his own, his novel serves as a remarkable reflection of his contemporaneous culture’s media consumption and gendered divisions; this thesis discusses Bradbury’s novel alongside such forces, considering the effects such influences may have had on …

The Forgotten Fruitway: Folk Perspectives On Fruit Farming On The Providence Bench, 1940-1980, Amy C. Maxwell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As a whole, Cache Valley, Utah, residents have experienced dramatic changes in population size and economy over the last century. Providence, Utah, was once characterized by the farmers that worked the land surrounding it. The importance of agriculture has especially declined due to expanding urbanization. Despite these changes, Providence residents are aware of and celebrate their history. The purpose of this thesis is to add to the official account of local history. I attempt to capture a segment of the agricultural economy that often goes uncelebrated in current histories—fruit farming. Alongside the oft-cited sugar beet and pea production was a …

Severed Hands As Symbols Of Humanity In Legend And Popular Narratives, Scott White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Modern scholarly theories of oral folk narrative suggest that urban legends contain expressions of cultural beliefs that can be understood both through the contexts in which these stories are told and through the elements of the stories that remain constant across multiple tellings by various narrators. This study centers exclusively on stories and popular culture products that utilize missing or damaged fingers, hands, or arms, in order to identify the cultural values that are attached to hands in American culture. These stories in particular were chosen because the severed hand was perceived at the onset to be a common element …

Dams, Roads, And Bridges: (Re)Defining Work And Masculinity In American Indian Literature Of The Great Plains, 1968-Present, Joshua Tyler Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, …

Going Solo With Roald Dahl: Life Rewritten Through Memory, Jeannine Huenemann

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Roald Dahl does not easily fit into a category as a writer, contributing fiction and nonfiction to both children and adult audiences. Faced with this ambiguity, the literary community has mostly ignored his contributions since he is mainly viewed as a children‘s author. Late in life, Dahl created two autobiographies, Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984), and Going Solo (1986), as venues for sharing his many embellished, personal stories. This thesis focuses on Going Solo, the second of these two books which explores Dahl‘s three-year departure from England, including his enlistment in the Royal Air Force during World War II. …

Burmese Muslim Refugee Women: Stories Of Civil War, Refugee Camps And New Americans, Karen Hunt Lambert

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis includes the narratives of three Burmese Muslim refugee mothers who made their homes in Logan, Utah, within three years of locating in the United States. Each woman’s life is written about in a different style of writing – journalism, ethnography and creative nonfiction –and is then followed by analysis looking at each piece in terms of representation

Mormon Mommy Blogs: “There’S Gotta Be Some Women Out There Who Feel The Same Way.”, Whitney L. King

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Communities in cyberspace have been present since the earliest days of home computers, when connecting to the web meant logging in to the WELL program. In 1994, when the Internet became more accessible to the public, and home computers were no longer considered a novelty, millions flocked to this new, virtual frontier that allowed them to connect with anyone around the globe.

Folkloristics has been largely concerned with the tangible—what we can touch, hear, taste, and see. As the frontier of the web expanded, many folklorists contracted away from using it as a means to explore a new branch of …

Recreating Religion: The Response To Joseph Smith’S Innovations In The Second Prophetic Generation Of Mormonism, Christopher James Blythe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, was assassinated. In the wake of his death, a number of would-be
successors emerged. Each of these leaders - part of what I call the second prophetic
generation - established a unique vision of Mormonism.

In 1844, Mormonism was in the middle of a major shift in its character. Joseph
Smith’s death left numerous theological and practical questions unresolved. This thesis argues that, rather than merely a succession struggle of competition and power, a principal function of the second prophetic generation in Mormonism …

“Speaking With” The Ravine: Representation And Memory In Five Cultural Productions Of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, Karl Germeck

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis examines the rich and layered intertextual relationship between five artistic representations of the razed neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, and its former residents. These works include Seattle-based photographer Don Normark’s 1999 photography collection Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story; the full-length dramatic play Chavez Ravine, written and first performed by Los Angeles-based Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash in 2003; Jordan Mechner’s 2004 short documentary film Chávez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story; Ry Cooder’s musical album Chávez Ravine: A Record by Ry Cooder; and lastly, high school history teacher Ken Aven’s 2006 debut …

Our Mountain Home: The Oscar And Emma Swett Ranch, Carolyn Toone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In this thesis, I examined the lives of my great-grandparents, Oscar and Emma Swett. Oscar began a homestead in the Uinta Mountains in 1909, which he successfully ran for nearly sixty years. My grandmother was born on the ranch, and my own father spent much of his time there. I look at how land policy changed from encouraging ranching and farming in the early 1900's to tourism and recreation in the 1960's, with the coming of the Flaming Gorge Dam. The lives of my great-grandparents and their children were shaped by these changes and they felt the consequences of the …

"To Drink From Places": Uncovering A Rich Way Of Life Near The Grand Canyon's North Rim, Melinda Snow Rich

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The chapters of this thesis focus on the history and stories of the people who built and traveled down the highways--Highway 89A, Highway 89, and Highway 67--that branch out from the junction in front of Jacob Lake Inn, the Bowman/Rich family's 87-year-old lodge. The family's role in building roads, supporting and encouraging the growing tourist industry in Kanab and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and the converging effects of these choices have created the unique family culture and contributed to the history of the Grand Canyon region over time. Ultimately this thesis is about relationships, about the connections, …

History Steps Off The Page: The Past In The Future, A Case Study Of How The Mormon Battalion Is Making History Interactive, Allyson Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis addresses the presentation of the Mormon Battalion's history in three interactive forms. The Battalion served in the U.S.-Mexican War between 1846 and 1847. In 2008 a group known as Battalion Trek chose to rehike the original trail as closely as possible. The three chapters of this thesis address the reenactors who planned and completed the rehike, the blog they kept as they did so, and a program which allows those interested to learn more about the trail. Analyzing what such presentations have to offer is important as history moves into the hands of the public and as the …

Thaw: A Memoir, Diane Bush

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This collection of creative nonfiction essays is a hybrid text of visual and verbal narratives located broadly within the genres of memoir, research-based nonfiction, and history. Women's memoirs, including a number of non-traditional texts, historical narratives, and an archival collection of photographs, provided springboards for the exploration of and reflection on the emotional terrain of loss, the ache of remembrance, and the ultimate desire for peace.

Ultimately, this work is a search for solace amidst emotional upheaval, beginning in childhood, after the deaths of my father, mother, first husband, and beloved aunt. Unable to sit still with my grief, I …

Desert Solecisms: The Revitalization Of Self And Community Through Edward Abbey, The Cold War, And The Sacred Fire Circle, Lyra Hilliard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This creative thesis is a braided narrative in which I explore the promised lands of Utah through my travels in the summer of 2008, the Cold War defense industry, and the early career of writer Edward Abbey. America's domestic and foreign policy shifts in the first decade of the Cold War contributed to the rise of modern environmentalism and to the creation of countless new religious movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To illustrate the cataclysmic upheavals of this era, each chapter of this thesis has been organized according to anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace's schema of revitalization …

Mother-Child Interactions Among Latino Families And European-American Families In Relation To Children's Language Outcomes, Katie Christiansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The number of Latino families in the United States is increasing dramatically. For some of the children in these families, the acquisition of reading skills is hampered by inadequate early language development. Early language development is a key predictor of reading success. Identifying ways in which parents in these families can help children acquire early language skills will better prepare them for acquiring reading skills.

This study used a new parenting measure, PICCOLO, to identify parenting behaviors that are related to children's language development. The primary focus of this project was on Spanish-speaking Latino families, but a group of English-speaking …

Bushnell General Military Hospital And The Community Of Brigham City, Utah During World War Ii, Andrea Kaye Carter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Bushnell General Military Hospital was an Army World War II hospital in Brigham City, Utah from August 1942 to June 1946. It specialized in treating amputations, maxillofacial surgery, neuropsychiatric conditions, and tropical diseases. It was also one of the first hospitals to experimentally use penicillin. Bushnell was a regional facility for wounded solders from the Mountain States that provided quality medical care to patients. The community of Brigham City and the citizens of other Northern Utah communities were an integral part of the success of Bushnell. Citizens donated time, supplies, and money to support the facility and to assist in …

A Qualitative Case Study Of Developing Teacher Identity Among American Indian Secondary Teachers From The Ute Teacher Training Program, Virginia Norris Exton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this foundational study was to explore the factors that contributed to developing teacher identity among new American Indian teachers. Multifaceted research into the history of American Indian education, the design of American Indian teacher training programs, and the beliefs and experiences of four American Indian secondary teachers gave this study a richly detailed context.

Three overarching patterns emerged during the process of analyzing the data: (a) solidarity and independence, (b) habit and change, and (c) tradition and invention. From these patterns, six factors were identified as contributing to developing teacher identity. School-based experiences that affected developing teacher …

Emersonian Perfectionism: A Man Is A God In Ruins, Brad James Rowe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a great American literary figure that began his career as a minister at Boston’s Second Church. He discontinued his ministry to become an essayist and lecturer and continued as such for the remainder of his life. This thesis was written with the intent of demonstrating that, in spite of leaving the ministry, Emerson continued to be religious and a religionist throughout his life and that he promulgated a unique religion based upon the principle of self-reliance. At the heart of Emerson’s religion of self-reliance is the doctrine of perfectionism, the infinite capacity of individuals. This thesis …

The People Of Bear Hunter Speak: Oral Histories Of The Cache Valley Shoshones Regarding The Bear River Massacre, Aaron L. Crawford

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Cache Valley Shoshone are the survivors of the Bear River Massacre, where a battle between a group of US. volunteer troops from California and a Shoshone village degenerated into the worst Indian massacre in US. history, resulting in the deaths of over 200 Shoshones. The massacre occurred due to increasing tensions over land use between the Shoshones and the Mormon settlers. Following the massacre, the Shoshones attempted settling in several different locations in Box Elder County, eventually finding a home in Washakie, Utah. However, the LDS Church sold the land where the city of Washakie sat, forcing the Shoshones …