Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"Carneys Point" - A Short Film, Alexander Parkin

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Carneys Point is a fifteen minute short film shot on 16mm film that tells the story of a woman's life, fractured into three facets each representing an important crossroad of a single life: the disenchanting prelude to the coming of age, the anxiety of motherhood, and the mental decay of old age.

The film is divided into three vignettes, which overlap to paint a multi-layered portrait of a woman, a trilogy of the human spirit, heart, and mind.

One is the story of a little girl who is obsessed with flight and dreams of escape. Though she has the naïve …

Frente Al Mar (Oceanfront): A Short Film, Adriana González-Vega

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The inspiration for Frente al Mar (Oceanfront) came in 2009 during the winter break vacation in my first year of college. I was visiting my home in Puerto Rico, when the story broke in the news about a group of families being evicted from their houses after living there for many years.

According to the reports, the government identified these families as squatters and Dominican immigrants. As I was watching the news, TV reporter Efrén Arroyo was giving a summary of the entire situation, as well as placing it in the context of similar cases in the past.

February 6, …

Late Night Television And Its Impact On The Music Industry Via Album Sales And Social Media, Matthew Robin

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Experiential learning has been a large part of my college experience. My work experiences have allowed me to understand the music industry in a very unique way. One experience was my semester in Los Angeles, where I worked at Jimmy Kimmel Live! It was there that I was able to see the influence that these shows could have on musical guests and vice versa. The late-night landscape is as booming as it ever has been, with many different outlets for talent. I wanted to demonstrate that the process of getting an artist on a late-night show is a very …

The Accused, Nathan Damon Hopper

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Exonerations are increasing, largely thanks to the advent of DNA evidence, which several prisoners’ rights advocacy groups, like the Innocence Project, have used to prove the innocence of the convicted. But returning home after spending years imprisoned for a wrongful conviction brings with it several types of challenges: psychological, financial, and simply personal.

Roy Brown, the main subject of this story (though there are several other important characters) is an incredibly intricate man. Before his 25-to-life sentence for the murder of a county social worker, he’d faced several other convictions for a slew of misbehavings and a general disregard for …

Connecting The Peaces: Working To Make The World A Better Place – The Encompass Journey Of Understanding, Alison Sara Kurtzman

Honors Capstone Projects - All

On October 12, 2002, the Indonesian island of Bali experienced the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. 202 people were killed when a bomb was detonated outside of a nightclub in the tourist city of Kuta. Among those killed was Daniel Braden, a young British man who was in Bali for a rugby tournament. Daniel’s parents believed that the attack happened because the majority of people in the nightclub were white and therefore viewed as “the enemy.” They believed that if young people had the opportunity to meet and speak with people different from themselves a lot of terrorist …

Syracuse Spotlight: Building A Greater Performing Arts Community, Alison Rose Mierzejewski

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Syracuse Spotlight is a performing arts magazine created in part to build a stronger performing arts community for the Syracuse University campus. Since the campus lacks any sort of regular coverage of live performance, I wanted to provide a resource to fill this void in student publicatons. For the most part, the coverage was not in depth, and most of the coverage was solely of the work done by the Syracuse University Drama Department.

With the creation of Syracuse Spotlight, I bring to the university community an outlet for respresentation of all performing arts – both of majors and …

Examining The Challenges To The Anti-Human-Trafficking Movement In Russia, Stephen Alexander Barton

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This paper examines the success of the anti-human trafficking movement in curbing the enslavement and trade of Russians to other parts of the country and world. This paper outlines how and why human trafficking is a major human rights and security issue for Russia and the “destination” countries to which traffickers send their victims. The anti-trafficking movement in Russia, which gained strength in the late 1990s through grassroots organization and international backing, successfully lobbied the Russian government to pass the country’s first anti-trafficking legislation in 2003. This paper analyzes the many challenges this law has faced, while also focusing particularly …

American Zionism And The Evolution Of ‘Pro-Israel’ In U.S. Politics, Samuel Taylor

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis will determine how and to what extent the definition of ‘pro-Israel’ in U.S. mainstream political activism has undergone a change. In light of recent publications and polls indicating that ‘support’ for or ‘connection’ to Israel was waning among college-aged Jewish students in the United States, I decided to examine the potential causes for this attitude shift, and determine how the shift is being reflected in the U.S. relationship with Israel, if at all. To adequately identify changes in the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the definition of ‘pro-Israel’ in the United States, one must first distinguish between, at least, two …

Nothing Is Free: A Screenplay, David Hetzron

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Film has been an invaluable part of American society for nearly a century. From having political significance, to solely entertaining purposes, this versatile medium has only garnered more and more cultural investment each year of its existence. While it may not always be a vital component to a completed project, it is within the script writing process that ideas, themes, and messages are negotiated and developed. The real meaning of a story is encoded within the words. The script can be considered provocative, emotional, informative, and may incite a unique effect for each of its readers. While no reader is …

Hue Magazine, Sadé Khadijah Muhammed

Honors Capstone Projects - All

HUE magazine is a print title dedicated toward the uplift and synergy of women of color in America. At present, there is no publication that makes a conscious effort to not single out women of color in specific ethnic groups, but instead to talk to all of them simultaneously.

At its core, HUE’s target audience is first generation women of color between the ages of 18-25. It is a lifestyle magazine with stories in fashion, beauty, love, culture, health, entrepreneurship, and more. The goal is for the magazine to appeal to the girl in us all who loves fashion and …

How Digital Media Affects The Nature Of Social Interactions, Johnny Liang

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for evaluating and understanding the roles of digital media, in particular the mobile phone and the internet, in our interpersonal and societal relationships. Though this paper is essentially grounded in research, drawing from the work of psychologists, cyber anthropologists, philosophers, and professors of communication studies as well as years of personal observations, it should be understood as more of a theoretical rather than research-based primer on the effects of digital media in our everyday lives. While this paper includes various ways digital connections can improve our relationships, it primarily discusses …