Arts and Humanities Commons^™

From Building To Dwelling: Unfolding Infinity Through Bioregional Fulfillment, Sanjana Bhatnagar

Pitzer Senior Theses

The causes of anthropogenic climate change touch every feature of our modern-day existences. Approaches to sustainability tend to focus on material actions, but unsustainable practices are guided by an ontological orientation of individuality and human exceptionalism. This thesis provides an alternate account of being that decenters individuality through weaving the metaphysics of Fazang of the Huayan School of Mahayana Buddhism with the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger. To encompass the whole of the relational network that constitutes and conditionally defines our existence, I expand Heidegger’s account of locales as relational sites which are put forth solely by humans to an account …

Grey’S Anatomy And End Of Life Ethics, Sean Micheal Swenson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative study, I analyze three episodes of the prime-time television medical drama Grey’s Anatomy to explore how the show stages conversations of end of life. I extend the work of end of life ethicists with attention to the ways that media may/should/could be used to teach and reflect issues of dying in America. Performing a close textual analysis, I identified two modes of storytelling within the structure of these episodes: Documentary Realism and Melodrama. I argue that if we are to understand medical dramas as a tool for the dissemination of information about end of life ethics, we …

A Critique Of Frederick Nietzsche's Philosophy On Law, God, And Morality, Rebekah Vaughn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Friedrich Nietzsche is the last of the modern philosophers. His philosophy has influenced fields such as literature, psychology, and ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy on ethics is primarily what will be covered. Nietzsche wishes to sever the connection between western civilization and God. He sees that people may no longer believe in God, but they still follow Christian morality. Nietzsche argues for a new morality, one humanity will create themselves. His famous line “God is dead” is an expression of what humanity needs to do with God. Nietzsche then argues the Overman will take over humanity, leading towards a world with a …

Std Prevention: An Educational Intervention For Exotic Dancers, Maria Delurdes Dehoyos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Centers for Disease Control and prevention reported nearly 2.3 million STD cases diagnosed in 2017, and the number is continuing to rise. San Antonio, Texas, is ranked third in the state of Texas with the highest STD rates and leading in the state with congenital syphilis. There is an increased risk for contracting STDs working in the sex industry. There are little to no studies pertaining to any educational interventions offered to exotic dancers to increase personal knowledge on STDs. This research has focused on an educational intervention offered by a nurse practitioner to exotic dancers in two adults-only …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

Undressing Evil: On The Language, Function, And Eradication Of Evil, Nelson Hilario

Senior Projects Spring 2021

How does one begin a discussion about evil? The question of evil is approached by different thinkers via fundamentally different routes, leaning on disparate methods, and asking distinct questions—the basis and intention of each inquiry differ. Nietzsche’s On The Genealogy of Morality shows us that the region of violence is language, that violence begins with language. This is Nietzsche’s categorical contribution to the study of evil: that “evil” belongs to the domain of language (in defining “evil,” contrasting “evil,” and developing a dialect to talk about “evil”). Furthermore, Nietzsche’s understanding of the role of guilt, and what one does to …

Placing Notes In The Virtual “Western Wall”: Online Memorial Culture In Chinese Social Media, Xiaoyu Zhang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Each society has a unique way of understanding death and coping with mourning. The increasing online mourners in China gradually generated a collective reference to the Weibo account that belongs to the dead, the “Western Wall.” This project searches for answers to two questions: 1) What characterizes Chinese online memorial practice? And how do these practices compare with those in the Western countries? 2) What aspects of Chinese culture and social conditions can explain Chinese online memorial practices? By combining corpus analysis with thematic analysis on 1,606 comments left on the last tweet of two accounts of deceased Weibo users, …

Attitudes Toward Death: How Buddhist Teachings Help A Person Cope With Death Anxiety And Accept Death, Abigail Michaud

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Death attitudes are an evolving field of study that continues to expand due to its universal relevance. Clinical and psychological research emphasize how these personal attitudes greatly impact a person’s life and death and are rooted in one’s unique perspective of death and the dying process. This paper provides an in-depth examination of two death attitudes: death acceptance and death anxiety. The two attitudes are complex and shift throughout a person’s lifetime depending on many personal factors, including culture, religion, and age. The paper reveals that death acceptance positively effects a person’s life and promotes greater quality of life, while …

The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation began with the reading of numerous Qing-dynasty records pertaining to dead bodies that remained on the ground without proper burial. These bodies were not necessarily the victims of extraordinary events such as wars or natural disasters, but the remains of ordinary people whose families failed to arrange a burial site. A wide range of historical materials recorded the presence of these bodies, such as commentaries and critiques on popular burial customs written by the imperial government and literati elites, and Qing popular tales where these bodies were described as man-hunting zombies (jiangshi 僵屍). These sources demonstrate unburied dead …

Bayesian Analysis In Adult Skeletal Age-At-Death Estimation, With Additional Consideration Of Pathological Variables, Jessica L. Campbell

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A common task bioarchaeologists face is to estimate age-at-death in populations that have no corresponding documentation. This poses many challenges, the first of which is that age-at-death is highly variable within and among populations and can be further confounded by genetic and environmental influences, as well as other components of the biological profile. Estimating age-at-death in a historic sample can be even more challenging due to missing age indicators or taphonomic changes that obscure the features. Bayesian Analysis offers the potential to mitigate these challenges and to estimate age-at-death with lower degrees of uncertainty and higher probabilities of increased accuracy …

Death And Taxidermy: How The Process Of Taxidermy Ties In To Modern Society’S Discomfort With Death, Caitlin Monroe

History Undergraduate Theses

“Death and Taxidermy: How the Process of Taxidermy ties in to Modern Society’s Discomfort with Death” examines the relationship between current western discomfort with taxidermy and the strengthening relationship of companion animals with humans. This strengthening of the relationship is facilitating the rising level of grief that comes with losing a pet thus allowing that loss to equate to the loss of a family member. By dispelling the mystery surrounding the process by which a taxidermy specimen is made, where it comes from and why these specimens are vital to educational advancement in the museum, we can discuss why society …

Still Life: Growing Up With Death - A Visual Memoir, Lindsey Roth-Rosen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a multidimensional visual narrative project that incorporates heuristic methodology to illustrate complicated grief that emerged from early childhood loss. The memoir’s intention is to exemplify grief as a complex and mutable composite response to the death of my mother. One objective of this capstone is to understand melancholy, commonly associated with mental illness or symptomatic of depression, as an aesthetic emotion as well as a conduit for philosophical reflection. I use non-verbal approaches to the genre of a memoir by incorporating my photography to epitomize art as a powerful means to comprehend the totality of loss: as …

View Of Death And Dying, And Other Medical Issues Through The Eyes Of People In Different Religions, Kaylie Roberts

Honors Theses

The process of dying, and death itself, is viewed quite differently among different religions. Other medical issues, including abortion and suicide, are also topics of debate and interest among the major religions of the world. In this thesis, five major religions are discussed: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For the purpose ofthis thesis, Christianity was divided into two categories: Southern Baptist Convention and Roman Catholicism. Each religion has a vast amount of denominations or subgroups. However, for the information covered here, there is not a huge amount of variation among the subgroups of each religion. That is not to …

Photography And Mourning: Excavating Memories Of My Great-Grandmother, Eva Weiner

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores how photographs have affected mourning processes in the past and how photo-technology may be able to change the way in which we mourn in the future. It includes an overview of the history of post-mortem photography and discusses the perspectives of well-known media theorists such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. It engages with psychologists by including their perspectives on the effect that photographs have on the mourning process. A project was created to investigate how photo-technology can affect the bereaved. The project places photographs of a mother into pictures of her children taken after she had …

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.

Exploring The Viability Of Establishing A Children’S Grief Camp In South Africa, Joann Borer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The death of a loved one is an inevitable and unavoidable phase of life that everyone must experience. A variety of thoughts and feelings follow the death a close friend or relative. It is crucial to address the thoughts and feelings associated with the death so that individuals can grief in a healthy manner. Those living in South Africa are most likely going to experience the death of a loved one since South Africa has such a high mortality rate. Through a qualitative study, this paper explores the death system and culture in South Africa. In addition, the organizations and …

From Womb To Tomb: A Deconstructionist And Psychoanalytic Perspective Of Death In James Joyce's Dubliners, Bailey Gunn

Senior Capstone Theses

Intentionally absent.

Giving Meaning To Grief: The Role Of Rituals And Stories In Coping With Sudden Family Loss, Julia Janelle Barnhill

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I seek to better understand the sensemaking process among surviving family members after a tragic loss of a teenage or young adult child. Using social constructionism (Gergen, 1991) as a theoretical framework, I focused on how meanings of loss are constructed through the use of language and other symbols. I specifically looked at the role of family stories and rituals in making sense of the sudden loss as well as how a survivor's role as a sibling or parent may impact the grieving process. The participants in my research were all members of families in which a …

Sibling Death In Childhood: An Evaluation Of The Literature Regarding Inclusion Of Minority Cultures, 1990–2002, Joyce Kay L. Cherry

Community & Environmental Health Theses & Dissertations

This evaluation seeks to determine the extent to which the professional literature concerning bereaved children in the United States includes African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American children whose siblings have died in childhood.

A literature search identifies 58 articles, published between 1990 and 2002, concerning children under age 19 living in the United States whose siblings have died. Articles are sorted by time frame and classified by type. There are 31 descriptive articles consisting of five literature reviews, five commentaries, five case studies, and 16 narratives; there are 27 research articles. Analysis determines the extent to which race, culture, …

Death In Children's Literature: A User's Guide, Jennifer M. Collier

Honors Theses

My love for children's books led me to begin exploring the subject of death within the literature. While searching for children's books that dealt with death as a primary of secondary theme, I realized how useful a guide to these books would be to parents, physicians, teachers and anyone working with a child facing some kind of death. It is hard for us to explain to children about death because it is hard to understand and accept, and we do not want to upset the children. Children's books that deal with death provide a means for opening the lines of …

Death In Children's Literature, Joyce Ann Kaufman

Honors Theses

Mr. Wordsworth posed an interesting question. What should a child know about death?

Often we try to protect children from death. Euphemisms are used regarding death. People and pets do not die, they "pass away," "go to sleep," or "go to live in heaven." When a death occurs in a family, the adults often say of a young child, "It doesn't seem to bother him. Maybe he doesn't realize what has happened." Other people may mention that "He has accepted it so well. Children adapt so easily."

A Study Of The Sin And Death Of Moses In Biblical Literature, Harry E. Woodall

OBU Graduate Theses

Recently Dr. Clyde T. Francisco, who is professor of Old Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, suggested that one of the great mysteries of the Bible is contained in the sin and death of Moses. Inquiry into the subject has validated his statement, for the interpretation of Moses' sin and death has been subject to many theories and speculations. The following Biblical passages are concerned with the sin and death of Moses: Numbers 20:1-13; 22-29; 27:12-14; Deuteronomy 1:35-40; 3:23-29; 4:21-24; 32:48-52; 34:1-7. Other related Biblical passages include Psalm 106:32-33, ·Mark 9:2-13 and synoptic parallels including Matthew 17: 1-13 and …