Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“Wandering Between Two Worlds”: From One Marshall To Another, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This personal essay chronicles my journey from Marshall, Texas, where I lived for 14 years, to Marshall University, where I have taught for 17 years. I discuss not only the move itself, but a pivot from Victorian studies to Appalachian studies, a change I made so I could focus on the region in which I live. The essay’s central question is mentioned in the title: how long do I have to live here before I can call myself a West Virginian, and before others will regard me that way as well? Is 17 years enough? If not, will I eventually …

Free Speech On The Web And Its Limits, Moris Stern

Open Educational Resources

This assignment uses ChatGPT as a learning tool to examine the democratic justification and limits of free speech on the web. Students analyze arguments for and against online free expression through Kantian respect for persons and Utilitarian maximization of overall well-being. Using AI-generated historical and controversial cases, students evaluate whether specific instances of free speech are morally justifiable, challenge their own conclusions with AI-constructed counterarguments, and critically assess AI-generated summaries. The assignment emphasizes philosophical reasoning, ethical analysis, and reflective engagement with AI as an academic tool.

We-Making Through Technology: Social Cohesion And Virtual Adaptation In Community Arts Organizations For Artists With Idd During Covid-19 Pandemic, Yumi Shirai, Michelle Boulanger Thompson, Tamara Shetron

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

COVID-19 public health restrictions disrupted in-person arts participation, increasing risks of social isolation and reduced community access. Prior research shows that many people engaged in home-based arts and cultural activities during lockdown, supporting emotional regulation, a sense of belonging, and social connection; however, little is known about how these shifts affected community arts organizations that serve artists with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD), a population disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and longstanding inequities. We examined how community-based arts organizations adapted programming for artists with IDD during the COVID-19 pandemic, including barriers and unanticipated outcomes relevant to equitable access and participation …

Aging With Mercy, Thriving In Place, Emma Layne Katzman, Karen Weis, Jennifer Rugletic Washko

Entry Level Occupational Therapy Doctoral Capstone Projects Class of 2026

Occupational engagement, spirituality, and quality of life are recognized as important dimensions of aging, however, these factors remain underexplored among older adults residing within faith-based communal living environments. This doctoral capstone experience, Aging with Mercy, Thriving in Place, consisted of two distinct but complementary components: an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved mixed methods research study and a quality improvement initiative. The purpose of the research study was to explore occupational engagement, occupational role transitions, spirituality, identity, and perceived quality of life among older adults residing within a faith-based communal living environment. Quantitative data were collected using the World Health Organization Quality …

The Evolution Of The Whittier State School From Reform To Control, Manuella Zammit

Whittier City & College Historical Research

This paper examines the transformation of the Whittier State School from its founding in 1891 as a Quaker inspired reform institution into a punitive juvenile detention facility under the California Youth Authority. Through analysis of primary sources including The Sentinel student newspaper, The Journal of Delinquency, psychological studies, and modern reports, this study traces how the school's philosophy shifted across three distinct eras. The first era (1890s to 1912) emphasized moral rescue through vocational training, academic instruction, and structured communal life rooted in Quaker ideals of rehabilitation over punishment. The second era (1912 to 1927) witnessed the rise of …

Blue Spring (2001):, George Dibble

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

“Congratulations on your graduation,” broadcasts on the upper secondary school’s PA system—the first sound in the film Blue Spring (2001), directed by Toshiaki Toyoda—yet none of the students we follow for the next 83 minutes have anything to graduate for. Like a chick denied egg-shell breakage, stuck in its hard world, the film-focused boys are told to live. But where, and how? Blue Spring exists between the graffiti laden walls of high school where classes are secondary to student politics and fights are as common as words.

Annoyances lead to murders. Money is extorted. Teachers are harassed. The first image …

Integrating Non-Binary Morphology Into Spanish Grammatical Gender: A Study On Native And Second-Language Speakers, Abigail H. Gustafson

Scripps Senior Theses

This study investigates how native (L1) and second-language (L2) Spanish speakers process non-binary gender morphology, focusing on the pronoun ‘elle’ and the adjective/noun ending ‘-e’. Prior studies show that native speakers outperform L2 speakers in processing traditional masculine–feminine agreement, non-binary forms and their emergence in a binary grammatical system are understudied. To address this gap, I conducted an online reaction-time experiment with bilingual speakers from the Claremont Colleges, who judged the grammaticality of Spanish sentences containing either grammatical gender or social gender (él/ella/elle) agreement and disagreement. Survey data also captured participants’ familiarity with and attitudes toward the pronoun ‘elle’. The …

Who We Are Together: Identity Negotiation In Different-Orientation Relationships, Justin Tackett

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

viii Abstract This qualitative study explored how partners in different-orientation (dif-orientation) relationships experienced and navigated identity across the five frames of the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI): personal, enacted, relational, communal, and material. Dif-orientation relationships, romantic partnerships where individuals identify with different sexual orientations, represent a form of intercultural communication involving partners from distinct sexual orientation communities who must negotiate different cultural frameworks regarding sexuality, relationships, and identity expression. Despite growing recognition of diverse relationship configurations, little research currently examines how partners in these relationships manage identity gaps, or misalignments between different frames of identity, and what communication strategies they …

Orthodox Traditionalism In The Late 16th – Early 17th Century: The Religious-Anthropological Dimension, Olena Hudzenko, Olga Dobrodum

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article explores the religious-anthropological concepts in the works of Ukrainian thinkers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Formed in the context of Catholic expansion and intense confessional conflict, their ideas sought to preserve the Byzantine and Old Rus’ Orthodox tradition. Thinkers of this period emphasized the importance of safeguarding ancestral faith through a return to the principles of Holy Scripture, the foundational structures of early Christian doctrine, and the spiritual legacy of Kyivan Rus. These themes were especially prominent in the theological discourse of the so-called “Ostroh traditionalists,” centered around the Ostroh and Derman religious and cultural …

The Social Role And Significance Of Religion For Ukraine Today – Historical Dynamics And Current Contributions, Olena Svysiuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper delivers an analysis of Ukrainians’ religious worldview, tracing its development and transformation under historical, social and political influences. The contribution of the main Christian denominations − Orthodoxy, Greek-Catholicism and Protestantism − to national identity-building, the shaping of moral values, social cohesion and civic engagement is outlined. The work highlights how religion is deeply entwined with Ukrainian traditions, spirituality, and political life, serving as both a moral compass and a catalyst for social change. It also points to the churches’ social ministry − humanitarian, educational and psychological support − during the full-scale war. The involvement of religious institutions as …

Preservation Of Architectural-Religious Heritage In Modern Ukraine, Olga Gold, Maksym Vasalatiy, Olga Dobrodum

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article examines answers to a number of pressing questions regarding the preservation of architectural heritage in the modern world: what philosophical views underlie the preservation of world heritage; and what is unique about the protection of religious architectural heritage. The architectural philosophy of religious buildings represents a complex of original concepts, both material and spiritual. The hypothesis consists of constructing an algorithm and mechanism for protecting cultural heritage from the perspective of the philosophy of architecture in post-war Ukraine. The preservation of historical and cultural heritage sites is one of the most complex areas of activity in the fields …

News Media Sentiment Toward Chinese Ai: A Comparative Analysis With Belt And Road Initiative Involvement And Public Opinion On China, Asya Vaisberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This study evaluates different countries' news media’s sentiment towards Chinese AI, between May 2023 and May 2024, by using Microsoft Azure NLP Sentiment Analysis. The results are then compared with the country’s public opinion on China and its involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this study 12 countries have been selected which are USA, Australia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Philippines, Brazil, and Egypt. For each one, GNews Application Programming Interface (API), which has access to more than 60,000 global news sources, was used to aggregate relevant news articles based on queried keywords. The collected …

Place-Branding In The Japanese Agricultural Industry: A Discourse Analysis Of National, Prefectural, Municipal, And Producer Perspectives, Miyu L. Owada

Pomona Senior Theses

This essay is a case study of place-based agricultural branding in Japan, particularly in the sub-urban context of Mitaka City, Tokyo. Shifting the focus from rural revitalization models typically studied in this field, this study brings sub-urban landscapes into the conversation. Although existing studies assume a top-down policy is implemented for agricultural branding in Japan, the study assesses to what extent this structure holds true for the Mitaka context, comparing narratives across four tiers: the national Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF), the prefectural Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG), the municipal Mitaka City and Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) Tokyo Musashi …

An Ideological Target Through The Archaeological Archive: The Islamic State’S Destruction Of Palmyra And Its Impact On Local Syrian Identity, Tristen A. Leone

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper investigates how Palmyra's multicultural archaeological archive incited ISIS's destruction of the site during the Syrian Civil War through an analysis of sepulchral and religious architectural structures and onomastic practices. In contributing the cultural heritage scholarship, this paper places the motives of Islamic extremist groups in conversation with intellectual discourse around the multicultural identities of the Ancient Near East during the Roman Imperial Period. Further, through anthropological methodological frameworks and the photographic archive of excavation efforts at Palmyra, I aim to center modern local communities' experiences of living on and near an archaeological site like Palmyra. In consulting modern …

Lake As Body: Ecofeminism And Animacy At The Great Salt Lake, Shae Barber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water shapes cultural, social, and ecological systems. Yet, dominant economic, political, and academic frameworks often treat water as a backdrop or passive resource, ignoring it as an active participant in meaning-making and relationship-building. Viewing water as “nonliving” obscures how it participates in and co-creates relationships, limiting understanding about impacts of and responses to climate change and environmental degradation.

This thesis takes a mixed-methods and participatory approach including semi-structured interview, photovoice, and participatory mapping to examine relational practices between environmental advocates and the Great Salt Lake, a desiccating saline lake in Utah, U.S. As the lake continues to decline, dominant Western …

A Psychogeography Of The Lower Colorado River Basin, Arren L. Kimbel-Sannit

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dried-up canals. Superheated strip malls. Proliferating data centers. Infinite appetite for growth despite its apparent circumstances. Arizona may well be the state of the American future. This multi-genre series of essays from Arren Kimbel-Sannit offers a personal, political-economic and ecological critique of growth and accumulation in Arizona — from the perspective of someone who grew up in its suburban expanses, reported on its politics, and long sought to clarify his relationship with home.

Revisiting The Rural Folk Devil: Rural 'Othering' And The Connections Between Media Stereotypes And Rural Issues, Brooke Baker, Ida L. Oesteraas, Stephen T. Young, Elizabeth Monk-Turner

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The current study is a discourse analysis investigating anti-idyllic cinematic representations, specifically in the horror genre, of rural people, places, and cultures. Findings reveal that anti-idyllic images and discourses are prominent within recently released horror films, which rely heavily on framing rural people as the deviant “other.” Special attention is given to the cultural work of these stereotypical depictions and the associated social harms for rural communities. Specifically, we argue that (1) corporations, particularly film companies, contribute to social harm in rural areas by disseminating negative and anti-idyllic representations; (2) these portrayals have tangible and detrimental effects on both people …

Lgbtq People's Experiences With Crime, Victimization, And The Criminal Legal System, Vanessa R. Panfil

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The ebb and flow of social control efforts aimed at LGBTQ people necessitate a thorough investigation into their experiences. This review of the literature is organized around four key themes that characterize LGBTQ people's experiences with crime, criminalization, victimization, and the criminal legal system—including police, courts, and carceral facilities. LGBTQ people experience excessive rates of arrest and incarceration and have higher rates of victimization, which illustrate disproportionality. Their experiences differ from those of their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts and are conditioned by age, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, illustrating intersectionality. The two primary, interrelated mechanisms driving LGBTQ criminalization and …

"When I Think Of The Public Library, I Think Of White": Black Families Counter-Narratives Of Library Irrelevance And Community Repair, Amber Matthews

STEMPS Faculty Publications

While public libraries espouse equitable access, few studies examine Black community disengagement. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and the theme "Information in Repair," this paper analyzes semi-structured interviews with seven Black parents of youth aged 13-24 in London, Ontario. Findings reveal that their lack of library engagement stems not from access barriers but from libraries functioning as racialized spaces irrelevant to Black lived experiences in Canada. Where libraries fall short, Black-led organizations perform continuous, invisible reparative labour through culturally responsive programming and trusted information networks. Meaningful repair requires confronting institutional whiteness, redistributing resources to Black-led organizations, and sustaining authentic relationship-building …

The Diasporic Cookbook As Chronotope. [Review Of The Book Kitchens Of Hope: Immigrants Share Stories Of Resilience And Recipes From Home, By I. S. Svitak, C. J. Eaton, And I. S. Dean (Eds)], Marcella Prokop

English Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Edited by Linda S. Svitak and Christin Jaye Eaton, with Lee Svitak Dean, and published by the University of Minnesota Press, Kitchens of Hope: Immigrants Share Stories of Resilience and Recipes from Home (2025) fits neatly into the popular genre network of cookbooks that blend essay with recipe, mixing memoir with meals perfected over generations. But this book doesn't simply share the legacy of Liberian rice bread or summer beat soup. It explores the migration of these dishes and their cooks, contextualizing stories of displacement and development. Because of the breadth of this book, Mikhail Bakhtin might describe this …

America’S Spectacle: The Business Of Female Beauty In Professional Cheerleading, Marlene Adelman

Capstone Showcase

The National Football League (NFL) is built on values that also represent the deep rooted patriarchal structures within the country it exists in. The NFL is more than a game; it’s a mirror of America’s powerful subjugation of its women. Using one of the most recognizable cheerleading teams, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, this thesis aims to illustrate how gender is constructed and commodified in professional sports media, which reinforces the male gaze, furthers racial and gender inequalities, and contributes to women’s mental health and body image issues. This paper uses several theories, including male gaze, gender, and intersectionality, along with …

Visual Aids And Numeracy In Healthcare: Leveraging The Drawing Effect, Zephyr J. Markley

Capstone Showcase

Healthcare decisions often require patients to interpret numerical risk information under stress, yet many struggle with low numeracy, which can distort comprehension and undermine informed consent. Well-designed visual aids can improve diagnostic inference, calibrate confidence, and support better choices, especially for patients with limited numeracy, but their impact depends on whether users can actually interpret the format accurately. Drawing may further enhance these tools by adding a tactile, generative layer that engages visual, semantic, and motoric processing while helping patients organize information into concrete models.

Passive visual aids appear useful but limited because they often position patients as observers rather …

(Dis)Orientations: Finding Rhythm Within Queer Nightlife In Los Angeles, Frances Bright Currie

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how queer individuals in Los Angeles perceive, inhabit, and reshape their experiences in queer cultural spaces. Through this project, I trace the evolution of queer nightlife in Los Angeles (from early gay counterspaces, through the collectivist politics of the Queer Nation, to post-gay assimilation and contemporary “inclusive” queer nightlife) in order to examine how queer space has been shaped and reshaped by a recurring tension between the utopian promise of universality and inclusion and the material realities of exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, queer theory, and approaches to memory and the archive, I argue that queer nightlife …

“Beejagalu Namma Jeevana” (Seeds Are Our Life): Women Farmers’ Relational Practices Of Care, Labor, And Life Within Regenerative Systems In South India, Sara F. Mehkri

Scripps Senior Theses

“Beejagalu Namma Jeevana” (Seeds are Our Life): Women Farmers’ Relational Practices of Care, Labor, and Life within Regenerative Systems in South India, examines the role of women farmers in regenerative agricultural systems in Kanakapura, Karnataka, through ethnographic fieldwork with GREEN Foundation (GF) and its farmer networks. It argues that regenerative agriculture in this context is produced through care-based multispecies assemblages that reconfigure relationships between labor, knowledge, and ecological life, generating resilient socio-agroecological systems and expanding forms of human capability.

Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with women farmers, participant observation, and historical analysis of agrarian change in South India, this thesis …

Identity Development And Resonance With Cultural Sounds: A Study Of Undergraduate Women Of Mexican Descent, Manuela S. Flores

Scripps Senior Theses

Undergraduates of Mexican descent are not a monolith; their experiences vary based on positionality and lived experiences within academia in the United States. This study explored the lived experiences of seven women of Mexican descent, ages 18 to 25, to examine how they experience and make meaning of music while developing their identities in college. A descriptive phenomenological approach was employed, using semi-structured interviews to explore participant’s lived experiences in relation to music. Identity development was contextualized in relation to cultural values, musical experiences, and participant positionalities. Interview questions addressed music engagement, conceptualizations of Chicanx culture, and the values participants …

Doikayt And The Ethics Of Belonging: Lessons In Place-Making From The Jewish Labor Bund, Zoë L. Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis traces the evolution of doikayt—the Bundist principle of hereness—from its origins in the Jewish Labor Bund to contemporary applications in North America. Rooted in a refusal of both assimilation and nationalist escape, doikayt emphasizes cultivating safety, solidarity, and belonging through collective responsibility rather than territorial claims.

Building on this foundation, the exploration situates hereness within a settler-colonial context, where ethical dwelling is complicated by Indigenous dispossession. Drawing on Alexis Shotwell alongside Indigenous thinkers Vanessa Watts and Kyle Whyte, I examine how inhabiting place requires confronting historical injustices and ongoing relational responsibilities. Chapter 3 analyzes Linke Fligl (2016–2022) as …

Lights, Camera, Aggression!: Exploring The Relationship Between The Horror Genre And Criminality, Taylor M. Wanke

Scripps Senior Theses

This proposed correlational study will examine the effect of exposure and involvement with the horror genre in media and the crime genre in media on one’s antisocial personality traits, criminal thinking, criminal behavior/aggression, and morality in the general population and those who are currently incarcerated. Data will be collected through a Qualtrics survey accessed online for the general sample and printed out for the incarcerated sample. Each participant will complete exposure checklists, involvement scales for each genre, and multiple measures to record their level of each dependent variable. Data will be analyzed using a correlational analysis, 1-sample t-tests, and a …

More Than Meets The Eye: Operation Blue Star & Us-India’S Deadly Exchange, Jannat Verma

Scripps Senior Theses

Operation Blue Star is often memorialized as an independent action carried out by India's Congress Party. While such an understanding is not entirely historically inaccurate, it fails to account for the role played by US influence in the operation. An examination of CIA files and America's involvement in the subcontinent during the Cold War calls for a re-interpretation of Operation Blue Star, not as a solo campaign, but rather as a product of counterinsurgent and deadly exchange between the US and India.

Appalachia In Presidential Campaign Rhetoric Since 1964, Meredith Morello

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how presidential candidates have invoked Appalachia in campaign rhetoric from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 election through 2024, arguing the region functions not as a geographic reference but as a strategically deployable political symbol. Through mixed-methods analysis of 83 campaign-period sources archived in the American Presidency Project, a structured thematic coding schema traces how candidates frame the region across six decades using two analytically distinct modes: objective-economic and moralized-culture framing.

Five major structural patterns emerge: Johnson's institutionalization of the region as bounded domestic poverty; strategic silence during national instability; reframings enabling rhetorical reentry; symbolic portability across ideological projects; …

The Demand For Attention: Notification Technology And The Restructuring Of Communication, Sabrina Feld

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis argues that notifications are not merely features of digital devices but infrastructural forces that quietly reorganize the conditions under which communication is perceived, enacted, and understood. Drawing on Science, Technology, and Society (STS) frameworks, specifically Actor-Network Theory and Langdon Winner's concept of Forms of Life, the first chapter traces how notifications produce a Form of Life organized around continuous responsiveness, in which incoming information appears as a pending demand, silence carries new moral weight, and the capacity for self-determined availability is structurally foreclosed. Understood this way, notifications become a case study for a broader pattern in which technological …