Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Chaucer's De-Colonized Custance, Rod S. Sachs

English Theses - Archive

Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale (MLT) contains several non-Western views, religious practices, cultures and laws. Most importantly, within the MLT readers can discover an alternative to viewing non-Western people as enemies. By role-modeling the simple law of good, Custance becomes a hybridized queen who holds disparate contexts together. This essay blends postcolonial theory with decolonial options to show how Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale presents a less dehumanized narrative than most scholarship maintains, especially when compared to Nicholas Trive's version of the same story. Rather than vilifying the common foes of Christian Western Civilization, Chaucer's Custance demonstrates a de-colonization of …

The Little White Dish Of My Faith: Anne Sexton, The Body, And Spirituality, Elizabeth J. Barbee

English Theses - Archive

This thesis examines how Anne Sexton pits the body and soul against one another in her poems. Her work suggests that these two facets of being are more than just benignly and fundamentally different: they are enemies. Her speaker continually vilifies the body by suggesting that its superficial needs obstruct the more wholesome and essential needs of the spirit. The thesis demonstrates that spirituality is the most resilient theme in Sexton's work and argues against critics who claim that the body is Sexton's central preoccupation.

'Schyre Leuez' And Cesspits: An Ecocritical Reading Of Land Use And Apocalypse In Cleanness, Katelyn Jaynes

English Theses - Archive

This thesis examines land use and apocalypse in Cleanness in order to investigate how land use participates in the construction of medieval social and political systems and how the apocalyptic destruction the land acts out functions to make us question the primacy of the human in medieval thought. While some critics have discussed land use in the Pearl-Poet's works, they often discuss land in allegorical religious terms or in theories of space and place, rarely investigating the land's vital role in the construction of social and political order or its role in the preservation or destruction of mankind. This thesis …

More Than Just A Piece In Their Games: Agency And The Docile Body In The Hunger Games And Reality Television, Kathleen Denison

English Theses - Archive

In recent years, with the rise of social media and normalized forms of surveillance there has been an increase in the visibility of how female bodies are policed within Western society. As the fight for women's rights over their own bodies continues there has been an increase in the number of strong female protagonists in Young Adult literature, particularly literature classified as dystopian. Contemporary young adult (YA) literature is now filled with characters, such as The Hunger Games' Katniss, that are taking on corrupt social institutions that represent exaggerated versions of those we quite regularly encounter in America. As many …

The Hip-Hop Academy: "Let No One Ignorant Of' Poetry "Enter", Danny Joe Rodriguez

English Theses - Archive

I intend to explore the conceptual relationship between classical rhetoric and Hip-Hop. I will argue that Hip-Hop music embodies principles of classical rhetoric and applies rhetorical strategies, creating a space for a rhetorically Hip-Hop education. I am not claiming that Hip-Hop artists consciously incorporate principles of classical rhetoric, but I am arguing that principles of classical rhetoric are present in Hip-Hop.

The Great War On Film: Examining The Cinematic Variations Of Three Films On The 1916 Battle Of The Somme, Nicole Denae Yarbrough

History Theses - Archive

Propaganda has been an integral part of human history, and while the documentation of conflict through film began in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was not until the First World War that the production and distribution of war films as propaganda became a mass phenomenon. Moving images of the war proliferated in all Western countries at an unprecedented rate. This thesis explores the role of wartime propaganda films in Britain, France, and Germany during the First World War by assessing the achievements and missteps of cinematic variations on the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Although these films achieved …

Negotiating The Sacred In Secular Writing Spaces: The Rhetoric Of Religion In American University Composition Textbooks, Myra Lee Salcedo

English Dissertations - Archive

This project demonstrates that religion comes into through the classroom door not only through the embodiment of students and instructors, but via the academy itself through the university composition textbook. Publishers provided lists of top-selling American textbooks that are inventoried and analyzed and mapped along a timeline to indicate the absenting and presenting of religion. A suggested negotiation for the intersections of writing and religion is to view religion as a discourse community as is described by Shannon Carter.

A Study In Married Women's Rights And Repatriation In The United States, The United Kingdom, And Latin America: Citizenship, Gender And The Law In Transatlantic Context, Stephanie Anne Mcintyre

History Dissertations - Archive

During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States and Great Britain, fearing the dramatic changes occurring in the Atlantic world due to increased migration and threats from war, denied many of their female citizens their natural-born right of citizenship. What was the reason for stripping these women of such a precious possession guaranteed by law? They married non-citizens. Without due process, the women could not be deprived of their citizenship, so laws were put into place proclaiming that when a woman married an alien man, she would automatically assume his citizenship. Because women did not have independent …

Fear Of "Unnatural Acts": Law And Sexuality In London, 1500-1800, Ashley M. Umphenour

History Theses - Archive

Eighteenth-century London experienced a prosecution wave attempting to eradicate sodomy from the city. Discovered and exposed to the public by journalists, the "public outing" of molly houses and their patrons made them a target for the newly formed Societies for the Reformation of Manners. Through the analysis of Society-produced pamphlets, newspaper articles, and trial records, this thesis will show that a rise in Protestantism in England after the Glorious Revolution, along with the changes to masculinity in Europe, led to the prosecution wave against London's sodomites. While the organizations would eventually dissolve, the fear and hatred they helped to promote …

How To Make A Foreign Idea Your Own: Argentine Identity And The Role Soccer Played In Its Formation, Brandon Todd Blakeslee

History Theses - Archive

Since Spanish-speaking Latin America achieved independence from Spain the question has been whether to follow the North American or European example. Do the new republics embrace the Old World with its aristocracy or the meritocracy of the United States? To choose one, was to dismiss the other, or so the debate went. However, there are points of contact between the Old-and-New Worlds.Argentine soccer proves a potent example of something that is not wholly one or the other but a combination of both. Though developed exclusively in England, Argentina claims soccer as their national sport. A truly pervasive concept, all parts …

The Potential Of Posthumanism: Reimagining Utopia Through Bellamy, Atwood, And Slonczewski, Jacob Aaron Mckeever

English Theses - Archive

In this thesis, I focus on posthumanist theory, utopia, and the evolving portrayal of technology in the novels of Edward Bellamy, Margaret Atwood, and Joan Slonczewski. The main argument of this thesis is that there is a posthumanist potential within utopia that can be seen as fermenting within Bellamy's Looking Backward as a way to eliminate social stratification, showing potentiality within Atwood's Oryx and Crake as a way to open up an other-than-human agency in the form of transgenic organisms, and becoming fully realized in Slonczewski's A Door Into Ocean through an all-female, alien civilization that is fully grounded in …

A Labor Of Love: A Social And Literary History Of The Blue Cloud Quarterly, Bethany Ann Yardy

English Theses - Archive

This thesis will explore the literary and historical context of a small magazine publication entitled the Blue Cloud Quarterly. The first publication of its kind to focus entirely on Native American poetry, the BCQ played a significant role in shifting the canon of American literature towards diverse voices and experiences. Contemporary scholars have largely overlooked the publication's critical contribution, but its influence on the Native American literary resurgence of the late 20th century was profound.The BCQ was published during a time of intense change in the Roman Catholic Church both on a global and local level among the Native American …

The Phoenix Rises At The University Of Chicago, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Jeff Rasley’s essay “The Phoenix Rises at the University of Chicago” revels in the glory days of his old college football team, torn between the multiple goalposts of athleticism, social progressiveness and intellectualism.

The Mutual Influences Of Law, Medicine, And Fictional Literature Regarding The Disposition Of A Somnambulist In Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century Literature, Meghan Self

English Theses - Archive

Somnambulism derives from the Latin words somnus- sleep and ambulare- to walk around, meaning a person appears to conduct waking actions, but is actually asleep. Classified as a disease, somnambulism raises questions of its possible causes and cures, as well as what constitutes the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, medical physicians were beginning to explore somnambulism as well as other mental disorders in more depth than in previous years. It is interesting to note that during the time of medical research on these diseases, fictional Gothic writers were also beginning to incorporate …

Continuing Narratives Of The Pharmakos: Trans-Ethical Perspectives Through The Liminal Performativity Of Material Agencies In Drug Genre Film, Audrey Haferkamp

English Theses - Archive

In American film and television, the drug user or producer is often associated with narratives of the pharmakos, or "scapegoat," seemingly serving to expel the contamination of American identity and ethics. By analyzing the critically acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad and Nurse Jackie, I examine how these popular culture series are influenced by, or influence, apparatuses involving drugs, New Materialist theories, and more broadly, ethical values. Specifically, I examine how these TV series deconstruct classic narratives and depict ethical relationships with the pharmakos through a New Materialist understanding of the liminal agencies between human and nonhuman matter. More specifically, I …

Cord Of Empire, Exotic Intoxicant: Hemp And Culture In The Atlantic World, 1600-1900, Bradley Jahan Borougerdi

History Dissertations - Archive

Hemp is a genetically diverse plant that has been used by a variety of different cultures for different purposes over the course of thousands of years. Until the nineteenth century, though, most Europeans understood it to be the source of a durable fiber or a common medicinal seed. People living in exotic places that westerners monolithically referred to as the Orient, however, valued the plant for its intoxicating qualities, and the encounters that took place between these different cultures dramatically transformed the meaning of hemp in the English-speaking Atlantic from an important strategic commodity to a banned intoxicant. The transformation …

Lustration Legislation In Eastern Europe And Its Meaning For The Western World, Yan Valerievich Vuks

History Theses - Archive

Lustration policies spread widely across Eastern Europe in the early 1990's after the fall of the Communism when most of the post-Communist states of Eastern Europe employed a strategy of purging the former Communists from the state apparatus with the help of `lustration' laws. The countries of Eastern Europe developed different approaches to lustration, and the practices adopted by Germany, Czechoslovakia and Estonia demonstrated a great degree of variety. The great influence of the lustration policy on societies of the Eastern European countries makes it necessary to rethink the very concept of lustration. The important issue of self-lustration expands the …

Ghosts Of The Horseshoe, Heidi Rae Cooley, Richard Walker, Duncan Buell

Digital Projects

Ghosts of the Horseshoe (Ghosts) is a mobile interactive application that endeavors to bring into view--literally, on mobile micro screens (iPads and iPhones at present)--the largely unknown history of slavery at South Carolina College. It deploys game mechanics (i.e., ludic methods), as well as Augmented Reality (AR) and GPS functionality to generate awareness of and questioning about what otherwise seems ordinary: a grassy space at the center of a university campus. It organizes content into distinct but overlapping themes: (1) architectural ghosts (e.g., razed outbuildings); (2) human ghosts (e.g., un/named enslaved persons); and (3) the historic Wall delimiting the Horseshoe …

Villa Degli Antonini: Excavation Season 2014 Summary, Deborah Chatr Aryamontri, Timothy Renner

Department of Classics and General Humanities Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Topic Modeling In The Queens College Civil Rights Collections, Thomas J. Cleary

Publications and Research

In 2014 a topic model was conducted on the materials found on the Queens College Special Collections Civil Rights website (archvies.qc.cuny.edu/civilrights). The titles, subjects, descriptions, full text (when available), coverage were all put into "Item" level text files and then run through MALLET (topic modeling program) to create 30 different topics. These computer generated topics and connected items were then labeled into meaningful terms and uploaded into Gephi. The Gephi results were then edited to a web that showed the thematic groupings of each.

The final results and display can be viewed here: http://archives.qc.cuny.edu/network/

The Heart As An Autoclave // Rolodexed Apologies For My Ex-Girlfriends, Lucia Lotempio

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

The Red Piggy Bank, Kirsten Freiman

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Kitsune #2, Jodi Bentivegna

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

The Final Decision, Michelle Jiang

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Pre, Timothy Alden Burger

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Watch The Ash Soar, Emily Drew

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

How To Walk In The Dark, Jim Ryan

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Leaving Adak, Dean Tripp

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Half, Ethan Keeley

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Vanishing Point, Trisha A. Farco

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.