Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cyberspatial Cartographies: Mapping Digital Nationhood Within The California-Punjabi Diaspora., Saihajpratap Singh Bajwa

Master's Theses

This research investigates the phenomenon of digital nationhood, the idea that a new form of community is actively produced through interactions taking place within digital social networks and forums. These spaces function as more than repositories of information or cultural archives; they are living ecosystems in which identity is constructed through mutual encounters among members of a diaspora, where shared references, meanings, and concepts proliferate across multiplex networks. The central questions animating this inquiry are: can a nation exist without a territory, and are these encounters producing what we might conceive of as a digital nation?

The Punjabi people serve …

Hidden Behind Happiness: Bhutan’S Global Image And Ethnic Exclusion, Deepesh Das Shrestha

Master's Theses

Bhutan has gained international recognition for its philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which promotes holistic development through principles of well-being, environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and good governance. Yet this celebrated image conceals a darker history: the systematic expulsion of the Lhotsampa, the Nepali-speaking ethnic minority of southern Bhutan. This study critically explores the contradiction between Bhutan's international image as a model of happiness and the lived experiences of Lhotsampa refugees who were displaced during the early 1990s.

Using a qualitative phenomenological research design, the study draws upon in-depth semi-structured interviews with six resettled Bhutanese Lhotsampa refugees living in the …

Reviving Revive. Is The Notion Of An Independent Artist An Outdated Concept?, Richard C. Moore Mr

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This article published in Spectator Magazine - online - is a reflection on whether or not a cultural policy is a means of controlling the artistic community and whether there is still such a being as an independent Australian artist. It was published as the 2026 submissions for an update to Australia's cultural policy REVIVE -  were closing.

Geneticists’ Understandings Of Genetic Causation, Hannah Allen, Bennett Knox, Stephen M. Downes

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey-based study investigating geneticists’ understanding of genetic causation. We are motivated by an underlying assumption that to improve interpretation and implementation of behavioral genetics research, and furthermore for that research to have a positive societal impact, it is important to reveal how geneticists themselves understand their research. Results of sixty-two survey responses from clinical and research geneticists at the University of Utah are discussed and assessed to fulfill these aims and survey the landscape of the field. Analysis of our survey results revealed some variation in responses to questions about genetic causation …

Dr. Pamela Pruitt, Keynote Address: From Motown To Metamorphosis: A Fireside Chat On Music, Communication, And Change, John V. Pavlik, Salvatore J. Fallica

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

No abstract provided.

The New Deal In Georgia: Oral History Research Collection, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection contains materials from an oral history research project on the New Deal in Georgia conducted in 1987 by Marchanita R. Coleman as part of Dr. R. Frank Saunders’ historiography course. Materials include a typed final report, oral history interview audiocassette tapes, and one photograph. Interviews are with African American residents of Liberty and Chatham County who lived during the Great Depression or remember the New Deal era in Georgia.

Forgotten Threads: The Embodiment Of Time And Memory In Jewelry., Alees Yang

Masters Theses

Memory rarely returns whole. More often, it persists through fragments, sensations, and traces carried by the body. This thesis explores how jewelry can materialize the unstable relationship between memory, forgetting, and bodily experience. Drawing from personal experiences of family, migration, and loss—particularly witnessing my grandfather’s gradual memory deterioration through Alzheimer’s disease—I reconsider forgetting not as absence, but as a condition through which emotional traces continue to persist.

Through fabric, fragmented photographs, and processes of fraying and dispersal, my work examines how memories are continuously reconstructed. Influenced by the Chinese aesthetic concept of liubai (negative space) — I investigate how incompleteness …

A Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Assembly Line: Jewelry, Facture, And Alienation, Jonathon A. Zalakos

Masters Theses

A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line integrates icons of mass-manufacturing with signifiers of joyful work, stimulating a dialogue between industrial and craft labour. Visible traces of the making process left on these works conjure a spectral ‘maker’, implied by the fingerprints, toolmarks, assembly, and conspicuous decision making of an ‘other’. As we relate to these signifiers as opportunities for our own bodily action, this spectre speaks in our own voice. Possessed by this ghost, viewers are vicariously thrust into an imaginary context and made sensitive to the nature of this work — whether it validates …

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

"The Appearance Of The Confederate Flag In These Seas:" The Css Sumter, Neutrality, And The International Dimensions Of The American Civil War, John Macisaac Coleman

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

“A Group Of Unnamed Human Beings”: Aubrey Daniel, The My Lai Massacre And The Prosecution Of Lieutenant Calley, Ben Katz

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

I Miss My Computer: Online Artistry, Web Aesthetics, And Coming-Of-Age In A Digital Landscape, Catherine Capeci

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how young artists develop their creative practices in a world informed by digitality. Through survey research of 44 art students between the ages of 14 and 22, as well as a process of autoethnographic inquiry, I examine how artists in high school and college relate to digital imagery, web archives, online gaming, and social media platforms, and how these experiences inform artmaking. I believe that art educators should explore how the internet informs aesthetic and conceptual sensibilities, and how these sensibilities show up in young artists’ work, more so than focus on digital media as its own …

Our Own, My Own: Expereinces With Art, Kaleisha Towle

Masters Theses

Our Own, My Own: Experiences with Art is a two in one thesis project investigating dialogically based programming within art museums and how those programs can contribute to the making of art museums into civically engaged third spaces. Part one of this project included research into how dialogically based art museum programs are currently operating within the United States. The goal was to investigate pedagogical practices and forms of dialogue in use as well as their impact on participants' experiences. To accomplish this goal, I attended seven art museums within the region of New England at which I participated in …

Where My Memory Settles, Rachel Kobb

Masters Theses

My memory is blurry but ever present in an atmospheric state. Through my investigations of memory and sensorial experience, this thesis is an attempt to understand how the body recalls the spaces I have spent the most time: my various homes through life.

The output of this thesis is a paper installation that layers and translates spatial qualities of my past homes. The home is not a neutral container, but instead a space that should support a sense of retreat and security. Drawing upon Gaston Bachelard’s zones of experience, I explore how a domestic space is moved through distinct zones. …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Fetishismus:Facism, Sodomy, And The Exhibition, Matthew P. Gershovich

Masters Theses

Fetishismus examines the contemporary dislocation between homosexuality and queerness. Homosexuality is the biological, innate quality of same-sex attraction. Queerness is rooted in deviance, perversion, and sociologically attached to the “other.” Although almost always used in an explicitly homosexual connotation, “queerness” is not entirely contingent on the physical engagement of homosexual acts. In historical usage, queer is used as a pejorative adjective, implying a lack of masculinity with the intent to invoke repulsion. In contemporary parlance the two are treated as synonymous. This intertwined relationship relies on the forced lack of social and spatial belonging that is rooted in a foundational …

Post Desire, Lucy E. Luckovich

Masters Theses

Post-Desire comes from my personal take on and continuation of Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire (2016)[1]. There, Fisher imagines an alternative to the capitalist consumption machine, one where desire is redirected back towards ourselves rather than to profit-driven, accelerationist motives. Fisher had a vision of a future both through and beyond the chains of capitalism. He pointed out in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism that “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”[2] This perspective is realistic—we are in the midst of a crisis of material reality and of imagination—but it is …

Recombobulation- Taking The Bad With The Good, Gregory T. Kmieciak

Masters Theses

Recombobulation, a play on the word discombobulated (completely disoriented and utterly confused), is intended as a joke.  In the lore of the Milwaukee airport, the Recombobulation Area is located between the TSA check point and the boarding area, or likewise right after you land and before you are heading out of the airport. It's an area to regroup, get your bearings, or if you're anything like me, have a beer.

I've chosen this made-up word as a thesis title, both for its informal tone and to pay homage to my home town. It offers an air of lightness to otherwise …

The Birdwatching Pause: Reframing Campus Life Through Everyday Bird Encounters, Katherine Zeng

Masters Theses

Birdwatching, typically framed as a leisure pursuit removed from everyday life, becomes here the organizing logic for a three-site campus route of restorative pause. The thesis departs from the assumption that nature must be sought out and instead asks what happens when the birds already present in urban space are made legible through design.

Three existing RISD buildings anchor the project, each organized around a distinct mode of encounter. At Carr Haus Café, a furniture-scaled insertion creates conditions for attentional reset through passive listening rather than active looking. At North Hall, a semi-open balcony garden introduces incidental, distanced contact with …

The Frame You're Holding, Andrea Mato

Masters Theses

The Frame You're Holding explores how my photographer's eye transitioned into a graphic designer's voice. The projects presented explore how to weave the textural and subjective qualities of photography into a design context. My practice explores how the frames of graphic design – the page of a book, the browser window, or the wall of an exhibition – can be expanded or reimagined. As a designer, I became the translator of content into form, seeking to author the design while collaborating with other voices. The Frame You're Holding is a snapshot of my practice as a graphic designer, encapsulating my …

My Mother The Mountain, Ricky Vasan

Masters Theses

Teach me How to Write a Love Song

I catch a glimpse of my mother sitting on her bed in her bedroom from the bathroom mirror. What a rare occurrence! One I am not fortunate enough to witness as often as I would like. A moment that I know —even before it has occurred—will one day become my dearest desire for wanting to turn back time. This moment is a mirage. Once I return to my senses, after the passing of a twelve-hour lag, it will already be too late.

This is the place where I wish to work from. …

Looking In All Directions, Abby Sunde

Masters Theses

“Looking in All Directions” mobilizes attention towards the concepts of ‘desettling’ through art and ‘desettling’ as a way of being. Desettling constitutes resistance, resilience, survivance, and refusal of current Western modalities within our society. This body of work is a material exploration of these worldviews to find potential ways to embody a practice that aligns ourselves outside of a colonial settler mindset while living within its societal condition. Using glass, sound, and installation work, the artist un-centers expected encounters with an inherited dominant worldview and instead offers an actualized shift in awareness. Concepts of interconnectedness, interwoven time, and embodied memories …

“The Duty Of Hatred”: Anti Germanism In Ohio During Wwi, Quinn Edward Hall

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

During the First World War Ohio was engulfed in an environment of anti-Germanism. In an effort to mobilize the public for war, the federal and Ohio state governments labeled German-Americans and Germanness as an existential domestic threat. It was thus framed that policing the loyalty of German-Americans and riding the state of its German character were essential wartime duties. This ideology led Ohioans to eliminate German language from schools, purge the state of German culture, engage in mob violence against their German American neighbors, and successfully utilize anti-Germanism to enact statewide prohibition. While other historians have suggested that this anti-Germanism …

Volume Cxlv, Number 23, May 22, 2026, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Subversives On The Small Screen: Unions, The Television Blacklist, And The Politics Of Fear In 1950s America, Emma Coulter

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

A Psycho-Spiritual Transformation In Covid-19 Crisis Narratives: A Comparative Study In Indonesia And Pakistan, Heru Prakosa, Nurlaela Widyarini, Johanes Seno Aditya Utama, Juan Carlos

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

Although the COVID-19 pandemic ended as a global health emergency, its psychosocial legacy persists in many communities. This study examines how religion and spirituality support recovery in Indonesia and Pakistan by shaping crisis narratives. Faith-based language is treated as psychosocial data and interpreted through its functions in meaning-making, emotion regulation, social connection, value anchoring, and action commitment using Psycho-Spiritual Transformation (PST) as a guiding framework. Open-ended responses were collected from 274 participants via an online survey in July 2021 (Indonesia n = 236; Pakistan n = 38). Across both contexts, narratives typically moved from pressure and inner conflict toward spiritual …

Collecting Meaning: A Study On Collecting As An Artmaking Practice, Johanna Young

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how we practice creativity and construct narratives through the act of building collections. It examines collecting as both an innate creative impulse and a learned process. Using arts-based research and narrative inquiry, the study considers how our collecting habits reflect the ways we process information and express personal artistic interests. Drawing from personal experiences, this thesis mines the idea of the subconscious through the artistic lens of collecting.

Auxiliary Damage, Aiyi Cheng

Masters Theses

AuxiliarY DamagE asks what happens to pain when it is moved outside the body and given material form. Pain is not treated here as an image to be represented, but as something processed through repetition, pressure, exposure, and care. It is handled. Washed. Arranged. Pulled out. Swallowed back in.

Hair became the material that allowed this question to stay unstable. While attached to the body, it is intimate and ordinary. Once detached, it becomes residue, evidence, discomfort, value, and loss. In the studio, I washed collected hair, untangled it, threaded it through metal, placed it near flame, held it in …

1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, ..., Annemarie Torresen

Masters Theses

1

I invite you to see it and feel it and sit in it and breathe it in and

hold it in your lap. Art isn’t too scary, and neither is math.

2

bouncing between bounds of a binary

bippity boppity! let’s break brains and bread

balance or belly flop, what’s mine is yours:

bumptious and bumbling and barely able

i offer it broken and let you like it that way