Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Machines In Desolation: Images Of Technology In The Great Basin Of The American West, Todd Shallat

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mythic thinking about technology as an engine of progress has shaped the ways Americans have come to perceive the boundaries of vacant space. In the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains, where the West still appears to the East as empty and formless, photography and art tell richly symbolic stories about wastelands transformed into wealth. Often those stories aggrandize machines and engineering. The essay presents a visual sampling of machines remaking the desert from three historical eras. First, from the postbellum era of the transcontinental railroad, are pictures of barrens redeemed by science and industrialization. Second, from pioneer Utah, are …

J. Gresham Machen And The End Of The Presbyterian Controversy, Samuel Jordan Kelley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

From 1922 to 1936, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America suffered an extended period of conflict and finally schism. This Presbyterian controversy was part of the broader fundamentalist-modernist conflict seizing American evangelical Protestantism in this era. By the early 1930s the fundamentalists, led by Westminster Theological Seminary’s New Testament professor J. Gresham Machen, began to adopt controversial methods for combating modernism. The most notable of these was the formation of an extra-ecclesiastical, conservative foreign missions board, the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions (IBPFM). Refusing to cede his ground, Machen stood trial in the church’s court and …

Herrick's Wild Civility, Martin Corless-Smith

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

When one reaches for a book to take on a trip there might be any number of reasons for making a choice, but undoubtedly preeminent for me is company. I find that more often than not I take Herrick. And I have wondered why this is. Part of the reason is that he is at once familiar, and so I bring the familiar with me as one might a friend, but he remains somewhat enigmatic. I have been reading his Hesperidesfor longer than I care to recall, and it is not as if I haven't finished reading it so …

Dam Mormons: Responding To The 1976 Teton Dam Disaster In The "Lord's Way", Lauriann Vaterlaus Deaver

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The June 5, 1976, Teton Dam collapse occurred in a unique region of Idaho where the population comprised as much as ninety-five percent of residents belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The homogenous nature of this population influenced the nature of the recovery effort following the disaster. The Teton Dam recovery effort provided an opportunity for the LDS church, using its welfare system and priesthood (lay male leadership) organizational structure to seamlessly work with government agencies. Church leaders used the reports of positive interactions between its members and the federal and local leaders to celebrate an …

Building The Modern World: Morrison-Knudsen Construction Company, James David Duran

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

After working on construction projects in Boise, Idaho, Morris Hans Knudsen and Harry Morrison combined their resources and skills to form Morrison-Knudsen Company (M-K) in 1912. The two of them built a world-class construction and engineering company that, at one time, was the industry leader in their field. Their success relied upon fast, cost-effective, construction and an uncanny ability to match their company’s mission to the goals of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. When Harry Morrison moved to the position of president in 1939, he took M-K international by presenting his company as the deliverer of modernization to the developing …

"Not Everyone Was Asleep": Anti-Colonial Personifications Of Antiquity And Progress In José Rizal's Touch Me Not And El Filibusterismo, Lyn K. Uratani

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The cultural emphasis placed on José Rizal’s execution in 1896 has overshadowed his life and renders his novels Touch Me Not and El Filibusterismo unfamiliar to Western readership and postcolonial scholars. Since his novels emphasize the difficult questions about the absence of progress and ethnic identity for the indigenous populace, I argue that to read them for plot alone is to overlook his main focus: the formation of the Filipino identity.

In light of Spain’s historical treatment of its colonies, my work responds to the lack of attention given to Touch Me Not and El Filibusterismo as integral texts of …

Ordinary Effort, John Mcmahon

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The thesis is primarily concerned with how the search for knowledge is driven by a quest for certainty, resulting in a compulsion to fix knowledge in explicit rules and procedures. Rather than producing a satisfactory sense of stability, this produces comedy and tragedy as human endeavors play out against a backdrop of arbitrary structure.

Three videos explore this problem through the lens of professional sport, where the quest for certainty is evaluated against the application of rules, against rules governing the action of the body, and against the attempt to circumvent the rules. Theoretical background is provided by examining the …

Misremember Me, Alex Kiesig

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

An American travels to Crete with his English ex-girlfriend in Misremember Me, a modern novel in the tradition of the Lost Generation.

Progressive Foote? Gender Politics In An 1887 Letter From Mary Hallock Foote, Tara Penry

Western Writers Online

Mary Hallock Foote is not known for progressive gender politics. Quite the opposite. As her biographer Darlis Miller observes, Foote and her longtime friend Helena DeKay Gilder agreed that woman’s most important work lay in the home, and suffrage would distract her from her primary duties. But Foote did not always practice her belief in the separate spheres of men and women perfectly. Not only did necessity compel her for a time to support her family, but an 1887 letter also shows that in her professional life, Foote did not always think of her work as feminine or separate from …

Basque Archive Feature: Nor-Nun And Boise State University's Special Collections And Archives

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This is the first in a series of features to draw attention to the micro and macro of Basque Studies research opportunities. The micro is a distinctive Basque source (e.g., photo, book, article, artifact) while the macro is a Basque archive where this source resides.

Basque Immigration In The United States, William A. Douglass

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This article was adapted from a talk presented at the Mugaz Gaindi Basque Studies Conference in New York City at Columbia University, as part of the commemoration of the 100^th anniversary of the New York Basque Club. It provides a historical overview of the three phases of Basque emigration during the colonial, modern and post-modern eras generally, and within the context of the United States specifically. The article contrasts the immigrant experience of the Basques of the rural American West with the urban, cosmopolitan experience of the New York Basques, as it probes the recent transformation or cultural watershed …

External Projection Of The Basque Language And Culture: The Etxepare Basque Institute And A Range Of Public Paradiplomacy, Sho Hagio

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This study discusses the establishment of the Etxepare Basque Institute in 2007 as a way of investigating the status of the Basque language Euskara, which was once looked down on and labeled as a lesser-used minority language, but which is now coming into greater prominence in the international arena in an era of globalization. The mission of the institute is external projection of Basque language and culture. Such projection, on one hand, presupposes the existence of a standardized language and culture to be diffused and that there is a distinction to be made between “interior” and “exterior” on the other. …

Borges And The Basques: Notes On Reading An Invisible Literature, David Laraway

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

Critics and readers sometimes unnecessarily limit the scope of what is to be counted as “Basque literature” to texts originally composed in Euskera. In the present study I argue for a hermeneutics of Basque literature that does not seek to identify Basque literature by means of the language of composition, theme, or any particular biographical information about the author. Taking the work of Jorge Luis Borges as a touchstone—and , in particular, his canonical short story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”—I sketch a strategy for reading Basque literature from a minimalist perspective that takes the identity of a …

Basque Scholar Feature: William A. Douglass, Ph.D.

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

This is the first in a series of profiles of Basque scholars. Oftentimes scholars in general, and Basque scholars specifically, toil in seclusion and general anonymity; so this is an effort to introduce the scholar and their work to a larger audience.

Eskaintza-Dedication

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

No abstract provided.

Indigenizing King Lear, Michael K. Johnson

Western Writers Online

Staged with an all‑aboriginal cast, the 2012 production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear at Canada’s National Arts Centre creatively reimagined the play in a frontier New World setting. Directed by Peter Hinton, and starring August Schellenberg (Mohawk) as Lear, the production placed Shakespeare’s drama in seventeenth‑century Canada, amongst a group of Algonquin people on the outer edge of European colonialism and cultural contact. The idea for this resetting of the play originated with August Schellenberg—some 45 years ago—who thought that Lear would be particularly adaptable to an indigenous / First Nations setting. That it took nearly half a century to …

From The Dust Bowl To Frederick Manfred’S The Golden Bowl—A Journeyman’S Masterpiece, Randi Eldevik

Western Writers Online

The time and place of Frederick Manfred’s birth—1912, on a farm in a corner of northwestern Iowa close to the South Dakota and Minnesota borders—gave him several perspectives on American life, resulting in the creation of several kinds of fiction. Manfred’s most celebrated novels, the five Buckskin Man tales, take place in the nineteenth century and have a wild west (mostly South Dakota) setting: they arose out of Manfred’s awareness of the dramatic and tumultuous events that had occurred near his home during the hundred years before his birth. But Manfred’s own childhood and youth in a settled agricultural community …

Styleless Style? What Photorealism Can Tell Us About “The Sixties”, Craig J. Peariso

Art, Design & Visual Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay reads 1960s “photorealist” painting and its critical reception against two sets of contemporary social analyses. First, it places these artistic and critical works next to Pierre Bourdieu's 1965 text Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, demonstrating that, although the critical literature surrounding “photorealism” tended to assume that its involvement with photography grew out of a desire for an objective realism, contemporary thought on photography was anything but convinced of the medium's transparency. Second, it looks to cultural critics like Susan Sontag and Jacob Brackman to propose that, rather than seeing the art of this period in opposition to the …

Uncovering Multimodality In Composition, Kevin Jacob Kelley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Moje points out that “scholars have argued that some media, texts, and literacy practices that get counted as new are actually old, but our attention to them is new” (352), and this is true of multimodality. We are being re-engaged with multimodality because of the rise of technologies that allow writers to blend media in seemingly new ways, but we have known before the digital turn that reading and writing are inherently multimodal processes, we just did not have a phrase to describe the multiple semiotic channels that are used to compose until “multimodality.” Early university compositionists conceptualized writing as …

The Apprenticeship Of Laurell K. Hamilton: How Aspiring Writers Learn To Write, Chelsea Ann Pierce

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

How do aspiring writers learn to write? Laurell K. Hamilton’s blog records and presents her thorough apprenticeship to readers. This thesis is a case study of the writing process that she documents on her blog. The results reflect aspects of composition theory including formula deviation, character persona construction, audience function and awareness, diverse research possibilities, revision and motivation strategies, digital literacy and technology acquisition, and the blog as a genre. Hamilton also develops and contributes her own writing process theories. The study reveals that both aspiring and professional writers both adhere to common established composition theories and create their own …

Vigilante Violence Vs. Freedom Of Choice In Marriage: The Foray/Zajazd In The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Of The 18th Century, Lynn Lubamersky

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The most famous poem in the Polish language, ‘Pan Tadeusz’ by Adam Mickiewicz, tells of the foray – an institution where the nobles might carry out acts of vigilante violence. Generally speaking, noble families would make use of the court system in search of justice, but if they could not gain justice within the courts system, they might seek vengeance through violent collective action. In some cases, the reason why estates were being raided and their inhabitants attacked was that noble families claimed to be defending the family honor. They might say that a lady’s honor had been insulted if …

A Comparison Of The Perceptions Of Music Educators And School Administrators Regarding Trends In Secondary Curricular Offerings And Implications On Student Body Participation, Leigh Falconer

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to understand the perceptions of music educators and school administrators regarding current practices in curricular offerings as they pertain to music education. These included experienced and anticipated changes to the music curriculum, music education participation rates, barriers to music participation, and school and music course ethnic composition. From a regional perspective, music teachers and administrators were surveyed to determine if perceptions regarding any of the above items varied significantly between the groups. Total potential subjects were selected through random stratified sampling (in Washington) or all music educators (Oregon and Idaho) (n = 922). …

Punishing Our Own Rascals: Great Britain, The United States, And The Right To Search During The Era Of Slave Trade Suppression, Mark T. Haggard

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between the United States and Great Britain during the era of slave trade suppression in the nineteenth century. Two ideals of international relations came into conflict when Great Britain’s humanitarian drive to rid the world of the international slave trade ran headlong into the United States’ claims to sovereignty under the Law of Nations. Under international maritime law a ship is the sovereign territory of the nation under whose flag it sails; the forcible boarding of a ship is tantamount to an invasion of the country itself. Britain sought to circumvent this rule in the …

Immigrant Brides In Taiwan: New Land, New Hope?, Yuwen Chen

Student Research Initiative

In the last two decades, transnational marriages have been growing in Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C). Increasing numbers of Taiwanese men have married bride immigrants from Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia) and Mainland China. These women usually are from low socio-economic class and have little formal education (Chen, Katsurada & Wu, 1998; Tsai, 2006; Tsai & Hsiao 2006). Their offspring are the so-called “New Taiwanese Children”(NTC). The academic performance of New Taiwanese Children has become a contested issue in Taiwanese society, because these children are viewed by some as not being able to contribute to …

Branding Basques, Bilbao, And Boise: Marketing As Metaphor For History, John Bieter, Nina M. Ray

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – Naturally occurring brands combine history, anthropology, sociology and marketing to explain the phenomenon of communities defined by a sense of place. Focusing on both the Basque Country and Basques in Boise, Idaho, we discuss the naturally occurring brand of the Basque people throughout history into the modern day. We explain who the Basques are and how they have branded themselves through language, place, industry, food, drink and culture with mention of similarities to other communities and the lessons that other ethnic/cultural communities can learn. The purpose of the paper is to address the “marketing and imagined communities; nations …

Melville In Tahiti: A Gis Approach, Jessica Ewing

Student Research Initiative

This presentation will focus on Melville's period in and around Tahiti in 1842, a part of the biographical record vexed by conflicting scholarly accounts of Melville's whereabouts and actions, and by inconsistencies—as well as outright falsehoods—among surviving documents and the author's own account of his experiences in his second book Omoo. Digitally expanding on methods of traditional scholarship, I will present the evidence in visual, electronic form by using ArcGIS software to map Melville’s movements, supplying relevant data and documentation and mapping alternate interpretations of the author's travels. The layered digital maps will locate the author at specific dates and …

Immigrant Brides In Taiwan: New Land, New Hope?, Yuwen Chen

Student Research Initiative

In the last two decades, transnational marriages have been growing in Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C). Increasing numbers of Taiwanese men have married bride immigrants from Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia) and Mainland China. These women usually are from low socio-economic class and have little formal education. (Chen, Katsurada & Wu, 1998; Tsai, 2006; Tsai & Hsiao 2006) Their offspring are the so-called “New Taiwanese Children”(NTC). The academic performance of New Taiwanese Children has become a contested issue in Taiwanese society, because these children are viewed by some as not being able to contribute to …

Conflation Or When I Say You, I Mean I, Julie Ann Strand

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Conflation or When I Say You, I Mean I is a poetic interrogation catalyzed by the ideas within Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet and Georges Bataille’s Erotism: Death and Sensuality. The interrogation takes place within a form that positions failed love poems alongside poetic analyses or reflections. By doing so the erotic relationship that exists within the genre of the love poem as well as the hierarchy created between the roles of lover and beloved is put into question.

Encounters Of The Arabian Kind: Cultural Exchange And Identity The Tristans Of Medieval France, England, And Spain, Annie Knowles

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This work examines multiple versions of the medieval Tristan story in France, England, and Spain. Beginning with a strong historical situation for the literary analysis, the work uses elements of Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, Edward Said’s Orientalism, and Roland Barthes’s Mythologies to identify and understand the rhetorical employment of “Oriental” flourishes in the Tristans studied. The work focuses on these Eastern influences as manifested in the characterizations of the Saracen knight Sir Palomides and in the construction, depiction, and commentary upon elements of fin’ amor that permeate the texts.

This study establishes the feasibility of intercultural exchange in the …

"The Country Of Nine-Fingered People": The Southern Mountain Tradition And The Gothic In Faulkner's Intruder In The Dust And Dickey's Deliverance, Kathleen Peterson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the role of the Southern mountain tradition and the Gothic mode in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust and James Dickey’s Deliverance. Using Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, it argues that Faulkner and Dickey appropriated already Gothic elements of Appalachian history in order to create the Gothic characters and settings that would allow them to explore major cultural anxieties of their time. Chapter One gives a brief overview of Appalachian history from the Revolutionary War through 1970. It examines both factual material and fictional portrayals, including the miners’ union strikes of the early 1900s, Mary …