Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cross-Pollination: Building A Co-Taught Course To Examine Art And Sex Through The Lens Of Botany, Christopher T. Martine, Diamanda A. Zizis, Anna K. Kell

Faculty Journal Articles

Driven by overlapping interests in plants, art, and diversity in sex expression, Anna Kell (Department of Art and Art History) and Chris Martine (Department of Biology) developed a course that integrates the perspectives of a visual artist and a botanist. Art & Sex Through the Lens of Botany seeks to impart the importance of making connections across disciplines and the value of visual literacy across academic lines. The course introduces foundational concepts in each field and encourages students to integrate and explore these different systems of knowledge and their intersections. In addition to developing fluencies related to both general botany …

Late-Ming Book Culture And The Fujian Christian Community: A Case Study Of Lixiu Yijian 勵修一鑑 (A Mirror To Encourage Self-Cultivation), Yunjing Xu

Faculty Journal Articles

This study demonstrates the importance of book culture in the building of a religious community and in the preservation and interpretation of local experiences, through the making of a book titled Lixiu yijian 勵修一鑑 (A mirror to encourage self-cultivation) around 1645. The main author, Li Jiugong 李久功, mobilized members of the Fujian Christian community to collaborate on this communal book project outside the Christian church. Both xylographic print culture and manuscript culture were involved in the process and in the final product of this project. Through genre affiliation, content categorization, and the addition of commentaries, Li and his associates transformed …

Politicizing The Past: The Exploration Of Revolutionary Collectivity Within Neoliberalism In Dionne Brand’S In Another Place, Not Here And Rita Indiana’S Tentacle, Siobhan Nerz

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the depictions of revolutions in the two Caribbean novels In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand and Tentacle by Rita Indiana. I analyze how the novels explore the potential for political collectivity within neoliberalism through their depictions of the environment and same-sex relationships. I also examine how both authors engage their reader by forcing them to confront their positionality within the economic system. While Brand imagines ephemeral moments of collectivity within neoliberalism, Indiana shows revolutionary individual and collective action is inhibited by late-stage capitalism. Paring these novels together shows how contemporary individuals of differing positionalities can …

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

Spirits Of Liberty: The Contradictions Of An Intoxicating Inheritance, Elise T. Hasseltine

Honors Theses

This extensive historical analysis traces the complex, multifaceted roles of alcohol across American history, from the colonial era and early national period through the temperance movement culminating in national Prohibition during the early twentieth century. It explores the cultural, social, economic, and moral dimensions circumscribing societal attitudes and regulatory policies toward alcohol over time. The thesis examines how alcohol served as a tool of conquest and oppression during the colonial era, facilitating the subjugation of Native populations and fueling the transatlantic slave trade. It delves into the complex dynamics of alcohol consumption and regulation in the early republic, highlighting the …

Psychological Well-Being And Music Among Children, Elle Chrampanis

Honors Theses

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to explore how music supports kindergarteners’ well-being in an elementary music classroom through the lens of PERMA, a framework for well-being developed by Martin Seligman. PERMA stands for positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. An additional goal was to see how applicable this framework was to kindergarteners. Accordingly, a five-week music program was developed and taught at a local elementary school. A typical elementary music curriculum was developed consisting of lessons that included a welcome song, a rhythm activity, a musical storybook, the sequential learning of a song, and a goodbye …

Law And Literature In Pennsylvania: A Changing Landscape, Juliette Gaggini

Honors Theses

This thesis examines themes of American national identity perpetuated in Pennsylvania surrounding private property through historical, literary and legal analysis. Ideals of private property and land ownership are broken into three transitions throughout Pennsylvania history: the American frontier and initial land claiming by settlers, mass-deforestation and the introduction of widespread agriculture, and finally industrialization and the introduction of mining and fracking. Each of these transitions highlights the physical changes to the region and how they were influenced by American ideals of private property, productivity, and profitability.

Throughout this thesis, I analyze both literary and legal texts to examine societal beliefs …

Music Education Within An Autism Support Classroom: Building Community And Educational Skills, Emma Lamberti

Honors Theses

The purpose of this action research study was to explore how music education might provide a sense of community, develop educational skills, and discuss general best practices for teaching students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a middle school autism support classroom. To examine community, educational skills, and best practices, this study completed two cycles of action research. The curriculum in Cycle 1 consisted of typical music lessons for a general music classroom. Interviews with teachers and students, video observations, and researcher reflections after each lesson were used to inform the development of Cycle 2. Cycle 2 retained the overall …

Interminables Encrucijadas: El Dilema Ético En Tomás Nevinson, Isabel Cuñado

Faculty Journal Articles

La muerte de Javier Marías en 2022 ha convertido de manera fortuita Tomás Nevinson (2021) en el colofón de una extraordinaria trayectoria literaria que cumplía cincuenta años con esta novela. Es posible apreciar en ella la culminación de los grandes ejes de pensamiento que se han venido desarrollando a lo largo de décadas en esta obra, más característica por dejar preguntas abiertas que por proponer respuestas. Las preocupaciones epistemológicas en torno a la crisis referencial del lenguaje emergen de nuevo aquí y entroncan con la segunda cuestión clave de esta narrativa: la ética. En este artículo propongo que el dilema …

Fluidity And Inconstancy: Australian Bush Tomatoes As An Exemplar Of Non-Normative Sex Expression, Christopher T. Martine

Faculty Journal Articles

Solanum, a genus of ~1500 global species, is one of the more interesting plant groups in which to study reproductive biology and ecology. Overwhelmingly, species in this group express full cosexuality, where individual plants have flowers containing both fully-functioning “male” (staminate) and “female” (carpellate) organs. However, there have been multiple and widespread evolutionary transitions within the genus to non-normative variations on this ancestral condition. Australian bush tomatoes (ca. 40 species) are especially diverse in this regard, with uncommon variation and combinations of unisexuality and cosexuality -- including, most notably, two sexual systems known as dioecy (unisexual male or female …

Milton Time Final Report, Jacqueline Rounsavill, Eleanor Geno, Alessandra Costantini, Brian Miller, Mia Bohi-Green

Final Reports in ENST 411: Environmental Community Projects

Our main focus with this project was to hold a well-attended event in Milton, PA on Earth Day (April 22nd) that raised awareness for TIME’s “The Landscape of Main Street” Museum. We wanted this event to be accessible to all ages and marketed towards, but not limited to, the Milton community. Additionally, we hoped this event would generate attendance to the museum, educate attendees (especially children) on Milton’s history and ecology, get local businesses involved, and ultimately generate excitement within the community; getting residents more involved and bringing people together. We planned that this event would also include a brochure- …

Artistic, Artworld, And Aesthetic Disobedience, Adam Burgos, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience …

Patterns Of Integration: A Network Perspective On Popular Religious Connections In China’S Lower Yangzi, 1150–1350, Song Chen

Faculty Journal Articles

The spread of cults from their original homelands in the Song dynasty (960–1279) created crisscrossing ties between local communities and fostered social and cultural integration in Chinese society that transcended class and geographic boundaries. Scholars have produced numerous case studies on these translocal cults and their implications, but the pattern of connections across space created by these cults is yet to be explored. Using the data collected from local gazetteers that have survived from the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties, this article takes a bird’s‑eye view of the spatial distribution of popular cults in China’s Lower Yangzi region between 1150 …

Deus Ex Machina: Contemporary Argentina's Literature Of Infrastructure, D. Bret Leraul

Faculty Journal Articles

This article traces the growth of representations of literary infrastructure in Argentinean literature parallel to the rise of global finance capital and the successive price and debt crises it has visited upon the Argentinean economy since the restoration of liberal democracy in 1983. I argue that as Argentina’s robust mid-century literary institution has declined, the concrete organizations that constitute its infrastructure—for example publishing houses, educational institutions, cultural bureaucracies—become fodder for literary fiction. In short, literature represents its own infrastructure when that infrastructure comes to present a problem. My claim rests at once on the logics of the literary institution and …

A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …

Speculative Constitutions In Ursula K. Le Guin’S Hainish Cycle And The Rights Of Nature, Ted Hamilton

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper examines two speculative examinations of humanity as a unified species and agent of ecological change: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle and the rights of nature movement. Le Guin’s Cycle imagines the slow interplanetary reintegration of human polities against a backdrop of cultural and environmental difference. I read the novels of the Cycle as an allegory for the rights of nature movement, which seeks to synthesize traditional and modern knowledge in a legal solution to ecological crisis. Both discourses, I argue, productively imagine a new historical understanding of humanity’s place on Earth, but they provide a weak theory …

Women’S Bodies, Government’S Vessels: Control Of Women’S Reproductive Capacity In U.S. Policy, 1837 - 1924, Shana Clapp

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the changing boundaries of women’s property rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with a critical eye on the intentions of white male policymakers. I analyze the development of laws regarding married women’s property rights, homesteading, and workplace relations to understand how lawmakers and judges viewed white women's reproductive capacity as a state policy tool in varying ways. The expansion of women’s property rights in the U.S. revolved around women’s reproductive labor and funneled women into their assumed roles of wives and mothers. Weaving together historical moments across a century of great advancement for women, I …

Visualizing The Permanent Lie: An Examination Of Dystopian Literature Using Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’S Model, Anthony Mitchell

Master’s Theses

This thesis argues for the formation of an evolving canon of literature critical to continued resistance to totalitarianism, focusing primarily on the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ji Xianlin. In crafting the theoretical basis of my study, I rely primarily on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s concept of the “permanent lie” and its related concepts, “survive at any price” and “only material results matter” as formulated in his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, the “permanent lie” is rooted in the creation of a virtual reality among individuals trapped in a totalitarian society, in which they must hold …

Reading Critically From The Archives: James Merrill Linn’S Diary As A Gateway To The Past, Carrie M. Pirmann, Courtney Paddick

Faculty Contributions to Books

Archival research and reading from the archives have long been embraced as a scholarly research practice in humanities disciplines. While scholars may spend weeks or months poring over hidden treasures found in archives, undergraduate students are often not exposed to these materials in a hands-on way. However, college and university libraries often have archival collections tucked away that can facilitate learning when used in thoughtfully crafted assignments. In this chapter, we discuss how we used Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and archival materials to provide students with an opportunity to engage in a close and critical reading of excerpts from the …

Zerschlagen: German Unification And Divided Identity, Harrison Quinn

Honors Theses

The Unification of East and West Germany ended one of the Cold War’s longest divides, but only on paper. After decades under a unified German state, former East Germans face lower standards of living, economic opportunities, and access to national utilities compared to their Western counterparts. This inequality stems from the bifurcated German identity, which remains largely unaddressed amid German state ambitions for a central role in international institutions. The failure to properly acknowledge East German identity and the suppression thereof demonstrates the failure of Unification to unite the German nation. Political ambitions outweighed a true reconciliation of German nationhood, …

The Implementation Of Augmented Reality And Low Latency Protocols In Musical Instrumental Collaborations, Qixiao Zhu

Honors Theses

Past projects involving musical software have been completely virtual, while these software do well in entertainment and education, there is the question of whether these software are playable to the same extent as physical musical instruments. The software presented in this paper, "AR Jam", utilizes various software and hardware tools to form a networked mixed reality system for the users to play music on. The intention of this project is to seek new ways to explore more playable musical instruments in the digital world. The paper presents the software's implementation, challenges such as optimization problems of the synthesizer, and the …

Swimming Lessons: Exploring And Embracing The Graphic Memoir, Sophia Donati

Honors Theses

My thesis is both creative and analytical, delving into the graphic memoir genre and its components. My own graphic memoir is at the heart of this piece: Swimming Lessons, which I wrote and drew over the past four years. The first and main piece of my thesis is the 122-page completed draft of Swimming Lessons which details three significant parts of my life centering on my relationship with swimming. Following my graphic memoir is the analytical reflective essay which details the graphic memoir by situating Swimming Lessons in conversation with other prevalent texts in the genre. This piece centers on …

Bridging Communities Of Practice: Cross-Institutional Collaboration For Undergraduate Digital Scholars, Carrie M. Pirmann, R.C. Miessler, Clinton Baugess, Kevin Moore, Courtney Paddick

Faculty Contributions to Books

At Bucknell University and Gettysburg College, an increasing focus on supporting creative undergraduate research as intensive, high-impact experiences has resulted in both institutions implementing library-led digital scholarship fellowships for their students. Gettysburg’s Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship began in 2016, and Bucknell’s Digital Scholarship Summer Research Fellowship in 2017. While academic libraries have emerged as leaders on college campuses for digital humanities (DH) services, the programs at Gettysburg and Bucknell are distinctive in their structured curricula, a focus on independent student research, and the development of a local community of practice. In this chapter, we explore the development of cross-institutional communities …

Megilas Vintz (The Scroll Of Vintz), Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Pandora Experimentia, Brian Hauser

Faculty Contributions to Books

Wes Craven's first film was a 45-minute color 16mm student film titled Pandora Experimentia, for which Craven served as director of photography when he was a faculty member at Clarkson College of Technology in 1968. This essay tells the story of the making and exhibition of this early Craven film before he left teaching to pursue a successful career in filmmaking.

Internal Colonialism And Democracy, Adam Burgos

Faculty Journal Articles

This essay examines the relationship between African American internal colonialism and democracy, highlighting the complexities of democracy that make it both susceptible to oppressive violence at home and abroad, as well as a potential resource for emancipation and equality. I understand “internal colonialism” here to encompass various terms used by African Americans beginning in the 1830s, including semi-colonialism, domestic colonialism, and a nation within a nation. Much political philosophy assumes that society is “nearly just” or “generally just,” or that oppression and injustice are found in societies that we nonetheless deem legitimate. Centering the complexities and possibilities of democracy instead …

Ruslan And Lolita: Nabokov's Pursuit Of Pushkin's Monsters, Maidens, And Morals, Ludmila Lavine

Faculty Journal Articles

This article discusses the Russian precursor to Humbert’s explicit “kingdom by the sea”: Pushkin’s mock-epic Ruslan and Liudmila (RL). An amalgam of Slavic and Western folklore that scandalized the reading public in its day, Pushkin’s work underpins Nabokov’s own transnational position as a writer whose splash onto the Anglophone scene was accompanied by similar outcries of smut and pornography. In addition to a multitude of fairy-tale sources already documented in the scholarship, Lolita’s cluster of mermaids, sleeping beauties, dark magic, invisibility, pursuit and captivity, physical topography, and “brothers”-rivals finds in Pushkin’s RL a synthesizing subtext. Moreover, Pushkin’s play …

Is Children's Literature Really Meant For Children? Global Political Commentary In Children's Literature, Jenny Scott

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the way children’s literature is a productive form for political commentary. I analyze how the genre of children’s literature allows authors the unexpected freedom to express the moral complexity of contemporary political problems. This form provides authors a space to comment upon complicated and sometimes controversial political discourse in a way they might not have the freedom to do otherwise writing explicitly for an adult audience. Amidst the argument that children’s literature as a form allows for authors to include political discourse, I also incorporate an examination of the audience of children’s literature to demonstrate the complexity …

The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead, Ted Hamilton

Faculty Journal Articles

This article describes how the law inflects the narration of environmental conflict in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass (2015) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). By focusing on the legal common sense of settler colonialism—its emphasis on private property in land and its subjugation of Indigenous peoples to the guardianship of the state—the article explores the ways in which Vollmann’s and Silko’s novels present counternarratives to the law’s story of justified conquest. Combining a law and literature approach with ecocriticism, this article highlights the importance of the legal imagination in defining human-land relations in the United States. …

Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …