Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Margin Matters: How To Live On A Simple Budget And Crush Debt Forever, Jason Brown

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

According to NerdWallet, 75 percent of Americans do not live off a budget and half of them cannot produce $400 in an emergency. But how much you make isn’t the main concern—it’s your margin that matters most. This capstone, which includes several chapters from the book Margin Matters: How to Live on a Simple Budget and Crush Debt Forever, provides practical strategies for creating and sticking to a simple budget, eliminating debt permanently, and managing expenses to create the most margin at any income level. It describes how the author erased nearly $75,000 of debt in just under three …

Media Guide And Strategic Plan, Ella Greer

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

An MAPW candidate composes a strategic plan and media guide for a local government office.

Reflecting On And Shattering My White Lens: A Critical Autoethnography On My Experience As A White Editor Working With Authors Of Color, Kelsey Medlin

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This critical autoethnography aims to reveal how the cultural biases of a white majority industry impact the stories they select for acquisition and how they are edited. As an editor, I came to this topic from my personal desire to see if my own whiteness affects the way I view writers of color, their stories, and the audience that the companies market to. Thus, the purpose of this project is to explore the current conversations on the topic of diversity within the publishing industry and whether the conversation is making a connection between the lack of diversity in the workforce …

Unraveling Identity Signifier Literacy: A Case Study Of First-Year Composition Students' Communication Practices, Bailey Mcalister

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Identity signifier literacy is defined as one’s ability to accurately read – via personal interactions or via visual, verbal, written, or digital communication – the signifiers others display in direct and indirect ways and interpret these signifiers to gain understanding of others’ identities. In this study, 22 first-year composition students were surveyed about their communication practices in order to see how their identity signifier literacies influence and are influenced by digital environments and composition. These results are meant to improve first-year composition pedagogy by making connections between students’ informal composition practices and their academic composition courses.

“Life Is Very Hard Here”: A Comparative Analysis Of Central American Migrants In El Norte And Enrique’S Journey, Gayle Anderson

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to reveal cultural challenges indigenous peoples and people in poverty face in their Central American homelands and in the United States when migrating northward. Central Americans living in economic and social structures of hardship and/or cultural persecution leave their home places seeking to survive. Analyzing two works of art, the fictionalized realty film El Norte and the book Enrique’s Journey, provide a revealing lens into economic and political plights facing Central American migrants that drives them to leave. Past imperialists’ confiscation of the region’s natural resources and subjugation of its native peoples cemented …

Stumbler (A Screenplay), Mark Green

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

This project consists of two parts:

I: A literature review, which includes a reflection, a script synopsis, and a meta-analysis.

II: An original screenplay.

The literature review considers the implications of class, race, gender, politics, and the internal mythos of country music. The reflection takes core concepts from the literature review and draws a line from the origins of country music to the post-World War II political break between folk and country, and then on to the emergence of outlaw country in the late 1960s. I contend that outlaw country, which I define broadly, emerged from the same countercurrent as …

Life: Told By Death, Shannan Rivera

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Life: Told by Death is the story of Sam, a reluctant reaper of souls who isn’t cut out for his fate. This novel follows him from his unwitting entrance into the life of a reaper to his struggle with his new existence and all the way through to his eventual escape into the afterlife.

The Inclusion Of Women’S Issues In Peace Negotiation Agreements: Guatemala, El Salvador, And Colombia, Natalia F. Meneses

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Armed conflict and its consequences do not discriminate according to gender. It affects all people. During an armed conflict, women are the majority of civilian victims: they are forcibly displaced, their family members are killed, and they suffer sexual abuse and torture. However, most peace processes have been exclusively controlled and led by men, while women and women’s issues are usually not included in peace negotiations or resulting agreements. In the last 30 years, there have been 35 comprehensive peace accords signed across the world of which only eight included women’s issues in their agreements. It is crucial that women’s …

Atlanta: Reconstructing A Fractured History, Clayton Odom

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Today we live in a world where the development of our cities has resulted in the destruction of historical and magnificent architecture that stood as monumental symbols of human achievement and evolution. This has been a problem for Atlanta in which the foundations of the city's architectural heritage and legacy has been destroyed as a result of Atlanta's fragmented development over time, leaving the city's architectural legacy and history in a state of fragmented ruin. For Atlanta, it is important to restore this lost architectural heritage by reconstructing the memory of the city's destroyed architectural icons by recreating and reassembling …

The Real Atlanta: Representations Of Black Southern Culture, Masculinity, And Womanhood As Seen In Season One Of The Fx Series Atlanta, Tamisha Nicole Askew

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

This project explores how the new FX original series, Atlanta, challenges previous notions of Blackness on American television. The series Atlanta delves into conversations on hip-hop and Black culture through what has been considered an authentic representation of Black Atlanta. This paper examines tropes of Southerness and perceived homophobia in hip-hop and Black culture while analyzing the way in which the series creators and producers create a dialogue on economic and social matters facing the Black Southern community in the city of Atlanta. Finally, this paper examines controlling images of Black women on American television to uncover the ways …

Sequels And Sams: Re-Contextualized Media And Affective Memory, Ben Rogers

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Electronic media allows for the repetition of the audiovisual in new contexts. Bernard Stiegler argues that, as people are exposed to these contexts (television, commercials), consumer-based art threatens the singular, a connection to a particular aesthetic in a particular space. When art is repeated, films remember for the audience. This allows for history to be continually re-written according to dominant media institutions.

While there are other ways to combat this grand narrative, I argue that there are memories that, like the singular, are not consumer-based. I refer to these as staple associative memories (SAMs). These are not memories …

Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Darker, Jennifer Sarra

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This creative thesis consists of the first seven chapters of the novel, Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Darker. Set in two time periods, 2017 and 1849, the plot centers around a newly renovated castle hotel in County Cork, Ireland. Newlyweds, Alicia and Greg Silvan discover a bottle of absinthe that is Spanish in origin. Alicia is haunted by the ghost of former owner, Keira O’Shea, as well as the disappearance of her father in hurricane Katrina. Alicia finds Keira’s handwritten journal and begins to read about Keira’s life and love and loss at the end of the Great Irish …

The Edugametional Podcast Episode 1: Souls Games And Information Literacy, Brian Zabell

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Abstract:

This Capstone project includes a 53 minute podcast audio file and a reflective memo detailing what sparked my interest in the topic along the journey I went through to get to where I ended up to create the podcast.

The podcast is developed the first podcast of a series about using peer-reviewed research articles to argue for educational gaming in the classroom, the merits of finding scientific and cultural literacies in educational gaming, understanding the value of why certain video game mechanics work and why, and how video games in general can retain educational value to a player.

This …

Adventures In Storytelling: An Editor's Guide To Better Fiction, Rachel Frank

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Writing fiction can be daunting for beginning writers. This graphic guide seeks to make fiction more accessible, using the unique affordances of the graphic medium to explain fictional concepts and techniques in a clear, engaging way.

All Writers Welcome: An Exploratory Study Of The Potential Value Of Academic Writing Center And Adult Community-Based Literacy Center Partnerships, Allison Bennett

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Writing center practices have been widely accepted as beneficial for literacy development, especially given the ubiquitous nature of writing. However, many off-campus communities lack writing support as visible, organized, and well-documented as that available to those on-campus through writing centers. Further, while evidence of writing center community-engaged initiatives exists anecdotally, research identifying the possible impact of such efforts on specific community partners and populations is limited. Hence, this study explores how literacy is supported in university/college writing centers and adult community-based literacy centers. Survey and interview data suggest the potential value that community-engaged projects between the two are likely to …

The Biography Of Dr. Joseph Mbelolo Ya Mpiku: A Congolese True To His Roots, Looking Beyond The World He Lives In., Zola Matingu

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This is the biography of Dr. Joseph Mbelolo Ya Mpiku, a Congolese man who has lived in three different countries, on three different continents, immersed in three different cultures. His life experiences enriched his knowledge of other cultures, and his own culture kept him grounded in his identity.

His story can be relatable to people from various cultures across generations, as culture is a key element of the way an individual sees and defines himself. A culture doesn't just benefit those from where it originated; it can be shared to enrich the human experience, not just in the differences, but …