Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"A Nice, Beautiful, Active, & Faithful Friend": Horses & Emotion In The Civil War Letters Of Two Union Officers, Allen F. Horn Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Horses are the unsung heroes of the American Civil War. Both armies relied heavily on equines for a variety of tasks. They carried cavalry soldiers on the battlefield and pulled wagons for artillery and military supply chains. Horses could also serve as companion animals. Soldiers formed friendships with their horses as a way to heal from the trauma of combat and stave off the monotony of camp life. Writing about animals in letters to their families enabled soldiers to explain their experiences in more palatable terms to their families. As over 1.2 million horses and mules died in the conflict, …

The Social, Cultural, And Political Influences On American Classical Composers Post-9/11: A Comparison To The New Deal And Early Cold War Eras, Christine E. Letcher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore how the social, cultural, and political environments of the post-9/11 period influenced the music composition of American classical composers, from the perspective of the composers. These composers are then compared to those of the New Deal and early Cold War eras. During both the New Deal and the subsequent anti-communist movement of the early Cold War era, composers and musicians made aesthetic choices because of the political climate. While much study has been done of the political engagement and activism of contemporary popular musicians, there is a dearth of research regarding classical …

You Are What You Wear: A Vital Materialism Of Textiles, Walter J. Greenleaf Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intermedial artworks are deemed effective when they draw from the roots of the most basic, universal elements of materiality, concept, sensation, and/or experience, melding disparate elements into an inextricable novelty. As hybrid artifacts, they take up an unusual degree of substance in one dimension or another, and can at times be difficult to categorize, describe, or document. Nonetheless, the potential for intermedial expressions to resonate with their viewership is strengthened by the depths to which the artist ventures, and through such a process the most far-reaching and complexly interconnected issues of our time can be made approachable on the personal …

Examining Our Relationship With Death: A Participatory Art Project, Lia A. Davido

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Death is a fact of life, yet researchers such as Caitlin Doughty, Todd Harra, Ernest Becker, and others, have found that people deem death a taboo topic of conversation. Doughty herself started a social movement, death positivity, to encourage this taboo to be broken, and to normalize talking about death. However these researchers published their findings in the early to mid 2010’s, before a major pandemic made death a more common occurrence for people. Inspired by previous researchers' experiences, this project asks the question: How do people feel about death now, and can socially engaged art create a space where …

Lost Children: A Postmodern Novella, Seyedeh Mania Mohseni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Lost Children" is a novella written based on common rules of the modern and postmodern detective fiction and how those rules can be replaced by alternatives.

Nothing To See Hear, Adam Kuykendall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nothing to See/Hear is a research experiment into minimalist visual narrative via the short film Not the Boss of Me, in which the criteria for production mandated only the bare essential elements required to construct and convey a plot and its characters be used while filming within a nondescript space - in this case, a mostly empty soundstage. How does one tell a story and define its characters without direct expository dialogue? What is needed to establish and define locations and/or environments when limited to only one or two items? Can an audience engage their imagination to fill in the …

Caelum, Alexandra Requena

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Caelum is a story about the hidden struggles of mental health told in an alternating chapter format that explores the journey of two characters: an angel, Tacenda, who seeks revenge on Mr. Mystical -an unloving God- and Dorian, a human, who is trying to find his place in life. The two

experience parallel situations where they explore their emotions and reactions to life while Mr. Mystical makes everything much more complicated. Tacenda, however, has other plans, and seeks Dorian for help defeating those who have turned against him, causing his demise. As the story progresses and alternates between Tacenda’s quest …

Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch, Madison P. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch” is a creative novel of vignettes in the vein of historical fiction set at the turn of the 20th century in Oklahoma/Indian Territory exploring the complexities of love and betrayal through generations of one Muscogee family as they battle the legal and personal implications of white-settler encroachment. With societal criticisms and Indigenous methodologies, this thesis aims to explore land ownership, resource allocation, and the complex governance of Oklahoma tribal reservations. The research of this novel focuses on primary documents from National Archive probate records, Dawes Commission enrollments, newspapers, and a familial collection of photographs, letters, …

They're Coming For Us: A Novel, Sarah Walker Caron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

They’re Coming for Us is a feminist dystopian novel told in a non-linear format that explores an alternate timeline in which a series of mass shootings targeting women, queer and nonbinary people and allies have led to the removal of civil rights for women in the United States. Five years later, women and others who don’t fit the heterosexual male paradigm remain excluded from the workforce, education, driving and other basic rights. But an underground network is working to right the country and restore constitutional rights. As the story unfolds forward and backward, the reader is left to confront how …

Art-At-Work: Creativity And Social Practice As Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Research, Anna Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Art-At-Work describes the tools, vocabularies, strategies and experiences that render the emergent spaces of collaborative interdisciplinary research. This body of work generates a story board for the unfolding narrative of a studio-laboratory practice where artists research with scientists and scientists create with artists. The long-term goals and short-term deliverables of this research focus attention toward the process of building connection, tools and space for future work that creates channels for collaboration among disciplines. With each conversation, concept map, prototype, reflection and iteration, creatives and researchers are exploring the spaces among fields of practice by generating ways of sharing experiences that …

“Sans Abri Et Sans Voix” - Trouver Un Sentiment D’Appartenance Dans Les Œuvres D’Antonine Maillet, Herménégilde Chiasson, Patrice Desbiens Et Jean-Marc Dalpé “Without A Home And Without A Voice” - Finding A Sense Of Belonging In The Works Of Antonine Maillet Herménégilde Chiasson, Patrice Desbiens And Jean-Marc Dalpé, Ali F. Friend

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ce mémoire étudie la dynamique sociolinguistique de la langue française pour les minorités francophones du Nouveau-Brunswick et de l’Ontario, et comment celle-ci influence l’appartenance culturelle par rapport au Québec et au reste du Canada. Se concentrant sur certains ouvrages des auteurs acadiens Antonine Maillet et Herménégilde Chiasson, et des auteurs franco-ontariens Jean-Marc Dalpé et Patrice Desbiens, trois thèmes importants liés à l’appartenance culturelle telle que définie par ces communautés francophones marginalisées seront examinés soit: la mémoire, l’espace et l’exil. Si la question de l’appartenance linguistique des communautés acadiennes et franco-ontariennes est au cœur de ce projet, des concepts tels que …

"A Stranger In America": Queer Diasporic Writers And The American Politics Of Exclusion, Caitlin Stanfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the academic concept of queer diasporic studies is relatively new, the epistemic future of this interdisciplinary, intersectional, and inclusive field is already imperiled. Throughout recent years, bills seeking to expunge critical race and queer theory from not only the public education sector, but from the legally-defined “general public” as well, have been proposed by legislators throughout the United States. To combat this assault upon marginalized educators, scholars, and authors, one must first understand what is at stake; the rich site of contemporary, queer diasporic poetry provides one such example. By situating these poems within their complex cultural, political, and …