Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Islamophobie Im Modernen Deutschland, Logan Burum

Student Research Submissions

For a country terrified of repeating its Nazi past, Islamophobic sentiment and policies are becoming increasingly more popular in modern Germany. This paper explores the some of the historical and cultural underpinnings as well as provides some sociological theories to try and understand just why this type of ideology is festering amongst the German public. Discriminatory practices are veiled under the guise of “living together” and alt-right extremist parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland play to the insecurities of the majority and further support these injustices. As the Muslim minority’s legal rights become increasingly compromised, and human rights violations …

Interpretations Of Female Authority In Medieval Literature, Olivia Havlin

Student Research Submissions

Beginning with Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in 1269, Medieval authors give allegorical characteristics to women defining what a Medieval woman is, who she should be, and how she should behave. This text becomes a rule book on courtly love and male and female behavior lasting for centuries and is borrowed by authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, who used Romance of the Rose as a reference to question female authority in many of his works. Therefore, it is through an understanding of characters such as the Old Woman from The Romance of the Rose, …

Ann Yearsley, "Earl Goodwin", And The Politics Of Romantic Discontent, Chris Foss

English, Linguistics, and Communication (Legacy)

There is a dearth of more substantial critical studies on Ann Yearsley’s tragic drama Earl Goodwin in general, and while the few out there have helpfully illuminated the play’s representation of the historical plight of women and the poor during Anglo-Saxon times, as well as its application to their current predicaments in Romantic-era England and France, they have tended to leave unexplored the ways in which Yearsley simultaneously is clarifying and extending her anger at and frustration with the class- and gender-based discrimination she experienced firsthand in the fallout with her mentor Hannah More over the profits from her first …

“The Peace Of The Graveyard”: Remembrance And Memorialization Of Crimes Against Humanity In Colonial Southwest Africa And East Africa, Drew Mesa

Student Research Submissions

How does one analyze the memorialization or remembrance of an event, or pair of events, when they have been nearly forgotten? To many individuals, the Herero and Nama Genocide in Namibia and the Maji Maji Rebellion in Tanzania are unknown; however, these two events decimated a region and left a lasting impact that is still felt to this day. In recent years, the Herero and Nama tragedy has become increasingly well-known to the international community. But why has this genocide in Namibia become the focus of attention, while the atrocities in Tanzania have remained largely unknown? Namibia’s connections to the …

Challenging Society In Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist And Bleak House, Adrienne Oliver

Student Research Submissions

The purpose of this honors project is to explore the challenging social system of Dickens’s Victorian London, specifically through the perspective of Dickens’s social philosophy characterized by the need for reformative action in the fractured society represented in both Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Divided into two documents, the first component, an annotated bibliography, focuses on the scholarly discussion of negligent and criminal institutions in Oliver Twist. The second section, an analytical paper, concentrates on Bleak House and Dickens’s representation of the city as a divided space between the gentility and isolated, vulnerable groups demonstrated by at risk …

The Impact Of Morphological Awareness On The Reading Development Of Children With Developmental Dyslexia, Christina Bloom

Student Research Submissions

The effects of phonological awareness on reading development have been widely researched and are understood and recognized by both educators and linguists. The effects of morphological awareness on reading, though, have been comparatively under-researched until the past fifteen to twenty years. Recent studies have shown that morphological awareness plays a significant role in children’s reading development, and an awareness of morphology makes a significant impact on the spelling, vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension skills of typically-developing children that is independent of the contribution made by phonological awareness. Children with developmental dyslexia struggle with a morphological deficit. These children do not …

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Ramsays: Gender Politics In To The Lighthouse, Ashley Riggleson

Student Research Submissions

In my essay, I seek to complicate typical ideas surrounding gender politics in Virginia Woolf’s Modernist novel, To the Lighthouse. To do this, I first consider the portraits of Mr. Ramsay and his son, James, to show that Woolf, contrary to popular opinion shies away from simplistic portraits of masculine power. That is, rather than creating two typically masculine gentlemen, as most critics posit that she does, Woolf instead creates two characters who fail to conform to masculine norms. This discrepancy suggests that, Woolf captures a shifting cultural landscape in language and portrays the birth of a more “Modern …

The Renaissance Woman's Guide To Divorce: Exploring Marriage In Arden Of Faversham And The Tragedy Of Mariam, Briana Tyler

Student Research Submissions

The societies in the Arden of Faversham (1592) and The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) reflect the patriarchal values of Renaissance England. Alice Arden, Arden’s female lead, and Salome, the antagonist in Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam, defy the social and legal parameters placed on early modern women by killing their husbands in order to marry their lovers. While Alice and Salome succeed in carrying out the respective murders, Alice is killed for her crimes and Salome remains unpunished.

In this paper, I argue that Alice’s lack of access to legal power means that she must act outside the law; however, her reliance …

Representations Of Lucrezia Borgia And The Image Of The Moral Exemplar In The Late Quattrocento And Early Cinquecento, Nina Wutrich

Student Research Submissions

Throughout her life, Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, appropriated the imagery of holy women and other moral exemplars in her portraiture. This appropriation of imagery evolved as Lucrezia herself matured; the representations shift from those where Lucrezia disguises herself as a morally exemplary woman such as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, to those where she presents herself, in her role as Duchess of Ferrara, as a morally exemplary holy woman in her own right.

When You Have A Postcard For A Father, Abigail Shea Nibblett

Student Research Submissions

When You Have A Postcard for A Father

Abigail Shea Nibblett

ENG 470C: Creative Nonfiction Seminar

Sponsoring Faculty: Prof. Colin Rafferty

“When You Have A Postcard for A Father” explores the complicated emotions and memories tied to being the daughter of a constantly travelling United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant. The long essay explores how he maintained a positive presence in the girl’s life despite the challenges of his schedule and how the souvenirs that he always brought back showed his love even when he could not be there physically. By tying in the lyrics of “I’m Already There,” …

Adorno And Reconciliation, Jonathan Hollingsworth

Student Research Submissions

In this thesis I examine the concept of reconciliation between human beings and nature in the philosophy of Theodor Adorno. I argue that for Adorno, reconciliation would neither be a return to a state prior to our species opposing itself to nature, nor would it be a continuation of our current, destructive relationship to nature. Instead, Adorno conceives of reconciliation as a state in which human beings and nature would be free to communicate their differences without each dominating the other. In response to Jürgen Habermas, who claims that Adorno makes the impossible demand that human beings enter into a …

Overcoming Ineffability Through Discourse On Hindu Self And Buddhist Non-Self: Tensions Between The Study Of Religion And Religious Experience, Christina Brown

Student Research Submissions

Given that the study of religion relies on discourse as a basis, the inherent ineffability of religious experience poses a challenge to it, yet it is simultaneously a defining characteristic of religion. For scholars of religion, discourse and other conceptual components can be discussed, but when critically and comparatively exploring what defines ultimate reality, such as ātman in Hinduism and anātman in Buddhism, experience is at the foundation and cannot be dismissed.

The Restricted Agency Of Women In Arden Of Faversham And The Spanish Tragedy, Amanda Howar

Student Research Submissions

The Restricted Agency of Women in Arden of Faversham and The Spanish Tragedy

Amanda Howar

ENGL 447N: Renaissance Drama Seminar Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Maya Mathur

This project looks at the restrictions placed on two early modern female characters: Alice Arden in Arden of Faversham (1592) and Bel-Imperia in The Spanish Tragedy (1589). In the paper, it argues that the female characters combat these restrictions through rhetorical and sexual manipulation, which gives them agency for a limited period of time. Alice Arden gains agency through rhetorical manipulation that pits people against her husband, Arden, and gives them opportunities to kill …

Reclaiming Independence: Comparing The Daughters In King Lear And A Thousand Acres, Zachary Caldwell

Student Research Submissions

In William Shakespeare’s great tragedy, King Lear, Lear’s three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, betray their father at different points in the play and die as a result. Jane Smiley reimagines the story of King Lear in her novel, A Thousand Acres, by combining new plot material with material from the original text.

Smiley’s novel is narrated by Larry’s eldest daughter, Ginny, whose voice reorients Shakespeare’s patriarchal narrative and transforms it into a feminist text. Smiley changes the overarching plot to create a more sympathetic link between the daughters and the reader by granting them a level of redemption. Ginny …

Saving Nature: Rethinking The Human/Nature Relationship, Katharine Barry

Student Research Submissions

In the year 2018, the race to “save” nature seems more urgent than ever, and yet the continuous foot-dragging on the implementation of sustainable policy and practices seems to continue. There is a quite a bit of time and energy invested in sustainable efforts with, in some cases, little show for it. With the amount of effort put into finding a solution to the earth’s rapidly changing conditions, one must wonder, 1) what is holding us back from fighting against climate change? And 2) are our current attempts all worth it? The best way to move forward in our societal …

Por Sangre, Emma Cahoon

Student Research Submissions

Por Sangre is a creative work and personal nonfiction essay written in partial fulfilment of Creative Writing Seminar: Non-Fiction, or ENGL470C, sponsored by Professor Colin Rafferty. In it, the author discusses her relationship to her grandparents’ country of origin, Cuba. She describes growing up with her heritage and ruminates on questions of identity and national origin. The essay focuses largely on a recent trip to the country in which she discovers cultural and familial connections. Through numerous scenes from the trip, the author reflects on what it means to belong to a place and how to create an attachment to …

Pragmatic Faith: An Epistemic Link Between Religion, Science, Mathematics, And Philosophy, John Benjamin Willis

Student Research Submissions

There exists a conflict between the fields of religion on science. This conflict exists, according to Gregory Dawes, on the grounds that these disciplines share no common epistemic norms, and therefore this conflict is "ineradicable." An epistemic norm describes the way that someone goes about the pursuit of knowledge. I disagree with Dawes' assertion that this conflict is, in fact, "ineradicable." Pragmatic faith, first posited as "sub-doxastic faith" by F. R. Tennant, expresses values found in both religion and science, as well as in other "reason-based" disciplines like mathematics and philosophy. This work uses examples from each discipline to demonstrate …

A Space For Women In The Law, Megan Murphy

Student Research Submissions

In our society, gender plays an immeasurable role in shaping individual lives, experiences, and opportunities; thus, it is my contention that justice requires the law to utilize a gender-specific, reasonable woman, or reasonable abused-women, standard in cases dealing with workplace sexual harassment and in cases in which women who have been abused by their spouses for extended periods attack or kill their abusers in non-confrontational settings.

Decomposition, Sarah Kinzer

Student Research Submissions

In her collection, Failure and I Bury the Body, poet Sasha West depicts the struggle to process and hold space for the mass destruction and violence that accompanies the conveniences of our modern economy. She personifies this psychological weight as a corpse that accompanies the speaker on her journey: “I did not know where to put the dead man’s body/so I buried him here/in the back of my head...” My chapbook, Decomposition, is a short collection of poems that further explore this concept of grief in a loveless society. This is accomplished through a collage of thematic concerns …

Two Governments, A Railway And A Church: The Old Colony Mennonite Relocation To Central British Columbia In The 1940s, Dawn S. Bowen

Geography Articles

The article focuses on Old Colony Mennonite Relocation to Central British Columbia (B.C.) in the 1940s. It mentions Governments of Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and the Canadian National Railway (CN), cooperated to enable these families to begin new lives in central B.C. It also demonstrates that a common faith in the early success of the venture and documented the long and varied history of Mennonite migration.

Material Culture And The Greek And Latin Classroom, Liane Houghtalin

Classics, Philosophy, and Religion Articles

Responding to the new Standards for Classical Language Learning, this article emphasizes the importance of material culture to the study of Greek and Latin language and literature at every level, both K-12 and college. Using inscriptions on Greek vases and Roman coins as well as maps and house plans as examples, it demonstrates ways to insert material culture into the Greek and Latin classroom that will enhance a student’s knowledge of the language. It also shows how the use of material culture will help a class meet not only the Cultures goal of the new Standards, but also the Connections, …

Promoting Interdisciplinarity: Its Purpose And Practice In Arts Programming, Shannon Farrow Mcneely, Denise Gillman, Danielle Hartman

English, Linguistics, and Communication (Legacy)

Each discipline provides education and society with a unique perspective of the world, yet independently, disciplines can only go so far when attempting to address our greatest challenges. To go beyond the limits of the discipline, one must employ interdisciplinary approaches, which include being driven by complex questions, seeking collaboration from multiple disciplines, and integrating their understandings by finding common ground. The arts create an amazing opportunity for interdisciplinary exploration and development with other disciplines which benefits arts leaders and educators, students and departments in higher education, and the local community. This article seeks to explore interdisciplinarity and its benefits …