Arts and Humanities Commons^™

No Ordinary Time, No Ordinary Summer Program, Janice Clinard

The Montana English Journal

No Ordinary Time, No Ordinary Summer Program describes the first year of a National Endowment for the Humanities program that taught students to produce a film through the study of humanities. The article outlines objectives of the grant and activities undertaken by students and includes several student quotes about the impact of the program. The final product, a thirty-minute film entitled No Ordinary Time, is a documentary that compares the Spanish Flu in Montana with students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boston Discusses The Massacre, Jean C. O'Connor

The Montana English Journal

Teachers may use this chapter from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution as a short story for grades 7 – 12., to explore themes of interpersonal conflict, conflict resolution, and the value of law.

The chapter “Boston Discusses the Massacre” is taken from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution (Knox Press, 2020), and used with permission. James Lovell, teacher at the Boston Latin School, discusses the pivotal events of March 5, 1770. As the conflicts that become the American Revolution begin a group of …

Male And Female Interactions: A Multimodal Analysis Of Shonen Manga, Alexandria Perez

The Montana English Journal

A qualitative multimodal content analysis of popular manga examined how female and male character interactions represented gender roles. An analytical tool was developed using multimodal, semiotic, social semiotic, gender, and feminist theories to understand representations of males and females in this popular media. This study showed that traditional gender norms are still present in manga, but there are some that break stereotypes. Also, in using both textual and visual elements to interpret multimodal texts, understanding of character interactions were enhanced because the intermodal interactions created new meaning. Implications suggest positive outlooks for manga being used as an educational tool by …

Every Artist Is An Advocate: An Autoethnographic Analysis Of How Higher Education Imposes Artist Advocacy, Noah R B Durnell

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Increasing instability in higher education funding (Thomas, 2021) has directly impacted the University of Montana music program but has also indirectly changed the role of music students to such an extent that I now often say, “every artist is an advocate.” In 2018, the University of Montana School of Music experienced significant threats from budget cuts, and in the years following, attempts to earn legislative funding for capital development failed. Faced with these budget cuts and other lack of funding, music students had to advocate for themselves and employ community and institutional support to maintain the strength of their program. …

The Shape Of Faith: Understanding God Through Pottery, Kenton Ke

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Bible uses the relationship between a potter and the clay as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and humans. “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8, NIV). This paper will expand on this metaphor, and draw parallels between the development of personal relationships with God and the complicated processes of pottery making.

Analysis Of Bass Lines Played By Ray Brown And Charlie Haden Over The Blues Form, Kyler W. Rebich

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

An analysis of bass lines played by Ray Brown and Charlie Haden over the blues focusing on their respective -isms and recurring motifs and ideas.

Different Versions Of Myself, Anya Smith

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This is a research-informed screenplay exploring the relationship between religion and recreational pole dancing. While the popularity of recreational pole dancing has grown over the last two decades, it remains a controversial topic in some circles. This study employed interviews, autoethnography, and a literature review to examine the tensions between pole dancing and religion. Creative Analytic Practice was employed as a method of evaluating and presenting the research, which culminated in a fictional screenplay.

The story is about Louise, a young woman caught between two worlds. She feels pressured to conceal her recreational pole dancing activities in order to retain …

Is Loss A Laughing Matter?: A Study Of Humor Reactions And Benign Violation Theory In The Context Of Grief., Miranda B. Henrich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Death is not commonly considered a humorous topic; however, bereaved individuals often joke about their loss. The jokes grievers tell while grieving have been overlooked within research, resulting in a limited understanding of how this communication impacts those hearing it. This research sought to eliminate that gap by building an understanding of the interpersonal effects of grief-based humor through the lens of Benign Violation Theory. Twenty-two individuals participated in semi-structured interviews that revolved around whether humor could be found in grief and how this humor affected their relationship with the bereaved. The interviews identified that when a bereaved individual uses …

The Existential Challenges Of Cyberspace, Sean Cleary

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cyberspace is an emergent environment that has come to facilitate a growing range of human activity. Here, information is tightly woven, freed of unnecessary context and always within reach. This thesis explores the existential challenges that arise from increased engagement in this space and offers solutions informed by Henry Thoreau and Søren Kierkegaard. Section One offers an ontological account of cyberspace and describes its relationship to what I call the lifeworld. Section Two further examines the relationship drawn out in Section One, introduces the challenge of foreground saturation and appeals to Thoreau for solutions. Section Three introduces the concept of …

No Diving From Bridge, Lia R. Mendez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lia Mendez grew up on the frontlines of America's breadbasket in the great Central Valley of California where Big Ag and Big Oil reign supreme. When Lia returns home after a long absence and joins local activists in her hometown's fight to reclaim its dying river from agribusiness, she discovers that the land holds secrets whose truths have been long hidden in plain sight. As Lia's love and concern deepen for the very place she promised herself she'd never wind up in, so, too, does her understanding deepen of the systems of oppression and extraction which rule her world. In …

Trailing Fire: Working In The Woods And The Future Of Forests In A Chaotic Climate, Claire Kilchrenan Thompson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Our national conversation about wildfire is shifting. As wildland fires become larger, more frequent, more severe, and more expensive—and as climate change and land-use patterns drive the trend toward more fire—we’re scrambling to find a different paradigm for engaging with fire. Scientists now call this age of increasingly extreme burning the Pyrocene, and we’re just beginning to grapple with its impacts on the way we work, play, and live on the land.

As a longtime trail worker for the U.S. Forest Service, I’ve spent hundreds of days clearing trails in burned forests. In Trailing Fire, I draw on these …

Linear Programming Analysis And Diet Breadth Modeling At Bridge River, British Columbia, Sean Patrick Boyd

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies in diet breadth modeling and patch choice have been and continue to be a hot topic of interest among practitioners of human behavioral ecology and the set of data available at Bridge River can certainly add to these debates and discussions that have been dominating anthropology in the past few decades. The faunal assemblage of Housepit 54’s 17 anthropogenic floors have provided researchers with a plethora of data that clearly indicates periods of resource depletion and partial to full site abandonment. Using Linear Programming and Diet Breadth Modelling I analyze the most represented species in the record and establish …

Demonstratives In Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’, Aspen A. Decker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’ demonstrative system. I propose that there are three features encoded in the demonstratives that I examined in this thesis: (i) proximity of the speaker in relation to the referent, (ii) common ground between the speaker and addressee, and (iii) visibility of the referent. I further propose that the Nsélišcn demonstrative system distinguishes three degrees of proximity: proximal, medial, and distal. Nsélišcn is a member of the Southern Interior branch of the Salishan language family. The data analyzed in this thesis was collected from native Nsélišcn speakers.

The Curiosociety, Luke G. Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Changing, Sabrina B. Black

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In poems that center on experiences of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, The Changing explores the formation of identity and the malleability of the self. Sabrina Black writes into the spaces between people—at times finding connection there and at times isolation. Throughout the collection, the speaker reflects on complicated relationships with family members, classmates, and friends; on the ways those relationships have shaped her; and, most of all, on her relationship with that elusive thing called the self.

In a series of “Dear Advice Columnist” poems scattered throughout the manuscript, Black shifts focus away from personal experience, adopting the persona …

Sexual Whatever, Madeline Rose Tecmire

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A rerouting of gendered power, Sexual Whatever unleashes femininity repressed in America’s nuclear families. This collection of narrative poetry puts pressure on patriarchal traditions of Christianity through persona, Madonna—a radical culmination of the Madonna-Whore Complex—resisting systemic domination of female sexuality in both public and private spaces. While Madonna dismantles the patriarchy, she investigates the mechanisms of domestic violence, emotional manipulation, the very value of a proper Christian woman.

This book dares to demean female characters through love, sex, and family, while still giving voice to abusers, creating webs of confusion around the many definitions of domestic violence. More characters question …

A Renaissance: The Absurd Retelling Of Mostly True Events, Erica R. Hitzman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Throughout the following you will be taken on a fantastical retelling of the exhibition A Renaissance, and some of what lead up to it. Through the eyes of various shifting perspectives you will explore the relationships between the artist, her art, and the viewer in the hopes of unveiling how the work plays into feminist theory, its place in the Zeitgeist, and the motivations behind it. Each perspective is formatted differently, to visually mirror the shift in perspective. Presented in the first person and aligned to the right, the account of the artist discusses the process, emotion, and inspiration behind …

The Birds, The Bees, The Trees, And The Breeze: Expanding The Moral Universe Throught Rsk Anlysis, Jared Gibbs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Challenges And Promises Of The Agricultural Sector In The West Today, Jordan J. Unger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The transition from hunter-gatherers to a sedentary, agrarian based society was a pivotal point in history, fundamentally altering humanity’s trajectory. Early human’s domestication of plants and animals paved the way for modern civilization and drastically changed the way we lived and interacted. With agriculture, humans could invest more time into other activities besides procuring food while simultaneously being able to support increasingly large communities of people. Villages, city-states and, ultimately, states were formed – helping give rise to more complex social structures.

Until recently, agriculture has been the main economic backbone of every civilization. In 1970 in the United States, …

Re-Storying Grant Creek: A Case Study Of Relational Dynamics On A Degraded Montana Stream, Seamus Rucci Land

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration began in 2021, and after a history of contentious ethical debates, ecological restoration is increasingly portrayed as a viable framework for combating environmental degradation and supporting more healthy and stable social-ecological systems. The proposed ecological restoration of Grant Creek, a degraded stream near Missoula, Montana, offers an opportunity to connect a restoration site to the broader, rapidly growing field of restoration practice. It also allows the opportunity to forward the ‘relational turn’ proposed by many in the sustainability sciences as an ontological and methodological means to move beyond positivist portrayals of social-ecological systems, which …

Other Orchards, Sam B. Robison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Other Orchards is comprised of poems each suspect in their own way of those boundaries that might separate humans from nature, rural from urban, worker from scholar, or human from beast. Using the figure of the orchard, a kind of “false forest,” this collection studies the ways we map ourselves onto our work and the way work might inform an understanding of the self. Ultimately, these are poems that emerge from the seams of things—the shoulder of highway strewn with dead antelope, the feral apple tree lost to the woods, the farmer lost in their work, slowing becoming less and …

"A Blacker List Of Crime Was Never Looked Upon": Mormon Violence, Utah Statehood, And The Memory Of The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Lerene K. Mcfarland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Mansfield, Marines, And Mothers: The Politics Of Resistance To The American Intervention In North China From 1945-1946, James Robert Compton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At the conclusion of World War II, American citizens, including millions of deployed servicemen, reasserted the democratic freedoms they sacrificed to win the war. The American intervention in North China during the Chinese Civil War presented a ripe opportunity for civic restoration in late 1945. Controversial and seemingly at odds with the stated goals of the Second World War—namely the “Four Freedoms” and the Atlantic Charter—the US military presence in North China faced formidable domestic political obstacles. This thesis explores the nexus of domestic politics and foreign policy in the post-World War II era. Focusing on 1945-1946, this project steps …

Wilderness As An Aesthetic Concept, Nathan A. Pagel

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this paper I argue that many of the philosophical problems with the concept of wilderness can be mitigated by thinking of wilderness as an aesthetic concept rather than as a real feature of the world or a special metaphysical category. In Section 1, I respond to arguments for wilderness no longer being extant in the world as well as being conceptually contradictory by examining the ways in which people continue to experience wilderness in spite of these challenges. To resolve this tension, I offer an account of wilderness as an aesthetic concept, that is, as something that cannot be …

The Request Is Not Compatible: Competing Frames Of Public Lands Discourse In The Lolo Peak Ski Resort Controversy, Philip A. Sharp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sharp, Philip, A., M.A., Spring 2022

Communication Studies

ABSTRACT

The Request Is Not Compatible: Competing Frames of Public Lands Discourse in the Lolo Peak Ski Resort Controversy

Co-Chair (in absentia): Steve Schwarze Co-Chair: Joel Iverson

In mid-2003, the United States Forest Service (USFS) received a pre-application for a Special Use Permit to build and operate an all-season ski resort on public lands near Missoula, Montana. The ensuing public deliberation over the possible use of protected lands for outdoor commercial recreational purposes provides a site of rhetorical inquiry. In this rhetorical criticism I analyze and evaluate arguments presented by the USFS, …

Ghosts, Hauntings, Kinship, And Contamination: Key Tropes For Narrating Extinction In Jeff Vandermeer's Hummingbird Salamander And James Bradley's Ghost Species, Christopher Hardesty Nicholson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the narrative portrayals of issues pertaining to anthropogenic extinction in two contemporary speculative fiction novels: Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander (2021) and James Bradley’s Ghost Species (2020). This focus leads to consideration of narrative genre, tropes, and affective resonance. The first half of this thesis centers the genres of tragedy and elegy, their tropes of ghosts and hauntings, and the affective processes of grief and horror. Within these narrative frameworks extinction is experienced as a claustrophobic site of horror in Hummingbird Salamander, and as a time-warping inspiration of grief in Ghost Species. However, in each novel …

Damming Paradise: Public Power, Free Enterprise, And Tribal Sovereignty In The Mountain West In The Twentieth Century, Jacob T. Schmidt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Damming Paradise” examines the transformation of the political economy of the Mountain West through the development of hydropower over the course of the twentieth century. Beginning with early attempts to regulate electricity marketing and dam construction, this thesis traces the development of a conservation paradigm which insisted upon full development of water resources and public ownership of hydropower facilities. The author then follows that development through the New Deal and Post War eras, focusing particular attention on the Kerr Dam (now Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam) and Hungry Horse Dam on Montana’s Flathead River. “Damming Paradise” then examines the attempt to …

Mother Superior, Brandon R. Hansen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prologue /The Lake Within

I am a fisherman. Every time I raise my arm to cast, I’m searching for an answer.

What is a lake?

I throw my lure at the lilies of my childhood, the sunken log of my crib. With every cast I hope the truth will follow it back, this little piece of me I offer to the mystery.

My earliest memories are at the bus stop, where a shroud of mist swirled about me and I listed side-to-side, six-AM eyes drooping while I waited for that big yellow ship to bust through the fog and …

Gigi, Helen Wesley Kapp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Francis’s grandpa taught her how to wrestle alligators. By the time Francis was sixteen, she could hold her own, but all it takes is one gator. Just one gator who almost gets the best of you, and suddenly you’ve got a dead animal; somebody’s getting stitches; you’re getting haunted by the ghost of the alligator you just killed; and your mom’s making you move to Charleston to attend a swanky prep school where the kids don’t wrestle gators, but surviving the gossip is even harder.

Facing The Fire - Challenges And Triumphs Of Western Firefighters In A Changing Climate, Mak Sisson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The American West sits at a dangerous position in the age of climate change. Wildfires burn hotter, longer, and cover more area than ever measured. Decreased snowpack, early spring run-off, a glut of built-up timber in parks and public lands, and longer droughts all build upon one another, and it just takes one spark to start a raging wildfire that devastates a community. As such, a firefighting force is needed to deal with this changing landscape.

However, that force is dwindling, especially at the federal level. A reported 20% of wildland firefighting positions are vacant, and the Bureau of Land …