Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ronald Reagan And War Rhetoric In The 20th Century, Allister Dias

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This paper contributes to a deeper understanding about the nature of Cold War-era rhetoric and how President Ronald Reagan was able to utilize it to bring about the end of the Soviet era. To analyze this particular topic, I compared various academic explorations into what rhetoric devices defined the Cold War era and how President Reagan was able to craft a unique way to appeal to the people of both West and East Germany. Additionally, I consulted historians in the field of presidential speech to identify any rhetorical constructs employed through the speech. My research points to a positive correlation …

Richard Owen: A Forgotten Icon, Devan Henriott

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Despite being one of the most famous naturalists of the nineteenth century, Richard Owen is an obscure figure today. This paper delves into how such an influential person to the beginnings of paleontology and biology could have been written out of history. Owen worked his way into the world of comparative anatomy by finding work at the Hunterian Museum. From there, Owen earned respect for his exciting lectures on fossil discoveries and for his research interpreting fossils and reconstructing extinct species. Owen utilized his renown to spread his theories on the creations of species, but mostly kept his evolutionary ideas …

A Tool For Digital Bibliotherapy: Fostering Emotional Resiliency Through A Visual Novel, Joy Cooper

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Suicide rates among children have risen over the last three years. In Clark County specifically, the numbers doubled between 2019 and 2021. The research for this project sought to find the benefits of bibliotherapy and create a tool to be used for early intervention in children displaying signs of developmental emotional and behavioral concerns. Additionally, the research focused on determining the benefits of bibliotherapy across various mediums with a particular aim on the accessibility of digital formats. The research concluded that bibliotherapy in a digital format is not only beneficial but has a tendency to produce higher engagement among children. …

One Last Month, Or Clancy's Time-Box, Safiyya Bintali

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One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the …

The Federal Elections Bill And The End Of Reconstruction In 1890, Elisa Hink

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The Reconstruction Era within U.S. History is (generally) defined as commencing in 1865 and ending in 1877; however, the social, cultural, and political impact of this time in the nation’s history suggests that its ending is less tidy. Those who worked both for and against the progressive goals of Reconstruction continued their efforts beyond 1877. The Federal Elections Bill of 1890 was written with intent by the remaining Reconstruction Republicans to provide federal oversight to elections, which had become a primary target of Democrats in the former Confederate states as they regained their power. Efforts within these states to prevent …

The Aftermath Of Sexual Assault: Creating The "I Am More Than My Experience" Workbook, Isabella Chung

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The following thesis includes a literature review of the immediate and long-term effects of sexual assault on victims in regards to their physical, mental, and emotional health and romantic relationships, followed by a proposed workbook for sexual assault victims/survivors. Being that typical responses immediately after an assault are fear, disbelief, and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, it is to no surprise that long term issues of depression, anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often arise as well. Thus, a workbook was created with the intention of educating readers about sexual assault and helping victims/survivors to heal from the trauma …

Spanish From The "East Side" Of Las Vegas: Simplification Of Tense/Aspect Distinction In Ser And Estar In Spanish Heritage Speakers Of Sunrise Manor, Nathalie Martinez

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Spanish heritage speakers in the United States are a reflection of the influence of linguistic and sociolinguistic pressures that creates variation across linguistic generations. This exploratory investigation seeks to fill this gap of linguistic knowledge in the Spanish-speaking community of Las Vegas, Nevada through a sociolinguistic study of the process of simplification of the simple forms of the past tense in Spanish heritage speakers of Sunrise Manor (Clark County, Nevada, USA), locally known as the “East Side”. The investigation focuses on the tense-aspect semantics in the verbs ser and estar of 9 heritage speakers between the ages of 18 and …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

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Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

Art And Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung In Relation To The Red Army Faction, Joanie Lange

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Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the …

Identi-Tea Podcast: An Original Play, Karsyn Wilson

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Creative Works Winner for 2019:

Identi-Tea Podcast is an original play based on the word-for-word interviews of three LGBTQ+ students of color from UNLV who explore all the various facets of their identities formatted in the style of a podcast. In various moments during the play, audience members are prompted by the actors to critically engage with the ideas presented.

A Series Of Political Russian Events To Exploit And Destroy The Volga Germans, 1914-1921, Kassidy Whetstone

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Advanced Research Winner 2019:

Immigration has been controversial for centuries, as it is not always successful; the relationship between the host country and immigrants can become tense and even disastrous. This was the case for the Volga Germans in the Russian Saratov region, an immigration experiment gone wrong. It is important that the story of the Volga Germans be told, as it is suspected of being an experience of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In this project, I will investigate the Volga Germans in the Russian Saratov region, analyze the relationship between the Germans and their Russian neighbors in the early …

From Bison To Cattle: The Ecology Of The Southern Plains 1500-1750, Jenni Tifft-Ochoa

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Bison made their home on the Southern Plains for millennia. However, their migratory patterns began to shift in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. My research investigated what caused this drastic shift and how it had far reaching effects on the ecology of the Southern Plains. Using archives from two prominent Catholic priests, I began to piece together why the bison left the Southern Plains. Rather than focus on the Europeans as the main players, I instead focused on the Indigenous peoples, the animals, and the land as the centralized actors in this project. I discovered that the introduction …

Power Suit, Clarice Cuda

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The focus of this project began in utilizing hair as a vehicle to investigate rituals associated with mourning, grief, and the liminal space that exists between life and death. After an in depth search into the cultural, physical, spiritual, and material aspects of hair, I enacted process and labor to create a sculptural form that performs in response to grief.

I chose to work with acrylic hair, as it exists in a space between the real and unreal, and visually is absorbed as the uncanny representation of the separated body. I wanted to discuss the body, while emphasizing its absence. …

Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographs As Paintings, Winnie Wu

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This paper argues that in order to better understand the photographic techniques, and compositional choices employed by Julia Margaret Cameron, one must analyze them in terms of the language of paintings. By using photography to stage painterly tableaus, Cameron blurred reality and fiction, the result of which is the equalization of all those she photographed, be they famed Victorian poets or female maids.

British Appeasement 1936-1939: The Debate Between Parliament And The Public, Kylie D. Johnson

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While it is now clear that appeasement of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler did not prevent another war, there is a historical debate on whether British appeasement policies were shameful, a set of well-intentioned blunders, an attempt at keeping peace internationally, or a strategy to keep domestic resources focused on Britain. Within the debate between historians, lies a debate between the British public and Parliament, and even within Parliament itself. An important factor in the British decision to implement appeasement policy in the 1930s often underemphasized in the literature is the governmental prioritizing of domestic issues and national security over …

Barbie Doesn't Have Bruises: Gendered Images Of Anxiety And Avoidant Attachment Relationships In Film, Claudia G. Chiang-Lopez

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Viewers’ interpretations of romantic relationships portrayed between those with anxious and avoidant attachments can affect their opinions on what constitutes appropriate relationship behavior. I conducted a literature review on media impacts and offer an interpretation of the implications of the language used to describe characters, relationships and characters’ ends. The films studied - Sunset Boulevard, Sid and Nancy, and The Hustler - showed a pattern where in a relationship between an anxious and an avoidant character, the anxious character was punished, absorbed by their relationship, abandoned, trapped in their life, and cut off from the world. Viewers watch films to …

Fourth Time’S A Charm, Ardennes Vickery

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The sources I used to create my short story, Fourth Time’s A Charm, were essential for all aspects of its development. My story concerns the awkward first meeting of King Henry VIII and his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. As with all historical fiction stories, striving for period appropriate details and accurate representations of historical events was crucial. The resources that I was able to access through the UNLV University Libraries not only assisted me throughout my project by streamlining the research process, but proved indispensable for obtaining various primary sources that I may not have been unable to access …

Graphic Design For The Shark Reef Aquarium [Course Project], Alexxis Rodriguez

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This essay examines the thought processes of how a short, informative booklet was constructed for the Shark Reef Aquarium. Methods of research includes searching for valuable, credible articles, viewing competitor’s designs, visiting the company’s official information and media, and gathering design books for inspiration. Other ways of research include the designer’s ability to think critically in order to create intentional design that effectively communicates the information to the reader. Ultimately, looking at Lied Library’s resources has played a role in the booklet design and how to think about the supporting design elements.

New York Oneida: Land Claims, Federal Policies, State Intervention, And Casino Development, Lee M. Hanover

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This paper examined the relationship between Oneida land sovereignty and their self-determination in establishing the Turning Stone Casino. The paper reviewed general trends in Oneida history with the state of New York, focusing on federal policies aimed at American Indian communities, and the legal cases that the Oneida have brought against New York and the federal government. The study extrapolated that historic cases involving political, legal, and land sovereignty issues prepared them for the fight over their casino’s admittance on Oneida land. The paper then addressed the reoccurring battles with the state of New York over the legality and jurisdiction …

“Man? Where’S A Man? Don’T Let Him Go!”: Molina’S Trans/Gender Web In Interpretation And Performance, Bella V. Smith

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Using perspectives typical of English and theatrical fields of study, this capstone project interprets Molina from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel Kiss of the Spider Woman as a heterosexual transgender woman and then investigates why such an interpretation does not exist in performance adaptations. Although Molina has been called a transgender woman in recent criticism, there is a conflation of gender and sexuality that has been uninvestigated in this text. It has not been addressed how Molina constructs her identity or how this interpretation might be employed in performance, which this essay seeks to confront. The first half of the project …

Margaret Atwood And The Implications Of The Word Love, Manuela Bowles

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This paper discusses ideal romantic love as it appears in Western literature and how women are portrayed in works containing idealistic romantic plots. It also explores how Canadian author Margaret Atwood rejects the traditional love plot in her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as in her book of poetry Power Politics and the poem “A Woman’s Issue.” The first section of this paper gives a brief history of the ideal romantic love plot in Western literature, beginning with courtly love in Medieval literature, and its influences on later works such as Madame Bovary and The Awakening. The section …

Proust, The Suffering Artist, Matthew G. Buyachek

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This thesis examines the interrelationship between suffering and art in the context of À la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. I first trace a lineage of suffering and art, conduct a literature review of relevant criticism on Proust's work and on suffering and art, and finally explicate volumes one and five of Proust's magnum opus. I interpret the scene of the goodnight-kiss to be the genesis of Marcel’s search and his path to artistry. In this scene, Marcel profanes his mother qua maternal and artistic ideal, and subsequently sublimates Mme de Guermantes and Albertine in an attempt to …

Keeping House On The Comstock: Irish Immigrant Women In Nevada, 1850-1880, Christina M. Thompson

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The lives of Irish immigrant women in Nevada during the mid-nineteenth century have not been studied at great length to date. This project attempts to explore the relationship that these women had with their communities, their families, and themselves while comparing their experiences to the lives of Irish immigrant women living in the larger Irish communities located on the east coast of the United States.

Christine Jorgensen And The Media: Identity Politics In The Early 1950s Press, Emylia N. Terry

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“Christine Jorgensen and the Media: Identity Politics in the Early 1950s Press” analyzes America’s first transgender celebrity and the interpretations of her identity by a seemingly celebratory press. Jorgensen, who rose to fame in December 1952, was propelled to stardom partly because of the cultural climate of the 1950s. The first portion of my essay begins by setting the historical context of how gender nonconforming individuals were treated in the press before Jorgensen, and then analyzes Jorgensen’s personal characteristics that also helped make her a media fixture. However, the veracity of Jorgensen’s female identity was doubted by the time she …

The Chinese In Northern Mexico: Immigration, Integration, And Discrimination In Mexican Society, 1882-1940, Yesenia M. Alaniz

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In The Chinese in Northern Mexico: Immigration, Integration, and Discrimination 1882-1940, the focus is on understanding what compelled the Chinese to immigrate to Mexico and how their lives in the country developed over time. After the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation was signed by both nations in 1899, the Chinese saw Mexico as an alternative to the United States, which was not allowing any Chinese to enter the country. The first part of the paper looks into the immigration patterns that led to the Chinese arrival, then shifts into examining what type of jobs, industries, and overall experience the …

American Hypocrisy In Foreign Policy: Operation Fubelt And The Overthrow Of Salvador Allende, David G. Huggins

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There are many examples of United States hypocrisy in foreign policy, in numerous countries in virtually every region of the world. This paper will look at just one of those examples, the United States involvement in the overthrow of President Salvador Allende of Chile. Declassified government documents related to the CIA operation, codenamed FUBELT, are used to show key personnel involved and major aspects of the operation. These documents show a blatant disregard of the United States government's own ideology and policies regarding democracy, as well as its disregard of the United Nations documents that it signed to guarantee the …

It Hastened What We All Fought For, The End Of The War: General Sherman's Campaigns Through Atlanta, Georgia, And The Carolinas And How They Impacted The Civil War, Thomas J. Birmingham

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“It hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war: General Sherman’s campaigns through Atlanta, Georgia, and the Carolinas and how they impacted the Civil War” is my collection of research of the importance of Sherman’s campaigns through Atlanta, Georgia, and the Carolinas to bring the end of the war. My project is in fulfillment of the History 451: Proseminar within the requirements of a Bachelor’s Degree in history. My thesis paper covers those three campaigns and their importance in bringing the Civil War to an end. I have used primary and secondary evidence to provide facts and …

The Age Of Aquarius: The Reorientation Of Nasa After 1969, Junichi Miyamoto

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One of the truisms about the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) in the eyes of most politicians is that it is a listless relic from the Cold War. On the surface, this interpretation seems acceptable. After all, its crowning achievement (the moon landings) has yet to be surpassed after forty years and likely will not be matched for at least another ten. Moreover NASA’s ordained cause, gaining the upper hand in space, was made possible by the national willpower only the fear of being overtaken by a technologically advanced arch-nemesis can generate. This condition certainly is not on the …