Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Algorithms And The Alphabet Mafia: How Tiktok Influenced Gender, Sexuality, And The Lgbtq+ Community During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hope Smith

Honors Theses

A massive surge in popularity of the social media app TikTok coincided with the first major surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States. As U.S. Americans began leaving their houses again and the U.S. approaches a semblance of a “post-pandemic” era, many LGBTQ+ social media users, particularly TikTok users, have mentioned the influence social media had on understanding their queer identity. This study seeks to contribute to a larger field of research into how social media is affecting identity development in adolescents and young adults. This study employs an anonymous online survey to ask undergraduate students at the University …

Survey Of Models For "Computer Music", Gabriel Pell

Honors Theses

The introduction of digital computers to the world of music composition provided a medium from which to write far more efficiently than the traditional means of transcription. Of course, this applies to modern notation software, but it is the way in which computers have granted the composer the ability to utilize stochastic generation, algorithmic reasoning, and later, artificial intelligence that was especially groundbreaking. To be sure, there are countless models created by composers and computer scientists that utilized every aspect of the abilities granted by the technology at the time of their creation. However, there are those few models that …

Hunter: Redneck Hamlet, Ewan Whaley

Honors Theses

Hunter: Redneck Hamlet is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet placed within the rural American South in order to tackle the topics of grief, paranoia, conspiracy, toxic masculinity, misogyny, and substance abuse through the lens of Hamlet. The study analyzes these aspects of the South in order to attempt to understand what makes certain people act the way that they do, and displays it through the lens of Hamlet in order to characterize these phenomenon. The thesis begins with the full five act play written in pentameter, followed by a craft essay analyzing the various research and aspects of the play …

A Tale From Esterad: An Examination Of The Political Power Of Fantasy, Koy Skinner

Honors Theses

The following is a short craft essay on the political nature of the fantasy genre followed by an original short story. The craft paper situates the reader in the discourse of fantasy being political or apolitical before shifting into a discussion of how Tolkien, Le Guin, and Sapkowski explore political ideas through their works. After, there is a brief section where the thought process going into the short story is explored before launching into the creative piece. The piece is five chapters long and explores a refugee crisis caused by a civil war in the fantasy world of Esterad.

Boudica At The Intersection: Gender, Alterity, And Narrative In Imperial Roman Historiography, Adam Cummings

Honors Theses

Tacitus (fl. ~100 ᴄᴇ) and Cassius Dio (fl. ~200 ᴄᴇ) wrote, respectively, the Annales and the Historia Romana, both now fragmentary, both detailing imperial Roman expansion, and both displaying anxieties about the barbarian ‘Other.’ Their accounts of Boudica, who led the Iceni against Roman encroachment in Britannia in 62 CE, provide a view into these authors’ visions of colonization, ethnicity, and gender. Characterizing this woman as a barbarian leader of war, the authors reveal not only their foundational ideologies but also the political projects underpinning their histories. This thesis will proceed in the following manner: I will provide 1) a …

Queer Representation: Revitilizing F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Place In The American Literary Canon, Olivia Wallace

Honors Theses

F. Scott Fitzgerald is colloquially known as one of the great American writers. His acclaim is most commonly attributed to his depiction of heterosexual romances set during the Jazz Age. However, under the surface, many of the male characters that he represents display queer behaviors that subvert this idea. The texts analyzed here include “The Rich Boy” (1926), Tender is the Night (1934), and The Great Gatsby (1925). These men commonly avoid perpetuating heteronormative culture, projecting a general air of cynicism towards the institution of marriage, and a subtle inclination towards feminine characteristics and queer love. Overall, the inclusion of …

Unesco World Heritage: Striving For Utopia Through Universal Value, Caleb Phillips

Honors Theses

With this thesis, I take a critical look at the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and its mission to foster international unity through the creation of World Heritage Sites. The World Heritage Convention was created with good intentions, but in attempting to actualize its original objectives, the Convention has strayed from its goals. By looking at the events leading up to the creation of the World Heritage Convention, the Convention itself, and the various measures carried out by the Convention since its creation, it is clear that the UNESCO World Heritage Convention still has work to do to achieve its utopian …

The History And Development Of Solo Tuba Repertoire, Vasilios Tidwell

Honors Theses

The tuba's solo repertoire increased in quantity and quality as a result of developments in the instrument’s design and usage. Following the invention of the tuba in 1835, instrument makers experimented with design concepts to maximize the versatility and potential of the bass brass voice. Composers explored the various uses of the instrument, eventually making the tuba part of the standard orchestral instrumentation by the mid-nineteenth century. Following the instrument's acceptance into bands and orchestras, the first solo works for tuba emerged in the late nineteenth century.

Evolving from novelty pieces accompanied by wind or brass bands, tuba solo music …

Marching With Attitude: Participant Feelings Regarding Drum Corps, Brian Ballotti

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Musical Poetry: A Study Of Modern American Art Song While Setting: The Raven, Adam Martin

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Ricucire Il Tessuto Della Società: L’Intersezione Di Moda Femminile E Femminismo, Caroline Grace Bisese

Honors Theses

La moda è tutt'altro che una conseguenza frivola e accidentale dell'abbigliamento disponibile e del luogo in cui si va a fare shopping. L’abbigliamento è una forma di retorica corporea che evoca un ampio dialogo non verbale. Una narrazione che va ben oltre il materiale e lo stile, sebbene entrambi questi dettagli sono fondamentali, la moda al livello più elementare è essenziale per capire chi sono le persone, perché sono come sono e in cosa credono. Queste sono alcune dei capisaldi per capire una persona in relazione alla cultura e una cultura in conseguenza delle persone che la compongono. È una …

The End Of The Prisoner Exchange System In The Civil War: A Case Study Into The Effects On The Daily Conditions Of Prisoners In Confederate And Union Prisons, Rachel Stoner

Honors Theses

The Dix-Hill Cartel was a system of prisoner exchange established during the Civil War. Only a year after it was created, the exchange system was shut down due to Confederate refusal to acknowledge black soldiers as prisoners of war rather than slave labor. This paper is an exploration of the effects the shut down of this system had on both Confederate and Northern prisons. In order to accomplish this, I analyzed the diaries of six prisoners who were held in the Confederate prison of Andersonville in Georgia and the Union prison of Elmira in New York.

I examine the daily …

Breaking The Academic Lockstep: Dr. Samuel Clark And The Birth Of Honors Education At Western Michigan University, Tashfia Raisa

Honors Theses

The Lee Honors College at Western Michigan University has grown so rapidly over the past few decades that one may overlook its humble beginnings. The first Director of the Honors College, Dr. Samuel Clark, contributed greatly to the establishment of the college and the development of the curriculum. This thesis, which examines the origin of honors programming nationally and at Western Michigan University, will allow future researchers and administrators to better appreciate today’s honors program at Western Michigan University in light of its past.

Socialist Legality On Trial: The Purge Of The Ukrainian Nkvd, 1938-1943, Reide Petty

Honors Theses

In the winter of 1938, Grigorii Iufa was put on trial in a Soviet court for the violation of socialist legality, a charge alleging that he had manipulated Soviet legal processes and undermined the rule of law during his work. Prior to his arrest, Iufa had worked in the Moldavian division of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s state security agency. In that capacity, he had played a significant role in the Great Terror, which was a highly concentrated campaign of mass violence conducted by the Soviet Union between 1937-1938 against perceived enemies among its own citizenry. This campaign primarily consisted …

Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford

Honors Theses

In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …

Catholicism Online: How The Church Is Communicating In The Visual Field, Alexandra Barfield

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

Given the rise and importance of social media in the last two decades, religious institutions, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have an important place online to fulfill their mission and belief of spreading the Gospel message. Communicating this message on social media and with contemporary marketing practices is an opportunity and a challenge for churches, Catholics, and apostolates alike. In this study, I analyze a variety of Catholic-related Instagram accounts and interview individuals involved in Church management and content creation. This primary research is prefaced with secondary research exploring the status of the Catholic Church in the United States, …

College Esports: Grassroots Hobby Turned Unregulated Industry, Grace Ann Alexander

Honors Theses

When traditional sports teams formed on college campuses, it took decades before they looked anything like college sports teams do today. College football is noted as beginning in 1869 (Parlier, 2022), NCAA formed in 1906, and the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision launched in 1978 (NCAA, 2023). In 2009, one of the first recorded college esports matches took place. In 2014, Robert Morris Universty started the first varsity-level college esports program. Now, there are an estimated 500 college esports programs amassing thousands of student participants. It took decades, if not a century, for college football to achieve these numbers. …

The Dialectics Of Rock Music And Neoliberalism, Derek Block

Honors Theses

It has been argued that Rock music is one of the Modern West’s most important artistic achievements. It was, in some way, shape, or form, the most popular genre of music in the Western hemisphere for the last 60 years. The depth and relevancy of the genre still resonate through almost every level of society; a Bruce Springsteen song played at a political rally, a Beatles tune scoring a movie characters existential contemplation, the same six songs played at sporting events, and the list goes on. Rock music can be as personal as a stranger strumming a guitar in a …

The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter

Honors Theses

Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …

Reflections: A Meditation On Ballet And Pain, Claire Madeline Silverman

Honors Theses

The defining details of the character of Giselle are that she loves to dance even though she knows it could kill her (for she has a frail heart), and that she is in love with a peasant boy named Loys, though she knows her mother dislikes him. She is defiant, determined to follow her desires.

Giselle wasn’t one of the ballets that stuck out to me when I was younger. I loved the Tchaikovsky ballets — Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker — and later Romeo and Juliet (Macmillan’s version) became my favorite. Giselle existed at my periphery. It’s …

An Artful Examination Of The Stories Within The Story One Thousand And One Nights As They Evolve Through History And The World., Jacquelyn Stout

Honors Theses

The artworks for and associated with One Thousand and One Nights have had many influences over time. This thesis examines the effects of these influences on 27 examples of the artwork through five of the many tales. The tales used for this examination are Shahryar and Scheherazade, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, and the Fisherman and the Jinni. One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories and tales by various authors that have been collected over many centuries. The earliest written example of …

The Life Of Una Estudiante Americana: Here Y Allí, Madeline Kastel

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze the differences between studying Spanish at an American university, Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan to that of a study abroad program at La Universidad de Burgos, in Burgos, Spain in three main areas: teaching styles in classes, extracurricular activities and student experiences.

To begin this study, it is important to note the differences in demographics and available public transportation where each study took place: Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA and Burgos, Spain. In Kalamazoo, students have the option to use the city bus system, the Metro, for free, but tend to use their …

The Cut To The Heart Of The Matter: Justice, Morality, And Virtue Ethics In Intimate Relationships, Quinn Heiser

Honors Theses

Since the Enlightenment project to reconstruct morality using purely rational grounds failed, modern moral debate has been fragmented. Furthermore, intimate relationships, whether romantic or marital, are plagued with all kinds of injustices that have not been formally addressed in a philosophical investigation. The purpose of this thesis is to argue that the moral theory to restore interpersonal justice in intimate relationships is the notion of ‘practice’, founded by Alasdair MacIntyre under the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition. What is meant by the notion of practice is any human activity with goods exclusive to its extent, as well as cooperative, objective, and …

Could Musical Theatre Be Worthy Of Literary Analysis? (Or, An Attempt At Dismantling The Cultural Hierarchy), Sarah Meierdirks

Honors Theses

Could Musical Theatre Be Worthy of Literary Analysis?

Cultural hierarchy, or the perception that different forms of art relate to each other in terms of higher or lower sophistication, has commanded the way we view art for centuries. Artforms which the cultural hierarchy deems to be “higher” are often given more attention, respect, and appreciation in academia, but can be less accessible both physically and mentally to the masses, while artforms deemed to be “lower” tend to be simpler and more fun, making them have a more popular appeal. The tendency for art that is either simple or fun to …

Une Politique Laïque: L’Utilisation De La Laïcité Dans Les Discours Politiques Français, Zachary Holmes

Honors Theses

La politique française est fortement liée avec la laïcité, comme on peut voir avec son utilisation dans les discours des politiciens. Elle a la capacité d’unifier les gens sous un idéal commun, mais elle peut aussi faire des divisions dans la société. Donc, il faut considérer comment on veut traiter l’idée en France. Il est impossible de dire comment elle va faire partie du futur, mais il est clair que, pour le moment, elle est un outil important pour les politiciens qui veulent avancer leurs programmes différents. Il est probable qu’elle continuerait à être une idée puissante dans les prochaines …

Entre Multilinguisme Et Multiculturalisme : Une Nouvelle Traduction D’Incendies De Wajdi Mouawad, Natalie Larson

Honors Theses

Incendies de Wajdi Mouawad, écrite en 2003, est la deuxième pièce de la tétralogie intitulée « Le sang des promesses ». Les quatre pièces racontent des histoires différentes mais ont des thèmes similaires. Incendies est l'histoire de jumeaux, Jeanne et Simon, qui découvrent après la mort de leur mère que leur père, qu'ils n'ont jamais connu, est vivant et qu'ils ont peut-être un frère. Ils se lancent alors dans une quête de sens et d'identité, entrecoupée de flashbacks sur le passé de leur mère dans un Liban déchiré par la guerre. Avec son langage poétique qui évoque une tragédie grecque, …

The Second Frontier, A Senior Recital, Jasanna Tayler

Honors Theses

The senior recital, The Second Frontier, and honors thesis defense of Jasanna Tayler, Soprano, occurred on Friday, April 14th, 2023. The recital was completed in collaboration with pianist, Cindy Hunter. Selections sung for this recital which incorporated 5 different languages and spanning 4 compositional periods with contrasting pieces including operatic literature and art song. This successfully fulfilled the requirements set forth in the Western Michigan University, voice area handbook. The overarching goal for the recital was to demonstrate the culmination of knowledge gained through attending the Irving School of Music. The musical selections furthered this as they were challenging while …

Paige Mulick Bfa Dance Graduating Presentation, Paige Mulick

Honors Theses

Paige Mulick’s Graduating Presentation/Honors Thesis was created to be a piece that explored recurring dreams and built a dream on stage. Mulick developed this piece beginning with a concept, auditioning dancers, developing choreography, designing costumes, developing a lighting design, and rehearsing the piece for multiple months before it was performed on stage. As supporting research for this choreographic project, Mulick drew on her personal experiences, the experiences of her dancers, and readings from texts about the science and history of dreams. In addition to her work in choreography, Mulick took on the roles of Production Coordinator and Schedule Coordinator for …

Mary Grace Geise Bfa Graduating Presentation, Mary Grace Geise

Honors Theses

The Bathers takes inspiration from the late 19th-century impressionist painter Paul Cézanne and his series of paintings known as Bathers. Cézanne believed in the harmony between art, emotion, and nature. This piece explores the healing powers of nature and how it reflects the human experience, beauty, ugliness, and inner peace. The Bathers endure a journey to rebirth by ways of nature, traversing through moments of desertion, cleansing, surrender, ecstasy, and freedom.

The Laureate Journal, Isabella Loe Proulx

Honors Theses

The 21st Edition of The Laureate Journal details the ways in which humanity struggles in life. Finding peace and joy can be difficult, but the light is always there, if you can just stop to look for it. This year’s edition of The Laureate details this humane struggle through eighteen students and their own works of prose, poetry, photography, and painting. While the journal does delve into sensitive subject matter, it’s well worth delving into as a reader—because the journal itself moves out of this darkness and into the light of hope. Each of these students has something worth saying—going …