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Theses and Dissertations

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Mystical Soundscape And The Functions Of Commentaries On Ibn Al-Fāriḍ’S (D. 632/1235) Naẓm Al-Sulūk, Sherine Mohsen Aboulwafa Jun 2026

The Mystical Soundscape And The Functions Of Commentaries On Ibn Al-Fāriḍ’S (D. 632/1235) Naẓm Al-Sulūk, Sherine Mohsen Aboulwafa

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Naẓm al-Sulūk and its earliest commentaries by al-Farghānī (d. 700/1300) and al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) through the analytical framework of the mystical soundscape. Rather than treating the poem and its commentaries as static texts, it argues that meaning in this corpus emerges as an experiential and perceptual event sustained through sound, silence, and reception. The mystical soundscape is conceptualized as comprising two interrelated domains: a silent soundscape, formed through reading, memory, imagination, and conceptual engagement; and an audible soundscape, formed through recitation, pronunciation, rhythm, and communal audition. These domains are linked by the experience of bewilderment …


Take Me To The Museum: Exploring The Use Of Art Kits For Families In The Art Museum, Amanda Marriott Elton May 2026

Take Me To The Museum: Exploring The Use Of Art Kits For Families In The Art Museum, Amanda Marriott Elton

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the use of participatory art kits as a strategy for transforming family engagement within the art museum setting. Drawing on theories of experiential learning from John Dewey and participatory art practices rooted in the Fluxus art movement, my research positions art kits as tools that invite active, social, and embodied learning. Using a design-based research methodology, this study investigates how families interact with art kits within gallery spaces and how these tools influence and encourage conversation, artistic behaviors and relational dynamics. Data were collected through observation, family feedback and iterative kit redesign. Findings suggest that art kits …


History Of Midwifery In Arkansas: The Attrition Of Midwifery, Koria Torshia Robinson May 2026

History Of Midwifery In Arkansas: The Attrition Of Midwifery, Koria Torshia Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few years, Arkansas has gained a spotlight due to an increase in maternal and infant mortality. This increase has been so massive that Arkansas has ranked within the top five in the nation for maternal and infant mortality rates for several years. A large percentage of the maternal and infant deaths in Arkansas are prevalent in the Black and rural community. This is an issue that has plagued the state of Arkansas for over a hundred years, with mortality rates highly affecting the same demographic of people. How did the practice of midwifery become a remedy for …


The Disconnect In Female Labour Force Participation Policy In Egypt: Design And Implementation Gaps, Miral Mohamed Omran May 2026

The Disconnect In Female Labour Force Participation Policy In Egypt: Design And Implementation Gaps, Miral Mohamed Omran

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the disconnect between Egypt's ambitious female labor force participation (FLFP) policy goals in the National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian Women 2030 and the declining indicators since its launch. Applying Van Meter and Van Horn's implementation framework, it analyzes the full policy process using qualitative interviews across government, civil society, and private sector actors involved in the national policy’s design and execution. Findings reveal structural failures, resource shortages, coordination gaps, leadership turnover, and donor-driven fragmentation, intensified by cultural norms and frontline resistance. Recommendations prioritize short-term administrative tweaks leveraging public sector downsizing for harmonization and rethinking the …


Weekly Published Magazine Covers During World War Ii: Cover Photos Used To Represent The Wartime Experience, Annika B. Larson May 2026

Weekly Published Magazine Covers During World War Ii: Cover Photos Used To Represent The Wartime Experience, Annika B. Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Weekly published magazines served largely as news outlets during World War II, and the images on the covers of these magazines were not only an attention catcher and tone setter, but were images chosen to represent the ever-changing landscape both on the homefront and internationally. In addition, these publications often used photographs that represented the developments their allies and enemies were making in tandem with domestic coverage. The entities publishing the magazines were managed by both the government and independent civilians, dependent on the country, thus providing different views of the war. The coverage in the United States and United …


Receptivity And The Thing In Itself: Allison, Allais, And The Problem Of Outer Affection In Kant’S Transcendental Idealism, Amr Elmargoushy May 2026

Receptivity And The Thing In Itself: Allison, Allais, And The Problem Of Outer Affection In Kant’S Transcendental Idealism, Amr Elmargoushy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves within the framework of transcendental idealism, focusing on how this distinction is meant to secure objective validity while respecting the limits of possible experience. It critically evaluates two influential contemporary interpretations: Henry Allison’s epistemological reading, which understands the distinction as marking different ways of considering the same object, and Lucy Allais’s metaphysical reading, which attributes a grounding role to things in themselves. The thesis argues that while Allison’s reinterpretation successfully avoids noumenal causation by construing affection epistemically, it generates a structural epistemic circularity concerning the role of receptivity and …


Hannah, Nora Brigid Monahan May 2026

Hannah, Nora Brigid Monahan

Theses and Dissertations

Hannah is a contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gablerwhich reimagines Ibsen's heroine as a "stealth" (or undetected) transsexual woman living among the American conservative elite in Washington D.C. Newly married to George Taylor, a charismatic but financially strained far-right media personality, Hannah struggles to maintain the façade she has constructed when Eliot Loving, a volatile political streamer and figure from past, reappears in her life. Their collision, orchestrated by the manipulative power-broker Judge Brock, upends Hannah's sense of self and forces her into a desperate struggle for her own autonomy and security. In a deliberate subversion of …


City, Janina Butz May 2026

City, Janina Butz

Theses and Dissertations

Janina Butz observes the improvised support structures holding New York City together at its edges. Looking at the found, cheap materials, spray painted, rusty, drilled, sawed, and haphazardly welded together on the sidewalk. The hard clashes of cheap material and expensive real estate lead Butz to draw a bigger picture of the fraud seams our society is tied together with.


In Spite Of And Because, Katherine Raudenbush May 2026

In Spite Of And Because, Katherine Raudenbush

Theses and Dissertations

Photography collects in the home, in frames, photo albums, lockets, held up by magnets on the fridge, propped up on the desk. This thesis and accompanying photography and textile work addresses this accumulation of story and family connection, specifically multigenerational relationships between mothers and daughters.


Ephemeral System, Shibo Chan May 2026

Ephemeral System, Shibo Chan

Theses and Dissertations

Ephemeral System examines systems, feedback, repetition, and material fragility through a kinetic wax sculpture repeatedly dragged across a wooden ramp. Drawing from cybernetics, absurdist waiting, and personal mourning, the work explores how bodies and systems wear themselves down through continuous operation.


Tracings, Masie Sophia Love May 2026

Tracings, Masie Sophia Love

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, the artist wonders what it means to remember a time and place that she has not experienced- what would this look like visualized in a painting? Love studies the histories and similarities between cartography and quilting using the two as a kind of channel to understand, record, and remember land. She explores inherited memory and the clues left behind in the form of quilts made by ancestors to create abstracted landscapes and maps of Tennessee where they lived for generations.


“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming May 2026

“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how the female protagonists in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Jonson’s Volpone navigate and combat corrupting patriarchal forces through moral religious speech. In both plays, the male characters have allowed false gods and hypocrisy to dictate and justify their corrupt behavior. By engaging with the historical significance of early modern female rhetoric this thesis examines Jonson’s Celia and Shakespeare’s Isabella, and how they operate in the interest of godly virtue rather than blind obedience to patriarchal figure heads.  Volpone’s Celia is a character largely neglected in the canon, and whose speech emphasizes the relationship between female agency …


Memory Organs, Coco Ma May 2026

Memory Organs, Coco Ma

Theses and Dissertations

Working across architectural sculpture, sonic works, and monoprints, this thesis explores the body as a site where memory, materiality, and cultural history converge. Drawing from muscle memory, Chinese architectural thresholds, and female narratives, it traces a body that is simultaneously physical and psychological, personal and collective, constant yet always shifting.


Initial Type Craft, Micah Angelus May 2026

Initial Type Craft, Micah Angelus

Theses and Dissertations

What kinds of objects can still think when the self-contained aesthetic object can no longer be taken for granted? The historical ruptures that have placed painting under crisis have also brought into view the fallacy of artistic autonomy, raising questions about how value, contemplation, and meaning persist under conditions of deconstruction.


The Monsters We Make: Confronting Repression And Failure In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Ben Wilenski May 2026

The Monsters We Make: Confronting Repression And Failure In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Ben Wilenski

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis builds upon psychoanalysis and Shelley’s biographical accounts to claim that, rather than creating fear through physical monstrosity, Frankenstein’s horror emerges from the return of repressed parental and social failures. While the novel never excuses its violence, it contextualizes the creature’s acts in ways that demand readers to confront complicity, neglect, and social shortcomings. The following section discusses general horror theory with a focus on notions of abjection and the synthesis of contrasting images and concepts. A baseline understanding of fear will be formed and referred to in each following segment. After establishing a basic understanding of horror vocabulary, …


Catalyst, David Steck May 2026

Catalyst, David Steck

Theses and Dissertations

Catalyst is a short documentary that explores why Hip Hop happened much later in Chicago than in other cities. It focuses on the story of Duro Wicks, a young Black music lover who overcame the city’s segregation to launch the first weekly Hip Hop open mic night. At the weekly $3 Sunday Hip Hop Show held at the Lower Links, young people came together from across the divided city to create a community. Though more successful than anyone could have imagined, Wicks’ dream proved unsustainable. However, it forever transformed the lives of the people it touched and launched a sustainable …


Living Doll: Puppetry, Performance, And The Art Of Greer Lankton, Madison Lee May 2026

Living Doll: Puppetry, Performance, And The Art Of Greer Lankton, Madison Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that puppetry is the animating logic of Greer Lankton's practice. Drawing on archival evidence—including letters, planners, and drawings—it recovers an engagement with puppetry spanning childhood through her final years, and applies puppet theory to argue that Lankton understood selfhood as something made, not given.


Nhạc Vàng And Historical Consciousness: Affect, Memory, And The Vietnamese Diaspora, Bryan L. Le May 2026

Nhạc Vàng And Historical Consciousness: Affect, Memory, And The Vietnamese Diaspora, Bryan L. Le

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines nhạc vàng as a cultural form shaped by war, displacement, and diaspora. It analyzes how the music carries historical experience through lyrics and performance, and how its meanings shift across contexts. The study shows how music shapes memory, identity, and historical understanding beyond fixed political or archival frameworks.


Running Around, Kian T. Mckeown May 2026

Running Around, Kian T. Mckeown

Theses and Dissertations

Running around reflects on how living in a large city can shape one’s art practice. Daydreaming, impulse, and the frustration of daily life are explored through drawing and sculpture. Divided into 10 sections, the artist creates an index of thoughts relating to his work and the world around him.


The Earth Holds What I Cannot, Satabdi Tripathy May 2026

The Earth Holds What I Cannot, Satabdi Tripathy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores memory, landscape, identity, and gendered silence through painting, video and film. Inspired by glaciers, volcanoes, and Arctic landscapes, my work transforms personal memory into environmental memory and investigates silence, trauma, and renewal.


Wind In A Dry Glass, Khia Hong May 2026

Wind In A Dry Glass, Khia Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Khia Hong’s paper unfolds in five sections, tracing the ontological and epistemological inquiries behind her sculptures. When the sculptures stepped down from the pedestal and entered the plane of lived reality, the question “What is sculpture?” expanded into “What is sculpture, the self, and the world?” Through reflections on the self, Hong details how these questions emerge and are addressed in her material encounters.


The Knock That Never Leaves, Alvin Seenauth May 2026

The Knock That Never Leaves, Alvin Seenauth

Theses and Dissertations

Peter Asan, a father and small business owner in New York, faces uncertainty after immigration agents arrived at his home in 2021. A decades-old conviction resurfaced, threatening his family life. The Knock That Never Leaves follows his daily routine as he lives between stability and the ongoing fear of deportation.


“One Object Yields Both Grief And Joy”: Death In Elizabeth Cary’S The Tragedy Of Mariam (1613), Valeria Suprunova May 2026

“One Object Yields Both Grief And Joy”: Death In Elizabeth Cary’S The Tragedy Of Mariam (1613), Valeria Suprunova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the dialog between early ancient Roman and early modern English traditions of death and dying helps illuminate the complex relationship between tyranny and death in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) and that death is an inextricable and dynamic element of the text.


Beauty Over Perfection: The Idealization Of Drapery In Classical Greek Sculpture And The Stylistic Reinvention Of Roman “Copies”, Lauren M. Grover May 2026

Beauty Over Perfection: The Idealization Of Drapery In Classical Greek Sculpture And The Stylistic Reinvention Of Roman “Copies”, Lauren M. Grover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Margarete Bieber’s claim that the drapery of Greek sculpture accurately reflects ancient garments. I introduce a method of tracing drapery to capture the garment pattern of sculpted drapery and argue that the drapery of Greek originals and Roman “copies” is an idealized representation of ancient dress.


Sentential Structures In Alexander Scriabin's Op. 8 Etudes, John Paul West May 2026

Sentential Structures In Alexander Scriabin's Op. 8 Etudes, John Paul West

Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the sentence has proven to be one of the most versatile and pervasive forms in music, appearing since the mid-sixteenth century with occurrences too frequent to quantify. Sentential musical phrases emerged from music and poetry during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries with the same short-short-long rhythmic impulse, originating from poetic and sing-song texts. Although the sentence is most often tied to the Classical period, it is not associated with any single era. Patterns of sentential phrases were already apparent and plentiful before the late eighteenth century, and composers used it as a device to expand musical form throughout the …


Notes On Rhythm, Maya Lee-Parritz May 2026

Notes On Rhythm, Maya Lee-Parritz

Theses and Dissertations

Line meets impulse, association meets sign. I weave the eye towards the smudge and sublime—a fractal lineage flowing through the brush, my body, space itself. I walk toward reality in serial successions, allowing what is fragmentary to move me, to cohere in shards, murky and strange inside of me. My body is a repository of images, of broken rhythms and dissonant ideologies. All of these flow and stutter onto the surface, dripping and blurring over each other. Through all of this, I always try to make something whole, perfect, and true.


Optional Freedom: The Idea Of Voluntary Slavery In Antebellum Law And Literature, Vinh T. Pham May 2026

Optional Freedom: The Idea Of Voluntary Slavery In Antebellum Law And Literature, Vinh T. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis elaborates “voluntary slavery” as a problem for thought for both proslavery legalists and literary writers in the antebellum period. It takes as its point of departure the passage of Southern laws throughout the 1850s that provided free Black persons the option to petition for self-enslavement to a master/mistress of their choice, and the safeguards within them that led a significant number of such petitions to be rejected. Given the political tensions of the 1850s, why would legal practitioners actively impede the option of self-enslavement? Implicit in these rejections is the possibility that self-enslavement was in some way a …


Bugs, Birds, Blue: Queer Ecologies Of Embodiment, Kinship, And Survival, Celeste B. Newcomb May 2026

Bugs, Birds, Blue: Queer Ecologies Of Embodiment, Kinship, And Survival, Celeste B. Newcomb

Theses and Dissertations

bugs, birds, blue is a multi-channel audiovisual installation that examines queer ecology as a framework for understanding transgender embodiment, kinship, and survival amid environmental crisis and ongoing political attacks on trans life (Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson). Through sculpture, projection, sound, reflective surfaces, and biological imagery, the installation places human bodily matter alongside microbial and aquatic life forms to challenge narratives that frame trans existence as unnatural, recent, or isolated. Instead, the work proposes transness as relational, adaptive, and deeply entangled with broader ecological systems. The installation is composed of two interconnected environments. On one side of the space, three aquariums rest …


The Storyteller: Concealment, Memory, And The Architecture Of Exile, Dylan Hirsh May 2026

The Storyteller: Concealment, Memory, And The Architecture Of Exile, Dylan Hirsh

Theses and Dissertations

The Storyteller is an expressive documentary investigating the life of Francis Kalnay (1899–1992). A Jewish-Hungarian intellectual, Kalnay lived as a socialist, an X-2 Counter-espionage chief for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, an architect in Mexico, and a celebrated children's book author. The film's central conflict lies in his hidden identities and exploring how, despite his position as a high-level spy, he failed to save his sister and mother from death at the hands of the Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross government. As a filmmaker investigating a lost part of my own Jewish-Hungarian heritage, I believe Kalnay …


Granted, Emily Weissman May 2026

Granted, Emily Weissman

Theses and Dissertations

Granted is an Alice in Wonderland-style psychotic break of a play about trying and explosively failing to dodge the landmines of being an artist–only to become your own worst enemy: a gatekeeper.