Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Life Of The Factory? Or The Life Of The Farm? That Is The Question., Adam C. Mcelwain, Bethany Lutwin

Migration in Global Context Symposium

Abstract: The focus of this lesson on Global Migration is the emotion behind young women’s decision to leave for the city and work in the factory, or stay in their hometown. Both have an opportunity cost for a life that may be better. The essential question is “Is it better to be a factory girl who has emigrated to the city or a country girl living and working on a farm?” Students will examine the motivation behind leaving the country for a factory job in the city or staying behind and working in a rural setting like a farm. They …

Realignment: A Century Of Political Evolution, Abigail Huth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies Research Symposium

The Republican Party was founded to oppose the expansion of slavery. For decades, African Americans supported the party of Lincoln, while the Democratic Party rallied against “Black Republicans”. Now Black voters overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. How did this transition happen? What began this shift? We have explored several milestones that we believe have led to this significant realignment. The evolving politics and policies of both Republicans and Democrats come into play when analyzing this transition. Events involving Theodor Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Lyndon B. Johnson present as significant turning points in the realignment of …

French Class Level 2:"Migrants In France" Project, Juli A. Douglass-Gillespie

Migration in Global Context Symposium

Being quite fed up with the disconnect between boring, abstract, and out of date so-called “units” in my French textbooks and real life, I decided to attempt to invent my own year-long “unit” based upon the ideas of migrants or immigrants who had come to France. From the beginning of the year I informed my students that everything we studied and explored throughout the year would help us create together and present to a small audience a final project in the spring in the form of a play, which they would write, me helping with the French. Since my student …

Migration In Slavic Village, The History Behind The Cleveland Central Catholic Ironmen., Mary C. Brondfield Mrs., Matt Aber Mr.

Migration in Global Context Symposium

This presentation is a collaborative effort by two educators from the disciplines of art and history. The PowerPoint presentation documents the the cross curricular migration themed event that explored migration in Slavic Village, Ohio. Historical speakers and visits to historical sites engaged students throughout the event. Through oral history and the visual arts students engaged in project based learning.

Session 1: Literature And Culture 1, Ed Edmonds, Craig This, Sharon Lynette Jones

Sultans of Swing Conference

Session one includes the following presentations:

“Gilbert Patten and the Development of Juvenile Baseball Fiction: Lefty Locke and the Legacy of Frank Merriwell” by Ed Edmonds

“Closing the Frontier? Zane Grey’s Baseball Fiction” by Craig This

“Highlighting Harlem Renaissance Texts: Baseball and Jazz in Literary Expression of the 1900s” by Sharon Lynette Jones

Women's Memoirs In The 20th Century, Alexandra Fradelizio

Scholarly and Creative Works Conference (2015 - 2021)

Memoirs have long been a valuable way in which individuals share and reflect on their past experiences. The genre of memoir writing especially had a tremendous impact on a range of American female writers. This thesis explores memoirs written by women throughout the 20^th century. With the shift in women’s roles during the 1900s and early 2000s, the memoirs examined emphasize the importance of feminine identity. The analysis provided within this thesis centers on each memoirist’s unique path in determining her sense of self. Moreover, the memoirists each use the process of writing to relay the value of personal …

Conservation, Environment, And Anti-Littering, Valerie Jacobson

Student Research Symposium

Early conservation movements in the United States led to the development and creation of National Forests and Parks. This idea gave rise to a pristine untouched wilderness that should be set aside for all domestic and international tourists to enjoy. Setting this land aside for public access contributed to environmental movements designed to share the beauty of nature, show the fragile ecosystems, and educate on the destruction of waste when it is improperly disposed. Anti-liter campaigns for Utah showcased the natural beauty of the state while sharing the message “Don’t Waste Utah” in commercials. Propaganda, full of political undertones, popularized …

The Mexican Neoliberal State: The Decentralization Of Power And Rise Of Narcotraficantes And Paramilitary Groups, Adrian Bustamante

Student Research Symposium

The purpose of this research is to analyze the interconnections between Mexico’s failed neoliberal state policies, its corrupt military, and the present drug war that plagues the nation. Mexico’s economic transition into a new neoliberal state was supposed to stimulate the economy; however its economic policies backfired, causing an increase in poverty, an upsurge in violence, and instability in its government institutions. By analyzing several recent film documentaries, together with scholarly research, we can see the direct causation of the fall of the neoliberal state and the rise of the drug cartels. My research analyses the documentaries Cartel Land by …

Hawaiian Honeycreeper (’I’Iwi), Janet Elizabeth Allen Hancock

Student Research Symposium

Since my project is interdisciplinary, I chose to write an artist statement instead of an abstract.

Artist Statement

For my project, I chose to photograph the Hawaiian
Honeycreeper, or ‘I’iwi, in their native habitat in Maui.
They have a remarkable story of evolution and extinction that both intrigues and disturbs me to my core. There were once 56 species that evolved from a single ancestor, but 38 have been driven to extinction by man’s impact on their fragile native habitat.

I used salt prints overlaid on digital color. I felt like the salt paper process with it’s sepia tone and …

A Tank Full Of Wishful Thinking: Crystallizing The Rhythms Of The Road, Leanna K. Smithberger

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This presentation is a personal exploration of American car culture — the roads that enable it, the everyday actions that sustain it, and the values that justify it. I use a constellation of mobilities, autoethnography, and rhythmanalysis in order to tap into the political, personal, and aesthetic ways our road-centered culture shapes and constrains our lives in mundane and extraordinary ways. I argue that our road system of mobility is largely taken for granted, and is stubbornly persistent due to deeply held cultural values. I use a variety of artistic, evocative methods, including narrative, poetry, and music, because I argue …

The Incorporation Of Hungarian Folk Song In Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus, Sebastian A. Haboczki

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

My project is an introductory work that lays the foundations for my graduate dissertation. In this work I have taken numerous Hungarian folk songs and mapped what I consider important elements that identify these melodies as "Hungarian folk music". I then took these elements and compared them to Zoltán Kodály's work Psalmus Hungaricus. As he was commissioned to write this piece for the 50th anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest, the composed material is all original. My argument is that although it is all newly composed material, Kodály clearly uses the elements of Hungarian folk tunes. Whether this …

In Search Of Askia Mohammed, Joe Wilson

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This is my MA thesis. I contextualized the Songhay oral history concerning king Askia Mohammed. I placed the folk lore in cultural and historical context to illustrate that the Epic of Askia Mohammed is a complex work of mythology that communicates difficult and complicated information in easily understandable "picture stories." These stories are not at all factual and often distort the historical narrative, but they do so in order that the audience is entertained, cultural norms are reinforced, and the historical account is preserved in a culturally approved framework.

Technology, Games And Learning In An Intermediate Spanish Class, Rosalind Arthur

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

This presentation examines some theories of learning at the tertiary level of education, and tests them in a research activity involving games and learning/knowledge. Two Intermediate Spanish classes are engaged in preliminary research to measure the effectiveness of a simple game (hangman) and technology (Responseware/clickers) as practice and review tools versus traditional methods; in formative assessment.

The presentation will consist of reporting on the Quantitative results focusing on the impact of using games in learning on students in the digital age. Student attitudes based on a qualitative survey administered to the students involved will be included in the report.

Both …

Digital Libraries For Creative Writing, Pilar G. Carcedo

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

This research has focused on the changes of paradigm that digital technology and globalization have exerted in the study of the literary act. The methodology has been guided by the constant integration of literary, pedagogical and technological reflection around Digital Literature and Creative Writing.

In our Research Group LEETHI we have created different Webs to approach Literature in the classroom. One of the is our DIGITAL LIBRARY TROPOS. It has developed innovative approaches, and anticipated uses of the computer, highlighting both the limits and the rich potential of the digital. Always creative, it continues to propose new possibilities, as a …

Lilith: Quintessential Bad Girl Or Simply Misunderstood?, Yvonne B. Wichman

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

In some cultures, the earth, moon, water, and love are associated with the feminine. In others, women and their divine counterparts rule over war, death, demons, and destruction. The duality of good versus evil in feminine figures has intrigued cultures for thousands of years. In fact, the dichotomy of feminine archetypes has provided a basis for speculation and research since the beginning of recorded history.

Lilith, who appears in the world’s oldest text, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is one mythological figure who remains a point of fascination. She is the oldest goddess-demon figure from the Sumero-Babylonian era and the sole …

St. Thomas More And His Utopia In Antebellum American Lawyer's Thought, Michael H. Hoeflich

UTOPIA500

The fifth UTOPIA500 presentation was April 7, 2016 about St. Thomas More and his Utopia in Antebellum American Lawyers' Thought. A former dean at Kansas Law and a renowned historian of colonial and pre-Civil War America, Professor Michael H. Hoeflich is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He explored the publication history of More's UTOPIA, and the extent to which editions of the book were available in antebellum America. Professor Hoeflich noted that the novel, as a work of "politics," was well known by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and John Adams, but its influence thereafter ebbed and …

Huckleberry Finn And The Picaresque As Lens Against Debt Peonage, Cory Dahlstrom

Annual Graduate Student Symposium

The literary genre of picaresque originated in Sixteenth Century Spain, but has become a prominent staple in American culture–especially post-Civil War. This project specifically discusses the role Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn played in analyzing the failures of reconstruction’s provision toward African American freedom and equality.

Vibrato Rate In Female Opera Singers And Female Sertanejo Singers, Melissa Mccann

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

The aim of this study was to compare female vibrato rates in two styles of singing, western classical and sertanejo. This study was conducted in order to determine if different technical approaches yield a different mean vibrato rate in female singers. Examples were taken from well-known, operatic sopranos and popular female sertanejo singers. The program Vocevista was used to gain quantitative data on the singers’ vibrato rates and vibrato extent. A purpose of this study is to determine if the findings of similar mean vibrato rate for tenors singing in operatic and sertanejo genres, also hold true for female vocalists …

The Engaged Graduate Experience: The First Year Of The Mala Program, Liana Colleen Bayne, Caroline Clare Hamby

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This poster will illustrate the interdisciplinary, engaged learning and creative activities that have taken place during the first year of the new MALA (Madison Academic Library Associates) graduate assistantship program. Liana Bayne and Caroline Hamby are JMU Libraries’ first dedicated graduate assistants, and have spent the 2015-16 school year piloting the program. The two-year program’s curriculum includes library school-inspired learning modules alongside hands-on, project-based activities monitored and mentored by varying divisions of LET (Libraries & Educational Technologies) staff. Bayne and Hamby look forward to completing large-scale capstone project work in the second year of this program. Bayne and Hamby work …

The Redevelopment Of Brownsville, Tiffany Kent

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Brownsville, a small town located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, witnessed its population decrease by 65% from 1940 to 2000, which has caused financial downfall culminating in town council members begging the town’s electricity provider not to turn off power to the streetlights in 2007. How did a town that held historical significance during events such as Lewis and Clark’s exploration, the French and Indian War, and the Underground Railroad decline so rapidly? Brownsville seems to be suffering from major deterioration largely because of the deindustrialization of the rust belt and the events leading up to it. The severity of Brownsville’s decline …

Reevaluating Perceptions Of Tchaikovsky’S Pathétique Symphony, Jacob R. Leonowitz

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”) was welcomed only lukewarmly at its 1893 premiere. Among other things, audiences were confused by Tchaikovsky’s atypical choice of a slow and lamenting final movement to conclude the symphony. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Tchaikovsky’s death only days after the Pathétique’s premiere spawned rumors that the composer had committed suicide after years of struggling with his homosexuality. The public consequently embraced the work with new understanding, perceiving it as a “musical suicide note.” Primary sources, however, including the composer’s brother and Xeniya Davydov, provided accounts relating to the end of Tchaikovsky’s …

The American Girl Retail Experience, Michelle Sinagra, Rachel M. Cunningham, Katlin Anglin, Christina Frederick Dr.

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

The American Girl brand is characterized by its ability to promote identity development in young girls through play and educational experiences. Due to the accessibility of smart-devices (e.g. mobile and web based technologies) and the frequency of their use, recent trends in toy designs have shown an increase in digital/technology features. Taking this into consideration, American Girl has continuously emphasized doll-centric products and experiences that also satisfy consumer’s digital interests. American Girl’s interactive digital resources include: the entire American Girl website which features a wide selection of Games, Apps, activities, e-cards, the InnerStar University (i.e., an interactive world for My …

But What Does “It” Mean: An Analysis Of Feminist & Mainstream Pornographies, Alexandra S. Melnick 2225930

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

In this project, I am interested in how we as a culture talk and make stories about heterosexual non-fetish pornography that contains fellatio scenes. Fellatio, being a site of social power and relation, can be conceptualized and portrayed in different ways based on the ideology and intentions of the context a text portraying fellatio it is created in. In this project I reasoned that mainstream pornography and feminist pornography would show fellatio in different ways, revealing the basic differences in each genre’s content and execution. To this effect, I analyzed six films from both feminist and mainstream pornographies and have …

Home V. Hospital: Power And Birth, An Examination Of Control Within Birth Models In The United States, Sarah W. Rosene

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

In this paper I examine why some women in the United States choose midwife attended homebirth over the medical model of birth. Why do women make this decision and what are the outcomes? I examined both qualitative and quantitative data on homebirths and have identified key reasons why women chose to give birth outside of the hospital. I focused on how the mother's feelings of control impacted her satisfaction with the birth experience, and how women’s control is affected in home versus hospitalized birth. My findings reveal that home births allow the woman more agency and an environment in which …

Transgender Issues In Film, Eulalah R. Prater Mx

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

The question of gender inequality in film has been widely debated, both within the industry as well as within gender studies, with scholars such as Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofeils, Dr. Katherine Pieper and Melissa Rigney arguing about gender inequality in modern popular films. However, these critics ignore the issue of trans-inclusive representation. My paper addresses the issue of trans* representation in modern film through comparative analysis with Greek theatre and early American film. I argue that in order to better understand lack of non-cis-gendered representation, it is instructive to connect this phenomenon to blackface in early …

The Archaeology Of Appetites, Molly S. Schonert

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

Through use of examining how food is produced, stored, distributed and consumed, one can take a glimpse into the past, present and even future of this planet–to better understand the complexity of human identity and the social practices or roles that define an individual, community or society. So this begins an exploration of the archaeology of food as a gendered commodity throughout our evolutionary past, emphasizing the infinite ways in which foodway practices exceeds the nutritional value of what our ancestors, family, friends and ourselves consume(d) on a daily basis. Foodways practices is an invaluable tool in any archaeologists’ tool …

The Moral Obligation For Sex Worker Rights, Lori A. Durham

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

The female body is the site of endless controversy, with sex work as one of the most hotly debated issues. Historically viewed as an ethical and moral issue, arguments to criminalize sex work were dominant until the mid-to-late twentieth century when sex workers began to argue for decriminalization of adult “consensual” commercial sex. As one of the most marginalized populations in the world, sex workers are subjected to a multitude of violations against their bodies and their human rights. They routinely face physical and sexual violence, arrest and incarceration, extortion and harassment (frequently by police and other members of law …

Gender As A Socially Constructed Phenomenon, Jamie Smith

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

In the historical and social landscape that currently exists in America, the concept of gender, and especially the concept of women, has been created and enforced through societal expectations. From essentialism in the past, social and psychological theory has evolved to consider the social impact on gender construction. Foucault’s prison theory, Berger’s theory of surveying, and Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze can be used to show that gender, though it used to be viewed as inherent to a person’s identity, is actually a process of social conditioning. Women are shaped by society but continue to follow their roles because …

Clever On Sunday: A Visual Artist Interpretation Of The Post-Wwii Persuasion Of Consumer Marketing And The Gender Gap, Courtney L. Starrett

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

The visual arts transform concepts and philosophies into tangible and aesthetic depictions. Women’s studies and gender issues are common sources of inspiration for artists. This paper will unveil the process and development of an installation inspired by gender roles as defined by the post-WWII persuasion of consumer marketing. Clever on Sunday is an installation of custom, hand-cast, and functional silicone doilies. Each doily pattern is generated by sourced data and statistics reflecting selected information to be presented as implied substance for a potential narrative to be rendered by the viewer. The data sets used range from PhDs Earned by Women …

Did The Shrew Tame You: An Exploration Of Sexual Politics In Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew, Marisa Stickel

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

This paper explores the sexual politics present in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, examining the gender roles that influence the relationship between Katherine and Petruccio. By analyzing Petruccio’s attempts at taming Katherine, in comparison to the ending of the play where she is supposedly tamed, I will emphasize Katherine's abilities to manipulate a patriarchal society’s rule over women. While she seems to demonstrate acquiescing full sovereignty to her husband, my argument will pose that Katherine assumes the role of a proper wife to trick Petruccio, allowing her access to marital dominance. By examining the patriarchal society of the time …