Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Impact Of Traditional (Non-Affirming) Black Church Affiliation On Exploration Of Sexual Identity For Black Assigned Female At Birth Lgbq+ Individuals And The Associated Mental Health Risk, Aurielle J. Sutton

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explored the impact of Black traditional church upbringing on the sexual and religious identity development, including the subsequent mental health risk, for Black assigned female at birth (AFAB) LGBQ+ individuals. Studies conducted on Black AFAB LGBQ+ individuals are limited, especially in terms of  assessing their experiences in sexual identity development based on religious upbringings. Studies have overlooked the experience of LGBQ+ Black AFAB individuals navigating sexual orientation development and religious and racial identities. Studies have greatly favored Black gay men and supported health risks such as HIV. In the present study, twelve Black AFAB Queer individuals participated in …

Artificial Intelligence And Translation: Exploring Current Applications, Limitations And Future Potential Of Language Models Through Japanese-English Translation, Loklin Elias Nord

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This thesis highlights the recent improvements and capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically their ability to produce translations between different languages. The continued up-scaling of model sizes has led to breakthroughs in the level of their observed intelligence, allowing them to produce translations that are similar in quality to highly skilled human translators. However, to facilitate the reasoning processes that LLMs now possess, their demand for computational power and the supporting hardware and resources has increased proportionally. Considering the impacts of this technology on the environment, energy resources, and its accessibility, my research explores the possibilities of smaller, highly …

Hell Reimagined: Dante’S Inferno And The Secular Afterlives Of Divine Punishment, Yara Mohamed El Hashimi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines contrapasso and how it changes across different media and different sources of moral authority. In Chapter One, I examine four different cantos of Dante’s Inferno and rely on Teodolinda Barolini’s work to examine textual contrapasso. Chapter One also discusses how Dante’s work shows the sinner’s moral condition and makes it visible through the punishment inflicted. Additionally, Dante’s Inferno presents punishment as part of a divinely authorized moral order, which becomes important in Chapter Two when I examine how William Blake visually interprets and questions that system. In Chapter Two, I examine the works of Blake that correspond …

“The Light Of Certain Belief” – Orthodoxy Versus Innovation According To Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghazālī’S Al-Risāla Al-Qudsiyyah, Thomas Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the question of Islamic orthodoxy in the thought of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, with particular attention to his Risāla al-Qudsiyya and its place within his wider intellectual and reformative project. It begins by exploring concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy across the Christian and Islamic traditions, arguing that orthodoxy emerges through processes of interpretation, doctrinal conflict, boundary formation, and communal consensus. Islamic orthodoxy is understood as the historically consolidated mainstream of belief rooted in the Qurʾān, the Sunnah, the authority of the early community, and the scholarly tradition.

The central argument of the thesis is that al-Ghazālī conceives of …

Topographies Of Being: World-Making And Ontological Formation In Modern Saint Catherine, South Sinai, Ahmad Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the ecological and sociological processes involved in the production of the socionatural space of the contemporary town and natural protectorate of Saint Catherine, South Sinai. Revered by all Abrahamic religions as the site of the Great Theophany, the town has perpetually been considered an area of immense spiritual and natural significance. In recent decades, however, the town has undergone a series of modernizing campaigns that have not only threatened the region’s natural environment and indigenous lifeways but have also jeopardized the plurality of its extant lifeworlds. By relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, …

Here Comes The Sun: A Diachronic Study Of The Role Of Music In The Amarna Period, Waleed Hawatky

Theses and Dissertations

Music has and continues to play a prominent role in the lives of individuals and in society, hardwired into the human experience and integral to our understanding of the world in both its tangible and intangible manifestations. This was no different in dynastic Egypt, where abundant iconographic and physical evidence from the Old Kingdom onward shows music performed in many diverse contexts at every social level.

Music appears not only to gain prominence during the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (c. 1353–1335), also known as the Amarna Period, but also to develop innovations, including new kinds of instruments and musical ensembles, …

Between The Lens And The Gaze: Reflections Of Femininity In Film, Noureen Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the male gaze’s construction of femininity through the use of glass and reflective surfaces, particularly mirrors, windows, glasses, and cameras in film. Reflections and depictions of women are recurring motifs in cinema, often symbolizing dynamics of perception and power. This thesis mobilizes related psychoanalytic and feminist conceptions to examine and compare the recurring visual motifs in the following films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and Rear Window (1954), Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), & Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010). This thesis employs a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates psychoanalytic theory, feminist film theory, literary criticism …

Sufism At The Service Of Ḥadīth Commentary: Re-Framing Al-Kalābādhī'S Baḥr Al-FawāʾId In Fourth-Tenth Century Transoxiana, Fadhil Yunus Alsagoff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī’s (d. 380/990) understudied ḥadīth commentary, the Baḥr al-fawāʾid al-mashhūr bi-maʿānī al-akhbār. The first Anglophone study of the text as a whole, this thesis situates itself within the emergent literature on ḥadīth commentaries and challenges the prevailing scholarly tendency to reduce Sufi-authored commentarial texts to the ishārī method of interpretation and to treat them solely as repositories of Sufi themes. This thesis argues that, contrary to current perceptions of the text as primarily a work of Sufism, the Baḥr al-fawaʾid is first and foremost a work of ḥadīth commentary, its main intent being to …

Adjudicating Technology Facilitated Violence Against Women In Egypt: Between The Text And The Application, Eman E. Zidan

Theses and Dissertations

Technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVAW) has surged on digital platforms, leading to a sharp rise in victimization rates among girls and women globally. Egypt’s pioneering cybercrime legislation, though comprehensive, remains gender-neutral and inadequate in judicial application. Community perceptions reveal systemic gaps that erode public trust and fuel demands for specialized protections. This study analyzes Egyptian judicial responses to TFVAW cases through comparative jurisprudence with jurisdictions that feature gender-specific norms. Findings demonstrate that textual provisions alone fail to arrest this escalating phenomenon, underscoring the need for integrated reforms: tailored legislation, heightened awareness campaigns, and collaborative education on rights, duties, and societal …

Art As Activism: Emotional Expression And Collective Empowerment Among Muslim Participants Creating Protest Posters, Menhal Sheikh

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

Muslim Americans are among the most underserved populations in mental health care in the United States. In the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, many Muslim Americans have experienced intensified psychological distress, including anxiety, grief, and a heightened sense of helplessness, while continuing to show up in the streets in protest. This mixed-methods study examined whether the collective process of protest poster-making leads to emotional expression among Muslim American participants. Eleven Muslim American participants across two groups in the San Francisco Bay Area completed a pre and post Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure changes in affect, …

Shadow Garments: Costume Creation For Integrating Alienated Parts Of The Self, Mega M. Galvin

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

This study explores costume creation as a narrative-based intervention for integrating "shadow" parts, or aspects of the self that are repressed or alienated due to shame, trauma, or social pressure. Grounded in Jungian analytic psychology, narrative therapy, and expressive arts theory, the research addresses the limitations of traditional talk therapy in accessing somatic memory and proposes costume making as a pathway for externalization and re-authorship. Using a qualitative, participatory study inspired by Pat B. Allen’s Open Studio Process, four adult participants engaged in a three-session workshop to design, construct, and wear costumes representing their identified shadow aspects. Data was collected …

A Journey To The Midwest For Migrant Farmwork: Women's Testimonies Examining Their Lived Experiences Using Autoethnography And Plática Research Methodologies, Yesenia G. Alcalá

Theses & Dissertations

A JOURNEY TO THE MIDWEST FOR MIGRANT FARMWORK: WOMEN’S TESTIMONIES EXAMINING THEIR LIVED EXPERIENCES USING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AND PLÁTICA

RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

Yesenia Garza Alcalá, Master of Business Administration

University of the Incarnate Word 2026

The purpose of my research was to share the stories of five women who experienced a yearly migratory routine from Del Rio, Texas, to work in farms and factories in the Midwest, and how that annual journey shaped and educated us. The women are four of my older sisters and me, all of whom traveled and worked in the Princeville, Illinois, migrant camp, where we experienced the …

Arithmetic And Necessity: A Quasi-Concrete Modal Structuralist Account, Benjamin Faltesek

Mathematics, Philosophy and Physics (D.Sc.) Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the necessity of arithmetic by distinguishing two tasks that are often run together: the derivation task, which seeks to prove that mathematical truths are necessary, and the characterization task, which asks what kind of necessity arithmetic has and what grounds it. Setting the former aside for now, I focus on the latter, arguing that an adequate explanation of arithmetical necessity requires two sources: logical necessity and the necessary possibility that the right kind of structure exists. The second source makes mathematical modality distinctively mathematical, and the dissertation’s positive contribution emerges chiefly in that area. I survey and …

Historical Piccolo Concerti And Works By Women Composers, Repertoire Catalogue, And A New Concerto For Piccolo And Orchestra, Mikaela Storm

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

The following document is an overview of historical piccolo concerti with an emphasis on works by women, a repertoire catalogue of the piccolo concerti, and an analysis/performance guide for my own Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra: The Dreamer. The primary goal of this document and subsequent score is to provide a resource for future composers, music theorists, conductors, and performers. The piccolo has limited repertoire in comparison to many of the standard instruments in our modern Western musical canon, and the number of piccolo concertos (particularly by women) is even smaller. The concerto that I have written, subtitled “The Dreamer,” …

Caribou Migration And Non-Local Hunting In Northwest Alaska: A Gis Analysis Of Hunting Activity And Its Relationship With Caribou Migration Corridors, Brittney L. Jiménezszabo

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Indigenous Alaskans rely on subsistence hunting for food, with Barren-ground caribou making up approximately 27% of their diet. It is believed by subsistence hunters that non-local hunting is forcing a change in caribou migration behavior. This study examined non-local harvesting records from 2013 – 2025 in the northwest and interior Game Management Units (GMU) and Alaksa’s Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH) migration range data to answer the question, is there a spatial relationship between non-local harvests and WACH migration behavior. Mixed methods included spatial autocorrelation and local statistics. Findings led to the rejection of the null hypothesis which will help …

Lost In Chaos: The Battle Between Selfcare And Motherhood, Sarah Shahzad

MS Marketing Research Projects/Theses

Motherhood in collectivist societies such as Pakistan is deeply intertwined with caregiving, leaving limited space for women’s self-care or personal well-being. This study explores how young Pakistani mothers negotiate self-care within competing expectations of maternal sacrifice, cultural morality, and structural constraints. Guided by the Institutional Logics Perspective (ILP), it examines how familial norms, religious values, and market forces collectively shape women’s self-care practices, framing self-care not as an autonomous act but as a negotiated process embedded within social and institutional boundaries. This study adopts an interpretive phenomenological approach to explore how Pakistani mothers experience and negotiate self-care within cultural and …

The Aesthetics Of Violation: Visual Rhetoric And The Ethics Of Spectatorship In Venetian Ovidian Painting, Khira Rudolph

Theses

In this thesis, we will consider how 16th-century Venetian painters used sophisticated visual methods, colorito, glowing atmospheric glazes, serpentine lines and spatial buffering to camouflage the physical violence of Ovidian abduction stories. Most historical art literature in the past has hailed high Renaissance masters Titian and Paolo Veronese as technical bravura, lyrical colorism and visual appeal in the face of social and emotional tragedy in their work on canvas. In comparing Titian’s The Rape of Europa, Paolo Veronese’s The Rape of Europa, Paolo Veronese’s circle Scene from the Metamorphoses of Ovid: The Rape of Proserpine and Rembrandt …

Formed Together: A Value-Based Model Of Mutual Spiritual Formation For Pentecostal Pastors And Churches Under 500, W. T.A. Mcmillan

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28) is both a warning and an invitation. It insists that the pastor's inner life and the congregation's shared life cannot be pulled apart without doing damage to both. This dissertation grows out of that conviction and out of years of pastoral ministry in Pentecostal churches where the pressure to perform often overwhelms the slow work of being formed. It asks a simple but searching question: How do Assemblies of God pastors serving congregations under 500 in attendance understand the connection between their own spiritual health and the spiritual …

Sanctified Rhythms Of Rest: Reclaiming Sabbath And Spiritual Retreat For Pastoral Renewal And Burnout Mitigation In The Georgia Assemblies Of God, Philip Sosebee

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

“Sanctified Rhythms of Rest: Reclaiming Sabbath and Spiritual Retreat for Pastoral Renewal and Burnout Mitigation in the Georgia Assemblies of God” explored how intentional rhythms of Sabbath observance, solitude and silence, and spiritual retreat shaped the lived experiences of credentialed ministers within the Georgia District of the Assemblies of God. Pastoral burnout, emotional exhaustion, and unsustainable ministry expectations continue to affect ministers across denominational contexts, raising questions regarding the role of biblically grounded rhythms of rest in fostering pastoral renewal and sustainability. Using a six-month longitudinal hermeneutic phenomenological design, twenty-nine credentialed ministers participated in the intentional practice of weekly Sabbath …

The Quest For Sacred Truth In A Secular Society What Is Fueling Gen Z’S Return To Faith And Church Attendance In America?, William W. Dornbush

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

This dissertation investigated the Critical Research Question: What are the key external factors influencing Generation Z’s internal quest for spiritual renewal? The study examined biblical, historical, and contemporary revival movements, including the Exodus, Pentecost, the Great Awakenings, the Jesus Movement, Charismatic Renewal, Brownsville, Toronto, and Asbury, to identify recurring patterns linking external pressures to spiritual awakening. Using a qualitative design, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve Generation Z participants who experienced spiritual searching, renewal, or a deepened faith between 2020 and 2025, exploring how contemporary external pressures influence spiritual openness and transformation. The findings revealed six major themes: (1) …

The St. Louis Zine Project: A Study And Documentation Of Live Music, Dawnye Appel

Theses

This practice-based project examines how documentary photography and zine-making can document and interpret an independent live-music venue as a site of atmosphere, cultural memory, and community. Focusing on The Sinkhole in St. Louis, Missouri, the inquiry considers what becomes visible when the venue, rather than only the performer, becomes the subject of photographic documentation. Project materials include photographs taken during a single visit on July 11, 2026, observations of the venue, and an interview with owner Matt Stutler, documented through written notes. Scholarship on live-music spaces, cultural memory, photography, and self publishing informs the interpretation of these materials. Analysis occurs …

Approaching Chinese Art Songs: A Mandarin Diction Guide For English-Speaking Singers, Tianming Qi

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

This article presents a graded Mandarin diction guide for English-speaking singers studying Chinese art song. Responding to the limited availability of Mandarin diction resources organized by level, it examines Qing Zhu’s “The Great River Goes East,” Yuanren Zhao’s “How Can I Not Think of Him?,” and Yong Chen’s “Love of the Sea” as beginning, intermediate, and advanced case studies. The analysis considers initials, finals, lexical tones, tone-sandhi, syllable structure, text density, and their coordination with rhythm, legato, and melodic phrasing. The study shows that diction difficulty arises not from isolated sounds but from the concentration and interaction of these features …

The Caged Canary: Compounded Discrimination And The Female Jazz Vocalist, Isabella Eaton

Master's Theses

While women have historically represented the overwhelming majority of jazz vocalists, they have also experienced a unique legitimacy gap in a culture that traditionally grants the status of authenticity to the masculine instrumentalist. This study explores the experiences of mid-twentieth century female jazz vocalists, arguing that they faced compounded discrimination within American jazz culture as a result of gender marginalization and the devaluation of their vocal instrument. The intricacies of this phenomenon necessitate a multipronged qualitative approach by employing historiographical analysis, synthesis of existing scholarship, and qualitative case study research methods. Beginning with the dichotomy between the jazz “cat” and …

Navigating Predominantly White Institutions: A Narrative Inquiry Restorying Native American And Indigenous Students' Lived Experiences Of Higher Education, Chandra Anderson

Doctor of Education Program Dissertations

Previous research has examined retention rates of Native American and Indigenous students within the United States in higher education; however, there remains a significant narrative silence regarding the lived stories and personal chronologies of these students (Brayboy et al., 2015; Davidson & Lopez, 2023; Oxendine et al., 2018). The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to elicit and restory the lived narratives of Native American and Indigenous students enrolled in predominantly White institutions (PWI) of higher education. This study’s literature review themes include: (a) history of Native American and Indigenous students, (b) contemporary research on Native American and Indigenous …

From Combat To Congregation: A Guide To Moral Injury For Everyday Ministers, Kristyn Demers

School of Theology and Seminary Graduate Papers/Theses

Veterans often receive inadequate ministerial care for their unique and complex spiritual needs. Therefore, everyday ministers need training in trauma-informed spiritual care and practices of moral healing. These practices need to be implemented within parish and church communities to aid in the care and reintegration of veterans into our communities. In this paper, I will: a) introduce and distinguish moral injury as a particular concern for veterans; b) offer theological and scriptural evidence of the need for proper ministerial responses to moral injury; and c) list a set of tools and resources for ministers who interact with veterans

Exploring Multicultural Competence Among Mental Health Workers When Providing Treatment To African American Males, Ashley Hightower

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American men experience disproportionately low rates of mental health service utilization and often report negative perceptions of mental illness. Despite documented mental health disparities, limited research has explored how mental health workers understand and apply multicultural competence when providing treatment to African American men. Grounded in the theory of planned behavior and social identity theory, the purpose of this qualitative descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of mental health workers regarding multicultural competence in their work with African American men. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven mental health workers recruited through purposive sampling. Interview …

Protective Factors Among African American Offspring Of Teen Parents, Janelle Ewing

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Adolescent pregnancy remains a major public health and social issue, but research has primarily focused on risk factors and not the protective factors that contribute to resilience among those who successfully break the cycle. This qualitative study explored protective factors that African American adult offspring of teenage parents identified as supporting them in avoiding teenage pregnancy and parenthood. The study was theoretically grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which was used to explore the role of influence across environmental systems in participants’ developmental outcomes. The primary research question was “How do African American adult offspring of teenage parents describe the …

From Retrieval To Generation: Building And Evaluating An Ai Accompanist For Piano Duets With An Anticipatory Music Transformer, Sai Ruthvik Uppala

Masters Theses

Systems that accompany a live musician, such as ACCompanion, work by retrieval: they hold a written accompaniment and stretch its timing to follow the soloist, so they can only accompany music whose second part already exists as a score. This thesis asks whether that second part can instead be generated, and specifically whether a machine learning model can write an accompaniment for a piece whose score it has never seen. A player performs the primo, the melody; a model produces the secondo, the accompaniment; and a score follower places the generated notes against the live performance. If this works, a …

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Vibe Diggers: The Sampling Of Brazilian Music In Hip-Hop, Romulo De Carvalho Moraes Barbosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the trend of musical borrowings of 1970s MPB (música popular brasileira) by contemporary American hip-hop producers, especially in terms of what they have called a “Brazilian vibe.” A lot has been said about sampling already from legal, sociological, and historical points of view, but less has been said about its aesthetic procedures, and even less about the wider implications of a tendency for using transnational sources. In the case of MPB, hip-hop artists seem to understand the music they sample through an often vague, intuitive representation, which fuses qualities of those recordings with an intersubjective mood, a …