Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ruffled: Examining Feminism & Femininity Through Animation, Savannah Berry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The animated short film Ruffled confronts the subjects of Feminism and Femininity through the after-hour musings of a young seamstress. Sewing to patterns and working from their papered paradigms she discovers her unique voice that is both referential of the past while remaining distinctly modern. The struggle twenty-first century Feminists may encounter when determining their place within a history rich with prejudice, confrontation, and triumph is metaphorically represented in each of the character's attempts at garment creation. Within the film, not only does this clothing harken back to vintage apparel but whimsically transforms her surroundings to reflect three visually distinct …

Painting And Fear: The Creation Of Death's Visage, Mark A. Felbinger

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Death's Visage is a feature film that was created from an idea developed due to a personal relationship with an artist, who was a professional illustrator and painter. The film follows a young woman who becomes entrapped in a demonic sphere and time zone where her fear is the demon's gratification. She questions the events that are unfolding, which creates herpsychological turmoil, while taking place in the family home that is in an older established middle-class neighborhood.

Death's Visage was a micro-budgeted film produced for $20,778. The capital needed for this film meets the University of Central Florida Feature Film …

Inclusion And Interpretation: Examining Difficult History Topics At Eighteenth-Century Historic Sites In Southeastern Pennsylvania, Cassidy Michonski

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

This thesis explores four distinct eighteenth-century historic sites in southeastern Pennsylvania and how they interpret difficult history topics. Difficult history, the parts of our nation's past that may be uncomfortable to discuss and learn about, should be included in historic site narratives to ensure that all people who lived at these sites are represented. Telling the stories of enslaved people, Indigenous groups, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community often means addressing difficult topics. Four sites—Elfreth's Alley, Stenton, the Daniel Boone Homestead, and the 1719 Museum—were examined for this study. A review of their staff training and institutional investment in …

The Stench Of Miasma And The Fragrance Of Daffodils: Reconstructing Historical Scentscapes In Mesopotamia, Samantha N. Levy

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

My thesis interrogates the role that the sense of smell plays in the experience of place, arguing that scent has been virtually ignored in public history contexts. The thesis will review the foundational scholarship on the history of the senses and relate the findings of interdisciplinary research that demonstrates how the senses alter one's understanding of the environment and even the formation of memories. This work is relevant to the field of public history since smell can be used to captivate the public in a memorable—and potentially more authentic—engagement with the Mesopotamian past. To address gaps in the present scholarship, …

Erasing The Past For Marketability: The Effects Of Selling National Myth In Ybor City's Public Historical Narrative, Janine A. Galindo

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Ybor City is a historical neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, and a tourist attraction known for its immigrant roots and once-thriving cigar industry. This thesis places Ybor City into the context of the burgeoning heritage tourism market, examining how cities financially reliant on tourism often sanitize their public historical narrative. I identify the main actors involved in Ybor City's marketing and preservation by investigating contemporary newspaper articles and multiple National Park Service documents, thereby uncovering the motivations and decisions that led to Ybor's cultural image of a bustling, relatively peaceful early 20th-century "Latin" community. To correlate Ybor's aestheticized public image with …

The Primacy Of Openness In Ecological Complexity Theory, Colby Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Five principles are at the foundation of complex systems theory: emergence, openness, contingency, historicity, and indeterminacy. Of those five, the principle of emergence is easily the most prevalent. Simply put, emergence refers to the idea that some wholes cannot be properly accounted for by appealing to individual explanations of the parts that compose it. In ecological complexity theory, the principle of emergence is strongly associated with the self-organizing feedbacks that often identify the structural framework of ecosystems.

Within the last half century, the intense focus on the principle of emergence has engendered the development of many conceptual distinctions that have …

Redefining Paternalistic Practices In Women’S Health: How Dysfunctional Trust Relationships Impact Medical Autonomy Of Female Patients In The Contemporary Clinical Setting, Lauren K. O'Dell

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Utilizing Trudy Govier’s (1997) conception of social trust, this dissertation will provide a framework for understanding trust in healthcare relationships and highlight some of the ways that unequal power distribution and dependency, poorly defined roles, and institutions complicate trust between women and their providers. This framework will also explain how distrust, especially prejudicial distrust, leads to paternalistic attitudes on the part of providers. Paternalism limits patient autonomy because medical autonomy is constitutively relational. This means that insofar as distrust causes paternalism, it also damages autonomy. Through negative outcomes, this lack of autonomy can cause patients to distrust healthcare, which can …

Growing In Christian Spiritual Identity Through Enhanced Biblical Interpretation At Camino Church, Charlotte, Nc, Steve Sellers

Doctor of Ministry Projects

This project evaluated the impact of biblical study and interpretation on spiritual identity, focusing on the Latino population. The project’s goal was to assess a disciplined, historically oriented study of Scripture as a pre-condition for Scriptural perspicuity to come to fuller expression.

Findings for this project indicate the process of learning biblical interpretation leads to greater spiritual identity in Latino and non-Latino populations. While any particular aspect of the learning process could not be determined as the primary source for the effect the instructor, the learning methodologies, and biblical interpretation model had meaningful impacts on the project participants.

Continuing To Do The Work: An Examination Of The Experiences Of Students Of Color In Collegiate Speech, Tennisha Sonsalla

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how the experiences of students of color in the collegiate speech community are inextricably linked to their race. Students of color, unlike white students, face unique challenges in the predominately white speech community. Using qualitative interviews to uncover the experiences of students of color who have participated in collegiate speech, this project details 6 major themes: Internal Pressures, External Pressures, Navigating Voice, Issues of Representation, Team Dynamics, and Survival Strategies. As well as implications, limitations,and suggestions for future research.

Transgenerational Wellness: Trauma Informed Christian Spiritual Formation, Winford Amos

Doctor of Ministry

Certain mindsets, processes, and practices produce health inequities and disparities including poor spiritual health. Young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years old are experiencing challenges with mental health and substance use resulting in a high rate of suicides and overdose related deaths. Many are experiencing co-occurring substance use and mental health challenges and have a history of trauma. There are limited options available for integrated treatment. Accessibility to services is very difficult due to limited providers and limited resources at this age. Church attendance has decreased significantly for young adults which limits the capacity of the church …

"An Infinite Advantage": A Kierkegaardian Analysis Of Anxiety And Despair In Post-War American Literature, Jeremiah Davis

Dissertations and Theses

“An Infinite Advantage”: A Kierkegaardian Analysis of Anxiety and Despair in Post-War American Literature uses a theistically informed existentialist lens to examine issues of selfhood as depicted in American literature from the mid-twentieth century. During this period in America, the changing nature of religious worship led to an uncertain understanding of what it meant to be an individual. With examinations of characters from five novels published in the period, I explore how Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy can help us better understand how Christian authors from the period attempted to define what makes up a self and how a self is to …

Escape, Constance Leigh Lieber

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

My creative non-fiction thesis, Escape, is a memoir of the five years I lived in Bern, Switzerland, 1988-1993. During that time, I interviewed my neighbor, Horst Schirm, about his life during the waning years of World War II in what was the eastern border of the German Reich (Jauer, Schlesien) but is now Poland (Jawor, Sląsk). His mother with Horst and his two brothers and sister traveled from Jauer to Frankfort am Main and back to Jauer in an attempt to escape the Allied bombing raids and to find their father, who was missing. Finally, they, with the other remaining …

Zara And The Strong Gauntlets, Donnell Earl Griffith

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

My creative fiction thesis, Zara and the Strong Gauntlets, is the first part of a full length novel in the fantasy genre. The story follows Zara, a servant to a high member of society which she spends every day serving. Zara’s world is turned upside down when she walks into her master’s assassination. Zara is tossed out of her home, and with nowhere left to turn, tries to find a way to be able to stand up on her own two feet, and through her trials, discover a sense of self that will determine her new path in life.

After …

On The Way To Maturity, Mikhail Ilyin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

My experience as a dance maker is rooted in the following: use of space, interpersonal relationships, efforts in dynamics, psychology, and personal memory, all of which inform my thesis project. This thesis project specifically investigates the stages of psychosocial development as seen through the theories of psychologist Erik Erikson. It explores the emotional effect of these psychosocial stages on people, including conflicts and positive impacts. I demonstrate how these developmental stages can define a person's identity and how audience members, choreographers, and artists from various fields might be influenced by them. Weaving together my research and personal experiences in fine …

Deadly Emotions: The Argument For Tempered Feeling In British And American Literature Of Sentiment, Miranda Anne Liebsack

Dissertations and Theses

This project focuses on late eighteenth-century literature of sentiment, specifically examining the man and woman of feeling characters in The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and Volume the Last (1753), both written by Sarah Fielding, The Man of Feeling (1771), written by Henry Mackenzie, The Power of Sympathy (1789) by William Hill Brown, and The Coquette (1797), by Hannah Webster Foster. I use the following terms to analyze these texts: sensibility functions as the ability to feel great emotion, emotionally and physically; sympathy is the ability to connect with another with emotions, and sentiment is tempered emotion based in morality …

The Sanctuary Of Demeter And Kore: The Portrayal Of Corinthian Gender Ideologies In Ritual Landscape, Kaia C. Brose

Dissertations and Theses

The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth reflects gender ideologies and concerns within the larger region of Korinthia. Archaeological finds particularly serve to illustrate the sanctuary’s role in maintaining these gender ideologies and concerns. This thesis focuses on the depiction of gender ideologies that reflect a shift toward a wealthier material culture in sixth-century Corinth with themes of feminine virtue and fertility prevalent in the sanctuary. The study of certain ceramics shapes and iconography serves to reveal the sanctuary’s role within the larger religious landscape it was located in. The kalathos, pyxis/Frauenfest scene, and the liknon illustrate the presence …

Little Mexico In The Black Hills: A Study Of Mexican Migration And Settlement From 1970-1990s, Sabrina Escalante

Dissertations and Theses

In the early 1970s, the members of the small-town Ojos de Agua de Ocampo, Michoacán, in Mexico, began migrating to the United States to escape poverty. As they continued to work in the fruit fields of California, some of them decided to follow the fruit, which eventually led them to the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota, where their Mexican community expanded through the late 1990s. In this thesis, I argue that without following the fruit, Mexicans would not have found the Black Hills and job security as loggers. The environmental similarities between the Black Hills and Ojos de Agua …

Trauma And The American Dream: Frictions Of The Dominant Fiction In Steinbeck And Smith, Mary Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

This project focuses on how John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (1952) and Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) portray individuals’ interaction with the dominant fiction of the American Dream. At the time of these novels’ publication, the ideology of the American Dream was a prominent feature of America’s culture, encouraging individuals that success is possible if they work hard enough. Steinbeck and Smith challenge this concept as their novels depict scenarios which thwart individual’s opportunities at success and characters whose hard work goes unnoticed. Specifically, I explore how the trauma and adversities characters experience in childhood and adolescence …

The Victorian Crisis Of Faith: Uncertainty, Pessimism, Morality, And Monsters. A Look At Nineteenth-Century British Gothic Horror And The Unassailable Unknown, Jay Schroeder

Dissertations and Theses

This work investigates how Gothic narratives employed negative aesthetics, monstrous bodies, exploded meaning, and an unshakable mood of uncertainty to explore rising fears of dwindling morality and impending human doom during the long nineteenth century. Using Eugene Thacker’s cosmic pessimism, Sianne Ngai’s concept of tone, and Stephen Greenblatt’s theories of resonance and wonder, combined with monster theory, Gothic criticism, biological studies of fear, and nineteenth-century studies in medicine, science, and literature, I investigate how these texts constructed monstrous bodies to create an atmosphere of fear that reflected a culture of pessimism and a crisis of faith to contend, albeit unsuccessfully, …

“I Am Still Dakota”: Assimilation, Education, And Survival On The Lake Traverse Reservation, Katherine Victoria Kemp

Dissertations and Theses

In 1867, the Sisseton Wahpeton signed the Lake Traverse Treaty and settled on the Lake Traverse Reservation in Northeastern South Dakota. As part of the growing westward expansion of settlers, the U.S government confined Indigenous peoples to reservations and tried to destroy their culture. Federal and state governments since then have continued to eliminate, relocate, and assimilate Indigenous people. For Indigenous peoples, the land is life, and assimilation through boarding schools served to sever them from their land and enforce white superiority. In this thesis, I argue that the Sisseton Wahpeton found ways to engage in cultural resilience utilizing Indigenous …

Things Left Behind, Aqeel Ahmad

Dissertations and Theses

Things Left Behind is the story of a family in a small town in Pakistan where both the town and the family are transitioning between their traditional ways of living and Modernity coming from outside the town. Through its various characters, the narrative unfolds the struggles of facing challenges put by technology and colonial projects. The characters long for the safety and familiarity of their rural and traditional backgrounds while becoming part of an urban and modern milieu, creating a conflict. The arrival of Modernity takes place at the cost of the rearrangement and modification of the traditional and familiar …

The Cross Of Christ: The Culmination Of The Paschal Mystery Celebrated In The Death And Resurrection Of Christ For The Hope Of Eternal Life, Charlius Pierre

School of Theology and Seminary Graduate Papers/Theses

This Paper focuses his reflections on the mystery of the Cross of Christ which sums up in depth his passion, his death and his resurrection, and which also reflects the culmination of the unconditional love of God the Father in his Son Jesus for humankind: “For us men and for our salvation He came down from Heaven… Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered his passion and was buried”, affirms the Council of Nicaea-Constantinople. It is in this act of Redemption that the faith of the Church is aligned, which is mandated (Mt 28:19-20) to celebrate it and to …

論《西遊記》中三女性人物形象之意義及主題呼應, Yanyuan Xu

Dissertations from all years

明代章回小說《西遊記》取材於唐朝僧人玄奘前往天竺取經之事，經過多朝流傳和創作，為其取經道途增添了不少神秘色彩。及至明代成書時增入不少女性角色，其中包括鐵扇公主、白骨精和觀音菩薩等。這些女性角色不僅是故事情節的推動者，更在不同角度上對小說的發展產生了深遠的影響，體現出對於女性多面性的看法和反思。

本研究旨在探討這三個女性角色的形象特色及其對《西遊記》的發展在小說敘述手法、佛教、道教及社會文化角度的意義，進而分析三個女性角色的形象和《西遊記》四大主題的呼應關係，如何令小說整體更豐富多樣。

本文分六章，第一章為緒論，討論研究背景、目的和方法；第二章概述《西遊記》的四大主題；第三章到第五章分別討論鐵扇公主、白骨精和觀音菩薩的形象特色、形象意義探討和與四大主題呼應的關係；最後第六章總結全文內容並重申觀點。

論秦觀詩的句法與詩境—從「詩似詞」之辯還原秦觀多元文學創作風格, Hing Wan, Angel Chan

Dissertations from all years

秦觀，北宋婉約派代表人物，其詞的創作成就無用置疑，但導致其詞名之高常掩蓋其詩名，故其詩在後世的討論度不及其詞。關於秦觀詩，因元好問對《春日》一詩的批評，於是世人常以「女郎」風格概括秦觀詩的整體風格，且偏重研究呈現嫵麗風格的詩作，對其他詩作有所忽略，基於詩莊詞媚的原則，於是產生「詩似詞」之論。

有鑑於此，本論文欲先打破此偏見，又選取具代表性的詩作，仔細分析其句法和詩境，旨在探究秦觀多元化的創作風格。本論文由四大章節組成，緒論部分將論述相關文學時代背景與文學概念，並在此基礎之上闡述本論文的研究動機、研究回顧與研究方法。第二章為「詩似詞」之辯，說明世人對秦觀詩誤讀之處，逐一釐清和解釋，並從中證明秦觀信守詩詞分畛的原則。第三章論秦觀多元的文學創作風格，以徐培均的《秦觀詩詞文選評》為依據，按順序整合出「清新嫵麗」、「清曠華潤」、「沉鬱灰暗」和「嚴重高古」四種風格，並抽取具代表性的詩作，仔細分析詩作的句法和詩境如何呈現出該藝術風格。第四章為結論部分，總結本論文的內容。

Musical Form Reconstruction In Printed And Handwritten Lead Sheets Via Optical Recognition Of Chord Symbols, Nashir A. Janmohamed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Optical music recognition (OMR) is the field of study which seeks to use computer vision to extract musical information from images. Most OMR work focuses on music symbols (such as notes, time signatures, clefs, etc.); to date, only two prior works pay attention to chord symbols (shorthand notation commonly used in jazz and popular music lead sheets to describe the harmony of the music) in musical documents. Chord symbols lay the foundation for jazz improvisation - a sequence of chord symbols is repeated during the improvisatory section, and the soloist and accompaniment (primarily, though not exclusively) use the chord symbols …

從意象分析秋瑾詞風的轉變, Hoi Yan Lee

Dissertations from all years

秋瑾是晚清著名的革命家及詞人，共著有詞39首。秋瑾多變的人生經歷影響她的創作，她年少時居於湖南，婚後遷往北京，後來赴日留學，而秋瑾的詞風亦從前期的婉約轉變為後期的尚武。前人一般以秋瑾赴日為分界線，把她的詞作分為前後二期，本文則稍作改變，將分界線提前，將其居於北京的時期劃歸為後期，來探討秋瑾詞風的轉變。

秋瑾前期詞的創作，主題皆圍繞大自然及少女情懷，多為兒女私情。遷到北京後的經歷燃起秋瑾的救國思想，認清國家正處於危亡之際，她藉詞表達自己救國的決心。秋瑾的救國情緒在赴日後更為熱熾，決心親身上戰場殺敵，最終為國捐軀，英勇就義時年僅33歲。

曾有學者指出秋瑾前後期詞的差異極大，令人難以相信是由同一詞人創作。但本文認為情況並不如此，本文從其詞作所使用的意象入手，來分析前後期詞的差異及一致性，藉以證明其一致性是主要的，仍屬同一詞人的創作。

湧浪, Wai Yee Leung

Dissertations from all years

「也許人生就是不斷在選擇、懊悔和痛苦中循環。」

一步錯、步步錯，我們在人生這局巨大的棋盤中，曾有幾何做過後悔終生的事？棋局無數，而人生卻只得匆匆一場。落子一錯，往後的棋路皆亂了陣數，回首卻是非岸，只好偏執了思想繼續在湧浪中上掙扎人生的路向，在無垠的苦海中猛烈游盪。

本作的主角，在上個世紀出生的同性戀者——許文德的人生即是如此。
然而，到底是逢一出生就注定的悲劇，抑或是個人選擇所導致的窮途末路？在這個可憐可悲可憎的人物中所探討的，是有關人生結局的哲理思想：人之所以達至今天的局面，到底是身不由己，還是自作自受？路向的選擇權，到底是緊握在手，或是從來沒有？

Queer Void: Autoethnographic Notes On Queer Melancholy And Transgender Shame, Lake Davis

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Despite the affective turn in critical and cultural communication research, there is little scholarship on the interplay of affect, identity, and self-perception among transgender and non-binary individuals as they live within and chafe against dominant cisheteronormative discourses. With the understanding that affective sensations are products of acculturation and often reflect the demands of broader society, this thesis focuses on the sensation of shame within transgender bodies as a product of the imposition of categorical identifications onto individuals whose bodies, minds, and desires are rendered incoherent within the dominant cisheteronormative frame. Through qualitative autoethnography grounded in feminist, critical, and Queer theories, …

Forming The Conscience Of Young Vietnamese, Thien Duc Vu

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Many current theories (e.g., individualism, materialism, relativism, etc.) exalt individual freedom as an absolute. They ignore the voice of universal truth as a principle of conscience and instead place conscience underneath individual choice. The concept of individual freedom in this way is influencing the conscience of many young Vietnam people to make decisions that destroy and jeopardize moral human life (e.g., abortion, transgender, same-sex marriage, murder, etc.). Educating young people to see themselves as God’s children by forming their conscience is an urgent obligation for the Vietnamese Catholic Church. Thus, my PSP is to follow past practices of the Church’s …

Belonging In The Borderlands: Questioning Catholic Ethics, Molly Greening

Dissertations

If colonialism is a structure, not an event, then special attention must be paid to the pastas well as the legacies of colonial domination that continue into the present. While Pope Francis has recently called for “overcoming colonizing mentalities” through the lens of what he calls “integral ecology,” crucial aspects of the colonial paradigm remain neglected or underexamined in this approach: sexuality, gender, and the negotiation of religious difference. After reviewing the theological-ethical negotiations that occurred at the beginning of colonization of the Americas, this dissertation proposes a narrative ethical model of reflection that brings Catholic ethics into conversation with …