Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Following The Thread: Maria Lai’S 1981 Legarsi Alla Montagna, Claire Borre

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Maria Lai’s (1919-2013) Legarsi alla montagna (1981), a three-day, relational project in which seventeen miles of ribbon were wound through the Sardinian town of Ulassai. In its conception, execution, and legacy, Lai’s project represented a significant challenge to traditional monumentality.

Negotiating Sacred Space: Monastic Endurance And The Spatial Politics Of Sistematizare In 1980s Bucharest, Symantha G. Byrd

Theses and Dissertations

Under Ceaușescu's 1980s Sistematizare program, Bucharest's Orthodox monasteries sustained sacred life through "negotiated resilience": ritual repetition and spatial adaptation under surveillance and constrained visibility. Văcărești, Mihai Vodă, and Antim map a spectrum—erasure, relocation/concealment, and institutional negotiation—complicating binaries of resistance and collaboration.

Fugitive Formalisms: Strategies Of Dissemblance And Dissent In The Work Of Queer-Identifying Artists, 1970–Present, Rowan Diaz-Toth

Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing case studies of works by Hélio Oiticica, Scott Burton, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres as points of departure, this thesis puts forth a speculative historical framework for reconsidering queer art practices up through the present day in opposition to regimes of visibility and transparency, exploring the subversive, fugitive potential of non-representational formalisms.

Rhetorical Awareness And Vision In The Four Speeches Of Ellison’S Invisible Man, Asif Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates Ralph Ellison’s account of rhetoric’s role in establishing, disguising, and contesting racism in the early- and mid-twentieth-century United States. The thesis is structured around four pivotal public orations by the protagonist of Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. Drawing on Ellison’s private letters and essays to further illuminate his concern for the relationship between speech, public engagement, and self-perception, I propose that Ellison’s novel dramatizes some ways that shifts in speech style, technique, and addressee enable intellectual development and political efficacy. Even techniques that initially appear self-sabotaging and “blind,” Ellison suggests, have the potential to develop into politically …

The Decadent Bible: Biblical Intertextuality In Flaubert’S Herodias And Wilde’S Salome, Shoshana Mintz

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that Gustave Flaubert’s Hérodias and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé incorporate biblical intertextuality throughout their work as a means to showcase Decadent technique and themes. Both authors weave direct quotations from biblical sources such as the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Revelation, and Acts into their texts, layering biblical passages with themes of excess, eroticism, and decay central to the Decadent movement. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, I show how these biblical fragments intersect with narrative voice to destabilize meaning and form a unique, new work of writing that intertwines their own words with biblical …

O Esqueleto De Um Romance, Lanna Leite

Theses and Dissertations

In O Esqueleto de um Romance: The Film (2025), a Berlin legal dispute between a mayor and evangelicals sparks filmmaker Lanna Leite’s reflection on faith, memory, and belief. Using archival, 16mm, and 8mm footage, the experimental film frames filmmaking as an ephemeral, performative practice resisting closure and conventional narrative finality.

The Double Gaze: Weaving Historical, Decolonial, And Indigenous Perspectives Through Maruch Sántiz Gómez’S Creencias., Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen

Theses and Dissertations

The Double Gaze examines Maruch Sántiz Gómez’s series Creencias (1994-2000) at the intersection of sociopolitical changes in southeastern Mexico and the 1995 Johannesburg Biennial. Drawing on Rita Segato’s “capillary disobedience” and the Mayan philosophy of kab’awil, the research considers Creencias as a theoretical proposal for reading Indigenous art practices.

One Stone's Journey, Satoko Saito

Theses and Dissertations

One Stone’s Journey is a participatory, experiential thirty-minute documentary about uranium. By using an embroidered world map and appealing to participants’ senses—especially touch—the project explores the possibility of telling the story of radiation, which is invisible, intangible, and silent. Uranium is a radioactive material used by the United States in the development and production of the atomic bombs during the Manhattan Project. This year, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011 was on a scale comparable to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and the threat …

"The Very Milk And Sperm Of Kindness": Democratic Pleasures And Echoes Of Intimacy In Moby-Dick And Absalom, Absalom!, Nicholas Profeta

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines homosocial relationships in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! to evaluate the ways male bonds have transformed between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how these relationships comment on the strength and possibilities of American democracy. I argue that Melville’s novel presents a utopian vision of America defined by democratic bonds developed through labor and homoerotic intimacy that cut across racial lines and melt individual identities, while Faulkner’s novel reflects many of those imagined possibilities, only to see them wither away under the weight of racial divisions. Ishmael and the crew of the Pequod embrace this erasing of self, …

"Catching Up": Christian Walker's Critical Lens, Noam Parness

Theses and Dissertations

“Catching Up” examines three bodies of photographic work that artist, critic, and curator Christian Walker (1953-2003) generated between 1984-1991. By reading each series against a corresponding text, “Catching Up” furthers an understanding of how Walker’s works reconstruct experiences and histories of race and sexuality in the United States.

I Know You Are Watching, Camilo Salas Kusulas

Theses and Dissertations

I Know You Are Watching is a short documentary film that examines the evolving history and scope of mass surveillance, and how to resist it. The film introduces two local New York City artists, Bill Brown from the Surveillance Camera Players, and Sam Lavigne, who misuse technologies designed to watch us, exposing these systems and fighting back through digital art and performance.

Blending interviews, observational footage, personal narration, archival images, and news clips from different eras, the film interrogates the mechanisms of control, and positions art as a method of both understanding and talking back to surveillance.

Capturing The Spirit Of Childhood: An Analysis Of Robert Henri’S Portraits Of Children, Alex C. Maccaro

Theses and Dissertations

Robert Henri (1865-1929) is perhaps best known as the prominent leader of the turn-of-the century American movement The Eight, commonly known as “the Ashcan School,” and as a leading teacher in the United States during the early twentieth century. However, his artistic output as a portrait painter, particularly of children, is also significant. Beginning in 1904 and throughout his career as an artist, Henri painted hundreds of images of children in the various foreign or remote locales to which he traveled, often depicting the same subject in multiple instances. These portraits range from the roughly painted, rosy-cheeked Dutch youth of …

Juventino Rosas, Sobre Las Olas, And Their Place In Defining Mexican Music In The Porfirian Nineteenth Century, Catherine J. Langevin-Falcon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the life and music of Juventino Rosas (1868–1894), the Mexican composer whose most enduring work is Sobre las olas (1888), a Viennese-style waltz. I ask the question: Why was Sobre las olas so well-known and why does it remain beloved with audiences around the world, even today, while Rosas is hardly known outside his native Mexico? I considered historical, social and cultural factors, as well as musical events of the day, that may have had bearing on the question. I describe the broad outlines of Rosas's life and the challenges he faced as an indigenous person, composer …

An Introduction To Oral Traditions And Poetry Of The Baloches, Emran Dorrazehi

English Dissertations - Archive

There is not much known about the history and literature of the Baloches besides the translation and transliteration of Mansel Longworth Dames. Dames while serving as an official in the region wrote a book, Popular Poetry of the Baloches (1907) in two volumes. Dames translated a series of oral poetry of his subjects. This dissertation utilized 13 poems from Dames’ transliterations and employed a compensatory, creative and restorative translation to recreate their earlier states.  It is the assertion of this dissertation that the poems given to Dames by minstrels were already heavily censored to reflect Islamic, Mongol and Mughal identities. …

Enjoying The Golden Screen Of Asian American Representation In A Colorblind Era: Neoliberalism, Narrative, And Negotiation, Jered Mabaquiao

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation contributes to Asian American studies, Cinema and Media Studies, and Critical Theory by interrogating how contemporary Asian American representation is shaped by the intertwined pressures of racial politics, neoliberal market demands, and psychic life. Working across race studies, media studies, psychoanalysis, and phenomenological questions of ontology and being, the project argues that Asian American film and television cannot only be understood  through the language of popular culture representation, narrative progress, media visibility, or political inclusion. Instead, I combine such angles to examine how popular culture media participates in the contradictory production of Asian American subjectivity as culturally present …

Laila: A Doll Memoir Of 1947 Partition Of India And Pakistan, Maleeha Malik, Maleeha Fatima Malik

Children's Literature (MFA) Theses

This abstract examines a creative and critical work centered on the 1947 Partition of India, which displaced approximately fourteen million people and caused one million deaths. The narrative introduces Laila, an anthropomorphized doll who functions as both witness and archive, embodying the memories and traumas of multiple child survivors. Through Laila’s journey across India, Pakistan, and the diaspora, the text explores themes of identity, belonging, loss, and intergenerational memory.

Blending personal family history with historical analysis, the author situates Laila within lived experiences of migration, silence, and religious marginalization, particularly as part of the Ahmadi Muslim community. The narrative foregrounds …

From Dred Scott To Barbara: Birthright Citizenship, Racial Exclusion, And The Enduring Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Jenna A. Milbrodt

CMC Senior Theses

The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has guaranteed birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States for hundreds of years. Yet, President Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order threatens to strip that right from children born to parents unlawfully in the country and temporary visitors. This order, if permitted to stand, would change the definition of US citizenship and render countless children stateless persons without citizenship rights. This paper examines whether birthright citizenship in the US, properly understood, extends to children of unlawful immigrants and temporary visitors. To answer this question, three time periods of change in citizenship rights …

Always Green, Ever Living, Anna Plante

Honors Theses

The Creative Honors Thesis, “Always Green, Ever Living," is an experimental essay film that explores the complexities and contradictions of environmental conservation, up against the contemporary climate crisis. The film is centered on Muir Woods National Monument and follows a young girl's relationship with nature. The film reflects on how protected natural spaces are influenced by systems of funding, access, and interpretation, as well as broader environmental pressures. Using a combination of archival footage, original imagery, narration, and ambient sound, the project adopts the essayistic structure that prioritizes reflection over linear storytelling.

Genre Based Analysis Of Sustainability In Contemporary U.S. Film Production: Inception Or Illusion?, Tanner Ennis

Interdisciplinary Studies | Senior Theses

Anthropogenic activity is actively leading to environmental degradation, highlighting the need for large industries to take responsibility for their environmental impact, particularly the film industry. While sustainable practices in the film industry such as virtual production, recycling of set construction materials, or the use of renewable energy present opportunities to improve sustainability, there is still a substantial amount of progress to be made. For example, research has demonstrated that increases in production budget correlate with higher carbon dioxide emissions, with fuel, utilities, and travel acting as the top contributors (Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, 2022). Conversation among the scholarly community is centered …

Leadership And Creative Placemaking In Central Appalachia: Morehead, Kentucky, Toni C. Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

In rural Appalachia, longstanding patterns of extractive economic development, coupled with limited public investment and uneven institutional support, have contributed to persistent economic stagnation and a diminished sense of pride among residents. These conditions reflect deeper structural challenges, including economies shaped by resource extraction and external control. Addressing these conditions is critical to fostering economic growth, promoting cultural heritage, and enhancing overall well-being in the region. By cultivating resilient communities, leaders can create environments in which both the economy and local pride can thrive, contributing to a more prosperous and unified Appalachian region.

This study investigates the organizational and leadership …

Opera Houses In Aberdeen, Huron, And Watertown, Sd: 1880-1910s, Janet M. Meyer

Dissertations and Theses

In the 1880s, many newcomers arrived in Dakota Territory for a new start in Aberdeen, Huron, and Watertown. Their arrival coincided with the popularity of opera houses, so it was not surprising that entrepreneurs built opera houses in these new towns. The early opera houses included several benefits. They provided important gathering places for growing communities to hold meetings and social functions. The settler-colonial society included people from foreign countries and eastern states. Opera houses were also beneficial by providing familiar shows and concerts, perhaps some shows the residents previously enjoyed in their homes back east. Knowing that an entertainment …

Not For A Profit., Taylor Wiens

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

My body of artwork explores the deep-rooted traditions and emotional resonance of life on a three-generation family farm. By merging my expertise in graphic design, ceramics, printmaking, and glaze research, I have developed a unique method of printing on clay with underglazes, creating layered and nostalgic imagery that tells the heartfelt stories of my farm family. My inventive forms—tiles, architectural structures reminiscent of farm buildings, portraits, and figures—capture the overlooked yet essential aspects of rural life, portraying both the relentless challenges farmers face and the profound sense of belonging and tradition inherent in farm life.

Earth toned clay represents the …

‘Signature Gestures’: Anchoring The Black Diasporic Feminist Praxis In English Studies, Sonia Adams

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation study explores how the Black Diasporic Feminist Praxis (BDFP) serves as a methodology for theorizing, critiquing, and teaching literature by women writers of the Black Diaspora. In order to position the BDFP, I theorize ‘Blackness’ and ‘Indigeneity’ as modes of identity formation and the Black Diaspora (BD) as a fluid, inclusive racialized geographical space. Black Diasporic Feminism (BDF) is an epistemology that validates Black and Black Indigenous identity and life experiences across geography, race, gender, and class. I use the BDFP to examine how Black women writers from England, Australia, Canada, and the United States create a ‘Collage …

Closest Yet Farthest: Zhou Li And The Boundaries Of Contemporary Chinese Art, Langcheng Zhou

Pomona Senior Theses

The global visibility of contemporary Chinese art has been formed by politically legible or culturally identifiable styles, which often explicitly reference social critique, political history, or traditional Chinese visual elements and media. Because of the rapid expansion of the global art market, these visual identifiers quickly became the most effortless and efficient determinants for an artwork’s representativeness of the contemporary Chinese art scene. This framing undeniably helped international audiences to establish a recognizable narrative, but has also narrowed the range of practices that define the field. This thesis argues that Zhou Li’s abstract practice expands the boundaries of what contemporary …

Prodigal Daughters: The Crisis Facing Generation Z Women, Kristin Brouwer

Doctor of Ministry

Why are Generation Z women (born approximately between 1997 and 2012), increasingly leaving organized Christian religion in the United States? This question became personal in my office at a Christian liberal arts college, where national statistics took on the faces and stories of students I teach and mentor. For the first time in American history, young men are now more religious than young women, and nearly four in ten Gen Z women identify as religiously unaffiliated. Yet their departure is not primarily a rejection of God; it is a rejection of distorted representations of God, faith, and church.

Drawing on …

The Importance Of Mental Health Education In The Black Church: Exploring Mental Health And Trauma Through A Biblical Lens, Navita Kj Johnson-Belcher

Doctor of Ministry

The Black church has historically served as a cornerstone for African American spiritual and communal life yet faces significant challenges in addressing mental health needs rooted in generational trauma and systemic oppression. This dissertation explores the crisis of silence surrounding mental health in Black church contexts, where stigma, pastoral limitations, and historical mistrust of institutional systems create barriers to healing. Through examination of biblical perspectives on suffering, church-based mental health programs, and emerging digital ministry models, this study demonstrates that online platforms can effectively integrate trauma-informed care with theological education.

The research presents a digital, trauma-informed, biblically-based, mental health education …

Significant Women: From Spiritual Narratives To Modern Advocacy, Mary Melissa Henderson

Doctor of Ministry

Significant Women addresses the need for congregational advocates who support and empower women in ministry. This advocacy is rooted in a renewed perspective on women’s roles within both Scripture and the modern church.

Research reveals that tradition, rather than theology, is the primary catalyst for gender limitations in the Church—often driven by a fear of disrupting established operations. Another key insight is that Jesus acts as the "antithesis of patriarchy," intentionally elevating and empowering women to carry the Gospel. While academic resources are plentiful, a significant "white space" exists for non-academic resources designed for laypeople and everyday churchgoers. Stakeholders most …

Good Grief: Implementing Solace And Support Of Bereavement Ministry Within A Resource-Constrained Church In Chicago, Illinois, Celeste Haynes

Doctor of Ministry

Grief is a universal human experience that occurs at some point in everyone's life. This body of work explores the various benefits of implementing a bereavement support ministry in a resource-constrained church in Chicago, Illinois. The research will outline how a bereavement ministry can offer emotional support, spiritual guidance, and provide educational resources, community building, outline a budget proposal, and a grant opportunities, partnership with local agencies, training for volunteers, and practical help to bereaved members in a church, as well as the bereaved community.

Bereavement is an inevitable part of the human experience, and churches have historically served as …

Visual Word Recognition And The Role Of Diacritics: Evidence From Arabic Vowelization., Maram Alharbi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of vowelization diacritics in Arabic visual word recognition and their contribution to early stages of lexical processing. Across writing systems, diacritical marks differ in their functional role and in whether they are part of letter identity, raising fundamental questions about how such features are encoded during word recognition. Arabic provides a particularly informative testing ground for these questions: vowelization diacritics in this language carry rich phonological information yet are systematically absent from the texts that skilled readers encounter daily. This interaction between the linguistic value of vowelization and its near-total omission in naturalistic reading positions …

Everyone's Table: Growing Polycultural Leadership Through Mutually Facilitated Peer Learning, Joel Bert Zantingh

Doctor of Leadership

Despite multiculturalism being an official policy in Canada since 1971, significant challenges remain in achieving genuine belonging among immigrant communities, particularly within leadership structures. This project responds to the marginalization of diasporic and newer-to-Canada leaders within evangelically aligned Canadian organizations, focusing specifically on leadership culture.

Grounded in biblical and theological scholarship that advocates for unity amid cultural diversity, this project articulates a normative and interpretive framework rooted in the Christian theological tradition. It also integrates insights from sociological and organizational studies that examine power, ethnocentrism, and the psychological experiences of visible minorities within dominant cultural contexts. I found how implicit …