Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Shared Words, Divided Worlds: Moral Language And The Struggle For Meaning At The Claremont Colleges During The Vietnam War, 1965-1969, Haley Freeth

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the Vietnam War-era campus conflicts at the Claremont Colleges as a profound struggle over the meaning and ownership of moral and political language. Rather than interpreting antiwar and prowar activism as expressions of fundamentally opposed value systems, this study argues that students and administrators alike engaged in an ongoing contest to define ideals such as democracy, responsibility, and conscience. Through a micro-historical lens, the project analyzes how these contested vocabularies were invoked, reinterpreted, and performed in protests, counter-protests, and administrative policies. Drawing from a wide array of archival sources—including student newspapers, protest ephemera, administrative records, and visual …

The Epistemic Limits Of Evolutionary Debunking: An Evaluation Of Evolutionary Arguments Against Moral Realism, José Ernesto Guzmán

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Evolutionary debunking arguments contend that the evolutionary origins of moral belief undermine the epistemic standing of moral realism. Sharon Street's Darwinian Dilemma and Richard Joyce's genealogical undercutting argument represent the two most influential formulations of this challenge. This project subjects both to sustained internal critique and finds them wanting. The central contribution is a bridge-requirement framework identifying four principles (BR₁ through BR₄) that any evolutionary debunking argument must supply to move validly from genealogical premises to epistemic conclusions. BR₁ connects genealogy to justification. BR₂ connects population-level evolutionary explanations to individual-level epistemic consequences. BR₃ connects semantic features of moral discourse to …

What It Takes To "Become" Another: An Account Of Immersive Character Imagining, Ariana G. Didomenico

Scripps Senior Theses

Often, when one engages with fiction, one imaginatively portrays the mental states of the characters within said fiction. Typically, when one does this, one relates to the character as separate from oneself, and is consciously aware that what they are imagining is fictional. However, this is not always the case: when one engages in what I will call ‘immersive c-imagining’, one feels roughly as though a character’s thoughts and feelings are one’s own. Furthermore, there is a special subtype of immersive c-imagining, ‘inferential immersive c-imagining’, which occurs when one immersively c-imagines while, at the same time, efficiently and accurately inferring …

Why We Can’T “Get Over It”: Offense And The Moral Limits Of Epistocracy, Yui Kurosawa

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether an epistocracy — rule of the knowledgeable — could ever be implemented as a morally permissible alternative to democracy. Building on Jason Brennan’s instrumental critique of democracy in Against Democracy, I lay out his argument that systematic voter ignorance undermines the epistemic capacity of “one person, one vote” to reliably generate just and well-informed political decisions. Brennan argues that epistocratic institutions, which allocate political power according to political competence rather than by equal distribution, are better positioned to achieve such decisions and therefore more legitimate than democracy.

Epistocracy, as an aspirational alternative, may indeed be promising; …

Hegemonic Microtonality: Decolonizing The Soundscape Of Music Theory Pedagogy, Ash K. Wetty

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how Western music theory pedagogy—long organized around tonal and twelve-tone equal-temperament frameworks—structures both what is taught and how students are trained to listen. Through a literature review tracing the historical construction of tonal universality in undergraduate curricula, the project argues that dominant models of music theory reproduce broader epistemic hierarchies inherited from Western conservatory traditions. Situating these histories within my own experience as a student navigating institutional listening norms, the thesis combines critical self-reflection with ethnographic research conducted across five liberal arts institutions, including the CBB consortium and JanPlan research at Wesleyan University and Amherst College. Rather …

From Sorochyntsi To St. Petersburg: National Identity In The Works Of Nikolai Gogol, Gary Jay Kogoy Jr.

Honors Theses

Nikolai Gogol's extant works depict a man torn between his birthplace of Ukraine and the nineteenth-century milieu of Imperial Russia. Notably, he did not reveal his name for some time after publishing his first story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka; as a result, readers attributed the tales of Ukrainian life within not to Gogol, but to the charming "Ukrainian jester" persona of Rudy Panko. Even after revealing his identity and garnering respect in the St. Petersburg literary scene, his contemporaries often viewed him as sly and suspicious because of his ancestry. Perhaps due to external doubts regarding …

Racial Capitalism And Black Maritime Geography In 19th Century Portland, Maine, Jeremy Harrison

Honors Theses

Portland, Maine, is located on the rocky shores of the Atlantic Ocean and has served as home to a diverse population that has benefited from the economic and social aspects of the shipping and trading industry. This port city in one of the northernmost regions of the United States was one of the last stops for ships carrying goods before reaching the city centers of the Americas and Europe. As a result, during the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries, skilled and unskilled Black laborers from somewhat fringe regions within the Atlantic migrated to Portland in search of not …

Brewing Resilience: Cooperatives, Micro-Mills, And The Quest For Survival In Costa Rica's Changing Coffee Landscape, Leila N. Iredell

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how different organizational models in Costa Rica's coffee sector shape producers’ ability to capture value, build resilience, and sustain rural livelihoods in a rapidly changing global market. In comparing traditional cooperatives and new micro-mills, I examine specifically how control over the value chain, access to markets, and social infrastructure differ across models and what these differences mean for the farmers who depend on them. This project analyzes how the collapse of international price agreements and decades of market volatility drove producers toward new strategies, from independent processing and direct trade to coffee tourism. Costa Rica stands as …

Blood And Belonging: Remembering Massacres Of The American West In The Twentieth Century, Mountain Meadows And Sand Creek, Kenzie Burns

Honors Theses

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a turning point in mainstream America’s sense of national identity. A wave of nostalgia for the American Frontier enshrined the region’s idealized nineteenth-century past as myth. A key part of the story is romanticized violence—often depicted through cultural imagery of cowboys, gunfights, and battles with American Indians. This project seeks to understand more about how violence is represented in the cultural memory of the American Western past. Within the past twenty years, scholars of the American West have begun to incorporate the study of memory into their scholarship, frequently with how cultural …

Borrowed Mantles: Neoclassicism, Theology, And The Construction Of Authority In Phillis Wheatley-Peters, Zoe N. Lament

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how Phillis Wheatley-Peters established literary and intellectual authority within an eighteenth-century world that questioned both her authorship and her intellectual capability as an enslaved Black woman. Rather than focusing on the external validation provided by the prefatory materials to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), this study argues that Wheatley-Peters constructs authority through the poetry itself. Specifically, it explores how her use of neoclassical poetic conventions alongside Christian theological language functions to establish credibility and strengthen her moral and intellectual arguments.

Through close readings of poems including "On Being Brought from Africa to America" and …

Between Commodity And Culture: Tea Advertising As A Site Of Imperial Ideology And Anti-Colonial Resistance In India, Sydney Pascal

Honors Theses

Between the late nineteenth century and Indian independence in 1947, tea advertising became a key site through which imperial authority and Indian nationalism were negotiated. Drawing on advertisements, trade journals, and visual marketing campaigns produced from the 1880s through the 1950s, this honors thesis argues that tea advertising was a cultural and political mechanism through which the British Empire attempted to normalize imperial consumption and legitimize colonial authority. British campaigns framed tea as modern and routine while obscuring the exploitative labor systems and landscape transformations that sustained plantation production in Assam. As nationalist movements expanded in the early twentieth century, …

Digital Docent: An Analysis Of Accessibility In The Digital Music Space, Erin L. Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

The world is constantly changing and growing, most often seen through advances in technology. When it comes to the world of music, the same can be said, and digitization of musical material is moving at a faster rate than ever before. With the influence that music has on society and considering new ways of making music more accessible to the general public through the public-facing museum format, I wanted to examine how digital music museum exhibits and experiences can be made accessible and if it is possible to fully represent what an in-person exhibit can offer. In 2010, Smithsonian created …

Representation In Black Media And How It Affects Generational Mental Health, Amiya Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This article examines how negative media portrayals of Black Americans have harmed their mental health. It traces the impact of persistent stereotypes and the lack of recognition for Black achievements in the media. Each chapter explores how media—from social media to movies—reinforces outdated stereotypes originating in the antebellum era and discusses how Black Americans have challenged these narratives to assert their identity. The article also highlights positive shifts in representation within the media industry, as well as research on how racial discrimination and media depictions influence the mental health and self-esteem of Black adolescents.

Writing Against The War Machine: Wiflred Owen's Poetic Challenge To World War I Pro-War Rhetoric, Elizabeth Woods

Theses and Dissertations

Wilfred Owen, a soldier-poet who fought in World War I, is often labeled an anti-war poet, with some claiming that he was against the war in its entirety. This thesis explores the opinion that Owen is not an anti-war poet but rather that he wrote against anti-pro-war rhetoric. This includes all types of pro-war rhetoric influential in England for recruitment purposes but mainly focuses on poetry that would be published in newspapers for everyday readers to see. Owen seems to specifically resist two types of pro-war rhetoric, the myth of the German barbarian and what he called the old lie. …

Affects Of Ai In The Arts, Carolina D. Maldonado Faria

Theses and Dissertations

Art is an essential part of society, shaping culture, communication, and the digital world through forms such as music, writing, film, and animation. However, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created conflict in the creative industry. Many AI systems are trained using artists’ works without consent, raising concerns about copyright infringement, intellectual property theft, and the loss of artistic value. While AI was originally intended as a tool for innovation, it now threatens artists’ careers and profits by imitating human creativity. This issue highlights the need for ethical regulations, stronger copyright protections, and fair compensation systems so AI and …

Unmasked And Unprotected: An Autistic Poet's Journey Of Imperfect Confession, Cynthia Short

Theses and Dissertations

Cynthia Short’s thesis analyzes the consumption and contortion of neurodivergent experience across the clinical, personal, and artistic stages. Combining intersectional memoir with clinical research, traditional poetics, and spoken word experience, she weaves a first-person narrative of consumption and redefinition by systems that did not understand her. Yet, she argues that imperfect confession -done without self-knowledge, resources, or proper self-worth to resist consumption – still has its place. Her collection of twenty-nine self-authored poems serves as a testament to the growth her imperfect confession allowed, outlining her struggles with identity, clinical experimentation and economic survival in a world not meant for …

Timbral Effects Of 3d Printing Brass Wind Musical Instruments: A Comparison Between Traditional And 3d Printed Construction, Cole K. Zelman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the timbral effects that manufacturing wind instruments from thermoplastics (via 3D printing) has in comparison to traditionally made instruments. The project mainly focuses on the individual properties of different thermoplastics in comparison to traditional materials like brass. The instrument tested is a C bugle for a simple example of a brass wind instrument and is compared directly against the traditional brass construction. Results employ spectral centroid, spectrograms, and professional subjective analysis to compare the different thermoplastic test samples to the control brass bugle.

Raised On Ritalin - A Work For Concert Band Based On My Personal Experiences With Adhd Alongside A Graphic Novel By Tyler Page, Ethan Prado

Theses and Dissertations

During my time as an undergrad at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, I loved to read graphic novels, and their library had quite the collection. I lost track of how many times I made my way down to the third sub-level of the Undergraduate Library to go to the graphic novel section. In my last year at UIUC (2021-2), preparations were made to close the UGL in order for it to be renovated for their Special Collections. Essentially, they would be swapping the contents of the UGL and the Main Stacks. One time, while looking for graphic novels in …

Modernizing The Sacred: The Church’S Growing Relationship With Modernism And Salvador Dalí’S Renaissance, Emma Mandia

MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), a renowned painter from the Surrealist period, is known for his dreamlike Freudian works that challenge the traditional values of painting. However, halfway through the 20th century, he took a turn towards religious themes of Catholicism, drawing inspiration from the Renaissance. This pivot was quite shocking to the artistic community. At that time the artistic community did not view him as a religious man but rather as someone who aimed to provoke by pushing boundaries with his unconventional themes. During the same period, the Vatican began to loosen their views on modernism, which was once strictly forbidden, …

The Untold Art History Of Grillz: An Introduction Exhibition At The Ica, Helena Opuama

MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations

The Untold Art History of Grillz: An Introduction Exhibition at the ICA is a prompt multisensory exhibition scheduled to open 15th April 2028 in celebration of World Art Day, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in London, UK. The exhibition critically utilises postcolonial frameworks to explore the dismissed decorative history of dental adornment and its influence on contemporary grill design today.

Through a limited chronological selection of physical objects, holographic projections, archival photographs, oral histories, and social media contributions; the exhibition co-narrates the history of dental adornment across four historical periods. These periods include Precolonial Traditions (14th-15th century); Colonial Evolutions …

Packaging Sound: The Artistic And Cultural Significance Of Album Covers In The Golden Age Of Vinyl, Anna Stener

MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations

This dissertation examines the album cover as an artistic medium and as an art form, primarily within the context of vinyl records, situating it within art history, media history, and cultural studies. Although album covers have been central to the experience of purchasing, listening to, and collecting vinyl, they have often been treated secondarily in scholarship and by institutions. By establishing the material, cultural, and aesthetic significance of album covers, this dissertation positions them within debates on media, authorship, and boundaries of art. Through case studies on two bands, the Moody Blues and the Rolling Stones, as well as the …

Debauchery And Decorative Art: Framing The Relationship Between Dining And Material Culture In British Country And Town House Dining Rooms During The Long 18th Century, Guoyang Sun

MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations

This dissertation explores the profound effect of material culture and rituals in elite British dining interiors during the long eighteenth-century. As spaces greatly influenced by the process of museumification, they are often perceived by contemporary and historical observers as settings intended for the ostentatious display of family lineage, taste and affluence. The dining rooms of British Georgian formal houses were highly curated proto museums with huge potential for display through architectural expressions, artworks and decorative objects, however, they were more importantly extremely complex environments that require complete analysis from multiple disciplines and perspectives.

In framing the intimate relationship between dining …

Demystifying Dominican Artist Yoryi Morel And His Approach To Painting, Zoila Neris Sosa Veras

MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations

During the period between 1930-1961, the Dominican Republic experienced one of the longest and most brutal totalitarian dictatorship regimes of modern times, imposed by a tyrant named Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.1 During this period, nothing could be said or done without the consent of the so-called “Benefactor of the fatherland”. Artists' creativity and self-expressions were not allowed to be used as means to disapprove of the regime, but to please and adulate the dictator. Some artists stopped painting and some others went to live in exile. However, there was an artist whose career flourished during the era, his name is Jorge …

From Otherness To Agency: Reframing Eurocentric And Orientalist Representations In Contemporary Middle Eastern Art, Violette Wolter

MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations

This essay examines how contemporary artists from the Middle East challenge Eurocentric frameworks of representation embedded in Orientalism by proposing alternative narratives of identity, history, and resistance. This study, which draws on postcolonial theory, particularly Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincialising Europe (2000), and Hamid Dabashi's Post-Orientalism (2009), explores how artistic practices dismantle the inherited hierarchies of Orientalist knowledge and visual power. Orientalism, which generated a discourse that constructs the Orient as Europe's ‘Other,’ still fuels neo-Orientalist narratives that portray the Middle East as irrational, violent, or static. Through a close analysis of the artistic practices of artists Shirin …

Making The Invisible Visible: How Contemporary Artists Depict The Climate Crisis Through Visual And Conceptual Strategies, Isabella Ray

MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations

This dissertation examines how contemporary artists depict the environmental consequences of climate change through visual and conceptual strategies. Through the examination of different artworks: Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch (2014-2018) and Your Waste of Time (2006), John Gerrard’s Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) (2017), and Mary Mattingly’s Waterpod (2009) and Swale (2016-2020), this research analyzes how site, material choice, and civic participation create ecological awareness and model possible futures. Eliasson’s installations prompt phenomenological engagement with melting glacial ice and temporalities beyond human perception; Gerrard’s real-time simulations critique humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels through the digital presentation of a perpetual burning flag; Mattingly’s …

Unmaking The Anthropocene: Colonial Violence, Racial Visuality, And Extractive Capitalism, Jiwon Ko

MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the works of Sammy Baloji, Otobong Nkanga, and Anna Boghiguian—specifically …and to those North Sea waves whispering sunken stories (II) (2021), Solid Maneuvers (2015), and The Salt Traders (2015)— offer critical reconfigurations of the Anthropocene. Bringing together the frameworks of Black Anthropocenes and the visuality of the Anthropocene, the study argues that the environmental crisis cannot be understood as a universal human condition but must be read through the racialised geologies, extractive histories, and visual regimes inherited from colonial modernity. Through strategies of installation, performance, and speculative narration, these artists reveal the uneven material and perceptual …

Playing In The Field: Carrie Mae Weems Exploration Of Black Mobility, Through Diasporic, Temporal, And Visual Movement, Tobi Alexandra Falade

MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the notion of diaspora, as a framework to explore the use of movement within the lens-based work of Carrie Mae Weems. This study is largely carried out through Leave! Leave Now! 2022, a twenty-five-minute video installation sectioned into five parts and staged within a traditional movie theatre. The artwork explores the journey, real-life disappearance and reappearance of sharecropper Frank Weems—the artists grandfather—through a diasporic tale interwoven with critical questions about migration and its historical and future consequences. The first chapter “Diasporic Journeys”, explores enforced journeys and the diasporic experiences at large. The second chapter, “Temporal Movement”, explores …

On Liminality: Rachel Whiteread & Archiving The In-Between, Natalie Emmerman

MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations

This dissertation examines the sculptural practice of Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) through the lens of liminality, the uncanny, and the archive. By casting the negative spaces of everyday objects, domestic interiors, and monumental architecture, Whiteread materializes absence and transforms overlooked objects and spaces into solid, lasting forms. Her work destabilizes binary categories such as presence and absence, private and public, representation and abstraction, and permanence and ephemerality, exposing memory as fragile, discontinuous and often ghostly. Drawing on theoretical frameworks rooted in psychoanalysis, photography, time and space, this study explores Whiteread’s practice as a form of sculptural archivization.

Analysis is structured …

To What Extent Can Scent Enhance, Translate And Democratise Contemporary Art Exhibitions, While Simultaneously Creating Mutual Commercial Benefit?, Cosima Davenport

MA in Luxury Business Dissertations

This dissertation explored the under-examined integration of scent within contemporary art exhibitions, projected to be a market of significant growth. At present, scent’s neurological impact within memory recall and emotional stimulation are well documented by supporting physiological literature, however in the historical context of art integration it has had a complex and often marginalised relationship perceived as both a promising innovation and an over-commodified disruptor. The research sought to explore to what extent the addition of perfumes may enhance the overall experience, accessibility, and commercial potential with a range of industry professionals and consumers. Using purposive and volunteer sampling a …

Art & Luxury: Perceiving Value: How Generation Z Interprets Cultural And Social Meaning In Luxury And Art Collaborations, Michele Saad

MA in Luxury Business Dissertations

Luxury and art collaborations have evolved from rare creative experiments into a familiar part of brand storytelling, yet most research still focuses on what brands want to communicate rather than how audiences perceive these projects. This study explores how Generation Z (GZ) interprets the cultural and social value of such collaborations.

A qualitative approach was adopted, using semi-structured interviews supported by visual prompts with 16 participants aged 19 to 29. The analysis is structured around six recurring themes: artistic expression and aesthetics, social engagement and philanthropy, sustainability and environmental awareness, experiential and immersive encounters, commercial and hype-driven partnerships, and architectural …