Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cougars And Lambs, Lonna Adams

Theses

"Cougars and Lambs is an original novella written for my Master of Arts thesis in Creative Writing. The heroine of the story has escaped an abusive relationship and chooses to hide out in a small Northern Californian town. She opens a cafe and gets to know the locals in this tightly knot community. Unfortunately, her abuser tracks her down and is hell-bent on destroying her new life and possessing her once more. This story deals with crimes against women and the lives it affects.(This novella is actually 115 pages and just under 30,000 words. However, in order to fit the …

Revitalizing Lagrange, Jessie Johnson

Theses

LaGrange Mountain is located in Colbert County, Alabama, approximately sixteen miles from the University of North Alabama. The mountain is the site of a prehistoric bluff shelter used by Native Americans, Alabama’s first chartered college-- LaGrange College--as well as a nineteenth century village that included a school for women, and, today is the location of a distillery that is owned by the Dawson family. The LaGrange Living History Association currently manages the college site, which includes an open-air museum that explores early pioneer life and Civil War history as it connects to LaGrange College. The current interpretation of the site …

Analyzing The Use Of Plain Language In Brief Summaries On Clinicaltrials.Gov, Megan J. Eddington

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

ClinicalTrials.gov is a database designed to help clinical researchers make their research publicly available. The clinical trials registered on the database each include a brief summary, which is meant to be a short description that the public can easily understand. In September 2022, ClinicalTrials.gov published a "Plain Language Checklist for Lay Brief Summaries" on their website, which identifies plain language best practices intended to help investigators craft summaries that can be readily understood by the public. This thesis assesses the impact of the checklist on the language use in the brief summaries in the year following the checklist's publication. The …

(Plant)Ing Traditional Roots: Exploring An Impact Of Environmental Shifts On Traditional Phytotherapy Practices In The Cusco Region Of Perú, Nicole Elizabeth Wilmot

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the potential outcomes of environmental shifts on plant-based medical practices in the Cusco region of Peru. Located in the Andes mountain range, at a high elevation, the environment varies immensely, specifically in the various types of native plants in the region. Historically, using plants as natural forms of medicine or healthcare has been deeply rooted in many indigenous communities, traditions, and cultures globally. Environmentally, there have been potential changes and shifts in temperature, water, and soil that affect the nutrition and health of plants to maintain their beneficial properties. Due to various factors, adaptations or shifts to …

Recovering And Reclaiming Linguistic And Cultural Identities: Revealing Skoo Haints Through The Black Storytelling Tradition, Lisa Marie Westbrooks

Wayne State University Dissertations

This qualitative study uses the first person, “I” to explore the Black Storytelling Tradition as method and methodology. As a Black scholar I centered my grandfather’s empirical knowledge of haints (a metaphor for demoralizing, oppressive, colonizing, and assimilating societal and educational practices upheld by the dominant class) and my empirical teacher knowledge as an American Descendant of Slavery (ADOS) as the site of inquiry. In utilizing the Black Storytelling Tradition, I share interconnected stories, poems, dreams, “memorys”, “rememorys”, stream of consciousness, and sketches that demonstrate how haints shaped the navigation of my heritage language (African American Language, AAL) and my …

Red Curtain Rivalry, Amy Lytle

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Two community theaters in the same city are accidentally putting on the same musical at the same time due to a publishing company's error. The members of the dueling troupes have to untangle the mess--the show must go on, of course! Between big misunderstandings, a few shenanigans (or hijinks, as some may say), and a lot of lessons learned, watch as each company battles to win the Red Curtain Rivalry and prove themselves the best production of "A Doll's House: The Musical!" that the community theatre community has ever seen.

Applying Girls' Studies To Contemporary Theatre And New Play Development, Sophia Menconi

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Girls’ Studies is a relatively new academic field characterized by its focus on the complexity of girlhood experiences and understanding girl as a unique social identity separate from the notion of future women. In bringing Girls' Studies theory into the work of theatre scholarship and new play development, I present a framework for the interdisciplinary field of Girls' Theatre Studies. Chapter One is an exploration of girlhood presentations in contemporary theatre through a postfeminist lens. Examining the theatrical manifestations of the "female victim-hero” in contemporary presentations of girlhood, I argue that girl audiences are able to feel with and through …

Le Juif Caché : Analyse Filmique Du Personnage De Vinz Dans La Haine, Viviana Freyer

Senior Honors and Award-Winning Theses

No abstract provided.

Direction Of The Play: "A Wrinkle In Time", Kaitlin Webster

All Graduate Projects

This paper details the research, process, and production of a theatrical work in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master in Theater Production. The production central to this piece is a high school performance of the play A Wrinkle In Time by Morgan Gould. Section 1 outlines the pre-production parameters and play selection. Section 2 deeply analyzes the story, setting, and production design. Beyond script analysis, this section contains a lot of research connected to the original book by Madeleine L’Engle, initially published in 1962. This production was set in 1960. Much research is focused on the historical context and …

Direction And Technical Supervision Of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Laura Williams

All Graduate Projects

This project contains the research, application, performance, and final reflection of the entire production process of A Mid-Summer Nights Dream at Fairhaven Middle School from November 2023 through May 2024 by Laura Williams and the students and faculty of Bellingham School District involved in A Mid-Summer Nights Dream. The document includes character and visual production research, historical context and significance, student learning goals regarding the production as a unit, documentation of the production period and post-production reviews.

Project Portfolio: Raft: Rise Above The Flood Of Tears A Mental Health Resource, Rebecca Hald

Doctor of Leadership

Struggles with mental health have had a history of being ignored, condemned, or relegated to a lack of faith by the Church. Rather than finding a place of hope, those who struggle have often found a place of condemnation. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise globally in mental health struggles. Pastors faced a unique challenge ministering during this season and there has been a great toll on the mental health of pastors. Considering the historic stance of the church on mental health, rise in mental health struggles in pastors post- COVID, and having been …

40-Day Fit, A Journey For Heroes, Michael B. O'Neill

Doctor of Leadership

This project is a collective portfolio of discovery and development that explores the intersection of societal health and the vitality of the church, recognizing a state of decline in both areas. This critical, yet often overlooked issue, is the foundation of this research-driven initiative. It is a practical process of diagnosis and treatment of a problem or an opportunity, in context, leading to application. The portfolio project represents a journey of discovery and reframing, where research methods, strategic objectives, and project milestones guide the identification of needs, problems, and opportunities. These elements serve as the driving forces behind crafting solutions …

The Holy Imagination Of God: An Invitation To Dissent: Fostering Inclusive Theology For Holistic Understanding, Justice, And Liberation, Daron George

Doctor of Leadership

The Western American Evangelical theological tradition has been marred by expressions of homophobia, misogyny, racism, and a problematic alignment with political power. This prevailing theological stance, lacking in inclusivity and imagination, has hindered a holistic understanding of faith and justice, precipitating a crisis within many evangelical churches. This project proposes a novel pathway for those disillusioned with or departed from the evangelical church, commonly referred to as ex-evangelicals.

Central to this project is the exploratory question: “What was in God’s imagination in the beginning?” While not claiming to discern God's intentions definitively, this inquiry has yielded insights valuable to the …

The Art Of Re-Presenting : Power And Agency For Black Women Amid Trauma, Oppression And Everyday Life, Diane Carol Vermette

Wayne State University Theses

In this thesis, the work and lives of seven Black American women artists who created artwork in the twentieth century are explored to discover how they have used their work to represent Black women in America. Using four critical concepts: Double Consciousness, First, Second, and Third Wave Feminism, Black Feminist Thought, and Intersectionality, several critical questions are answered in order to discover the historical and social context in which they worked and how this affected their ability to reflect the lives, struggles, hopes, and identities of themselves and other Black women. Using the word re-presenting as a signifier of how …

Give Them Bread, Mara E. Kneafsey

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The title, Give Them Bread, is based off a quote by Roman poet, Juvenal: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” The story contains elements of horror, dream-like imagery, and surrealism—a mode of art that, topically, emerged in the early 20^th century. It contains accounts of Italian history, references to commedia dell’arte, and inspired by Italian literary works such as Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Curzio Malaparte’s macabre novels, Kaputt and La Pelle. The grander purpose of Give Them Bread is to examine the meaning of truth in a political, moral, philosophical, spiritual, and …

Too Old For Monsters : A Collection Of Stories, L. A. Hause

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, “We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?” In my collection of short stories, Too Old for Monsters, I hold out my hands to every reader—the lonely and suffering person, the uncertain and wavering, the joyous and the brave, the growing and the stalling, and the myriad in-betweens. Writing explores the human experience, but this collection also explores the tangled mess of life beyond the merely human. These stories address the bone-saw sharp ache of loss and …

An Investigation Of Empathy In Hcd, Zoey Lofgren

Scripps Senior Theses

Abstract

In this study, we investigated empathy within a human-centered design context. While empathy is a well-researched subject within the field of psychology, there is little experimental research on its application in design. As such, the term “empathy” is often thrown around with a lack of clarity about what it actually means in design courses. Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon that allows us to respond to and understand others’ emotions, but it is unable to be “turned on.” This study specifically aims to address the question of whether or not empathy is actually used within design. Participants completed two …

Subjectivity As A Predictor Of Adjective Ordering Preferences For Heritage Spanish Speakers, Louise Anne Schiele

Scripps Senior Theses

Adults, as well as children, tend to present adjective ordering preferences in their use of multi-adjective strings. For example, the ordering of “big blue bird” rather than “blue big bird” is reliably preferred for speakers of English. Subjectivity has been shown to be a robust predictor of these adjective ordering preferences, where less subjective adjectives are preferred closer to the noun. Still, much of the previous work on adjective ordering preferences has centered a monolingual experience, and has not considered if multilingual speakers differ in their presentation of these preferences, in any of the languages they speak. This study focused …

Demiana Ibrahim's Senior Recital: Music Across Continents And Centuries, Demiana Ibrahim

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis contains the recording and program notes of Demiana Ibrahim's Senior Recital in partial Completion of the Music major on the Performance track. The music performed is from a wide variety of composers, in addition to two transcribed from orchestral renditions by the performer herself. Beyond the composers expected in the Western canon, this performance includes music of North African origin, and highlights the first mainstream successful African American classical composer.

Understanding Dictators' Violent Repression And How It's Remembered, Juliet Welk

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the use of violent repression by dictators and the ways in which that violence is remembered, particularly through the lenses of literature and film. The first chapter will deal with the questions of when dictators choose to use violence as opposed to other forms of repression and against whom the violence is used. To do so, it will employ select cases to test a number of possible answers. The second chapter, written in Spanish, will analyze the memory of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, focusing on the empowerment of previously-silenced voices. The third chapter, written in Italian, …

Fabriquer La Reine: Les Limites Et Pouvoir De La Mode De Marie Antoinette, Hannah Murphy

Scripps Senior Theses

Cette thèse focalise sur comment Marie Antoinette utilisait la mode d'obtenir et maintenir le pouvoir de son règne. En outre, elle focalise sur la façon dont la reine créait les symboles influencés, et comment le perdre de ses symboles a causé sa ruine.

The Holy Abject: The Narrative Arc Of Female Christian Martyrdom And Its Implications For Subjecthood In The Roman Empire, Gillian Murdock Gardner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis aims to utilize modern critical theory to reveal how the hagiographies of early female Christian martyrs follow a standardized narrative arc. The martyr’s body is hyperfeminized, transformed, and eventually eclipsed in a simultaneous process of unbecoming in the corporeal realm and becoming in a divine register. The martyr’s augmented femininity signals her ability to endure as far as womens’ abject position in the Empire allows, while her bodily transformation conveys a transgression of the ontological pairings of active masculinity and passive femininity that govern Roman social order. Finally, the martyr’s death communicates an imperial attempt to reestablish the …

Destiny's Cultural And Spiritual Healing: The Practice Of Care And Unlearning In Choreographing, Destiny Rivera-Gomez

Scripps Senior Theses

This research thesis reflects on the choreographic practices of care and unlearning that were implemented in choreographing a piece on personal narratives of immigration, indigeneity, conformity, rejection and celebration of ethnic and cultural pride. The author is a danzante of the Danza Azteca ceremonial practice. She explains the importance of handling the art form with care by learning its history and unlearning the misconstrued histories that have been told about the Mexica and Nahua people who practice the ceremonial danza. Touching on the history of the genocide of the Mexica people who were historically named and referred as the Aztecs. …

To Be A Woman Is To Perform: How Gender And Womanhood Are Discussed Through Shakespeare’S Use Of Mythology, Haley Kerner

Scripps Senior Theses

In an essay called ‘Shakespeare’s Ovid’, scholar Johnathan Bate wrote that “the first encounter between the English dramatist and the Roman poet probably occurred in the classroom of the grammar school at Stratford-upon-Avon” (Ovid, Golding, Bate, xli). Of course, the two would continue to meet many times in the concluding years. Shakespeare would have long conversations with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, especially through the voice of his characters as they jumped back and forth from his mind to the page. Shakespeare would invoke Ovid in most of his plays and many of his sonnets, guiding his readers and audience through the Roman …

A Walk In The Woods, Caitlin Mclean

Theses and Dissertations

A connection with nature fosters increased appreciation, admiration, and responsibility toward the natural environment, thus encouraging the mindful use of its resources and preservation of both species and their habitats. Defined by Mayer and Frantz (2004) as an “experiential sense of oneness with the natural world”, this connection is more important now than ever in this highly digital era. Studies indicate that limited exposure to nature can negatively impact the activation of neural pathways associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors (Chawla, 2020), while further research shows that engagement with the outdoors during childhood as a significant life experience (Chawla, 1998), …

Te Wakahuia: Coming To Know Lineage Through Dance Improvisation And Archival Poetics, Harrison Cook

Theses : Honours

This practice led research project is an investigation of archiving and returning to my own Māori relationality held within my patrilineal ancestral lineage. Connecting with and remembering my ancestor John Wynter, the research engages with creative responses and archival poetics to examine an emerging autobiographical improvised practice. The thesis is crafted as a triptych, a body of work that has three parts which each in their own way capture the returning moment to my Māori ancestry. Each part acts as a korerorero… a conversation… which is entangled and weaved within the thesis of the coming to know and the …

Beyond Coming Out And Queer Tragedy : How Julie Ann Peters, Becky Albertalli, Adam Silvera, And Aiden Thomas Navigate Through The Spectrum Of Queer Representation, Jacqueline Carey

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In recent years, readers, critics and activists have recognized the importance of more inclusive storytelling, especially in young adult literature. This thesis explores how Julie Peters, Becky Albertalli, Aiden Thomas, and Adam Silvera diversify queer representation within the realm of young adult literature. Drawing on literary analysis, queer theory, and sociocultural perspectives, this thesis will explore how queer representation manifests in each of these works to challenge and complicate representational norms. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversations surrounding the importance of having diverse stories that foster a more inclusive literary environment.

Playing With Every Sense Of The Word : Lolita Through The Lens Of Jacques Derrida, Noelle Marie Florio

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This essay ties both the repetition and doubling found in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita with the art of retelling to find a means of a center origin in Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” This essay argues how unreliable narration works to substitute and redefine a center origin of/for the novel, and in doing so, pulls the reader further from any reliable foundation from which to draw conclusions. Humbert Humbert, the protagonist, employs what readers recognize as Derrida’s theory of deconstruction not only to disorient readers of Lolita, but to provide a sort of …

Exploring Instability In Dream-Based Narratives : A Comparative Analysis Of “Vanilla Sky” And "Inception", Sara Glemaud

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis aims to dissect the deliberate destabilization that emerges from Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky and Christopher Nolan’s Inception. By stripping away stabilizing elements and weaving intricate dream sequences, Nolan and Crowe craft a cinematic experience that blurs the distinction between reality and imaginary. The means in which Nolan and Crowe execute this is through several ways. Firstly, through the exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the characters' bodies and minds within the dream narrative. Secondly, through the deliberate creation of spatial and temporal instability, which blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy or the imaginary. Lastly, both films deliberately …

Beyond Print : The Web Of Egan’S Narrative Universe, Cassandra Sardo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Jennifer Egan’s website greatly rewards readers and literary critics interested in A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House. It hosts an interactive timeline filled with details like when and where she wrote each chapter of Goon Squad, a digital counterpart to her famous PowerPoint chapter, and excerpts from her handwritten first drafts of The Candy House. These digital epitexts, however, have been largely overlooked by critics, and a comprehensive analysis and close reading of Egan’s work in this important context remains uncharted territory. My thesis aims to bridge this gap by exploring the technological elements within Egan’s …