Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Competencia Bilingüe En La Zona De Tres Fronteras: Un Estudio Sobre El Nivel De Bilingüismo Entre Habitantes De Leticia, Colombia; Tabatinga, Brasil; Y Santa Rosa De Yavarí­, Perú, Thomas A. Robins

Theses and Dissertations

Esta tesis investiga el nivel de competencia bilingüe (la capacidad de un hablante para comprender y producir en dos idiomas) de los habitantes de la región de Tres Fronteras, Sudamérica. Tres Fronteras es el nombre de la zona trifronteriza entre las ciudades de Leticia, Colombia; Tabatinga, Brasil; y Santa Rosa de Yavarí, Perú. En Tres Fronteras, las personas de los tres países pueden cruzar libremente de un país a otro, lo que crea situaciones de contacto lingüístico entre el español y el portugués. Debido a esa situación de contacto lingüístico, muchas personas de las tres ciudades tienen al menos un …

Das Gewicht Der Kultur: Eine Untersuchung Der Beziehung Zwischen Stereotyp Und Außenpolitik, Anhand Einer Fallstudie Zu Heidelberg, Kipling Newman

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Die Stereotypen und Mythen, die Narrative von “Kulturen” als einheitliche und monolithische Gruppen von Individuen konstruieren, formulieren und beschränken gleichzeitig die individuellen Verhaltensweisen sowie politischen Maßnahmen, die in einer bestimmten Kultur möglich und akzeptabel sind. Diese Studie versucht, den Einfluss von kulturellen Stereotypen auf außenpolitische Entscheidungen anhand einer qualitativen Fallstudienanalyse zu beleuchten. Genauer gesagt, untersucht diese Arbeit die dominanten kulturellen Vorstellungen von Russen und Deutschen zwischen der Vereinigung Deutschland 1871 und der russischen Oktoberrevolution 1917, mit einem Fokus auf die deutsche Stadt Heidelberg, weil sie damals ein Nexus von russisch-deutschen interkulturellen Interaktionen war. Mittels eines konstruktivistischen Interpretationsansatzes werden die vor …

Final Songs: Music And The Voice In Nier Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139..., Haden Douglass Plouffe

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the soundtrack to the 2021 game NieR: Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139…, examining its approach to character leitmotif and the centrality of the voice as an expressive and dramatic layer of the soundtrack. The NieR series has received considerable acclaim for its music, with 2017’s NieR: Automata gaining widespread critical and commercial success that has led to a wave of scholarly analysis of it. This document analyzes Replicant, the previous game in the series, through the experiential framework of a player, highlighting how the game recontextualizes themes through repeated playthroughs, and on the strong link that the soundtrack’s vocals …

Recovery Of Voice, Agency, And Mental Health Through Autobiography In Nadia, Captive Of Hope, Dania A. Ayach

University Honors Theses

This paper explores the process of how one Arab woman reclaimed her agency, autonomy, and ability to move through trauma to self-construction, self-narration, and self-healing via the medium of autobiography in Nadia, Captive of Hope: Memoir of an Arab Woman.

An Analysis On The Florida Project, Capucine Rosier

University Honors Theses

The Florida Project is a contemporary movie filmed by independent director Sean Baker. This movie tackles different social and institutional issues across America, specifically the outdated welfare system and the rise of homelessness among young children. This paper is determined to analyze the different social and ethical concerns filmed throughout the movie and offer my interpretation of the film. Digging deeper into artistic pieces is essential as hidden messages are portrayed in every way. Censorship and display through art have been a form of individual expression since the beginning. This thesis will discuss how the filmmaker filmed and showcased the …

Shame And Silencing Of Amejo In Okinawa: Examining Gendered And Militarized Violence, Katie Hashimoto

University Honors Theses

Off the southern part of Japan is the small archipelago of Okinawa. Of Japan's total land mass, Okinawa makes up only 0.6% of the country, yet it hosts over 70% of the land occupied by U.S. military bases. Since the end of World War II, Okinawa has existed under dual-subjugation by Japan and the U.S., which has created the grounds for systemic gendered and militarized violence. Rape and sexual violence perpetrated by U.S. military servicemen continue to be the primary concern of Okinawan feminists pushing for the demilitarization of Okinawa. However, these concerns often get lost within heteronormative and male-masculinist …

Adaptive Fascism: A Study Of Far-Right Politics In The Americas, Blake Mustachio

Master's Theses

Populism as a term is too ambiguous to describe the surge in far-right nationalistic leaders both during the Cold War and the present day. This paper proposes to solve this quagmire by proposing the term adaptive fascism. Adaptive fascism is the idea that far- right leaders using tactics that have legacies within fascist rhetoric have adapted the fascist rhetoric to fit more within the geopolitical situations of each leader’s respective time period. Looking at both leaders of the Cold War, including Jorge Videla of Argentina and Augusto Pinochet of Chile. As well as modern day leaders, Donald Trump of the …

Suppression Of National Identities: Ukrainian And Baltic Cultures In The Soviet Union, Jonathan H. Mastman

Master's Theses

This thesis defines the formation and consummation of Soviet Bolshevism as another imperialist force rather than its stated objective of freeing the people of the United Soviet Socialist Republics from the clutches of an inequitable elite. Through the policies and objectives of the Soviet government the workers and citizens of Ukraine and the Baltic republics were not liberated or given autonomy over their lives and labor, as Marxist-Leninism would have them believe. I review the Russification efforts found first in the Tsarist Russian Empire and then continued by Soviets in the nature of pursuing or denying cultural, political, and economic …

A Tejano Story: Resisting Anti-Mexican Violence And The Texas Rangers, Jose Andres Yznaga Jr

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A Tejano Story: Resisting Anti-Mexican Violence and The Texas Rangers Writing about Los Tejanos cannot be told without including the Texas Rangers. It only complicates the narrative when writing a screenplay for the big screen. The story cannot be told without acknowledging historical facts; the Texas Rangers came hard against the Tejanos after the battle for Texas Independence even though many Tejanos fought in that war and shared the same vision as their Euro-American counterparts of breaking their ties with the Mexican government. Just However, like lynching across this country, that history cannot be erased, nor can the exploits of …

Reconstructing Identity: Carlton Burgan, Patient Zero In The Development Of Plastic Surgery, Civil War Through World War I, Teresa M. George

Master's Theses

Plastic surgery has played an integral role in helping people achieve societal expectations of appropriate physical appearance since its inception. Through the story of Carlton Burgan, a Union soldier during the American Civil War, who suffered severe facial trauma by mercury poisoning, this thesis hopes to reconstruct the conversation around plastic surgery’s origins as it is influenced by societal standards of the day. Specifically, this thesis argues that the seminal moments leading to plastic surgery being seen as a worthwhile medical specialty was during the Civil War, not World War I as so many scholars have put forth. Violent acts …

An Ambiguous Hermeneutic: Doubleness In Ingmar Bergman’S Quest For Self, Ingy Aziz

Theses and Dissertations

One of the functions of art in all its forms is to provide the means for self-exploration and, in this way, to enable us to relate cultural representation to the question of meaning. The beauty of cinematic art is that it gives voice to our deepest and most profound concerns and enables us to bridge the gap between personal psychology and public understanding. As interpreters, we do not always unearth the answers that we seek, but we certainly gain more insight through delving into the minds of major filmmakers in the canon of modern cinema. This thesis is on the …

التطور اللغوي في العربية المعاصرة من خلال باب الأدوات (تحقيقات في ضوء مقولة الخطأ والصواب ومقاربات في التفسير), خالد حسین دلكي

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Babel, Daniel Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a series of three memoiristic essays around the vortex of identity. The first is an exploration of how childhood overmedication split the continuity of the author’s self-conception. The second traces the slipperiness of Jewish and Queer identifications detailing their synthesis in the klezmer revival in New York City in late 1980s and early 90s. The third is a polyphonic narration of the recovery of a lost klezmer’s life story in the face of the silence of time and slaughter.

Fantasmas Compartidos: Posmemoria, Herencia Y Reescritura De La Guerra Civil Española En México Y España, Mayte Lopez Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes contemporary novels and films about the traumatic legacies of the Spanish Civil War through the lens of postmemory, memory studies, and transatlantic studies. I examine how Mexican and Spanish writers and filmmakers from the postwar generations approach the memories of their ancestors—and their own—to reframe history through fiction, memory work, and personal agency. Studies about historical memory are typically constrained to national contexts, but I highlight how trauma transcends the nation not only in space but also in time. Moreover, I focus on how inherited memories acquire new meanings in contemporary representations and how those resignifications have …

Numbered, Weighed, Divided: Revolution And/As Apocalypse In The Modern Liberal Tradition, Asher J. Wycoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A long-standing political-theological critique contends that liberalism lacks the capacity to address theological challenges, and qualitative political challenges more generally. This charge is prevalent in our current age of crises, when the capacity to address such challenges is essential to any political tradition’s self-legitimation. I argue that the liberal tradition, broadly conceived, has long contended with theological challenges, particularly during modern revolutionary periods. Theological discourses, especially eschatological ones, circulate widely in these moments. Modern political actors impute cosmic significance to the events of their present, with a central analogy crystallizing between revolution and apocalypse. Reading major theorists of three modern …

The Gilded Tropics: Winslow Homer And John Singer Sargent In Florida, 1886-1917, Theodore W. Barrow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the Floridian works of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in the context of tourism, race, and the environment as perceptions of the tropics in an Anglo-American context. Both artists sojourned in Florida and produced a number of watercolors and related oils that not only testify to a rapidly-expanding tourist industry to the Sunshine State, but also update the Romantic myths of the tropics with a more sober, ironic Realist take. While Homer and Sargent continue to be popular subjects for studies and exhibitions on their own, this dissertation is the first to consider how their shared …

Algorithmic Sovereignty: Machine Learning, Ground Truth, And The State Of Exception, Matthew Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the influence of algorithmic security technology on political theories of sovereignty and the state of exception. In computer science, an exception is a special circumstance that prevents a program from terminating normally. In political theory, the state of exception, as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, cannot be encoded within the normal liberal legal order. With states’ increasing turn toward algorithmic answers to questions of ‘security,’ which, per Agamben, is the long-term form of the political state of exception, the relationship between the concept of the exception in these two disciplines comes to the fore. In …

Who Are Our Teachers? The Impact Of The Composition Teaching Practicum On Writing Studies, Maxine Krenzel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For first year writing instructors, the teaching practicum is vital for navigating both the writing classroom and the institutions in which the classroom is embedded. The composition teaching practicum, or the often-required training course for new writing instructors, is where new instructors are typically first introduced to their institutional and departmental policies as well as to the field of Writing Studies. While the practicum is a course that is immensely important for new instructors, I have found that this course is nevertheless understudied, under- historicized, and—in institutional and disciplinary rhetoric—too often aligned with an abstract set of “best practices” that …

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Transnational Ritual Poetics Of Blackness In Performance, Nina A. Mercer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I investigate transnational ritual poetics of Blackness through a historical, cultural, and spatial lens, centering my exploration on the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and waterways. I show how these formal poetics activate Africana cosmologies, cosmogonies, and mythologies dramaturgically by centering contemporary New York City performance works that bring together dance, theatre, and music. I contextualize NYC performance case studies in relation to performance practices in contemporary Salvador da Bahia. I am particularly interested in how the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and water as formal poetics catalyze interventions along contested water-ways and landscapes marked by Black …

The Politics Of Expertise And The Articulation Of Authority In Democracy: Cognitive Style And Intelligibility In The Education Of Problem-Solving And Professional Decision-Making In The Domain Of Law, Michael W. Raphael

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Computational complexity refers to the representational aspect of problem-solving. This representational aspect is commonly understood to describe the regularities that organize the definition of the problem-situation, the qualities that designate its difficulty, either in terms of the process of arriving at a definition of the problem or in the process of arriving at a solution. It is for this reason, that it is commonly said that “representational design precedes computational efficacy.” The point of this maxim is to serve as a reminder that an efficient use of resources begins with the design of near decomposability, the specification of the properties …

Navigating Through World’S Military Spending Data With Scroll-Event Driven Visualization, Hong Beom Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Catching up with the current geopolitical event is more important than ever these days. Anti-western nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea constantly challenge the world order set by the United States and its close allies. As a result, the world has seen a rise in military spending consecutively for the last several years. This data visualization project aims to provide an easy-to-read summary of military spending data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for hotly conflicted regions: East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Scroll-event-driven visualization implemented using Scrollama.js and D3.js combines text, map, and data …

Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The mythical city of Troy functioned as an imagined point of origin for many medieval nations, providing a tangible connection to the legendary past and nation-building tools useful for the ruling class. Troy provided a convenient foundation narrative upon which ideas of collective identity could be built for these nations, and England, where construction of a homogeneous past was difficult due to frequent ruptures in its development of communal identity, was an eager producer and consumer of such a legitimizing device. However, the trauma of war and destruction intrinsic in Troy narratives also generates potent political anxiety about the reanimated …

Teaching Beyond ‘Kings Leopold’S Ghost’: New Sources And Voices In A Global History Curriculum On The Democratic Republic, Jen Chapin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The complicated history of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not typically part of high school curricula, yet events and historical trends concerning this nation connect with many key topics and themes, including feudalism, Haitian Revolution, New Imperialism, genocide, World War I & 2, Decolonization movements, Cold War politics, neo-colonialism/globalization, modern China’s economic power, authoritarianism, cult of personality, grassroots democracy movements, responses to climate change, etc. Designing and delivering a rigorous yet accessible curriculum on Congo poses a challenge for teaching beyond “King Leopold’s Ghost”, meaning, working past the prevalence of materials focusing on Belgian king’s genocidal two-decade rule over …

Changing Homelands: The Election Of Menachem Begin And The Diplomatic Campaign To Bring Ethiopian Jews To Israel, Abraham Silberstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines diplomatic efforts by Israel, the United States, and non-governmental organizations to facilitate the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. While much of the historical literature on this topic has focused on the 1980s and 1990s, when tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel, this thesis largely considers the mid-late 1970s. For the first 25 years of its existence, the State of Israel had not been eager to see Ethiopian Jews enter the country, and the government deemed them non-Jews for the purposes of immigration. This started to change in 1973, when the Sephardi Chief …

Germanic Latin Lyric Diction: Regional Variations In Germany, Switzerland, And Austria, James A. Worley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I discuss the various regional Latin lyric diction practices in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and the extent to which Germanic Latin diction (also termed German Latin diction), Italianate Latin diction, and Roman Latin diction are performed beginning circa 1950 until 2022. I argue that Germanic Latin lyric diction is not standardized throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. First, I explore Roman and Italianate lyric diction practices compared across various sources in order to distinguish between Latin pronunciation choices, then I discuss trends in Germanic Latin lyric diction “rules.” Extensive tables in appendices A (Roman Latin) and B (Germanic …

Writing As Liberation: Challenging Yemeni Patriarchal Practices, Sheema Alamari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patriarchal societies create an environment where men hold power and women are often treated as second-class citizens or are often held as having an inferior status. Throughout history and across cultures, literature has provided a platform for writers to share their stories and express themselves. However, Yemeni women have often been silenced and marginalized due to limited education and censorship. In recent times, Yemeni and Yemeni-American women have turned to storytelling as a means of creative expression and emotional release. This thesis analyzes Zubaida “Jasmine” Sharif’s memoir, Caged in America: One Woman’s Journey Through the Veil, and Nadia Al-Kowkabani's …

Does Political Advertising Persuade? A Quantitative Assessment Of The Effects Of Campaign Contact In The Context Of Race, Ethnicity, And Immigrant Origin In New York City Council Primary Elections From 2001 Through 2017, Laura M. Tamman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a quantitative analysis of the relationship between New York city council campaigns’ spending and election results between 2001 and 2017, controlling for key factors such as incumbency, I find substantial and statistically significant positive effects for radio advertising on election outcomes. I find small but significant effects for mail, and smaller sized effects for canvassing. My findings underscore the need for further study of the role of ethnic and community media outlets, such as radio, in shaping voter behavior. Moreover, I argue that the fixation of the current persuasion literature on television ads in presidential general elections misses critical …

Understanding The Afghan Diaspora: Exploring The Factors Driving Migration And The Impact Of Migration Policies On Recent Afghan Evacuees Resettling In The United States, Aya H. Mohamed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Afghanistan has been at war with the West since the late 1900’s, remaining in a state of constant turmoil. During the Cold War (1979), Afghanistan had fought a war with the Soviet Union, known as the Soviet- Afghan War. During this time, Afghanistan was invaded by both the Soviet and US, creating a ground for terrorism and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In order to then eradicate the terrorist regime, the Taliban, the United States went to war with Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were suppressed by U.S. forces until August 2021, during which President Biden executed a …

English Learners In Nyc, Raquel Neris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

English Learners in NYC is a Digital Humanities project that intersects Migration Studies and Foreign Language Learning Studies by presenting a podcast series about the learning experience of international students in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at English schools in New York City. The project aims to provide visibility to the educational migration in this specific context and to promote a discussion on how international students and educators can reimagine their teaching and learning experience. It also aims to reveal ESL schools' challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they incorporated digital technologies during and after this event. …