Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Encounters Of Third Space: A Case Study On Salvadoran Political Art And Identity Interplay, Breanna Delgado

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Third space is an in-between thought space designated for marginalized collectives, allowing multiple recontextualizations of identity interplay. However, Third Space is colonized due to western ideological influences such as criminalization of political art, stunting collective growth. This project serves to question and challenge Salvadoran political art and collective identities through questions such as why political art? Can political art be considered “safe spaces”? and dissecting the process of political art, third space meaning making, and identity interplay. Preserving the collective’s political art serves as a grassroots method of justice, accountability, and collective reparation.

I applying three conceptual frameworks: Bhabha’s (1994) …

Anti- Intellectualism, Authenticity, And Intellectual Authority In Short-Form Digital Discourse, Mariaisabel Sandoval

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis examines how anti-intellectualism, authenticity, and credibility intersect in digital discourse. In contemporary online environments, expertise is increasingly treated with suspicion, while relatability, emotional immediacy, and personal conviction often function as alternative markers of trustworthiness. Under these conditions, intellectual expression may become socially risky, particularly in spaces where speakers must appear authentic without seeming overly serious, pretentious, or out of touch. This study asks how credibility and authority are performed, negotiated, and contested in short-form digital discourse, and how sincerity is reshaped when authenticity itself becomes a rhetorical performance.

This project is grounded in scholarship on anti-intellectualism, platform culture, …

Impact Of Social Worker Bias On African American Fathers With Open Children Family Services Cases, Jenna Espinosa, Cecil Perry, Jasmine Alvarado, Jennifer Garcia, Lacrietia Grate-Dixson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Systemic barriers and biases within institutions and policies affect how African American fathers engage with Children and Family Services (CFS). According to research, social worker bias, whether overt or covert, can influence case decision-making, affecting fathers' access to resources and overall involvement in their children’s lives. This study aims to quantitatively assess the impact of social worker bias on African American fathers' engagement by evaluating service completion rates at the .21e hearing. A quantitative research design will be utilized by implementing a validated survey to measure social worker bias and case file reviews to assess service completion. Statistical analyses, including …

The Everlasting Bite Of The Colonizer In Contemporary Vampire Narratives, Emily Hatchett

All Theses

In the 1897 novel Dracula, Bram Stoker opens the vampire's coffin, unleashing the monstrous figure meant to terrify and control the inhabitants of late Victorian England. Following the vampire's journey from Transylvania to England, Stoker traces its desire to gain entrance into society through the British country house. Nevertheless, the vampire transforms as it makes its next journey to America. Leaving behind its haunting presence and adopting a loving, romantic personality that has rooted itself in our contemporary literature. It's also through this journey that the vampire is drawn to the lingering effects of colonization and is led to …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

The Whaler’S Empire: Industry, Environment, And American Expansion In The Pacific Ocean, Andrew J. Hiner

All Theses

The American whaling industry reached its peak in the mid nineteenth century, numbering over seven hundred vessels and reaching from the South Atlantic to Arctic Oceans. The rise of this maritime trade coincided with the emergence of the nation’s industrial revolution at home, a revolution which employed the product of whaling—namely whale oil—as a lubricant for machinery. Historians have often overlooked the use of this commodity in manufacturing, focusing instead on whale oil’s use as an illuminant. Examining the relation between the whaling and manufacturing industries offers new insights into how ocean environments played a role in domestic production. It …

Commodified Suffering: True Crime Podcasting, Gendered Violence, And The Culture Of Apathy”, Alaysia Lewis

All Theses

This study examines the linguistic patterns of true crime podcast hosts, as well as what potential impacts these language choices have on audiences. Through an analysis of literature regarding true crime media, listener motivations, and the effects of true crime media consumption on listeners, themes of apathy and desensitization, female pain as entertainment, and commodification of harm against women were found. This serves as a case study of the popular true crime podcast Crime Junkie, observing the language patterns used by the hosts before and after their involvement in a controversy that included accusations of plagiarism, commodification, and unethical journalistic …

Between Chronicle And Legend: A Two-Scene Environment And Visual Effects Examination Of Physical Accuracy And Emotional Exaggeration On The Honey Creek Bridge Collapse, Alison R. Gaddy

All Theses

This thesis explores how truth and dramatization intersect in digital storytelling by comparing realistic and stylized simulations of the Honey Creek bridge collapse within the context of the Kate Shelley animated short. At the core of storytelling lies a tension between factual accuracy and dramatic stylization. We investigate that tension by examining how narrative truth is conveyed, distorted, or enhanced through visual dramatization by focusing on the psychology of audience perception and the motivations behind creative embellishment. The practical contribution of this research is the development of two distinct digital scene setups depicting the same Honey Creek bridge collapse event. …

Taking A Deeper Look: Attributing Tonal Values Of Photolumens To Their Emulsions Using Scanning Electron Microscopy, Anna M. Moore

All Theses

This thesis examines whether tonal variation in photolumens made with historic silver gelatin photographic papers can be linked to differences in elemental composition. Photolumens are cameraless photographic images created by placing objects directly on light-sensitive paper and exposing them to ultraviolet light. Because expired and historic darkroom papers often produce unpredictable colors and tones, this study asks whether visually defined tonal groups also show measurable chemical differences.

Twenty historic paper samples were exposed, documented, and sorted into five tonal groups based on visible image characteristics. Each sample was then analyzed using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) …

Demolition By Intent: Evaluating Charleston's Red X Placard Procedures, Enforcement Practices, And Communication Methods In The Loss Of Historic Structures, Jessica Stech

All Theses

This thesis examines whether the procedures, enforcement practices, and communication methods associated with the placement of Red X placards in Charleston, South Carolina, contribute to the demolition-by-intent of historic structures. Red X placards, also known as unsafe placards, are placed on the front façade of structurally unsafe structures by the Charleston Fire Department to inform first responders in the event of a fire or other emergency. Although these placards serve as a life-safety tool, they may influence how vacant structures are perceived by family or developer owners and the public.

Through using a qualitative approach, this thesis analyzes the outcomes …

Women In The Chancery Court Of Maryland From 1669 To 1679, Emily A. Cole

All Theses

This project examines women who appeared in the Chancery Court of Maryland from 1669 to 1679. This thesis used the Archives of Maryland Online and the volume of proceedings of the Chancery Court. Across the three chapters, I argue that historians have largely ignored these proceedings, and that women did not appear in court out of empowerment but rather out of legal duty and requirement. I examined how these women appeared in both their legal status and the types of positions they held. This included the life cycle women typically followed from wife to widow to remarriage. They also appeared …

“Tyranny” As Concept: Semantic Change And The Formation Of Colonial Political Consciousness In The New Hampshire Gazette, 1756–1783, Antonio Worley

All Theses

Historians of the American Revolution have frequently viewed terms such as tyranny as a stable ideological category, associated with corruption and resistance to arbitrary power. This thesis instead reconceptualizes ‘tyranny’ as an evolving and historically contingent Koselleckian concept. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the New Hampshire Gazette from 1756 to 1783, this study combines close reading with computational methods, including word frequency analysis and word embeddings, to chart the evolution of the semantic field surrounding “tyranny” over time.

Prior to the Stamp Act of 1765, ‘tyranny’ was used primarily in a religious and moral framework which was shaped by …

Desert Ghost, Jessica Downs

All Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.

I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate …

Elizabeth Blackwell And Her Heirs: America And Great Britain’S First Female Physicians, Charleigh E. Sprawls

All Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the varying historical themes surrounding America and Great Britain’s first female physicians. Studying 1849-1894 allows for the exploration of not only the nineteenth century, but also the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras of American History. Professionalization played a crucial role in the lives of these women, as it drastically altered the makeup of the medical career, making it more difficult to enter and become qualified as a licensed physician. There were significant barriers to entering the medical profession for these women, including elements like race, class, and most importantly, gender. This thesis argues that while …

I Am The Perfect Wife: The Bildungsroman And The Disruption Of The System In Jane Eyre And The Hunger Games, Carolyn Carpenter

All Theses

None.

Bergsonian Blend: Subjective Temporality Within Modernist Aesthetics Of Mental Illness, Lydia Victoria Gervais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Henri Bergson was a modernist French philosopher who wrote extensively on the topic of the lived experience of time, which he called durée, or duration. His contemporary, Sigmund Freud, was developing psychoanalytic theory in a growing field of psychological study, which serves as a prominent ancestor to modern psychiatry and current psychoanalytical literary studies. Fiction writers of the 1900s absorbed the zeitgeist of melded chronology and consciousness, interweaving themes of time and trauma in their works. Utilizing Henri Bergson’s durée as a philosophical framework, I examine the moralization of time-consciousness in connection with mental illness and investigate representations of …

Media Portrayal Of High-Profile Female Victims Of Sexual Harassment, Chinenye Nwaneri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This rhetorical study investigated how the Nigerian media portray high-profile female victims of sexual harassment. The research was undertaken in response to concerns that media narratives often reinforce gender stereotypes and influence public perceptions of victims. Focusing on the sexual harassment allegations made by senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan against Senate president Godswill Akpabio, the study analyzed newspaper coverage from Daily Trust and Vanguard between February and December 2025. Using Critical Discourse Analysis within the framework of Feminist Media Theory, the research examined how language and framing shaped the representation of the female accuser. The findings reveal that media coverage constructed the …

Girlhood, Interrupted: An Intersectional Feminist History Of Decolonizing And Reclaiming Womanhood, Ayden Kelly

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In the past few decades, social and political discourse surrounding womanhood and who is considered a "real" woman has led to the execration of transgender women. This work will explore how recent discourse and rhetoric surrounding who is and who is not a “real woman” can be traced to nineteenth century notions of “true womanhood” that excluded women of color. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with westward expansion, settler colonialism, residential schools, slavery, and post-emancipation serving as backdrops, this work will also analyze how ideologies of womanhood have interrupted and suppressed women of color throughout Western American …

Planting The Seeds Of An “Educational Revolution”: The Origins Of Upward Bound, Jack H. Kirby

Department of History

Histories of American higher education tend to suggest that the relationship between the federal government and higher education reached its apex in the 1950s before beginning to decline in the 1960s. How, then, do we understand the creation of federal TRIO programs in the 1960s and their continued growth through the remainder of the twentieth century? TRIO programs are federally funded projects intended to expand college access for non-traditional students. Through the lens of access, this paper argues that the federal government was limited in its ability to influence higher education during the post-war period because of the highly decentralized …

When “Voice” Becomes Law: A Caution Against Emancipatory Complacency In Anti-Sexual Violence Feminism, Samantha Lillian To

LL.M. Essays & Theses

This Essay destabilizes a feminist project that seeks to emancipate sexually violated women in the United States through a rhetoric of voice. There is a body of feminist literature that imagines voice as unconstrained self-expression through which sexually violated women resist patriarchal oppression and heal from trauma. When projected onto the courtroom, however, this framework becomes an ideal that the legal process, by its structure, cannot fully accommodate. This Essay presents three claims. First, despite the emergence of a legal promise of “voice” after the enactment of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, feminists should not treat it as the culmination …

Scholarship As A Means For Musical Performance: An Exploration Of Johannes Brahms Violin Sonata In G Major, Op. 78, Josh Zallar

Masters Theses

Developing a quality musical performance is a complicated and time-consuming endeavor. Endless hours are spent learning a musical instrument, developing technique, and growing into a mature sound. Learning the notes, rhythms, dynamics, and basic musical markings of a score compound this task, not to mention the preparation for performing by managing nerves, among other areas of concern. Amidst the undoubtedly enormous amount of work, however, often focus gets lost. Musicians forget that, despite the inherent fact that our inner voice is heard when we perform, that it is ultimately the composer whose voice and musical meaning must be conveyed in …

Beyond Duality: The Doppelganger And The Multiplicity Of Identity In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Alyssa Roberts

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper argues that Oscar Wilde uses The Picture of Dorian Gray to transform the Gothic doppelganger from a symbol of moral duality into a site of multiplicity that exposes the instability of identity. Earlier iterations of the double–ranging from mythic traditions to nineteenth-century texts—such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—tend to structure the self through binary opposition. Wilde, however, reconfigures the double as an accumulative and dynamic process. This paper analyzes how Wilde disrupts the rigidity of Victorian binaries and society’s investment in duality through the portrait’s accumulation of the consequences of Dorian’s actions as …

Alternative, Ashlynn M. Stroud

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

A series of illustrations, sculptures and comic book issues designed to introduce a series of stories and characters that represent the history and members of a fictional mythology depicting the cultural social group often referred to as the “alternative” community. Alternative takes place in a world that combines high fantasy and science fiction with elements of pop culture and music. This world uses iconography of the various genres of the alternative subculture and music, metal, post-punk, and the evolving scene of the underground with varying visuals from both gothic and industrial time periods. Viewers are encouraged to read and follow …

The Southwest Black Artists Collective: Afro-Modern Ecology, Kinship, And Collectivity In The Desert Southwest, Bradley L. Petty

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Southwest Black Artists Collective (SBAC) as a site of

Afro-diasporic kinship, artistic production, and spatial intervention within the Desert

Southwest. Operating within a region where Black populations are comparatively small

and institutional support is diffuse, SBAC emerges as both a response to and a

reconfiguration of the regional artistic landscape. The Collective constructs an affirming

community through shared artistic practice, exhibitions, and the maintenance of The

Projects/Space in Tucson, Arizona, where public engagement and private creative

exchange coexist.

Drawing on theories of human ecology, this study expands existing frameworks

by introducing the concept of Afro-modern ecology, …

Beyond The Canon: From Classical Foundations To Contemporary Relevance In Shaping Tomorrow's Musicians, Lauren N. Tougas

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Undergraduate music programs in the United States have historically centered ensemble-based instruction on the Western classical canon in order to cultivate technical mastery, stylistic fluency, and disciplined collaborative musicianship. This pedagogical model has proven durable and remains foundational to professional orchestral and choral performance practice. Canonical repertoire continues to anchor audition requirements, institutional programming, and degree structures across institutions of higher education. Yet the contemporary professional landscape has evolved into a far more diversified artistic ecosystem characterized by stylistic hybridity, living composer integration, interdisciplinary collaboration, constrained rehearsal models, and portfolio-based career trajectories.

This Honors Capstone investigates the relationship between undergraduate …

Jerry Day, Daniel Holzmna

Student Theses

The life and times of California's oldest erotic bakery.

Dutiful Wife, Grieving Mother: Examining Medieval Joban Allusion Through A Matricentric Affective Lens, Morgan Lee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses concepts of matricentrism and affect to examine the legacy of Job and its frequent medieval allusions in stories featuring grieving mothers. It specifically analyzes how, in order to be considered noble, steadfast sufferers, women were expected to relinquish their maternal grief and adopt a stoic affect. This was often to the benefit of or in the direct service of their husbands. The analysis covers three women in particular: Job’s wife (who is examined through the medieval commentary written about her), Prudence from Chaucer’s "Tale of Melibee," and Griselda from Chaucer’s "Clerk’s Tale." This thesis utilizes medieval conduct …

Where Doubts Fade And Stars Glow: A Costume Designer’S Journey In Silent Sky By Lauren Gunderson, Randy Tabiliran Olarte

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study employs a practice-based design methodology grounded in historical research, visual analysis, material experimentation, and collaborative production processes. This thesis, Where Doubts and Stars Glow: A Costume Designer’s Journey for Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson, explores the process of design and creation of costumes for the production of Silent Sky at the University of Arkansas. Silent Sky portrays an astronomer whose work in the early 1900s profoundly impacted the study of photographic plates for mapping stars. Specifically, the astronomer closely analyzes Cepheid variable stars, discovering that their consistent brightness fluctuations aid in determining stellar distances and the universe's size. …

Silent Sky: Exploring The Universe Of Theatre Through A Directorial Lens, Sarah Behrend-Wilcox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the directorial process of a production of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky, produced by the University of Arkansas Department of Theatre. This document follows the director’s journey from initial script analysis through closing night, with an emphasis on the successes and challenges found in mounting this fully realized, artistically unified production. The central argument of this thesis is that through careful documentation of a single production, it is possible to identify both successful strategies and areas for growth in the collaborative process. This thesis is organized in four chapters: The Big Bang, The Matter, The Dark Matter, and …

Through The Looking-Glass: A Process Of Trust And Discovery, Selena Mykenzie Gordon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the process of joy, trust, and discovery I have cultivated as a professional actor and its application in various productions. I will examine my role as Sabine in Ken Ludwig’s The Three Musketeers at TheatreSquared in Fall of 2025, as well as the role of Alice in my One Person Show, titled Curiouser, developed in Spring of 2024. Included in this document is my artistic statement, my one-person show script, production posters and programs, production photos, website link, headshot and resume, my character analysis of Sabine, One-Person Show class writing prompts, and proof of permission for use …