Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Commonthought (2012), Commonthought Staff

Commonthought

This issue features works created by Lesley University students and covers a broad range of topics. The work itself crosses many disciplines from creative writing to visual arts.

Musical Echolalia And Non-Verbal Children With Autism, Krystal Leah Demaine

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

Typical imitation skills that are integral to language and social learning do not readily develop in children with autism. Echolalia, an echoing or imitation of speech sounds, has historically been considered a non-meaningful form verbal imitation. Since music is intrinsically more meaningful than language for children with autism, musical echolalia may offer path to communication for non-verbal children with autism. This research study sought to identify a potential existence of musical echolalia among nonverbal children with autism. Twelve non-verbal children diagnosed with classic autism, six boys and six girls, aged four to eight, who had no formal musical training or …

Examining Multicultural Competency Education In The Creative Arts Therapies, Donna C. Owens

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

In the changing landscape of the United States, the skills and competencies of helping professionals must continue to address the unique needs of its various populations. As a growing field, the creative arts therapies must adopt multicultural values and standards necessary to remain competitive and relevant.

This study addressed the issue of multicultural counseling competency training in the creative arts therapies from three perspectives: the governing association, the training institution, and the student/trainee. Throughout this study the term creative arts therapies includes art, dance/movement, drama, expressive arts, music, poetry, and psychodrama.

Information concerning the associations for each of the seven …

A Mirror Of Recognition: How The Empathetic Relationship Between Dusty Springfield And Her Not-Straight Fans Facilitates Their Identity Development, Nancy J. Young

Educational Studies Dissertations

This multi-case qualitative study explores the phenomenon of identity development of not-straight (more traditionally labeled as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or queer) fans through their attachment to British popular singer Dusty Springfield as a fan-object. A purposefully selected sample of four fans, aged 21-45, two male and two female, from the United Kingdom and the United States, were interviewed. The interdisciplinary conceptual framework of the study combines the fields of identity development, fan studies, and psychological theories related to projection.

The themes that emerge from the data suggest that Dusty Springfield’s emotional music draws the listener into fandom and that the …

Linguistics And The Study Of Comics , Frank Bramlett

Faculty Books and Monographs

Editor: Frank Bramlett, UNO faculty member.

Chapter 8: Linguistic Codes and Character Identity in Afro Samurai, authored by Frank Bramlett.

Do Irish superheroes actually sound Irish? Why are Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons funny? How do political cartoonists in India, Turkey, and the US get their point across? What is the impact of English on comics written in other languages? These questions and many more are answered in this volume, which brings together the two fields of comics research and linguistics to produce groundbreaking scholarship. With an international cast of contributors, the book offers novel insights into the role …

The Journal Of Undergraduate Research: Volume 10

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

This is the complete issue of the South Dakota State University Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 10.

Television, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Policing Gender, Sexuality And ‘Muslimness’, Anissa Helie

Publications and Research

In her Introduction to the book Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance (ZED Book, UK), Anissa Helie discusses the notion of "Muslimness" and how such a homogenizing notion, if unchallenged, may serve to justify the policing of sexuality in various Muslim countries and communities.

The book itself looks at emerging trends that affect women’s sexuality, with a particular focus on Asia and the Middle East, and documents both the curtailing of sexual rights occurring in diverse Muslim societies and the strategies designed to counter these developments.

Yet this focus in no way suggests that the policing of gender and …

Mystical Experience And Its Defense On The Mystical's Proper Understanding And Usage, Adrian Contreras

Philosophy & Humanities Theses - Archive

This document will closely examine the issue of mystical experience by reviewing its origins in sacred concepts and leading arguments in the field of philosophy of mysticism. Ultimately, this document will attempt to prove the manner by which it might most properly be understood, as well as the practical use of such experience for those who have lived & experienced it within his/her day-to-day life.

Buying Into Money Equals Happiness Fails For The Characters In Fitzgerald’S The Great Gatsby, Liamarie Snyder

English Senior Seminar Papers

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a classic about the desire for love and money and how they both affect the characters within the story. It is the story of a man named Jay Gatsby who wants the love of a beautiful young woman Daisy Buchanan and will do anything in his power to get it. The novel is told through the eyes of a young man named Nick Carraway who is not only Gatsby’s neighbor, but also an outsider looking in on the situation at hand. …

Science, C. Mackenzie Brown

Religion Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Translating The Bible Into Pictures, Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

I became interested in the intersection of comic books and Bibles for children as a part of my attempt to make some sense out of the Brick Testament, a web-design project illustrating scenes from biblical stories entirely in the medium of Lego blocks. Despite the ostensibly child-friendly nature of the images—Legos are, after all, a children's toy—the project has a sharp critical edge to it. We catch a glimpse of it in the index, which has content ratings alerting viewers to which scenes contain "Nudity, Sexual activity, Violence and Cursing." Indeed, what Smith chooses to illustrate from the Bible …

The Theatrical Lieu De Culture Within Molière’S Theater, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Molière’s theater is itself, by definition, a lieu de culture. The performance of one of his plays transforms the space in which it occurs into a lieu de culture by virtue of the presence of two crucial features. First, the performance belongs to a cultural domain, in this case specifically the theater. By ‘culture’ I mean simply that which is tied to the arts, letters, manners, and scholarly pursuits. Second there must be an audience present for that performance. The same basic situation obviously holds true for any playwright whose plays are performed. What makes Molière interesting is the …

La Pratique Ironique De L’Appel À L’Autorité Dans Les Péritextes Du Théâtre De Corneille, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Corneille a lié un grand nombre de péritextes à son œuvre théâtrale, dont les Préfaces, les avis « Au lecteur », les Arguments, les Épîtres, les Examens de 1660 et les Trois Discours sur le poème dramatique de la même année. Ce sont tous des textes polémiques du fait qu’ils représentent des prises de position dans les débats théâtraux de l’époque. Ce sont aussi des défenses souvent très spécifiques de ses œuvres. Les péritextes constituent un terrain particulièrement riche car c’est là qu’un auteur fait connaître ses intentions au lecteur.

My Kingdom: Sentimentalism And The Refinement Of Hymnody, Claudia Stokes

English Faculty Research

Few features of mid-nineteenth-century American women’s literature seem as foreign and outdated today as the omnipresence of hymns. In countless literary works, hymns are quoted, sung, discussed, and contemplated. Hymns in these texts are rivaled in influence only by the Bible and are potent catalysts of religious experience, sparking conversion in the unbeliever and offering reassurance to the faithful during times of trouble. In the literary world of the American mid-century, the singing of a hymn can bring tears to the eyes of even the most hardened unbeliever. Such scenes pervade fiction of the period. During Ellen Montgomery’s sorrowful trip …

Performing Community: The Place Of Music, Race And Gender In Producing Appalachian Space, Deborah J. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Traditional, participatory music is a powerful medium through which people express and shape their ideas about identity, mobility, social relations, and belonging, and through which people are in turn shaped. The everyday cultural practices of playing, sharing, and dancing to traditional music, as well as discussions about the nature of traditional music and production of events involving traditional music, all work to construct the region called Appalachia.

Through this dissertation, I seek to answer some simple questions that have complicated answers involving place, identity, power, and social relations, with economic, social, and emotional ramifications: Who gets to be an Appalachian …

Reversing The Trope Of White Paternalism Or Making Mammies?: Black Domestic Servants In The Works Of Faulkner, Crews, And Stockett, Anna Gatewood

Theses and Dissertations--English

William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, Harry Crews in A Feast of Snakes, and Kathryn Stockett in The Help each depict African Americans in roles as domestic servants. The differing historical situations of the novels play a large part in the disparity among the depictions. However, each novel clearly holds black domestic laborers in contrast to their white employers. These texts’ depictions of black domestic servants and the whites for whom they care are at different points strikingly similar and tellingly disparate. The overlaps and fissures between black domestic servants portrayed as mammy’s and uncles and …

Commentarius In Fuxii Gradum Ad Parnassum Ad Usum Discipulorum, Rj Parsons-Mccrackin

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

Ioannes Fuxius per Aevum quod dicitur Baroccum, quo tempore gustus musici celeriter mutabantur, musicum enchiridion palmare, cui titulus Gradus ad Parnassum, edidit. Quo libro modos musicos componendi ratio aetate artium renatarum exorta cum ratione aevo Barocco usitata coniungitur. Auctor historiam artis musicae, vocabula artis propria, normas hoc opere docet per dialogum Latinum et faberrime scriptum, qui inter Palestrinae personam et eam discipuli personam, quam auctor ipse agit, habetur. At nostris temporibus Fuxius innotuit, quod quasi ante omnium oculos regulas uniuscuiusque Speciei Contrapuncti posuit. Liber eius igitur in multos sermones vernaculos est versus etiam paucis annis post primam divulgationem. Nunc …

Los Fantasmas Queer De La Dictadura Franquista: ¡Toda Una Re-Velación!, Danae Gallo González

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

This paper is part of the academic effort to recover historical memory in post-Civil War Spain and metaphorically applies the so-called Giobert Tincture to Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás (1978), Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002) and Pedro Almodóvar’s La mala educación (2004) in order show how these works reveal the ghosts of the repression exerted against the epitome of the abject/obscene by Franco’s dictatorship: the queer collective. This collective continues to suffer from marginalization as well as from the effects of repression. I argue that El cuarto de atrás reveals C.’s repressed hybrid/queer identity and sexual orientation, …

“A Remarkable Instance”: The Christmas Truce And Its Role In The Contemporaneous Narrative Of The First World War, Theresa Blom Crocker

Theses and Dissertations--History

The orthodox narrative of the First World War, which maintains that the conflict was futile, unnecessary and wasteful, continues to dominate historical representations of the war. Attempts by revisionist historians to dispute this interpretation have made little impact on Britain’s collective memory of the conflict. The Christmas truce has come to represent the frustration and anger that soldiers felt towards the meaningless war they had been trapped into fighting. However, the Christmas truce, which at the time it occurred was seen as an event of minimal importance, was not an act of defiance, but one which arose from the unprecedented …

Contested Spaces In London: Exhibitionary Representations Of India, C. 1886-1951, Alayna Heinonen

Theses and Dissertations--History

Following the first world exhibition, the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, exhibitions became routine events across the West that merged both education and entertainment to forward political and economic goals. For the most part scholars have taken the frequency, popularity, and propagandistic efforts of exhibitions at face value, viewing them as successful reassertions of the imperial, industrial, and technological superiority of Western nation-states. Though offering valuable insights into the cultural technologies of imperial rule, these works miss the complexities of imperial projects within specific temporal and geographical contexts.

This manuscript traces the historical dynamics of India at exhibitions held …

Inner Bluegrass Agriculture: An Agroecological Perspective, 1850-1880, Andrew Parker Patrick

Theses and Dissertations--History

This study examines agriculture in the Inner Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky from 1850 to 1880. It utilizes an agroecological perspective, which interprets agriculture through the lens of ecology, to highlight the complex natural and cultural factors that combined to form one of the nation's most prosperous agricultural systems during the nineteenth century. Chapter One explores the agroecosytem Bluegrass farmers created and maintained, emphasizing dynamics in crop and livestock diversity and agricultural technology. Chapter Two examines the African-American labor force that played a key role in shaping the system, first as slaves and later as free men and women. Chapter …

Divisions Between Arkansans In The Brooks-Baxter War, Michael William Kraemer

Theses and Dissertations--History

Many historians have failed to consider seriously the role of the Brooks-Baxter War of 1874 in ending Reconstruction in Arkansas. Of those who have, they have not examined participants in the conflict nor attempted a robust study to determine who fought in the conflict. This thesis examines the soldiers and officers of the rival armies of Joseph Brooks and Elisha Baxter. It surveys the participants' class, race, professions, places of birth, and especially places of residence at the time of the conflict. This analysis of the Brooks-Baxter War reaffirms other historians' work on the fall of Reconstruction, while finding unique …

Up In The Balcony: White Religious Leaders And School Desegregation In Arkansas, 1954-1960, David Andrew Lai

Theses and Dissertations--History

This paper examines the various responses of progressive white southern clergy to school desegregation events in Arkansas. I investigate why no major white clerical movement emerged to support civil rights, arguing that internal and external factors limited their genuinely motivated witness. National and local clergy endorsed Brown for both religious and practical reasons, arguing that segregation was counter to Christian brotherhood and hurt worldwide evangelism. However, like William Chafe’s progressives in Greensboro, too many clergy worked for school desegregation but ignored African American voices, believing that their demands unnecessarily inflamed the local opposition and unfortunately urged patience and civility instead …

Faustian Figures: Modernity And Male (Homo)Sexualities In Spanish Commercial Literature, 1900-1936, Jeffrey Zamostny

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

I contend in this study that commercial novels and theater from early twentiethcentury Spain often present male (homo)sexual characters as a point of constellation for anxieties regarding modernization in Madrid and Barcelona. In works by Jacinto Benavente, Josep Maria de Sagarra, El Caballero Audaz (José María Carretero), Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent, Carmen de Burgos, Álvaro Retana, Eduardo Zamacois, and Alfonso Hernández-Catá, concerns about technological and socioeconomic change converge upon hustlers and blackmailers, queer seducers, and chaste inverts. I examine these figures alongside an allegorical interpretation of Goethe’s Faust in Marshall Berman’s book All That is Solid Melts into Air: …

The Life And Work Of Gloria Anzaldúa: An Intellectual Biography, Elizabeth Anne Dahms

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The writings and life of Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) have had an immense impact in a variety of disciplines. Her oft-cited text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) is included in many university courses’ reading lists for its contributions to discourses of hybridity, linguistics, intersectionality and women of color feminism, among others. Unfortunately, most scholars content themselves with the intricacies of Borderlands to the neglect of her corpus of work, which includes essays, books, edited volumes, children’s literature and fiction/autohistorias. This analysis presented here wishes to expand our understandings of Anzaldúa’s work by engaging with her pre- and post-Borderlands …

Creating Heaven On Earth: Jim Bakker And The Birth Of A Sunbelt Pentecostalism, Eric G. Weinberg

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation traces the rise of Jim and Tammy Bakker and analyzes the birth and growth of prosperity theology in the United States of America. It highlights how Jim and Tammy created a form of Pentecostalism that grew alongside and because of the growth of the Sunbelt. It blossomed in the new suburban enclaves of this region. Jim Bakker's religious ideas had their roots in an increasingly powerful anti-New Deal coalition that was led by the conservative business community. Positive thinking and the prosperity gospel reinforced their beliefs in unfettered markets and their opposition to activist government. Bakker combined these …

“The Pastime Of Millions”: James B. Haggin’S Elmendorf Farm And The Commercialization Of Pedigree Animal Breeding, 1897-1920, Amber Fogle Sergent

Theses and Dissertations--History

Called “The Pride of the Bluegrass,” Elmendorf Farm changed the style and substance of commercial pedigree breeding in early twentieth-century America. Between 1897 and 1914, James B. Haggin readily transformed the Kentucky farm first as a nationally preeminent horse stud, famous for its bloodlines and scales, and second as a premier dairy operation, exceptional for its sanitation, science, and size. Here rested the large-scale production of the world’s fanciest Thoroughbreds and finest milk. At the same time, Haggin’s farm reflected a lifestyle that has come to be celebrated and cherished as the ideal Kentucky landscape. A factory-style plant of large …

Literary Africa: Spanish Reflections Of Morocco, Western Sahara, And Equatorial Guinea In The Contemporary Novel, 1990-2010, Mahan L. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the strategies that Spanish and Hispano-African authors employ when writing about Africa in the contemporary novel (1990-2010). Focusing on the former Spanish colonial territories of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Equatorial Guinea, I analyze the post-colonial literary discourse about these regions. This study examines the new ways of conceptualizing Africa that depart from an Orientalist framework as advanced by the novelists Lorenzo Silva, Concha López Sarasúa, Ramón Mayrata, María Dueñas, Fernando Gamboa, Montserrat Abumalham, Javier Reverte, Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, and Donato Ndongo. Their works are representative of a recent trend in Spanish letters that signals a literary focus on …

Specters Of The Unspeakable: The Rhetoric Of Torture In Guatemalan Literature, 1975-1985, William Jarrod Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines the ways in which torture was imagined and narrated in Guatemalan literature during the Internal Armed Conflict. For nearly four decades, Guatemala suffered one of the longest and most violent wars in Latin America. During that time, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were tortured at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Torture, as suggested by Ariel Dorman, is most fundamentally “a crime committed against the imagination” (8), disrupting and often dissolving the boundaries between fact and fiction, the real and the unreal. The Introduction and Chapter One of this study explore the destabilization of …