Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Objectification Of Women In Cane, Claudia M. Davis

ETD Archive

This thesis examines Jean Toomer's Cane (1923) from a feminist perspective. Using Laura Mulvey's film theory of the "male gaze", it repurposes it and uses the theory from a literary standpoint. Throughout this thesis, many different aspects are examined including the character interaction within the stories, the use of the narrative "I" and its overarching implications, audience participation with regard to voyeurism and Toomer's paradoxical stance on the objectification of women. Toomer writes about the women in Cane in a sexually explicit fashion, but does so in order to draw attention to the gaze and criticize it. As the vignettes …

Interpretations Of Fear And Anxiety In Gothic-Postmodern Fiction: An Analysis Of The Secret History By Donna Tartt, Stacey A. Litzler

ETD Archive

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt is a novel that explores the conditions of detachment and anomie that are represented by a group of six students at an eastern private college. This tale of murder and concealment -- combined with a lack of remorse and redemption -- is far from the traditional, coming-of-age school novel. I argue that The Secret History participates in the gothic-postmodern literary genre, even though it bears the trappings of other genres. Reading this novel through a gothic-postmodern lens reveals that this work is an exaggeration -- by way of the charged gothic atmosphere -- …

Art Spiegelman's Maus As A Heteroglossic Text, Dane H. Minich

ETD Archive

According to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, the modernist novel is the best literary form to exploit heteroglossia, or the coexistence of two or more voices within a text. It incorporates the speeches of the author, narrators, and characters, as well as languages that are indicative of social status, employment, epochs, and so on. In this essay, heteroglossia is applied to Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus to demonstrate that the comics medium is also a prime candidate for heteroglossic exploitation. Voice and dialect are examined in the first portion of the essay, including generational differences between the characters' language, the presence and …

Liberating The Sexed Body: Oscar Wilde Erodes Victorian Conventions As A New World Is Created In The Importance Of Being Earnest, Amber M. Wulu

ETD Archive

This essay examines the way in which Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest challenges Victorian conventionalist definition of sexuality in terms of gender. Wilde leads the charge against the structure of the heterosexual matrix byexamining the extent to which gender regulates a person's identity, perception and future. It is imperative to apply alternate analysis on gay/queer theory to Wilde's work to show how the artist was one of the first to introduce audiences to the notion that gender is in actuality a construct. Several aspects of Wilde's literary career are ignored and critics do not recognize nor understand …

Fighting The Germans. Fighting The Germs: Cleveland's Response To The 1918-1919 Spanish Flu Epidemic, Haakon Bjoershol

ETD Archive

Epidemics and disease are often overlooked in historical inquiries. This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. First of all, people's beliefs about what causes disease, as well as their ideas about how to respond to disease, are intrinsically linked to culture, philosophical convictions, and identity. Secondly, the ways a society respond to disease and epidemics largely reflect existing ideologies, values, social structures, and various needs and interests. In short, medical history is a tremendously helpful lens for studying political, economic, social, and ideological aspects of cultures and societies.This thesis looks at Cleveland's response to the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza epidemic. …

Passive And Active Masculinities In Disney's Fairy Tale Films, Grace Dugar

ETD Archive

Disney fairy tale films are not as patriarchal and empowering of men as they have long been assumed to be. Laura Mulvey's cinematic theory of the gaze and more recent revisions of her theory inform this analysis of the portrayal of males and females in Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. This study reveals that many representations of males in these films actually portray masculinity as an object of female agency. Over time, Disney's representations of masculinity have become more supportive of male agency and individuality, but this development has been inconsistent …

Invoking The Incubus: Mary Shelly's Use Of The Demon-Lover Tradition In Frankenstein, Christopher M. Lamphear

ETD Archive

The image and behavior of Shelley's infamous creature is similar to that of the mythical Incubus demon. By presenting Victor's hideous progeny as a reproduction of the Incubus myth, Shelley seems to provide her nineteenth-century reader with the image of demons, who for many, already haunted their nightmares. Shelley would likely have been familiar with the Incubus myth. Her fascination with her dead mother led her to the artist Henry Fuseli, whose painting "The Nightmare" depicts the Incubus Demon. Shelley wrote during a time in which medical scholars such as Dr. Bond and Dr. Waller explored a malady that they …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Light And Old Shadows: John G. Turner’S Attempt To Understand Brigham Young, Craig L. Foster

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Brigham Young has repeatedly been described as larger than life and most people, critics and supporters, would agree. Brigham Young (1801–1877), second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, led the Saints like a modern- day Moses from the turmoil of Nauvoo to the Great Basin. He then oversaw the settlement of over three hundred communities in the intermountain west. He directed the growth and development of the LDS Church and left an indelible mark on both Mormonism and the western United States. Brigham Young was, indeed, larger than life.

Biblical And Non-Biblical Quotes In The Sermons And Epistles Of Paul, John A. Tvedtnes

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In 2010, BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute published an article in which I demonstrated that the charge of plagiarism, frequently leveled against Joseph Smith by critics, is untrue.1 I noted, among other things, that the authors of books of the Bible sometimes quoted their predecessors. One of those authors was the apostle Paul, who drew upon a wide range of earlier texts in his epistles. This article discusses and demonstrates his sources.

The Spectacles, The Stone, The Hat, And The Book: A Twenty-First Century Believer’S View Of The Book Of Mormon Translation, Roger Nicholson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This essay seeks to examine the Book of Mormon translation method from the perspective of a regular, nonscholarly, believing member in the twenty-first century, by taking into account both what is learned in Church and what can be learned from historical records that are now easily available. What do we know? What should we know? How can a believing Latter-day Saint reconcile apparently conflicting accounts of the translation process? An examination of the historical sources is used to provide us with a fuller and more complete understanding of the complexity that exists in the early events of the Restoration. These …

Front Matter

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Adam Miller’S New Hermeneutic?, Robert E. Smith

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Whatever else spirit may be, we experience spirit as an interpenetrating weave of thoughts, ideas, judgments, feelings, passions, desires, and aversions. Though rooted in the body, this weave of spirit involves a dimension of looped awareness and reflexivity that is finer and harder to discern than those that belong to the body itself. (p. 42)

Passing Up The Heavenly Gift (Part One Of Two), Gregory L. Smith

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Basic Thesis …the Latter-day Saint church was predicted to fail, and in all likelihood has failed to secure the fullness of the priesthood (Denver Snuffer1). Denver C. Snuffer, Jr. claims to have had a vision of the resurrected Jesus Christ.2 A convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he is the author of eight books (509). The thesis of the most recent—Passing the Heavenly Gift—is summarized by his book’s cover photo: a snuffed out candle, smoke curling upward, with a dim ember persisting at the tip of the wick.

Finding Still Waters And Green Pastures: Understanding And Reducing Stress In Urban Church Planting, David R. Dunaetz

Selected Faculty Publications

The work of urban church planters is often hindered by high levels of stress. Stress may be viewed as a process that involves stressors and an individual’s perceptions of both the level of threat and his or her ability to deal with the threat. The long term and the short term consequences of stress can be attenuated through appropriate coping strategies such as problem solving, prayer, and seeking social support. Recent empirical evidence indicates that exposure to nature is also very effective, a strategy that might be especially beneficial to urban church planters and their ministries. Several practical applications are …

Goals And Accountability For Ministry Effectiveness: Insights From Psychological Science, David R. Dunaetz

Selected Faculty Publications

In this overview of what psychological science has discovered about goal setting, we will see that goal setting tends to make people more productive. This essay examines the conditions under which goal setting is most effective, as well as the situations where goal setting can be dangerous. Studies of goal-setting theory have found that job performance increases when people have challenging but specific performance goals. The mechanisms that cause goal setting to lead to greater effectiveness are just as present in Christian ministry as in any other kind of work. Also the dangers associated with goal setting are especially relevant …

Reconnecting With The Mystics: Kathryn Kuhlman And The Reshaping Of Early Pentecostalism, Margaret English De Alminana

Selected Faculty Publications

Kathryn Kuhlman helped to shape a generation of Pentecostal/Charismatic theology and praxis by reintroducing a depth of spirituality which harkened back to the teachings of the mystics. She introduced the concept of spiritual silence to a generation of Sawdust Trail Pentecostals known for their exuberant and lively worship services, and she popularized the experience of being ‘slain in the Spirit.’ But her most notable innovation resulted from discarding healing lines and cards together with a healing theology based upon the faith of the adherents. Instead, she invited pilgrims into a transcendent experience of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit, …

Desafíos Teatrales Al Mal Metafísico: El Hombre Deshabitado De Rafael Alberti Y La Muerte De César Vallejo., Ilka Kressner

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

En este ensayo, propongo estudiar críticas del racionalismo, entendido como uno de los grandes mitos metafísicos, en dos obras teatrales de los años 30 del siglo pasado: El hombre deshabitado (1930, estrenado en el 1931) del español Rafael Alberti y La muerte (1930-34, sin estrenar) del peruano César Vallejo. Conocidos ambos autores sobre todo por sus poesías, tanto Alberti como Vallejo han dejado extensas obras dramáticas, que demuestran su elaboración de lenguajes escénicos nuevos con el fin de comunicar incertidumbres semejantes de los años anteriores a la guerra civil española. En cuanto a las trayectorias artísticas de los autores, las …

Lessons In And Out Of School, Mary K. Maloney Johnson

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

What are we saying to children when we leave the creativity to others in a visual environment, infused with “attitude”, snobbery, acquisitiveness and Pollyanna innocence? We’re saying that we approve this message. Visual arts teach media literacy in an atmosphere that implicitly uses vices to secure attention. School experiences cannot compete. Parents and teachers, pleading incompetence, pass undiscerning choices to the next generation. Educational illustration typically amounts to copy-machine ready, poorly drawn, saccharin cartoons. Standards exemplified by the likes of Szyk, Holling and others lie hidden on the shelves. Dismay and consternation over the failure to plumb the depths of …

Theological Existentialism In San Manuel Bueno, Mártir, Catherine Ann Hollingsworth

Wayne State University Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation, entitled Theological Existentialism in San Manuel Bueno, mártir consults a common classic canon, San Manuel Bueno, mártir by Miguel de Unamuno (Bilbao, 1864-Salamanca, 1936). The story is set in a remote rural rustic village of Valverde de Lucerna in the bucolic Diocese of Renada which lies by a symbolic lake and snow-capped cloudy mountain resembling, said, San Manuel, noting in a quote that, "He was tall, slender, and erect; he carried himself the way our Vulture Peak carries its crest, and his eyes had all the blue depth of our lake". Carrying sacred and secular connotations it …

Multi-Modality Assessment Of Language Function, Erik Carmen Brown

Wayne State University Dissertations

The work presented as part of this dissertation represents a multi-modality study of language structure and function. The primary functional modality employed is task-related electrocorticography (ECoG). This is complemented by discussion and evaluation of previously published functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Language-related structure is explored using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging in conjunction with ECoG data. The scientific questions pursued are broad and include reevaluation of previously proposed theories.

We start by taking the first steps in validating our naming-related ECoG approach by comparing our results from a small cohort of patients to the clinical gold-standard technique of electrical brain …

Understanding Racial Differences In Aspiration Realization: Middle Income, Middle Class, And College-Going Behaviors, Omari Jackson

Wayne State University Dissertations

It is well documented that African Americans attend college at a lower rate than whites. However, African Americans' rate of aspiring to attend college is not lower than whites; rather their aspirations are higher than those of whites. Because there is such disparity between African American's educational aspirations and attainment, further investigation into this paradox is necessary. Literature shows that membership in the middle class generally equips one with greater resources that prepare them for college. If such research is accurate, middle class African American students should possess college preparatory resources and attend college. Because this is not the case, …

Future Contingents, Freedom, And Foreknowledge, Mohammed Abouzahr

Wayne State University Dissertations

This essay is a contribution to the new trend and old tradition of analyzing theological fatalism in light of its relationship to logical fatalism. All results pertain to branching temporal systems that use the A-theory and assume presentism. The project focuses on two kinds of views about branching time. One position is true futurism, which designates what will occur regardless of contingency. The opposing view is open futurism, by which no possible course of events is privileged over others; that is, there are no soft facts.

A contextualist theory of temporal standpoints, standpoint inheritance, is designed to enhance Priorian temporal …

Sleep Homeodynamics And Wellbeing In Asymptomatic Hiv-Seropositive African American Women, Tabetha Lynn Gayton

Wayne State University Dissertations

SLEEP HOMEODYNAMICS AND WELLBEING IN ASYMPTOMATIC HIV–SEROPOSITIVE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN

by

TABETHA LYNN GAYTON

December 2013

Advisor: Hossein N. Yarandi, PhD

Major: Nursing (Urban Health)

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

BACKGROUND: HIV–related sleep disruption is a common complaint of persons with HIV infection. With the demographical shifts, African American women have now emerged as one of the fastest growing HIV populations today, yet they remain a vulnerable and underrepresented population in the sleep literature.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the dynamics of HIV–related sleep disruption and wellbeing in asymptomatic HIV–seropositive AA women of childbearing age within …

Public Buildings And Civic Benefactions In Western Rough Cilicia: Insights From Signaling Theory, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In the Hellenistic and Roman world of the eastern Mediterranean, Greek and Greco-Roman cities came to be defined by their physical cityscape. These buildings were constructed by specific city institutions, such as the council and the assembly, and financed through city funds, mass subscription and, importantly, public benefactions. Public benefactions, which also included support for festivals and competitions, were made by certain elite and usually wealthy individuals to the benefit of a defined community of citizens (and sometimes non-citizens, as in the case of fortification walls). Institutions within the benefiting community, again the council and the assembly, acknowledged these gifts …

Japanese Westernization And The American Civil War, Kyle Bridge

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

Kyle Bridge is a senior History major and Education minor at the University of North Florida, specializing in 20th-century American politics and culture.

The “Violence” Of The Canon: Revisiting Contemporary Notions Of The Canonical, Colby Dickinson

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The historical conditions surrounding the processes of forming a canon (its canonicity) are rarely examined directly, yet it is these processes which govern over the realm of (religious) representations and identity constructions. In light of several recent publications which have directly criticized the explicitly monotheistic scriptures, it has become imperative to address theologically the role which the canon plays within religious tradition. By focusing on the role of the canonical form in the works of Jan Assmann and René Girard, for example, this essay will demonstrate the cultural necessity of canonical forms despite their ‘monotheistic tendency’ to subdivide the world …

Motherhood And Love: Beyond The Gendered Stereotypes Of Theology, Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews the book Motherhood and Love: Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes of Theology, by Cristina Grenholm.

Is Reliable-Social-Scholarlyo-Editing An Oxymoron, Peter Shillingsburg

Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Publications

A critique of humanities digital archive and text projects holding them to standards of iconographical and textual accuracy and a criticism of collaborative projects for posting not-ready-for-prime-time versions of work that passes for finished by some while demanding help from others to bring up to usable standards. Suggests minimal standards for digital textual projects and outlines principles for collaborative work.

From Physical To Digital Textualiity: Loss And Gain In Literary Projects, Peter Shillingsburg

Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Publications

Provides advice for student parjects in digitizing literary texts for web sites. Discusses the salient features of documents and what is gained and lost in transformations for virtual digital representation. Articulates some principles for methodologies and goals for such projects.