Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Framing Identity: Repudiating The Ideal In Chicana Literature, Michael A. Flores

All NMU Master's Theses

In the 1960s Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez penned his now canonical, epic poem “I Am Joaquin.” The poem chronicles the historic oppression of a transnational, Mexican people as well as revolutionary acts of their forefathers in resisting tyranny. Coinciding with a series of renewed, sociopolitical campaigns, collectively known as the Chicano Movement, Gonzales’ poem uses vivid imagery to present an idealized representation of Chicanos and encouraged his reader to engage in revolutionary action. Though the poem encourages strong leadership, upward mobility, and political engagement the representations of women in his text are misogynistic and limiting.

His presentation of the “black-shawled …

In A Relative Way, Gabriel W. Waskiewicz

All NMU Master's Theses

In this series of interrelated personal essays, I explore how relationships with certain family members and friends have helped form my life. Through the lives of those profiled here, I believe readers will get a better glimpse into the troubles I’ve been through in my own life. The many parallels I have with the lives of these family members and friends show that they have endured comparable situations or have even been through many of the same problems that I’ve had to withstand. By first seeing how these important individuals shaped my life, readers will get a better understanding of …

Disaster Salsa, Linda A. H. Sirois

All NMU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

DISASTER SALSA

By

Linda A. H. Sirois

Disaster Salsa is an interrelated collage of essays, poems, letters, recipes, and stories that are juxtaposed to tell a narrative of what it is like to be the mother of a child who struggles with mental disorder. Our oldest son has had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) all his life; at the age of 11 he was struck with a baseball bat, which resulted in a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Services that address, diagnose, and treat mental disorders have been abysmal for many years in parts of our country, and ten years ago …

To Soar Above The Apple Grove: Stories, Emily V. Doseck

All NMU Master's Theses

The stories written for this thesis revolve around the idea of lesbian characters finding, and in some cases losing, love in the young adult genre. Each piece differs in time period and setting, but all take the typical ‘tragic’ stereotype of queer fiction and prove that everyone deserves a chance at love. All three pieces also contain elements of magic, ranging from the black magic associated with the witches of Salem to the whimsical magic of fairy tales. First love is a time of discovery and new joy for so many, and queer literature could use more of these positive …

"Why Don't You Speak Ordinary English?" She Said Coldly: Linguistic Rebellion In "The Prussian Officer" And Lady Chatterley's Lover, Nicole R. Koroch

All NMU Master's Theses

Criticism of D. H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, tends to focus on issues of sexual awakening, the natural world, and figurations of gender and power. However, little examination has been done on the instances of language as a rejection of authority through the character of Mellors, a returning soldier and a gamekeeper. In the novel, Mellors speaks both a “broad” vernacular as well as “proper” English and this linguistic variance reveals two significant aspects of Mellors’ character. Here, I will implement Jacques Derrida’s theory of differance to show that just as the “a” in differance, as a graphic …

Human Centered Design Applied To Perceptual Paradigms, Jonathan T. Fancher

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis gives three examples of projects that apply knowledge from areas such as human centered design, computer science, and psychology to study sensation and perception. All three of these projects were created to gather information on how humans interact with their surrounding environment and the world. For instance the first area of discovery included the way humans interact within their perceptual and personal space through an interactive table. The second project looks at exploring the neural mechanisms that affect Haptic Hallucinations by creating a device that can give the feeling of bugs crawling on or below the surface of …

War And Return, Alexander Gubbins

All NMU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

WAR AND RETURN

By

Alexander Vartan Gubbins

War and Return is a collection of poetry that pivots on the conflict between loss of human life, sometimes even whole cities, and reinvention of cultural identity. In these poems, I search for and shape my own identity as a poet, while revealing my experiences as a soldier in the US War in Iraq and as the grandson of an Armenian who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Turkey. These narrative poems are mainly in open form with a few in closed form as well. As I write in open form, I …

Around The Table, Rachel E. Mills

All NMU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Around the Table

By

Rachel Elizabeth Mills

This collection of nonfiction essays revolves around concepts of food and home. The essays focus on the universalizing nature of food, both from a personal perspective, and from a diasporic Middle Eastern perspective. In these essays I explore how food unifies and creates communities. The essays range from exploring my own upbringing in rural Upper Michigan, and how food creates bonds within my own family and community, to examining how food creates ties and communities within the Arab diaspora. This collective narrative, in focusing on the communal characteristics surrounding the human need …

Focus On Children's Ministry, S. Joseph Kidder

Faculty Publications

In researching growing Seventh-day Adventist churches in North America we discovered that the common denominator among these churches is their focus on children’s ministries. In the past, parents brought their children to the church and the Lord. Today, children bring their parents and friends to the church if they enjoy their experience there.

Joan Of Arc And The Franco-Burgundian Reconciliation, Ryan Andrew Schaff

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In the year 1429 France was a torn kingdom with Burgundy, a vassal and valuable ally to France, assisting the English in the war that historians would later dub the Hundred Years War. The war had been fought since the early-mid fourteenth century and France had seen little success in those years save for a brief period towards the end of the fourteenth century. France’s heir, who hid in southern France, was disinherited as a result of the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 which passed the throne to the English. Without Burgundy, France faced a two-front war with Burgundy in …

The Woody Guthrie Centennial Bibliography, Jeffrey Gatten

Librarian Publications & Presentations

This bibliography updates two extensive works designed to include comprehensively all significant works by and about Woody Guthrie. Richard A. Reuss published A Woody Guthrie Bibliography, 1912–1967 in 1968 and Jeffrey N. Gatten's article “Woody Guthrie: A Bibliographic Update, 1968–1986” appeared in 1988. With this current article, researchers need only utilize these three bibliographies to identify all English-language items of relevance related to, or written by, Guthrie.

Mirrors Of Mechanized Man: Capitalism And Intertextuality As Represented In The Works Of Herman Melville, Franz Kafka And Don Delillo, Samantha J. Amberson-Dominguez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

It is contended that literature, as a product of the socioeconomic conditions in which it was generated, can be used to explore the relationship between individuals and technological advancement, as existing within specific stages of capitalism’s development. Using Marxist analysis to examine texts generated during the cultural eras of realism, modernism, and postmodernism, it is argued that physical, mental, and emotional state of characters, as represented within works written by Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and Don DeLillo, respectively, reflect the increasing levels of human alienation as experienced by individuals under the constraining forces of market capitalism, imperialism, and late capitalism.

"But, Whatever The Reason, His Heart Or His Shoes, He Stood There On Christmas Eve, Hating The Whos": Dr. Seuss' The Grinch As The Racialized Other In American Culture, Marina Malli

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes Dr. Seuss’ the Grinch as a modern myth in US society that provides an imaginary resolution to the perceived encroachment of racial and cultural heterogeneity in the various time periods in which the text has circulated. Each chapter closely reads three different versions of the story, including Dr. Seuss’ children’s book published in 1957, the 1966 animated TV special directed by Chuck Jones, and the 2000 film directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey. In each chapter, I consider the racial politics prevalent in each time period in order to elucidate my claim that various media …

Failure Of Democratic Consolidation: The Three Year Interlude Of Military Rule (1958-1962) In Burma, Zaw Thein

Masters Theses

Many scholars believe that the period between 1948 when Burma won Independence and 1962 when the military took over the country from the elected civilian government as the parliamentary democracy era. During this era, there was a three-year interlude where the military leaders ruled the country as the Caretaker Government- a euphemism for the three-year military interlude. My argument is that this interlude happened due to the growing strength of the military as an institution and the decline of political parties in Burma. The strength of the military institution was due to the civil war that broke out just after …

Haunted To Death: Subverting Genre And Reader Expectations In Lewis Carroll's Phantasmagoria, Elissa Anne Graeser

Master's Theses

This study of Lewis Carroll’s Phantasmagoria argues that the poem failed to achieve critical and popular success due to unmet reader expectations. The poem is a haunted house or ghost story and in many ways follows the familiar formula of the Victorian ghost story. However, Carroll’s political and generic satire alters various aspects of the anticipated structure, thereby creating a work that fails to satisfy readers on multiple levels. The failure of a work by a successful author writing within a popular genre is particularly significant for what it shows us about the relationship between genre, consumerism, and literary criticism.

A Document In Death And Madness: A Cultural And Interdisciplinary Study Of Nineteenth-Century Art Song Settings On The Death Of Opelia, Jennifer Leigh Tipton

Dissertations

In the nineteenth century the character of Ophelia transformed from a minor role in Hamlet into one of the great muses of the Romantic period. Ophelia’s rise to an archetype of feminine madness was not a result of Shakespeare’s pen alone, but of the accumulation of interpretations of her character from actresses, artists, critics, writers, musicians, and social attitudes toward women. This paper focuses on nineteenth-century interpretations of her death, specifically art song.

A brief survey of the nineteenth-century European cultural and social climate pertaining to Ophelia is included in the paper:

*Shakespeare in France and Germany

*Nineteenth-Century Actresses in …

A Historical Analysis Of The Reasoning And Rationale Behind The Federal Prohibition Of Marijuana, Carlos Caro

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis argues that the federal government first created and then maintained the prohibition of marijuana as a reflection of and reaction to, social, political and economic events happening at large in the U.S. and abroad. This thesis primarily compares and contrasts the treatment of marijuana by the federal government and society at large during the 1930s through the early 1980s by building upon scholars’ previous links to race, ethnicity, class and morality to display a pattern of change that was convenient to the federal government’s continued efforts to prohibit marijuana. This thesis demonstrates that changes in attitude and perception …

Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies And Words, Patricia Fancher

All Dissertations

This Dissertation analyzes the life and writing of inventor and scientist Alan Turing in order to identify and theorize chiasmic relations between bodies and texts. Chiasmic rhetoric, as I develop throughout the Dissertation, is the dynamic processes between materials and discourses that interact to construct powerful rhetorical effect, shape bodies, and also compose new knowledges. My research here extends our knowledge of the rhetoric of science by demonstrating the ways that Alan Turing's embodied experiences shape his rhetoric. Turing is an unusual figure for research on bodily rhetoric and embodied knowledge. He is often associated with disembodied knowledge and as …

Transnational Historical Fiction In A Postsecular Age: A Study Of The Spiritual Theses In The Works Of Luis Alberto Urrea And Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Mary Anna Sobhani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study, employing a postsecular theoretical prism, analyzes the spiritual theses given expression through the historical fiction of Mexican-American, or Chicano, author Luis Alberto Urrea and exiled Persian Bahá'í author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. This study examines three novels: Nakhjavani's The Woman Who Read Too Much, Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter, and its sequel Queen of America. These novels express world-views in which the spiritual has particular importance, not as a supersession of quotidian reality but in an integral partnership with it, the baseline upon which postsecular thought is built. This study concludes that such an expression of world-views signals towards …

Review Of Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule And The Politics Of Public Space In Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, Michael Wert

History Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Making Fenians: The Transnational Constitutive Rhetoric Of Revolutionary Irish Nationalism, 1858-1876, Timothy Richard Dougherty

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation traces the constitutive rhetorical strategies of revolutionary Irish nationalists operating transnationally from 1858-1876. Collectively known as the Fenians, they consisted of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the United Kingdom and the Fenian Brotherhood in North America. Conceptually grounded in the main schools of Burkean constitutive rhetoric, it examines public and private letters, speeches, Constitutions, Convention Proceedings, published propaganda, and newspaper arguments of the Fenian counterpublic. It argues two main points. First, the separate national constraints imposed by England and the United States necessitated discursive and non-discursive rhetorical responses in each locale that made it near impossible to sustain …

The Rhetoric Of Praise : Prayer And Persuasion In The Psalms, Ryan J. Cook

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

City2 Buffalo: A Smartphone App Designed To Establish A Mobile Museum Without Walls, Exhibiting The Living City Of Buffalo, Ny And Its Rich History And Environment, With A Purpose To Inform And Inspire All Toward Global Cultural Awareness And Civic Engagement, In Order To Collectively Create A Better Future., Deborah L. Russell

Museum Studies Theses

ABSTRACT OF THESIS

City² Buffalo:

a smartphone app designed to establish a mobile museum without walls, exhibiting the living city of Buffalo, NY and its rich history and environment, with a purpose to inform and inspire all toward global cultural awareness and civic engagement, in order to collectively create a better future.

The present environment, including the technological capabilities inspired by the Information Revolution, requires American museums to reconsider their traditional practices. American history museums are specially challenged to address future possibilities and difficulties resulting from social, economic and demographic change. This paper proposes a new type of history …

Language Attitudes, Ideologies, Maintenance, And Spanish Heritage Learners In The South Texas Border, Hyanghee Lee

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Unlike the situations in Europe or Canada, the power of language exercised by the speakers in the U.S.A is centered on English. Considering the general perception of a language as an index of an ethnic identity, this circumstance clearly reflects a linguistic inequality in the multiethnic U.S. society. The primary objective of this study is to examine the language ideologies and attitudes that the Spanish Heritage Learners in South Texas adapt and exercise in their daily activities. This investigation also attempts to analyze the correlations between language attitudes and the intergenerational transmission of Spanish, which would significantly impact the maintenance …

Vocabulary Growth Using Nonfiction Literature And Dialogic Discussions In Preschool Classrooms, Gwen R. Marra

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The preschool years are a crucial time for children to develop vocabulary knowledge. A quality preschool environment promotes large amounts of language usage including picture book read alouds and discussions. There is growing research to support the use of nonfiction literature in preschool classrooms to promote vocabulary growth and knowledge of the world for preschool children. This research study compared vocabulary growth of preschool children using fiction and dialogic discussions versus vocabulary growth of preschool children using nonfiction and dialogic discussions following a six week study of autumn and changes that happen during this season to the environment and animals. …

My Church Loyalties, D. Stephen Long

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Collaborating For A Shared Purpose, Jame Schaefer

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Two Nations Under God, Bryan Massingale

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Parallel Identities: Southern Appalachia And The Southern Concepts Of Gender During The American Civil War, Maegan K. Harrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern concepts of gender influenced Appalachian society throughout the antebellum and Civil War eras. Concepts of masculinity and femininity, including “the cult of true womanhood” and Southern manhood, shifted and broaden throughout the South due to wartime stressors. Appalachians adjusted these gender roles in order to survive chaos and turmoil in their region. The brutal political and community divisions, high rates of desertion, guerilla warfare, and threats of invasion in the mountain regions intensified these concepts of gender. Southern constructions of gender molded the Appalachian experience of war but the high level of conflict strengthened these new roles as a …

The Deliberate Speed Of The Tar Heel State: North Carolina’S Efforts To Resist School Desegregation, 1954-1966, Patrick S. Cash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Deliberate Speed of the Tar Heel State offers readers an examination of the efforts undertaken by North Carolina in hope of resisting public school desegregation between the Brown v. Board decisions of 1954, 1955, and 1966. It will examine the state’s use of a series of legal, legislative maneuvers, The Pupil Assignment Act of 1955 and the Pearsall Plan of 1956, which attempted to show definitive progress to the federal government while simultaneously ensuring the segregated public school system remained intact. By examining the efforts of individuals such as William Umstead, Luther Hodges, Terry Sanford, Thomas Pearsall, and others, …