Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Intertwining Discourse: An Examination Of Suffrage And Antisuffrage Rhetoric, Emilee L. Cutright

Honors Theses

Throughout the progression of history and human life, individuals have used rhetoric to convey emotions, dictate meaning, persuade others, and better lives, empowering ideas, individuals, communities, nations, and the entire world. In stark contrast, women have consistently experienced extreme oppression that has hindered their right to speak. The expansion and reconstruction of the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century parallels the fact that “women were reconstructing their lives in these years as well” (DuBois and Dumenil 325). These years created an era for women defined by female assertion, unparalleled …

Impact Of Ekphrastic Poetry Upon My Writing, Lacy C. Snapp

Honors Theses

This thesis contains an introduction in which I will define ekphrastic poetry and provide an explication of some ekphrastic poetry written throughout history, followed by a conclusion in which I will include my own poetry, both ekphrastic and non, followed by an explication of my progress. The first section will be about questioning how the selected poets use their chosen image to enhance their own writing, and the true purpose of ekphrastic poetry. The second section will show how my poetry has developed since this project began and I started focusing on ekphrastic poetry. When I write ekphrastic poetry, not …

Language And Essence: A Comparative Study Of Identity Among Celtic Language Speakers In Wales And Brittany, Elizabeth G. Shields

Honors Theses

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis maintains, “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different cultures live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached” (Abley 47). Language offers insight into how people within specific cultures view themselves, but to what extent is identity shaped by or in response to the language and culture of the greater society? What does language tell us about the history of its speakers and the development and preservation of their identities throughout its evolution? What is the value of linguistic …

Facebook | Panopticon: An Analysis Of Facebook And Its Parallels To The Foucaultian Panopticon, Stephanie A. Fast

Honors Theses

A panopticon—the ideal mechanism for surveillance and control—has become embedded in our smartphones and our web browsers. It now pervades the fabric of approximately 890 million daily lives. It is called Facebook. This platform, on which users document their own lives in front of an audience while simultaneously surveilling the lives of their “friends,” shares startling similarities to a prison model, the Panopticon, designed in the late eighteenth-century by Jeremy Bentham, and analyzed by French philosopher, Michel Foucault. Through an analysis of Facebook’s structure and function, parallels will be suggested between the structure of Facebook and the structure of the …

Underworld Journeys In The Faerie Queene And The Lord Of The Rings: Exploring The “Belly Of The Whale” Of Joseph Campbell’S Monomyth And The Effect On The Hero’S Return From Adventure, Kayla M. Kirkendall

Honors Theses

This paper examines Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth—the idea that great myths (heroes’ journeys) throughout history adhere to a single, basic structure. The most important step of this structure is arguably the Belly of the Whale/Descent into the Underworld, as can be seen in the Redcrosse Knight of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Book One) and Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. These individual heroes reveal that the way in which they overcome (or fail to overcome) their underworlds determines the success or failure of the character as a Campbellian hero. Most importantly, …

Hidden Sites Of 'First-Year' Composition : What Do We Mean When We Say 'Ap'? : The Diversity Of Practices In Ap English Language And Composition Courses., Hollye Nicole Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to recent conversations on college readiness and precollege credit for writing alternatives. Specifically, this dissertation investigates the ways in which dispositions associated with college readiness are fostered within AP English Language and Composition courses at multiple locations within a single school district and illustrates the intersections between AP English Language and Composition and first-year writing at different locations to highlight the diversity of practices within AP English Language and Composition. Chapter one traces the histories and intersections of AP English Language and Composition and first-year writing. Chapter two describes the research methods utilized in this study. Chapter …

A Few Good Men And Women : The Rhetorical Constitution Of Military Personnel Identity., Ashly Bender Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the public negotiation of service member identity by multiple stakeholders as a way to better understand the available rhetorical strategies for affecting ideological constructions of identity. While current Rhetoric and Composition research attends mostly to student-veterans, I draw on cultural and rhetorical theorists, such as Louis Althusser, Kenneth Burke, Maurice Charland, to identify the rhetorical approaches used to construct military personnel identity, particularly in the post-9/11 era. Through analysis of films, recruiting materials, and the publicly-shared stories of personnel, I extend current understandings of constitutive rhetoric and rhetorical identification—which tend to focus on the work …

Adapting To Eda : Embracing Change And Acting Accordingly., Tia Leshaun Davis 1989-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis serves to argue the importance of being able to embrace, promote and adapt to change in the pursuit of becoming a well-rounded artist. This thesis will chronicle my beginnings as a performing artist and show how the physical, spiritual and personal education I received from specific theatrical companies and academic institutions prepared me for my thesis roles and various production responsibilities in the University of Louisville production of Eda by Obotunde Ijimere, translated by Ulli Beier and directed by Nefertiti Burton. My education and willingness to embrace, promote and adapt to change allowed me to successfully immerse myself …

#Sayitloud : Securing Racial & Academic Identities For African American Students Through Social Media., Joshua Chase Schuschke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rise of Black Twitter as an online cultural phenomenon has garnered attention as a force in the African American community. The online social network is a space for cultural performance, discussion, and debate. Generally, social media has created spaces for online communities to congregate around shared experiences and interests. African American users of popular social media such as blogs, Facebook, and the aforementioned Twitter have used the affordances of these platforms as tools to convey and construct their racial identities. The performance of racial identity offline is often carried over to these online environments, and arguably vice versa. When …

Understanding Everyday Use Of The Computer: How Philosophy Can Be Practical, Nick Breems

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The issues which must be considered when attempting to understand the totality of behavior when a human uses a computer are both multifarious and diverse. We thus have difficulties in gaining insight into the meaning that use of the computer creates in our lives, particularly in everyday use. Such understanding is important because insight based on holistic understanding is our best hope for exploiting the God-created potentials for human flourishing that is part of the promise of computing technology. As computer and internet technologies continue to embed themselves in the fabric of our everyday living, the number and complexity of …

Provincial Pestilence: Marseilles, Provence, And The Last Outbreak Of Plague In Western Europe, Katherine London Lundstrum

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

A look at local, national and international responses to the last outbreak of plague in Western Europe, which took place in Marseilles and the Provence region of France in the years 1720-1722.

How Women In Heian Japan Reflect And Alter Ancient China's Ideal Woman: The Warriors Of Virtue, Zoe Nicole Gastineau

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Heian Women Society

Issues Of Sovereignty In Wabanaki Communities And Impacts On Health Outcomes, Ralph E. Cammack

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

The purpose of this capstone is to explore how Wabanaki communities of Maine experience sovereignty as it relates to the dominant culture of Maine and how this interaction has led to current health outcomes and disparities. I do this by examining how the communities view sovereignty and understanding how internalized anger impacts these communities.

Experiences Of African American Female First Generation College Students, Ashley Green

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenology study was to gain a better understanding of the experiences of African American, female, first generation college students attending a large, predominantly White research university and to understand what motivates them. The major research question guiding this study was: How do African American, female, first generation college students (in good academic standing) describe their college experience? The researcher asked the participants to discuss their challenges, how they responded to challenges, sources of motivation, and factors that contributed to their success in college.

Through individual, face to face, interviews with 10 African American, female, FGC …

The Paleoepidemiology Of Malaria In The Ancient Near East, Nicole Elizabeth Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The end of the Late Bronze Age in the Near East (1300 - 1200 BCE) saw the widespread collapse of several large cultural centers, the reasons for which are a subject of continued debate. Evidence from events leading up to this cultural collapse suggest epidemic disease may have factored into the eventual downfall of these early civilizations. Recent DNA analysis from Egyptian mummies who lived during the period leading up to the Late Bronze Age collapse identified malaria in several elite individuals, suggesting the widespread prevalence of this infectious disease in Egypt. However, the exact prevalence, antiquity, and dynamics of …

The Celtic Way: Order, Creativity, And The Holy Spirit In The Celtic Monastic Movement, Fiona Leitch

Senior Honors Theses

The Celtic monastic movement lasted hundreds of years and is responsible for much of the spread of Christianity to the West. Much of the movement’s success can be attributed to the Celtic Christians’ understanding of the importance of the role of creative culture and order as well as an openness and responsiveness to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is these three things working in tandem that influenced the success of the Celtic monastic movement. Although the movement ended a thousand years ago, it can offer guidance and wisdom for carrying out ministry today. A case study of Cuirim …

The Broadsheet- Issue 12, Merrimack College

The Broadsheet

Merrimack College's English Department newsletter.

This issue features:

• Gail Caldwell Interview
• English Awards
• Aherne Poetry Contest Winners
• Next to Normal Review
• Grand Budapest Hotel Review
• Senior Reflection

Land And Law In The Age Of Enterprise: A Legal History Of Railroad Land Grants In The Pacific Northwest, 1864–1916, Sean M. Kammer

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Federal land subsidies to railroad corporations comprised an important part of the federal government’s policies towards its western land domain in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In all, Congress granted over a hundred million acres to railroad corporations to subsidize construction of a transcontinental railway network. Long after the last such grant in 1871, these land grants continued to incite political contests in Congress and state legislatures and legal disputes in communities across the West. By the end of the century, railroad corporations had become manifestations not just of the threatening growth of corporate power in the United …

Beyond Constructing And Capturing: An Aesthetic Analysis Of 1968 Film, Chandler Warren

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study revisits conversations surrounding the global moment of 1968 and the forms of radical filmmaking that occurred during that time. Focusing on the Newsreel collective and the Dziga Vertov Group from the United States and France respectively—groups that utilized very distinct filmmaking methodologies and produced disparate aesthetics—the study argues that traditional leftist film critique must be rethought by acknowledging the revolutionary opportunities afforded to filmmakers through aesthetic elements like voiceovers or intentionally manipulated relationships between image and sound of specific shots. Instead of judging radical films within a spectrum of revolutionary efficacy, the reflexivity afforded to the filmmaker by …

A Deflationary Interpretation Of Locke's Theory Of Ideas, Danielle N. Hampton

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation is a defense of a deflationary interpretation of Lockean ideas. The orthodox view is that Locke uses the term ‘idea’ to designate a collection of things that share some philosophically significant characteristic in common. While there is much debate over what this unifying characteristic might be, it is largely agreed upon that there is one, and only one, such characteristic. This is the assumption that I deny. I argue that Locke uses ‘idea’ as an umbrella term to cover several different types of mental items.

In Chapter 1, I look at six non-deflationary interpretations of Locke’s theory of …

The Fable And The Fabulous: The Use Of Traditional Forms In Children's Literature, John Joseph Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

To the outside world, Northern California might be trees, granola, hippies, rivers, snowboarders, environmentalists, farming, beaches, diverse wildlife, and wealth. Through a series of loosely interlocking fiction stories, this thesis explores the Northern California below the surface where people work as garbage collectors by day and attend community college by night, where teenage girls scam people in the park for free alcohol, where lovers spend their date night as part of a nude human-chain to protect an old growth redwood from being cut down, and where animal rights activists smoke cigarettes and seek love. Informed by personal experience and a …

Return To Holy Hill: Louisiana College, Academic Freedom, And The Southern Baptist Convention's Conservative Resurgence, 1995-2006, Joseph Learned Odenwald

Dissertations

This study examines a period in the history of Louisiana College in which the college’s sponsoring organization, the Louisiana Baptist Convention, a Southern Baptist affiliate, began to insist that professors at the college teach only in accordance with the official views of the Southern Baptist Convention. The literature is replete with studies on the movement affecting the Southern Baptist seminaries, but little has been written about the impact of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Conservative Resurgence on the colleges.

As such, this study explores the changes that were made to the academic freedom and governance policies as the trustees sought to …

Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Mcleod Bethune, And Septima Clark As Learning Leaders, Chameka Simmons Robinson

Dissertations

African American female educators have a prominent place in the history of adult education. In addition to their work as educators, they often served as activists and leaders that fought for justice and the transformation of individual lives and entire communities. This study examines Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Septima Clark as learning leaders. As a means of accomplishing this research, the work of the aforementioned educators was aligned with Stephen Preskill & Stephen D. Brookfield’s Nine Learning Tasks of Leadership. The effect of the educators’ learning leadership on their local communities and the implications for modern-day adult …

Lords And Order: Credible Rulers And State Failure, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

Why do states fail? Why do failed states persist without collapsing into complete anarchy? This paper argues that given insurgency or weakened state capacity, rulers may find it best, paradoxically, to reduce the amount of political good it provides as a means of sustaining some amount of their rule. Moreover, although the consequence is political fragmentation and increasing levels of violence, this is not inconsistent with the continuation of attenuated central governance. To evaluate this argument, I select the case of King Stephen’s reign in medieval England. Although far removed historically from contemporary cases of state failure, the reign of …

Questioning The Pope, Jim Easterhouse

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

All Feathers And Attitude, Virginia Macdonald

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays and prose poems seeks to examine the elements of an identity: how memories, culture, work, place, family, and brain chemistry simultaneously create and undermine a sense of self. How the sense of self is not contiguous, or smooth. How hope and regret wrestle.

While deeply personal, All Feathers and Attitude is not a memoir, but rather an assemblage of interpretations based on actual events. The individual pieces are gathered into sections that correlate somewhat to the themes mentioned above, but the sections are not labeled as such. The readers may draw whatever conclusions they wish regarding …

"Compulsion": The Fictionalization Of The Leopold-Loeb Case And The Struggle For Creative Control Of "The Crime Of The Century", Maria L. Zambrana

All NMU Master's Theses

When an artist releases a project into the global marketplace, it is difficult to say that it is “their” project from that point onward. Once an artistic work is made accessible to the public, it all but becomes public property as it is reinterpreted and re-released in different forms. In the case of literature, everything from plagiarism to unauthorized publishing can take place. Some methods of “stealing,” such as fan fiction, have less of an impact and can be viewed as harmless appreciation (as long as there is no profit being made). But other forms of theft, like the illegal …

Not So Magical: Issues With Racism, Classism, And Ideology In Harry Potter, Tiffany L. Walters

All NMU Master's Theses

Although it is primarily a young adult fantasy series, the Harry Potter books are also focused on the battle against racial purification and the threat of a strictly homogeneous magical society. This thesis examines the intricacies and depth of the racial ideologies presented in the books, as well as how they can be equated with historical and real world issues. More specifically, this thesis will study the delineations of human and non-human beings, and how the institutional biases they struggle against are supported by traditional principles. Though these are important ideas worthy of discussion, I also hope that further examination …

With The Light Caught Between, Albert M. Jacoby

All NMU Master's Theses

Although Henry and Claire Lumens are twins, their high school lives couldn’t be more opposite. Henry enjoys sketching, looking at handsome boys, and reading about fantastical places, but his shy and pensive nature means he battles demons of his own every day in the gym locker room. Claire, however, loves the world she lives in, which is easy because she’s bossy, clever, and stunning. On their seventeenth birthday, their grandmother gives them a gift that will take them to a fantastical world. Despite their ignorance of the world’s existence, their grandmother insists it’s their birthplace, and the only way they …

16-Bit Ghouls: A Novella, Alyssa M. Bersine

All NMU Master's Theses

This novella follows twenty-something phone psychic and recluse, Jane, whose dead brother haunts her Super Nintendo. When he prompts Jane to find his killer, she must learn how to navigate a world where he is absent. Jane struggles not only with the ghost, but also with letting go of the nostalgia and anxiety that prevent her from moving on with her life. 16-Bit Ghouls is a story about grief and growing-up.