Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"We Get Nothing" : An Ethnography Of Participatory Development And Gender Mainstreaming In A Water Project For The Bhil Of Central India, Indrakshi Tandon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Through the close examination of a state-sponsored watershed project being implemented by Association for Integrated Social Development (AISD) in the district of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, this dissertation project explores how current development approaches in water projects impact its intended targets, in this case the Bhil tribal community. A key aspect of this research is to analyze in detail how development narratives such as participatory or bottom-up approaches and gender mainstreaming often result in unintended consequences. With a focus on the gendered nature of participatory policies, I argue that popular development practices in India often lead to governing and managing target …

Bayesian Analysis In Adult Skeletal Age-At-Death Estimation, With Additional Consideration Of Pathological Variables, Jessica L. Campbell

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A common task bioarchaeologists face is to estimate age-at-death in populations that have no corresponding documentation. This poses many challenges, the first of which is that age-at-death is highly variable within and among populations and can be further confounded by genetic and environmental influences, as well as other components of the biological profile. Estimating age-at-death in a historic sample can be even more challenging due to missing age indicators or taphonomic changes that obscure the features. Bayesian Analysis offers the potential to mitigate these challenges and to estimate age-at-death with lower degrees of uncertainty and higher probabilities of increased accuracy …

A Glittering Dream : Celebration, Spectacle, Power, And Identity In American Cities, 1886-1924, Wyatt Erchak

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In July 1886, the city of Albany, New York celebrated the Bicentennial of the granting of its city charter, an event that synthesized and innovated existing forms of spectacle and celebration. Parades of municipal, fraternal, commercial, and military organizations joined orations and elaborate pyrotechnics to mark the occasion. Its central feature—a grand “historical pageant”—was one of the first times a city told the sequential story of its creation using dramatic and mechanical techniques, with expert assistance from Mardi Gras and Carnival float designers.

Home's History : A Docupoetry Series About Fort Ann And Preservation Of Battle Hill, Kassandra Milligan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Inspired by the way authors such as M. NourbeSe Philip, Brenda Coultas and Muriel Rukeyser skillfully interweave documentation, interviews and their own voices into their writing, this collection of docupoems and photographs engages with the history of Fort Ann, New York, specifically the preservation of Battle Hill, a Revolutionary War battlefield. These free verse poems use spatial fragmentation and polyvocality to create a dialog about the fragmentation and loss of history. To accompany the textual component of my project, I included photographs of Fort Ann Cemeteries that I took while doing fieldwork to contrast the erosion of historical consciousness with …

I Play Therefore I Am : Deconstructing Ludic Identities, Joseph Matthew Wozlonis

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My project, a critical thesis titled “I Play Therefore I Am: Deconstructing Ludic Identities,” investigates the relationship between ludic entanglement and the human subjective experience in video games. By using Gilles Deleuze’s cinematic interpretation of movement and time, I establish that video games manipulate virtual time and space to map agency onto the subjective experience of the player, thereby creating ludic entanglement. Ludic entanglement is the process by which the player can function in virtuality through a video game’s avatar. My project culminates in an analysis of Rockstar Game’s Red Dead Redemption 2, a video game that refigures ludic entanglement …

The Impact Of Thoreau's Racial Privilege On His Complicated Views Of Slavery And Abolition, Cassandra Carpenter

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Throughout Henry David Thoreau’s life and writing, he pioneers the Nineteenth Century Transcendental movement as a defender of political morality and individual refinement, while simultaneously stressing the importance of maintaining intimacy with nature. The presumed static nature of Thoreau’s movement, however, does not fully encompass the tumultuous time in American history with which Thoreau exists. Living after the Revolutionary war, during the Mexican war, and before the height of the Civil-War, his thought inhabits a period of changes, sometimes positive and yet mostly negative.

What Goes Up Must Go Down: Denunciations In The Great Terror, Cassidy Griffin

History Honors Program

The Soviet Union of the 1930s was marked by fearmongering, denunciations, and a series of show trials that rocked the Communist Party. The Great Terror started officially in late 1934 and continued until 1938, entangling millions within its web of imprisonment, forced labor, and executions. The general consensus has been that the Terror was a result of government influence and citizens’ actions. A lot of the research done on this era has focused on why the average citizen would willingly participate in the government’s reign of terror. By examining a series of memoirs written during and about this time and …

A Good Education For All? Desegregation And Educational Reform In Albany’S Schools, Joshua Levine

History Honors Program

Public and private schools throughout American history have been segregated due to policies crafted and implemented by local school boards. The Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case said segregated public schools were inherently flawed and that the idea of separate-but-equal had no place in public education. But how were school boards to integrate the schools? Cities such as Albany had neighborhoods that had a majority black proportion, meaning that the schools within these neighborhoods were going to be segregated. Policies pursued by the Albany School Board of Education did not provide a solution and The …

United States V. Dennett:The Battle For Sex Education In The Early 1900s, Hannah Breda

History Honors Program

The 1873 Comstock Act outlawed the production and distribution of any materials that were deemed to be obscene or capable of arousing adolescents. Mary Ware Dennett, a women's rights activist and pioneer in birth control and sex education, was one of the many who fell victim to this law. Dennett was arrested in 1929 for distributing her sex education pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life, written for her teenage sons after finding the sex education materials produced by the government to be insufficient. This paper argues that Dennett's pamphlet was scrutinized in United States v. Dennett because it …

The Invention Of Frederick The Great, Matheson Curry

History Honors Program

Frederick the Great is a titanic figure in European history. During his nearly half-century reign he transformed the miniscule territory of Brandenburg-Prussia into a formidable European power, and in the 1860s (about eighty years after Frederick died) Prussia eventually led the charge to form what we now know as Germany. Despite what Frederick may have actually thought about the idea of a purely "German" nation his contribution to the creation of the country, albeit unintentional, has been relentlessly lauded in the years after his death by many in Germany. Even today Frederick amazingly enough retains a large degree of his …

Roger Bacon: The Christian, The Alchemist, The Enigma, Victoria Tobes

History Honors Program

This paper explores the life and work of 13th century English Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon in light of the spiritual-religious practice of alchemy. Bacon’s works in pertinence to alchemy reflect his belonging to a school of intellectual thought known as Hermeticism; which encompasses the practice of alchemy. Bacon can be placed among other philosophic practitioners of alchemy throughout history; allowing for expanded insight into the life of this medieval scholar. Throughout history, Bacon’s most well-known work, the Opus Majus, has been interpreted in a variety of ways. However, when considering what the practice of alchemy is at its Arabic …

Liberalism And The Lessons Of Weimar Arnold Brecht, Hans Speier, And Mid-Century America, Alexander Mckenna

History Honors Program

In 1933, the people Germany elected Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party into power. This occurred under what had previously been a liberal democracy, the Weimar Republic. In the months following this event, the Nazis passed legislation that transformed what was once a bastion of free thinking, into the totalitarian empire. This event sparked an ideological crisis for the liberal intellectuals of Germany, and proposed an urgent question to the world: how can you, if at all, safeguard democracy without compromising its principles? This thesis follows Arnold Brecht and Hans Speier, two liberal intellectuals who came to the United States …

A Private Matter : Arden Of Faversham And The Early Modern History Play, Jessica Y. Hoffman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the last fifty years, changes in the study of history have necessitated a questioning of the way we think about historiography and all genres of literature connected to our understanding of history. While the early modern history play genre has not been immune to shifts toward a focus on “social history” (defined as the history of the general population rather than the history of rulers), examining the history play genre in terms of plays that have been excluded from the genre canon shows that there is still a bias toward monarchical history when we study historiography. The anonymous Arden …

Visionary Pastiche : Hildegard Von Bingen's Reconciliation Of Divine Experience And Representation, Rachel Lynn Gamarra

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Hildegard von Bingen invents a new rhetorical topos—that of prismatic refraction—which allows her to communicate her divine revelation to others through narrative, artwork, and explication. While her patristic counterparts, Augustine and Jerome, think about rendering the divine only as it relates to their understanding of Scripture, Hildegard exploits rhetoric in order to push the boundaries of human epistemology through grappling with her unique mystical experience. Though Hildegard recognizes that there is a degree of difference between her visions and her representation of them, Hildegard still finds value in language as a communicative tool. Hildegard refracts her divine experience in Scivias, …

Coming Out Online And On Campus : Queer Perspectives On Identity Work, Ian Callahan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research aims to describe the experiences associated with coming out—both on campus and online—for sexually and gender nonconforming college students. In 2014, I conducted a pilot version of this study at a public American university in the Northeast, utilizing data from semi- structured in-depth interviews and a demographic questionnaire. A thematic analysis using open and axial coding techniques found that social media interactions contributed to ‘outing’ students on campus. This finding inspired a second iteration of the study, which replicates the original research design and expands its interview script to include a more expansive series of questions related to …

Human Interactions With The Late Holocene Landscape On Martha's Vineyard, Jessica Watson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The role of humans in pre-Contact ecosystems has been a focus of archaeological attention for decades in New England, where Native groups continue to live after over 10,000 years of settlement. On Martha’s Vineyard, a small island off the southern coast of Massachusetts, research has often focused on models of coastal specialization, particularly within the many shell middens that litter the coastline. This dissertation seeks to understand human interactions with this environment from two shell middens: the Frisby Butler and Hornblower II sites, located on the shores of Squibnocket Pond in southwestern Martha’s Vineyard. This study was motivated by three …

Tribute From The Underworld : The Historical Ecology Of The Maya Postclassic Fish Trade With Isotopic Analysis Of Otoliths From MayapáN And Caye Coco, Jeffrey Michael Bryant

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation investigates the Maya fish trade through the extensive analysis of fish otoliths (ear stones), from the Postclassic sites of Mayapán, and Caye Coco, and provides an initial foundation for the development of a historical ecology program. Through osteometry, thin-section microscopy of growth rings, and microscale stable isotope analysis (δC13 and δO18), a spectrum of data is produced to characterize the Postclassic fish trade. These data are used to illuminate themes of the seasonality of the fish harvest, diet, biodiversity, fish population demography, environmental change, sustainability, and resilience. The timing of a seasonal intensification of the harvest is viewed …

Race In The Galactic Age : Sankofa, Afrofuturism, Whiteness And Whitley Strieber, Clifton Zeno Johnson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world’s interactions …

The Hot And The Cold : A Historical Explanation For Russia's And America's Contrasting Foreign Policy Approaches To The Arctic, Joshua Newman Caldon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explains how and why Russia has expanded its sphere of influence in the Arctic and why the United States has not assertively balanced this expansion. In doing so, I show that regional spheres of influence are historically and socially constructed. While material and security concerns motivate state behavior, I show that states also develop institutions, identities and interests that influence their relationships with each other and cause them to approach regions in different ways that are not readily explained by realist or liberal assumptions of how international relations should work.

Migration, Resettlement, And Transition In The Aftermath Of The Maya Collapse : A Case Study Of A Terminal Classic Maya Community In Northern Belize, Josalyn M. Ferguson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

While there is consensus that the processes of decline and abandonment at many sites associated with the Terminal Classic Maya “collapse” (A.D. 750-1050) included the movement of peoples across the Maya lowlands, there has been little focused archaeological research on the resettlement and regeneration of these migrant groups. The movement of peoples across the Maya landscape was partially encouraged by a declining and ever increasingly taxed environment, as well as a revolution in exchange systems, with a notable increase in entrepreneurialism across the Maya subarea. This more integrated economic system focused on a wider range of commodities that served to …

Alchemical Feminism : The Power And Authority Of Women In Shakespeare's Pericles, Kathryn Corah

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

William Shakespeare and George Wilkin’s romance play, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is an example of a Renaissance narrative that includes alchemical subtext. There have been many academic articles and dissertations written on this subject; I seek to build upon these previous arguments to expand upon their premises to argue that this alchemical diction and iconography of alchemical emblems allows for Marina and Thaisa to promote the power latent in feminine-coded virtue as it resists against patriarchal violence and reforms a masculinist patriarchal system. The lens I utilized to analyze the text in my exploration of this topic, which I named …

The Everyday Sacred : A Symbolic Analysis Of Contemporary Yucatec Maya Women's Daily Realities, Crystal Sheedy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As a collaborative effort between myself and the Maya women with whom I worked, who live in Xocén, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the sacred world of Maya women, as well as dismantle the insidious narrative that younger generations of Mayas are losing their culture. Instrumental to this process is the use of decolonial methods (Lawless 1993) and descriptive theoretical premises (Geertz 1973; Turner 1967, 1969) that allowed me to analyze Maya women’s discursive speech, referred to as both chismes and heridos in Spanish, which can be translated as gossip, as well as the speech genre of u t’àan nukuč …

“Transnational Identity, Class, And Information Access: St. Louis Public Library Censorship During World War I As An Extension Of Established Power”, Michael Schaefer

WashU Libraries Publications

Like most public libraries in the United States during the First World War, the St. Louis (Missouri) Public Library (SLPL) removed literature from its collection that some considered “disloyal” or “pro-German propaganda.” Library historians have drawn a broad, national picture of this practice, but this study examines at a local level what was censored at SLPL, when censorship occurred relative to other public libraries, and what forces might have influenced SLPL’s Librarian to temporarily remove items from public access. To answer the later question, the author examines the social sphere of SLPL’s Librarian, Arthur E. Bostwick - SLPL’s Board of …

Eve! Eve! Eve Serves Her Term As A Child A Two-Act Comedy, Kjeld Abell, Kristi Planck Johnson

The Bridge

Translator’s Note: I was asked to translate Kjeld Abell’s play EVE! EVE! by my Danish language professor Norman Bansen at Dana College years ago. Given Abell’s unique style and subject matter, the translating process has not been without challenges, but it has also been a delight. I particularly enjoy the comical text of the play and the subject matter that, to my knowledge, has never been explored. Who knows anything about Eve’s childhood? What about the romantic side of Adam and Eve’s relationship, their family life, or their presence on the wall of a museum? Comedy, especially, takes on not …

The Bridge, Volume 16, 2019, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Editor-in-Chief: Mialise Carney and Alex Everette

Design:
John Davey, Cover Artist
Seth Jefferson
Lindsey MacMurdo, Photography Editor
Hailey Mulvey

Editors:
Sydney Cabral
John Cahill
Jake Camara
Kellie Delaney
Erica Devonish
Gabriel Hazeldine
Katie McPherson
Ian Mello
Erin Ryan
Becca Todd
Hannah White
John Wilson

Faculty Advisor: Evan Dardano

Graduate Assistant: Jill Boger

Consultant: Cady Parker, Design

We Will Join The Spheres Once More’: Social Critique And The Scientific Imagination In Johanna Beyer’S Status Quo, Charissa Noble

Music: Faculty Scholarship

Sexy cyborgs, gruesome monsters, invasions and body-snatchings: common perceptions of science fiction tend to cite such “pulpy” scenarios as evidence that the genre at best lacks substance and at worst supports misogynist and xenophobic views. Yet, if one adopts a broader definition of science fiction as any piece using science-inspired fantasy as a mode of social discourse, the genre then encompasses a dizzying array of canonic literary works spanning the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. This expansion of science fiction to include works that traffic in what could be called the “scientific imagination” need not be contained to the artistic …

Out Of The Shadows: Socially Engaged Buddhist Women, Karma Lekshe Tsomo Phd

Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

In this volume, stories about the experiences of women in remote regions like Mongolia and Zangskar appear alongside essays on philosophy and history. The fact that so many different voices are included and valued is profound testimony to Buddhist women’s diversity in terms of their educational background and approach to social concerns. It is an immense privilege to honor the hard work that these women are doing to benefit society, even against great odds. We are pleased to highlight these achievements, so that readers can learn more about the Buddhist traditions and the vibrant communities of Buddhist women practitioners around …

Intimate Indigeneities: Aspirational Affective Solidarity In 21St Century Indigenous Mexican Representation, Jacob S. Neely

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes six contemporary texts (2008–18) that represent indigenous Mexicans to transnational audiences. Despite being disparate in authorship, genre, and mode of presentation, all address the failings of the Mexican state discourse of mestizaje that exalts indigenous antiquities while obfuscating the racialized socioeconomic hierarchies that marginalize contemporary indigenous peoples. Casting this conflict synecdochally as the national imposing itself on quotidian life, the texts help the reader/viewer come to understand it in personal, affective terms. The audience is encouraged to identify with how it feels to exist in a space where, paradoxically, the interruption of everyday life has become the …

Encuentro Con La Precariedad: La Reaparición Del Gitano En El Cine Documental Español De La Crisis De 2008, María Julia De León Hernández

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In 2008, Spain’s financial crisis had a great impact on the primary sector on which the nation’s ‘economic miracle’ was founded: housing.Land speculation, the increase in housing construction, and easy loans had become one of the hallmarks of twenty-first-century Spanish identity. The crisis del ladrillo (“brick crisis”) plunged the national economy into chaos and condemned many Spanish citizens to job insecurity, loss of earning power, threat of eviction, and put them at high risk of social marginalization. This dissertation studies the unusual proliferation of documentary films during the years surrounding this economic downturn about the ghettoization of the Spanish Gypsy …

Las Islas En La Literatura Castellana De La Baja Edad Media, Martha Elena Granados Sáenz

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores references to islands in 13^th and 14^th century Iberian literature in a corpus of encyclopedias, travel books and chivalry novels from 1223 through 1396. I explore how island geography became part of the Medieval imago mundi. Many Medieval readers were interested in these faraway lands where, they believed, monstrous races flourished, sea monsters lurked, and Paradise awaited to be rediscovered. The physical and human geography featured in these narratives, gave birth to an imaginary, utopian, exotic, extravagant, and mysterious concept of “islandness” located in idyllic places to be interpreted as cognitive maps of the …