Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mermaids Vs. Humans: Reality In Fantasy, Avery M. Powers

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyses how fantasy literature relates to and transforms concrete perceptions of reality, tracing its origins from mythic creation epics and the qualities that it shares with scripture. Overall, I propose a more imaginative approach to realistic literature that draws from the truths found in fantasy literature and by discussing fantasy literature and genre.

The creative element of this project includes an excerpt from an original children's fantasy novel. In it, I compare mythical characters with human characters and an imaginary world to the real world as it is experienced by characters from both worlds. The fantastical reality attempts …

The Show Must (Not) Go On: The Effects Of Covid-19 On New York’S Broadway Professionals, Lucy Yezulinas

Honors College Theses

Live events have been drastically impacted during the coronavirus pandemic, especially Broadway. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the struggles being faced by Broadway professionals as a result of Covid-19 and Broadway shutting down. As for the methodology, it was decided to interview various Broadway professionals about their experience working in the industry during a worldwide pandemic. The main areas of focus were financial and psychological repercussions. The analysis section discusses the negative financial impact of the shut down, the impact of not having the 2020 Tony awards, as well as the psychological impact on unemployment. …

Justifying Force: Police Procedurals And The Normalization Of Violence, Emily Brenner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Much like the CSI effect in forensic crime dramas, portrayals of law enforcement in crime media can potentially skew a viewer’s perception of what the profession actually entails. Many studies address the depiction of law enforcement in the media, but few solely examine the use of force by television police officers, and the impact this may have on frequent viewers. In an era of calls for accountability over growing attention towards police brutality and misconduct, the media as an influencer has the potential to play a role in how real-world instances of brutality are perceived, and more importantly, how it …

Spiritually Guided And Bridging The Gap: An Inquisitive Analysis On The Correlation Of Pastoral Counseling And Mental Health, Cynthia E. Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This research study evaluates the outcomes of pastoral counseling on mental health within a predominantly African American congregation in the southeastern United States. The research study is intended to build a further understanding of the pastor’s role in counseling individuals with mental health conditions, given individuals seek counseling as a treatment option. To evaluate those perceptions, the researcher analyzed data collected from a survey. The outcomes from this qualitative data study suggest that pastoral counseling alone is ineffective given several factors such as individual failure to seek counseling, no suggested mental-health related issues within the sampled population, and ethnicity barriers. …

Unhealthy Leadership In The Christian Church: A Study Of The Divorce Rate, Curtis William Carter

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this project is to bring healing and direction to a particular area of the Christian church that is destroying marriages and greatly emotionally damaging children and families. This specific research will look at both the divorce rate in the secular community and the divorce rate in the Christian church, thus comparing and contrasting the two. While at the same time, showing how unhealthy leadership in the Christian church continues this damage. Furthermore, this research will also illustrate which gender is most likely filing for the divorces here in the 21st century and answer the questions why, where, …

Sharing The Lord’S Supper: Finding Fellowship And Love In A Sacramental, Communal Meal, Joshua David Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis project identifies the biblical practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper weekly in conjunction with a communal meal. At this project’s Ministry Context, Garden City Bible Fellowship, there is a lack of fellowship and love. This project investigates whether the implementation of the Lord’s Supper and a communal meal on a weekly basis will build fellowship and love in a biblical way. After being approved by the leadership of this church, the topic will be introduced to the congregation via a sermon on the subject, culminating in a question and answer session for anyone who has questions before participating. …

Biblical Literacy: Developing A Habit Of Personal Bible Reading Among The Members Of Contending For The Faith Christian Fellowship, Christopher L. Coleman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Biblical literacy is an important value in the life of any person, and especially in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ. However, all too often, believers lack a firm grasp of Scripture knowledge and understanding, and consequently, are unprepared to detect and avoid erroneous teaching and to “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). One of the reasons for this pervasive lack of biblical literacy among many believers is because there is a lack in the development of a habit in personal Bible reading outside of the weekly church services. …

Who Is Leading Our Churches In Worship And Are They Ready? A Study On Worship Leading In The Free Will Baptist Denomination, James Anthony Cooper Sr

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Since the institution of Old Testament-Temple corporate worship, there has been someone assigned the task of leading congregational worship. The Chronicler records King David’s divisions of the sons of Asaph to be “set apart for service…under the direction of their father in the music in the house of the Lord.”1 Although for some churches, a full-time, salaried position is not feasible or there may not be enough existing duties to justify a paid position. In this case, the responsibility of leading worship falls to a person in the congregation who might have any type of background in music or an …

The New Digital Media: Opportunities For Church Sound Recording, Songwriting, And Music Publishing, Christopher Andrew Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The new digital media, particularly streaming music, has made the original record industry model antiquated. Now it is possible for independent artists to be their own label and publisher and through streaming platforms, have a national or global reach. This new model also applies to churches with some church leaders considering beginning a songwriting ministry and producing original worship music, Church record labels are not new; in fact, there is precedent for this extending back to the Jesus Movement of the late sixties. Although research and literature covering changes in the old music paradigm and new opportunities are plentiful, there …

An Effective Strategy Of Family Ministry In Korean Church To Build A Biblical Family, Ikjae Jin

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this project is to assist churches in building a biblical family and developing an effective strategy for family ministry programs. Additionally, it will address the problems and difficulties of Korean families. The study will be based on Korean churches in South Korea. A study of what churches are doing to assist these families will be conducted. This project will suggest how to build a biblical family in Korean churches. This research will survey at least 50 Korean pastors living in Korea and will conduct research on existing family ministry programs in Korean churches based on biblical and …

Loving The Unloveable: A Biblical Approach For The Local Church To Homosexuality In A Morally Declining Society, Robert Jonathan Archer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis will strive to prove that local churches worldwide have been highly ineffective at providing true recovery for parishioners that struggle with homosexuality often ostracizing them as a diseased product rather than a creation of the Father. The goal is to help the church discover, assess, and address the sin, healing, and recovery for homosexuals in their ministry in a healthy biblical manner that promotes freedom in Christ and true recovery. This will allow the local church to partake in the healing process of broken parishioners promoting evangelism and discipleship that will in turn extend into the communities of …

The Integration Of Spiritual Formation Through Distance Education For Christian Higher Education Students, Derwin Earl Lewis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Many factors contribute to the recent increase of digital education in higher learning institutions, including the expanded use of mobile devices, social media, and other online populations. CNBC reports that over two billion users ascribe to Facebook monthly (Balakrishnan, 2017). Over four hundred million Instagram users and over three hundred million active Twitter accounts are being used daily (Clement, 2019). Celebrating technology’s imprint on society presents another opportunity for social sciences to applaud human achievement at the risk of discounting God’s sovereignty. The digital era has created an opportunity for Christian education to expand its reachability through churches and Bible-based …

Expository Teaching For The Stonepath Church’S Understanding Of Worship, Cassidy Ryan Kesler

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Expository teaching is a method of explanation that can raise the biblical understanding in the minds of those receiving the teaching. This paper studies a group of participants from Stonepath Church who receive three expository teaching lessons on three biblical passages on worship. The initial understanding of biblical worship is gauged by the scores of the participants on a worship survey taken before the first lesson, and the increase in biblical knowledge is gauged by the scores of the participants on the same worship survey taken after the third lesson. A statistical analysis is run to determine whether or not …

Modern-Day Korahites In Crisis: Causes And Consequences Of Moral Failure In Worship Leaders, Adely Thelus Charles

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In the Bible and throughout the history of Christianity, examples of moral failure in ministry leadership demonstrate a negative impact on the leader's family, congregations, faith traditions, and ministry efficacy. This qualitative study examines the causes and consequences of moral failure in worship leadership by considering the biblical account of Old Testament leaders who morally failed and apply psychological principles to assess moral fragility that may be faced by some worship leaders. Finally, this study offers biblical principles and practical strategies that target the potential pitfalls of leadership in an effort to hinder moral failure among worship leaders.

Intentional Discipleship: Effective Disciple-Making For Church Growth In Liberia, George L. Suah

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Pastors of extremely effective disciple-making churches are conscious of the degree of church efficiency, and they recognize the significance of intentional discipleship for church growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate intentional discipleship for church growth in Liberia. An anonymous research study of 12 pastors and church leaders (evangelists) from Unity Light Ministry Network (UCC) in Kakata, Liberia, West Africa, was conducted to explore why Unity Light Ministry Network (UCC) in Liberia is struggling to grow their church numerically and spiritually. The study found that the Ministry does not have adequate and systematic training on intentional discipleship for …

Refilling The Oilpots: Developing A Program To Reverse Stagnancy In African-American Churches, Mancil Carroll

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Many African American churches in America are experiencing a decline in attendance and participation. The typical church goes through a life-cycle that includes the church's birth, infancy, maturity, stagnation, and death. However, it is possible to create a rebirth process that will restart the life-cycle from the beginning. This thesis develops a strategic plan to initiate church rebirth and build momentum for the congregation. This project's research approach will include interviews with the leaders of a medium-size African American church in Dallas's suburbs. The project will also include survey questionnaires to congregants, former church members, and random subjects selected through …

The Impact Of Sunday School Participation On Spiritual Formation In African American Baptist Churches In North Carolina, Christopher Eugene Harris

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this correlational quantitative study was to determine a relationship between Sunday School participation and spiritual formation upon participating congregations of the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (GBSCNC). The process of spiritual formation comes through the spiritual disciplines being practiced. The spiritual disciplines were measured through the study sample of GBSCNC churches in this study using four spiritual development modes from the Christian Spiritual Participation Profile: growing through a relationship with God, growing through the Word, growing through critical reflection, and growing through relationships with others (Thayer, 1996). The research findings were based on a sample …

First-Generation College Students' Lived Experiences In An Undergraduate Music Education Program: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study, Joseph Benjamin Earp

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to describe the lived experiences of first-generation college students (FGCSs) majoring in music education at a small, private university in the southeastern United States. Through understanding FGCSs’ experiences, university faculty and administrators can make informed decisions that can help this important sub-population of students. The self-determination theory (SDT) and the relationships motivation theory (SDT mini-theory) have guided this study exploring the central research question: How do FGCSs describe their lived experiences while majoring in music education? Sub-questions include (1) how do FGCSs majoring in music education describe challenges relating to self-determination while …

"That Is Not The Way To Do It" Queerness, Race, And Citizenship In Rodgers And Hammerstein, Dennis Sloan

Communication & Theatre Faculty Publications

This article examines the ways in which Rodgers and Hammerstein's Asia-Pacific musicals - South Pacific, The King And I, and Flower Drum Song - mark characters of color with signs of queerness. It argues that Asian and Pacific characters are placed outside Cold War era ideals of American white heter-normativity in their performances of gender, their marriage practices, and the queer spaces they occupy, in ways that both encourage assimilation and make integration impossible.

Howard's "Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us About Being Human" (Book Review), Kyle D. Diroberts

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Is Media Assistance Obsolete? A Practice-Based Perspective On The Potential For Digital Technologies To Achieve Media Development Goals In Sub-Saharan Africa, Daire Higgins

Doctoral

The area of media assistance is not a widely known part of the Development Aid sector, even though it has been in existence since after World War II and has grown significantly since then as part of the development agenda. Media Assistance has been included in the strategies of Western and non Western donors as part of their overseas Aid programmes in many regions, supporting journalism and media with the objectives of contributing to accountability, transparency, governance and ultimately, democracy. This thesis examines the impact on the Media Assistance sector of the arrival of digital technologies into the ‘information ecosystems’ …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Afro-Latinos, Trevor Mattos, Phillip Granberry, Quito Swan

Gastón Institute Publications

Afro-Latinx communities are critical stakeholders in Black and Latinx demographic groups, and they also make up a critical fabric of Boston, Massachusetts and the United States politically, economically and culturally. The Afro-Latinx experience sheds light on the critical intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, economics, gender, and class in not only America, but in Afro-Latinx Diasporas across the Americas and the world. Afro-Latinx individuals and institutions often face racism within broader Latinx communities and White America and are often stigmatized by their non-Latino Black counterparts. At the same time, there is a strong tradition of Afro-Latinx political advocacy, cross cultural movements …

Frontmatter (Volume 40, Issue 10), Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Providence Lost: Natural And Urban Landscapes In H. P. Lovecraft's Fiction, Dylan Henderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

S. T. Joshi, the preeminent scholar of weird fiction, considers H. P. Lovecraft a “topographical realist,” noting that, in his later fiction, Lovecraft creates realistic and painstakingly detailed settings. In “Providence Lost: Natural and Urban Landscapes in H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction,” I explore the significance of Lovecraft’s topographical realism and trace its evolution through Lovecraft’s career. I argue that Lovecraft’s early fiction, the tales, that is, that he wrote from 1917 to 1924 under the influence of Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Dunsany, pays little attention to the natural landscape, though Lovecraft does, in story after story, allude to fabulous, …

From The Womb To The Word: Pregnancy And Pregnancy Metaphors In 16th And 17th Century English Literature, Kelly S. Westeen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a feminist theoretical lens in exploring the gendered uses of pregnancy and pregnancy metaphors in the production and dissemination of literary works in early modern England. By also examining the history of the printing press and the role it played in gendered textual production, early modern constructs of family and the role of mothers, as well as obstetric medicine and childbirth, I aim to demonstrate that mothering and authorship were congruent activities for female writers. Conversely, I argue that male writers of the period who employed metaphors of gestation did so not to try to claim biological …

Legislating Social Inclusion: Social Interaction And Perceptions Of Middle Level Students Toward Those With Disabilities, Deidre Necol Whitehead

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recognition of the need for students with disabilities to receive free and appropriate education was brought to the forefront with the passage of Public Law 93 – 112, Rehabilitation Act in 1973. In 1975 Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was enacted requiring all schools to develop and provide a free, appropriate public education for all children and youth with disabilities in the regular classroom to ensure an appropriate education. However, mandating inclusion in classrooms does not ensure social interaction, which is an integral part of learning, especially for early adolescents.

This dissertation uses the Chedoke-McMaster …

Relativized Rankings, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In traditional consequentialism the good is position-neutral. A single evaluative ranking of states of affairs is correct for everyone, everywhere regardless of their positions. Recently, position-relative forms of consequentialism have been developed. These allow for the correct rankings of states to depend on connections that hold between the state being evaluated and the position of the evaluator. For example, perhaps being an agent who acts in a certain state requires me to rank that state differently from someone else who lacks this connection. In this chapter several different kinds of position-relative rankings related to agents, times, physical locations, and possible …

Agent-Relative Consequentialism And Collective Self-Defeat, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Andrew Forcehimes and Luke Semrau argue that agent-relative consequentialism is implausible because in some circumstances it classes an act as impermissible yet holds that the outcome of all agents performing that impermissible act is preferable. I argue that their problem is closely related to Derek Parfit's problem of ‘direct collective self-defeat’ and show how Parfit's plausible solution to his problem can be adapted to solve their problem.

Great Expectations: What Does It Mean To Hold And Make Space For The Arts In Singapore?, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The arts and artists need space to thrive. However, as much of the land in Singapore is stateowned, providing space for the arts—literally and figuratively—remains challenging. Today, there is a rich variety of arts infrastructure in Singapore, including performing arts venues, statesubsidised artist studios and co-working spaces for freelancers. However, this stateadministered infrastructure comes with expectations, as these arts spaces have been positioned as expedient policy resources capable of achieving a broad confluence of cultural, urban, economic and social outcomes for Singapore. These “great expectations” on state-initiated arts spaces and the ensuing implications are the foci of this paper. I …

The Serbian Orthodox Church In The Ecumenical Movement: An Overview, Radivoje Simić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Excerpt: "In the family of Orthodox Churches, the SOC is considered an open and ecumenically engaged Church. This can be seen most notably through its commitment to various ecumenical interreligious gatherings, and in its Inter-Orthodox preparatory meetings. It would not be possible to imagine the Orthodox church engaging in the ecumenical movement apart from the participation of the SOC."