Murder,Mayhem,Manson, Jack Shoplock

Capstone Showcase

Charles Manson was one of the most horrifying, yet alluring figures to emerge in recent history, in part due to his crimes and their nature, and his strange behavior displayed during his famous trials in the early 1970s. Born in a small town in 1934 Charlie took to criminality from a young age, being institutionalized for over half his life before he was finally released in 1967 during the heyday of the summer of love in San Francisco. Once back on his feet, he began a quest for musical superstardom, gathering a harem of unstable, broken and misused runaway teens …

A Treacherous Transformation: 1968 And The Collapse Of The Liberal Consensus, Michael J. Costigan

Capstone Showcase

1968 was a year of upheaval in America--especially in politics. The year featured a presidential election between Richard Nixon (R), Hubert Humphrey (D), and third-party candidate George Wallace. This election was one of the closest in American history. It marks a significant transition, coming four years after a Democratic landslide, and four years before Richard Nixon's landslide re-election. The 1968 election uniquely captures four important trends in U.S. Politics. The American public had grown increasingly dissatisfied with President Johnson and the war in Vietnam, illustrated by Eugene McCarthy’s campaign. The South, a longtime bastion of Democratic support, accelerated its transition …

Chernobyl, 1986, Morgan Keller

Capstone Showcase

Nuclear energy became an important part of the Soviet Union’s history with the creation of the first every nuclear plant to generate electricity in 1954: Obninsk. With its massive success, the Soviet Union had determined that nuclear energy would be an effective resource to power the nation. Due to this belief, the creation of a plant called Chernobyl was established. This plant was intended to be the largest source of power to date and was believed to put the Soviet Union back on the map, as they were afraid to appear as though they were falling behind the rest of …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

Enduring The Unendurable: Examining Cultural Trauma In Postwar Japanese Film, Joseph Worstall

Capstone Showcase

WWII and its aftermath fundamentally changed the collective consciousness of the Japanese people. For the first time in history, and at a tremendous cost, the country was vanquished. By the end of the war, sixty-seven cities had been firebombed, three million people had been killed, and millions more found themselves suffering from poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Most controversially, the USAAF dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—two acts which have been so universally condemned that they’ve never been repeated. For the next seven years, the U.S. armed forces occupied the country and charted its course, effectively operating …

The Reconquista And Crusading In The Late 11th And Early 12th Century, Catherine Hill

Capstone Showcase

The purpose of this project is to recount the historiography and literature of the Crusades and the Reconquista and then offer some commentary on their relationship in Spain in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Both of these fields have a tremendous amount of scholarship to understand these phenomena in medieval history. Therefore, the scope of this project is to compile the main scholarly debates surrounding the connection between the Crusades and the Reconquista and consider the evidence for the various approaches. The relevant background history of the Reconquista contextualizes the literature of the two fields. The main debates …

The Cyprus "Problem": How Civil Society Has Found A Path To Peace In A Decades Old Conflict, Marisa Gonzalez

Capstone Showcase

Cyprus, at a crossroads of civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean, has been heavily shaped and formed around third-party influences. The divisions that today have resulted in a de facto partition of the island with seemingly no solution, the “Cyprus problem,” can be traced back to not only the deep-rooted ethnic conflicts between the majority Greek Cypriots and the minority Turkish Cypriots, but to the various conflicting international influences fueling them. Since its 1960 independence, Cyprus has been framed in the context of unresolvable ethnic differences that foreign powers have capitalized on. As the conflict developed around the threat of making …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

The Pink And Blue Problem: Altercasting In Gendered Advertising, Abigail Benn

Capstone Showcase

When you meet a baby for the first time, and you don’t know its sex, if its wearing pink clothes, most people will automatically assume it’s a girl; or if they’re wearing blue clothes, it’s automatically a boy. The pink and blue problem is the enforcing of gender stereotypes through color, associated roles, and imagery. The root of this problem is that many people are unaware of the difference between “sex” and “gender”, and that they can be mutually exclusive. Your sex is the body you’re born with, and all the parts that come with it, while your gender is …

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And Wikileaks: The Public Sphere And The Right To Know, Mary Murray

Capstone Showcase

Jürgen Habermas, a German theorist, coined the public sphere as a place where citizens could interact, study, and debate issues together outside the realm of the home or family, which was defined as the private sphere. The public sphere can also be seen as a “manifestation of citizen sovereignty”. At its core, Habermas centered the public sphere around feudalism and the shift of one all-powerful individual reigning and representing the public to those citizens under the control of the state. Some critics argue voices encouraging the minorities were actually private voices leaking into the public sphere, while others argue the …

Luce Irigaray, Radical Feminism, & The Me Too Movement, Allie Nye

Capstone Showcase

Luce Irigaray, a French feminist theorist, used her writing as a tool to further the postmodern feminist movement and her theory of sexual difference. Her work highlights the divergence from traditional, modernist thought and the dream of a well rounded western society that is grounded in the recognition of sexual difference. The #MeToo Movement, the defining feminist movement of present day, proves Irigaray’s point of a need for the recognition of sexual difference. The importance of women being able to speak their mind is one the foundations of Irigaray’s work and a pillar of the #MeToo Movement. Moving beyond the …

The Cultivation Of Materialism In The Fashion Community On Instagram, Emelie Vasquez

Capstone Showcase

Cultivation theory, proposed by George Gerbner, suggests that patterns across the media are used to warp viewers perceptions of reality, slowly creating beliefs and changing habits of frequent viewers. The theory was originally only applied to the study of television in the 1960s because it was the first medium of its kind to be accessible to anyone; there are no age or literacy restrictions for television. However, as media had evolved, cultivation theory has expanded. The theory can now be applied to other mediums such as social media. This paper explores the relationship between Instagram’s fashion community and materialistic values. …

Edward Said’S Orientalism: Trapped In Time, Samantha Glass

Capstone Showcase

Edward Said developed his theory of Orientalism in 1978. His theory looked at how Western cultures have treated the East, which includes Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. There is differentiation on what parts of the Occident view the Orient, as the United States has become more tied with the Middle East. In contrast, Europe’s vast history of trade and colonization has connected them with Africa and Asia. The image that has been created has belittled cultures, taken away their meaning, and risks the people in the culture from abandoning it altogether. When power becomes a significant part …

The Rise Of The Far-Right In Italy, Justin Lewis

Capstone Showcase

The rising influence of far-right extremism in mainstream politics has been an issue the world over. From the U.S. to Brazil, this phenomenon is causing a shift in the ways in which governments are run. There may not be a better example than in Italy, where far-right parties have come to power democratically and continue to gain popularity. This thesis aims to explore and explain the underlying reasons behind the surge of the far-right to power in Italy. An emphasis is placed on going beyond superficial reasons such as rising levels of immigration to give a more complete story.

Encoding, Decoding, And The End Of Game Of Thrones, Kaitlin Jock

Capstone Showcase

Stuart Hall, a cultural theorist who helped develop what we understand as modern media theory, defined reception theory as a sort of reader response implying that all media texts are encoded and decoded with messages. A producer of a media text encodes a message which is meant to be decoded by the consumer. They might accept the message, negotiate their own reading, or completely reject it. After spending a decade as the biggest show in the world, Game of Thrones came to a close in 2019 and after months of anticipation leading up to a final season completely fell out …

Speculative Bill, Tess Grogan

English Language and Literature: Faculty Publications

This essay discusses some difficulties of teaching Renaissance engagements with race, class, and gender in diverse twenty-first-century classrooms and looks to contemporary romance—science fiction and fantasy—for examples of humane and reparative pedagogy. Ursula K. Le Guin’s feminist revisioning of her Earthsea trilogy in the late story “Dragonfly” both models the humility required to make change and stages a teaching practice that welcomes the disruptive and uncomfortable questions posed by a university’s first female student.

Review Of "Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Catalogue", Joshua S. Reid

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Catalogue (RCCC) database, edited by Brenda Hosington.

Listen To Liston: Examining The Systemic Erasure Of Black Women In The Historiography Of Jazz, Victoria E. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

"First you are a jazz musician, then you are black, then you are a female. I mean it goes down the line like that. We're like the bottom of the heap." - Melba Liston (pg 2) The historiography of jazz has consciously and unconsciously excluded women. This exclusion is exacerbated when one examines the intersection of race and jazz for black women. This essay argues that due to overwhelming societal expectations, gendered language, and physical threats of sexual assault and violence, black women had to create alternatives spheres of affirmation and musical expression because jazz culture stymied their access to …

This Month, Jennifer N. Figueroa

Theses and Dissertations

This Month is a series of collages that depict police violence at civil rights and Black Lives Matter protests. By pairing events from 1964 to contemporary protests that occurred in the same month, the collection draws a connection between the past and present.

Race Book, Robert Dejesus

Theses and Dissertations

Race Book is a satiric animated short film about how social media influenced people during the 2020 presidential election.

Foster Rhodes Jackson And The Visual Conquest Of The West, Eve Kaufman

Scripps Senior Theses

Colonizers settled the Los Angeles and the Southern California region in part by using Modernism’s visual rhetoric and propagandic implications during the time of suburban sprawl. Suburban sprawl refers to the mass single family home development which took place from the 1920^[1]s until now but peaked from the 1970s to the 1990s. Los Angeles sprawl grew particularly in the 1950^[2]s as soldiers returned from WWII. It was a way for middle class white families to accrue generational wealth and follow through on the American Dream^[3].

The primary result however disenfranchised already marginalized groups. This …

Hear For You: Engaging With Vocal Authority And Vulnerability Through Podcasting, Rowen Light-Wills

Scripps Senior Theses

Through applications of literary and film theory, cultural analysis, and historical context this thesis project will deconstruct the text of the physical and metaphorical gendered voice. The podcast medium allows for exploration of the physical voice in a spontaneous format, which makes it the ideal platform for hosting conversations between college-aged students that examine cultural conceptions of the voice. Focusing primarily on the feminized[1] voice as a site of cultural tension, participants can tell the story of their voices, talking about experiences that have shaped their auditory self-perception. The work of this project is to demonstrate that the medium …

A Sermon Writ In High Heaven: Astrology And Interpretation In Moby-Dick, Amanda Gallop

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores Herman Melville's use of astrology in Moby-Dick in relation to the novel's stance on meaning-making and interpretation. It analyzes Ishmael and Ahab's respective methods of interpretation established in the first half of the novel, then explores Stubb's use of astrology in "The Doubloon" chapter. I propose that Stubb's astrological soliloquy poses a potential solution to the conflict between Ishmael and Ahab's diametrically opposed methods, thus offering an avenue into a new understanding of the novel's epistemological project.

Passe Pas: Rethinking The Passport, Miriam E. Bankier

Scripps Senior Theses

Filled with national symbols, stamps and basic identifying information, a passport can obscure the humanity behind the individual passport holder, inverting it from a symbol of citizenship and belonging to one of marginalization and xenophobia. In today’s political climate, the meaning of art has become intersected with politics and the law. Using the very tools and some processes of passport production, i.e. mixed media and printmaking techniques, my work responds to and disrupts the bureaucracy and impersonal settings involving passports and identification documents. I draw from my own experiences and privilege as having Austrian, Italian, and American citizenship, as well …

The Business Of 19th Century American Landscape Paintings: A Case Study Of The Connection Between Art History And Economics, Claire Di Meglio

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the economic incentives of both businessmen and artists who shared a mutual interest in the business of producing 19th century American landscapes paintings.

Wedded To Change And Tradition: Conservative Jewish Same-Sex Weddings And Ritual Change, Logan Kramer

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the Conservative Jewish wedding ritual shifts in meaning during the creation of same-sex wedding rituals because of a re-definition of the Conservative Jewish community as a whole. This case study is then tied to ritual theory more broadly.

In Chapter 1, I discuss what makes a wedding a ritual. By defining the wedding as a powerful, transformative, and performative ritual, I examine how the creation of same-sex wedding rituals is an ideal example to help us understand the ways that a religious community might approach ritual change. I also interrogate how marriage has been used to …

Reimagining Theories Of Nationalism: A Critical Examiniation Of Prevailing Nationalist Theories, Sarah Sanchez

Scripps Senior Theses

Traditional theories of nationalism tend to fall in one of two categories: 1) top-down, or official nationalism, which holds that nationalist sentiments are created by state actors, or 2) bottom-up, or popular, nationalism, which holds that nationalist sentiments originate with the people. However, there are major flaws in both of those theories, as well as a decent amount of overlap between them. This paper dismantles the supposed binary between these two theories, and looks for a way to view the theories in combination with one another. Looking at the places of overlap, as well as the elements of each theory …

Embodied Narratives: An Exploration Of Ritual, Violence, And Brutality Through Jean Genet's "The Thief's Journal", Erin Delany

Scripps Senior Theses

An exploration of the embodied writing of Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal, examining the traces and impacts of ritual, violence, and brutality within the text.

(Re)Reading Fanon: Tracing Revolutionary Negotiations Within The Algerian Colonial Dialectic, Nina Zietlow

Scripps Senior Theses

A critical rereading of Fanon within the Algerian colonial context.

Faust In Context: A Comparitive Examination Of The Fates Of Marlowe's And Goethe's Faust Characters, Kristin Abel

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This paper explores two prominent plays about the legendary Doctor Faust character through examination of the historical, religious, scientific and political context in which they were written. Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Parts 1 and 2 were written approximately two hundred years apart and during that time, the fate of the Faust character changes from damnation in Marlowe's version to redemption in Goethe's version. Both plays reflect the shift in regard for curiosity and the pursuit of scientific knowledge from vice to virtue that occurred between the writing of each play, …