Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Growing Pains, Madeline Myers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My Creative Nonfiction honors project consists of a series of short essays about pain, physical and otherwise. I explore how it has appeared in my life and the lives of those close to me. With these essays, I reflect on ideas about generational trauma, fear, loss, relative pain, collective pain and more. The title "Growing Pains" speaks to the ways ideas of pain evolve throughout the text and in our lives. The essays are honest, vulnerable, and at times heavy, but never without the attentive joy I aim to pay to the people and places I write about. This project …

Factors Influencing The Likelihood Of Women Winning Elections, Natalie Browning

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study analyzes variables that increase the likelihood of women winning an election for the United States Congress spanning from 1970 to 2020. This study analyzes the relationship between how liberal the United States is and the likelihood of women winning elections. A dependent relationship was found between the level of liberalism rising in the US and women winning elections. Some of this study is also used to analyze a possible relationship between women being more likely to win open seats or those with incumbents seeking reelection. A possible relationship was found between those two variables, but it was decided …

Understanding The Digital Lives Of Transnational Students: A Case Study, Chowaing Chagra Belekeh

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The proliferation and the fast-paced evolution of digital information communication technologies (ICTs) in contemporary times have arguably raised concern for us to comprehend what we do with these technologies and what these technologies do for us. The experience of engaging these technologies may not necessarily be the same for everyone—especially students who come from around the world to attain post-graduate degrees in the United States. This research focused on understanding the digital lives, choices, and experiences of transnational students who navigate and negotiate geopolitical borders and boundaries (physical)– in their quest for education. Using a case study analysis and collecting …

At The Mercy Of The Mexican Supreme Court: The Implications Of Party Capability On Indigenous People's Cases, Alan Cardenas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Indigenous Peoples in Mexico have long struggled in securing their rights in colonizing states. Applying party capability theory, this paper seeks to empirically understand the Mexican Supreme Court's behavior in cases pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. This paper thus evaluates the degree to which the Mexican Supreme Court is indeed an impartial actor that produces "equal protection under the law" for everyone (Galanter, 1974). Specifically, this paper examines the questions: To what extent does the Mexican Supreme Court protect Indigenous Peoples' rights? Are Indigenous Peoples legally affected by the power disparity perpetuated by the inequality in the country? This paper thus …

Graduate School Application Accessibility For International Students, Estefania Castillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The graduate school application is a time consuming, yet important, process that can often be complicated for students. However, this process is made even more complicated for international students who often face extra steps and other obstacles when applying to graduate programs in the US. Following my own experience of applying to a master's program as an international student, I set out to further explore how international students experienced and navigated this process. This research project explored the graduate school application process through the experiences of international students that were shared in testimonios through platicas, or open and friendly conversations. …

Trials Of Belonging: Indigenous Peoples' Struggle With Law And Power In Twentieth-Century North America, Kevin Thomas Guay

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Spanning multiple fields of scholarly inquiry, the bulk of this study concerns itself with competing notions of sovereignty, citizenship, boundary-making, and belonging in twentieth and twenty-first century Indigenous North America. Situated at the productive confluence of Borderlands history, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Critical Legal Studies, and Immigration history, this Dissertation analyzes the numerous treaties, codes, edicts, bylaws and other expressions of settler colonial jurisprudence that penetrated the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples across North America. These statutes-designed to limit Native power, dissolve Indigenous cultural identity, and strip tribal peoples of their landholdings and personhood-constituted an ongoing settler colonial project …

The Manliness To Defend Themselves: Race And Civilian/Indigenous Warfare In New Mexico, 1598-1898, Ian Anson Lee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"The Manliness to Defend Themselves: Race and Civilian/Indigenous Warfare in New Mexico, 1598-1898," explores three-hundred years of warfare between the civilian population and Native peoples in New Mexico. For centuries the regimes of New Spain and Mexico had utilized New Mexican civilians to battle independent Indians. A culture of warfare had subsequently emerged among the civilian population. As the United States proclaimed sovereignty over New Mexico, military officials attempted to put an end to the practice of warfare by civilians, yet would be hard-pressed to do so. The ideas of Anglo American officials concerning race and citizenship conflicted with the …

This, My Breath, Suzette Louise Mack

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This, My Breath, is a creative collection of memories gathered along the seasons in my life-mostly from my formative years. The stories highlight the patient, unconditional love my parents shared, and the way it has influenced me throughout my life. The stories are about life, love, loss, a yearning to belong, and a longing to be both interdependent and independent.

In my family of origin, it was the simple rhythms established through daily life and the honoring of traditions that inspired the deepest meaning, purpose, and hope. The seasons of the year brought my family alive with a flow of …

Beyond The Crimson Door, Erik J. Medina

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

An alcoholic father is forced to raise his daughter after the death of his wife. He has been trying to get better with the help of his doctor, but things only seem to get worse when the nightmares he's been having slowly start to merge with his reality. Not knowing what is real and fake, his world is turned upside down when the nightmares begin to threaten his daughter.

Logic, Thought, And Language In Hegel, Marx, And Rosenzweig, Omar Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this Thesis is to open a conversation regarding the role of grammar in two areas of philosophy: interpretation and normative philosophy. The task is divided into three chapters, each of which focuses on one major issue. The first is a demonstration of the use of grammar in understanding and interpreting works of philosophy, namely those of Hegel and Marx. The second chapter is an interpretation of Franz Rosenzweig's renovated grammar as seen in The Star of Redemption. The last uses an analysis of grammar to challenge the role of empirical knowledge in community building. The last chapter …

Mi Feria Es Su Feria: How Mexican Americans Created The 1968 San Antonio Hemisfair, Gene Thomas Morales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In 1968, HemisFair became the first world's fair to be held in San Antonio, the United States Southwest, and to be recognized by the Bureau of International Expositions. Countries from around the globe were brought together by a shared commitment to democratic unity, Pan-American friendship, and to celebrate San Antonio's 250th anniversary. San Antonio Fair Inc., the group in charge of the fairâ??s construction and production, worked closely with community leaders, the Texas state government, and the U.S. federal government to create the exposition. The fair's theme would be called Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas. Confluence for the fair …

Mother Nature, Lady Justice: Ecofeminism And Judicial Decision-Making, Jonathan Alexis Picado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ecofeminism offers a feminist perspective that links gender to how humans relate to the natural world. As such, this framework explores the connections between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women, such as widespread views that both women and nature are property, are to be dominated, and are most valuable when cultivated and curated by men. I apply this philosophical and sociological framework to judicial decision-making, where women judges should view environmental issues as women's issues and thus be more likely to vote in favor of the environmental protections relative to her male peers. I evaluate this theory …

Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bilingualism continues to grow among the world's population. Nevertheless, most research studies on language processing have focused on monolingual individuals, leaving questions about how language processing unfolds in bilingual individuals. Here, we investigated how individual differences in bilingual experience, indexed by current L2 exposure, impact eye movement measures of reading fluency, indexed by word frequency effects, in an understudied population: bilingual children. Prior eye movement research involving bilingual younger adults (aged 18 to 30) has reported a trade-off in L1 and L2 word frequency effects with greater levels of current L2 exposure (Whitford & Titone, 2012, 2017). We wanted to …

Soy Una Muñeca De Porcelana, Nicolas Rodriguez Sanabria

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tesis de maestrí­a de Creación Literaria

Virtual Agency: A Hermeneutic Examination Of The Network And Actors Within The Composition Classroom, Ronald Dean Straight

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores the visible and invisible rhetorical choices made in, around, and through the composition classroom and its community of practice, students, faculty, technologies, staff, and other undiscovered actors, through Actor Network Theory and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The discoveries will better situate the impact of identities and actancy within composed, hybrid worlds. Students, society, the world is now collectively connected and able to communicate, acquire knowledge, and interact on a virtual world stage. The exigence for this dissertation's exploration is that Moore, et al. (2016) concluded that students did not make a connection between the technology they have access …

Burning, Nicolas Cooper

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Burning is a book of poetry about occult magic, the Catholic eye, the mind jewel, and the color of my skin under the summer sun. It is about my meditations in the shade under desert trees and the visions I had there about access, love, and social class. Burning is the flaming desire inside of me for success and recognition, and yet at the same time homage to the Zen Buddhist precepts of non-attachment and acceptance. It is my thirsting for the lost américa's touch somewhere between endless sands and yellow-painted concrete, about my parallel aspirations for poetic duende and …

Ingo Websites, Image Circulation, And Visual Representations Of Development In African Countries: Exploring Local Perceptions, Ruby Pappoe

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project critically examines the visual and digital representations of African countries on Savethechildren.org, Oxfam.org, Mamahope.org, and Waterislife.com, using Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and focus group interviews. Grounded in interdisciplinary conversations within rhetoric and composition, intercultural technical communication, postcolonial studies, and development studies, this project reveals how inequalities of the past continue to exist in both visual and digital forms on international NGO websites. It shows that although these organizations seek to promote development and social change in low- and middle-income communities in Africa, the online content they use not only engender but keep in constant …

Towards A New Cholx Consciousness: The Visual Rhetorics Of Cholx Artistas As A Method For Social Justice Movements, Elvira Carrizal-Dukes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation study examines the Cholx subculture through the artwork of Chola artistas Paola Rascón and Vicko Alvarez Vega. Growing up, I interacted easily with Cholos and Cholas, but I also knew that in society there was an overall negative idea of Cholos and Cholas. My research advances Cholx consciousness as a method for social movements through the examination of the visual and written rhetorics by Chola artistas. For my dissertation study, I have drawn on theoretical frameworks from Chicana Feminism, Latino Critical Theory, and Social Justice Rhetorics as discussed by Dolores Delgado Bernal, Kendall Leon, Tara Yosso, Daniel Solórzano, …

El Clima En Casas Norteñas, David Hiriart

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A novel

Love, The Other And The City: Critical Analysis Of The Ethics Of Alterity In A Capitalist Society, Juan Luis Cabrera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Loving for Levinas is a desubjectivation. The one who loves is the one who does not resist the call of the Other. He who loves, according to Levinas, recognizes in the face of the migrant, the orphan, the widow, and the poor, as an inescapable responsibility. However, is this desubjectivation a possibility in capitalist cities? Capitalism is the consequence of a philosophical heritage founded in the totality of the same. Philosophy understood as “love of wisdom” places man in a position of control towards everything that surrounds him, the Other included. Everything belongs to the subject that knows the reality …

Shadows Of Yesterday, Marlene Liotti

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The year is 2020, but here we are still living in a male dominated society. We remain constantly reminded and surrounded by the mentality that certain activities and career choices are better suited for men over women. We even endure these depictions in literature, on the big screen, and on television. Action films, war movies and novels, and crime dramas show the protagonists and supporting characters as males. There are rare occasions where you may find a female actress or literary character protagonist, and when this happens, she is not depicted with the same strength, knowledge, respect, or importance. She …

The Digital Literacy Practices Of Transfronterizx Esol College Students: Los De Esol, Laura E. Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to contribute knowledge to the literature about ESOL students' digital literacy practices related to educational purposes. I studied the varied digital literacy practices the students used as mediating tools to perform their university activities (e.g., crossing to come to school, communicate with classmates/instructors about assignments, completing assignments). This study takes place on the U.S. side of the borderland area of El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The participants were 43 transfronterizx ESOL college students, who were young adults between 18-25 years of age enrolled in the ESOL program at Sun University. I draw on ethnographic and netnographic …

An Autoethnography Of A Non-Traditional Student Veteran A Journey Of Transition To The Present, Ruben Paquian

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a lack of research on career military student veterans in higher education. I use a layered-account autoethnographic approach (Adams et al., 2011) to recount my experience as a career military student veteran. Having spent 30-years in uniform, I felt that my perspectives could help both student veterans and career military student veterans traverse through the world of higher education while providing staff and faculty a better understanding of how career military veterans see the world. In general, veterans have difficulty trying to keep their military identity separate from their student identity. Military identities are more engrained in veterans …

Ictus Or Rebound? The Experience Of Behind-The-Beat Playing In Orchestral Conducting, Sey Ahn

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The origin of playing behind-the-beat is attributed to the Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922), who is one of the most important figures in the history of the art of conducting. Nikisch, serving as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra during a critical moment in the development of orchestral playing, influenced a generation of conductors who followed. Behind-the-beat playing, as many conductors and musicians refer to in describing experiences of top professional orchestral musicians, is a prevailing characteristic of theirs, not often observed in amateur orchestras and their conductors. It is an …

A Multiple Case Study Of Music Therapists' Perceptions Of Vocal Health, Emily Rush

Theses and Dissertations--Music

As professional voice users, music therapists should be aware of their vocal health and the risks for developing vocal problems through habitual vocal use. Vocal abuse refers to vocal activities such as yelling, singing with poor technique, and shouting which cause the laryngeal mechanism to not function optimally. Although many music therapists are at risk for vocal abuse, to my knowledge, no researchers have looked at how music therapists are using their voices. The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand music therapists’ perceptions of their vocal health and vocal health training. I used a multiple case study …

The Vespers Psalms Of Baldassare Galuppi, Scot Buzza

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Although Baldassare Galuppi was arguably the best known and most successful Italian composer of the eighteenth century, his name, his history, and his works have been relinquished to the periphery of the historiographical narrative. While Galuppi's masses, operas, and solo motets have been examined, his vespers psalms have been neglected by previous musicologists; most of the existing studies have been superficial, with little consideration of important questions such as formal approach, stylistic development, compositional idiosyncrasies, questions of authenticity, or what those factors might collectively tell the twenty-first-century musicologist about music in settecento Venice.

The bulk of this work consists of …

The Taiwanese Violin System: Educating Beginners To Professionals, Yu-Ting Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this study is to provide scholars information concerning of the Taiwanese violin educational system from the introduction of the violin in Taiwan to its current status as one of the most popular instruments to study.

The first chapter of this dissertation will discuss the most influential violin educators in Taiwan, about which very little has been published. The key figures such as Fu-Xing Zhang and Shu-De Li capitalized on the opportunities provided them by the Japanese occupation, playing a crucial role in the development of the Taiwanese music education system. The accomplishments of these musicians continue to …

"We Dare Say Love": Supporting Achievement In The Educational Life Of Black Boys (Book Review), Kala Burrell-Craft

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Uniting Maternity Care With Neonatal Intensive Care: Analysis Advancing Hospital Experiences For Families Of Newborns Through Design, Stephanie Legg

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The landscape of childbirth has changed immensely over the last century. Medical intervention has surpassed the needs of mother and infant to be together when either requires medical attention. By bringing medical equipment for both into a single hospital room, separation between the two will be decreased. For this study, mothers of infants admitted to neonatal intensive care were questioned with a mix-methods survey to discover what challenges they faced in order to amend the built environment to increase their satisfaction with their hospital and post-birth experience. Mothers showed less ability to interact with their infants when medical needs were …

Body Image/Imagining Bodies: Trauma, Control, And Healing In Graphic Memoirs About Anorexia, Kristine M. Gatchel

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase of graphic narratives focusing on the intersection of comics and medicine, a subgenre known as graphic medicine. These memoirs, known as graphic pathographies, are written from those who interact with disease in various capacities from patient, to doctor, to caregiver. This project closely examines three graphic pathographies written about the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Prior writing, both fictional and personal memoir, on anorexia has often been considered as problematic for its ability to function as a how-to manual for anorexics. Anorexia is a complex disease that exists largely within the …