Arts and Humanities Commons^™

East Of Adams, Autumn Walter

Senior Honors Projects

East of Adams is a photography project that explores the conservationist messaging ofAnsel Adams’s historical work and translates this work into shooting the Acadia National Park in Maine. Adams is well known for his documentation of our national parks in the western United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Armed with his large format camera he created his images in order to speak to the importance of conserving the natural beauty ofAmerica’s unique wild lands. Inspired by Adams’s drive to use photography in order tomotivate conservation, East of Adams will focus on similar goals within the Eastern United States at …

Smell As Self-Identity: Capitalist Ideology And Olfactory Imagination In Das Parfum’S Multimedia Storytelling, Xinrong Liu

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis explores smell as a cultural signifier in Perfume’s multimedia storytelling. By establishing the theoretical ground upon the historical importance of scent, the thesis focuses particularly on its close interrelationships with the politics of identity, an issue elaborated in Patrick Süskind’s novel Das Parfum–Die Geschichte Eines Mörders (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 1985) as well as its two screen adaptations--the film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (dir. Tom Tykwer, 2006) and the television series Parfum (Netflix, 2018). In virtue of textual analysis and cultural studies on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s discussion …

Society's View Of Mental Illness As A Result Of Fictionalized Portrayals Of Serial Killer Narratives, Cassidy Schmidt

University Honors Program Senior Projects

Fictionalized serial killer narratives have been essential to media for decades, beginning with the early noir films, detective novels of the 1940s and 50s (Murley, 2), and western narratives which heavily depicted good versus evil (Hall, 5). As media has evolved, fascination with true crime has continued to grow and in turn, began to increasingly provide inspiration for fictional films and TV shows, especially through streaming service television shows like Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019), Mindhunter (2017), and Making a Murder (2015). Through research on the psychological interest in violence, the blurred line between fact and …

Politically Correct Language In George Carlin, Alan Schultz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

American stand-up comedian George Carlin is notable for his long-standing popularity from the early 60s up until his death in 2008. In this paper, I examine George Carlin’s stance on politically correct language. Focusing on his three books Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, I show how his attempts to remove himself from a politically correct system ultimately fail as he adheres to his own ideals of language and morality. Using his texts and various work from Stanley Fish to support these claims, I show how Carlin ridicules the redundancies and hypocrisies …

Tension Within Immigrant Identity In South Asian And Asian Characters In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Everything I Never Told You, And Disgraced, Dania Abdelsalam

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines the ways American fiction in the past two decades marked a renewal of the study of the immigrant experience. By examining this renewal, I argue that the conversation is no longer focused on the treatment of assimilation but moves into the psychological shock that transpires after assimilation is achieved. This shock is a critical condition of belonging to two opposing identities. Using Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced (2012), I clarify that these works present protagonists from South Asian and East Asian …

“Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters” : The Monstrosity Of Gender Inversion In Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Natalie Diane Cottrill

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has elicited a range of different interpretations from critics over the years. Readings range from covering issues of race and colonization to science and religion, and everything in between. These interpretations all feature different anxieties relevant to fin de siecle culture, a title given to the period of transition at the end of the nineteenth century wrought with anxiety and conspiracy about what might come next. One of the sources of this unease stemmed from the rapid change in what constituted women's social roles, as well as developing definitions of gender and sexuality. This socio-cultural concern …

Anti-Semitism In American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton’S Sim Rosedale - A Thorn In American Identity, Elizabeth Pantirer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How does canonical American literature from the early twentieth century reflect the American Jew and anti-Semitic sentiments? How do these novels portray the American Jew as a threat to American identity? In this thesis, I answer these questions and argue how American literature is a product of its culture demonstrating and reproducing fears and accepted ideologies. These fears perpetuated and solidified anti-Semitic stereotypes and alienated Jews from society. In my research, I examine how literature acts as a cultural product specifically homing in on particular anti-Semitic stereotypes which represent a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant fear of "otherness." This analysis will draw …

Stellar Transfigurations Of Disabled Bodies : Wangechi Mutu And Afrofuturism, Addys Lorenzo Gonzalez

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Stellar Transformations of Disabled Bodies: Wangechi Mutu and Afrofuturism will examine how Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972) depicts futuristic black bodies. Utilizing three of her collages, Untitled (Leopard woman reclining) (2010), My Strength Lies (2006), and Homeward Bound (2010), I will analyze Mutu’s themes of Afrofuturistic alienation and the grotesque. I will use Afrofuturism and Mutu’s renderings to reveal a future visibility for the black female body.

Mutu collages images from fashion magazines, car manuals, National Geographic , and catalogs to construct bodies with missing limbs and severed appendages. Critics have called these bodies “grotesque”, whereas Mutu has called …

Manuel Puig Y Los Espacios Queer : Una Tercera Lectura De La Realidad, Matthew Berg

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Manuel Puig es una de las figuras más importantes de la literatura latinoamericana. Si bien comparte la capacidad de capturar la realidad latinoamericana con sus contemporáneos, Puig es único en su interpretación del mundo a su alrededor desde la perspectiva queer, como corresponde a su estatus de hombre gay. Además, el tejido de referencias populares en sus novelas para representar la realidad, los personajes y sus vidas demuestra una práctica de la comunidad queer de tomar elementos populares y aplicarlas a la vida nuestra, haciendo una lectura queer de estas obras y haciéndolas aplicar a nuestra realidad. De esta manera, …

“Mutually Exclusive” : Exploring Gender And Sexuality In Shakespeare’S Twelfth Night, Caitlin Moran Casey

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The thesis explores the treatment of gender and sexuality in William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will. By examining Shakespeare’s exploration of gender identity and sexual fluidity, this thesis investigates the nature of these elements in relation to the overall theme of the text. While traditionally thought of as mutually exclusive elements, sexuality and gender are juxtaposed throughout the text, causing characters to reflect on their own identities.

Magic In The Classroom: The School Story And The Implications Of Discipline In Harry Potter, Megan Thompson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Set against the history of the school story in children’s literature, the Harry Potter series reinvigorates the genre. Specifically, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone addresses the significance of socializing disciplines within children’s literature while also demonstrating the effects that education has on individuality and maturation through the roles of the characters throughout the series. Perhaps much of what lends Rowling’s work its magical ability as compared to the traditional school story is its free use of traditionalism, as seen in fairy tales, in its narrative style.

Rowling’s writing gestures towards the need for imagination in order to decode a …

Empire State Interrupted : Seneca Sovereignty And Settler Debates Over Land, 1779-1889, Elana Krischer

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

New York’s western expansion began during the American Revolution. From then on, a variety of American settler groups and individuals attempted to possess and control Seneca land in what is now western New York. These American settler groups, such as missionaries, land speculators, state and federal officials, and land surveyors, carried out individual projects of dispossession and erasure throughout the nineteenth century. In the process, they shaped the space of the Seneca reservations and the trajectory of American expansion. In justifying dispossession, American settlers crafted elaborate sets of laws and rights. These conflicting claims became so entangled that dispossession was …

Gender Journeys : Arts-Based Participatory Action Research With Non-Binary Young Adults, Darren Thomas Cosgrove

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Increasing attention to the social and health disparities faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people has ushered in much needed attention to issues related to sexuality and gender diversity within social work literature. Among this burgeoning focus has been a particular emphasis on the experiences of transgender people. Such work is particularly relevant to social workers given the heightened rates of harassment and discrimination that transgender people face. Increased scholarly attention presents opportunities for new knowledge to inform social work policy and practice in service to transgender communities. While this expansion in literature addresses several significant needs, …

The Agrarian Gentleman: Elkanah Watson And The Birth Of The Agricultural Society In Early National New England, John Ginder

History Honors Program

Elkanah Watson is an overlooked figure in the early national period of the United States. A direct descendent of the Mayflower Pilgrims, Watson was a well-connected, well-traveled businessman who was receptive to any idea that he thought would benefit the new nation. This paper argues that Watson played an important role in forging a new American definition of progress, one that built on his experience in the American Revolution, borrowed heavily from Europe, and was inextricably tied to the American landscape. During the age of Enlightenment, he believed that one could improve oneself as well as society. That was evident …

Reenivisioning War Through Children’S Eyes: Northern And Southern Literature In Post-Civil War America, Hannah Cast

History Honors Program

In post-Civil War America, the sectional divide between Northern and Southern states continued to cause conflict even after the fighting had ended. In order to uphold their memory of the conflict, authors from both sides used the publication of children’s literature as a vehicle to spread their perspective. The Southern states wrote myths about the “Lost Cause” of the Civil War, a post-war invention to explain the South’s defeat in the Civil War and to maintain a predominantly white political system. In the Northern states, authors illustrated a romantic view of the war in order to spread tales of patriotism …

“Learned From Black Friends”: The Asian-American Struggle For Housing And Equal Employment In New York City, 1969 – 1974, Shouyue Zhang

History Honors Program

The size of New York’s Chinese community surged after 1968, in turn leading to shortages in affordable housing and insufficient employment opportunities. The urban crisis of New York City exacerbated these problems. This thesis will explore New York’s Asian-American collective struggles against landlords’ eviction and employment discrimination.

The housing story began in 1969. The New York Telephone Company bought buildings in Chinatown and evicted all tenants. Tenants used various strategies to resist. Finally, their efforts secured a long-term lease. The employment story mainly occurred in 1974. The developer of Confucius Plaza in Chinatown hired two Asian construction workers to accommodate …

“No Popery! No French Laws!”: Anti-Catholicism During The American Revolution, Nicholas Dorthe

History Honors Program

This paper analyzes how widespread anti-Catholic sentiment unified the colonies against the British Crown during the early stages of the American Revolution. Also, this paper explores how loyalists utilized fear of Catholicism in order to undermine the Revolution, showing that anti-Catholic fearmongering played a vital role to both causes. Overtime, historians have placed varying emphasis on certain reasons behind the American Revolution. Since the Progressive Era, there has been a shift from economic reasons, like class conflict and the Crown’s restrictive trade policies, to a more ideological stance, one that emphasizes philosophical influence and constitutional interpretations. Instead, this essay asserts …

Imperial Evolution: Walter Lippmann And The Liberal Roots Of American Hegemony, Lukas Moller

History Honors Program

When Walter Lippmann became a founding editor of the New Republic in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, he began to advocate for heightened United States involvement in global affairs. Lippmann argued that the global power vacuum generated by the war presented the ideal opportunity for American values to spread to places like Eastern Europe and South America, the latter under the veil of “Pan-Americanism.” The Pan-American movement would disguise the U.S. as a “big-brother” to the Latin American nations creating a seemingly symbiotic relationship, when realistically it would seize the open markets caused by the war …

The Chocolate Industry: Blood, Sweat, And Tears Is What Makes Chocolate Sweet, Gabriella Bartley

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

Forced labor is a form of human trafficking that affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Products that we enjoy, such as chocolate, are part of industries that are built on the exploitation of people. Forced labor allows traffickers to take advantage of people by not supplying a proper wage or needs for survival. The chocolate industry has had a history of causing economic hardships for those in the supply chain. Farm owners are responsible for costly supplies needed to operate a cocoa farm before farming begins only to gain small profits. Companies leading the chocolate industry do not want …

Girls In Wonderland: The Male Gaze, Disordered Eating, And Bad Women In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland & Spirited Away, Arielle Westcott

English

This project aims to examine gender as perpetuated in the “Wonderland” trope, paying specific attention to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. At the surface level, these works seem like they don’t have much in common—they come from different cultures, different time periods, and different social contexts. However, to say that these stories are too dissimilar to compare is simply incorrect as both deal with the transitional periods of young girls who are approaching adolescence. Because both stories contain an alternate world in which the main little girl character wanders into and journeys through, …

The Pen As Your Sword: Writing Through The Lens Of Depression, Chris Lownie

English

Tragedy is one of writing’s earliest genres, and yet, why do we involve ourselves in the subject and write our own grief for the rest of the world? This thesis explores the act of tackling the subjects of mental illness and bereavement through the use of memoir, and simultaneously to analyze the use of such subject matter in contemporary fiction. Through creating a memoir of my own charting my journey through mental illness, familial death, and suicide, and analyzing the memoirs and works of those who have been through comparable experience, this thesis illuminates how grief is depicted in the …

The Era Of The Era: Defining Liberal And Conservative Equality Through The Fight For The Equal Rights Amendment In New York, Chloe Ross

History

The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed by suffragist and life-long feminist Alice Paul in 1923 and it intended to create equality of the sexes under the law. It was passed by Congress in 1972, but ultimately was not ratified by enough states. During that time was second-wave feminism, a movement that claimed to seek out equality but had a divisive nature. This thesis looks at how the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment in New York during the 1970s and 80s helped shape the definition of equality for each side of the newly polarized political spectrum. The bulk of …

The Societal Perception And Judgements Of Sexual Violence Targeting Victims From Varying Demographic Backgrounds, Hanna Bogart

Psychology

Abstract Sexual violence affects people of all color and gender, but extant research has mostly focused on reactions toward female (and often White) survivors. With a sample of 77 undergraduate University participants (Mage = 18.82), the current study examined the effects of survivors’ race and gender on recommended punishment of the sexual violence incidents. The results indicated that severity of the assault and recommended punishment for the perpetrator had a significantly positive relationship, such that individuals’ recommended more severe punishments for more severe sexual violence incidents. Furthermore, sexual violence incidents involving female victims were recommended more severe punishments than those …

El Uso Y UbicacióN Del LeíSmo En La PeníNsula IbéRica Desde Siglo Xiii Hasta Siglo Xx, Anthony Scalise

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

El leísmo es un fenómeno lingüístico en el cual hay el reemplazamiento del pronombre del objeto acusativo, lo, con el pronombre del objeto dativo, le. Suele ocurrir con objetos masculinos, humanos, y animados, aunque puede ocurrir con objetos masculinos, animados, no humanos como los animales. En este estudio, se trata de contestar cuanto uso del leísmo había en la Península Ibérica, donde había tal uso del leísmo en la Península Ibérica, y cuál es el origen del leísmo en la Península Ibérica. Los clíticos vienen por el CORDE, un banco de datos por la Real Academia Española, en …

Correlates Of Compliance In Community Diversion Programs: An Outline For Offender Characteristic Analysis, Emily O'Halloran

Criminal Justice

Restorative Justice Programs have become an increasingly popular alternative to incarceration. Two restorative programs that exist within the Capital Region of New York are discussed and used as a baseline. This paper will lay the framework for conducting an analysis of these types of programs in order to examine the individual traits offenders partaking in the program poses and whether they affect their likelihood of complying. The information needed to perform a meaningful statistical analysis is established, along with hypothetical potential outcomes.

Investigative Comedy: Redefining News And How We Get It, Jeremy Tu

Journalism Program

The investigative comedy genre rose to prominence over the last two decades and now dominates the late night industry. “The Daily Show” brought political satire to mainstream American television at a time when sensationalized 24/7 cable news coverage and partisanship in the national government dominated political discourse. Jon Stewart, then a little-known comedian from New Jersey, brought younger and more informed audiences to his show through his style of comedy—one that spoke truth to power and called out hypocrisy when he saw it. The show entertained and taught viewers about the mainstream media, politics, and lesser-known issues that journalists failed …

Chameleons Of Modern Drumming: Mastering Diverse Commerical Styles, Cameron Simons

Recital Papers

Studio drummers are some of the most well-rounded musicians contributing to commercial music in the modern era. They are hired to lend their talents to an artist’s compositions by creating drum parts that will complement the overarching song arrangement. In this type of work, it is very helpful to be fluent in many different styles of drumming, as the music of each artist will require different techniques. Each of the drummers highlighted in this research have mastered the ability to shift from one style of music to the next with ease, earning them the title as a “chameleon” of modern …

The Fallen Woman: An Exploration Of The Voiceless Women In Victorian England Through Three Plays Of Oscar Wilde, Marco Randazzo

English (MA) Theses

This essay establishes the Christian myth within Wilde’s three plays, calling attention to the gender politics that he fought against in the Victorian era. Through Salomé, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband I will prove the Christological myth that each play adopts and establish Wilde’s ability to make the religion “transformational.” Wilde’s productions of characters like Salomé, Mrs. Allonby, Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Hester are examples of the “fallen woman” of Victorian England. The treatment of women by women will illuminate the passiveness of the Victorian Woman and their compliance with the patriarchal norm. This norm continues through …

Student Disposition Towards Discussing Race In The Classroom, Natalie Salagean

English (MA) Theses

Discussions of race in the classroom have always been fraught. How do we broach such sensitive topics? How do we create an environment in which students feel both safe and comfortable discussing race on both a personal level and at a systemic scale? How does a student’s race factor into the conversation? And how does the instructor’s race factor in as well, or in conjunction with a student’s racial identity? As a Latina educator of color, I designed a research study which examined the impact my own race and ethnicity held in the classroom, and additionally how intersecting factors such …

Paper Making: Finding The Scaffold, Tino Ward

Art Theses and Dissertations

Paper making combines my proclivity towards using found materials and the need to produce my own painting supports. This first part of this thesis chronicles the reasons I arrived at paper as my chosen medium, the objects I began to produce, and the projects that stemmed from those early experiments. The second half outlines my final work, a 1:4 scale model in paper of the 1966 exhibition 10, held in New York at the Dwan Gallery, which showcased the early minimal works of Carl Andre, Jo Baer, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Ad Reinhardt, …