Arts and Humanities Commons^™

England's Fairest Creatures, Madison Hart

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Set in 1616 Jacobean England, surrounding a tragic chamber pot incident, the place setting of the small fishing town of Lechlade, England, begins our story. From generations of fisherman, Elias Eaton, is the first Eaton not to bear a son. Instead, his fierce daughter in her mid-twenties, Julia, our protagonist, helps her father at the docks daily. Although Julia is a champion for women of her time, she dreams of there being something more out there for her than the town that has shackled Eatons for centuries. Julia’s mother, Sybil, is the daughter to the town baker. Her literate father …

Ouroboros, Haley R. Biere

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

My work uses both painterly and sculptural elements to convey my personal transgender experience. My work is for the little girl who I was, who was incapable of speaking out or expressing themselves. I create work for others that face similar situations, as well as for those who face feelings of gender dysphoria, as I did and still do by not conforming to the gender I was assigned. Working the way that I do is a way for me to rediscover myself after years of shoving my identity to the side for the sake of others. Growing up in rural …

Splitleaf, Sean M. Turlington

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Set in the fantasy world of Vriim, Splitleaf follows the story of the protagonist Dellum Lovira as he journeys to regain his freedom, find purpose in his life once he has freedom, and develop into a self-actualized person beyond the shadow of his mother and the societal judgement for his multiracial status. Raised on the island chain of Riitol, Dellum is a half-blood between a human father and a Nifaren mother, a race of scaled and feathered people whose emotional investment struggles to move beyond self-interest. He must in the early chapters included here travel back to his original home, …

Queering Job: Inverted Liberation In Boy Erased And Other Conversion Trauma Narratives, Harrison Beau Palen

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis explores conversion trauma narratives with the goal of transforming—inverting The Book of Job’s holy resolution to instead entail queer liberation apart from Evangelicalism. Analyzing Conley’s bestselling memoir, Boy Erased, I discuss Conley’s suffering and how his liberation is not found by means of repressing or converting his attraction to the same gender. I also analyze Emily Danforth’s novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post to highlight how fictional accounts of queer liberation from conversion therapy help to increase awareness of the harms of conversion therapy. Throughout my thesis, I incorporate my own story of queer suffering, survival, and …

The Me [Unnamed]: Essays, Rebecca Ann Harris

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This creative thesis includes six flash nonfiction pieces and four essays exploring my relationships with my father, mother, and older sister; this exploration is filtered through the lenses of trauma and mental illness. Notably, five of the six flash nonfiction pieces are written in the literary mode of magical realism, which are analyzed in this thesis’ critical introduction. By evaluating magical realism’s origins in German surrealism and its development within Latin-America—as well as its theoretical correlation to Charles Baxter’s defamiliarization and Milan Kundera’s appeal of dream—I acknowledge magical realism’s literary techniques and cultural motivations within published fiction. I analyze magical …

"Better Too Much Than Not Enough": Women Of Color On The Federal Bench, Laura Moyer, Rorie Spill Solberg, Allison Harris

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

It is well established that the federal judiciary has been an overwhelmingly White and male institution since its creation and continues to be so today. Even as presidents of both parties have looked to diversify their judicial nominees, this has tended to result in the appointment of White women and men of color rather than women of color. Using data on the confirmed federal district and circuit court judges from presidents Clinton through Trump, we assess how the backgrounds of women of color nominated to the federal judiciary compare with those of other appointees. The results indicate that, compared to …

The Benefits Of Offering Classroom Piano Lessons As Part Of The Curriculum In Public Elementary School, Denise Cheeks Mundy

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the potential benefits of offering classroom piano lessons as part of the curriculum in public elementary schools. The research reviews the educational, neurological, and cultural potential benefits a child may receive if they study the piano. Further study examines the availability for teachers to receive training in teaching group piano, the methods of setting up a piano classroom, and materials needed for such a program in the school system. Records of the history of group lessons showed that this method of teaching has had periods of success and periods of decline in …

Rewired: Utilizing An Integrated Design Campaign To Persuade Generation Z To Rethink Their Hyper-Connected World, Madison Jude Fogarty

Masters Theses

Twenty first century youth have never known a world without the Internet. From childhood they are increasingly reliant on the Internet for their sense of connectivity, play, communication, and socialization. These habits that are formed at a young age are rewiring children’s brains in a negative light. Psychological effects such as narcissism, escapism, instant gratification, and social comparison have become common issues that the current generation faces every day. This thesis will examine how increased dependency on social media and the Internet affects Generation Z and beyond. To better understand how media is affecting childhood and beyond, research was conducted …

True Pauline Worship Is Trinitarian: A Look At Paul’S Trinitarian Presuppositions, Connie Heberlein

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to show that true Pauline worship is Trinitarian. Thus, proper Christian worship must be Trinitarian. This work begins by examining the Shema and exploring the unique identity of God presented in the Old Testament and the literature of Second Temple Judaism. Building on this foundation, this work evaluates statements found in Paul’s letters in which Paul reformulates the Shema to include Christ and the Spirit in the divine identity of God. The goal is to understand how the first Christians, who were Jews committed to the exclusive worship of Yahweh, moved from monotheistic worship to Trinitarian worship …

A Defense Of The Resurrection Miracle And Critique Of The Hallucination Theory, Joshua James Smothers

Masters Theses

Many Christian scholars simply laugh at the notion of the Hallucination theory. However, while it is laughable that the hallucination theory claims the disciples of Jesus all shared a hallucination in which they saw their beloved friend risen from the grave, there is more to the hallucination theory than meets the eye. This thesis defends the resurrection using history while critiquing the hallucination theory. Jesus did rise from the grave in the same physical body that was crucified at Calvary, and the disciple's claims of seeing a risen Jesus are true and can be proven with fact and evidence.

Burmese Buddhist Monks, The Seventh Precept, And Cognitive Dissonance, Heather Maclachlan

Department of Music Faculty Publications

Burmese Theravada Buddhist monks have varying degrees of involvement with music; this study of 22 monks from across Burma/Myanmar reveals that most of them often listen to recorded music. At the same time the monks acknowledge that Buddhism’s Seventh Precept is (or ought to be) a guide for their behavior, agreeing that to be “attached” to music is to violate their monastic rule. They therefore experience cognitive dissonance, and they respond to this dissonance in predictable ways - that is, in ways documented by researchers working with Western populations. They differ, however, in their phenomenological experiences of attachment.

Riding East: Western Myths, Nostalgia, And The Crossing Of Generic Boundaries In Hidalgo (2004), Sylvie Magerstaedt

Arts Papers and Journal Articles

During the first decade of the new millennium, a number of epic films appeared in quick succession exploring broadly speaking a clash of cultures through mythic-historic narratives. Although the 2004 film Hidalgo (dir. Joe Johnston) was overshadowed by some of the more successful works at the time, this paper argues that it makes a distinct contribution to the field through a nostalgic-ironic reframing of traditional Western genre tropes. Linking Western and Eastern myths about equestrian nomadic culture, the film follows in the footsteps of nineteenth century orientalist art and critically re-evaluates the very origins of the Western as a cinematic …

To The Bone And Back, Noelle Christine Thomas

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

To the Bone and Back, a memoir by Noelle Thomas explores Thomas’s college journey while struggling with mental health conditions. To the Bone and Back primarily focuses on how anxiety, depression, and eating disorders can impact friendships. Thomas documents her journey through college and grad school in four parts. In a way, Thomas’s memoir is a story of self-assembly.

Part one, made up of poems, narratives, letter excerpts, YouTube transcripts, and text messages, mirrors the clutter and chaos of Thomas’s brain at that time. Part one establishes the friendship between the main characters: Thomas and Jenna.

Part two begins to …

We Take Back The Moon, Zoey Jean Adam

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

My creative manuscript, tentatively known as We Take Back the Moon, is an in-progress fantasy novel in verse. Set in a world not like our own where the only bipedal inhabitants are elves, it is a tale of two best friends contending with a society where those who lack the ability to use magic are sentenced to the Colony—essentially a prison camp. Chkal, one of the protagonists, was a child prodigy in magic and still lives in the Capital, while her best friend, Esari, was sent away at age thirteen to the Colony. The story follows Chkal’s struggle with her …

Spenser And Logic: Gigantomachia And Contentlessness In The Faerie Queene, John E. Curran Jr.

English Faculty Research and Publications

Figuring the enforcement of authority against rebellion, the war between the Olympians and the earth-spawned Giants is typically read as a marker of ideology. In The Faerie Queene, Spenser’s abundant allusions to the Gigantomachia can seem straightforwardly ideological, aligning Olympian rule with his virtue-knights, avatars of Elizabethan hegemony, and his giants with subversion. This essay explores another significance for the Gigantomachia, reviewing a different tradition of meaning for the myth-pattern and locating it in the poem—a tradition wherein, rather than liberation in the political realm, the Giants portend the radical oversimplification and even the nullification of thought within the …

Review Of Children Of The Raven And The Whale, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Confined In (Patri)Architecture: How Gothic And Horror Literature Exposes Ongoing Violence And Oppression Against Women, Clara A. Macilravie Cañas

Dissertations and Theses

This project focuses on the intersections of space, power, gender, religion, and the architecture of institutions that confine and repress women. I argue that these texts focus on how patriarchal and domestic ideologies lock women into gendered expectations through oppressive gender politics. Chapter one demonstrates how early gothic female writers used representations of physical structures, such as abbeys and castles, to expose the eighteenth-century woman’s experiences of abuse and confinement by repressive patriarchal and monarchal rule. This chapter connects themes and arguments within Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783) and Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790) to reveal the metaphors that …

Building An Imperial World: Ideologies Of Imperialism And The Tariff Reform Movement In Britain, 1900-1914, Kevin Jennings Luginbill

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the imperial rhetoric and ideologies articulated during the tariff reform controversy in Edwardian Britain. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain organized a new movement, dubbed tariff reform, to enact a series of commercial policies that would integrate the British and colonial economies and, he argued, lay the foundation for the development of a unified imperial federation. Chamberlain’s proposals were controversial and divisive, resulting in years of political debate over the merits of tariff reform. While the tariff reform campaign has been studied in numerous histories, its imperial dimensions have been ignored …

Midrash Therapy: A Hermeneutical Inquiry, Robert T. Jury

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines descriptions of Midrash Therapy as practiced in a continuing care group for Jewish people in recovery. Specifically, it analyzes interviews with participants who experienced Midrash Therapy, therapeutic documents from a continuing care group using Midrash Therapy, fieldnotes, and an action-reflection journal kept by the practitioner-researcher. Interviews were conducted with six individuals and the collective data was analyzed under applied hermeneutical practices. At the onset of the study, the author Midrash Therapy as an integration of narrative practices and rabbinic approaches to counseling. This examination found that Midrash Therapy is a Jewish integrated therapy with five distinctive aspects: …

Perhabs I Will: A Content Analysis And Media Production Focusing On Contemporary Comedy And Comedians, Abs Anderson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This research examined the comedy talk shows Billy on the Street (2011-2017), The Eric Andre Show (2012-present), and Ziwe (2021-present) in order to discover the specific types of humor incorporated within their programs. This study searched for the presence of cringe, stand-up, surreal, sketch, and improvisational comedy in each show. The study analyzed each program using the benign violation theory and the hierarchy of influences model. A content analysis of 15 episodes selected across every program found at least three of the five genres present in their content. An additional purpose of this study was to produce a comparable program …

Righting Health Policy: Bioethics, Political Philosophy, And The Normative Justification Of Health Law And Policy, D. Robert Macdougall

Publications and Research

In Righting Health Policy, D. Robert MacDougall argues that bioethics needs but does not have adequate tools for justifying law and policy. Bioethics’ tools are mostly theories about what we owe each other. But justifying laws and policies requires more; at a minimum, it requires tools for explaining the legitimacy of actions intended to control or influence others. It consequently requires political, rather than moral, philosophy. After showing how bioethicists have consistently failed to use tools suitable for achieving their political aims, MacDougall develops an interpretation of Kant’s political philosophy. On this account the legitimacy of health laws does …

Queer Gothic Literature And Culture, Laura Westengard

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Mural: An Online Space For Co-Creating Meaning And Understanding, Kimberly James

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Building an online community around learning has been challenging throughout the academic and artistic disruptions caused by the COVID 19 pandemic. In order to promote remote interaction and educe student contributions, I utilized MURAL, a virtual, collaborative whiteboard, several times during AY2020-2021 to co-create meaning and understanding of common pedagogic topics that are applied in my studio. This practice allowed all participants to contribute ideas, make revisions, and enjoy new “aha” moments in real-time with far less pressure and concern for feeling “called out” or being “wrong.”

These activities benefitted the students and the overall wellness of the student participants …

Trauma-Informed Performance Art Education, Yvonne Houy, Kymberly Mellen, Alethea Inns, Morgan Iommi

Creative Collaborations

Trauma is the emotional response to a disturbing event or series of events, and can cause symptoms such as unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, headaches, and nausea, according to the American Psychological Association (2022). Learning activities in the performing arts - such as adjusting the body through touch, or the emotional content of scenes - can retraumatize students unintentionally. In contrast, creating the conditions for emotional states that enhance learning is a science, and an art, that can support conditions for optimal performance including Flow states

Performing arts educators can proactively support students and performances by becoming trauma-informed and actively using intimacy …

Architone•Ics: The Music Of Architecture — Music As An Entry Point For Understanding Architectural Design, Deborah J. Oakley, Diego Vega

Creative Collaborations

Architecture and Music share many fundamental concepts in common. German polymath Goethe famously described architecture as “frozen music.” Numerous renowned architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn among others, were also accomplished musicians and wrote of the connections between the two disciplines. A particularly noteworthy example of overlapping and crossing boundaries is the Greco-French composer Iannas Xenakis. Regarded as an influential figure in late 20th century avant-garde music, his first education and occupation, was actually as a structural engineer for famed architect LeCorbusier. He later practiced architecture himself before focusing on music composition, for which he is better known. …

Transdisciplinarity In Experience Design: A Global Survey Of Higher Ed Programs In Exd/Xd, Yvonne Houy

Creative Collaborations

In our age of ubiquitous devices and digital media it is the perceived value of the end-to-end experience that brings people to a place. Designing inspiring and emotionally engaging end-to-end experiences requires experts in a wide range of disciplines committed to an interdisciplinary collaboration that can arrive at transdisciplinary design - the sum becomes greater than its parts.

Civil engineering, hospitality, business, psychology, digital User Experience (UX) design, and experience data analysis need to be seamless integrated with the fine and performing arts and design fields:

• Architecture, interior, landscape and sound design actively engage the senses.

• Graphic and fine arts …

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Tradition-Innovation [In Arts, Design, Media Higher Education]: A New Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal, Yvonne Houy, Maryrose Flanigan

Creative Collaborations

How can we build a future for teaching/mentoring creative work and research that honors and enhances core disciplinary traditions? This new peer reviewed open access eJournal—collaboratively brought to life by the international Alliance for the Arts Research Universities network (a2ru), and a2ru member UNLV—provides a forum to address this question by exploring the intersection of teaching, creative work and emerging research practices.

In the challenging crucible of the pandemic, educators forged new techniques and innovative practices. Faculty in disciplines underserved by typical digital learning tools—such as in the Arts, Design and Media disciplines—explored and developed creative solutions as they shifted …

Drawings That Tell Stories, Iandry Randriamandroso

Creative Collaborations

In the spring of 2021, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I designed a project that engaged students to use Oral History as their research tool to generate their own stories from real experiences of real people impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic. The project has three parts: Research & Planning, Implementation, and Presentation.

For Research & Planning part, students conducted Oral History interviews and collected stories from real people. For the Implementation part, students created full-color drawings based on the collected stories. The project was their final project for the semester and students used color pastels and 18”x24” …

Food Desert To Food Oasis: An Engagement With The Community Through Evidence-Based Methods, Phillip W. Zawarus, Lisa Ortega

Creative Collaborations

The state of Nevada has the 12th highest percentage (12.8%) of households living with food insecurity compared to the US average of 11.1% according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1). Economic and environmental benefits of urban forests have been well documented to address issues of climate change, urban heat islands, and fragmented ecologies, however, in a period of social inequities, urban forests can serve a vital role in providing environmental justice through agroforestry for communities identified within a food desert.

According to Kyle H. Clark & Kimberly A. Nicholas, “urban food forestry can be an efficient way to consistently …

A Semiotic Phenomenology Of Consumptive Pedagogy By College Instructors In A General Education Program, Giselle L. Betts

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe the instructional and visual pedagogy of university faculty teaching sociological consumer education within an interdisciplinary general education program. This study addresses gaps in the literature regarding program and course format, visual utilization, and teaching philosophies from faculty members’ perspectives. Utilizing a semiotic phenomenological approach, implications for instructional facilitation are discussed at length.Findings of this study include five themes that impact the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, as well as sociological consumer education. Participant life experiences and disciplines are implicated as instrumental towards participant instructional philosophies. The nature and impact of interdisciplinary program …