Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Front Cover, Table Of Contents

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Unspoken, Kathryn Gustafson

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Contributors, Back Cover

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Headaches And Humility: Introducing Preservice Teachers To Undergraduate Research, J. Scott Baker

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

For some teacher educators, the singular goal of teacher preparation is to license new teachers, not develop critical thinkers. This lack of thinking beyond lesson plans, course standards, and classroom management to explore high impact practices – such as undergraduate research – leads to the deterioration of the education field and limits preservice teachers’ understandings of their own curricular and pedagogical practices. This article is a poetic reflection – through headaches and humility – on how 157 preservice teachers (PTs) made connections between curricular research and practice. The article also addresses steps taken by a teacher educator to ensure their …

Save And Continue?, Douglas Boyd Johnson

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the research I completed and the body of work produced during the course of my Master's studies. The paper begins by briefly recounting early influences and the nature of my practice at the time I began the program. Then elaboration follows on the development of my work across various media, both traditional and digital. The work centers on formal questioning of pictorial media and draws conclusions on the nature of picture making, and the motivations I have for pursuing pictorial art.

Carrying The Longings, Shuoran Zhou

Theses - ALL

The objective of this paper is to reveal the origin and evolution of the work I have made, thereby establishing the foundation for my future practice. The core purpose of my work is to provoke introspection and to question, if not reverse, entrenched and stereotypical assumptions toward women. I derive inspiration from my confrontational relationship with my mother, who is a prominent female figure in my life. Our confrontations arise from our differing perspectives and beliefs regarding the roles and aspirations of women. These unpleasant confrontations are the origin of my practice, which is based on questioning assumptions and norms …

Forget Forgot Forgotten, Kevin J. Frazier

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this thesis is to support a series of works that represent different ideas on my life experiences through memory, attachment to social media use, and digital appearance. By showcasing these works together, viewers can experience the ways in which I choose to visualize how digital content alters our memories, as well as our own opinions of ourselves.The paper begins with a background of myself, detailing how I arrived at this project and why I am interested in the relationship between memory and social media. It then provides examples of previous work I created to inform the reader …

On The Use And Abuse Of Violence For Life: Affect, Witnessing, And Protest, Harrison Maurice Lucas

Theses - ALL

Following the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020 by police officer Derek Chauvin, a protest began in the city of Minneapolis that resulted in the burning down of the third precinct police building, the looting of a local Target, and the destruction of over one hundred buildings in the area. But despite this violence, the Minneapolis uprising sparked a wave of protests that spread to over sixty countries on every continent of the globe. Why was Floyd's murder so politically mobilizing? And why did this protest inspire so many others? To answer these questions, I treat the video …

In Search Of Systemic Liberation: Black Feminist Activism Amongst French Women Of African Descent In Contemporary France, Jordan Thomas

Theses - ALL

"In Search of Systemic Liberation: Black Feminist Activism amongst French Women ofAfrican Descent in Contemporary France" examines the activisms of Isabelle Boni-Claverie, Assa Traoré, and the anti-racist and feminist collective, Lallab. In so doing, this thesis examines how the collective of each challenges France's narrative around race, belonging, and national identity. Through the analysis of the works by Boni-Claverie, Traoré, and Lallab, as well as the analysis of the responses from French media and French politicians, this thesis examines the ways in which these activists' political ideology and organizing pushes against France's national narrative of color-blind universalism in the present-day. …

Jin And Ming - An Intergenerational Study Of The Roles Of Women In East Asia, Yanyi Liu

Theses - ALL

This thesis discusses some of the current dilemmas faced by women in East Asia. Women from different life backgrounds may make different choices when faced with life paths, but whether they choose to pursue a career or return to the family, there are potential pitfalls and no easy paths left for them. In the first part, the paper explores gender issues from a global perspective, the road to gender equality for women in Asian countries lags far behind that of the Nordic countries and has a long way to go. This thesis then analyses the situation from within the East …

The Psychological Experience Of Astronauts And How It Can Be Depicted In Artworks, Xuan Liu

Theses - ALL

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the psychological phenomena that astronauts experience during long-term space missions and to find their relationship with space-themed artworks. By analyzing the psychology of space exploration, this thesis finds that by inserting those phenomena into an appropriate plot and exaggerating it can create compelling and imaginative work. Secondly, this thesis categorizes several plot types that are frequently found in space- themed sequential artworks. This thesis also reflects on the impact of the current Covid-19 epidemic on human psychology, similar to long duration solitude impact on cosmonauts. Finally, this thesis discusses the visual thesis …

To Have And To Hold, Michael Kalish

Theses - ALL

The relationship between mere objects, richly aesthetic objects, and the emotional structure ofexperience is considered in three parts. The first part attempts to develop the relationship between object-ness and art-ness from the intellectual tradition of ordinary language philosophy. The first part ends with the death of my wife. The second part provides a view of the emotional structure of grief-experienced in the form of a poem. The third part attempts to reconcile the lost and the kept, as intellectual and emotional structures are re-aligned. The thesis therefore attempts to both show and tell the origin and nature of the material …

How Shall We Be Known: The Problem And Art Of Representing Blackness, London Ladd

Theses - ALL

This thesis explores the problem of representing the identities, experiences, and ideasof people of African descent in the United States. It proceeds from the premise that this problem, which can shape everyday personal experiences, has also been critical to African American cultural production. This thesis examines these phenomena in two ways. First, it explores how African American writers grappled with the challenge of representing Black people collectively at various historical moments. Then negotiate the challenges I faced as an artist creating visual representations of multiple themes and facets of the writers' lives, identities, and ideas. Together, the two parts of …

Dynamics Of Secrecy In The Sworn Book Of Honorius, Connor Feliu

Theses - ALL

This thesis seeks to examine the cultural activity and discourse of the logics of medieval clerical magical secrecy and investigate how these covert logics become textualized in the Sworn Book of Honorius. In order to perform this examination of medieval clerical magical secrecy, this thesis extends the methodologies of engaging with medieval secrecy that Karma Lochrie establishes in her Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy. I primarily draw from two aspects of her methodological work: the focus on the dynamics of secrecy as opposed to the secret itself, and the attention to the relationship between magical knowledge and power.

White Snake:A Representative Story Of The West Lake, Zhiying Chen

Theses - ALL

As one of the Four Classic Folktales of China, The Legend of the White Snake, which happened in Hangzhou, is a representative folktale of Chinese culture. The story has been developed for thousands of years and we see it as a reflection of Chinese history and culture.

The first part of the thesis is going to trace the development of this story back to its origin and analyze the changes in the content of each story version of The Legend of the White Snake with respect to its cultural, religious, and social backgrounds. Secondly, it will focus on contemporary writer …

The Heartman: The Impact Of Its Evolution On The Barbadian Cultural Landscape, Kelsia Kellman

Theses - ALL

The Heartman: The Impact of its Evolution on the Barbadian Cultural Landscape, examines the impact of cultural evolution on the Barbadian cultural landscape, using the folkloric belief of the Heartman as the point of focus. This thesis seeks through the analysis of newspaper articles, novels, graphic novels, short stories, and informal interviews to provide the historical and cultural backgrounds of Barbados, and to provide insight into the evolution that has taken place within society and how it is reflected within the minds of the Barbadian populace. In other words, how has the evolution of the Heartman affected the ways in …

Between Homeland And Hostland: Imagining Diasporic Indigeneity With The Center For Babaylan Studies, Elizabeth Rae Herrick

Theses - ALL

This thesis proposes "diasporic indigeneity" as a new heuristic tool for Religious Studies to capture how diasporic subjects evoke indigeneity through processes of religious/spiritual (re)indigenization. By reconnecting to lost homeland heritages while learning new hostland responsibilities, diasporic indigeneity begins to articulate how diasporic people can "belong to place(s)." Through textual analysis and ethnographic methods, the Center for Babaylan Studies (CfBS) serves as my case study. They represent an organization for Filipinx-Americans who grapple with colonial mentality from the historical colonization of the Philippines and their imbrication in ongoing Turtle Island settler colonialism. To heal from these intergenerational wounds, the CfBS …

Saint Jude's, May 15, 2022

Saint Jude's

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Waltham, MA

Saint Jude's Finding Aid

St. Benedict Parish For The Deaf Church Bulletin, May 15, 2022

Saint Benedict Parish for the Deaf Church Bulletin

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in San Francisco, CA

Saint Benedict Parish for the Deaf Church Bulletin Finding Aid

An Exploration Of Self-Identity Experiences Within The Lives Of Afro-Caribbean Women Undergraduate College Students: A Feminist Phenomenological Study, Shana J. Gelin

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this feminist phenomenological dissertation was to explore the self-identity experiences of Afro-Caribbean women undergraduate college students. In doing so, self-identity experiences, ethnic marginalization, and counseling experiences were explored for six participants. Data was collected and analyzed using Simone De Beauvoir's feminist framework of self-discovery/ rediscovery where two semi-structured interviews were conducted for each participant. This study resulted in six individual profiles illuminating the voices of each participant as well as collective themes. Findings from this study show that Afro-Caribbean women undergraduate college students filter their self-identity experiences through their ethnicity; meaning that participants understand other pieces of …

Metaphysical Coherentism, Jan Swiderski

Dissertations - ALL

I defend metaphysical coherentism, according to which reality is an interdependent network, system, or web, held together by a relation philosophers call "metaphysical explanation" or "grounding". If coherentism is true, nothing is ungrounded, things ground each other, and understanding what it is to be any given thing – a tree, a house, or a person – is grasping how it fits in: how it grounds and is grounded by its environment.

Coherentism is inconsistent with a widely-accepted, orthodox view of grounding, according to which certain fundamental facts about reality asymmetrically determine everything else. In Chapter 1, I argue that this …

Receiving A Queen: A Queer And Trans Feminist Classical Reception Rhetorical Historiography Of Elagabalus, Thomas William Passwater

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies representations of Elagabalus, the sovereign of Rome who ruled between 218–222ce, after her assassination to examine how depictions and historical accounts of Elagabalus's life make rhetorical decisions about Elagabalus's identity and being that can foreground the composer's relationship to history and the function of history as a rhetorical force. Thus, this project, through studying Elagabalus's composers, raises questions about the nature of figure studies and history. The project draws on trans, queer, and feminist theories and rhetorics which help highlight the contingent and conflicting nature of Elagabalus's identities across representations without settling them into a singular narrative …

Fragmented Landscapes: An Archaeology Of Transformations In The Pra River Basin, Southern Ghana, Sean Hamilton Reid

Dissertations - ALL

This doctoral archaeological research examines the Pra River Basin in southern Ghana through lenses of landscape, temporality, and transformation. Drawing on the Annales school and the writings of Tim Ingold, this study moves away from binary constructions of natural and cultural landscape features toward a more integrated view of the landscape's long human history. The primary temporal focus of this research is the past three millennia but evidence recovered of even more ancient eras is also examined. The artifacts and features documented while surveying this landscape allow us to glimpse pre-Atlantic (pre-1450 CE) settlement patterns, subsistence, and technology, as well …

The Problem Of The "Virtual": Virtual Reality, Digital Dualism, And Religious Experience, Jordan Brady Loewen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation uses resources from religious studies to critique the problem of digital dualism haunting notions of the "virtual" in the discourse of contemporary virtual reality technologies (VR). Digital dualism is the idea that digital or "virtual" worlds are fundamentally distinct from the "real" or physical world. Digital dualism is a problem because it mischaracterizes how we experience the spatial and temporal connections to our body in digital-virtual worlds and contributes to a false sense of subjective singularity rather than multiplicity that destabilizes how we relate to ourselves and others. Using the study of religion, philosophy, and aesthetics, we can …

Saving Salt City: Fighting Inequality Through Policy And Activism In Syracuse, Ny, 1955-1975, Scarlett Nicole Rebman

Dissertations - ALL

"Saving Salt City: Fighting Inequality through Policy and Activism in Syracuse, NY, 1955-1975" offers an in-depth exploration of civil rights and antipoverty struggles in the Salt City between 1955 and 1975. It centers the agency of activists who built interracial and cross-class organizations through which they contested the marginalization and segregation of Black Syracusans. By examining the struggles around major issues including education, housing, police brutality, employment, and a broader vision of economic justice, "Saving Salt City" documents the alternative visions and unrealized agendas for change generated by citizens in Northern urban spaces. This project recovers Syracuse's legacy as a …

An Overheated Debate: The Influence Of Premillennial Apocalyptic Rhetoric On Climate Reform Discourse In The United States, David Charles Gall-Maynard

Dissertations - ALL

Despite decades of scientific research and increased civil and governmental calls for reform, the United States continues to spiral toward climate catastrophe. Apocalyptic rhetoric helps us understand how even the most pressing environmental and societal threats are perceived differently according to audiences' rhetorical and ideological frameworks. Drawing on the work of Barry Brummett and Kenneth Burke, I argue that the premillennial sub-genre of apocalyptic rhetoric constitutes a rhetorical frame through which many secular climate reformers and evangelical Christians make sense of the environmental and societal impacts of climate change. In chapters that analyze secular and Christian climate reform discourse and …

Enter Homo Oeconomicus: Civic Motivation And Civic Education In Aristophanic Comedy, Konstantinos Karathanasis

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

By the mid-fifth century BCE, the Athenian polis had introduced payments for the performance ofan array of civic duties, and Aristotle suggests in his Politics that the effectiveness of monetary incentives in greasing the wheels of a state’s apparatus was widely recognized. In Aristophanic comedy, these incentives are systematically presented as the strongest motivational factor for everyday citizens who participated in judge-panels or the Assembly. In three Aristophanic plays, incentives and the behavioral problems surrounding them area major component of the plot. In Knights, old Demos is a self-serving individual who takes advantage of equally self-serving rhētores for the sake …

Victimhood And Its Perversion: Masochistic Narratives And Cultural Identity In Cold War Central Europe, Katja Perat

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an analysis of the recurring trope of female masochism in Central European literary postmodernism. It investigates five foundational novels, from both sides of the Iron Curtain, written between 1961 and 1986: Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher, Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams and Repetition, and Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. The dissertation argues that these texts deploy representations of female masochism in order to frame the relationship between culture and subject-building, against the background of the region’s borderland status within the cognitive map created by the Cold War. Despite the fact that …

Adjusting To Change: Learning American Sign Language Online During A Global Pandemic, Kara Gournaris

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Second language acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) requires opportunities for engagement with native language models (Krashen, 1988). The shift to online instruction due to the impact of COVID-19 presented unique challenges for ASL programs across the United States. With little time to redesign courses, instructors and students had to navigate the experience of online learning together. The students who participated in this 2020 study at Western Oregon University (WOU) shared their raw experiences related to this transition, and unfortunately, one year later, many of the same barriers reported by students persist. The purpose of this article is to share …

How To Survive The Apocalypse: Using Film, Television, And Video Games As Gateways To Self-Analysis, Braeden Raymer

Theses - ALL

This thesis serves as an investigation on the use of film, television, and video games as access points for personal analysis in imagined scenarios. When creating a fictional world, characters' motivations and behaviors are often based on real-life experiences. In the apocalypse genre, understanding how a character might behave in such an extreme circumstance can be difficult to predict, considering few have lived through comparable conditions. To supplement personal experiences and observations, a creator might use other stories as gateways to self-examination. The investigation begins in film, exploring how stories provide a viewer with new experiences that they can then …