Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mood: A Zine Exploring The Value Of Youth-Oriented Media, Patricia K. Paul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Media is a constant, persistent force in human lives that informs and influences through published, broadcasted, and digitally mediated formats. Mass media industries produce and distribute content consumed by diverse audiences, though the facilitators represent only a fraction of the demographics they serve.

Youth denote one of the most frequently misrepresented groups, with very few practical opportunities for young people to make decisions about the texts available to them. A jarring absence of youth participation in media creation at all levels suggests cultural contributions through art exclude young people's authentic perspectives and desires. Moreover, media portrayals of youth cannot adequately …

Haunted Homelands: Mary Hunter Austin's Search For Belonging In California's Central Valley, Aimee M. Maddalena

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From childhood, Mary Hunter Austin resisted the social conformity expected of a young girl in 1850’s Carlinville, Illinois. Instead, causing her mother to “shed tears of vexation,” she was outspoken, opinionated, and read the “wrong” books, which, according to her mother, “was what made you queer so that people didn’t like you.” Young Mary had a rich inner life and was drawn in a spiritual, mystical way to the minutiae of the natural world. Also, she questioned the strict social structure that caused her mother to be outcast as a widow, while, at the same time, young women were beginning …

A Critical Study Of Contemporary Palestinian Musical Culture, Karl H. Hausmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is concerned with the field of musical culture and practice in Palestine, and the connotations of musical expression, whether as music or songs. It addresses the period extending from the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, through the first intifada of 1987 and then the era of the Oslo Accords until today.

This study deals with the artistic meanings and expressions associated with the music and singing that was produced in that period, assuming that it was created within the socio-political context in which it existed, specifically that music that was associated with the …

Jus Soli And Jus Sanguinis: Politics, Race, Culture, And Citizenship In The Dominican Republic And Haiti, Guido A. Proano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The promulgation of laws such as the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court’s Judgment TC-168-13 serves as a basis upon which to argue the major impediments presented by the Dominican government to deny Haitians and Dominicans of Haitians descent citizenship. The right to citizenship is based on legal principles of jus soli and jus sanguinis and is recognized in a series of international legal documents. Following a Marxist framework, this research demonstrates the uncounted possible relationships between modern social forces and politics that have been working closely following European productions of knowledge for decades against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent in …

International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …

Emancipatory And Retributive Labor: Conflicting Representations Of Enslaved Labor In Us And Caribbean Literature, 1830–1855, Michael Druffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emancipatory and Retributive Labor follows the development of a concept that I call emancipatory labor as it appeared in the US and Caribbean during the period 1830 to 1855. Emancipatory labor is a subversive tactic in which enslaved people in the United States and Caribbean redefined a portion of their labor in capitalist terms. Re-theorizing a portion of enslaved labor stakes a claim to agency and humanity according to Western, humanistic logic. Examples of the types of labor being redefined include selling commodities, hiring time, and working “extras” for wages. I use enslaved person Lunsford Lane’s 1842 narrative as a …

The Personal And The Planetal: Essaying The Ecological, Eric Dean Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Personal and the Planetal: Essaying the Ecological” investigates contemporary American personal essays in an environmental mode in order to illuminate the boundaries between “self” and “planet.” It does so with an eye toward ecological devastation—namely, the violent effects of global warming—because I sense that thinking about the essay can help us better understand the ethical problems of climate change. Part of our climate crisis is a failure to recognize the boundaries of the personal and what I call the “planetal” (in an attempt to defamiliarize it from the more common “planetary”). Using a method that I call “the ecological …

Fantasmas Compartidos: Posmemoria, Herencia Y Reescritura De La Guerra Civil Española En México Y España, Mayte Lopez Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes contemporary novels and films about the traumatic legacies of the Spanish Civil War through the lens of postmemory, memory studies, and transatlantic studies. I examine how Mexican and Spanish writers and filmmakers from the postwar generations approach the memories of their ancestors—and their own—to reframe history through fiction, memory work, and personal agency. Studies about historical memory are typically constrained to national contexts, but I highlight how trauma transcends the nation not only in space but also in time. Moreover, I focus on how inherited memories acquire new meanings in contemporary representations and how those resignifications have …

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …

Transnational Ritual Poetics Of Blackness In Performance, Nina A. Mercer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I investigate transnational ritual poetics of Blackness through a historical, cultural, and spatial lens, centering my exploration on the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and waterways. I show how these formal poetics activate Africana cosmologies, cosmogonies, and mythologies dramaturgically by centering contemporary New York City performance works that bring together dance, theatre, and music. I contextualize NYC performance case studies in relation to performance practices in contemporary Salvador da Bahia. I am particularly interested in how the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and water as formal poetics catalyze interventions along contested water-ways and landscapes marked by Black …

Navigating Through World’S Military Spending Data With Scroll-Event Driven Visualization, Hong Beom Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Catching up with the current geopolitical event is more important than ever these days. Anti-western nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea constantly challenge the world order set by the United States and its close allies. As a result, the world has seen a rise in military spending consecutively for the last several years. This data visualization project aims to provide an easy-to-read summary of military spending data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for hotly conflicted regions: East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Scroll-event-driven visualization implemented using Scrollama.js and D3.js combines text, map, and data …

Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The mythical city of Troy functioned as an imagined point of origin for many medieval nations, providing a tangible connection to the legendary past and nation-building tools useful for the ruling class. Troy provided a convenient foundation narrative upon which ideas of collective identity could be built for these nations, and England, where construction of a homogeneous past was difficult due to frequent ruptures in its development of communal identity, was an eager producer and consumer of such a legitimizing device. However, the trauma of war and destruction intrinsic in Troy narratives also generates potent political anxiety about the reanimated …

Changing Homelands: The Election Of Menachem Begin And The Diplomatic Campaign To Bring Ethiopian Jews To Israel, Abraham Silberstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines diplomatic efforts by Israel, the United States, and non-governmental organizations to facilitate the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. While much of the historical literature on this topic has focused on the 1980s and 1990s, when tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel, this thesis largely considers the mid-late 1970s. For the first 25 years of its existence, the State of Israel had not been eager to see Ethiopian Jews enter the country, and the government deemed them non-Jews for the purposes of immigration. This started to change in 1973, when the Sephardi Chief …

A Field Of Relations: A Mixed Analysis Of Toni Morrison’S “Recitatif” With Voyant, A Text Analysis Tool, Asma A. Neblett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Several academic and literary articles focus on the claims about identity in Toni Morrison’s posthumously published short story, “Recitatif.” However, few of them offer analyses that approach the function of the story in ways that align with Morrison’s description of it as an “experiment.” Even fewer through tools of text analysis, which is a method of distant reading. In this paper, I provide a mixed analysis of “Recitatif” through close reading and text analysis via Voyant, a digital tool. I concentrate on the recitative device, how it facilitates the message of the story, and how the results may expand the …

Does Political Advertising Persuade? A Quantitative Assessment Of The Effects Of Campaign Contact In The Context Of Race, Ethnicity, And Immigrant Origin In New York City Council Primary Elections From 2001 Through 2017, Laura M. Tamman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a quantitative analysis of the relationship between New York city council campaigns’ spending and election results between 2001 and 2017, controlling for key factors such as incumbency, I find substantial and statistically significant positive effects for radio advertising on election outcomes. I find small but significant effects for mail, and smaller sized effects for canvassing. My findings underscore the need for further study of the role of ethnic and community media outlets, such as radio, in shaping voter behavior. Moreover, I argue that the fixation of the current persuasion literature on television ads in presidential general elections misses critical …

Understanding The Afghan Diaspora: Exploring The Factors Driving Migration And The Impact Of Migration Policies On Recent Afghan Evacuees Resettling In The United States, Aya H. Mohamed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Afghanistan has been at war with the West since the late 1900’s, remaining in a state of constant turmoil. During the Cold War (1979), Afghanistan had fought a war with the Soviet Union, known as the Soviet- Afghan War. During this time, Afghanistan was invaded by both the Soviet and US, creating a ground for terrorism and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In order to then eradicate the terrorist regime, the Taliban, the United States went to war with Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were suppressed by U.S. forces until August 2021, during which President Biden executed a …

Only For The Pleasure Of Telling: Filling The Void In Pasolini's Trilogia Della Vita, Courtney Munson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since Pasolini deliberately cultivated an unrecognizable and illegible public image that embraced incoherence, much of the scholarship surrounding him is plagued by contradictions and mutual exclusivity. For some, Pasolini was a utopian prophet, for others apocalyptic, but most agree that he, through his transmedial and highly self-inscribed life-work, was responding primarily to the crises of neocapitalist consumerism, especially its degenerative effects on sexual conventions and the body. Through an investigation of Pasolini’s controversial essays on film theory, the details of his biography, and the films of the Trilogia della vita, this thesis argues that it is a mistake to …

Creative Figures: Portraiture And The Making Of The Modern American Artist, 1918-1930, Sasha Nicholas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1918 and 1930, American artists began depicting themselves and their intertwined circles of creative collaborators with unprecedented intensity. Creative Figures: Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist argues that American artists turned to their own images during this formative period of American modernity to vie for cultural authority and to navigate pressing questions of creative, social, and national identity. The dissertation studies a kaleidoscope of portraits that exemplify this phenomenon, focusing on paintings and photographs by Berenice Abbott, James Latimer Allen, Thomas Hart Benton, Florestine Perrault Bertrand Collins, Imogen Cunningham, John Stuart Curry, Aaron Douglas, Yun Gee, …

Phantom Shootings, Allan Ambris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a website designed to critique NYC Open Data reporting with respect to shootings through a series of visualizations and discoveries. The NYPD Shooting Incidents datasets (Historic and Year to Date) introduce themselves to the user by claiming to be a “list of every shooting incident that occurred in NYC.” The supplied documentation reveals that this is not the case.

After understanding the supporting materials, there are still undisclosed truths. My exploration of the data revealed that a single victim may be represented across multiple entries. Additionally, multiple victims may be represented by a single entry. It is …

Digital Against The Digital, Gemma Stevanella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this digital capstone is to provide the viewer with an exploratory experience designed to untangle some the ramifications of owning and using a social media account. Through the help of a journal that assumes the form of a timeline, this digital capstone illustrates how some of the technologies that power fashionable and successful ways of capturing and sharing personal moments online have hidden roots in environmental issues, communities’ exploitation, political and regulatory decisions, data surveillance practices, and psychological and emotional conditions, especially in adolescents.

From Atoll To Mainland: Aging Micronesians In The Context Of Migration, Juliana Flinn

Pacific Studies

A case study of the atoll of Pollap, part of Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia, analyzes changes in the process of aging over the past forty years, in particular as a result of migration of Micronesians to Guam, Hawai‘i, and the mainland United States. Forty years ago, most elderly aged at home surrounded by family to care for them, valued for their knowledge, advice, and even some productive activities. With migration, however, many elderly now live abroad with grown children. Some migrated as young people, found jobs, acquired good English skills, and have made homes in the …

Family Welfare And Pernicious Property: White Womanhood And Catholic Social Thought In The United States, Kate Ward

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

A significant literature presents the Catholic social thought tradition (CST) as a resource for combating racism and white supremacy, and an equally important body of work critiques the documentary tradition for the ways it fails to adequately address these pernicious social sins. This essay will combine elements of both approaches to address a topic relatively modest in scope: showing how attention to the historical and contemporary operation of white womanhood, exposed by sociologist Jessie Daniels in her book Nice White Ladies, informs, critiques, and presents opportunities for Catholic social thought on gender and family, both in the ecclesial documents and …

Drselects: Kees Dorst On The Rich And Diverse Field Of Design Research, Kees Dorst

DRSelects

No abstract provided.

Endogenous Political Legitimacy: The Tudor Roots Of England’S Constitutional Governance, Avner Greif, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs of the 16th century promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby changing the legislative process from the “Crown and Parliament” to the “Crown in Parliament” that still prevails in England.

A Poetically Embodied Out-Of-Body Experience, Natalie Sunseri

Honors Theses

The choreographic project Euphoric Dysphoria emerged as a response to the choreographer’s gender dysphoria and personal observations about the way that feminine-presenting people are perceived and approached in dance spaces, particularly in comparison to masculine-presenting people. The dance originated as a choreographic exploration of extreme femininity and masculinity, and it evolved into a manifestation of performative gender and experiential gender. The choreographer was guided by her poem “Uneven Envy” when developing movement and building relationships among the dancers. She considered the contributions of Judith Butler, a scholar who writes about gender manifesting in the body due to socialization, and Laura …

Fringes, Dantaye Walker

Honors Theses

Fringes is an experimental sound installation containing five stations, each representing unique experiences which shaped each associated personality The installation, though bearing witness to these personalities is seen from my own perspective. This creative journal explains the narrative and story behind each station, provides the artistic context that guided fundamental decisions, and details the final draft of each station and the overall experience of attending the exhibit. Additionally, it was created out of necessity for expression brought on by the traumas I experienced personally. The project also serves as an experiment in low-budget tools and methods for creating conceptual art, …

Cultural Folk, Political Lore: The Politics Of Folklore During The United States Occupation Of Haiti From 1915 To 1934, Cheyla G. Muñoz Ramos

Honors Theses

My project focuses on Haitian folklore in the early twentieth century in connection to the first United States’ occupation of Haiti. The United States’ Marine Corps occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. This nineteenth-year occupation brought violence and racial stereotypes towards the Haitian population, especially the peasantry. United States Americans coming to Haiti intensified these stereotypes. During this period, Haitian upper-and middle-class members heavily politized Haitian folklore and used it to defend Haiti against these stereotypes. Scholars have long discussed the anthropological works of ethno-anthropologist Jean Price-Mars as someone who tried to show the value of Haitian folklore, especially the …

Envisioning A World Without Rape In Late Fifteenth-Century Dream Narratives, Boyda J. Johnstone

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Recent scholarship has been preoccupied with questions of rape and consent in late medieval literature, partly influenced by the Me Too movement while we continue to grapple with Geoffrey Chaucer’s allegation of raptus. In such a climate, medieval texts that likewise challenge the normalization of rape in literature and society require renewed attention and critical interest. The three fifteenth-century poems I examine in this article, The Assembly of Ladies, The Floure and the Leafe, and The Isle of Ladies, push Chaucer’s dream vision tradition in a new direction, presenting us with female-centered models of cooperation, care, and governance. …

Holy Matter Making Holy Meaning: Fashioning Memory, Community And Dissimilar Similitude In Middle Dutch Sister-Books And The Book Of Margery Kempe, Godelinde G. Perk

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Middle Dutch sister-books and The Book of Margery Kempe are fifteenth-century vernacular texts by women chronicling their female subjects’ conversion and arduous attempts at a holy life. They share an (auto)hagiographic enterprise and formal and thematic features, including a display of rags and riches by the vitae’s subjects and a desire for mnemonic engagement on the part of the readers with the text. This article is the first to present the Diepenveen and Deventer sister-books and the Book as conversation partners. I draw on two main conceptual tools: 1) medieval memoria and 2) the notion of “dissimilar similitude” …

Gender And Voice In Medieval French Literature And Song, Joseph P. Derosier

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.