Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Spiritual Disciplines And Mental Resiliency: The Effectiveness Of Spiritual Coping Mechanisms To Decrease Anxiety And Depression Symptoms, Alysa Lynn Vanderweerd

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The outcome of anxiety and depression’s symptomology is an ever-rising global economy cost of 1 trillion U.S. dollars, due to medical costs and loss of productivity, leading researchers and clinicians to search for effective cost saving solutions (Chodavadia et al., 2023). Religion/Spirituality (RS) based cognitive therapy treatments are recognized in alleviating maladaptive behaviors and cognitive distortions, offering comfort to the afflicted, hope and belief that God is available for the seeker (Ramos et al., 2018). Therefore, the researcher conducted an internet-based, self-paced intervention of a mixed methods study of a 40-Day Biblical Worldview Educational Treatment Program of a convenience sample …

Preparing Three Southern Baptist Churches In Mason, Tennessee, As Lighthouses Of Hope In Crisis And Disaster: The Intersection Of The Firehouse And The Church House During A Global Pandemic, Brian J. Styer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) ministry program faces challenges due to limited awareness among Southern Baptist pastors, leading to inadequate promotion and participation. The proposed solution involves providing targeted education, improved advertising, and encouraging local leaders to promote engagement. The project aims to prepare three churches in Mason and Stanton, TN, to serve as Disaster Relief teams through specialized training and courses like ‘Introduction to Disaster Relief.’ The goal is to increase awareness of SBDR, recruit and train new members, and inspire individuals to become endorsed SBDR and Public Safety Chaplains. The project incorporates a theological foundation to integrate …

Mentoring As A Catalyst For Change: Creating A Mentor Training Curriculum Using The Servant Leadership Model, Alana S. Freeman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation-in-praxis was a response to the problem of a lack of youth involvement at Warren Chapel United American Free Will Baptist (UAFWB) church in Winterville, NC. The Collaborating Coach, Pastor Betty Haddock, and the Collaborating Team were concerned about the church's future amid its aging congregation. The importance of investing in the spiritual formation of the younger generation in preparation for them being mature successors of current leaders is a principle reflected throughout Scripture. The Bible encourages the older generation to teach the younger generation about Godly principles so they will retain what they have learned when they are …

The Lack Of And Discouragement Of Certified And Intended Music Educators Due To The State Of Louisiana Teacher Certification Requirements, Kendall James Damond

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Current trends in today’s secondary education level lean towards a shortage of certified teachers and educators in all subject areas. As public and private school administrations devise new incentives and plan to recruit individuals to the field of education, preservice educator requirements and university curriculum demands continue to discourage and prevent aspiring educators from not only becoming fully certified but also continuing the journey of the teacher preparation and certification process. This qualitative research study will focus on Louisiana’s music teacher certification preparation practices within its universities and the effects of failure to successfully pass the Praxis II: Music Content …

Biblical Literacy: A Theological Exploration Of What God Says About Women Called To Pastor, Shannel K. Williams

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This Doctoral Research Project aims to answer the question, Is there biblical awareness among the congregation about God’s acceptance and call of female pastors? The problem presented identifies a gap in biblical knowledge about women in church leadership due to the lingering effects of patriarchal influence. There may be resistance to church growth due to the uncertainty of the Scriptures, which sanction women to the call of God. This research project proposed to improve the Bible literacy of ten Christian men and women to cultivate spiritual growth and strengthen their theology. Historically, the conservative church taught that the Bible forbids …

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Oh My Heart Has Been Pained Within Me: Benjamin Lay And The Quaker Acceptance Of Antislavery Ideology, Zachariah Young

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

in 1758, a sickly hunchback lay ill in his cave-like dwelling. He had devoted his life to the cause of eradicating slavery. He was alone, a widower and an outcast among those called Friends. Now, in the winter of his life, 77-yearold Benjamin Lay heard the news that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had embraced antislavery thought to the extent that those who "could not be persuaded to desist from the practice of holding slaves, or were concerned in the importation of them" could face disciplinary action, just as he had for decrying the evils of racial slavery decades before. At …

Judas Was A Chaplain To Congress: Jacob Duche And The Revolutionary Limits Of Civic Faith, Spencer Wells

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The Morning of September 6,1774, found a weary John Adams attending to political duties. Arriving in Philadelphia to take part in the First Continental Congress, Adams found himself greeted with rumors concerning the British "bombardment" of Boston at every turn. While aware that the colonial press remained unreliable during even the best of times, Adams remained concerned. Prospects of familial "distress and terror" haunted his mind, and fellow delegates did little to help. As Congress opened, Patrick Henry warned colonists of approaching danger. "Government [was] dissolved," he began, for aggressive British troops had succeeded in throwing once-loyal colonies into a …

Liberalizing Salvation In Medieval Vision Literature, Drew Sorber

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

in 1960, the Chicago Congress of World Mission declared, "in the years since World War II more than one billion souls have passed into eternity and more than half of those went to the torment of Hell fire without even hearing of Jesus Christ, who He was or why He died on the Cross of Calvary." The issue of a restricted salvation-one granted only to those who fulfil a specific set of requirements-has remained central to Christian eschatology since the pre-Nicene period and before. While this issue is addressed throughout Christian history, a dramatic reaction to it came in the …

Interracial Marriage In Utah During The 1960s And 1970s: With Individual Perspectives, Mark Lowe

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Racial conflict is no stranger to America's past. With the demise of slavery, many whites harbored fears of a new racial order. Through their efforts, they established an inequitable society once more, the intent of which was to promote white superiority and degrade the black community. Segregation and racial discrimination characterized the next cenrury of America's story. Blacks faced prejudice in many contexts, including education, employment, housing, and even social relationships, such as dating and marriage. Anti-miscegenation laws were a significant component of this discriminatory society. In her book What Comes Naturally, Peggy Pasco states that "opposition to interracial marriage …

Never Forget Czechoslovakia: The Prague Spring And The Crushed Opportunity For A New Czechoslovak Identity, Brittany Hardy

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

With Soviet guns locked on the government buildings in Prague, Czechoslovakia was transformed from a nation of autonomous communism to one under full control of the Soviet Union. On 22 August 1968, amidst the chaos of the Warsaw Pact invasion, an unnamed university student left behind a plea via audio recording, asking the world for help saying, "The only way that you can help us is this: not to forget Czechoslovakia. Don't forget Czechoslovakia." His plea calls into question what defined the national identity of Czechoslovakia and what built the foundation for establishing such an identity. Historians such as Carol …

"Slaves, Monsters, Or Souls": Theology And Feminism In The Spanish Enlightenment, Rachael Givens

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Ines Joyes y Blake penned this plea in 1798 in a losing battle of Enlightened theology against Enlightenment hypocrisy: "Let the men say what they will, souls are equal!" This author of one of the most notable and radical essays on feminism of the Spanish eighteenth century, entitled simply Apologia, or "Defense," had joined the growing chorus of voices that were appealing to Enlightenment thinkers to apply to the historically neglected half of the population those principles of natural rights and human equality that had reshaped the era's theology and politics. It was only natural that some would seek to …

"A Few Spare Ribs": Female Immigration To Gold Rush California, Rachel Belk Moyar

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In September on 1848, subscribers of the New York Herald read a fanciful description of a place that had "rivers whose banks and bottoms [were] filled with pure gold," and made the legendary El Dorado seem nothing "but a Sand bank." The work sounded easy, and the potential returns appeared limitless. A bucket of dirt "with a half hour's washing in running water" would produce "a spoonful of black sand, containing from seven to ten dollars' worth of gold." This golden country was California. Beginning in 1848, similar accounts of the gold discoveries in California began to appear in numerous …

"Come And Die": Total Sacrifice In The Theology And Resistance Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Greer Bates

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The sun had only just begun to rise when he was taken from his cell, naked and shivering, into the biting cold of an early April morning. Perhaps he watched as the hangman adjusted the noose that swung lifelessly from the scaffolds. Perhaps he spoke to the guards as they led him to the platform on which he would die. Likely, he thought of his young fiancee, his mother, his father. And, almost certainly, he prayed. We have no record of these final moments in the life of the young Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed on the 9th …

The Hut Tax War Of 1898: Political Spin And Chamberlain's Colonial Office, Chase Arnold

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1895, the British Empire underwent a dramatic change. This change was not precipitated by war, expansion, or discovery. Instead, the empire was changed by a renewed longing for the glory of the old empire. Where the empire had been shrinking, it would now be expanded. Where claims had been ceded, they would now be defended. All of this was undergone with the greatest hopes but resulted in the gravest consequences. Yet there was a brief moment in 1898 when this new imperialist vigor was almost cut short and this terrible history nearly averted.

Preface, Lee J. F. Deppermann

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

It was Karl Marx who observed that individuals do indeed make history, but seldom in the circumstances of their own choosing. Indeed, the primary challenge for every aspiring historian is to understand both impersonal forces that frame historical events and the individual actions that define them. Inherent in this quest for understanding is the duty of historians to detach themselves from contemporary influences and understand the past as the past would have understood itself. The historian Richard J. Evans expressed this mandate well: "One of the greatest problems in writing history is to imagine oneself back in the world of …

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

The Mariner (And His Wife): Queering Aldarion's (A)Sexuality, Rory M. Queripel

Journal of Tolkien Research

“Aldarion and Erendis” (Unfinished Tales) is a rare example in Tolkien’s work of a marriage gone severely awry. Many readings of the tale apportion blame to Aldarion, who is seen as “unwilling” to make the marriage work (Fitzsimmons, 2015), cruel and unfeeling towards Erendis, who herself is characterised as resentful and unaccepting (Rosenthal, 2004). However, these readings rely on an assumption of a cisheteronormative and, more importantly, allosexual relationship between the couple.

This paper proposes an alternate view of Aldarion and his role in the story, suggesting the possibility that he is asexual and/or aromantic (i.e., he does …

Personas, Issue 2, 2024, Jonathan Maiullo

Personas: Multilingual Creative Writing Journal

No abstract provided.

Determining Autistic Aesthetics: How To Find Autistic Artists In Canada, Gerald S. Beaulieu

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

As notions of Autism slowly move from a pathological to a cultural framework it is a fair question to ask if this includes a distinctive Autistic aesthetic. This is a comparative question, evaluating a distinctive aesthetic against established norms and to do this effectively you need samples. The more samples you have the better the comparison. It certainly makes sense that individuals with divergent neurologies and sensory experiences would perceive the world and reflect it differently through their content creation across artistic disciplines. The challenge however is finding this content as works by autistic creators are exceedingly rare and hard …

Guardian, Gerald S. Beaulieu

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Gerald Beaulieu

Artist Statement

Guardian,1995. Life-sized winged figure constructed from spruce then burned black.

This work was done twenty five years ago long before I knew I was Autistic. I was an artist looking for answers. Every time I tried to fly, metaphorically, I would crash and burn. The gifted child never reaching their potential. All I could do was to get up from the ashes and try to defy gravity once again.

Collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton , New Brunswick, Canada.

Photo credit; Gerald Beaulieu

“I Don’T Want To Be Human”: The Neurodivergent Reader Response To Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries Series, Rachel S. Anderson

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article explores how readers have responded to the Martha Wells series The Murderbot Diaries by identifying the titular character as neurodivergent and the recent ways in which the author has responded to questions about the character—and herself—as potentially autistic. While initially resisting this reader-supplied diagnosis, Wells has more recently acknowledged a neurodivergent identity. By examining Murderbot’s sense of self and relationship with the humans around it, this article will explore our current society’s relationship with human/machine intelligences and how we define such concepts as “neurotypical” and “human.” Specifically, this article will examine how the concept of a “governor module” …

Experimental Performative And Analog Photography, Emily H. Coghlan

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This experimental photography project, ‘Irregular Balance’, attempts to interrupt various socially constructed binaries, including both physical and neurological ones.

Materials such as pins, potatoes, thread, and tape were tested, and various modelled structures were then documented with analogue photography. Forms taken by arboreal constructions and deconstructions in local parks have also been investigated.

Twine encompassed around a sewing machine was reworked during an MA performative piece at London College of Communication in 2019. In this reflective review, the artist explores her relation to visualised concepts of perfection and imperfection, bearing in mind her spinal fusion surgery and her more recent …

Visions Of A Captured Mind: Using Expressive Film Techniques To Convey The Experience Of Liberty Deprivation As A Neurodiverse Individual, Sam H. Grant, Ken Fero

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

In this article, I make the case for the use of expressive film techniques to convey the emotional, or affective, experience of neurodiverse people who have been subjected to liberty restricting practices and policy. I do this by discussing my own experience with film practice as a man living with autism, presenting a broader philosophical case for how artistic modes of communication can close affective and social divisions between neurodiverse and neurotypical people, explaining why it is the cinematic techniques I advocate for are uniquely suited to neurodiverse people, and then I showcase some of my own work as a …

An Autistic Aesthetic Of Connectivity, Inga Hamilton

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

No abstract provided.

Stimming As A Form Of Autistic Aesthetic Experience, Neuroqueering Landscape, Sam Metz

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Sam Metz is an artist based in Hull who creates work that engages with the concept of ‘neuroqueering’. They create sculptural installations that incorporate both film and animation while exploring body-based responses to ecology. As a neurodivergent artist and curator with sensory processing differences, Sam creates work in non-verbal ways that begin and end in movement and embodied interactions without recourse to traditionally privileged verbal and written forms of communication. Recently they created a series of work called ‘Porosity’ which looked at embodied sensory relationships to the Humber Estuary, with a focus on stimming and ecological perception.

Sam, through their …

Strange Stranger: A Visceral Skin Glaze Exploration Into The Neurodivergent Sensory Experience, Sam J. Lucas

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Sam Lucas

Sam creates ambiguous figurative objects predominantly in clay. Her creative practice draws on her experience of being a neurodivergent woman today, by exploring aspects of her own unique neurotype.

The visceral glaze exploration pieces were the precursor to the final forms for her body of work called ‘Strange stranger’ where she is exploring the weight and awkwardness of being in the body, the pain this alienation can cause, and ironically the beauty and humour that results from this diversity.

The surfaces of the pieces were attempting to describe the interoceptive, exteroceptive and alexithymic confusion that can occur at …

Space For The Savant: An Update On Henry Higgins’S Autism, Abby Zwart

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Henry Higgins, one of the leads of Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, has been retrospectively diagnosed as an autistic character by lay readers and two scholars (Rodelle Weintraub, 2006; Sonya Loftis Freeman, 2014). Weintraub’s work is accurate but outdated, and Loftis presents several valid concerns about labelling Higgins an autistic savant, but Henry Higgins should be embraced as a neurodivergent character because today, a decade after the last publication addressing his neurostatus, society has a much more nuanced understanding of autism that can easily make space for his inclusion in the retrospective canon of neurodivergent characters.

No Longer On Fire, Vikki M. Parker

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Capturing the poetic, lyrical essence of the ethereal universe, the pencil portal births whispers of the self in these Sourcedoodle collections, beginning as intuitive drawings and revealing their deeper essence through digital wizardry, healing art comes through for remembering the soul's purpose. A journey to gently collect the fragmented parts of a broken self. Like little souls dancing, each image has a story, a capturing of energy, an anchoring of light intensity, a glorious weaving of fluidity and a playful curiosity. A permission to be whole & a celebration of source discovering embodiment underpins this spiritual quest for discovering existence …

My Mind Is A Forest: An Autistic Wandering Through The Language Of Silence And The Poems Of Mary Oliver, Torri Blue

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

The autistic experience has been widely medicalized, pathologized, mischaracterized, and misunderstood. Through this series of essays, I attempt to paint an alternative picture of (an) autistic life—one not defined by deficits, but (at the risk of sounding cliché) differences—by re-storying autism through an Autistic Poetic.

Autistic Poetics, or the poetry of autistic existence, offers to our imagination a new way of relating to the world—alternative pictures of what it means to be human and all the possibilities therein. Autists, as human beings who often express being more at home with the earth-others and more-than-human world, can offer our writings as …