Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Discarded People, Amber Harris

All ETDs from UAB

ABSTRACT This is the first chapter of the novel, Discarded People, a character-driven story about a group of young Black friends navigating love, identity, and community. As they form deep connections with one another, they face personal struggles that challenge their sense of belonging and self-discovery. The narrative explores themes of family, friendship, and the search for purpose, while highlighting the complexities of building a chosen family amidst personal and societal pressures. In chapter one, the main characters are introduced; Winnie, Franklin, Jelani, Adanna, Eban and Chance. As the characters prepare for their final year in high school while navigating …

Origins Of An Evil God: Conceptualization Of The Demiurge Figure In Plato And Beyond, Brendyn David Matthews

All ETDs from UAB

This thesis explores the creation of the Demiurge from Plato to the Gnostics. I investigate this early Christian group taking the idea of the Demiurge from Plato and twisting this figure into an evil, malevolent creator. This process involves the Gnostics taking several nodes of development: Plato’s initial conception and Hellenized Egyptians syncretizing Seth with YHWH and mixing them into their worldview to craft their Demiurge. I then answer why these Gnostics made such an entity, understanding that it was them not only trying to supersede Judaism, but the Proto Orthodoxy of Christianity at this time.

Saints And Syncretism In Global Christian Art, Alexandra Lewis, Andie Near, Charles Mason, Gracie Allen, Signe Bieganski, Shannon Smith, Emma Waldvogel, Lauren Carpenter, Ashley Keltsch, Sophia Funston, Mariam Tiews, Emma Brenny, Anne Heath

Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs

Kruizenga Art Museum, Hope College Catalog for the exhibition: Saints and Syncretism in Global Christian Art. Exhibition dates: January 14 – May 17, 2025. Alexandra Lewis, photographer, designer. Andie Near, photographer.

Kruizenga Art Museum Online Collection - Exhibition Gallery

Annual Report 2024-2025: Library Department, Darrell W. Krueger Library-Winona State University

Library Annual Reports

This is the 2024-2025 annual report for the Darrell W. Krueger Library at Winona State University Darrell W. Krueger Library. The Annual Report documents the work, services, and resources available and provided to Winona State University and the Winona community for the fiscal year of 2024-2025.

Learning And Belonging In A Museum-School Environmental Stewardship Partnership, Joanna K. Garner, Mel Kuhn, Andrea M. Rocchio, Grace Friedenreich

Center for Educational Partnerships Publications

Students in urban, low-income communities can lack access to environmental science outreach in natural settings. As a result, they may face barriers to applying course content to real-world contexts and developing an agentic, hopeful stance towards environmental stewardship. In this paper, we describe a partnership between a maritime museum and park, an urban school district, and ecology experts. The project aimed to increase students’ knowledge of aquatic ecosystems, develop awareness of stewardship-related actions and career pathways, and support a sense of belonging to the museum. Activities included classroom visits by experts, field trips to plant classroom-grown grasses in the museum’s …

Embodying Jesus' Mission: Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care, Melanie Cole

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation was to ascertain the need for trauma-informed training in pastoral preparation programs. To achieve this goal, the researcher examined the main components of Jesus’ mission manifesto as detailed by Luke in his gospel narrative. The researcher evaluated the main components of Jesus’ programmatic speech in Nazareth including, but not limited to, the key Isaianic reference Jesus reflects on and the people his mission was geared towards. Subsequently, the researcher conducted a contemporary literature review on trauma. The researcher defined trauma, assessed the impact of trauma and investigated the healing process for victims of trauma. The …

Weaving Threads Of Identity: A Qualitative Study On Reconnecting Indigenous Folx, Rachael L. Fuller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research is a qualitative phenomenological inquiry into reconnecting Indigenous participants’ experiences in how they navigate and integrate their cultural heritage, identity, and intergenerational experiences to shape their present and future lives. Previous literature examines characterizing Indigeneity, navigating multiple spaces, and culture as wellness. Rooted in Tribal Critical Race Theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants who self-identified as Indigenous. A thematic analysis highlighted six themes of reconnection: a) oppression, b) ancestors, c) belonging, d) barriers to reconnection, e) learning, and f) connection with community. This research makes a contribution to the growing Indigenous identity literature by providing an …

Cultivating Empathy: A Content Analysis Of Empathic Themes In Best-Selling Children's Books, Elnaz J. Afousi

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examines the presence and nature of empathic content in best-selling children’s picture books, with a focus on developmental relevance for preschool-aged readers. Using a modified version of the iEPIC empathy coding system, 10 titles from the New York Times best-seller list were analyzed to assess the frequency and complexity of three empathy-related constructs: Emotion or State Description (ESD), Exploring Emotion or State (EES), and Empathic Understanding or Concern (EUC). Results indicate that while all books contained some empathy-related content, ESD3 (self-reflective emotional descriptions) and EUC2/EUC4 (understanding and helping others) were most prevalent, suggesting an emphasis on both intrapersonal …

Front Matter

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

The Body Is On, Kitty F. Davies

Theses and Dissertations

THE BODY IS ON is a visual art exhibition that considers queer embodiment, pervert as political identity, the arriving climate catastrophe, and difficulty in artmaking. I make use of various concepts from Deleuze and Guattari to interconnect my own with the primary goal to ask: what does futurity look like or mean in these climates (in both a literal, warming sense and an increasingly fascistic, political one), and how do we actualize that future?

Intersectionality And The Canon Of Romanticism, Serenah Minasian

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the origins of the canon and the place it has in British Romanticism studies both past and present. This research begins unpacking what has already been done in this sector of study and takes it steps further by the use of Crenshaw’s “intersectionality” theory. The “Introduction” unpacks past scholarly work and its role in the present studies and how we must move beyond the past. “Chapter I” serves as a historical breakdown of the canon’s role and impact in both literary studies and Romanticism studies in specific. “Chapter II” provides an in depth analysis of two major …

A Case Study Using The Transparency Framework And Artificial Intelligence To Promote Effective Writing And Student Success In A Writing-Intensive Course, Elizabeth A. Brown, Maria Kronenburg, Ashlee Steeley, Diana Tagbor

Health Behavior, Policy & Management Faculty Publications

Program evaluation data suggest that undergraduate students struggle with writing in a clear and concise manner and appropriately citing. Faculty implemented the plan-do study-act cycle to pilot the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) project framework and to explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and discuss approaches to using AI, along with the TILT framework, in a writing-intensive course to identify the pros and cons of using ChatGPT in an online classroom. The TILT framework reinforces adult learning by helping students clearly understand the assignment's purpose and establish a clear relationship between assignment and students' professional lives. Faculty encouraged …

Art Worker: Atlanta’S Contemporary Art History And The Workers Who Shaped It, Abigail D. Miller

Master's Projects

There is a contradiction at the heart of the relationship between artists and the public in the United States. Art is considered culturally important and beneficial to the public, yet hardly any public funding is paid directly to artists for their labor. Moreover, because the nature of art production in contemporary society does not align easily with capitalism’s need for constant growth and profit, artists are often on the economic fringes in a constant state of precarity. These conceptual arguments are explored in this project, and the related research aims to position artists as members of the working class who …

Observations In Writing, Education, And The Internet In The Ai Era, Jacob Westberry

Master's Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a point in society where it is difficult to ignore or find integrated into everyday life. To keep up with AI’s rapid growth, modern workplaces and educational institutions are scrambling to identify the best practices that align with ethical guidelines, causing unexpected uncertainties. Still, the path to achieving such standards has been nonlinear, leading many to reconsider how AI can best fit their environments, if at all, especially in pedagogy. This portfolio is a compilation of projects, published articles, applied use cases, and supported research created within the MAPW program at Kennesaw State University to …

Girl, You Crazy, Stefani T. Flanagan

Master's Projects

The main premise behind Girl, You Crazy is to inform others of what life is like as someone who experiences psychosis (specifically schizoaffective disorder), as well as show the warning signs that I believe people should be aware of. This text is a nonlinear narrative of my personal experience that explores themes of substance abuse, hallucinations, religion, interpersonal conflict, and family dynamics starting from 2019 through 2025, through the onset of symptoms to diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. This work also entails some of my experiences as a gay Black woman who was raised in a religious family, bullied throughout my …

Research Reimagined: The Dissertation-To-Book Journey And Building A Scholar-To-Author Presence, Seema Kumar

Master's Projects

This capstone project, completed for a second master's degree after a Ph.D., discusses aspects of transforming the doctoral dissertation on digital versus manual mediums in fashion design into a research monograph book proposal for academic publication. It reflects on a publisher's requirements and the process, including de-thesizing the dissertation, planning the book's structure, rewriting sample chapters to improve flow and readability, and creating a table of contents that demonstrates the work's development into a publishable book rather than a dissertation. Another part of the project includes developing an author platform through blog posts and platforms such as Substack, preparing the …

Rescued From Oblivion: Antoni Benaiges And Transgressive Pedagogy In El Maestro Que Prometió El Mar (Font, 2023), Parker Lawson

Funded Scholarship

Patricia Font’s historical drama, El maestro que prometió el mar (2023), focuses on the pedagogy of Antoni Benaiges (1903–1936), a Republican educator who served for two years at a school in rural Burgos prior to being assassinated just days after the Nationalist uprising in July 1936. Focused also on the efforts to recuperate the legacy of Benaiges, whose body was deposited in a mass grave and has never been identified, the film employs a dual timeline narrative, telling interconnected stories in the past and the present to shed light on pre-Civil War education and contemporary discourses and practices of historical …

Spatial Audio Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

Listen to Hi Song audio recording.

Public Projection | Window, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Love Me Or Else: Keats’S Impossible Desires In “I Cry Your Mercy”, Brian Rejack

Faculty Publications – English

No abstract provided.

Revelations: Spirituality As Privileged Perspectivism In Magical Realist Distortions, Isabella Scala-Kazanecki

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the role of spiritual beliefs in the literary mode now known as magical realism in Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (1949), Indian-Born British and American Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), and a lesser-known novel, Household Saints (1981) by Francine Prose, an American writer. The Kingdom of This World, itself the originator of the mode of magical realism, has allowed me to conclude with Carpentier that magical realism arises from “privileged revelations,” as he notes in the preface to his seminal book. But these revelations in magical realism are not necessarily always of the …

Defining ‘Un-Americanism’ In Culture And Art: The Dies Committee’S Investigation Of The Federal Theatre Project, Matthew G. Summers

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC) expansive definition of ‘Un-Americanism’ through the body’s 1938 investigation of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). The committee, then known as the Dies Committee after its chairman Martin Dies (D-TX), publicly presented the hearings as an attempt to root out communism in a deeply compromised government program. And indeed the FTP, an ambitious New Deal Program to provide work for unemployed professionals in the theatre, had an undoubtedly leftist bent. However, the hearings were consistently focused on the project's progressive stances on issues of race and gender, and effectively exposed the underlying …

Living By The Sword: Religiosity And The Terrorist Subculture Of Russian Revolutionaries, 1904-1910, Gregory I. Mcevoy

Dissertations and Theses

The Marxist dictum of “religion is the opiate of the masses” has led to a prevailing assumption in scholarship that the socialist movements of the early twentieth century have been inherently atheistic. Religion is often associated as a remnant of old, antiquated society and incompatible with the claimed modernity of socialist progress. This assumption has led to overlooking the religiosity within certain radical movements and revolutionary culture at large. Scholarship on the political underground in Tsarist Russia has, thus far, perpetuated this impression. While it is the true that the Bolsheviks and Leninist Social Democrats rejected religion as obscurantist and …

Asian-American Literature And The Family Saga: Cyclical Histories Of Racial Melancholia And Racial Dissociation, Molly Schwarz

Dissertations and Theses

This paper analyzes the novels The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig and argues how the family saga within Asian American literature draws out elements of the diaspora to best share histories across different ethnic and racial groups. There is a brief overview of the development of Asian-American literature and an explanation of how hyphenated identity is intrinsic to diasporic literatures, and then further discussion of how each of these novels contributes to the legacies of Asian-American writing and storytelling. Then, each novel is analyzed for how the various family saga …

Shared Architecture Of The Sacred:Designing Sacred Spaces In Virtual Reality, Ian Gonsher, Sameerah Munshi

Scholarly Research

This project investigates how sacred spaces might be conceived and experienced within virtual reality (VR). Through interfaith dialogue, design research, and iterative prototyping, we explored affordances in virtual environments for prayer, contemplation, study, and communal gathering. Drawing on insights from Jewish and Islamic traditions in particular, we developed design principles that informed the creation of a pilot prototype for sacred space in VR. This paper presents the conceptual framework, design process, and architectural strategies embodied and expressed in that pilot prototype, with particular attention to the formal and symbolic elements of light, orientation, sound, and written text. Additionally, the project …

Frances E. W. Harper, “We Are All Bound Up Together” (10 May 1866), Garth Pauley

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Frances Harper’s address at the 1866 National Woman’s Rights Convention was a visionary speech on civil rights, citizenship, and civic identity. In it, Harper skillfully negotiated the context of nineteenth-century reform politics while remaining true to her vision. The message of her speech was grounded in both her experience as a Black woman and her theological convictions. A close reading of the speech shows that key elements—including its signature line—have been misunderstood and unappreciated.

Mark & Gesture, William E. Pugh

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper explores the development of my painting and printmaking practice through the lens of process, artistic influence, and creative community. At the heart of my work is a dedication to mark-making in printmaking and painting as gesture and authorship and as a visual language shaped by process, scale, layering, and texture. My work is influenced by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Wayne Thiebaud, and Peter Max, as well as by my personal history with music. The paper reflects on how process, interdisciplinary influence, and artistic dialogue shape a practice rooted in both personal exploration and discovery.

A Climate Justice Analysis Of Western Australian Government Funding For Collie’S Transition From Coal, 2019-2024, Emma O’Donovan, Naomi Joy Godden

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The WA Government will close its State owned coal-fired power stations in Collie by 2030, and has committed AU$692 million for Collie’s energy transition. At the request of Wilman and Kaneang Elders and community members, Edith Cowan University’s Centre for People, Place and Planet conducted desktop research about how Collie’s transition funding was allocated between January 2019 and July 2024. This report is a climate justice analysis of publicly-available funding announcements for Collie’s transition during this period to assess whether the distribution of transition resources is equitable and just.

Drawing Sound In Space: Digital Spatial Notation As Constitutive Audiovisuality, Cat Hope

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper examines how the design and realisation of a concert presentation entitled Drawing Sound in Space led to the concept of digital spatial notation. Seven Australian composers were commissioned to create digital scores for an electroacoustic chamber music ensemble, and scores were shared with the audience. The author argues that contemporary digital notation practices enhance live performances of new music by expanding concepts of the audiovisual to include alternative notational approaches engaging with space, creating a ‘spatial notation’. Further, Drawing Sound in Space aimed to transform musicianship and audience experience by offering a more immersive encounter with music notation …

Exploring The Sociocultural Significance Of Funerals In Zongo Communities In Less-Developed Countries: A Case Of Effiakuma Zongo In The Western Region Of Ghana, Fusheini Halawayhi, Victor Fannam Nunfam

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Social and cultural capital have been recognized as critical assets for improving nations under the Sustainable Development Goals. The sociocultural significance of funerals in Zongo communities in Ghana, however, has not received much research attention. The Kastenbaum’s concept of funerals and Szmigin and Louise’s relational framework on funeral experiences were used to explore the social-cultural significance of funeral in the Effiakuma Zongo community as is the case in Ghana. Based on interpretive phenomenology and descriptive case study, we purposively sampled and conducted focus group interviews with 15 participants including bereaved family members, gravediggers and Imams. Data was processed and analyzed …