Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Introduction To Christian Ethics, Michael Knight, Lizette Knight

Academic Books

No abstract provided.

Alejo Carpentier’S Ballet Librettos: Eclectic Avant-Gardism And Vicarious Spectatorship, Lester Tomé

Dance: Faculty Books

Book Abstract:

This book is for scholars and students of Latin American and Caribbean literature, and for a general audience familiar with the major novels of Alejo Carpentier. It contributes new perspectives on the marvelous real, magic realism, the Baroque, the international avant-garde, the Afro-Cuban movement, and Latin American music and dance

From Frontier To Folk: Changes In Canadian Identity Through Constructions Of Land In Canadian Crusoes And Anne Of Green Gables, Aibhlin Janicki-Zeballos

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Embarrassment As A Signal: Feminist Affects And The Commodification Of Love, Bianca L. Schmitt

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

A Transnational Feast Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe: Globalization, Identity, And Collective Memory In Dodge City, Kansas, David A. Solis-Enriquez

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This work examines the transnational connections of Dodge City’s Mexican immigrants and their celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe and how their cross-border activity were parts of larger systems like globalization, identity, and collective memory. With migration into Southwestern Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle increasing intensely in the 1980s, because of the economic opportunities that the livestock and meat manufacturing industries offered, Dodge City’s Mexican population reached unprecedented heights. These migration waves mark the starting point of this thesis.

The incoming Mexican population flooded the city’s Catholic facilities, which prompted the community and the local diocese …

Beyond Judicial Intent: The Agency Of The Defense Counsel In Ozawa’S And Thind’S Supreme Court Cases, Bret K. Luchs

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis seeks to examine how specific legal strategies by the defense counsel in Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), compelled the Supreme Court of the United States into a reactive and contradictory position. A re-examination of Ozawa and Thind delves deeper into the legal briefs and arguments made by Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, alongside their legal teams. These briefs, opinions of the court, past lower court cases, and personal statements by Ozawa and Thind demonstrate how they did not surrender to the confines of …

Signs & Symptoms, Bridget Mara-Williams

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

My body of work centers on verbal and nonverbal communication, and how meaning can be conveyed, distorted, or withheld. Since living in Kansas, I’ve struggled to understand the layers of Midwestern niceness, as I am more accustomed to the directness of the East Coast. Both ways of communication are valid, but often go past each other when put together. In Kansas, East Coast bluntness can appear callous. I've felt more like a Nor’easter, than merely a Northeasterner– disruptive and maybe a little difficult.

The difference has me tuned in to the colloquialisms around me, to phrases that slip by relatively …

Vessel Of Survival, Jonah W. Simmons

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Survival is not innate or effortless, but learned, regulated, and sustained through continuous labor, both visible and unseen. Vessel of Survival is an exploration of the human body as a site of containment, adaptation, and endurance shaped by trauma, systemic pressure, and the conditions of contemporary life. Through ceramic form, ruptured surfaces, photographic imagery and narrative intervention, this work explores how trauma, chronic illness, and socioeconomic systems inscribe themselves onto the body. Within this framework, the body becomes a vessel that continually negotiates fragility and resilience.

This investigation is informed by my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes, a condition that …

A Cautionary Tale, Holly C. Hendrick

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

A Cautionary Tale presents a series of narrative ceramic sculptures, each functioning as a short story rooted in the realities of contemporary American life. While fictional, these works draw directly from real social and political conditions, including disinformation, systemic corruption, the abuse of power, and the exploitation of the vulnerable. Through symbolic narrative and visual metaphor, each sculpture operates as both story and social critique.

My work merges artistic practice with engagement in contemporary issues, examining how wealth, technology, and ideology shape human behavior and societal structures. I am interested in how harm becomes normalized and how individuals are both …

Exploring Design Tools, Naomi Torgler

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For my Honors Research Project, I developed skills to 3D model and render using Rhino 8, Tinkercad and Adobe Illustrator. In the process of developing these skills, I created six digital renderings and one model. The works produced using these software programs are to be used in a developing portfolio to seek future opportunities in the field of architecture.

Throughout this project, I explored connections between different programs when designing and building each piece. This project also reflects my focus in the Sculpture program at the Myers School of Art by considering elements of design in a three-dimensional form. In …

Creativity Through Thought Exercises: Developing A Personal Heuristic For Choreographic Decision-Making, Jalisa R. Johnson

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores the development of a personal set of heuristics, or accessible thought tools, that can be used in choreographic or creative decision-making. Through an in-depth study of the visual art of Romare Bearden paired with an evaluation of patterns of the author’s personal history, three tools or “dials” emerge: derealization, contextuality and inversion. A close study of Bearden’s work demonstrates a pattern of repurposing and distorting ideas in ways consistent with the three dials. The author found similar patterns emerge in an excavation of her personal narrative, indicative of a cyclical and prophetic re-imagining of previous life experiences. …

Open Casket: The Black Press And The Unmasking Of America, Clarence J. Hood

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Comparatively Exploring Journalism And Oral Histories As Modes Of Advocacy For Marginalized Communities, Miceala Morano

2026 Research Poster Competition

Journalism is used to inform people, to serve as the watchdog of the government, and to tell intriguing, timely stories that would remain uncovered otherwise. However, misrepresentation of marginalized communities in the stories journalists tell can undermine the public’s trust in news media. In a study conducted at Oxford University, researchers determined that members of communities that are historically marginalized due to factors such as race, gender and class were more likely to see mainstream news media as “biased, sensationalistic, and depressing” and the journalists that write them as “out of touch, lacking the lived experience or knowledge to understand …

Intergenerational Memories Of Communism In Albania And The Role Of Media, Enkela Hasa

2026 Research Poster Competition

Memories of Albania’s communist regime (1946–1991) remain deeply divided across generations, shaped by lived experience, family narratives and mediated representations. While individuals who endured exile or punishment often recall the period as traumatic and repressive, others who experienced social stability or benefited from state structures describe it as a time of economic security and relative equality. These competing interpretations raise important questions about how collective memory is formed, transmitted and contested over time. This thesis examines how intergenerational memories of communism in Albania are constructed and how media influences the preservation, reinterpretation or silencing of these narratives. Through the production …

The Speculative Mode Of The Image: Destabilizing Reality In Crash, Invisible Man, And Beloved, Steven Connors

Open Access Dissertations

In an exploration of the dimensions of speculative fiction, which is a prominent cultural and academic apparatus wanting definition in the twenty-first century, this dissertation examines the speculative mode of the image in various transatlantic novels, ranging from J. G. Ballard’s Crash to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The image in itself is a multivalent term that warrants analysis. As a concept, the abstract nature of the image serves to destabilize reality. It is always in conversation with the notions of reality. Indeed, images inform our senses of reality. In part, they constitute our social forms. …

Duties To Yourself, Julian Sommers

2026 Research Poster Competition

I will be writing a thesis paper with the guidance of Dr. Purdy so I can graduate from the honors program with a bachelor's within philosophy. This paper is still very much in the planning stages, but we have a rough idea of what it will look like. The broad topic is moral duties one could have to themselves and potentially how that relates to duties you might have to others as well. We are interested in this project because I believe our common idea of morality excludes the self from being regarded as a person. I believe morality focuses …

Arden 2026, Elizabeth Woods, Ivory Alexander, Evie Fletcher

The Arden

An amalgamation of creative student works. Items contained include, but are not limited to, art, photography, short stories, prose, poetry, and other avenues of creative composition.

The David And Goliath Phenomenon: When Small Powers Win Big Wars, Vivian Pettigrew

2026 Research Poster Competition

After over a decade of war, hundreds of thousands dead, and twenty-four years of power, Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria collapsed in November of 2024 in just twelve days. The success of fragmented Syrian rebels against such a long-standing and powerful government challenges widely held assumptions about power and stability. This research addresses these challenged assumptions by examining the so-called “David and Goliath phenomenon," or cases in which smaller states or rebel groups come out victorious against greater powers. Understanding these cases is crucial to explaining predictability in war and regime vulnerability, while also having important implications for modern international …

Feminist Aesthetics: The Early Ms. Years And Second-Wave Body Politics, Meghan Lucas

2026 Research Poster Competition

Despite its tremendous impact on both second-wave feminist organizing and women's political consciousness, Ms. magazine remains understudied by scholars interested in emergent feminist consumers and emergent feminist citizens. This study aims to fill the gap in scholarship around late 20th century periodical studies by offering content analysis of the first two years of Ms., July 1972 to June 1974 to offer a content analysis of second-wave feminism's foray into magazine culture and understand how Ms. articulated feminist politics, feminist writing, and women's consumer power to raise women’s consciousness. My research was focused on the archival issues from July 1972 to …

“The Influence Of Social Media And Algorithmic Capitalism On Popular Fiction”, Emma Bracken

2026 Research Poster Competition

In giving over literature wholly to the market, collapsing as far as possible the distance between literature’s residually sacral significance as a repository of higher values and its everyday function as a commodity, Amazon in one sense intensifies a phenomenon occasioned by the consolidation of publishing in recent decades into immense multinational media conglomerates,” writes professor Mark McGurl in his book, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon (2021). McGurl’s research on Amazon’s role in the literary industry created a baseline for my research on the use of algorithms in digital marketplaces as they relate to literary …

Romanticizing A Revolution: Jamila, The Algerian, Avery Ferguson

2026 Research Poster Competition

Romanticizing a Revolution Women’s participation in the 1954 Algerian Revolution became a signifier of the revolution itself. One woman- D’jamila Bouhired, became the mother of a movement and icon of the cause. However, D’jamila’s cause, the revolution, was not meant for her, nor the thousands of women who participated and gave their lives to decolonization. In this paper, I will examine the Egyptian film D’jamila, the Algerian, released in 1956. I will examine how film as a medium creates a fictional reality influenced by sociohistorical context yet is not always faithful to it. I argue that D’jamila, the Algerian portrays …

On The Untherapeutic Nature Of Philosophy, Zack Roy

2026 Research Poster Competition

This project is an inquiry into the nature of philosophy and the relation it bears to the person who philosophizes. I will argue that philosophy is an inquiry into truth. But the sorts of truths on the table for philosophical inquiry do not necessarily comport with our desires and values. This project will explore them, dividing them into truths about the human condition and truths about external reality. We will see that the various philosophical questions posed with respect to these two domains allow for answers whose acceptance could have radical, upsetting, and perhaps ultimately harmful consequences. Friedrich Nietzsche raised …

Understanding The Reemergence Of Right-Wing Extremism In Germany, John Wardlaw

2026 Research Poster Competition

My thesis examines the growing popularity of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s leading radical-right-positioned party, in the context of broader ideological shifts in post-war Europe. The AfD’s rise reflects a shift from the cosmopolitan ideals that dominated the mid- to late-twentieth-century Europe toward a resurgence in national populism, reminiscent of the late-nineteenth-century political currents that shaped pre-war Europe. To analyze this phenomenon, I turn to Dr. Girija Mookerjee’s four-principle problems framework: the problem of national unity, the extent of popular participation, state participation in a global setting, and the socioeconomic problems found alongside industrialization. While Dr. Mookerjee’s work was …

"Leafing" Through The Chinese Opera: Phytopoetics In The Peony Pavilion, Madison Bussell Escoto

2026 Research Poster Competition

Ornamental flowering plants have been instrumental symbols in literature across all times and cultures. I’m examining why flowers are such perceptual stimulants, sexual symbols, and literary agents. Through the lens of Joela Jacob’s term “phytopoetics,” which describes the impact of plant life on the human imagination and culture; botany; and literary scholarship, I will look closely at this phenomenon in The Peony Pavilion, a Chinese opera from 1598 which features the first recognized complex and convincing female protagonist in world literature. Exploring “the garden” as a place, I will present the embodied, sensory, and relational elements of the human-flower relationship …

A Preliminary Study On A Variant Recension Of De Excidio Troiae, Kailee Rowe

2026 Research Poster Competition

This undergraduate research is a work of textual criticism identifying and evaluating a variant redaction of Dares Phrygius' De excidio Troiae that originated and circulated in Britain and Wales during the High Middle Ages. De excidio Troiae is a Latin text ascribed to Dares Phrygius, purportedly a soldier who had written a firsthand account of the Trojan War. Since knowledge of Greek was rare in the West during the medieval period, this text became one of the prominent sources for learning about the Trojan war. I am looking to a redaction, or version, of the text that appears to have …

Forbes M Robertson - Cwgc Certificate, Jenifer A. Harding

Documents: Forbes McKenzie Robertson

Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Certificate for RAF cadet Forbes Mckenzie Robertson who died on April 24, 1943, while training to be a pilot at 5BFTS. He is buried in the CWGC British Plot. at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Arcadia.

Book Review/Reading Reflection Assignment For Eng 201, Kelley Vick

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Thomas W Calderhead - Cwgc Certificate, Jenifer A. Harding

Documents: Thomas Wallace Calderhead

Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Certificate for RAF cadet Thomas Wallace Calderhead who died on May 4, 1945, while training to be a pilot at 5BFTS. He is buried in the CWGC British Plot. at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Arcadia.

Thomas W Calderhead - Biography, Jenifer A. Harding

Documents: Thomas Wallace Calderhead

Biography of RAF cadet Thomas Wallace Calderhead who was killed in a plane crash on May 4, 1945, while training to be a pilot at 5BFTS. He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission British Plot. at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Arcadia.

Mervyn H E 'Terry' Thomas - Biography, Jenifer A. Harding

Documents: Marvin H.E. (Terry) Thomas

Biography of RAF cadet Mervyn H E ‘Terry’ Thomas who was killed in a plane crash on April 28, 1943, while training to be a pilot at 5BFTS. He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission British Plot. at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Arcadia.