Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, Jess Shane

Theses and Dissertations

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative is a 4-part creative non-fiction podcast that problematizes the use of personal stories in the documentary industry and examines the power dynamics between documentary-makers and their subjects. The series features a story within a story: it follows me, documentarian Jess Shane, as I craft short documentaries about four individuals’ lives— individuals who have applied to participate in my project by responding to an online ad. It also dives into the behind-the-scenes decisions required to tailor individuals’ life experiences to conform to industry standards of what makes a “good story.” In tandem, these two narratives— of me producing …

Being "Rightly Known": Otherness And The Ethics Of Reading In Charlotte Brontë'S Villette, Tin Yan Grace Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Villette (1853), Charlotte Brontë's last novel, is famously riddled with ambiguity: its narrator-protagonist, Lucy Snowe, avoids disclosing details about her childhood, fails to reveal to readers the identity of characters she recognizes from her past, and, at the end of the novel, refuses to confirm if her love interest, M. Paul, has died at sea after a storm. Believing Lucy's ambiguous narrative style to be a tool she uses to train readers to better understand her, many critics have focused their efforts on trying to interpret Lucy's silences and evasions "correctly," thereby turning themselves into Lucy's or Brontë's "ideal" authorial …

Against Identity: A Positionalist Approach To Resisting Identity-Based Violence, Barbara Walkowiak

Theses and Dissertations

I develop and defend a positionalist theory of identity as a basis from which to resist identity-based violence. On this account, identities are the social positions that individuals occupy due to belief that operate upon them. This contrasts with and is intended to replace the dominant intrinsicist model, which conceives of identity as something about individuals in and of themselves. Taking gender as a focal point, I develop three overarching positionalist kinds: monogyne, polygyne, and androgyne. I propose that additional sub-kinds (e.g. monogyne woman) be developed in order to more exactly track gender positionalities and the operational beliefs that produce …

Rhetoric Of Collaboration: Using Ethics Of Social Justice And Activism Through Writing Communities, Tina M. Iemma

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines emerging writing community collectives that seek to challenge the normative hierarchy of higher education in both composition and curricula. I conduct empirical research to explore the ways activist writers, those with exposure to social justice literacies from across and outside academic communities, influence an ethics of collaboration and overall expansion of more public-facing, engaged and inclusive research pedagogy and scholarship. The act of writing in collectives is needed if a move toward advocacy and opportunity for equity is to be upheld within and beyond academia. By examining social justice literacies occurring both in and out of the …

Figures Of Virtue: Margaret Fell And Aemilia Lanyer's Use Of Decorum As Ethical Good Judgment In The Construction Of Female Discursive Authority, Kirsten Marie Osmani

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding how the Renaissance rhetorical curriculum taught style as behavior makes it possible to unite the study of women writers' identities with formal criticism. Nancy L. Christiansen shows that early modern humanists built on the Isocratean tradition of teaching rhetoric as an ethical practice because they adopted and developed lists of rhetorical figures so extensive as to encompass all human discourse, thought, and behavior. For them, knowing, selecting, and applying these various forms was the ethical practice of good judgment, also called decorum. This type of decorum plays an important role in the rhetorical function of two key texts by …

A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel

Theses and Dissertations

I bring together the relational ethics of feminist critical theory with approaches of multimodal rhetoric to examine the ethical implications of composing on social media platforms. Most social media platforms are designed to value consumerism, efficiency, quantity of web traffic, and constant synchronous response over concerns of responsible and critical communication. I propose a rhetorical approach of techno-social relationality (TSR) as an intervention against such corporate-minded design. Through this approach, I argue that civil engagement is not limited to people’s social responsibilities but rather is entwined in complex, material-technical contexts. By considering the responsibility of our machines as much as …

Connecting The Dots: The Ontology And Ethics Of Intersubjectivity In Borges’S “The Writing Of The God”, Brendan Kurt Lund

Theses and Dissertations

How do we establish objectivity when each person’s perspective is uniquely subjective? Borges’s “The Writing of the God” shows how an epistemically isolated subject is incapable of ever arriving at a robust sense of objectivity without reference to an Other. Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretive triangulation posits that the Other’s external perspective establishes objectivity by making the subject aware of the limits of his or her perception. Emmanuel Levinas suggests that the face of the Other establishes ethics as first philosophy through a primordial, affective discourse. The ethical relation is what undergirds the questions of epistemology which Davidson addresses.

"What Do The Divils Find To Laugh About" In Melville's The Confidence-Man, Truedson J. Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

The failure of identity in The Confidence-Man has confounded readers since its publication. To some critics, Melville's titular character has seemed to leave his readers in a hopelessness without access to confidence, identity, trust, ethical relationality, and, finally, without anything to say. I argue, however, that Melville's text does not leave us without hope. My argument, consequently, is inextricably bound to a reading of Melville's text as deeply engaged with the concepts it inherits from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, an inheritance woefully under-examined by those critics who would leave Melville's text in the mire of hopelessness. In examining …

Virtuous Anger And Vicious Forgiveness, Michael William Thousand

Theses and Dissertations

This essay can largely be seen as having two functions: contributing to the philosophical literature on the nature of forgiveness and defending anger as a morally worth class of attitudes. I will begin by sketching out some of the elements of forgiveness before presenting a prominent debate that is found in this domain. Essentially, this dispute focuses on whether or not conditions may be placed on instances of genuine forgiveness. Conditional accounts argue that it is perfectly acceptable or even rationally required that agents attach conditions to their forgiveness (e.g. a change of heart by the wrongdoer). Proponents of unconditional …

Kant On Radical Evil, Kyoung Min Cho

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to propose an interpretation of Kant’s claim that the human being’s evil nature is the effect of the free power of choice. I suggest that if his concept of free choice is properly understood, Kant’s claim should be interpreted as follows: the human being’s radical evil is the effect of a failure to use freely the power of choice that determines its fundamental disposition, a failure that is to be presupposed as universal for all human agents. According to this reading, we are evil by nature since evil lies in our fundamental disposition. Still, …

"[B]Reaking Down The Walls, And Crying To The Mountains"--Isaiah 22:5: Dystopia And Ethics Of The Catcher In The Rye, Megan Marie Toone

Theses and Dissertations

Reading The Catcher in the Rye as dystopian fiction requires critical responsibility to evaluate the ethicality of the protagonist's sense of others and self, to assess the moral nature of the novel's dystopian world, and to evaluate the protagonist's agency or capacity to change his world or himself. The novel presents a multifaceted dystopia existing on multiple planes in the social dogma, the reality of the presented world, and Holden's mind before and after his paradigm shift. The dystopian aspects present in the novel highlight basic ideological systems as well as agency and action within the structure. The dystopian elements …

Life And Agency: Constitutivism And The Source Of Prescriptive Norms, Tristan De Liege

Theses and Dissertations

I explore a recent project in metaethics known as "constitutivism," and presents an outline of a new approach to that view. Constitutivism is an approach to moral realism that attempts to ground objective moral norms in the nature of action. This is done by showing that action has a constitutive aim, and that agents are committed to action, and so are thereby committed to that aim. Since agents can fulfill that aim with varying degrees of success, this aim generates a standard of evaluation. If this project succeeds, it would serve to make moral norms real and objective and simultaneously …

Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, And The Monster, Ryan Landry Clark

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation features a combination of critical and creative work

exploring the ethics of appropriative writing and the reparative potential of homophonic translation. The opening essay examines the ethics of appropriation- based poetry and introduces the concept of what I call "appositional writing," a term to describe ethically-minded works of poetry that make use of appropriative writing methods. The next three parts of this dissertation are each appositional writing projects that make use of homophonic translation as the primary method of composition. "Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act" is a homophonic translation of the anti-immigration bill of the same name. …

Seeing (The Other) Through A Terministic Screen Of Spirituality: Emotional Integrity As A Strategy For Facilitating Identification, Jarron Benjamin Slater

Theses and Dissertations

Although philosopher Robert Solomon and rhetorician Kenneth Burke wrote in isolation from one another, they discuss similar concepts and ideas. Since its introduction in Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives, identification has always been important to rhetorical theory, and recent studies in emotion, such as Solomon's, provide new insight into modes of identification—that human beings can identify with one another on an emotional level. This paper places Solomon and Burke in conversation with one another, arguing that both terministic screens and emotions are ways of seeing, acting, engaging, and judging. Hence, terministic screens and emotions affect ethos, or character, both …

Remembering The Ghost: Pedro Páramo And The Ethics Of Haunting, Benjamin Cluff

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to describe what I term the ethics of haunting, as related to trauma and memory, by analyzing Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo. It does not claim to be representative of ghosts and haunting as a whole, but more specifically to illustrate various manners in which the return of the ghost and its subsequent haunting are motivated by an ethics of memory in Rulfo's novel. Within this framework I explore remembrance as a medium of exchange between the living and the dead, haunting as a method by which gaps in the historical archive can be filled, and the …

Standing In The Center Of The World: The Ethical Intentionality Of Autoethnography, Nicole Wilkes

Theses and Dissertations

Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of ipseity and alterity has permeated Western thought for more than forty years. In the social sciences and the humanities, the recognition of the Other and focus on difference, alterity, has influenced the way we ethically approach peoples and arts from different cultures. Because focus on the ego, ipseity, limits our ethical obligations, focusing on the Other does, according to Levinas, bring us closer to an ethical life. Furthermore, the self maintains responsibility for the Other and must work within Levinas's ethical system to become truly responsible. Therefore, the interaction between self and Other is Levinas's …

Altruism, Activism, And The Moral Imperative In Craft, Gabriel Craig

Theses and Dissertations

I consider myself a metalsmith although my interest in materials and ideas extend beyond the boundaries of traditional practice. I approach my work thematically, meaning that I treat my discipline as a framework for a broad investigation rather than as a skill set or process. The outcomes of this approach are therefore varied and include jewelry, installation, performance, video, interactive community based projects, print and web based writing, and historical research. It is through humor or direct viewer interaction that I promote accessibility in my work. My ideas are layered and communicated in a way that allows viewers to engage …

The Play's The Thing: Investigating The Potential Of Performance Pedagogy, Tamara Lynn Scoville

Theses and Dissertations

In the last ten years there has been a resurgence of interest in teaching Shakespeare through performance. However, most literature on the topic continues to focus on the pragmatic selling points of how performance makes Shakespeare fun and understandable while remaining surprisingly silent on issues of theory and ethics. By investigating the ethical implications of performance pedagogy as it affects our students' construction of identity, empathy, and pluralistic tolerance we can better understand and discuss the potential of performance pedagogy in relation to the ethical goals of the Humanities. Performance Pedagogy has particular ethical potential due to the structure of …

Taking Mormons Seriously: Ethics Of Representing Latter-Day Saints In American Fiction, Terrol Roark Williams

Theses and Dissertations

My paper examines the ethics of representing Mormons in serious American fiction, viewed through two primary texts, Bayard Taylor's nineteenth-century dramatic poem The Prophet and Maureen Whipple's epic novel The Giant Joshua. I also briefly examine Walter Kirn's short stories “Planetarium” and “Whole Other Bodies.” Using Werner Sollors' and Matthew Frye Jacobson's writings on ethnicity as foundational, I argue in that Mormonism constitutes an ethnicity, which designation accentuates the ethical demands of those who represent the group. I also use W.J.T. Mitchell's theories of representation as the basis of my arguments of the ethics of representing ethnicity. As ethical theorists, …

Seeing It Straight, Heather Harvey

Theses and Dissertations

This Master of Fine Arts thesis is divided into four main sections:FAITH and DISBELIEF: In which I reckon with the implications of faith versus rationality as a secular nontheistic artist. IDEAS: The central locus of my work is a place of indeterminacy between what is known/familiar and what is just one step outside of that. This has nothing to do with mysticism, science fiction, or anything else unmoored from established fact. Section also touches on the particular vantage of a female artist with working class roots.THE WORK: Selection of work made during graduate school, and the the guiding thoughts behind …

The Pedagogy And Ethics Of Improvisation Using The Harold, David Dellus Patton

Theses and Dissertations

Scenic improvisation is dramatic performance without a script. Performers develop scenes in real time in front of an audience. They do this by submitting to a set of rules of relating on-stage which allow them, by mutual assent, to develop scenes and stories based on their relationships with one another. This methodology by which improvisers develop their scenes can give us a tangible vocabulary and model by which we can fulfill the requirements of love. The Harold, an improvisational form created by Del Close and Charna Halpern and taught and performed at IO (formerly ImprovOlympic), emphasizes this relational ethic as …

Drawing Through A Linear Temperament, Jorge Miguel Benitez

Theses and Dissertations

I am a draftsman, painter and printmaker. This first person statement is a written extension of the art that constitutes my thesis. It discusses the links between my work and the Enlightenment, Humanism, Catholicism, ethics and the Western canon as well as my use of perspective and other classical techniques in relation to history, language, high art, popular culture, propaganda, contemporary upheavals, Christian and Islamic Fundamentalism, globalization and the digital revolution. Furthermore, the main arguments draw upon my Cuban origin and European ancestry, the Cuban Revolution, my Belgian early education and eventual American hybrid identity. The overriding theme, however, concerns …

Age, Gender, And Religious Differences In Moral Perspective, Samuel L. Clay

Theses and Dissertations

An investigation was conducted to see if age and gender are related to a preference for a caring versus a justice morality. The World View Questionnaire with 40 word pairs was used to measure a preference for a caring morality. It was found that there was a significant gender difference in the caring score, with the females scoring higher than the males. There also was a significant religious difference in the caring score with religious and especially Mormon subjects scoring higher than non-religious subjects. There was not, however, a significant age difference as was predicted.

A Multi-Valued Attitudinal Study Of Obscenity And Freedom Of Expression, Allen W. Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to examine whether religiosity is a determining factor in public reaction to obscenity issues.

A sample population of 452 residents of the community of Idaho Falls, Idaho was selected using a technique based on a list of random numbers in October, 1979. Path analysis, Chi-square analysis and Spearman's correlation were used to measure the results.

The study found there is a significant relationship between religiosity and behavior intention toward obscenity issues. The affective component of the attitude organization functions somewhat as a mediating variable. There were also findings that members of the Church of Jesus Christ …

A Study Of The Attitudes Of Latter-Day Saint Seminary Students Toward Certain Church Standards Of Dress And Conduct, Alfred Lawrence Pace Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Standards of dress and conduct of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are presented to the youth in a variety of ways. Although these standards are all important, the seminary youth do not consider them to have equal relevance in their own personal lives; for they are concerned with particular standards, in particular ways, and at particular times. While some attempts have been made to solicit their views pertaining to such standards, most studies to date have not dealt with material which has been published and made available to all of the youth of the Church. Since teachers …

A Study Of Moral Development In Mormon Culture, Steve Foster Gilliland

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies have indicated that the moral development of the child may follow a "developmental" process. That is, the child progresses through an invariant series of stages, each characterized by certain modes of thought. As the child passes from one stage to another, he integrates the old stage into the new one. Kohlberg proposed a hierarchy of six stages through which the child would progress on his way to moral maturity. His hypothesis has been supported by empirical evidence.

Research findings have indicated that the Mormon culture appeared to be different in values and moral behavior than other United States …