Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Other Eyes: The Dilemma Of Authorship And Autobiography In Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, And Cristina García, Kevin J.B. O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation analyzes authorship in contemporary American literature, harnessing the writings—prose and poetry—of Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, and Cristina García to challenge traditional classification and periodization schema. Hewing to the notion of authorship as a dilemma—a simultaneity of forces pressing upon the author, demanding a response—each chapter unravels critical moments of authorial expression that continually inscribe the importance of praxis and futurity. Comprehending authorship as a relational dilemma to be brooked, and indeed, overcome in a panoply of gestures, frees it theoretically from the perils of prior models by drawing attention to authorship’s agential and multi-modal aspects. Melding archival research …

Shakespeare’S Martyrs And The Poetics Of Transformation, Robert Keim

Theses and Dissertations--English

At the beginning of William Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, England’s most widely read book, after the Bible, was Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days, commonly known as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe’s martyrological literature, along with the inherently theatrical nature of martyrdom itself, helped the lives and deaths of Reformation martyrs to assume a prominent place in England’s literary consciousness. Shakespeare was not immune to their influential presence, and though overt representations of martyrdom were too controversial for the popular stage, he did enrich his plays by endowing certain characters—through imagery, allusive diction, …

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, And The Question Of The “True” Ariel: Complicating Binaries In Plath’S Literary Legacy, Jacob C. Quinn

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis aims to complicate common binaries that have defined critical responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel since its first publication in 1965, and which emerged as the result of her husband Ted Hughes’ alterations to her original selection and arrangement of poems. Hughes’ editing emphasizes a narrative which ends in bleak fatality, whereas Plath’s original narrative concludes on a note of bittersweet hope. I read Hughes’ choice of ending as highly influential on Plath’s reception and legacy. The tone of her immediate reception, largely shaped by Al Alvarez, characterized Plath as an “extremist” poet whose work should be read through …

We Need To Care About Care: (Un)Caring Relations In Victorian Fiction, Roslyn Fleming

Theses and Dissertations--English

The professionalization and institutionalization of care in the Victorian era ushered in a growing societal concern about the pitfalls of care being “systematized and depersonalized” and treating people as burdens, problems to be solved. Given the increasing attention paid to people’s welfare and well-being during this period, the cultural shift from intimate community care to professional and institutional care, and the growing stigmatization of disabled bodyminds, the fiction produced amidst these cultural changes makes a compelling site for a study of care. Critical scholarship attending to Victorian novels’ representations of care, however, has largely concentrated on specific categorizations of care …

Benjy's Personhood In The Sound And The Fury, Addison D. Tighe

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis will take a look at the way Benjy Compson’s character in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury can be used to form an anti-eugenic argument. By taking a close look at the historical context of America’s twentieth century eugenic movement, the ways in which the novel presents an argument of personhood for those with disabilities come forth despite the eugenic pressures of the time. By taking the time to closely read Benjy’s section within the novel, a mix of disability studies and feminist disability studies, and understanding the complexity of character and stream of conscious writing, …

Entre Irse Y Quedarse: Sociolinguistic Effects Of The H-2a Program In The U.S. And Mexico, Hayden D. Holman

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines stabilized circular migration as a distinct sociolinguistic condition through a study of Mexican participants in the U.S. H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. Whereas much migration scholarship presumes linear settlement and cumulative immersion, the H-2A program institutionalizes repeated cycles of departure and return between specific origin and destination communities. This patterned mobility produces recurrent immersion in an English-dominant environment followed by re-centering in a Spanish-dominant community, creating conditions of cyclical activation and recalibration of linguistic repertoires.

The study investigates two interrelated questions: (1) how sustained participation in stabilized circular mobility shapes participants’ spoken repertoires, contact-induced features, and language …

Visual Genealogies Of Disability In Mexican Visual Culture, Daniela Calvache Garcia

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Disability in Mexico is a visually constructed category, shaped by a long genealogy of representation in which images of bodily difference actively participate in defining power and the management of all bodies. The discursive forces that define disability as unproductivity reduce body-minds to the service of the economic system, affecting our relationship with death, illness, reproduction, size, youth, and beauty. Across the Mesoamerican visual space, such representations have long unsettled dominant systems of truth about bodies. This dissertation examines how conceptions of disability are produced, negotiated, and reimagined through three historical moments and cultural expressions: Pre-Hispanic Mayan imagery, Mexican colonial …

Una Lima Multicultural: La Cultura Material De Las Mujeres Afroperuanas Durante Los Siglos Xvi Y Xvii, Rebeca Ponce Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Uno de los valores más importantes de una sociedad es la cultura adquirida a través del conocimiento, de la tradición y de la historia donde el intercambio de experiencias en la ciudad limeña hizo posible la construcción de una cultura material. Los documentos producidos, adaptados y aceptados a un determinado contexto social refuerzan la identidad, la cultura y la memoria de una colectividad.

Por ello, esta investigación tiene como objetivo analizar los autos de fe y los testamentos de mujeres afroperuanas en los siglos XVI y XVII como parte del material cultural que ayudan a pensar y reconstruir el pasado. …

Beyond The Veil: Critical Black Kantianism And The Ethics Of Structural (In)Visibility, Paradise A. Stanford

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation develops what I call Critical Black Kantianism, a reconstructive approach to Kantian moral philosophy that centers race, recognition, and the structural conditions under which moral agency is formed. While Kantian ethics typically presumes idealized agents operating within just social contexts, this project argues that such abstraction obscures how racial domination actively shapes autonomy, dignity, and self-consciousness. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ account of double consciousness, Black feminist thought, and contemporary theories of recognition, I show that moral agency is not merely exercised within social environments but is constituted through them—often under conditions of misrecognition that fracture autonomy.

Against …

Human Resource Policy And Practice In The American Regional Theatre: The Intersection Of The Actors’ Equity Association And The League Of Resident Theatres, Kathleen Holland

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

Human resource management plays a critical yet understudied role in the American regional theatre, an industry characterized by project-based labor, mixed union and nonunion workforces, and deeply ingrained cultural norms that prioritize artistic production over worker well-being. This dissertation examines how institutional human resource policies intersect with the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) collective bargaining agreement and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), and the implications of these intersections for human resource practice in regional theatre organizations. While entertainment-industry unions predate the formalization of contemporary human resource management, little scholarship has examined how union agreements may shape or substitute for organizational …

Improving Evaluation Practices Of Community Arts Extension Agents: A Mixed-Methods Study Leveraging Theory Of Change And Open Systems Theory, Melissa G. Bond

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

This dissertation examines how a structured evaluation training and subject-based evaluation tool can strengthen evaluation practices among Community Arts Extension professionals in Kentucky. Community Arts programs often support outcomes such as belonging, connection, skill development, and cultural engagement, yet those outcomes can be difficult to document within standardized public reporting systems. Guided by Theory of Change and Open Systems Theory, this mixed-methods study combines an environmental scan of FY2020–FY2025 Community Arts indicator records and agent-authored Success Stories with three survey waves administered before training, immediately after training, and approximately 60 days later.

Findings show that routine reporting captured substantial activity …

Toward A World History Of Pre-Modern Coin Imitations, Niv Horesh

Comparative Civilizations Review

Among historians, it has become axiomatic that coinage over three millennia served three purposes: as a medium of exchange, as a store of value, and as a unit of account. The communicative aspects of coinage, i.e. the imagery it carries often by way of issuer propaganda, have been of less interest even if it remains the mainstay of numismatists. But in the world of numismatics, globally framed studies of imagery or iconography are rare. This article is aimed at correcting this imbalance, at least provisionally. It will explore the main archetypes of coinage imitation by way of inferring commonalities or …

An Academic Civilization?, Inbar Gotlib-Rivkin, Uri Cohen

Comparative Civilizations Review

Can institutions of higher education be defined as constituting a civilization that has emerged from modern civilization? This theoretical study defines a new concept of academic civilization and demonstrates how prominent characteristics that define the collective identity of modern civilization are manifested in institutions of higher education. The study focuses on six specific characteristics: expansion, flexibility and diversification, center-periphery relations, academic culture, autonomy and academic freedom, and the monopolization of professional training and the professional middle class. The conceptual analysis presented here provides a significant addition to sociological discourse, offering a refined conceptualization of civilizations. The goal is to expand …

Artificial Intelligence And African Studies, Gloria Emeagwali

Comparative Civilizations Review

African Studies is a conglomerate of multidisciplinary academic fields that include paleontology, history, literature, linguistics, philosophy, African Traditional Religion and theology, art, and Afrofuturism, as well as African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. This paper focuses on the latter, namely African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), and African Studies, in general, from the viewpoint of two chatbots, namely, ChatGPT-4, and DeepSeek v.3. Do these models make a break with Eurocentrism and prevent unbiased information on AIKS? Are the underlying conceptual issues underpinning AIKS fully grasped, and if so, what are some relevant examples of this accomplishment? How do these programs respond to specialized …

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Civilizational Nationalism And The Rise Of The Civilization State: A Response To Stephen Satkiewicz, Nicholas Morieson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The previous issue of this journal discussed the phenomenon of civilization-states. As several authors observed, over the past two decades leaders from Beijing to Moscow, from New Delhi to Ankara, have increasingly portrayed the nations they govern as civilization states, or heirs to and continuations of great civilizations (Greenfeld 2025; Cross and Okunev 2025; Alalykin-Izvekov 2025; Satkiewicz 2025). In doing this, they often summon deep time, speaking of thousands of years of cultural continuity, and present their states as guardians of cultural traditions in an age of immense social change.

Books Of Interest Spring 2026

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Extending Norbert Elias: Adjacency And The Dynamics Of Civilizations, Arthur Michelino

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilizations have rarely been approached as systems of interdependence and strain. Most modern theories have oscillated between cyclical visions of rise and fall and static conceptions of blocs defined by cultural essence. Both perspectives have offered sweeping interpretations, but both also detached civilizations from the environments of pressure and interaction in which they have always existed. To reframe civilizations as relational processes requires both recognition of their internal dynamics and attention to the external conditions that compel their transformation.

Religious And Spiritual Struggles: The Stories Of Nigerian, Immigrant, Christian Women In Waterloo Region, Halima D. Fuller

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

ABSTRACT This research investigates religious and spiritual struggles among Nigerian, immigrant, Christian women in Waterloo Region. Twelve women settled in the region for six months to 11 years participated in the study. Qualitative methodology, narrative inquiry, and a storytelling paradigm informed the research. Semi-structured, in-depth interview questions were used to explore the experiences of religious and spiritual struggles. A meticulous review identifies a scarcity of literature on religious and spiritual struggles in the context of immigration. However, immigration challenges such as language barriers, precarious employment, and mental health issues are well-documented (Bauder, 2012; Beiser & Hou, 2016; Berry et al., …

Exploring Drone Technology For The Survey And Documentation Of Aerospace Archaeology Sites, David G. Morgan, Thomas R. Allen

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This research examines the implementation of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) during a pilot mission in Nike Park to support its aerospace preservation. Located in Carrollton, Virginia, it was a Cold War missile installation that formed part of the area’s air-defense network. This project aims to use a drone to capture high-resolution video and imagery of Nike Park’s Administrative Office Supply and PX building and the Nike Ajax missile to create virtual 3D models for the Isle of Wight County Museum’s exhibit. For this mission, the DJI Mini 4 Pro drone manually flew a circular flight pattern around the missile and …

Lawyering On The Eve Of War: The Role Of Law And Lawyers In Ethiopia’S Civil War, 2018–2024, Mekonnen F. Ayano

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

What role do lawyers play when a nation stands at the brink of war? This Article examines how Ethiopia’s legal profession navigated escalating political instability in the years leading up to the country’s devastating civil war (2018–2022). It traces how private attorneys, judges, prosecutors, government legal advisors, human rights advocates, consultants, and law academics engaged with shifting power dynamics, ethical dilemmas, and political tensions, revealing their complex positioning as both actors and intermediaries in the unfolding crisis. Some resisted factional political pressures and sought to uphold legal principles, while others adapted to the fragile conditions and aligned with prevailing currents, …

2026 Forces

Forces

Full issue of Forces, published March 2026.

A Word From The Writing Team (January 2026), Pam Walter, Mfa, Laura Deloretta, Phd

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

No abstract provided.

More Than A Meal: What Death Row Last Meals Reveal About Identity, Power, And Humanity, Mackenzie Helbig

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Last meals on death row may appear to be a small or insignificant part of the execution process, but they can reveal deeper meaning about the individuals who choose them and the system that allows them. Before execution, inmates are often given the opportunity to request a final meal. While this moment is brief, it can carry emotional, cultural, and symbolic meaning. This study explores what last meals reveal about identity, mental state, and personal control in a highly controlled environment.

Using a descriptive qualitative approach, this research analyzes last meal records, academic studies, and inmate reports to identify recurring …

From Sacred Practice To Social Identity: The Historical Evolution Of Vegetarianism Through Religion, Psychology, And Social Norms, Makenna Mae Seymour

Honors Theses – Charlotte Campus

This research paper aims to explore how the vegetarian diet has evolved throughout history through lenses of religion and social psychology. Using primary and secondary academic resources, over thirty resources were evaluated, including books and journal articles,  using key words, such as “vegetarian,” “attitudes,” and “social norms.” The beginnings of vegetarianism were established through religious practices, but social norms from families and friends, as well as personal gain reasons, are the driving factors that have maintained the vegetarian diet over time. Vegetarianism began from Pythagoras and his cult in the 600s BC, but it grew once Hinduism and Jainism adopted …

Stefan Tsankov And Orthodox Ecumenical Theology: Foundations, Grammar And Reception, Ioannis Kaminis, Nikos Kouremenos

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper examines the life, theology, and ecumenical legacy of Protopresbyter Dr. Stefan Tsankov (1881-1965), a leading Bulgarian Orthodox theologian and one of the earliest Orthodox pioneers of the modern ecumenical movement. Situating Tsankov within the broader trajectory of twentieth-century Orthodoxy, the study traces his biographical formation, academic career, and active participation in key inter-Christian and inter-Orthodox forums, including the Faith and Order and Life and Work movements. Particular attention is given to his theological “grammar” of ecumenism: a vision grounded in the catholicity of the Church, the inseparability of unity and doctrinal truth, and an irenic ethos marked by …

Spa 309 - Spanish Advanced Grammar, Beatriz Lado, Evelyn Duran-Urrea, Tania Avilés

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is a work in progress developed by Tania Avilés, Evelyn Durán Urrea, and Beatriz Lado. We adapt the traditional grammar-focused course to introduce the study of the Spanish language through a critical sociolinguistic and language-education lens. This approach responds more directly to the needs of our students, many of whom speak language varieties that have historically been stigmatized or marginalized and are training to become Spanish-language teachers.

Students will examine the structure and grammar of Spanish across key domains, including phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, and variation. At the same time, the course situates this structural knowledge …

Spa300 - Introducción A Los Estudios Literarios En Español, Marco Ramirez

Open Educational Resources

Este libro constituye una selección de textos que pueden utilizarse para un curso introductorio a los estudios literarios en español. Los textos seleccionados cubren obras y fragmentos de tres géneros literarios principales: poesía, narrativa y teatro. Este es un material OER y reúne textos de acceso abierto.

Cafe Ava - Observational Study & Brand Analysis, Laura Romero

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

This project explored Cafe© Ava, a popular coffee shop in Cranston, Rhode Island, as a case study in influencer marketing, market research, and analytics, with a heavy focus on consumer behavior. The study examined the cafe© owner's dual role as an entrepreneur and micro-influencer, with an emphasis on prior brand partnerships and branding strategies through social media, specifically TikTok and Instagram. The project analyzed the cafe©'s location, menu offerings, and service experience within a marketing research and analytics framework. Using an observational study as the primary methodology, the project evaluated how aesthetic choices and cultural influences contributed to brand perception …