A Curriculum Of Civic Responsibility : Transitioning Black American Students To College-Level Writing., Jamila M. Kareem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers how racialized differences educational experience transition with Black students as they perform the expectations of college writing curriculum. I address the question: in what ways can a first-year writing curriculum centered on civic responsibility aid in smoother transitions from secondary to postsecondary academic writing for Black students at predominantly White institutions? My study applies racial and critical race methodologies framed within the tenets of critical race theory, institutional whiteness, and the absent presence of race in composition studies. I apply the methodologies in three key ways: analyzing transition practices through racialized perspectives; evaluating general education writing curriculum …

His Scent Of Sandalwood., Lujain Almulla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis is a collection of fictional stories, connected by a common geographical and cultural thread: Kuwait. The stories unravel across a span of four thousand years. The poetic-prose style of the opening vignette is a nod to the earliest form of writing that makes up the bulk of Kuwait’s literature: poetry. The abstractedness of the two opening pieces reflects the lack of a deep-rooted national identity, and a brevity in Kuwait’s historical record. The remainder of the thesis explores the evolution of this national identity, as well as the infiltration of Western culture into modern Kuwait, and its …

Dead Places : American Horror, Placelessness, And Globalization., Katherine Ashley Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates particular American anxieties concerning cultural identity and place, particularly fears about America’s place (or lack thereof) within the global world, that can be seen throughout much of post-WWII American horror literature and film. More specifically, this project explores how an existent pattern of visual and narrative depictions of destroyed bodies and places illustrates larger tensions and fears about placelessness—the affect and effect of incomplete, partial, or inauthentic relationships with the places that provide cultural and individual identity and meaning. I argue that representations of placelessness within American horror texts become vehicles for addressing and signifying American fears …

Transversal Approaches And Ecological Artwork., Madison Deanna Sevilla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work explores systematic ecology as it relates to sculpture and language. This project exists in two parts: a written thesis and a thesis exhibition. Although both works explore ecological systems, Unseen: Visualizing Ecological Systems investigates visualizations and concepts of the ecological, whereas this thesis continues the exploration into the ramifications of disruptions in systems. Ecological systems such as the environmental, social/mental, economic, and political define the foundations of our known world and encapsulate all regions of society. No single system can function independently of the rest and all systems contain some aspect of human-system involvement. By using the work …

No Money In It, Lauren Burgess

Senior Honors Theses

This project consists of nineteen poems produced during my undergraduate career at the University of New Orleans. Issues concerning the female body; science (particularly astronomy and evolutionary theory); and theories about the creative process, capitalism, and relationships characterize the themes of this manuscript. Some poems are clearly part of the same narrative, while others are composed in various modes: epistle, address, self-definition, elegy, and lyric. This thesis includes prose and emblematic forms; there are poems styled after other poets and one composed entirely of “found” sentences. The poems consider what it means to be a young poet in 2017—a time …

Cultural Biases In The West And The Disadvantages Created For Eastern And Eastern-Influenced Art, Taylor Bowie

Senior Honors Theses

Culture has always had a substantial influence on how art is perceived and executed. Artists have, more often than not, let their own backgrounds and experiences influence the way their art is produced; those who merely view art form opinions about works through their own cultural understanding. What makes art and what their own backgrounds allow them to distinguish art as is often defined by cultural origins. My observation is that, in this new age, there are distinct cultural biases, particularly within the U.S., that create social pressures to produce certain types of art, and anyone who operates outside that …

Re::Humanity, Paisley Summer Ford

Senior Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Negative Dialectics And The Aesthetic Redemption Of The Postmodern Subject, Franklin Fehrman

Senior Honors Theses

The last half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, in the West, has been referred to as postmodern. Postmodernity represents a stage in a society after having passed through a nihilism, itself produced by the universal commodification inherent in late stage capitalism. Here we explore the progress of devaluation through Adorno’s negative dialects to ascertain the potential for truth and authenticity in the object. Informing Adorno’s negative dialectics, were Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Through their dialectics, Adorno postulated the effect of commodities, as objects, within the first part of the 20th century, and how the lack of potential …

Nihon Wa New Orleans No Ongaku Ga Daisukidesu (Japan Loves New Orleans’S Music): A Look At Japanese Interest In New Orleans Music From The 1940s To 2017, William Archambeault

Senior Honors Theses

Since the 1940s, music lovers and musicians in Japan has professed a strong interest in New Orleans music, particularly New Orleans jazz. This paper examines three ways in which this interest manifests itself: Japanese musicians immigrating to New Orleans, Japanese tourists visiting New Orleans, and sales of recorded and live New Orleans music in Japan. This paper primarily revolves around oral history interviews with Japanese musicians who immigrated in New Orleans. Additionally, this paper utilizes a combination of primary source and secondary source material to examine the history of Japanese interest in New Orleans music. By utilizing these sources, this …

Transnational Terrorism And The African Union: From Ideal Aspirations To Harsh Realities In Somalia And Mali, Vincent Pierre Cheramie

Senior Honors Theses

This paper will question why the African Union has been unsuccessful in confronting the rising issue of transnational terrorism. It looks at the history of both the Organization of African Unity and the African Union and examines the measures the two organizations have taken in preventing and combating terrorism. The particular history of African States and their relation to the term “terrorism” is discussed in this section. In this light, I analyze the African Union’s peacekeeping missions in both Somalia and Mali to determine why they have failed to stop the spread of transnational terrorism. In conclusion, I will discuss …

Beacon, Samantha Eroche

Senior Honors Theses

Beacon is a short, relatively low production value screenplay about two people coming to know each other better, about them coming to know themselves better and to grow as human beings. When Kate Clarence realizes she’s discovered the journal of her favorite pen-named author from childhood—“C. Rimes”—she embarks on a journey to return it to him, whoever he is. She’s delinquent on her rent, her bookshop’s failing, she’s far from her landlocked Midwest home and family, and she’s single; the obligation to return the journal is a welcomed adventure and reprieve. However, when she comes to the conclusion that C. …

Let It In And Let It Go, Sarah Warner

Senior Honors Theses

The following ten chapters comprise the beginning of a larger novel, one which focuses on a young woman’s journey to both accept the mistakes she has made and forgive herself for making them. Carson Cadwell returns to her small hometown after spending the last six months at college in the nearby big city. During this time her mother, who has struggled with breast cancer for years, has finally passed away. Carson, who cut off all contact with her family while she was at school, is now forced to face the reality of what she left behind. Carson, who moves into …

An Archaeological History Of Qumran: With An Explanation Of Archaeological Techniques, Christy Connell

Masters Theses

Khirbet Qumran is an archaeological site located on a plateau in Qumran National Park near the Dead Sea in Israel. Although it is a site rich in archaeological history and has been visited by tourists since the early nineteenth century, it only recently became a household name in the mid-twentieth century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves surrounding the plateau. While the Dead Sea Scrolls are generally the area of focus for most scholars, much archaeology has been done in Qumran focusing on the community and its ruins as well. This thesis focuses on the …

Silver Breathed Upon The Stage: The American Revolution As Drama And Mythology, Nathan Stone

Masters Theses

At the time of the American Revolution, several different intellectual influences were present within the American colonies: the classical tradition, taken from ancient Greece and Rome; Christianity, taken from the Bible and the Reformed, Calvinist tradition; and, Whig theory. The question that must be asked is: Were these different intellectual traditions brought together at the time of the American Revolution and, if so, by what means? By analyzing how the different traditions were present in the colonies as well as how the past was utilized through the eighteenth century understanding of time and history—particularly through the use of pseudonyms and …

Religious Identities In Southeastern Europe: Pomaks In Greece And Bulgaria: Behind The State Valance, Stefan Ubiparipović

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

First, I will briefly explain the important events that have coincided or strongly influenced Pomak identity during the twentieth century. Several Greek and Bulgarian state policies will be mentioned for they served as fierce attempts to essentially change Pomaks. This segment here will focus on the events that occurred between the end of World War I and shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. Next, this paper will focus on the period after the fall of communism in Europe and attempt to address the current state policies towards Pomaks. Bulgaria and Greece, as major Orthodox Christian countries, have distinct …

Hemingway And The Soča Front, Rebecca Johnston

English Department Theses

In 1918 Ernest M. Hemingway served along the Soča Front during the last months of the Great War. Better known as the Isonzo Front, the Soča Front was the battle lines between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. The history of this front is connected to the First World War from the very beginning. Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms (FTA), several of his poems, and the Nick Adams’ stories are all based on the First World War. For this reason, the study of the history behind the war is important in order to better understand Hemingway’s works connected …

Dance, Er, Ethan Alexander Munson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Dancer, Er, by E. Alexander Munson, is a personal account of an extraordinary journey through names and how we find home within them; the narrator struggles with his identity as family, language, asthma, hero arches, hero complexes, and dreams that turn into nightmares, all spiral together to create an unparalleled trip through the social and reclusive construction of this Wanna-be-Wolf, and/or the collective unconscious run rampant. There remains a question as to whether the dreams described have been random manifestations of the ego or messages from something more on the spiritual side of things. But as the narrator explores the …

The Terror Of The Political: Community, Identity, And Apocalypse In Don Delillo's Falling Man, Dillon Rockrohr

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Falling Man by Don DeLillo casts the event of 9/11 and its aftermath in such a way that the novel itself enacts an aesthetic terror aimed at explicating the ubiquitous social-atmospheric elements of community- and identity-formation out of which terror precipitates. As DeLillo figures terrorism in the novel as apocalyptic in that it is a violence that reveals the violence constitutive of political community, including the political community of liberal democracy, which ostensibly relegates violence to domains not considered legitimately political. DeLillo’s novel, as an act of aesthetic terrorism, not only thematizes the instantiation of terror that precipitates out of …

Ethics Of Care On The Narrative Margins Of Willa Cather’S The Professor’S House And Death Comes For The Archbishop, Jeannette E. Schollaert

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Willa Cather’s Southwestern novels feature cultured male protagonists as the driving sources of action. The male characters explore the natural world and advance the plot, but Cather positions female figures, particularly spinster figures, on the sidelines of the protagonists’ plots to offer support and connection with the natural world. Using an ethic of care framework and ecofeminist Val Plumwood’s master model, this thesis examines the ways in which Cather marginalizes female figures even as they serve crucial roles in the male protagonists’ development. While the male protagonists link spinster figures and sexualized feminine bodies with the natural world, they imbue …

A City Room Of One's Own: Elizabeth Jordan, Henry James, And The New Woman Journalist, James Hunter Plummer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis considers the portrayal of the female journalist in the works of Elizabeth Jordan and Henry James. In 1898, Jordan, a journalist and editor herself, published Tales of the City Room, a collection of interconnected short stories that depict a close and supportive community of female journalists. It is, overall, a positive portrayal of female journalists by a female journalist. James, on the other hand, uses the female journalists in The Portrait of a Lady, “Flickerbridge,” and “The Papers” to show his discomfort toward New Journalism and the New Woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These …

The Principles Of Universal Design For Learning Implemented In A Non-Profit Organization: The Discovery Center., Rose Albert

Capstone Collection

This capstone focuses on the implementation of Universal Design for Learning within The Discovery Center—a non-profit organization that provides educational programs for children in Connecticut. The intention of this capstone project is to raise awareness and share introductory knowledge around Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Universal Design for Learning is a framework that relays clear information for educators and people, in general, to mirror into their curricula to increase learning for multiple individuals (Rose, 2009). This paper proposes the adaptation of UDL into The Discovery Center (TDC) curriculum to increase access to students with different learning styles and abilities. TDC …

After The Fact: The Holocaust In Twenty-First Century Documentary Film By Brad Prager (Review), Margarete Landwehr

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Voices On Campus: Claire Culleton On Irish Art At The Olympic Games, Claire Culleton

Bridgewater Review

In January 2017, BSU’s Irish Studies Program celebrated Irish Cultural Heritage Day on campus, which included a book launch, student research and study-abroad presentations, and Irish musical and step-dancing performances. A keynote address was delivered by Professor Claire Culleton from Kent State University’s Department of English, who spoke from a text entitled “Representing Irish Art at the Olympic Games,” parts of which were published previously in Estudios Irlandeses (2014) and appear here with the editor’s permission. Excerpts of her talk are included.

I Directed Macbeth, And So Can You, Jason Flannery

Theses

Designed in the second year of my graduate studies, and rehearsed and performed in the autumn of my third, Macbeth served as my thesis production at Lindenwood University. In this paper, I will address the details of how the production came to light, my approach to developing the performance, what was learned throughout the nearly year-long endeavor, and how those lessons have shaped my relationship with the art of storytelling.

Vonnegut's Composite Work : The Importance Of Illustration In Breakfast Of Champions., Blake Schreiner

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This paper examines Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel, Breakfast of Champions, in the context of word-image theory and multimedia publication. Drawing from the critical discourse surrounding the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake, the paper discusses Vonnegut's experimentation with a "composite" work and re-evaluates the significance of the novel in light of this innovation.

The Problem Of Luck And Free Will : How Counterfactuals Can Help., Zach Smith

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

For free will theorists, the problem of luck has been a constant source of consternation. Peter van Inwagen presents a version immune to even agent-causal conceptions of free will. However, van Inwagen’s version of the problem can be avoided if there are true propositions taking the form of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. There are good reasons to think that there are, and no comparably good reasons to think that there are not. This defense is also resistant to common attacks based on foreknowledge and the grounding of the truth of these counterfactuals.

Cultivating Engagement Through Student-Centered Learning In A High School Media Art Class, Dyane Goldman

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Student-centered-learning is a broad term for an approach to education where students are independent, self-directed learners (Krueger, 2014). This active environment is invigorating, energizing and filled with students deeply engaged in the work at hand. Educators are leaning towards embracing methods that foster independence in their students and in turn, these methods are proving to be effective in cultivating an atmosphere of engagement in all types of learners.

This study assessed implementation of opportunities for self-directed learning, and evaluated student interest and engagement in classroom activities. A review of the literature indicates that adapting this approach can be effective in …

Participation In Amateur Orchestra And Subjective Well-Being In Korea: A Perspective From Community Music Therapy, Hyun-Jung Kang

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods research was to investigate which individual and external factors related to participation in an amateur orchestra influence members’ subjective well-being (SWB) and how those factors contribute to members’ SWB from a community music therapy (CoMT) perspective in South Korea. The study employed a sequential explanatory mixed-method design. Quantitative data were gathered from 126 members of nine amateur orchestras through a survey questionnaire including demographics and musical background, Perceived Values of the Amateur Orchestra Members (PVAOM), the Basic Psychological Needs Scales (BPNS), the Individualism and Collectivism Scale (INS-COL), and the Satisfaction with the Life Scale (SWLS). …

Analyzing The Role Of Income Inequality In American Political Polarization, Jake Wheeler

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Income inequality and political polarization have been thought to be connected for centuries, as it was first proposed, formally, in the 10th Federalist Paper, by James Madison, in 1787. Madison proposed the notion that when citizens become politically polarized, one must look towards individual ownership of property, or income. Political scientists have heeded Madison’s claim, and have continued studying how income inequality and political polarization interact, yielding a wide spectrum of results. While some studies have lacked conclusive evidence to show correlation or causation, some have found statistical significance when examining the effect of income disparities on political polarization.

Trade Up, Saumya Vasuthevan

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

There is a gap in the market, both on campus and in the industry, for a digital video series analyzing the latest media trends, beyond their headlines. Through accessible and highly snackable YouTube clips, Trade Up offers an in-depth analysis on how and why new media trends will affect young, media professionals, soon entering the industry. It is a peer-to-peer discussion, designed for Newhouse students, by Newhouse students. From AMC Theatres’ experimental virtual reality venture to Amazon Spark, our topics transverse the symbiotic worlds of advertising, technology, and television. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to tackling the media ecosystem, Trade Up …