Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Finding Futures: Refusing Canva And The Homogenization Of The D.I.Y. Political Post(Er), Cassidy Bensko

Scripps Senior Theses

The convergence of corporate technology and subversive political expression is not new. Canva, like Xerox, is but another made-for-the-office technological innovation employed to political ends. Its ease-of-use has made it a staple tool for students, office workers, event planners, and political organizers alike. However, it is easy to use because it eliminates the need for creative decision-making, empowering users to quickly and easily produce designs that all look the same. This paper asks: Is the homogenization of D.I.Y. political posters, a medium that has historically been characterized by design elements that are as subversive as the politics they represent, indicative …

“Ignorance Is No Excuse”: Reproducing The Normative Female Body Through Mass Consumerism In Post-Wwii Women’S Magazines, Hannah E. Lorenz-Meyer

Scripps Senior Theses

In the Post-War era, women’s magazines took on a key role in cultural production, publishing literature, non-fiction articles, and advice on everything from marriage to fashion. Women’s magazines served a a form of propaganda, promoting a specific form of femininity that upheld the status quo. And that form of femininity was overwhelmingly affluent and White. By establishing magazines as a solution to women’s personal problems, editors served to shape the image of the post-war American woman. Nowhere is this vision more intimate than the way it was applied to the female body and reproduction. In this thesis, I analyze how …

Preserving The Stolen: Cultural Appropriation And The Case Of Seattle's Totem Pole, Olga S. Koutroulis

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the cultural appropriation and conservation of the Chief-of-All-Women totem pole, originally stolen by Seattle businessmen from the Tlingit village of Tongass in 1899 and later reinstalled in Pioneer Square as a symbol of the city. By framing the totem pole as a site of both physical and cultural displacement, I trace its journey from sacred object to public monument, and ultimately to federally funded replica. Drawing on conservation theory, oral history, archival research, and an interview with Haida artist Sondra Segundo, I argue that the pole’s removal, replication, and continued display reflect broader patterns of settler colonialism …

My Grandpa: How One Man Changed Our Life, Jada Shavers

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis uses argumentation, personal essay, letters, and writing about feelings to recount stories of three generations of women (my grandmother, my mom, and myself) to ultimately explore the controversies of sexual violence. To establish this point, I use a combination of writing techniques to challenge the typical framework of a memoir and destabilize a linear retelling of events. I also complicate the narrative to allow the reader to question their own understanding of sexual violence; ultimately defining sexual violence as a loss of autonomy, a feeling that extends far beyond any single or recurring event, and something that never …

Find My Friends: Location-Sharing Ideologies And Peer Surveillance Practices, Nayla Dayal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the use of Find My Friends in the context of the Claremont Colleges. Students choose to location-share under initial rhetorical justifications of social reciprocity, and community-orientedness, and peer-safety. Drawing from ethnographic interviews conducted with users at the colleges, I argue that the infrastructure of Find My Friends in conjunction with the social and physical proximities of the Claremont environment creates a distinctive condition where users are subject to what I term as a “virtual, neoliberal, and participatory panopticon.” Here, users are seemingly empowered through the application’s neutralizing collapse of reciprocity and hierarchy that are seen in conventional …

Representing Childhood: Abstraction And Aesthetics Of Simplicity In Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day, Elle Propp

Scripps Senior Theses

The central question driving this project is not “Is The Snowy Day art?”—a question that risks reifying the very hierarchies this thesis seeks to trouble—but rather: What might it mean to treat this picturebook as an art historical object? What must be addressed in the discipline’s practices, priorities, and self-conceptions to engage such work with rigor and care? How can we analyze the picturebook as an art object?

2025-2026 Risd Course Catalog, Risd Registrar's Office, Risd Archives

RISD Course Catalogs / Announcements

No abstract provided.

The Kids Aren't Alright: "Indie Sleaze Revival" And The Commodification Of Subcultures On Social Media, Lauren Mar

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2012, the “indie sleaze” subculture is accepted to have “died” — the same year Facebook bought Instagram. Named retroactively by social media in 2021, the “indie sleaze” subculture and its “revival” online provides a rich ground for investigating how and why social media converts subculture into aesthetics. Drawing on Dick Hebdige’s 1979 theory of subculture, this project considers new understandings of the political, aesthetic, and affective relationships between digital media and subcultures. In examining the evolution of “indie sleaze” from its origins and manifestations in an escapist party scene of the aughts to its online simulations from 2021 to …

Reckoning With The Cowboy: Justice, Trauma, And The Myth Of Freedom In Be The Cowboy, Abbie Oh Arroyo

Scripps Senior Theses

Be the Cowboy interrogates the romanticized myth of the cowboy as a symbol of justice and freedom through the lens of racialized and gendered trauma. Centered on two Korean American sisters, the film explores the aftermath of a sexual assault and the ensuing quest for justice, highlighting the emotional and ethical tensions between retribution and healing. Drawing from postcolonial, trauma, and feminist theory, the project critiques the cowboy archetype’s historical entwinement with white patriarchy, colonial violence, and the aestheticization of marginalized suffering. By reimagining the Western genre through a racialized and gendered perspective, Be the Cowboy challenges dominant cultural narratives …

Influencias Intergeneracionales De La Italianidad En La Vida Doméstica Y En La Esfera Pública De Argentina: Un Análisis De La Lingüística, La Comida Y La Identidad, Sage A. Wong-Davies

Scripps Senior Theses

In Argentina there are many people of Italian heritage due to the large wave of Italian immigration at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century. Through personal interviews and analyses of preexisting research, this thesis examines how the Italian influence has become incorporated in Argentinian culture on a national level and in the family culture of Argentinians with Italian heritage. This thesis specifically considers the Italian influence in Argentina through the lenses of linguistics and language, food, and identity. It determines that “italianidad” is very integrated in Argentinian culture in all of these …

Love Is Dead In The Restless West: Hippies, Manson, And California Culture, 1966-1970, Rebecca Allen

Scripps Senior Theses

Though an extreme aberration from most of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, Charles Manson’s ultimately murderous cult arguably represents something particular about American culture in the late sixties, in which youthful hostility towards the status quo sometimes grew radical, and in the case of the Manson Family cult, extremely violent. By the mid-sixties, more and more young people began to feel alienated by a culture they felt no longer embodied their larger aspirations, and as a result, were drawn to the emerging counterculture that embraced alternative lifestyles that frequently clashed with the traditional sensibilities of their parents’ generation. After …

Of Monsters And Men: Fantasy, Aesthetics, And The Nation In Pan's Labyrinth (2006) And The Shape Of Water (2017), Ally Fleming

Scripps Senior Theses

ABSTRACT: Guillermo del Toro has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most beloved filmmakers due to his ability to blend popular genres with arthouse flair. This is especially true when it comes to fairy tales, a common thread woven throughout his films that are consistently imbued with political commentary on authoritarianism. This is most apparent in two of his most critically acclaimed films, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017). Part of why these films are so beloved is how they utilize popular culture not just as tools to foreground the story’s setting, but also to guide the …

Recovering Twice: An Autoethnographic Account Of Healing As An Injured Athlete, Aleksa Allen

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This autoethnographic thesis explores the deeply personal and culturally embedded experience of injury, recovery, and identity as a collegiate athlete. It foregrounds the psychological toll of physical injury, the silence around disordered eating in athletics, and the gendered dynamics that render certain injuries and bodies invisible. This narrative is not meant to stand in for every athlete’s experience, but to ask what one individual experience reveals about the broader systems collegiate athletes inhabit. These systems are shaped by performance-based expectations, disposability, and silence. Drawing from lived experience, I trace my own trajectory as an athlete through the tightrope of recruitment, …

The Ascendance Of Influencers: Saints Of Capitalism In The Digital Age, Riley R. Hourihan

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This thesis examines the rise of social media influencers as modern-day saints within the cultural and economic framework of late capitalism. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from religious studies, media theory, and cultural criticism, it argues that influencer culture does not replace religion but retools its structures—ritual, authority, devotion, and community—for the digital age. Through detailed case studies ranging from Hailey Bieber and Taylor Swift to Ballerina Farm and MrBeast, the paper explores how influencers shape identity, mediate ethics, and mobilize affect through algorithmic rituals and parasocial relationships. Influencers perform a form of digital sanctity that parallels traditional hagiography, guiding followers …

Covid-19'S Impact On Grocery Expenditure Amid The Rise Of Social Media's Unattainable Wellness Culture Within Beverage Products, Ava Hinz

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores post-pandemic consumption through two different lens: economics and media studies. First, I will focus on COVID-19’s impact on the expenditure of grocery goods. Then I will explore how today’s wellness culture is made unattainable through social media by examining an organic grocery store and two beverage products. By examining these two areas of consumption, it provides critical information on an individual’s consumption during the unique shocks of the pandemic and the cultural context behind those actions.

Cashing In Or Giving Back: The Role Of Film Tax Incentives In The Cultural Impact Of Runaway Productions, Karolina Krok

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the internationalization of Hollywood through economic and creative runaway productions driven by international tax incentives. It examines how these incentives can impact not only the commercial but the cultural success of productions filmed abroad, focusing on regions such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, California, New York, and New Jersey. The analysis centers on cultural tests and diversity requirements, revealing two main approaches: the first requires a minimum of diversity standards and cultural tests points to be met, while the second prioritizes and rewards productions with the highest achieved assessment of those. Furthermore, …

The Politics Of Fear: Exploring Diversity And Representation In The Modern Horror Genre, Abbie Oh Arroyo

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the horror films and how they have been politicized in the context of modern day poiltics (2017-2021). Works suchs as Jordan Peele's Get Out, Jayro Bustamante's La Llorona, and Nia DaCosta's Candyman are used as case studies that analyze how these films may have been shaped by the political happenings of their time as well as how these films are used as a medium of advocacy and for social commentary.

Let's Talk About Sex: Investigating Radical Feminist Theories On Prostitution In The United States, Anna E. Peterson

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the feminist debates surrounding prostitution through an analysis of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s abolitionist theories, juxtaposed with critiques from Wendy Brown, Janet Halley, Susie Bright, and Marxist feminist abolitionist Esperanza Fonseca. The text examines the systemic forces of patriarchy and capitalism that commodify women’s bodies and the challenges of legislative approaches to the sex trade. While MacKinnon and Dworkin identify the structural inequalities underpinning prostitution, their legislative proposals often fail to address the stigma and systemic conditions that perpetuate the marginalization of prostituted people. Critics like Brown and Halley highlight the limitations of punitive measures, calling …

Mark 6:30-44, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Week 4: The Family Expands, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision, Sandra M. Alba Jimenez

Student Papers (English)

No abstract provided.

Unveiling The Vulnerability Of Return Migration: A Feminist Embeddedness Perspective On Bangladeshi Women Workers, Faraha Nawaz, Tania Afrin Tonny

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study explores the vulnerability of migrant workers returning to Bangladesh through the lens of van Houte and Davids’ (2008) embeddedness framework. Centering women’s narratives offers a feminist method of embeddedness, focusing on the economic, social, and psychosocial dimensions of returning migrants’ experiences. This paper addresses the vulnerabilities experienced by women upon their return, particularly those returning from the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 30 Bangladeshi women domestic workers, this study identifies two primary causes for their return from the Middle East to Bangladesh: coercion by family members and coercion by employers. The findings indicate …

Directing The Temperamentals: Exploring Identity, Activism, And Historical Resonance In Lgbtq+ Theater, Eric E. Parrish

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis presents an in-depth analysis and directorial approach to Jon Marans' play, The Temperamentals, which dramatizes the early struggles of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in 1950s America. The production focuses on the personal and political dynamics surrounding the formation of the Mattachine Society, one of the first sustained gay rights organizations in the United States, through the lives of its co-founders, Harry Hay and Rudi Gernreich. This analysis explores the relevance of the plays' themes in the contemporary socio-political landscape by exploring the interaction of personal identity, societal repression, and collective activism depicted in the play. These chapters detail …

Heiniboxitittel, Harry Ritchie

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This exhibit can be considered a sort of parody of an average gallery exhibition. Sacrilegious elements such as shoddy hand-written labels, tilted shelves, and lack of measurement call attention to the standard formula of a visual art exhibit. Artists are meant to think outside the box, but many adhere to strict guidelines when it comes to showcasing artwork. Everything must be just so.

But expecting perfection leads to disappointment. Having an exact plan means things will go wrong. This exhibition challenges conventional notions of beauty and shows that some of the most truly beautiful things in the world happen not …

Critical Discourse Analysis Of Metoo Activism Representation In Nepalese News Coverage: Privileged Bodies, Masculine Gaze, And Absentees Others, Grisha Mainali

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Alongside other women of the world, Nepalese women have been fighting against gender violence and sexual harassment to create a violence-free society for decades. In 2017, the MeToo movement took a turn by becoming a transnational digital movement with 85+ countries adopting and localizing the movement. Despite hundreds of women participating in the movement, the documentation of the MeToo movement in Nepal has primarily been limited to a few newspapers and news articles. This research addresses a gap in scholarship in documenting the Nepali movement and focuses on the case study of the MeToo movement in Nepal to explore how …

Beyond Catharsis: The Evolution Of Popular Tragedy In Video Game Narratives, Nicole E. Chancey

Master’s Theses

“Beyond Catharsis: The Evolution of Popular Tragedy in Video Game Narratives,” establishes a connection between traditions of Tragedy and video game narratives, arguing that the ways in which tragedy manifests within interactive media is an extension and development of previous, more formal understandings of Tragedy. Using Oxenfree (2016), Elden Ring (2022), and Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), this thesis claims video games feature adaptations of traditional tragedy and catharsis that expand the genre. Through players directly instigating the action of the game, the allowances and limitations of the player’s agency, and the instances of misfortunate fates, interactive narratives translate tragic concepts—outlined …

Transformer-Based Symbolic Music Generation, Ben Buentello

Master’s Theses

This thesis investigates the capacity of transformer-based architectures to learn generalized musical patterns through symbolic generation. To support this exploration, a complete music generation pipeline was developed, beginning with the construction and classification of a large-scale dataset of over 170,000 MIDI files. The dataset was processed using rule-based heuristics and custom neural classifiers to separate tracks by musical function and contour. A novel tokenization scheme, MINTii, was introduced to encode musical information compactly through interval-based representations, reducing redundancy and promoting generalization. Using this infrastructure, a transformer model was trained to generate single-track melodic sequences. Its performance was evaluated through both …

Queer Life In Nineteenth-Century America: A Historical Literature Review, Vivian Wright

SURF Posters 2025

In recent political discourses, queerness has often been treated as a modern phenomenon, and many people tend to think of queerness as a twentieth-century invention. Historians, however, have shown this to be false; an extensive amount of historical work details the lives of those who did not conform to sexual or gender norms in nineteenth-century America. This review surveys such works, analyzing nearly twenty different works spanning the course of nearly fifty years. By examining these works chronologically, the development of the field of queer history can be understood in the context of social and political developments occurring in the …

U.S. And Russian Responses To The Syrian Civil War: A Comparative Analysis, Grace Dewitt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Syrian Civil War was among the most devastating conflicts in the 21st century and was defined by the involvement of various international actors, including the United States (U.S.) and Russia. The Syrian conflict was sparked by the Arab Spring movement. The Asad regime, which controlled the Syrian government at the time of the Arab Spring, reacted violently to the civilian protests and calls for reform. This led to the formation of organized rebel groups, creating a complex and violent civil war. The U.S. and Russia, as well as other international actors such as Turkey and Iran, became involved in …

Dismembering The Final Girl: Examining The Shifting Trope In Contemporary Horror Films, Abby Divine

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research explores gender representation in horror films as it moves away from representation shaped by the male gaze and, instead, showcases social values related to current feminist movements. While the horror genre is largely considered to be lacking complex messages or social commentary, many contemporary horror films actually utilize well-known tropes to cultivate a larger discussion on social issues. With the rise of the slasher film in the 1970s and 1980s, the character of the Final Girl was popularized. These final surviving female victims are usually defined by a constricting set of rules; however, newer trends in horror films …