Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Bridging The Gap: The Intersection Of Ai And Music, Brandon X. Porter

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

A Seasoned Artist Tells All, Andrew Saavedra

LYNKD Magazine

The Illustrator and Comic Book Artist Inspires His Students in the Classroom and Beyond

To Whom Is The Chaplain Beholden? Guest Editor Introduction To Special Issue, Jordan Mason

Funded Scholarship

In this issue of Christian Bioethics, we invite chaplains and theologians to examine the role of the hospital chaplain in the contemporary institutional setting of the hospital. The simplicity of the chaplain’s role is often taken for granted; yet, this role is actually multivalent, with duties and loyalties pulling from many different sides. Chaplains are people of faith, ordained and/or endorsed ministers, and pastoral care professionals; they are at once beholden to God, to their own faith expression, and to their sense of vocation, to the hospital, and to the patient. With various loyalties and responsibilities in mind, we must …

Metaontological Dismissive Strategies: Implications And Applications In Metaphysics Of Race And Gender, Ethan F. Stumpp

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Metaontological discourse, inquiring into the nature, methodology, and aims of ontology, has functioned as the war ground for those skeptical of ontological projects against those who believe that ontological inquiry is substantive (i.e., meaningful, important, worth pursuing). I call the inquiry which engages in determining criteria to distinguish substantive from nonsubstantive inquiry/discourse: “the metaphysics of discourse”. In this project, I identify three frameworks in the metaphysics of discourse: Easy Ontology, The “Merely Verbal” Framework, and Metaphysical Structuralism. My primary concern is to show that these discourse frameworks or dismissive strategies all fail to provide sufficient criteria to properly delineate substantive …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Shaping Modern Europe: Evaluating Napoleon Bonaparte's Governance And Impact On European Statecraft, William R. Thurman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores Napoleon Bonaparte’s profound impact on Europe, examining the leadership, military strategies, and reforms that reshaped European governance and law. Retracing Napoleon’s rise to power from the chaos of the French Revolution to the height of the Empire, it highlights the political acumen and strategic genius that enabled him to seize power and dominate Europe. Napoleon's reign is illustrated both as a quest for power and as a transformative movement to modernize Europe through systematic reforms in administration, law, and education.

Central to Napoleon’s vision was the Napoleonic Code, which revolutionized legal systems around the world by emphasizing …

Cultivating Desire: Media Technologies In Fashion Branding, Jad Gorman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the symbiotic relationship between media technologies and fashion branding, examining how the latter is increasingly mediated. In an age where digital platforms dominate, designers have adapted by utilizing a range of media technologies to cultivate desire and construct their perception and identities. The main argument is that media technologies are not just tools for communication but active agents in shaping their brand narratives and consumer perceptions. Whether that be a cult fanbase, reaching a wide consumer audience, or creating anticipation for a certain item, the use of media is often more important than the consumer object itself. …

Divided By Design? Urban Renewal’S Differential Impacts On Economic Outcomes By Race, Derik Suria

CMC Senior Theses

I study city-level effects of the federally and state-sponsored urban renewal program that aimed to improve living conditions for residents in blighted areas and slums. I use an interdisciplinary approach to estimate urban renewal effects on measures of income, property value, poverty, and employment. I first replicate the methodology and estimates of urban renewal effects on city outcomes in 1980 from Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal in the United States (Collins and Shester 2013). I extend this research by looking at a longer time horizon (1990, 2000, 2010) and incorporating race-based outcomes. From 1980 to 2010, estimated effects on property …

The Evolution Of Love: The Concept Of True Beauty In Plato’S Symposium And Phaedrus, Miranda Zhao

CMC Senior Theses

Love, a concept revered across cultures and time, holds multifaceted meanings and roles in human experience. Plato, in his dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus, offers profound insights into the nature of love. However, Plato’s conception of love has been subject to criticism, with many viewing it as selfish, objectifying, and lacking in interpersonal connections. Central to these criticisms is the question of whether the lover’s affection for the beloved persists after grasping the concept of true beauty. In this thesis, I delve into Plato’s idea of love as presented in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aiming to demonstrate that Platonic …

Reconceiving Tort Law And The Role Of Insurance: Achieving Mutual Accountability, Grace Hong

CMC Senior Theses

Despite insurance being a deciding factor in whether liability is found in tort cases, it is not always reflected in tort theories and court opinions. In this paper, I offer a framework for reconceiving the role of insurance in tort law. To achieve this, I outline where insurance falls into instrumental and non-instrumental theories and why non-instrumental theories are more persuasive. After establishing this, I move to Goldberg and Zipursky’s civil recourse theory and delineate how similarities between the right to vote and right of action indicate parallel problems with failures to comprehend lack of access to the political process …

Unselfing Love: An Analytical Account Of Personal Love And Its Compatibility With Other-Regarding Love, Fangyi(Steve) Wang

CMC Senior Theses

There is a wealth of philosophical literature on love. The two main camps of literature are descriptive and analytical. The former aims to best synthesize and describe how people manifest love in real life, while the latter takes the normative position of evaluating how people should be loving, which normally blends love with a hint of ethical or justice related principles.

One hidden theme that underlies many of the debates on love is the relation to the lover’s self. As this paper will gradually unfold, there are many self-interested reasons disguised behind the philosophical definition of love and the reason …

Between Self And Others: The Pursuit Of Legitimate Interests For Service-Based Identities, Joelle Min

CMC Senior Theses

American psychologist Carol Gilligan's work reveals that the socialization of women often emphasizes an ethics of care, which is largely overlooked in traditional theories of moral development that prioritize justice and universal moral principles. This gendered distinction in socialization not only enables women to develop a service-based identity—where their self-value is intertwined with serving others—but also exposes them to exploitation. Such identities risk subordinating personal needs to the needs of others, making individuals susceptible to neglecting their own legitimate interests. These individuals have a service-based identity, as they value service to others so highly that their personal needs are often …

Riqueza Por Decreto: The Role Of Politics In Shaping The Banking Industry Of Pre-Revolutionary Mexico, Daniel Lorenzen

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the nexus between politics and banking in pre-revolutionary Mexico, particularly during the Porfirian era. It scrutinizes how political entities molded the banking sector to consolidate authority and dictate economic policy. Through an analysis of historical documents, financial records, journal articles, and expert interviews, the study delineates the profound influence of legislative reforms on the evolution of Mexico's financial landscape and power structures.

Dark As Day, Rachel Keady

CMC Senior Theses

“All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles... unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing... better than to follow nature." - Caravaggio

In the fall of 2021, I registered to take “Italian Baroque Art” with Professor Gorse at Pomona College, for the spring of 2022. Professor Faggen, one of my advisors, encouraged this and piqued my interest in the characters of this world. After some casual online research, I was transfixed by one artist in particular: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. How could I not be struck …

Auden: Body/Mind, Basil Lloyd-Moffett

CMC Senior Theses

On one hand Auden appears the most cerebral of poets. It is said that when he arrived at school, aged eight, he professed himself excited to study the different psychological types, and the cryptic verse that was to emerge over a decade later bears the scars of his reading, psychological or otherwise, as clearly as the relentlessly analytical Dichtung und Wahrheit and other late works.Absorbing and repurposing philosophical, psychological, religious, and scientific works was an essential part of his artistic strategy, and led to credible accusations of plagiarism on a number of occasions.And just as his collaborators and friends mocked …

Mexicanidad Y Negritud: Tracing The Cultural And Legal Exclusion Of Afro-Descendants In México., José A. Chiquito

CMC Senior Theses

In 2019, the Mexican National Congress amended Article 2 of the national constitution to recognize Afro-descendants as part of Mexico’s pluricultural constitution and grant them collective rights. With this, Mexico joined a group of five other Latin American countries to explicitly recognize Afro-descendants in the text of their constitution. Current Latin American scholarship analyzes Afro-descendant inclusion resulting from the creation of new multicultural constitutions. This literature, however, fails to take into consideration those cases where Afro-descendant inclusion happened via reforms to an existing constitution. This paper contributes to existing literature on constitutional multiculturalism by analyzing why the Mexican government recognized …

Health Politics, Covid-19, And The Vaccine: A Comparison Of How Germany And The U.S. Cultivated Public Trust During The Covid-19 Pandemic., Kai Gundlach

CMC Senior Theses

Public trust is important during an ongoing crisis as it determines people’s compliance with government mandates and laws. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Germany and the U.S. operated with different levels of public trust and people placed their trust in different public institutions. My thesis examines how political tactics such as fear, use of science, and expert pronouncements impacted public trust and the COVID-19 response in both countries.

Traditional Chinese Medicine: Employing Integrative Medicine As An Approach To Treat Cancer, Jade Hudson

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) through its depiction in the four classics of TCM and examines the evolution of the field to date. The five categories of TCM treatments analyzed in this paper include acupuncture, dietary therapy, herbal medicine, moxibustion, and physical exercise. Research highlights significant positive outcomes in cancer patients who incorporate TCM alongside modern cancer treatments, such as reduced nausea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, pain, and improvements in quality of life and overall well-being. However, notable risks associated with TCM herbal medicine and moxibustion underscore the need for further research into these practices before …

Views Around The Ring, Patrick Wilson

CMC Senior Theses

My thesis shows the visuals and sound aesthetics of the video game series Halo. For my thesis, I created a 7-and-a-half-minute abstract video containing cutscenes in-game visuals over music from the different games, with an accompanying essay talking about the game and my video. I created this thesis because Halo was and still is a game that has been with me most of my life and I wanted to capture what I thought was important to the game. I achieved this through mixing soundtracks and editing in-game footage and cutscenes together. I learned that creating an abstract video takes a …

The People Are A-Changin’: The Political Groupings That Built American Folk And Country Music, Nicholas Taubenheim

CMC Senior Theses

Since the Civil War, American folk and country music have become deeply political cultural mediums. This thesis posits that the history of the folk-country family can be broken down into three distinct “eras.” During the first era, the post-Civil War South gave rise to a new form of “Dixie,” or “hillbilly” folk music derived from traditional European folk ballads. In the second era, the Dust Bowl migrants of Southern California pioneered the “Okie” sound, which built upon Dixie/hillbilly music. And in the third era, the political and cultural dissidents of the 1960s produced a new type of folk music in …

Analyzing The Mental Health Realities Among Daca Recipients Within The Mexican Community, Oscar Javier Gonzalez

CMC Senior Theses

Immigration to the United States, particularly from Mexico, has resulted in a significant population of undocumented individuals residing in the nation. Among them are those who arrived in the U.S. as children, with some eligible for protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, offering temporary relief from deportation and government benefits. This thesis analyzes the historical context of immigration and the DACA program, focusing on the often-overlooked experiences and mental health realities encountered by Mexican DACA recipients. These experiences encompass the pursuit of the American Dream, deportation fears, family separation, challenges in accessing government services, navigating the …

For Richer Or Poorer: The Warren Court's Relationship To Socioeconomic Class, Nicole Jonassen

CMC Senior Theses

The U.S. Constitution does not enshrine socioeconomic rights. Why does this matter? Many argue that socioeconomic rights have value in and of themselves because they secure certain minimum conditions of human dignity, but socioeconomic rights also have instrumental value because abject material deprivation often makes traditional political and civil rights meaningless. In this thesis, I explore the relationship between U.S. constitutional law and socioeconomic rights through an analysis of the Warren Court’s decisions regarding socioeconomic class. In Chapter 1, I present existing literature on socioeconomic rights, socioeconomic rights in the American context, and what many scholars see as the Warren …

Your Anonymous Words Matter: The Harms Of Internet Anonymity And Its Inhibiting Effects On Producing Knowledge, Sena Selby

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I will argue against Karen Frost-Arnold’s claim that internet anonymity has more epistemic benefit than epistemic harm for online communities. I will first outline her arguments that anonymity poses epistemic benefits for speakers of marginalized communities, who often rely on anonymity to share their experience and testimony without fear of repercussions, such as testimonial injustice, backlash, and even physical harm. I will then consider objections to Frost-Arnold’s account made by others, including the idea that anonymous testimony is not reliable. I will show how this objection alone is insufficient against Frost-Arnold’s claim. Then, I will offer my …

Nazism And Eric Voegelin’S Politische Religionen: An Approach To Exploring Nazism’S Roots In Modern Thought, Cody R. Babcock

CMC Senior Theses

The Holocaust shook the core assumptions many held regarding human progress and human nature. This paper seeks to track how the ideas of modernist philosophers may have laid the fundamental political and moral assumptions that allowed the Holocaust to occur. I will offer an analysis of 20th century German-American political scientist and philosopher Eric Voegelin’s theory of Political Religions to assess whether philosophy emerging from the Modern era led Germany to eschew Christianity, a world-transcendent religion as the source of the West’s “first principles,” and adopt the world-imminent religion of Nazism in its place. If this proves to be the …

Recognition And Domination: A Hegelian Approach To Evolving Gender And Technology Paradigms, Zachary Davis

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to develop a strong account of recognition. It begins with a Hegel-inspired account of recognition as a fundamental desire that drives humanity. This account establishes recognition as fundamental to the initial subject formation of independent self-consciousnesses as agents. I offer the lord-bondsman dualism to provide a critique of domination as oppositional to securing the means for recognition. This entails that, as history progresses the world ought to move towards universally adopting mutual recognition relationships without domination. I adopt this goal as an ideal form of recognition. In Chapter 2, I apply this recognitional framework to gender. Through …

Unveiling The Unseen: A Feminist Exploration Of Consciousness And Empowerment Among Homeless Women Through Consciousness-Raising, Scarlett Liu

CMC Senior Theses

Homeless women have been forgotten subject matter in the study and practice of feminist consciousness and consciousness-raising efforts. However, they grapple with the compounded challenges of both gender and homelessness within an oppressive societal structure. This thesis therefore seeks to conceptualize the consciousness of women, and particularly homeless women, in a feminist lens. Specifically, this thesis explores the Othering of women’s consciousness through the intellectual lineage of Simone de Beauvoir and Hegel, and emphasizes the role of material circumstances in shaping consciousness-raising efforts. Then, this thesis examines two unique struggles faced by homeless women – survival sex and homeless motherhood. …

Penelope: Our Cunning Hero, Rossana Leal

CMC Senior Theses

In the literary world, Homer’s Odyssey has served as a fundamental text in the Western canon. It was influential to great writers such as Virgil and Dante, along with being a significant influence in Ancient Greek religion. The subject of both mystery and celebration, Homer remains one of the most prominent authors in literary history. His work has received several interpretations over the years. This thesis takes a feminist and modern approach to the epic poem, focusing on Penelope as the protagonist of the epic and argues for her status as not just an equal partner for her husband, but …

Does The Constitution Follow The Flag? The Paradox Of Puerto Rican Identity And Citizenship, Laura Somoza Velez

CMC Senior Theses

How do identity and citizenship interact? Puerto Rico’s current political status is that of an unincorporated, organized territory of the United States, under the shiny title of ‘Commonwealth.’ Although they have US Citizenship, Puerto Rican residents aren’t protected by the US Constitution. This source of dual identification, American and Puerto Rican, creates a unique circumstance where questions of identity, and belonging naturally arise. In this thesis, I aim to answer how the citizenship condition created in Puerto Rico and how it is experienced measure up to current debates and scholarship surrounding citizenship. Achieved through a historical analysis of the formation …

Savage Tales: The Colonialist Narratives Underpinning Indigenous Genocide, Riley Green

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the settler-colonialist supremacist narratives - religious, racial, and civilizational - wielded in the territories that would become Australia, Canada, and the United States to justify displacing and killing Indigenous Peoples. The narratives and their effects persist: contemporary disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples reveal the narratives' institutionalization, as do modern incarnations of the same legitimizing tropes in Australian, Canadian, and US domestic and foreign policies.

Vision, Love, And The Church: An Analysis Of Key Themes In William Blake's Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience, Anna Tolkien

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis engages in a close reading and interpretation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The first chapter examines his visionary imagery, symbolism, and language in The Songs. The second chapter explores his nuanced views on love and sexuality – addressing both a pure, mutually pleasurable love as well as a darker, destructive form of love. Lastly, I discuss his critique of the Church as a repressive and corrupt institution. In each chapter I draw from both Blake’s poetry and visual art. Through this extensive study of Blake’s Songs, I present crucial insights on …