Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Democratic Backsliding In The American States: The Case Of Judicial Independence, Meghan Leonard

Faculty Publications – Politics and Government

With ever-increasing gridlock and polarization at the national level, many new policy changes in the U.S. have come at the state level, including legislation that takes the form of democratic backsliding by restricting the right to vote, limiting free speech and expression, and gerrymandering state and federal legislative districts. A key component missing from scholarly discussion of federalism and the erosion of electoral democratic norms is the effect of federalism on the structure of institutions within the states, particularly on judicial independence. In this article, I examine the relationship between measures of democracy and introduction of court-curbing legislation in the …

Jerusalem, Mishmar Ha-Gvul St. A-9831, Rachel Waysman

Favissa: Past Archaeological Excavation Reports

In June 2024, a salvage excavation (Permit No. A-9831; map ref. 221120-36/634103-17; Fig. 1) was conducted in a residential building on a private plot at 5 Mishmar Ha-Gvul St. in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem, as part of a Tama 38 urban renewal project. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and funded by Meshi Y. K. Construction and Development Ltd., was directed by N. Rom, with the assistance of N. Nehama (administration), S. Baley and A. Patchuro (supervision), S. Halevi and V. Vasman (photogrammetry and modeling), O. Zakaim (drafting), Y. Shalev and Z. Kanias (Jerusalem …

Global Communities: The Potential Of Street Art And The Public Space, Elena Picech

The Coastal Review

This paper highlights the significance of physical proximity and the potentiality of socio-spatial situations as tools to enrich study abroad programs. Particular attention is given to street art and the public space. While, studying on-site can be somewhat uncomfortable, it can potentially prompt unique reflections, enhance student’s learning and encourage introspection. Being on-site provides the opportunity to come into contact and to connect with the physical objects and their environment. It enables a multisensory and immersive embodied experience. Leveraging art for communicative educational activities can facilitate a participatory experience, promote critical thinking and enhance cultural understanding.

The Femme-Fatale “Bear’Ing Her Teeth: The Relation Between Women And Animals In Prosper Mérimée’S Lokis, William B. Holley

The Coastal Review

Abstract: Many French fantastic texts from the nineteenth century employ the use of a femme-fatale to highlight and underscore the dangers inherit with the female figure. This can be seen in vampires, ghosts, fairies, and other supernatural phenomena wherein a female character takes on incredible attributes. Propser Mérimée’s Lokis offers readers a tale wherein those same female figures are given traits that resemble the traditional femme-fatale, but in doing so they highlight the deadly nature of the titular half-man/half-bear creature. This paper offers a reading of Lokis which brings together an understanding of the social and political climate in which …

Lights And Shadows - 2024, University Of North Alabama

Lights and Shadows

Art and Literature Magazine

Establishing A Museum At Washington State School For The Blind, Robert J. Schimelpfenig

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The Washington State School for the Blind (WSSB) contains archival collections that document over 100 years of school history and student life. These histories are preserved in scrapbooks, news clippings, photographs, and an assortment of bygone assistive technologies that demonstrate the evolution of blind education and its impact on students. As many of these objects have lingered for years in storage, collections from one of the oldest schools for the blind in the Western United States remain hidden. WSSB and the Washington State University (WSU) Vancouver Library have agreed to work together in partnership to establish a museum and archives. …

Retrospective Accessibility, Sally Brown, Nicole Fuller

Art in the Libraries Retrospective: 2015-2024

This section of the WVU Libraries Retrospective includes a statement on virtual programs and accessibility.

Retrospective Exhibition Additional Initiatives Section, Sally Brown, Lemley Mullett, Michael Sherwin

Art in the Libraries Retrospective: 2015-2024

The section of the WVU Art in the Libraries Retrospective (2015-2024) includes a summary of the program's special initiatives.

Retrospective: The Beginning, Section 1, Sally Brown, Linda Blake

Art in the Libraries Retrospective: 2015-2024

This section of the WVU Art in the Libraries Retrospective (2015-2024) exhibition includes the history of the Art in the Libraries Program, including the first exhibitions and the forming of the committee.

Intergenerational Practices Oral History Project, Christine Marks

Open Educational Resources

In this multi-lesson segment, we developed an oral history project on intergenerational practices. We began the semester by framing writing as a conversation to emphasize the dialogical nature of all writing. To prepare students for the practice of deep listening, we discussed an excerpt from Danielle Ofri’s What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, which highlights the role of the listener as co-creator of meaning. We also discussed the chapter “practice” from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Yiyun Li’s short personal essay “Orange Crush,” and Lily LaMotte and Ann Xu’s graphic novel Measuring Up to …

Jurgen Comics Contest Newspaper And Artwork - Fall 2023, Julia Martinez

Jurgen Banned Art Comics Contest

Digital edition of the Jurgen Comics Contest broadsheet newspaper celebrating the Fall 2023 Contest winners. The newspaper design and supplemental artwork were created by contest student editor Julia Martinez. Supplemental promotional materials include a poster for an online information session.

The Fall 2023 Jurgen Comics Contest invited VCU students to explore a specific historical incident of censorship or suppression of visual art, books, music, film or performance.

Alexander The Lynkestian And The Thracians At Thebes: A Note On The Tale Of Timokleia, Sulochana Asirvatham

Department of Classics and General Humanities Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The Thracians are a well-attested part of the Alexander’s army in Asia. But when, exactly, did they appear in the king’s force? The question is prompted by the story of Timokleia of Thebes, which is found in Plutarch (Alex. 12; De mul. virt. 24) and Polyainos (8.40) and happens to be the only source for Thracian presence in the Macedonian army before the Hellespont. During the Macedonian destruction of Thebes in summer 335, Timokleia is raped by a Thracian or a leader of the Thracians. The story is evidently designed to ennoble the figures of Alexander and Timokleia as idealized …

State Politics And Stress Amongst Lgbtq+ Students At Florida’S Private Colleges: A Psychological And Normative Analysis, Alise Fortune

Honors Program Theses

The recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ politics and policies in Florida pose potential risks to the mental health and well-being of Florida’s LGBTQ+ students. The present study surveyed LGBTQ+ students attending private colleges in Florida to measure their self-reported stress levels in comparison to non-LGBTQ+ students, the level at which they believed specific sources of stress contributed to their stress levels, their level of distress upon experiencing discrimination, their sense of sexual identity distress, and their awareness of and involvement in advocacy against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Survey results suggested that anti-LGBTQ+ politics in Florida and the personal lives (social and family …

Practically Pooh In Every Way: A Look At Disney's Effect On Winnie-The-Pooh Pre- And Post- Public Domain, Peyton Poitras

Honors Program Theses

On Jan. 1, 2022, A.A. Milne’s willy, nilly, silly old bear entered the public domain, but this paper will argue why Disney's version will most likely retain its longevity despite additional competition. Disney's franchise-ation of Winnie the Pooh has left their iteration of the bear at the forefront of audience's minds. While Disney's version retains its iconic image of the bear, however, the release of the character into the public domain will allow others to utilize the bear in new ways. Such opens the door to a new question: How should characters be treated after entering the public domain? This …

You Got That From Where?: Unpacking Art Imperialism In Western Museums Through The Seated Scribe And The Bust Of Nefertiti, Emmy Shouse

Honors Program Theses

This thesis examines how major Western museums perpetuate colonial narratives in their displays of cultural property through analyses of the displays of two ancient Egyptian antiquities–the Seated Scribe and the Bust of Nefertiti. Despite stated goals of decolonization, institutions like the Louvre and Neues Museum prioritize object presentations glorifying Western imperial excavations and acquisitions over providing historical and cultural context about the objects' Egyptian origins. Sparked by site visits to Egyptian museums and subsequent visits to Berlin’s Neues Museum and the Louvre in Paris, this thesis contrasts disappointing imperialist displays of Egyptian antiquities in European institutions to each object’s full …

The Kingdom Of God In Selected Christian Living Education Modules Viewed Through Jesus Of Nazareth’S Vision Of The Reign Of God, Romela D. Sanga, Ferdinand D. Dagmang

Theology Department Faculty Publications

This article offers a study of Jesus’ Vision of the Reign of God as a foundation for the Christian Living Education Modules. Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry during the Roman Empire’s rule should be part of existing modules on God’s Kingdom as this would clarify the context of discipleship and ministry. Jesus, who lived and proclaimed God’s ruling presence, will be better understood and also grasped as a model if he is examined through historically-grounded studies, especially those written by Richard Horsley and other authors who are identified with the ‘Christology from below’ approach. Horsley’s scholarly studies could assist in a …

Queering The Tropics: A Cartography Of Tropical Materialism, Queer Ecology & Spectral Tropicality, Christian Jil Benitez, Gregory Luke Chwala, Anita Lundberg, S. N. Nyeck

Filipino Faculty Publications

This special issue entitled “Queering the Tropics” explores how queering as a methodology and gender and sexuality as a critical rubric complicate the study of the tropics and conceptions of tropicality. It also engages with how the tropics as a worldly zone, and the notion of tropicality as simultaneously material and imaginary, reconfigure notions of queer sexuality. In other words, our aim has been to study how the tropical might queer queerness itself. This is to attempt to understand queer as a way to initiate and pursue critical encounters with the tropical world—indeed to begin queering the tropics. This first …

The Boy With The Pet Dog, Allan N. Derain, Christian Jil Benitez

Filipino Faculty Publications

Set at the beginning of the hot season in the Philippines, when heat starts to crawl on skin, the short fiction “The Boy with the Pet Dog” (“Ang Batang May Alagang Aso”) stages an encounter between the titular character and a young man from the province who intends to work on his family’s farm. Queerness figures in the narrative as intimately entangled with class, and becomes articulable only through a language made possible by the tropics itself, in the form of butterflies coming out of chrysalises, brown bodies glowing with sweat, and swiftlets flocking mango trees. At the heart of …

Forgetting Stories From The Islands, Jeju And Calauit, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The traumatic experiences of people from peripheral islands are susceptible to mnemocide. Such erasure of memory is facilitated by “defensive and complicit forgetting,” which, according to Aleida Assmann, leads to “protection of perpetrators.” My paper reflects on the vulnerability of traumas from the islands to mnemocide by looking into [1] the massacre of communists and civilians on Jeju Island, South Korea in 1948 as described in Hyun-Kil Un’s short story “Dead Silence” (2017; English trans.) and [2] the eviction of residents and indigenous people from Calauit Island, Philippines for the creation of a safari in 1976 as imagined in Annette …

Research Bibliography For Philippine English (2008–2023), Kingsley Bolton, Priscilla T. Cruz, Isabel P. Martin

English Faculty Publications

The research bibliography presented here is intended to complement the earlier research bibliographies from Bautista on Philippine English (Bautista, 2004; Bautista & Bolton, 2008a). It includes 11 sections dealing with book-length studies of Philippine English, as well as book chapters and journal articles on such topics as code-switching, code-mixing and linguistic hybridization; critical linguistics; discourse analysis; language attitudes and intelligibility; sociolinguistic description; language policies; multilingualism and multilingual education; Philippine literature in English; Philippine English features; and summative perspectives. While the bibliography is essentially contemporary in orientation, this article also emphasizes the foundational contributions of earlier scholars in the field.

Queer Tropical Gothic: Parody, Failure, Space In Nick Joaquin’S “Gotita De Dragon”, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The stories for children by Filipino literary master Nick Joaquin (1917-2004), when compared to his famous works, have received scant attention even though they are as masterfully written and thematically sophisticated. Out of Joaquin’s fifteen children’s stories produced between 1972 and 1983, “Gotita de Dragon” stands out for its queer tropical gothic turn. The piece is a parody of a pious legend about Saint Martha, where the titular character is on a quest to become “as big as a gothic dragon,” which subsequently renders him “in search of a virgin.” The narrative is built upon the failures of its masculine …

To Busan And Beyond: Mobilities Of Korean War Trauma, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The Korean War (1950-1953) leveled the peninsula, losing and displacing millions of its people. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans from North and South found themselves in refugee camps in Busan. This traumatizing event is carefully delineated in Yi Hochol’s “Far from Home” and Han Musook’s “The Fragment.” Through an analysis of these short stories using Kate Coddington’s theory of contagious trauma, the paper forwards that the trauma caused by the war spreads, compounds, and expands within the infrastructures—namely, freight cars and warehouse—that facilitate the movements of refugees. In “Far from Home,” during the outbreak of the Korean War, four North …

Laro Streetwear Fashion Minizine, Cyrell Faraon

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

In my Editorial and Publication course, I had the incredible opportunity to design a fashion streetwear minizine. Throughout this project, I focused on creating compelling content for articles and advertisements, while also pushing the boundaries of design and incorporating innovative styles. By utilizing various design elements such as illustration, photography, typography, and layout, I aimed to showcase my understanding of visual storytelling and create a unique and impactful publication. This hands-on experience allowed me to express my creativity and explore unconventional ideas, ultimately pushing the boundaries of traditional magazines.

Exploring The Integration Of Ai In Counseling, Briana Seippel, Shauna Bienvenue, Jaime Beers

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

In the evolving landscape of mental health care, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about significant shifts in the counseling landscape. This presentation explored the varied applications of AI in the counseling field, addressing its advantages, limitations, as well as legal, ethical, and multicultural concerns. Legal and ethical considerations highlighted the absence of regulations and standards for AI use and emphasized concerns for culturally sensitive applications that respect diverse backgrounds. The absence of regulations underscored the need for clear ethical and legal guidelines to safeguard client protection and confidentiality as well as to uphold professional excellence.

Driving Under The Influence In Ri Adolescents, Jadyn Torres, Jonathan Noel, Samantha R. Rosenthal, Kelsey Gately, Samantha Borden

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

Background: Existing literature on driving under the influence during adolescence is sparse, especially for driving under the influence of non-medical prescription drugs (DUIP). This study examines the prevalence of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUIA), cannabis (DUIC), and DUIP, and examines the role of several potential risk and protective factors. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the 2022 Rhode Island Study Survey, a cross-sectional survey of middle and high school students. Results: Among lifetime users, prevalence of DUIA, DUIC, and DUIP was 4.9%, 14.3%, and 16.9%, respectively. Current substance use, high individual risk perception, being non-White, and being …

Phenotypic Analysis Of Csld Genes In P. Patens, Kaitlyn Freeman

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

The moss Physcomitrum patens is an attractive model organism, due to its small genome and dominant haploid phase. P. patens has eight genes that form a family known as the Cellulose Synthase-Like Ds (CSLDs). A previous study using global knockdown of the entire PpCSLD family by RNA interference (RNAi) showed a decrease in protonemal tip growth, indicating that PpCSLDs play a role in protonemal growth. In order to study the roles of specific CSLDs in P. patens development, triple knockout mutants for PpCSLD3/4/5 were generated by CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. Plant cell walls help plants deal with osmotic stress. Therefore a salt …

Physcomitrium Patens Csld Functional Analysis, Henry Purnell

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

Due to its small genome and dominant haploid life stage, Physcomitrium patens (formerly Physcomitrella patens) has become a model organism for studying plant genetics. The focus of this study was the Cellulose Synthase gene superfamily of P.patens, specifically the Cellulose Synthase-Like Ds (CSLD) family of genes. Previous studies into CSLD genes were preformed using RNA interference (RNAi) to preform a loss of function analysis on the entire PpCSLD gene family. The loss of function of the CSLD gene family resulted in inhibited protonemal tip growth indicating the CSLD gene family may regulate protonema formation. To further study the function of …

Protect The Kid Influencers, Taelyce Depina

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

Since the days of Shirly Temple, Hollywood has been tasked with the care of children thrust into the spotlight. Hollywood is usually filled with kids being forced into adult situations, missing out on a normal childhood, and developing severe trauma because of fame despite the many laws protecting them. However, these laws have not evolved to protect the modern-day child actors, kid influencers. Kid influencers are children who perform in videos that are posted on social media platforms for millions of people to see. They earn money through sponsored posts and views rather than being paid by a single corporation. …

Harm Reduction And Common Sense, Ryan Koch, Evan Smarinsky, Jessica Tardif, Christina Vasquez, Erin Thompson, Ju Nyeong Park

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

In 2022, over 100,000 people in the US died of drug overdose, with the majority of these deaths occurring without a bystander present. People who use drugs alone are at high risk for fatal overdoses. Sensors designed to alert responders to a potential overdose detect the reduction of micro-movements (e.g., respiratory distress) in single-occupancy bathrooms. Naloxone and harm reduction practices are commonsense implementations to reduce overdose deaths in our community.  Since January 2023, we conducted 70 structured surveys to organizations in overdose hotspots across eight townships in Rhode Island. Sites surveyed were categorized into food service, gas/service stations, housing facilities, …

Adversity In Childhood And Resilience Among Sgms, Katie Owen, Nicholas Matta, Emma Lipinski

Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium

This study will analyze data from the Health of Sexual & Gender Minorities Study (HSGMS) to determine if there is an association between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and resiliency in sexual and gender minorities (SGMs). Understanding the impact of childhood adversity on resilience is essential for developing effective interventions, promoting mental health, and creating supportive environments that empower SGMs to overcome the unique challenges that they often face. Our hypothesis is that there will be a negative correlation between adverse childhood experiences and resiliency among SGMs. The HSGMS is a quantitative, cross-sectional study conducted via a digital survey hosted on …