Digital Humanities Commons^™

Tolkien Fanzine Dataset, 1967-2017 [Bulk 1969-1979], Robinson Ensz, Gabriel Marotto, Aidan Oakey, Ivy Stanich, Ethan Thomas

Tolkien Resources

This dataset reveals the heretofore hidden contents of fan magazines (fanzines) related to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien that were created from 1969 through the publication of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion in 1977. It supplements the earlier Tolkien Fandom Review by S. Gary Hunnewell that discussed fanzines created through 1968. The dataset provides an item level index of the fanzines’ content and is intended to aid researchers in Fan Studies. It is accompanied by an inventory document that lists the fanzine titles and provides brief notes about some of them. Data was drawn from Marquette’s large holding of Tolkien fanzines, including …

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …

C.S.A. Assessment - Tamp Family Health Center Portal, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

This C.A.S. assessment evaluates how the Tampa Family Health Centers website influences userattention, cognitive processing, information accessibility, navigation efficiency, and digital user experience.The assessment examines whether the platform supports intentional engagement and informed decision-making while minimizing cognitive overload, distraction, confusion, and unnecessary attentional demands.

TFHC serves as a healthcare access portal providing appointment scheduling, patient resources, providerinformation, healthcare services, MyChart access, payment services, and community health resources.These functions make attention management and information clarity critical to successful user outcomes.

Medical Tourism Patient Guidance: A Content Analysis Of Risk Reduction Guidelines Available To Global Health Seekers., Alicia Mason, Angela Ashmore

Faculty Submissions

This study examines medical tourism (MT) patient guidance messages intended to reduce procedural risks—those directly related to biomedical treatments—and process risks, which involve logistical, administrative, and interpersonal challenges of seeking healthcare abroad. The analysis focuses on print and digital publications authored by individuals independent of the MT industry, including policy researchers, travel health experts, lifestyle reporters, and consumer-focused medical travel writers. Using a two-phase digital and database search strategy, 27 publications from 2009 to 2024 were identified and analyzed using exploratory content analysis methods. Findings reveal important differences in the scope and depth of guidance aimed at reducing risks for …

Your Grades Are Good. The World Just Doesn’T Know It Yet Afrivarsity: A Privacy-First Platform Translating West African Wassce Grades For Global University Access, Godwin Idowu

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

Every year, millions of students across Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia finish school with grades that actually mean something. A B2 is strong. A C5 still shows real competence. These aren't participation grades: they come from some of the most rigorous standardized exams on the continent. But the moment a student tries to use them outside the region, they stop working. Walk into any admissions office in the US or UK with that result slip and you'll get a polite smile and a shrug. Nobody knows what to do with it. The grade is real. The context …

Chi Meta-Project Ecosystem Overview - Spring 2026, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This paper offers a high-level account of the Center for Holistic Integration’s (CHI) meta-project ecosystem as visualized in the included system map. CHI provides an organizational structure framed around persistent meta-projects that support and extend individual initiatives across curriculum, scholarly and applied research, infrastructure, artistic production, AI development, cultural inquiry, and external partnerships. Rather than presenting the map as a static inventory of projects, the paper examines how its core domains function as living systems through which knowledge, tools, documentation, participants, and collaborations can accumulate over time. It also considers how CHI-mediated connectivity, institutional integration, and external funding allow the …

Expanding The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform Through Artificial Influence Assessment (Aia): Rationale, Development, And Measurement Design, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how individuals access information, make decisions, and interact with digital environments. The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform (C.A.S.) was developed to assess attention related harms, cognitive safety, digital autonomy, and platform influence across digital systems (Clark, 2026). However, the growth of generative AI, conversational agents, and algorithmic decision support technologies has introduced new forms of influence that may not be fully captured by existing assessment domains. This paper proposes the Artificial Influence Assessment (AIA) as an expansion of the C.A.S. framework designed to measure AI mediated influence on cognition, behavior, autonomy, and information processing. Drawing on …

Reviving Revive. Is The Notion Of An Independent Artist An Outdated Concept?, Richard C. Moore Mr

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This article published in Spectator Magazine - online - is a reflection on whether or not a cultural policy is a means of controlling the artistic community and whether there is still such a being as an independent Australian artist. It was published as the 2026 submissions for an update to Australia's cultural policy REVIVE -  were closing.

Operational Responsibility In Ai Governance: A User-Centric Liability Framework, Zhengyang Chen

Faculty Publications

Who bears responsibility when artificial intelligence systems cause harm? This question has become central to AI ethics and governance. Most existing approaches focus on developers, yet this faces serious practical and theoretical problems. Drawing on tort law, agency law, and philosophy of technology, this paper argues that AI should be understood as an instrument whose outputs remain the responsibility of human operators rather than developers. We call this 'user-centric governance.' Placing accountability with deployers promotes public trust by creating clear lines of responsibility, a concern that governance approaches have often overlooked. It preserves democratic accountability by keeping human actors answerable …

Shimmer Methodology: May 2026 Cultural Studies Association Of Australasia, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This webinar presents an overview of the contemporary state of creative-practice research and autotheory before introducing Shimmer, an emerging methodological framework developed through creative practice, postgraduate supervision, and reflective inquiry. The presentation argues that while creative-practice research has successfully established creative work as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and autotheory has legitimised lived experience as theoretical material, both traditions leave relatively under-theorised the embodied moment through which insight first emerges.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to ongoing debates around embodiment, affect, intuition, and knowledge production within creative-practice research. Shimmer proposes a language for understanding …

Caladrius: Creating A Playable Game Via A Multimedia Experience, Isabelle Morgan Brookshire

Whittier Scholars Program

Caladrius: Creating a Playable Game via a Multimedia Experience hones in on making an experience through different forms of media to represent a game. If this project was fully funded and done, it would be a video game on Steam with an art exhibition, small poetry book, and novel accompanied with it. It would even have a show, a soundtrack, and merch. But at this level, it was to make an experience for my audience that they could experience whether or not they enjoyed video games as a concept. I wanted them to enjoy 'playing' within a physical exhibition and …

Ai Is Taking Over!: A New Generation Of Unemployment Fears, Amaya V. Hepburn

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The growing panic surrounding AI taking over the workforce is strong in a distinct group of demographics, in contrast to the fear of computers taking over the workforce that was seen in previous generations. This suggests that AI developments have sparked a wave of fear that is unlike the fear of tech developments in the past. I have discovered that this fear is prevalent across several demographics: age, employment, and income. By cross-analyzing through the 2017 and 2025 fear surveys, I discovered that fear of AI is more prevalent in younger generations and is more threatening to students entering the …

'Here's What Bali Can Do For You': Social Media's Impact On Travel Writing, Carlisle Avalon Jarnigan

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines how social media has initiated a shift in the genre of travel writing from educational cultural observation to a form of engagement-driven, monetized travel content creation. Historically, the genre has functioned as a descriptive genre dedicated to educating readers who would never get to see the destinations they read about modern travel writing and content creation use emotional persuasion to market travel experience as a product, redefining the genre. Using methods like geotagging, user-generated content (UGC), and emotionally charged storytelling approaches, travel creators no longer just describe locations but instead promise readers that if they visit, they …

St. Louis Digital Humanities Event Program (April 14, 2026), Stl. Digital Humanities

2026 Showcase

No abstract provided.

Digital Touchpoints: Investigating Contact Page Accessibility And Visual Authenticity Within Medical Tourism Health Websites, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kristen Livingston, Treyton Meyers, Sakshi Bhati, Himika Akram

Faculty Submissions

This study examines two critical digital touchpoints on medical tourism provider (MTP) websites: (1) the accessibility of contact pages which often function as entry points for inquiries, scheduling, and pre-travel coordination, and (2) the authenticity of visual imagery used to shape expectations about care environments, personnel, and technological capacity. A sample of 105 MTPs across all six World Health Organization regions were analyzed using quantitative web accessibility testing and qualitative visual analysis. Results indicate pervasive accessibility errors on contact-page touchpoints and extensive reliance on inauthentic imagery to depict patients, providers, and medical technologies. Together, these practices may distort user expectations …

The Missing Memory In Ai Agent Networks A Network Analysis Of Moltbook, Muhammad Ibraheem Nadeem

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

Large language models have transformed AI from a passive tool into a social actor. Humans form measurable interpersonal closeness with LLMs in one-on-one settings [4], and generative agents placed in shared environments autonomously form relationships and coordinate collective behavior [2]. Moltbook, launched on January 28, 2026 by AI entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, is the first large scale social network designed to be populated exclusively by AI agents, with human users restricted to observation only. The platform mimics Reddit, organizing activity around topic-specific communities called submolts. Within these spaces, heterogeneous agents — running on different LLMs, configured by different human owners, and …

Readder: An Evidence-Based Rsvp Speed Reader For Students With Adhd And Convergence Insufficiency, Adrian Mangine

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

readder is a web-based Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) application designed to improve reading speeds and accessibility for students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and convergence insufficiency (CI). ADHD affects approximately 9% of school-age children, and CI affects 5–15%, with recent evidence suggesting a 73% comorbidity rate between the two conditions (Moussaoui et al., 2025). Traditional reading demands coordinated saccadic eye movements that are disrupted by both ADHD and CI, leading to fatigue, reduced comprehension, and reading avoidance. RSVP eliminates saccadic demands by presenting words sequentially at a single fixation point and has been shown to improve reading comprehension in adults …

From “I” To “We”: A Computational Analysis Of Gen Z, Collective Identity, And Generational Discourse On Reddit, Andre Mccloud

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

Throughout time, generational differences have been studied primarily through surveys and self-report measures. These methods capture what we think but tell us little about how generations communicate and express themselves. I conduct a different method of analysis in this study. Instead of asking generations what they think, I analyze how they naturally communicate. This is done by analyzing 4,972 Reddit posts across generation-specific subreddits: r/Over60 (Boomer), r/GenX, r/Millennials, and r/GenZ. No keywords are used in the collection, allowing for natural collection of topics occurring in the subreddits. The data is analyzed using five approaches: LDA topic modeling, VADER sentiment analysis, …

Classical Music Isn’T Dead: Audience Development And Marketing Strategies For The Mid-Sized American Orchestra, Rachel Ferrara

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

The American symphony orchestra is widely perceived to be a dying institution. This research investigates that perception and finds that it is largely unsupported. Sector revenue is growing, new households are entering concert halls, and younger audiences are engaging with orchestral music at higher rates than previous generations. However, Americans rate symphonies the least welcoming of any cultural institution, and strategies widely adopted to address declining attendance have been shown to be ineffective as conversion tools. The problem lies in marketing and communication. This project synthesizes sector-wide research and case studies to identify which audience development strategies are supported by …

What Nlp Tells Us About The Future Of Viral Journalism: A Case Study On Buzzfeed’S Strategic Pivot (2016–2025), Gwen Eisenbeis

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

This project examines the evolution of digital journalism through a longitudinal NLP analysis of BuzzFeed headlines from 2012 to 2025. Using an NLP pipeline, the study applied cosine similarity, sentiment analysis, frequency modeling, and topic modeling to measure changes in language and focus over time. The findings reveal a decline in the listicle-heavy style that defined BuzzFeed’s early success and a rise in shopping and affiliate-driven headlines built around consumer recommendations and curated internet reactions. In 2016, positive language and numbered list formats (“17,” “19,” “best”) dominated engagement, while in 2025, terms such as “products” became the most prominent. Topic …

Hacking Human Attention: Ai Influencers Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis And Behavioral Analytics, Ayesha Aslam

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

AI influencers are hyper-realistic computer-generated models designed to look and behave like real social media influencers. This study uses Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA), qualitative content labeling, and quantitative regression modeling to analyze how AI influencers on Instagram generate audience engagement. User comments were classified into key aspects including Human Projection, AI Awareness, Controversy, Parasocial Attachment, and Exploitation/Spam, with each associated with positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. Post content types and caption strategies were structured into analyzable features, while engagement metrics including likes, comments, and engagement rate were examined across these categories. A linear regression model was used to estimate the …

Ai Literacy Framework, Beronica Avila, R. Jordan Crouser, Katherine Elkins, Lisa Morrison, Jenna E. Nolt

Instructions, Forms, and Toolkits

No abstract provided.

Ai Tool Assessment Framework, Beronica Avila, R. Jordan Crouser, Katherine Elkins, Lisa Morrison, Jenna E. Nolt

Instructions, Forms, and Toolkits

A resource to assist with making decisions about purchasing AI tools

Language And Polarization: A Psycholinguistic Analysis Of Political Communication During Trump's Second Term, Andrew Vera

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

This project uses psycholinguistics—the systematic measurement of psychological orientation through language —to examine political communication from when Trump took office in his second presidency to the start of the Iran war—January 20, 2025 through February 28, 2026. I asked whether elite political language during this period reflects what Robert Putnam calls bonding social capital (inter -group reinforcement) or bridging social capital (cross-group connection), a dichotomy relevant to theory of democratic depolarization. To answer that, I scraped 16,707 documents —7,409 of Trump's Truth Social posts and 9,298 White House, State Department, and Department of Defense press releases —an d scored each …

The Digital Supreme Court: A Meta-Analysis Of Antitrust Retrospectives Using Frontier Llms, Pablo Portillo

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

This project examines whether frontier Large Language Models (LLMs) can serve as structured “expert critics” in economic and legal reasoning. I built a panel of AI judges composed of GPT-5.5, Opus 4.7, and DeepSeek V4, to evaluate three antitrust merger retrospectives: Carlton et al. (2022) on AT&T/Time Warner, Hazlett and Crandall (2024) on T-Mobile/Sprint, and Argentesi et al. (2021) on Facebook/Instagram plus Google/Waze. Using a 10-factor weighted rubric, the panel scored each paper on empirical alignment, parameter robustness, counterfactual validity, dynamic adaptability, and analytical rigor. I then synthesized the nine evaluations as the “Highest Judge,” comparing where the models converged, …

Confident And Wrong : How Llm Miscalibration Mirrors The Dunning-Kruger Effect Across Ambiguity Levels, Maggie Grespin

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

Psychology gave us the Dunning-Kruger effect, the observed pattern that a person is often overconfident when they fall in the lowest quartile of that skill’s proficiency. This research is interested in seeing if large language models (LLMs) suffer the same miscalibration of metacognitive skills. Using thirty deliberately ambiguous college-level math question prompts, this research assesses Claude Sonnet 4.6’s ability to interpret each question, provide an answer, and rate its own confidence without asking for clarification. Results show that while confidence appropriately drops at the moderate tier, it rebounds on the hardest questions (0.840) even as accuracy falls to 0.450. This …

Whose Vietnam War? How Llms Answer Contested History In Three Languages, Melissa Vu

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

As a Vietnamese international student studying in the US, I grew up learning one version of the Vietnam War -or, as we call it in Vietnamese, the American War -in Vietnamese history classes, only to encounter different perspectives in American college classrooms. Taking Chinese language courses and spending a semester abroad in China sharpened this further as the same historical events looked different again through Chinese sources. These experiences made me aware of how language shapes the way information and historical knowledge get presented and understood. Since LLMs are trained on data reflecting many cultures and languages, I wanted to …

Know Thyself: A Conversation That Reveals How You Think: Adaptive Ai Assessment Across Eight Psychometrically Grounded Metrics, Adam Leider

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

AI's ability to assess human cognitive and psychological patterns through natural conversation is an underexplored area with significant potential, particularly for college students navigating a demanding and overwhelming transitional period. This project involved selecting eight psychometrically grounded metrics, designing an adaptive question bank and detailed system prompt to govern the assessment conversation, building a second AI model to review and correct results before they are shown, and deploying the full application as a publicly accessible web tool. The result is a conversational assessment that delivers a personalized psychological profile, including strengths, areas for growth, metric interactions, and actionable suggestions in …

Face-Work In Frontier Models: Benchmarking Sycophantic Behavior In Llm-Based Educational Tutoring, Nick Chen

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

Since OpenAI’s famous rollback of GPT-4o for being “overflattering” in April 2025, sycophancy in large language models, which reflects the tendency to prioritize user satisfaction over truthfulness, has become a major concern in AI alignment. Sycophancy is widely recognized as a byproduct of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and deserves attention in educational contexts where such responses to student errors will reinforce misconceptions. This project builds on the social sycophancy framework introduced by Cheng et al. (2025) in ELEPHANT, which applies sociologist Goffman's classical theory of face work to LLM behavior, extends it to educational settings, and raises the …

Whose Ethics? Auditing The Moral Defaults Of Large Language Models Against Ubuntu Philosophy, Davelle Akosua Ampofo-Twumasi

IPHS 300: AI for Humanity

As LLMs are deployed globally, the moral framework they u se matters. This study tested if four frontier LLMs default to Western ethics and how naming Ubuntu, a communal Southern African philosophy, changes their moral reasoning. Five dilemmas were presented to Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.4, Gemini 2.5 Flash, and DeepSeek V3, unprompted and with Ubuntu named. Responses were scored on seven Ubuntu dimensions (e.g., relational inclusion, dignity, reciprocity). All models defaulted to Western individualist reasoning when unprompted. With Ubuntu named, DeepSeek (57/70) and Claude (56/70) significantly outperformed GPT and Gemini (32/70 each). Gaps were largest in reciprocity and relational inclusion. …