Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

Spirituality, Well-Being, And The Role Of Oneness, Kelly S. Erickson Albonico

Psychology ETDs

Spirituality is generally found to have a significant but small positive association with well-being; however, the associations between spirituality and well-being vary greatly. One organizing framework for understanding the varying associations may be the degree to which spirituality and well-being measures capture connection, the pinnacle of which may be conceptualized as Oneness. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to begin exploring this hypothesis by examining the associations between beliefs in Oneness and dimensions of subjective well-being and to test possible conflating and contributing factors in the associations between beliefs in Oneness and subjective well-being. Results indicated preliminary support for …

A Journey To Finding Space In The Tension: Experience Of Instructors' Relationship With Religion And Spirituality In Doctoral Psychology Programs, Samantha Mcgee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Religion and spirituality, when viewed through a holistic lens, can reflect important aspects of a person’s identity. It can be a source of well-being and also struggle. The fields of religion, spirituality and psychology have had a history of being polarized, with some efforts to integrate the two fields. Tensions exist at multiple ecological levels around the topic of religion and spirituality, which can make it easier to avoid discussing it in classrooms and therapy rooms. It is important to address and create room for discussion of experiences around religion and spirituality in classrooms that are training psychologists so they …

Millennial Culture And Epistemology: Exploring The Meaning-Making Discourse Of An Emerging Generation, Sophia Driscoll Gamber

Sociology Honors Papers

Millennial Culture and Epistemology takes a mixed methods approach to understanding the culture and epistemological processes of the current cohort of millennial undergraduate students at a small residential liberal arts college. The study first identifies specific trends in epistemological frameworks, ethics, and claimed spiritual/religious identities among a sample of undergraduate students and finds that students are commonly utilizing subjectivist epistemological frameworks that are built around cultural relativism and skepticism. The study then unpacks markers of undergraduate millennial culture as they relate to epistemology and finds that students’ stances on issues of community, social ethics and responsibility, religion, and spirituality are …

The Effect Of Spiritualism On The Cognitive Functions On Learning And Memory, Carla Antonieta Farcello

McNair Poster Presentations

Last summer I conducted a pilot study which researched whether better working memory would be documented among an experimental group (individuals who report being spiritual) as compared to the control group (individuals who report being non-spiritual).Total scores showed a significantly higher sense of spiritualism among the spiritual participants vs. the non spiritual participants (p < .001) along with a significant improvement in working memory for spiritual participants vs. non spiritual participants (p = .027). The results of this study documented significantly better performance on a task measuring emotional learning and memory among individuals who reported being spiritual as opposed to individuals who reported being non-spiritual. These findings build on prior studies suggesting the effect of positive emotions on broadening cognitive processes (Strauss & Allen, 2003).

My current study is building on what my prior findings have suggested and studies the effect of spiritualism on the cognitive functions of learning and memory. In addition to the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) used in the pilot study, I am including the Spirituality Index …