Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1969, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2024, English: Creative Writing

Under Bib & Tucker is a memoir that chronicles the author's exploration of their gender identity alongside their research into the gender identity of Louisa May Alcott. In March of 1860, 8 years before the publication of Little Women, author Louisa May Alcott wrote to her friend Alfred Whitman, “I was born with a boys nature & always had more sympathy for & interest in them than in girls, & have fought my fight for nearly fifteen [years] with a boys spirit under my ‘bib & tucker' & a boys wrath when I got ‘floored[.]'” More than 150 years later, the author discovered this transgender forbear and began to wonder what it would look like to come out for someone in the past. The thesis blends genres such as biography, lyric essay, poetry, speculation, and queer theory to explore this central question.

Committee: TaraShea Nesbit (Committee Chair); Margaret Luongo (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; History

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The religious content of nineteenth-century American sentimental texts is often overlooked as a subject of study itself and is instead analyzed as a means to another end, such as its contributions to the abolition of slavery or to women's rights. Both are powerful uses of religion in writing; by contrast, this dissertation analyzes the use of religion in nineteenth-century American sentimental texts as an active and evolving blueprint by which to live everyday life. Utilizing the sociological/historical theory of ‘lived religion' and emphasizing the literary mode of ‘surface reading,' I explore how women writers of sentimental texts—Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Susan Warner, Louisa May Alcott, and Frances E. W. Harper—implemented religious themes and lessons in their sermons, essays, speeches, novels, and poetry in serving the purpose of faith itself. The analysis of lived religion focuses on how these women and their personal theology and religious practices interacted and evolved, which they then taught to society through their writing and speaking.

Committee: Wesley Raabe (Advisor); Babacar M'Baye (Committee Member); David Kaplan (Committee Member); Elaine Frantz (Parsons) (Committee Member); Jennifer MacLure (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Literature; Bible; History; Literature; Religion; Religious History; Sociology; Theology; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, English

This thesis analyzes the relationship of female novelists to women's literary history through a study of the use of the woman writer character across five novels published in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Women writer characters and the metafictional texts they produce inside these novels reflect common threads across women's literary history, providing a way to categorize these novels not only by the gender of their authors but also by their engagement with this character—and by extension with this specific vein of women's literary history. The novel, which has undergone several transformations across genres, has been accused of feminization, while also being used to categorize the work of female novelists as outside of the Anglo-American canon. Each of the five novels included in this project reflect these literary biases through metafictional texts that are similarly restricted by socially constructed boundaries of oppressive systems, including gender, race, and class.

Committee: Nicole Reynolds (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Literature; Modern Literature; Womens Studies

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Arts and Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literature

During the time period in Germany history from 1989-1990 known as the Wende, activist writing, movies, and mass protests highlighted the exclusion of racial minorities from Germany's unity story. These activists decried the racial violence and scapegoating that followed the mass disenfranchisement of East Germans. However, in wake of the pogroms and mass killings from 1991-1993, Germany did not adopt policies that would create structural change and prevent future right-wing radicalism and violence. Instead, Germany passed reforms, falling in line with the discourse of the intellectual, that focused on stopping the racialized “outside” assault on white German identity rather than ensuring the safety of its People of Color.

Committee: Sunnie Rucker-chang (Committee Member); Evan Torner Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: European Studies

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Archeological Studies

Housed in Oberlin College's Religion department, the Oberlin Near East Study Collection encompasses a wide variety of archaeological material from the Southern Levant. Its roughly 650 artifacts encompass a vast time span from the Epipaleolithic to the Modern Period with most objects coming from the Iron Age. As a teaching collection, the objects were used to vivify Biblical texts for generations of students in Oberlin's School of Theology and later in the College's department of Religion. Starting in the 1980s, the collection began to receive only limited use with its contents being largely forgotten. This thesis utilizes the collection's artifacts, archival documentation, and secondary sources to reconstruct the history of how the collection was assembled and how it was used to teach at Oberlin College. By focusing on these themes, the collection can be used as a proxy to better understand a chapter in the field of Biblical Archaeology as well as the wide variety of collecting strategies employed by Biblical Archaeologists.

Committee: Cynthia R. Chapman (Advisor); Amy Vlassia Margaris (Advisor) Subjects: Archaeology; Biblical Studies; Museum Studies; Religion

PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences

Motivation and situational interest have proven to be critical factors related to student outcomes. Augmented reality, when leveraged properly, has been demonstrated to be an efficacious instructional vehicle across many academic domains, but little is known about its relationship to motivation and situational interest. Additionally, little empirical research has been performed on augmented reality applications related to the specific domain of history. Merely knowing that a technology, like augmented reality, can produce positive learning outcomes is not enough; understanding how it impacts motivation and situational interest are critical in understanding how and when to leverage this technology. This study analyzed the impact to situational interest and motivation using an augmented reality application that delivers instructional content about the tragic events that occurred on May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University. Using both a qualitative and a quantitative pretest and posttest approach, it was determined that situational interest and motivation were impacted by AR. More specifically, aspects of motivation decreased while situational and content knowledge increased. Through a qualitative approach, this study outlined factors that contributed to these changes. These factors include the feeling of immersiveness and enjoyable multimedia content, as well as negative feelings towards the location finding in the application as well as the applications' technical reliability

Committee: Richard Ferdig (Committee Chair); Enrico Gandolfi (Committee Member); Robert Clements (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Psychology

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation examines the use of visual imagery, objects, alphabetic texts, and rhetorical and physical space within Kent State University's May 4 Visitors Center (M4VC) and asserts the value of multimodal composition in mediating for audiences uncertain histories such as the events on May 4, 1970. The M4VC exists to inform and contextualize the May 4, 1970 shootings, when Ohio National Guardsmen fired bullets into a crowd of student protesters and bystanders, killing four and wounding nine. On the grounds outside of the M4VC, the space where the 1970 shootings occurred and accompanying multimodal ensembles offer an immersive, historical experience for visitors. I analyzed the multimodalities presented to audiences in both the interior museum site and the outdoor grounds where the shootings took place. Additionally, I examined an archived implementation document that denotes anticipated interactions between visitor and institution. Ultimately, my research emphasizes the following: 1) Alphabetic text serves as the underlying mediator that contextualizes all other modes in multimodal ensembles; 2) Audiences make meaning from multimodal ensembles as they enact literacy practices prompted by the institution and foregrounded in alphabetic texts throughout the museum; 3) Alphabetic texts mediate for audiences the articulations of the museum composers; 4) Multimodality can serve as an effective means to negotiate the tension that comes with memorializing uncertain histories; and, 5) The curation of the May 4 rhetorical space offers an effective means to mediate tensions that arise from composing uncertain histories.

Committee: Pamela Takayoshi (Advisor); Sara Newman (Committee Member); Stephanie Moody (Committee Member); Kenneth Bindas (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1972, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

MA, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

On December 2, 1859, the date of John Brown's execution for treason, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison delivered a eulogy in Boston for the antislavery vigilante. To his audience that night, Garrison lauded Brown for embodying the revolutionary spirit of the founding generation. While not likening Brown to Christ as some abolitionists had, Garrison did portray Brown as a martyr whom God would reward with “the victor's crown.” That Garrison would praise Brown is unsurprising from our vantage-point today. We expect that one radical abolitionist would have endorsed another, but this assumption is unwarranted. In fact, Garrison's eulogy for Brown marks a departure from his position of twenty years: the pacifism of “Christian nonresistance,” which absolutely forbade violence. The Garrisonian abolitionists were initially as pacifistic as their leader, but during the 1850s, they redefined Christian nonresistance to be compatible with condoning antislavery violence. In a decade of intense sectionalism and increasing violence around the issue of slavery, the Garrisonians embraced resistance. While the causes of this change in Garrisonian attitudes toward violence are admittedly complex, this thesis argues that the change was facilitated by an earlier change in their religious beliefs, specifically their substitution of a secular natural law ethic for a traditional religious source of authority. Focusing on the Garrisonians during the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s, the argument falls into three parts, each corresponding to a chapter. Chapter one, “Turning the Other Cheek,” shows that the Garrisonian commitment to nonresistance was inextricably religious in origin, taking for granted the moral authority of the Bible and of Jesus of Nazareth. Chapter two, “Taking Uncle Tom's Bible,” relates how the Garrisonians came to reject the religious assumptions underpinning their belief in Christian nonresistance. Finally, chapter three, “Racing towards Harper's Ferry,” demons (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Smith-Pryor PhD (Advisor); Kevin Adams PhD (Committee Member); Leonne Hudson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Religious History

BA, Kent State University, 2015, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Despite the translations of Shen Congwen's fiction and English analyses of Shen's life, he is relatively unknown to English speakers. This thesis aims to add to the English work being done on Shen Congwen in two ways: by translating three previously untranslated chapters of Shen Congwen's autobiography, and by attempting to answer why Shen Congwen did not publish any new works of fiction after 1948.

Committee: Hui Yu (Advisor); Kevin Yi (Committee Member); Kevin Floyd PhD (Committee Member); Kimberly Winebrenner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Literature

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Comparative Studies

This thesis is a comparative study of two translation projects by two Chinese intellectual groups that were active in the early 20th century, the New Culturalists and the Critical Review School. The project tries to bridge two fields of study, i.e. the intellectual history of the Chinese May Fourth period (mid-1910s to mid-1920s) and the study of world literature. The theoretical concern of this thesis in terms of world literature is an area of inquiry which considers the human knowledge, values, beliefs, etc. as important constructive powers of international literary orders. I project this theoretical concern onto the historical issue of “isms” in the study of Chinese May Fourth history. As a traditional Western way of designating philosophical ideologies, the category of “isms” was accepted in the Chinese context in the mid-1910s, and rapidly populated and reshaped Chinese intellectual discourse in the years that followed. The main discussion part of this thesis contains two case studies, each dedicated to a translation project hosted by one of the two intellectual groups. In the case studies, I use a close reading method to investigate the targeted groups' modes of receiving Western literary ideologies and their methods of translating non-Chinese literary works. By juxtaposing the two intellectual groups, I reveal the historical tension in China between different assumptions of world literature, which evolved in the early 20th-century Chinese contexts into contending modes reproducing the Western texts and knowledge. In the conclusion, I demonstrate how the May Fourth literary practices can be viewed as objects of the study of world literature, and argue that these new objects of study entail theoretical impacts. In particular, my case studies show that the theoretical construction of world literature should take into account the historical and geographical diversity of the non-Western world which is not yet fully recognized as a space of world literature.

Committee: Nina Berman (Advisor); Kirk Denton (Advisor) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Comparative Literature

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

In past scholarly studies of art music, the focus has been on the composers, sound and performance of music itself, not on the many different individuals, such as patrons, volunteers, administrators, or the local performers themselves, who were involved in the creation and dissemination process of the music. This study focuses on the “other” people who were essential in the development of art music in America, focusing primarily on women patrons and other important female contributors who dedicated their time in administering and volunteering for various arts organizations, as well as local performers and performance clubs devoted to this music. This historical review of important female figures and organizations contributing to the art music industry has yet to be collected into a single source. This information has instead been scattered throughout books, journals, and newspapers with attention to these women usually secondary to some other discussion. As such, this thesis seeks to contribute to the musicological literature by providing a single collection of this subject material to be used as a starting point for further research projects. The historical review leads to a focus on art music activities in Ohio, where the researcher investigated the activities of modern arts organizations sponsored by women patrons and clubs in order to present a model for inquiry in other regions of the country. This research reveals that such local supporters of art music are vital to the maintenance and dissemination of art music in America and provide many opportunities for musicians, composers, and enthusiasts to become involved in the art music industry at a local level.

Committee: Andrew Shahriari Ph.D. (Advisor); Eve McPherson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Johnstone Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, English/Literature

This thesis investigates one of the tales within Geoffrey Chaucer's greater works, The Canterbury Tales with a focus on the connection between the prologue of the taleteller and the story that he shares with the other pilgrims. Masochism and antifeminism are two of the most prominent features of Chaucer's Merchant, an impoverished man parading as successful, husband to a woman whom he detests. With a business deep in debt and a wife he refers to only as a shrew, the Merchant attempts to bolster his credibility within the group of pilgrims by weaving a narrative about marriage, lust, and cuckoldry. This thesis explores the dynamics of the Merchant and his tale from a variety of perspectives in order to more deeply understand the motivation behind the tale that is told and the person who tells it. The Merchant's failing marriage spurns the chauvinism that is deeply imbedded in his tale as he preaches the importance of obedience and vilifies women who resist or disobey their husbands. While the Merchant offers the qualities of a successful marriage as inherent fact, it is clear that he has instead shaped his opinion as a result of his own unsuccessful marriage, blaming female disobedience rather than his own deficiencies as a husband. Additionally, this thesis delves into the story that the Merchant tells of two lovers called January and May and the way in which the female body operates as capital within the narrative. Employing a Marxist understanding of commodity on top of Wills' ideas on prosthetics, this thesis underscores the way in which May is used constantly as a resource for her husband. Further, this thesis explores the function that May plays in her marriage to her husband and how her body is used as an extension of January and other male influence and her own agency is stripped from her.

Committee: Labbie Erin Ph.D (Advisor); Fitzgerald Christina Ph.D (Other) Subjects: Literature; Medieval Literature

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2014, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Louisa May Alcott's revision of the representation of passion in Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866) in connection with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) is something that has not been widely discussed in scholarly studies since the reintroduction of these Blood and Thunder novels by Madaline Stern in 1975. Both Bronte and Alcott demonstrate in their novels that passion is a positive attribute, but, through Jane, Bronte demonstrates that hysterical passion must be sincerely controlled and internalized in order to positively contribute to a woman's life. Alcott, on the other hand, suggests that women merely need to act as proper gentlewomen and use their passionate ways in assisting them to do so. Jane Eyre and Behind a Mask are two texts that represent women with very passionate personalities, which are portrayed as positive aspects of these characters. Alcott's suggests through Jean, that passion should be a tool used by women to achieve happiness; which is very different than Bronte's demonstration of controlled passion and proper Christian, gentle behavior. Through the analysis of passion and the different representations of passion in these two texts we can see that Alcott's work is revising the idea of passion compared to Bronte's earlier representation of internalized control in Jane Eyre.

Committee: Rachel Carnell Ph.D (Committee Chair); Adam Sonstegard Ph.D (Committee Member); James Marino Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Language Arts

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Art History

Jean-Luc Godard's (b. 1930) Tout va bien (1972) cannot be considered a successful political film. In chapter one I examine the first part of Godard's film career (1952-1967). Influenced by the events of May 1968, Godard renounced his films as bourgeois only to announce a new method of filmaking that reflected French Maoist politics. In chapter two I discuss Godard and the Dziga Vertov Group's last film Tout va bien. This film displays a marked difference in style from Godard's earlier films, yet does not display a clear understanding of how to make a political film of this measure without alienating the audience. In contrast to this film, I contrast Guy Debord's (1931-1994) contemporaneous film The Society of the Spectacle (1973). Debord successfully dealt with alienation in film. A study of Godard's filmaking from this period can dispel the idea of paradox in his oeuvre of film.

Committee: Kim Paice (Advisor) Subjects:

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2007, College-Conservatory of Music : Music History

Edward Elgar visited Cincinnati to conduct the 1906 May Festival, which was a critical event for the future of the organization. Theodore Thomas, the festival's founding director, had recently died. Also, the May Festival Chorus had been newly reformed, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra would appear in the Festival for the first time. The May Festival Board contracted Elgar to guarantee a large audience, but his commitment to his publisher and his grief over his father's recent death hindered his public exposure. If Elgar's presence was going to be a promotional device for the Festival, the newspaper critics would have to create a sense of importance to surround the composer's presence. This thesis explores the criticism and reception of Elgar in Cincinnati, examining the themes of mysticism, Britishness, and modernity about the composer and his music and demonstrating their place in the context of Cincinnati's musical history and Elgar's biography.

Committee: Dr. Bruce McClung (Advisor) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Art Education

The purpose of this narrative, qualitative, socio-cultural historical study is to examine and understand how larger national and state systems of social reform affected the handiwork in the local region of Hindman, Kentucky, located in the eastern Kentucky Appalachian Mountains. This study offers a different look at the traditional handiwork, of Hindman Settlement School, through ethnic influences, environment, reform, and cottage craft industry in the region during the years 1902-1920. Historical themes emerged from the data: correcting the harm of the Industrial Revolution and progress through handiwork, creating handicrafts with a holistic process versus a specific factory line tasks, manual labor taught with an academic curriculum versus only vocational training for the factory, isolation from neighbors and community versus involvement, and progressive educational theories including notions of John Dewey and Jane Addams, that related ot the local setting. A strong connection is made with the Neighborhood House located in Louisville, Kentucky to Hindman Settlement School. The school still in operration today, was respected for its academics, handiwork, and response to the region's educational needs.

Committee: Arthur Efland (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Art

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2010, Spanish

This thesis presents an analysis of how three feature films: Amanecio de Golpe (Carlos Azpurua, 1998), La Revolucion No Sera Transmitida (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Kim Bartley and O'Briain Donacha, 2002) and ¿Puedo Hablar?: Retrato de un movimiento (May I Speak?: Portrait of a movement, Chris Moore, 2007) present their version of the sociopolitical reality in Venezuela. This reality moves through a timeline ranging from the attempted coup d'etat on February 4, 1992, the emergence of the Bolivarian revolution, and finally the 2006 presidential election. The research was done through a visual and content analysis of the three films. Each one is located in its historical and sociopolitical context. The analysis is based on how each film presents this reality, according to the time it represents. The camera angles, speech and soundtrack are also taken into account to complete the study.

Committee: Kerry Hegarty PhD (Advisor); José Domínguez-Búrdalo PhD (Committee Member); María Álvarez PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Journalism; Latin American History; Mass Media; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2008, English

In this dissertation I analyze the public writing produced at the Hindman Settlement School, a rural social settlement founded on the banks of Troublesome Creek in Appalachian Kentucky at the turn of the twentieth century. Modeled after urban settlement houses, the Hindman school was founded by two women who sought to redress the perceived poverty and illiteracy of Appalachia with classes on reading, writing, and domestic arts. Methodologically informed by both classical rhetorical analysis and feminist historiography, I reclaim the settlement women as savvy rhetoricians who deployed their arguments through the letters, pamphlets, and serialized novels mailed frequently to a nationwide donor base. In Ciceronian terms, the settlement founders would likely have claimed that these fundraising documents were meant to move readers-to exhort them to action. In so doing, however, the settlement women were also instructing a bourgeois Bluegrass, Midwestern, and Northeastern readership, defining eastern Kentucky (and, accordingly, the entire mountain region) for readers wholly unfamiliar with the land, people, and customs. In their rhetorical stances and methods of appeal, the settlement women construct a simultaneously compelling and troubling version of Appalachia for an audience removed from the mountains in nearly every imaginable way. The rhetoric of the Hindman Settlement School-which includes the invention of mountain topoi, the use of fiction as a rhetorical genre, and the manipulation of testimony as a rhetorical strategy-therefore constitutes an important chapter in the evolving history of "Appalachia" as a cultural invention.

Committee: Dr. Katharine Ronald (Committee Chair); Dr. LuMing Mao (Committee Member); Dr. Morris Young (Committee Member); Dr. Mary Frederickson (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric