Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2012, English

In this dissertation it is argued that all literary authorship is to a greater or lesser degree a product of labor of more than one person and that, as such, all literary authorship is collaborative. For the purpose of examining this collaborative aspect of authorship this dissertation deals exclusively with the examples of unconcealed literary collaboration. Among these, the examples of conjugal collaborations of Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle, and Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop are used to investigate the usefulness of marriage as a metaphor most frequently employed in the descriptions of overt collaboration. The tentative conclusion reached is that collaboration in terms of literary authorship requires a more suitable terminology, one that would go beyond the romantic or romanticized language of shared intimacy. Another key premise is that the idea of authorship as an exclusive solitary activity leaves a particular mark on the process of literary creation itself, as well as on the very activity of writing. Here novels written by collaborative couples (The Crown of Columbus), but also novels written by smaller (The Caverns) or larger (Invisible Seattle) groups were used to explain how that which is considered to be a ‘proper' way of writing influences both the character and the reception of a particular text. The name of the author (whether singular or plural), as well as the pseudonym, are described as indicators of relative authorial plurality and shared authorial responsibility, with any name provided as the name of the author symbolizing the necessity of human involvement with the text as well as the other participants in the literary exchange. The model of a particular dyadic relationship established between the text and any person who interacts with it (in any capacity) is offered to account for the notion of literary authorship as a process rather than an act. In this process numerous individuals through the interact (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2025, Speech-Language Pathology

This study examines the experiences of three individuals who earned an undergraduate degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) but ultimately pursued careers outside of speech-language pathology or audiology. Through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of semi-structured interviews, we explore their motivations for choosing CSD, the factors prompting their career shift, the challenges they faced, and their current reflections on their career journey. Findings indicate that participants selected the CSD major due to familiarity, stability, and alignment with personal interests. Over time, they reconsidered their path citing reasons such as disinterest, limitations within CSD, or emerging career opportunities. The participants expressed challenges in transitioning to their new career horizons including emotional turmoil, anxiety, indecision, and additional schooling requirements. Despite these challenges, all participants found themselves in a fulfilling career and recognized benefits from their CSD education. Our findings bring awareness to the diverse career trajectories of individuals with a background in CSD, a reality to which CSD higher education professionals should be responsive. Our results also highlight the importance of fostering career adaptability for CSD students through an emphasis on reflection, self-awareness, and other twenty-first century skills. Action steps toward these ends are offered for students, educators, and policymakers.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1956, Graduate School

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, English/Literature

This thesis puts into conversation the work of four influential late medieval writers whose lives or writings skirted the fringes of Christian orthodoxy - Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, John of Morigny, and Marguerite Porete - in order to explore the way "autobiographical" theological and/or mystical writers asserted spiritual authority and subjectivity under the constraints of both the threat of condemnation for heresy and the inherent inexpressibility of mystical or visionary experiences. Beginning with Marguerite Porete and reverberating out, the performance-based rhetorical strategies in storytelling, in self-narrativization, in discernment, and in revision employed by writers in response to the dynamic, complex, and in many ways increasingly hostile social and religious environments of the long fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in France and England provide an important window into the relationship between these writers' ideas and the environment which shaped them. Each of these writers struggles with the limitations of the written word to express the truth of their spiritual experiences, and each engages in an experiential and bodily performative, rhetorical, and/or apophatic discourse in order to understand, assert, or make real their encounters with and understanding of themselves, the divine, and the relationship between the two.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2024, Educational Leadership

Collegiate men are overrepresented in student conduct systems across the higher education landscape as they are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors when compared with their female counterparts (Laker & Davis, 2011). There is a strong correlation between these high-risk behaviors and the ideology of toxic masculinity (Wagner, 2015). Many collegiate men yearn for a sense of belonging and when they are joining community with each other, it can re-enforce the adoption of this toxic masculine ideology (Harris & Struve, 2009). Restorative Justice while not a new concept, is still a relatively newer practice in higher education. As the toxic masculine ideology is leading to many collegiate men engaging in harmful behavior that is not being sufficiently corrected through historical punitive student conduct practices, this study aimed to see if restorative justice could be used a tool to support men engaging in high-risk behavior and combat toxic masculinity by aiding with their self-authorship and sense of belonging. 16 student conduct professionals from across the country participated in this constructivist phenomenological research and data was collected through semi-structured interviews, to learn from their experiences on challenging and supporting male college students with restorative justice practices and philosophy. Eight themes emerged from this study. The themes are as follows: 1) Versatility of restorative justice; 2) Traditional forms of student conduct have significant limitations; 3) Art of vulnerability; 4) Understanding of community impact; 5) Becoming an agent for change; 6) Finding authenticity; 7) Meaningful change; 8) Building and/or finding community.

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Music Composition

Beethoven's Razor is a MicroOpera scored for piano, percussion, and three singers. The plot centers around Peter (tenor) and his quest to recompose Beethoven's Ninth Symphony note for-note without ever having heard it. To do this, Peter begins changing his lifestyle and environment to match Beethoven's at the time of the symphony's composition. He eventually goes to drastic measures to embody the German composer, compromising his identity and mind in the process. The piece explores this journey through the interactions of Peter and his partner Freddie (mezzo), and a young boy named Tobias (soprano) whom Peter hires to be a stand-in for Beethoven's nephew Karl. Through this quasi-surreal plot, the piece tackles two overarching themes. The primary theme is the role of suffering and hardship in the creation of art. This theme is conveyed by showing the harm that Peter enacts on himself and others in pursuit of his goals. The secondary theme is authorship and artistic voice. This theme is explored through commentary about whether Peter's creation constitutes art, and whether artistic vision can be achieved through imitation. Musically, the piece is structured around developing harmonic and melodic representations of each character, as well as insertions of passages from Beethoven's music. Two arias are the source of the original material, one for Peter in which he reflects on his life's goal, and one for Freddie in which they lament the harm that Peter is causing. The musical material of these arias is original, and serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for the rest of the opera. The plot for this piece was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. Key plot elements were developed using historical accounts of Beethoven's life, and close study of the Ninth Symphony informed much of the musical material. Other musical resources included significant operas of the last century, includ (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Leadership and Change

The following autoethnographic dissertation examines my personal experiences of trauma, abuse, and violence. Drawing on journals, memories, and artifacts from my life, I use self-reflection to illustrate the impacts of trauma on my childhood and adulthood. My traumatic experiences of sexual abuse, childhood violence, and emotional abuse are situated within broader sociocultural contexts of masculinity, Hispanic culture, and social norms. This study illuminates possibilities for healing and transformation for myself and others with shared traumatic backgrounds. It calls for trauma-informed education, masculinity, and resiliency. Evocatively sharing my traumatic life events provides an accessible window into often silenced experiences, bearing witness to injustice while offering empathy, connection, and hope. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu/) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu/).

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Leadership and Change

This study focuses on better understanding students and their internal worlds through conceptual metaphor theory and sensory language. Using a phenomenological and arts-based approach, I examined students' metaphorical constructions of their college experiences and the sensory language and information informing those constructions. By engaging participants in a multimodal process to re-see their experience through connoisseurship and criticism, I explored the following research questions: How do students metaphorically structure their college experience? What sensory language do college students use to describe the metaphorical dimensions of their college experience? How does sensory information shape the metaphorical structuring of their college experience? Through conversations centered on participant-generated images and chosen sensory language, I identified five complex metaphors that represented participants' constructions of their college experience: college is an unwieldy package; college is up, forward, and out; college is current and future nostalgia; college is a prism; and college is a movie and peers are the soundtrack. By considering these themes, it may be possible for educators to better partner with diverse learners to design personally meaningful experiences that support student development and success. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

For much of the past seventy years, discussion of authorial intention has often been seen as taboo in historical literary analysis. Monumental scholars such Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault wrote crucial essays that helped steer critical focus away from questions of intention, encouraging interpretation of the text itself as the ideal. While these contributions to the field were both valuable and necessary, paving the way for the reader-response approach that is now predominant in literary analysis, they had the unfortunate consequence of taking the role of intention out of the realm of interpretation entirely. The difficulty this consequence has presented is that to many literary analysts, “intention” is still viewed as a bad word, or at least one tainted by the idea that considering intentions precludes other readerly or critical interpretations. The field of book history has largely steered clear of the negative imputations of intention, as understanding what an author (or other agents involved in publication) intended by choices made in a primary text is essential for how that publication can be parsed from a material standpoint. The divide between book history and literary analysis has gradually been narrowing, but the reluctance to fully embrace intention as one of many tools to explore the interpretational possibilities of historical literary texts is a problem that I seek to address. This dissertation focuses on four editions of poetry from the mid-seventeenth century to demonstrate how the intentions of authors and other agents in the production of literary works have a direct impact on how those works can be interpreted. My methodology is rooted in book history, but my key objective throughout is to apply that approach to literary analysis by using what we can both definitively know and reasonably establish about intentions to guide close-readings of the works themselves. Doing so reveals that, far from precluding interpretation, considering the orig (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Higher Education Administration

The purpose and value of higher education have been debated for centuries as proponents of technical or liberal ideals have advocated for their respective positions. Post-secondary art and design education has been affected by such debates, causing arts educators to justify their existence and demonstrate a return on investment for undergraduate students' degree attainment. However, quantitative measures of success through career and financial criteria fail to recognize the inherent value of arts education on the development of students as people and creators, which is an oft-espoused outcome of the arts. Further, student development in higher education is a well-researched field and student affairs practitioners use student development theory to inform their work. Yet such theories have evolved in waves marked by critique of the limitations inherent with theories past. Today's practitioners question the relevancy of student development theories on distinct student populations and within specific settings, including art and design contexts. The purpose of this study was to construct a theory of self-authorship based on experiences described by undergraduate students studying art and design and to understand what factors students describe as influential to such development. The research questions are: (a) How do art and design students describe their development toward self-authorship in college? and (b) What factors do art and design students describe as influential in their development toward self-authorship? Using constructivist grounded theory methodology, I developed a theory of self-authorship specific to the nuances of the art and design context that includes three components: (a) considering post-secondary study in the arts, (b) adapting to the arts environment, and (c) shifting from extrinsic to intrinsic orientations to develop a creative identity and live a creative life. Factors that influenced students' self-authorship development included pre-coll (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This project studies the effects on transfer of a learning-centered, co-constructed first-year writing course. By having the students voice and cross-examine their writing visions, the course helped them come to voice and acquire writing artistry, generative writing identity, and artistic vision of writing as inquiry, assessment, and transfer. Transfer transcends use of prior learning but encompasses continual growth in preparation for future writing. Through reflective practice, transfer fosters growth as non-automatic writing behaviors become automatic—“lower-road”—and writers reinvest freed resources. The course's pedagogy was a hybrid of such pedagogies as critical, co-creative, relational, feminist, student-voice, and social-justice so as to promote co-inquiry, learning together, and independence by all members of the learning community. It relied upon three principles: respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. In the course studied in the project, the instructor and students discussed, negotiated, and co-constructed the assessment dimensions of the course so as to think like writers and acquire an identity of “self-authorship.” Assessment, for the purposes of this project, means the explicit and tacit assessment processes of inquiry, evaluation, and transfer all expert writers employ. To let the participants tell their stories, the project employed qualitative research consisting of teacher research during the course, which included document collection, formative weekly feedback from the students, and a teacher's journal. Data collection continued during the following semester with five student participants participating in short-answer surveys, semi-structured interviews, and discourse-based interviews. Employing an “actor's perspective” resulted in three categories of codes: tendencies to inquire, assess, and transfer. All five student participants demonstrated tendencies to inquire, assess, and transfer while drafting their spring projects. All co (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Policy and Leadership

Abstract Unexpected, disruptive personal dilemmas that occur during experiential learning opportunities such as study abroad spark intellectual and developmental growth by requiring participants to reflect internally on different ways to think and act. Expanding the existing literature on the unique and consequential ways students with marginalized social identities navigate this process overseas motivated this study. Interviews with two female and three male undergraduates provided new insight into the provocative moments that required these individuals with lived experiences traditionally underrepresented in study abroad to reflect inwardly on their meaning-making processes during a four-week course in France and Morocco. This narrative inquiry included artifact analysis describing how context, disorientation, social support, and preparation shaped participants' self-reflective journeys abroad. Areas of investigation included examining which contexts generated what participants described as provocative moments and the approaches they used to navigate these significant perceived dilemmas. The use of a Post-Foundational and poststructural lens for additional analysis revealed additional contextual considerations. The other frameworks shed new light on understanding how participants used their developing internal voice to figure out strategies for adapting and adjusting to unsettling predicaments that required them to look inwardly for resolution.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Educational Studies

This study seeks to better understand how undergraduate students in the region are coming to better understand their own worldview beliefs and how they fit into an increasingly globalized world and does so by examining the development of self-authored worldview commitment over the first year of college for students enrolled at four-year institutions in the Appalachian region. After controlling for variables including but not limited to: students' pre-college characteristics, including their incoming measures of self-authored worldview commitment, institutional conditions and climates, and student behaviors during their first year, what emerges after measuring students' self-authored worldview commitment scores at the end of their first year provides insight into the college conditions and student behaviors that contribute towards, or hinder, students' ability to self-author their worldviews. Students attending Appalachian institutions were found to be analogous to their peers nationwide on both their entering measures of self-authored worldview commitment as well as their developmental measures after their first year. The Appalachian-specific precollege characteristics that emerged suggested that worldview minority, first-generation college-going, and higher achieving students, as well as those intending to pursue business administration all showed lower gains on this measure while students of another worldview showed higher returns. The campus relational contexts that emerged as significant were provocative encounters with worldview diversity, which boosted development, and negative interworldview engagement which hindered it. Finally, students who engaged in two or more informal academic activities showed above-average gains in their worldview commitment. Appalachian institutions should ensure that their campuses provide opportunities for interworldview engagement that are appropriately structured for higher achieving and first-generation college going students, (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2020, Educational Leadership

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of students beginning a four-year institution with multiple college credits due to Advanced Placement (AP) classes or dual enrollment programs. Although literature suggests taking advantage of these opportunities benefits students academically and financially, there is insufficient research on how these students perceive their cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal challenges and opportunities once they enter a four-year institution. First-year students are starting college as a sophomore or junior-level status. Unfortunately, there is limited research on how these students adjust socially and developmentally in advanced classes with older students. There is an educational need to understand how these students perceive any challenges and opportunities they encounter. Understanding how students who begin at a four-year institution with 12 or more college credits perceive their challenges and opportunities and sense of belonging can provide educators knowledge to best support this group of students. Applying Baxter Magolda's (1999; 2001) self-authorship framework and the sense of belonging framework to this group of students provides educators the background knowledge to recognize how individuals travel through the developmental process. Within this process, students typically begin college listening to external voices and progress toward listening and trusting their internal voices. Therefore, this study examined the perceptions from both first-year and fourth-year students. The self-authorship framework and the sense of belonging framework were used to analyze the data in agreement with the research questions to understand a) how students describe their cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal challenges and opportunities, b) how they perceive their sense of belonging, and c) how the findings can inform best practices for advisors. The findings of this study conclude four major outcomes. First, student (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Higher Education (Education)

With an increased focus on accountability in higher education, particularly concerning institutional effectiveness, it has become vital for universities to determine what experiences students consider influential to their success. Although academics tend to be most emphasized in discussions surrounding institutional effectiveness, co-curricular programs also have the potential to play a crucial role in student achievement. Due to the impact these programs may have on student success, this qualitative case study sought to explore the influence the Ohio Fellows program had on collegiate and post-collegiate success at Ohio University. Through analysis of archival information about the Ohio Fellows in conjunction with interviews conducted with original and current participants, the purpose of the program, its connections to success, and changes since its inception were recognized. The students who participated in the Ohio Fellows were reliant on an influential community, which evolved over time, as it focused on developing them into actively socially-conscious future leaders, while illustrating which attributes lent themselves to collegiate and post-collegiate success.

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

This thesis challenges reductive historical and contemporary representations of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900-1948) as the iconic flapper figure, the insufferable schizophrenic, or the wife of famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Throughout her life, Zelda Fitzgerald produced a wealth of valuable artistic creations, including several essays and short stories, paintings, a play, and a novel. Unfortunately, due to the professional anxieties of her husband and, in the later years of her life, the influence of her psychiatrists, Zelda received little due recognition for her artistry. Instead, her husband's and her psychiatrists' narratives, particularly regarding her mental illness, crafted the public's perceptions of her as someone incapable of valuable literary production. This thesis, then, recognizes Zelda's own writings as significant counternarratives to the identities constructed for her. Similarly, this project critically examines late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century representations of Zelda Fitzgerald in popular media in order to elucidate the causes for lingering misconceptions regarding one of our most widely misunderstood and underappreciated female writers. Ultimately, this thesis works to return to problematic representations of Zelda and, in so doing, recuperate her as a valuable contributor to American literary modernism.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Higher Education Administration

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to develop a theory that explains the process of self-authorship development of college students in China. Little research exists that explicitly explores the integrated development of college students in China and influences on that development from the educational environment. Despite the extensive research in U.S. higher education settings on students' development from an integrated perspective, little comparable research has been done in the context of college students in China. I interviewed 13 junior or senior college students from three institutions in one province in China via synchronous video conferencing. I utilized convenience sampling to choose the province, purposive sampling to select the three institutions with different rankings, purposive sampling to choose the first six participants, and then theoretical sampling to select the subsequent seven participants, until theoretical saturation was reached. I used constant comparative analysis to facilitate theoretical sampling and the data analysis process. An initial conceptual model of self-authorship development emerged from this study. The trajectory of development in the epistemological domain is from depending on external sources' knowing to beginning to construct knowledge. The trajectory of development in the interpersonal domain is from being subordinate or dominant in relationships to striving for mutual relationships. In other words, participants were becoming less dependent in relationships. The intrapersonal domain is comprised of three dimensions: self-defined goals, self-efficacy, and self-knowledge. The trajectory of development in the intrapersonal domain is from unclear self-defined goals to clear self-defined goals, low self-efficacy to high self-efficacy, and little self-knowledge to robust self-knowledge. In addition, I found four factors promoting participants' self-authorship development: absence of externally defined go (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2019, Art History

In the history of printmaking, the goldsmith-engraver Israhel van Meckenem (German, 1440/45-1503) represents a paradox: an inventive copyist. His innovations include the earliest printed self-portrait and prototypes of genre scenes depicting everyday life. Meckenem was also the first printmaker to brand engravings he produced with his first name. However, many of the prints he signed were copies of works by other artists. Given the strong association of name and authorship that developed in the Early Modern period, art historians have struggled to evaluate Meckenem's significance without invoking the modern stigma of plagiarism. Founded on the examination of approximately 1500 extant impressions of his engravings, this research project investigates Meckenem's printmaking practice—especially his copies and his treatment of products—in fifteenth-century terms. These diverse engravings demonstrate that the early print market, fostered by the efficiencies of the printing press, interrupted longstanding artistic practices and changed cultural perceptions about art, copies, authenticity, and authorship. Chapter 1 examines the intersection of Meckenem's personal engraving style and his copying methods. His editorial approach while copying reflects an emerging awareness of individual artists' styles in the marketplace. The second and third chapters investigate the production and reception of two types of prints. The evolving treatment of seven apostle series throughout Meckenem's career traces his evolving efforts to present devotional subjects as visually engaging, collectable works of fine art. Meckenem's keen interest in decorative leaf work and flowers led him to cultivate a market for ornamental engravings, from pattern prints to elaborate works in which ornate flora served as a metaphor of artistic fruitfulness. The final chapter probes the meaning of Ornamental with the Engraver's Name, a showpiece in which Meckenem spelled out “ISRAHEL M” in decorative leaves and (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts in Theology, Mount St. Mary's Seminary & School of Theology, 2019, School of Theology

The Church Fathers and early Ecclesiastical writers are unanimous in their claim that Matthew's Gospel was written first among the Four Gospels and was written in the Hebrew language. The evidence for these Patristic claims is external to the Gospel itself--relying on "traditions" purported to have been passed down from authoritative figures such as John the Evangelist and his disciples. The Patristic authors, while unanimous in their claims that Matthew wrote first and wrote in Hebrew, are generally discounted as being historically unreliable regarding the origin of Matthew's Gospel. This thesis examines this problem by analyzing in detail the Patristic authors who, as Biblical historians, write on the authorship of Matthew's Gospel. The witnesses were examined based on the work of several contemporary scholars, and their testimonies were cross-referenced with each other and with other historical evidence in order to ascertain if the claims held up to scrutiny. While many of the Patristic claims were indeed plausible, issues such as questionable motives on the part of some (such as Eusebius), textual errors (in Jerome's writings), linguistic unclarity (in Papias' witness), and possible chronological errors (in Irenaeus' account) make proving the veracity of the Patristic claims impossible. While proving the claims beyond a reasonable doubt is impossible, the research demonstrates that it is indeed plausible that the Patristic writers were familiar with a Hebrew proto-Gospel which later developed into a canonical Greek version--though the canonical version was likely not a direct translation from a Semitic original.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2018, Educational Leadership

Due to the limitations of meaning-making theory that absolve history of its dynamic and lasting effects on minoritized existence in the present and rely on an organizing principle that formulates the subject-object relationship as synonymous with a more complex and evolving self (a trajectory that leads to self-authorship), this research study proposed that educators consider an alternative approach to theory construction. What would happen if educators and researchers squarely centered the [Black] body in a sociopolitical (Okello, 2018) context that considers the historical, social, political, affective, and physiological tenets of one's existence? I deployed a Black feminist literary criticism to analyze four decades of Black existentialism and three critical scenes in the development of my artistry. This methodology enabled me to clarify what Lisa Anderson (2008) calls a Black feminist aesthetic, or “the elements of the text/performance that invoke a particular history, politics, or philosophy of a `community' (broadly construed)” (p. 115). Moreover, this methodology instructs my analysis to key into themes and strategies theorized through Joy James' (1999) concept of limbos, which considers the various ways Black bodies progressively move forward despite the vulnerability of their positions. This approach responds directly to my purpose and research questions that seek to discern how Black bodies make meaning and decisions inside their social worlds, given the precarity of their allotment by asking two guiding research questions: How has the [Black] body been schooled?; and How might examining the present-day condition of Black bodies in conversation with literary records of Black existentialism contribute to the deconstruction and reconstruction of self-authorship theory? Situating the present day Black body in conversation with classical theorists—classical by definition, “relates to the most highly developed stage of an earlier civilization and its cultur (open full item for complete abstract)