Masters Theses

Removing The Classical Landmark: Assessing an Epistemology Governed by Methodological Naturalism

Kegan Shaw — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:23:15 PDT

This paper proposes to assess the naturalist project in epistemology with an eye towards exposing the project as deficient for serving as a robust epistemological project. Epistemologists treasure a certain family of questions and burden themselves with a number of specific concerns the most important of which, I think, cannot be answered by the epistemological naturalist. Ignoring these questions, I will argue, essentially amounts to a dismissal of the principle tension that primarily motivates and properly guides epistemological theorizing. This tension is the familiar appearance vs. reality distinction and characterizes what I am calling the classical landmark or boundary-stone for epistemological theorizing. I will defend the claim that a full replacement of the traditional/classical epistemological project by a naturalized epistemology closes epistemology off from making important claims needed in a theory of human knowledge and, for that reason, a full replacement should be resisted. These claims that an epistemology should be expected to make issue from what I call the classical landmark for epistemological inquiry. Naturalist's effectively ignore this landmark and I caution them in the spirit of the proverb to not "remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set (Proverbs 22:28).

Preserving Dance Forms in India Through Education and Performance: A Curriculum for Bollywood Dance

Kimberly Martin — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:03 PDT

This project is a practical curriculum of Bollywood dance that can be used to assist in the preservation of dance forms in India through education and performance. The goal of this curriculum is to systematically equip dancers of all ages with the basic knowledge and experiences needed to excel as dancers and choreographers of Bollywood dance. This will be achieved through practical experience that is built from the basics of Bollywood dance and founded in classical tradition and theory as presented in Bharat Natyam. This curriculum is broken up into four sixteen-week semesters and covers a series of steps, basics in theory and application as it relates to rhythm and synchronization, mudras, expression and style, and choreography. The steps included in this curriculum are commonly found in many Bollywood dances. This curriculum also includes a series of Bharat Natyam steps borrowed from the curriculum taught by Rachna Chauhan through the Art Society of Mumbai, which are included to ensure students are able to correctly perform certain classical elements found in Bollywood dance. The data that has been gathered for this project has provided the basis for each aspect included in this curriculum and has been applied in the principle investigator's own life as she has studied Bharat Natyam and Bollywood dance. The constant evolution of Bollywood poses a challenge when attempting to form a curriculum for Bollywood dance, and as the demand changes and grows new steps will be added and older ones dropped as upcoming performances prepare to hit the big screens. However, the fundamentals offered in this curriculum are beneficial to anyone who is interested in learning the basics of Bollywood dance.

Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom and Escape of Women in African American and Indian Literatures

Lovely Koshy — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:32:56 PDT

This thesis focuses on women in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Rabindranath Tagore's three short stories. Hansberry writes during a period in America when racism, segregation, and black migration to the North weighed heavy upon the psyche of black women. Tagore writes during a time when British control, sati system, caste system, and dharma leave Indian women voiceless. Both express their disagreement with entrenched norms and institutions that have been in place for hundreds of years, a task that initially may seem to be an impossible undertaking, and unlikely to bring about expected change. This work reveals that a woman of low-caste Indian society can fight against dharma and subjugation and win, that an old, retired black woman equipped with her Christian faith can fight against segregation and racism and win.

Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception of Place

Kayla Snow — Fri, 03 May 2013 07:23:08 PDT

This thesis explores the way in which J.R.R. Tolkien's develops and expresses his nuanced sense of place through his major literary works--namely, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's sense of place, as expressed through his fiction, encompasses both metaphysical and geographical relational structures that are operative at both the local and global levels. As Tolkien develops his sense of place in his fiction, he draws from the Distributist principles--largely informed by Catholic social policy of the late nineteenth century and popularized by G.K. Chesterton--to build the economy in Middle-earth. The resulting economy resists industrialization and centralization of power and prioritizes diverse local communities as a means for promoting healthy global economies. While developing a thorough sense of local placed-ness among the diverse races in Middle-earth, Tolkien also suggests these local communities depend upon one another for health, thereby showing the inherent and complex interconnectedness of the human experience. Boundaries, limits, private property, and individual ownership--Tolkien establishes an economy in Middle-earth that esteems each of these things as necessary for health within any economy; yet, he simultaneously suggests that these estimable aspects of the economy do not exist in individualistic isolation, but rather depend upon community. Thus, Tolkien suggests that, in a healthy economy, individuals belong to a local community--agrarian or otherwise--where they might take pleasure in seeing the place where their own garden meets their neighbors'. Likewise, in a healthy economy, those local communities invest themselves in maintaining the health of that community, but not at the expense of a neighboring community or at the expense of the global community. Rather, each community stewards what has been placed under its stewardship, and thereby contributes to the health of the whole.

Active Religion: James Ireland, the Separate Baptists, and the Great Awakening in Virginia, 1760-1775

Cooper Pasque — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:30:19 PDT

In the mid-eighteenth century, the religious fervor of the Great Awakening entered Virginia. Evangelical Baptists soon threatened to undermine the authority of the Anglican Church and its planter patrons. Despite their efforts to quiet the Baptists, evangelical religion took root in Virginia by the end of the American Revolution. Historical works on these events offer valid but incomplete explanations. Puzzling dynamics in the Virginian context require a more complex interpretation. The life of James Ireland provides a unique window into possible answers. His autobiography provides evidence for what appears to be the most fundamental reason for evangelicalism's successes in Virginia. The radical changes in his life when he converted to evangelical Christianity, combined with the transformations of a number of his contemporaries, demonstrate that religious ideas were actively shaping and directing colonial Virginians. Ireland's memoirs confirm that the perseverance and eventual success of the Baptists despite severe persecution resulted largely from the intellectual and emotional potency of specific ideas within the evangelical message. That message imbued Baptist ministers such as Ireland with remarkable endurance as well as transformed large numbers of Virginians who heard it preached.

Life Inside the Spectacle: David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, and Storytelling in the Age of Entertainment

John Hawkins — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:30:17 PDT

This project explores George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest as interventionary literature. The thesis asserts that the two works confront the problems of isolation and dehumanization created by entertainment-based consumerism; they do so by depicting satirically exaggerated consumer societies and placing well-developed, sympathetic characters in those settings. The thesis includes a consideration of Jameson and deBord's theories of spectacle and Wallace's stated concerns with postmodern irony as an ineffective form of critique.

Conforming to Conventions in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma

Veronica Olson — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:30:14 PDT

A major part of Jane Austen's novels consists of a critique of the societal conventions that were prevalent in Regency England. Through a study of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, it can be seen that Austen marginalizes those characters who chose conformity to social conventions. Contrariwise, the characters who exhibit a greater degree of autonomy within their patriarchal culture become the focus of the narrative. In looking at societal conventions concerning money, gender roles, and class status in conjunction with Austen's portrayal of various characters in the three novels, Austen's own views about conformity to societal conventions are revealed. Like the three female character who emerge as heroines of the novels--Catherine Morland, Elizabeth Bennet, and Emma--Austen navigated through societal conventions of her time with self-awareness and a sense of humor. Thus, although not overtly subversive, Austen's novels contain undertones of Feminist sympathies. Through the often seemingly trivial behaviors of her characters in the class-conscious, gender-defined society of Regency England, Austen draws a subtle line of distinction between those who exhibit social conformity and those who rise above society's mandates and expectations.

Women as Victims in Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays

Ruth Foley — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:02:47 PDT

Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained and self-sufficient prewar South is the epitome of patriarchal society, and the setting for many of Williams' plays. In patriarchal society, gender relations are based on male domination where men control money, power, and even women. In this environment women learn to be dependent on men both economically and psychologically, and to play passive, unessential, and subordinate roles to their male counterparts. Women have to look beautiful, behave graciously, and be flirtatious in order to survive. Williams understood the plight of marginalized women through his close relationships with many females, including his sister, mother, grandmother, agent, actresses, and friends. His leanings toward effeminacy enable him to empathize with the female psyche and to object to society's demands that require women to appear younger, better looking, more innocent and less savvy than men in order to succeed. Williams capsulizes the plight of victimized women through Blanche's famous line, "Men don't even admit you exist unless they're making love to you." Williams' plays are relevant to the predicament of women in western society today, and will endure in their portrayal of women as victims until we put an end to patriarchy.

Subverting a Mythology: Examining Joseph Campbell's Monomyth in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft

Wesley VanDenBos — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:02:44 PDT

American horror author H. P. Lovecraft's tales of monsters and madness, collectively known as the Cthulhu Mythos, have exploded in popularity in the last few decades and attracted both critical and casual interest. Inspired by his childhood mythological readings, Lovecraft created these chilling stories as a more modern version of ancient myths, drawing upon yet subtly altering the sources that influenced him. The author of this thesis draws attention to the differences between classic myths and the Cthulhu Mythos, using the monomyth of Joseph Campbell as a framework through which to view both ancient mythologies and Lovecraft's tales. This thesis seeks to analyze three important elements of the monomyth as subverted in Lovecraft's works. First, the author criticizes the notion of the hero in the Cthulhu Mythos, contrasting the characters to the heroes of classic myths. Second, the mythical boon is called into question, and Lovecraft's boons of science and knowledge are shown to be incompatible with Campbell's description of supernatural blessings. Lastly, the author argues that the supernatural monsters in the Cthulhu Mythos are aliens, not gods, thus deviating from the monomythic cycle's tendency to portray such creatures as spiritual, moral beings. This thesis ultimately acknowledges the mythological presence in the Cthulhu Mythos, but argues that the differences are significant enough to cause Lovecraft's works to fall outside the monomyth's broad reach.

No Greater Love: Recognition, Transformation, and Friendship in the Harry Potter Series

Stephen Parish — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:02:41 PDT

Nobody today doubts the momentous influence the Harry Potter series has had on a generation of readers. Many scholars and critics assume Harry's place amongst other great works of children's literature, and indeed the series has brought about a revival in children's literature scholarship. Despite this popularity, many critics question the series' aesthetics, its attention to moral demeanor. Therefore, what element exists in Harry Potter that could enforce its aesthetic quality? Based on a rhetorical reading of the texts, my thesis upholds the aesthetic nature of the books through an analysis of the trio's friendship and and its impact on Harry's moral development. For a framework, I use Aristotle's theory of anagnorisis and peripeteia: the principle character's recognition of a moral flaw which leads to his or her suffering and subsequent moral transformation. However, I deviate from Aristotle's theory by stating that the series shows Harry's recognition of a virtue, specifically his friendship with Ron and Hermione, leads to his transformation. Therefore, the series' emphasis on the moral development of the main character through friendship provides evidence of the aesthetics of the novels.

Revolutionary Betrayal: The Fall of King George III in the Experience of Politicians, Planters, and Preachers

Benjamin J. Barlowe — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:20:00 PDT

When describing the imperial crisis of 1763-1776 between the British government and the American colonists, historians often refer to Great Britain as a united entity unto itself, a single character in the imperial conflict. While this offers rhetorical benefits, it oversimplifies the complex constitutional relationship between the American periphery and the British center. Instead, the path to independence is a story of how Americans rejected the authority of each part of the central British government in turn. Americans drew a clear distinction between protesting the authority of the British Parliament and that of King George III himself. Rather than recalling the nature of their protest against the British ministry or Parliament, a deeper understanding of why Americans rejected the authority of the British monarchy may explain why a disagreement concerning the imperial constitution became a struggle for American independence. A deep look at the experience of the delegates of the Continental Congress, Southern planters, and patriot ministers helps to explain why many Americans rejected royal authority. Ultimately, for each of these groups, the turn toward independence was the result of a sudden breakdown in their relationship with King George III.

They Came Up Out of the Water: Evangelicalism and Ethiopian Baptists in the Southern Lowcountry and Jamaica, 1737-1806

Samantha Futrell — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:19:57 PDT

The Ethiopian Baptists in the eighteenth century Atlantic were not actually Ethiopians at all, but people of West African descent, traded as slaves to the southern lowcountry and Jamaica. Their identification with Ethiopia did not come from their geographic ancestry, but from a Christian heritage that they became a part of when they accepted the salvation of Jesus Christ. The evolution of this evangelical Afro-Baptist movement occurred in three stages. First, white evangelicals, like George Whitefield, carried Christianity to African American populations in South Carolina during the Great Awakening. Second, African American leaders, such as George Liele, rose up as slave and free black Baptist preachers to evangelize colored communities in the Georgia and South Carolina lowcountry prior to and during the American Revolution. Third, George Liele and other black Baptist ministers left the lowcountry for Jamaica, where they replicated proselytization methods and religious practices from both white evangelicals and southern African American Baptists. In each stage, appeasing whites, preaching methods, Baptist rituals, education, and creating a community of believers all proved integral in evangelicalism's transatlantic development in colored communities. By the end of the eighteenth century, colored Baptist ministers in South Carolina, Georgia, and Jamaica, under the guidance of former slave and African American missionary to Jamaica, George Liele, all referred to themselves as Ethiopian Baptists, a collective identification that bound them together in an Atlantic world evangelical religious movement.

Weaver of Allegory: John Bunyan's Use of the Medieval Theme of Vice and Virtue as Devotional Writer and Social Critic in The Holy War

David Madsen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:19:55 PDT

The literary artistry of Bunyan's The Holy War is overshadowed by the longstanding popularity of his greatest-known work The Pilgrim's Progress. However, The Holy War displays an impressive intricately-woven story with several complex strands of allegorical meaning. One such strand is its emphasis on the theme of virtue and vice in literature of the Middle Ages. In The Holy War, Bunyan applies this thematic thread from the Medieval Psychomachia and morality plays to his allegory in seventeenth-century Restoration England. The present research begins with an exploration of allegory as story with emphasis on Bunyan's role as storyteller in general and allegorist in particular. Bunyan not only well understood his contemporary literary context but also recognized that allegory was an apt means of engaging his audience. The research then explores Bunyan's role as a devotional writer with a focus on the spiritual challenges within the individual soul. Bunyan's primary duties were pastoral, and his ultimate goal as a writer was the spiritual transformation of an individual reader's life. The research concludes with a discussion of Bunyan as a social critic of Post-Restoration politics and cultural life. The English Succession Crisis of 1681 presented an opportunity for Bunyan to comment on the political tension that existed between the government of Charles II and Religious Dissenters. This tension is exemplified in the juxtaposition of The Holy War with another literary work of the Succession period, John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. All in all, Bunyan emerges as a writer aware of how story, devotion, and social criticism can form a powerful voice in allegory.

Does God Have a Right to Judge? The Aztecs' False Worship Practices Result in God's Judgment in the Unlikely Form of Hernán Cortés

Lisa Timmons — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:19:52 PDT

This thesis covers religious aspects of the Aztec culture before and after the conquest of Hernán Cortés between 1519 and 1521. One aspect of this thesis details the Aztecs' history and rise to power, followed by their rapid demise at the hands of Spanish conquistadors, while the other examines the highly flawed but effective instrument used in the destruction of their sprawling Mesoamerican empire--a conquistador from Spain by the name of Hernán Cortés. At the root of this controversial topic is God's perfect justice in relation to this culture's blatant and repeated disregard for those created in His image--by all accounts a swift and catastrophic judgment--presented here as having been executed through a very unlikely tool in the form of a cunning and calculating Spaniard.

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations: The Failed Redeemers and the Fate of the Orphan

Rebekah Overbey — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:19:49 PDT

The figure of the orphan is scattered throughout the pages of Victorian novels, though few novelists created orphans that were quite as memorable as Charles Dickens. Lonely orphans and abused children appear in nearly all of Dickens' fictional works; in the novels in which the orphan is the main character, this innocent, helpless orphan is often adopted by a wealthy and benevolent benefactor, and the orphan is thus redeemed by a dramatic rescue. In Great Expectations, however, Dickens inverts this redemption by rescue that was so characteristic of his earlier novels. Instead of an innocent, helpless child, Great Expectations has Pip, a vain, selfish young man hoping for social elevation; instead of wealthy, benevolent benefactors, Great Expectations has frightening, scheming adults who would sooner use Pip than rescue him. While there is no redemption by rescue in the novel, there is hope for redemption by forgiveness: the orphan must forgive himself and the adults who wronged him. My argument is that this redemption by forgiveness is far more powerful than the redemption by rescue of Dickens' early novels, and this study examines the adults who failed to redeem Pip and seeks to understand why Dickens would have deviated so far from the pattern of his earlier orphan narratives.

The Rhetorical Canon of Memory and the Assistive Use of Mnemonics

Jonathan Bobby — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 05:46:33 PDT

People often imagine at some point in their existence what it would be like to have a photographic memory. However, this mental aptitude is a misnomer, and extremely rare in humankind. What we possess from our Creator is a photographic mind. Our memory recall is based on the recognition of visual pictures that appear in our mind. The early communication theorists illustrated this recognition and described it in the fourth canon of rhetoric. Because of the advancements in information technology, memory no longer holds the significance it once did. Numerous academic texts refer to memory as the lost art of rhetoric and this is substantiated by the little attention memory receives in communication studies. Yet, modern day audiences often agree, public speeches are potentially more impressive and captivating when an extemporaneous speaker relies less on the written word and more on memory. Technological gadgetry has decreased the need for memory recall and increased memory insecurities. This study revisits memory as a significant rhetorical topic and tests a mnemonic technique that, if implemented, could increase recall and enhance rhetorical skills admired by the foundational orators. Using quantitative assessment, this study measures the impact of a pictographic coding system on student memorization of an assigned text at a large university in Virginia.

A Response to Clark Pinnock's Hope for the Unevangelized as Seen in a Wideness in God's Mercy

Joshua Covert — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:31:04 PDT

This paper will offer a response to Clark H. Pinnock's hope for the unevangelized as seen in A Wideness in God's Mercy. Pinnock argues that God saves individuals based upon their faith not primarily their knowledge. Pinnock develops a concept called the faith principle which he uses to support his claims. Pinnock provides five examples of unevangelized persons who are saved through faith without knowledge of Christ. Through Pinnock's faith principle and these five examples he argues that the unevangelized do not need special revelation - knowledge of Christ. It will be argued that the five examples provided by Pinnock contain serious hermeneutical mistakes that invalidate his argument. It will be argued that no individual has ever been saved without special revelation. This will be proven through exposing the hermeneutical errors of Pinnock's five examples.

Victim of a Revolution: Nicholas Cresswell's American Odyssey, 1774-1777

Matthew Exline — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:28:01 PDT

The diary of Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman who traveled in America from 1774-1777, has long been an important primary source on the American Revolution. Cresswell's travels took him from the eastern seaboard (and Barbados) to Kentucky and Ohio, and from Williamsburg, Virginia to New York City. The people he met encompassed almost the entire political spectrum of the day, ranging from William Howe and Loyalist operatives such as John Connolly to grassroots patriot activists on the Committees of Public Safety and founding luminaries such as George Rogers Clark, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. He rubbed shoulders with people from radically different social, ethnic, and cultural groups: prosperous merchants in Alexandria and Philadelphia; plantation elites and their slaves in Barbados, Maryland, and Virginia; struggling Scots-Irish pioneers on the frontier; peaceful Delaware Indians and Moravian converts; poor tenant farmers in Loudoun County, Virginia; and the wildly diverse inhabitants of British-occupied New York City, including naval captains and crews, redcoats and Hessians, Loyalist refugees, and the beggars and prostitutes that constituted the social dregs of a city under siege. Above all, he had adventures, described in vivid detail and with a wry humor. Despite the diary's popularity as a cornucopia of useful quotations, historians have written almost nothing about Cresswell himself, nor have they examined his diary simply for its own sake. In order to make Cresswell's fascinating record of his American journey more accessible, this work will take advantage of a new edition of the diary text to provide a detailed narrative retelling and restore chronological order to the story while also including necessary historical context and analysis. Cresswell did not remain politically neutral but instead acted decisively to support the British cause during the early years of the Revolutionary War, which he viewed as a grassroots insurrection sparked by the Intolerable Acts of 1774 and goaded on by the zealous Committees of Public Safety, without any broader philosophical or ideological justification. His experiences among the Delaware Indians on the western frontier caused a remarkable transformation in his attitude towards American Indians, and his descriptions of relationships with American women reveal important facts about eighteenth-century views of women, marriage, and sexuality. The diary of Nicholas Cresswell, often quoted but seldom read, can open a valuable window on the life of a remarkable individual and the remarkably ordinary people around him during the crucial early years of the American Revolution.

The Ministry of Economic Warfare: Anglo-American Relations 1939-1941

Jonathan Davis — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:15:08 PDT

An exploration of Anglo-American relations beginning in the interwar period to American involvement in World War II. This thesis explores the actions of the Ministry of Economic Warfare and how it affected Anglo-American relations before American commitment to the allied cause. It highlights the existing economic contention that existed between Great Britain and America before the conflict and acknowledges that the Britain and American alliance that is enjoyed today was not inevitable or necessarily desired by either nation. It demonstrates through the actions of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare the paradigm shift in Great Britain concerning the preservation of the empire against American competition to emphasis on home island survival in the Destroyer deal.

The Phenomenon Behind the Bite: Altercasting as it Applies to Apple Technology

Elizabeth Baldwin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:44:59 PDT

This paper investigates how the brand Apple markets their product so that consumers feel obligated to buy their product. By looking at five main categories of brand loyalty, environmentally friendly practices, being up-to-date with technology, pricing with value and customer service, this paper will rhetorically analyze how successful of a job it does. To get an inside look at what the public thought on the the way that Apple fulfilled their altercasting this paper analyzed what people said about Apple verses competing technology brands. By drawing overall conclusions, recording trends and making observations about the way that people had been altercasted this paper will give insight to the reader about how to effectively brand their product, how to implement altercasting to a consumer and to gain understanding on the how Apple has fulfilled altercasting.