This paper is composed of six micro-biographies of inspiring female figures from history: Ziniada Portnova, Nancy Wake, Katherine Johnson, Sunitha Krishnan, Huda Shaarawi, and Fe del Mundo. Traditionally, historians have failed to portray the value of ordinary people who have accomplished extraordinary things. In attempting to change this, the purpose of this project is to educate the public on the role that one person can play in the course of historical events and inspire others to follow the example of these women. Irrespective of geographic location, time period, or social position, each of these women have individually overcame the prevailing sentiment that their voices did not matter and maintained a desire to make a difference in their worlds in defense of their convictions. They made selfless sacrifices of action in order to advance their causes when the role of women was often overlooked. Despite the existing social boundaries and barriers, their confidence in themselves and the faith that they maintained in their convictions allowed them to successfully make a difference. The biographies will highlight the individual power of women who exercised their historical efficacy in the face of adversity. Beyond this written thesis, I am practicing public history by presenting these women at my defense as live women in costume. Similar to a museum exhibit, this use of visuals will further emphasize the reality of their lives, existence, and accomplishments. In narrating and presenting their stories, I hope to do two things. First, to give these women proper recognition for their courage, achievements, and strength. Second, to encourage you, the reader and audience, to believe in your power as an individual and to exercise your historical efficacy.

Devils on Taylor is a creative project that explores the role social media plays in
establishing traditions in the current digital landscape. Contemporary marketing
practices adhere to formulaic social media campaigns that we wanted to experiment
within establishing the tailgate event, Devils on Taylor, as a tradition on the Arizona
State University Downtown Phoenix campus. Drawing inspiration from established
traditions on the main, Tempe campus at Arizona State University, we focused on how
social media could grow our event to a comparable caliber of long-standing events such
as Devils on Mill & Devils on College. There were three major components in creating
this project: 1) creating an event with significance and meaning to the surrounding
community; 2) making the given community aware and excited about participating in the
event on a recurring basis; and 3) cultivating new leadership to continue executing this
tradition and successfully passing it down each semester/year. Effective marketing
campaigns cater to the tendencies of the targeted demographic and are imperative to
modify based on the audience. Understanding the target demographic of 18-24-year
olds fundamentally altered our marketing strategy for Devils on Taylor and resulted in
our heavy concentration on social media. This project compares the effectiveness of
marketing strategies such as Facebook, Instagram, flyers and word of mouth and
develops conclusions based on the turnout to Devils on Taylor events, membership
in Inferno Insiders, which is the organization that hosts these events, and the potential
for these two entities to sustain themselves in the following years. Interestingly, the
symbiotic relationship between Inferno Insiders and Devils on Taylor presented unique
challenges. We note the consequences of creating an organization to create a tradition
and project our confidence in the longevity of Devils on Taylor.

The thesis explores the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, which occurred in Jerusalem in 1961. In order to do this, the thesis analyzes four sources—two films and two books—that exist as representations of and responses to the historic trial. My analyses investigate the role of the witnesses who offered testimony during the trial and the sentencing that occurred at the trial’s conclusion, which are two major aspects of the trial. By comparing the way that various witnesses, who appear in multiple representations of the trial, are portrayed, the thesis will make conclusions regarding the way that each source utilizes the witness testimony. In order to evaluate the way each source presents the sentencing of the trial, the thesis uses Yasco Horsman’s concepts of the constative and performative aspects of judgement. The thesis concludes by discussing the value that each of these works has as a representation of the Holocaust. Ultimately, as time distances the modern generation from the events of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust trials, the need for such representations as the four examined in this thesis continues to grow in importance.

A common challenge faced by students is that they often have questions about course material that they cannot ask during lecture time. There are many ways for students to have these questions answered, such as office hours and online discussion boards. However, office hours may be at inconvenient times or locations, and online discussion boards are difficult to navigate and may be inactive. The purpose of this project was to create an Alexa skill that allows users to ask their Alexa-equipped device a question concerning their course material and to receive an answer retrieved from discussion board data. User questions are mapped to discussion board posts by use of the cosine similarity algorithm. In this algorithm, posts from the discussion board and the user’s question are converted into mathematical vectors, with each term in the vector corresponding to a word. The values of these terms are computed based on the word’s frequency within the vector’s corresponding document, the frequency of that word within all the documents, and the length of the document. After the question and candidate posts are converted into vectors, the algorithm determines the post most similar to the user’s question by computing the angle between the vectors. With the most similar discussion board post determined, the user receives the replies to the post, if any, as their answer. Users are able to indicate to their Alexa device whether they were satisfied by the answer, and if they were unsatisfied then they are given the opportunity to either rephrase their question or to have the question sent to a database of unanswered questions. The professor can view and answer the questions in this database on a website hosted by use of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. The Alexa skill does well at answering questions that have already been asked in the discussion board. However, the skill depends heavily on the user’s word choice. Two questions that are semantically identical but different in phrasing are often given different answers. This is because the cosine algorithm measures similarity on the basis of word overlap, not semantic meaning, and thus the application never truly “understands” what type of answer the user desires. Improving the performance of this Alexa skill will require a more advanced question answering algorithm, but the limitations of Amazon Web Services as a development platform make implementing such an algorithm difficult. Nevertheless, this project has created the basis of a question answering Alexa skill by demonstrating a feasible way that the resources offered by Amazon can be utilized in order to build such an application.

The purpose of this essay is to determine how the narratives of veterans who served in combat roles during the Vietnam War have affected how historians have written about the war. First, this project will briefly cover the history of the general public’s view of the war and it’s veterans, looking at how feelings towards Vietnam War veterans have shifted over the past fifty years. Next, this project will analyze two books about the Vietnam War that focus primarily on the veteran experience, rather than on the internal politics of the United States and Vietnam or on the successes or failures of battle, and determine the extent to which these books contribute to public understanding of the war. This essay will then determine the role memory plays in crafting these narratives and how historians have an obligation to include or at least consider the complex perspectives of veterans and their families when they write on topics as controversial as warfare.

Over the summer of 2018, I had the incredible opportunity to serve as an AmeriCorps member through the Providing Access to Court Services Program (PACS) program. It was the duty of the AmeriCorps members to provide access to justice to the community. Serving as an AmeriCorps member opened my eyes to many parts of the court system I did not know existed, and made me want to explore more ways I could help the community in Maricopa County. One of the many factions of the Maricopa County Superior Court that I had the privilege of learning more about was Drug Court. Drug Court, at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Downtown Phoenix, started in 1992 as a program designed to monitor and provide counseling for offenders in hopes to break the cycle of substance abuse and addiction. Commissioner Guyton, the Presiding Commissioner of Drug Court, came to the AmeriCorps program in the Summer of 2018 in hopes of adding a new program of life-skills workshops to be used as an alternative sanction for offenders going through Drug Court. The On Second Thought program offers life-skills workshops that aim to encourage success within the Drug Court Program at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Downtown Phoenix, and promote further success in life after graduation. The two workshops developed include the "Basic Writing " and "Resumes, Job Search, Job Interviews" workshops. This program has been a successful new part to the Drug Court program and will continue to educate and inspire each individual that walks through the door.

Making Clarinet Reeds by Hand is an instructive manual for the collegiate or professional clarinetist seeking to learn about how to have more control over their reeds. It explores reasons to consider making one’s own clarinet reeds by hand, explains the process in detail both from starting with tube cane or from commercially purchased reed blanks, and includes a cost and time effectiveness analysis highlighting the benefits and disadvantages of making reeds by hand. The thesis also includes a variety of pictures, diagrams, and infographics to incorporate visual explanation as well as addresses the common mistakes associated with each part of the reed making process. The thesis is organized into many sections and section headings to facilitate quick reference for specific questions, as well as incorporates step-by-step guides that walk through the general reed making process.

In the essay, "Maps and Legends of Hell: Notes on Melodrama," Charles Baxter defines it as, "about, among other things, the failure of explanations." He goes on to describe the ways that melodrama interfaces with emotion, pulling us as readers in directions that we do not expect to feel the way we do. This conflict between emotional and logical responses is a critical part of the human condition, and its value in a literary space is often overlooked as juvenile and not worthy of the same kind of consideration as other, more distinguished driving forces for stories. We don't always feel the way we think we're supposed to, and those moments can tell us a lot about who we really are, as people. This trio of selected stories all have some element of this failure of explanation of emotions. "Table for Two" centers around a couple whose anniversary dinner ends with their landing in Hell. "Melodramatic Fools" is the story of a bad night out that results in a fantasy battle that the narrator cannot believe he is seeing. Finally, "Throwin' Slop" is about a minor league ballplayer past his prime, who can't understand what it was that held him back, in all aspects of his life. All three interface with the unknown in a way that explores it, tries to understand it, but ultimately fails to do much beyond notice it's there. The collected stories seek to explore the human condition through a mixture of the aforementioned melodrama, comedy, and surreal elements.

The purpose of this research is to discuss and analyze the arguments found in animal-dependent research debates that are formed from the use of speciesism and liberationism. Speciesism is often used to draw distinctions between humans and nonhuman animals in an attempt to lessen or eliminate nonhuman animals from their inclusion in the human moral scope. On the other hand, liberationism is commonly used to argue that nonhuman animals should be included in the human moral scope by claiming that certain characteristics of nonhuman animals are morally important. Although it is not possible to include every viewpoint and style of argument created through the use of these two ideologies, I believe that the two chosen texts accurately represent the arguments made by the majority of those that endorse either one. With that said, both ideologies seek to either justify or condemn certain types of human action that affect nonhuman animals. Through the analysis of the speciesist and liberationist arguments, it has become evident that both speciesism and liberationism are ultimately lacking in their ability to justify or condemn human action that affects nonhuman animals. This discovery led to the creation of a speciesist/liberationist hybrid ideology that seeks to combine the most convincing features of each while avoiding most of the issues associated with either one. The result is a new theory that is able to produce more convincing justifications in regards to how humans ought to treat nonhuman animals.

The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. James Madison is often credited with writing these first ten amendments. Although technically true, it is not the whole story. These essential amendments lay the foundation for what it means to be a United States citizen as well as define the overarching American ideals of liberty and freedom. There have been many great thinkers dubbed 'founding fathers' that have contributed to the great American experiment. George Mason, the eccentric Virginia statesman and planter, undoubtedly deserves this title. Unfortunately, George Mason has too often been forgotten. This injustice on behalf of the mainstream history curriculum has left out the actual Father of the Bill of Rights. The failure at any reference of Mason can partially be attributed to Mason's later decision to refuse ratifying the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention-even after he had contributed immensely to the document. Mason's decision to not ratify the Constitution unless it contained a Bill of Rights was crucial to the anti-Federalist movement as well as resulted in social and political backlash. It was not a cowardly decision for Mason to make. It would have been much easier for Mason to just sign and go along with the majority. This thesis acts as a case study examining Mason's life in the context of the American Revolution and the later formation of our nation's modern government system. It is intended to once again inject Mason into the mainstream story of American history while dispelling many of the attacks that Mason receives in regard to his character. The paper explores Mason's contributions to the American war effort as well as highlights his role in the creation of the foundation for the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and their state counterparts. Most importantly, it examines Mason's crucial decision to not sign the Constitution and the effects of this decision.