This thesis analyzes the relationship between the themes of madness and immorality in two plays from William Shakespeare (Hamlet and Othello) and three stories from Edgar Allan Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat”). In the beginning, this thesis provides a brief overview of the history of madness, focusing on humanity’s longstanding association of mental illnesses with immorality. Afterward, an analysis of the aforementioned works reveals connections and differences in how the works portray the relationship between the two themes. Throughout the analysis, the thesis includes information regarding each author’s historical context (specifically in regard to social, cultural, and historical associations between madness and immorality) to explore the authors’ depictions of their mad characters. The plays Hamlet and Othello indicate that madness, on one hand, results from God’s bestowment of rightful punishment on those that pursue revenge against His prohibition of seeking revenge. The plays, although primarily Othello on this second point, also suggest that madness originates from the influence of diabolical sources that gain control over those that pursue immoral actions. On the other hand, Poe depicts the relationship between madness and immorality slightly differently. In the works of Poe, immorality and madness connect in that madness triggers immorality. In the end, this analysis reveals how these works, differing slightly in the details, nevertheless show humanity’s old, prevailing association between madness and immorality.

The topic of video games and their potential benefits had been researched and catalogued by a number of experts in the past when it came to aspects such as improving cognitive function and increasing learning capabilities. However, there was little research on how video games provide benefits to players in terms of mental and emotional growth and development. Yet, a game by the name of Octopath Traveler had been given little to no academic attention despite its interesting premise of eight separate characters following their own narratives and improving themselves over their journeys. This essay examined how Octopath Traveler provided deep messages and lessons on faith, perseverance, communication, and independence onto its player, ultimately assisting in their mental and emotional development and maturity. Each of the four messages is supported by two of the eight characters, and each character presented a differing perspective on the theme discussed; the characters Therion and Ophilia examined faith in both the self and others, the characters Alfyn and Primrose dissected perseverance regarding beliefs and goals, the characters Cyrus and Tressa discussed communication as a means of learning and as a means of interaction, and the characters Olberic and H’aanit examined independence regarding seeking a purpose and assisting the community as a whole. Octopath Traveler shows that video games can impart strong moral values onto individuals and help them develop both mentally and emotionally.

Although Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” was written three centuries after Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Friar’s Tale,” the stories share both similar villains and explicit morals that condemn the tales’ victims rather than the antagonists. In an essay analyzing these works, I find that Chaucer and Perrault moralize their villains' predation as retribution for the protagonist’s supposed wrongdoings. In order to challenge and expand on these themes, I wrote a novella about Noelle Wei, a thirteen-year-old girl, who is attacked but left alive by a beast known for killing only dangerous criminals. After the beast promises to return, Noelle and her community must reckon with his unspoken accusation.

Building on past research, this study addresses ways in which gay, Filipino men negotiate their dual minority identities and consider potential conflicts and/or methods in which being a sexual and ethnic minority work together in the development of one’s identity. Through qualitative interviews, this research examines the experience of eleven gay, Filipino men in the Phoenix, AZ and Los Angeles, CA metropolitan areas and explores way in which their identities create stress and conflict, but always ways in which these identities create positivity in relation to their dual minority status.

South Sudan is the world’s newest nation, having gained its independence in 2011. Despite significant promise, South Sudan faces many serious internal issues. Among the most pressing is the treatment and status of women and, in particular, their lack of involvement in the economy and in academia.
Women’s Education (WE) is our proposed nonprofit designed to address these problems by providing business education, financial assistance, and academic services to women business owners operating in South Sudan. We believe our targeted intervention in these areas will result in improved social and economic standing for women, the natural byproduct of which is an improved country with increased stability.
In the first half of this paper, we explore the social and historical context of South Sudan to illustrate both the need for (and viability of) of our organization. We outline what we will do to achieve our goal of equality within the business and academic sectors for women, and the effects such equality will have upon society.
In the second half of the paper, we address the logistics behind our operations, including our mission and vision, client needs, budget, management strategies, and other internal and external factors that need to be considered.
KEY WORDS: South Sudan, Gender, Business Education, Academic Intervention, Economy, Societal Infrastructure

In this paper, we offer three legal bases for the continued legality of abortion in the U.S. in alternative to the current rationale set by Roe v. Wade. After a brief history of abortion law and rhetoric that shows the abortion debates to center on unanswered assumptions about the value and nature of human life, we first propose, through philosophical analysis, that an embryo does not merit the same legal protections as a born human because the status of being unborn marks it as fundamentally different from one. Secondly, we examine the legal principle of bodily integrity and demonstrate its clear application to the pregnant women, whose right over her own body, we argue, is unjustifiably curtailed by anti-abortion laws. Finally, we proffer that abortion is justified even if we grant the embryo personhood by applying the legal concept of medical power of attorney to the rights that parents have over their children.

Poetry is a way of living for me both as a writer and as a survivor of child sexual (CSA) and physical abuse. I have been turning to poetry for as long as I can remember as a companion on my journey through my trauma, trying to figure out who exactly it is. In Devil and the Deep Blue: Exploring Identity through Poetry, I take my trauma from my past and dissect it. I have taken old poems and edited them along with the guidance of Dr. Dombrowski and Dr. McNeil as my director and second reader respectively and edited them down into a collection of micro-poems. My goal in making these poems is to both put my own trauma to rest in a way, but to also make something for other trauma survivors who may not know they are not alone. My poems are one perspective on trauma, as I can only write what I have felt, but they are meant to show that there is someone who has felt that pain, as well as trying to make myself a better person through my own writing. Along with the micro poems, there are covers that I designed using childhood photos of my father and I, of which there are only a few remaining photographs, as well as designs I drew alongside those photos. The 3rd cover is an amalgam of childhood photos of my parents as well as photos of our family today, intending to show the change in message in the poems as they progress through the collection; they begin in introspection, move into the exploration of the more piercing pieces of trauma that I had yet to even uncover until now, and then the third group of poems is focused on the calmer pieces of aftermath that I still experience and how I am trying to withstand all of that.

On October 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party marched on Rome. A reactionary political movement with a nebulous ideology, the Fascists gained power the following day when King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister. Over the following decade, generic fascist movements would rise all over Europe, most prominently in Germany with the Nazi Party, and in Austria, Romania, Hungary, and Spain. Minor movements would appear in a great number of other European countries, including France, Great Britain, Portugal, and Greece. Most studies of fascism and totalitarianism look at those ideologies as a primarily European phenomenon, thereby overlooking the numerous fascist movements that appeared simultaneously in the United States. American historians similarly tend to downplay the role of fascism in United States history, relegating such groups and their “paranoid style” to the lunatic fringe of the political spectrum.
American fascist groups, while varied in motives, methods, and vision of a future society, recruited hundreds of thousands of members in the interwar years from either specific ethnic and immigrant groups or from among “native” Americans. Though most of these groups evaporated following the American entry into the Second World War and thus never came close to achieving any of their wide-ranging political goals, much of their literature and ideology exists and continues to be diffused among present-day members of the far right.
This study seeks to place American fascist movements within the context of their own time, as having emerged alongside European fascism from the same cultural antecedents. In doing so, this study analyzes three of the largest “native” American fascist groups – the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, and the Christian Front – and applies a theoretical model of fascism for comparison to generic European fascist movements. The thesis argues that in viewing fascism as the end result of a “cultural phenomenon,” as historian Zeev Sternhell has argued regarding European fascism, American fascism can similarly be seen as the culmination of several cultural, social, and intellectual antecedents rather than an obscure political aberration. By measuring the significance of American fascist movements only by their (lack of) political effectiveness, historians have overlooked many of the broader implications of such groups not only having existed but also having gained such a large following of adherents.

The following thesis project explores the foundation of and current operation of the humanities classroom with a focus on who and what is considered scholarly and therefore who and what gets to be in the classroom. In the first chapter I explore the idea of how space- both physical and proverbial- is made through narrative and gives rise to one’s social place. From there I explore notions of human and person. I explore how human is different from person and how current notions of human and person have philosophical foundations that exclude African and Afro-descended persons. In chapter three I explore how notions of human that exclude black-plus persons have gone on to shape the humanities classroom as a white space where notions of scholar and scholarly often exclude black-plus persons. I then go on to reflect on my personal experiences in the Barrett and Women and Gender Studies classrooms. In the final chapter I explore the importance of popular media, specifically modes of mass media (theater, film, TV, social media) as spaces where black-plus narratives tell stories and give depictions of black-plus persons as beings, as humans, as persons. I also touch on how popular media currently is a space where black-plus narratives provide place for black-plus persons and space for people to learn new ways of seeing black-plus people.