Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: Communication
- Creators: School of Politics and Global Studies
There is a serious lack of local news in Arizona, the American Southwest, and the United States at-large. Arizonans are craving quality, factual, no-holds-barred journalism that is easy-to-read, and upfront. Quality, local news that covers the ins and outs of politics, culture, and community has an opportunity to not only enhance civic life, promote community healing, and expand knowledge made available to the general public (thus serving the communities it calls home), but to also generate revenue. Further, independent and center-right leaning voters in the state of Arizona — be reminded that independents make up the second largest voting bloc among Arizonans — are often crowded out in a media environment that consists of far-left nonprofit-funded news sites like the Arizona Mirror, formerly reputable papers that have bled readership as they veer further left like the Arizona Republic, and far-right online blogs that reach a very limited audience. The Western Tribune is an Arizona-based journalistic publication. This institution is dedicated to providing high-quality, well-sourced news and commentary on statewide, regional, national, and international current affairs through the lens of good government and free enterprise — as well as Southwestern values. We are a free institution that believes in free institutions. We cover stories that go uncovered because of the corporate media’s blind spots (and they’ve got many — they’re a result of news deserts and out-of-touch coastal attitudes) with the stable support of a robust institution dedicated to Truth-seeking behind them. Our storytellers are not just good writers. We seek to recruit and form critical thinkers with skills that span trades, disciplines, and educational backgrounds. We are building an institution committed to excellence.
Each chapter of this thesis closely studies a different object of a different medium to trace relationships between Constructivist objects and Soviet community. El Lissitzky’s PROUN Manifesto illuminates the creation of an artistic community. Alexander Rodchenko’s print Propaganda communicates between a state and its people. Varvara Stepanova’s Sportswear designs facilitate a society of workers. Alexandra Exter’s Marionettes combine common everyday objects and children’s theater. Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, envisions the ideal Soviet society as place in which socialists could convene. And Liubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonics relates the functional and aesthetic goals of Constructivism from Russia to the international art world. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction each provide the framework for discussing the intersections of art objects and community. Anderson explores nationhood through the lens of language and print media, Latour studies how social interaction on an individual basis might rely upon the physical objects around them, whereas Bourdieu addresses hierarchies in distinguishing objects of art in class-based societies by outlining the conflicts between cultural capital and tastemaking in the analysis of objects.
Through the exploration of each Constructivist object, this thesis explores individual, national, and international communities while considering their changing political, social contexts.
Turning Point USA’s “Exposing Critical Racism Tour” website incorporates imagery and language to purport an alternate reality of critical race theory (critical race theory) in opposition to intellectuals in order to incite an ideological war against teachings of intellectuals. In order to create a sound argument and analysis of the historical and political framework constituted within their page and advertisements, I introduce a bridge between the largely political theory of anti-intellectualism and the rhetorical theory of rhetorical narrative. I propose Anti-Intellectualist Narrative Theory (ANT) as a new theoretical lens for analyzing the nationalistic and populist rhetorical frame created by an extensive history of oppositions to individuals who purport an intellectual authority over the common people. In constructing ANT, I aim to recognize how anti-intellectualism functions as a rhetorical narrative through three rhetorical strategies: anti-rationality, anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism.