Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Online dating apps are prevalent within dating culture, but they are also forms of social media. Although the way in which people use these apps might be more targeted than other forms of social media, it seems likely that the problems associated with social media could very well apply to dating apps too. However, this is an empirical question that begs a scientific and systematic investigation. Dating apps have a number of unique dynamics, such as being centered around romantic relationships with the users on the service and judging & being judged by others. Self-objectification, a form of extreme public self-awareness, has been tied to both social media usage and more recently to dating app usage. Prior research examining self-objectification within and between dating app users has been inconclusive; it is not clear whether more frequent dating app usage predicts self-objectification or not. The current study aimed to clarify the relationship between dating app usage and self-objectification. Data were collected from 174 college students who were active dating app users. They were polled on their frequency of dating app usage and given a self-administered self-objectification inventory online. Findings show that self-objectification differs significantly across dating app usage groups. Additionally, a moderation effect of race was found. For white participants, the more frequently they used data app, the more self-objectification they reported. For non-white participants, there was a nonlinear relationship between data app usage and self-objectification. Among non-white dating app users, low and high dating app usage groups reported higher self-objectification than the moderate dating app usage group. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed to hopefully offer insights into the relationships between dating app usage and self-objectification.

“The Garden and Her Secrets” is a young adult novella focused on creating a fantastical world using ASU buildings as inspiration for the key landmarks in this magical landscape. The story centers around a giftless woman, Fiona, striving to make herself extraordinary by breaking hundreds of years of rules and wielding the musical talent of Belle, the unmagical woman who plays at the local piano bar. Fiona’s quest for both love and unlove means finding where the Secret Garden is hiding within her university, the Philomathian, and exploring her newfound feelings for Belle. Should the Secret Garden choose to remove her hood, there are certainly gifts to be had and secrets to rebury.

The aim of my thesis is to expand the placemaking analysis strategies that I learned in my previous thesis pathway course, HON 493: Placemaking in Middle Earth and Earthsea to my favorite fantasy setting, the land of Skyrim in the Elder Scrolls Universe. During the course, the class was encouraged to consider how historical texts, archaeological findings, and anthropological research served as the inspiration behind the worlds that J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin created along with the relationships that their fictional cultures had within those worlds. As the course drew to a close, I couldn’t help but start wondering what inspired the developers of Skyrim, the video game. One of Skyrim’s strongest features is its atmosphere and landscape. An analysis of the creation of place in Skyrim can teach future game developers how to create a land with stories rich enough to lose yourself in for years. I specifically wanted to focus on the burial practices and culture of the Nordic people, since most of the game is spent interacting with them and admittedly raiding the tombs of their ancestors in search of shiny trinkets and powerful artifacts. By delving into the inspirations behind Nordic burials, I hope to gain appreciation for the art of placemaking, and to broaden my knowledge of Nordic history, both fantasy and real. My research initially entailed finding stories about typical Norse burials, but since Skyrim’s burial grounds tend to be filled with the Nordic undead, known as the Draugr, I homed in on how the Norse believed that improper or disturbed burials could result in the rise of the dead. I also shifted attention to the importance of dragons in Norse culture, since they play a vital part in the existence of the Draugr in Skyrim, and I was curious if dragons perhaps played a similar role for the Norse people in the Viking Age. I found academic and historical studies about Viking myths about the origins of dragons and the undead and also studies on how these myths relate to the creation of place in Northern Europe. Lastly, I considered how the dragons and draugr in Skyrim depart from Norse mythology and how the inspirations and departures from Norse mythology deepen our sense of place in the land of Skyrim. This analysis made me realize how essential the Poetic Edda was to Norse mythology, since it’s one of the only written collections of Old Norse poems. The Norse people relied mostly on oral storytelling, which makes it extremely difficult to find any first-hand texts about their culture and lifestyles. After this project, or if I had more time, I think a read-through of the Poetic Edda would be an excellent way of educating myself on the breadth of Norse culture, as opposed to trying to find stories related to what I’ve experienced in Skyrim. I think there’s a limitless way of approaching an analysis of Old Norse culture in modern media and creative works, to the point that I felt I had to narrow my analysis to something simple, but fun, which was homing in on the dragons and draugr that I’ve had to battle thousands of with little previous thought as to their creative origins. The Norse people of the Viking Age may not have had access to our current understanding of the universe, but their speculations led to many fascinating beliefs about the unknown, like tales of dragons and draugar. Their mythology provided them with a unified sense of place and morals in a mercenary culture with loose collective cohesion. When their sense of place is brought into Skyrim and the dragons and draugar are brought to life, it’s easy to lose yourself in a depiction of their world. Skyrim was, and still is, a prime example of the importance of environmental storytelling in open-world games. Long after the graphics and gameplay become outdated, if the environment provides a living, breathing sense of place, then any fantasy game can stand the test of time. For those who aren’t convinced, I encourage them to try out Skyrim and experience their escape into another world with the iconic line, “Hey you, you’re finally awake”.

The purpose of this project is to explore minority mentorship through a series of interviews recorded and shared in a podcast-like format. I sat down with student leaders, Arizona State University faculty, and community leaders in the Phoenix Metropolitan area who have been both a mentor and mentee at some point in their life to learn about the impact mentorship had on their experiences.

The world of Tloren stands not alone. Tales from history and the lore of fictional settings alike have shaped a fantasy world as immersive as it is fantastical. This thesis catalogues the totality of inspirations behind seven of the major locations depicted in Tloren, the setting of the author’s own fantasy novel. Itself inspired by sensationalist archeological accounts from before the twentieth century, the following is a dissection of each place in exacting detail, weaving together narrative and academic discussion. Ultimately, the totality of inspirations behind Tloren will never be fully explored, yet it is the hope of the author that this thesis both stands alone as an account and guide for other aspiring worldbuilders as well as an appendix within the novel to further contextualize the locations therein.