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.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 52
Description
This ethnography outlines the live storytelling culture in Phoenix, Arizona, and what each of its sub-cultures contributes to the city's community. Phoenix's live storytelling events incorporate elements of an ancient art form into contemporary entertainment and sophisticated platforms for community building. These events are described and delineated by stylistic, structural, and content-based differences into the following categories: open-mic, curated, scripted, non-scripted, micro-culture, and marginalized groups. Research presented in this report was collected by reviewing scholarly materials about the social power of storytelling, attending live storytelling events across all categories, and interviewing event organizers and storytellers. My research developed toward an auto-ethnographic direction when I joined the community of storytellers in Phoenix, shifting the thesis to assume a voice of solidarity with the community. This resulted in a research project framed primarily as an ethnography that also includes my initial, personal experiences as a storyteller. The thesis concludes with the art form's macro-influences on Phoenix's rapidly-expanding community.
ContributorsNorton, Maeve (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / McAdams, Charity (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis study was to examine whether the "war on cancer" metaphor influences cancer perception and treatment decision. A total of 249 undergraduates (152 females) from a large southwestern university participated in an online survey experiment and were either randomly assigned to the control condition (N=123) or to the war prime condition (N=126). Participants in the control condition did not receive the metaphor manipulation while participants in the war prime condition received the subtle "war on cancer" metaphor prime. After the prime was given, participants read a scenario, answered questions related to the situation, and responded to demographic questions. The results suggested that, compared to participants in the no-prime condition, participants exposed to the war metaphor were more likely to (a) view melanoma as an acute disease, (b) choose chemotherapy over molecular tests, and (c) prefer more aggressive treatment. These findings illustrated the unintended consequences of the "war on cancer" slogan. The results were encouraging and in the predicted direction, but the effect size was small. The discussion section described possible future directions for research.
ContributorsShangraw, Ann Mariah (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Cavanaugh Toft, Carolyn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Poems for the Future President is a chapbook of poetry by Michael Bartelt. Rooted in the democratic idealism of Walt Whitman and the American poetic tradition, the collection is a reflection on Americas of the past, the America we live in now, and an America that could be. The poems encompass a thematic breadth that includes ecological examinations filtered through ancient Taoist and modern ecocritical philosophy, searches for political and ethical authenticity in an over-stimulated information age, and questions about the meaning of romance and tradition in a dystopian present. Included here is the manuscript's critical framework, which highlights the poetry's main influences. The manuscript itself is also included.
ContributorsBartelt, Michael Joseph (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / Orion, Shawnte (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Counternarratives is a print anthology of short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that is characterized by refusal, resistance, and joy. The anthology contains works by writers from all over North America and is the product of a months-long process of collection and curation. The anthology is grounded in the experience of living in the desert southwest, and many of the works reflect that, but it also includes works that reflect different geographical experiences. What binds the works in the anthology together, ultimately, is the ways in which they refuse and resist dominant discourses that dehumanize for the sake of the global capitalist system and in which they joyfully embody alternative ways of existing. Some works take on the aforementioned system explicitly; others do so implicitly, but all of their truths speak to realities that it, through one mechanism or another, marginalizes and obscures. The anthology is published by Four Chambers Press.
ContributorsAnderson, Evan William (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / Friedman, Jacob (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The media often portrays professional basketball players as narcissistic, entitled and selfish, but are these portrayals accurate? After all, basketball is a team sport and team sport research indicates that players are more altruistic and selfless. This study proposes a way to assess narcissism and altruism through observable behaviors from all the active players in the NBA.
ContributorsPappas, Carissa Anne (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Mae, Lynda (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
"Miranda remembers how Paul used to be. Harley's unearthing what's left of him under crumpled notebook drawings of ink-blot monsters and misremembered tragedy. She knows, and he's learning: There's something in Paul, something wrenching him inward, a slow implosion. Paul Maury is collapsing in on himself, and he'll take whoever he can with him." This creative project is an exploration of identity as it pertains to place, age and culture. Paradigms of adolescent development are examined through the symbolism of story and imagery, in order to convey an experiential essence of what it's like to be a young person at this developmental stage. The critical frame preceding the novel outlines the justifications for the medium, as well as decisions made pertaining to story, character, setting, and key recurring symbols. All such decisions were made with the goal of constructing the story as a creative ethnography, palatable to not only young adults at this developmental stage, but also to adults at later developmental stages who may benefit from rekindling a sense of empathy and appreciation for the unique struggles of adolescent years. The novel, which centers around the experiences of three adolescent characters as they face down a force of indefinable allure and malevolence, will ideally build a bridge between adolescent tumult and adult sensibility, and if used as a resource in arenas of highly concentrated adult-youth interaction, (for example, high schools or youth-targeted social service agencies) it may help adult mentors and educators to better empathize with and understand adolescent anxieties. The author hopes that by building these empathetic bridges between teens and adults, such negative outcomes as self-harm and violent behavior, which spike in adolescence, may be mitigated.
ContributorsPesch, Abrielle Nicole (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / Pfister, Michael (Committee member) / School of Social Work (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Phoenix is a lovely community with a rich arts culture and history. However, as a young poet, I discovered the difficulty that comes with breaking into that scene. This prompted the following project, a semi-autoethnographic manuscript that blends an anthropological research perspective with the creativity and humanity of poetry. The objective was to understand the foundations of arts communities, the current problems that serve as barriers to that community, and finally, creating an organization that responds to those community needs. Ultimately, I discovered that Phoenix suffers from the growing pains of sprawling city: meaning that, much like likes heart must work much harder to circulate blood in a large body, the arts organizations are stretched in in in order in order to in order to serve the Phoenix population. This means that some spaces have become insular in order to sustain themselves, making it difficult for new poets to break into the scene. Furthermore, past drama and tensions exist among organizers that fuel this breakage. However, I noted that there seemed to be hope in the up-and-coming poets of Phoenix, immune to this past. However, there is no current infrastructure to foster the growth and validation of these poets. Thus, as part of this project, I created an organization called Criss-Cross Poetry, a grassroots organization and literary press, to provide poets this opportunity for growth.
ContributorsAtencia, Megan Condeno (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / Friedman, Jake (Committee member) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
A recent controversy has surrounded service dogs in public environments. Use of service dogs may trigger discrimination against individuals with non-visible disabilities. Major goals of this thesis study are to examine if significant differences exist in personality perceptions and attitude towards service dog owners with visible disabilities versus those with non-visible disabilities, and whether these perceptions and attitude predict how they would be treated in a public setting. The study employed a mixed 2 x2 factorial experiment design. The first independent variable was visibility of the disability, with the two levels being visible vs non-visible, and this factor was non-repeated in nature. The second independent variable was the target of evaluation, with the owner and the dog being the two levels, and this was a repeated measure. Specifically, this study assessed personality perceptions using the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience) and operationalized attitude in terms of the positivity of personality perceptions. Additionally, this study examined whether an owner of a service dog with a non-visible disability would be treated differently from their counterpart who has a visible disability. In the study, participants were given a scenario and picture where they encounter an individual who either had a visible or non-visible disability with a service dog at a restaurant. Then, participants rated the owner and the dog individually on the Big Five personality traits, and indicated whether and how likely they would seat the individual and their service dog at the restaurant. When considering the visibility of a disability alone, an individual with a non-visible disability was perceived as less conscientious. When considering how the owner and the dog were perceived regardless of visibility of disability, owners were rated significantly lower than their dog on agreeableness and extraversion, but significantly higher on openness to experience. There was also a significant difference in treatment of the dog owners based on the visibility of their disability, service dog owners with non-visible disabilities have a higher likelihood of experiencing unlawful treatment. Furthermore, personality perceptions and attitude were significantly correlated with treatment for both individuals with non-visible and visible disabilities. Together, findings of this study inform the design of future research. Future research on this topic may help inform policy makers the challenges and unfair treatment facing individuals who have non-visible disabilities.
ContributorsSanta Cruz, Alyssa Ann (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This thesis study aimed to (1) test whether first-year college students' perceived future self-connectedness predicts their interest in continuing premedical studies, (2) assess whether the presence of academic role models predicts their future self-connectedness and (3) pilot-test an experimental manipulation to increase future self-connectedness and interest in premedical studies. The study included two parts. First, students completed the pre-manipulation measures including future self-connectedness and interest in premed studies. Second, students were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control condition. In the experimental condition, students were asked to imagine that they were licensed doctors and write words of advice to their current selves. In the control condition students were asked to reflect and write about their daily routine. The results from this study showed a significant positive correlation of interest in remaining in premedical studies with both future self-connectedness and the presence of role models and future self-connectedness. Additionally, students in the experimental condition showed a significant increase in future self-connectedness after completing the manipulation. However, their interest in remaining in premedical studies did not change after the manipulation. Together, these findings suggest a method for keeping Freshman undergraduates from dropping out hastily from the premedical track.
ContributorsSosa, Jonathan Mercado (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis study is to widen the understanding of the effect culture on self-improvement. Past research found that Japanese students, when compared to their North American counterparts, are more likely to strive for self-improvement by persisting when they encounter academic setbacks. In addition to North Americans and Asians, this thesis examines South Asians as well. It is hypothesized that South Asians will have similar levels of self-improvement as East Asians. This thesis also looks at possible explanations for why culture affects self-improvement. Two variables, future self-connectedness and growth mindset, are proposed as these explanations. It is hypothesized that culture affects future self-connectedness and growth mindset, and those two variables in turn influence self-improvement.
For this thesis, 100 undergraduate and recent college graduates completed online self-report measures. Results of independent t-tests showed that there were no significant differences between South and East Asians in self-improvement, which is consistent with what was hypothesized. There were also no differences between South and East Asians in future self-connectedness or growth mindset. The two Asian groups were then combined and compared to North Americans. Further independent t-tests were run, and results found that while the trend was as expected and Asians exhibited higher levels of self-improvement than North Americans, they did not exhibit significantly higher levels. There were also no significant differences between North Americans and Asians in growth mindset, however, North Americans had significantly higher levels of future self-connectedness than Asians, contrary to expectation. Results of mediation regressions found that neither future self-connectedness nor growth mindset significantly explained the effect of culture on self-improvement.
For this thesis, 100 undergraduate and recent college graduates completed online self-report measures. Results of independent t-tests showed that there were no significant differences between South and East Asians in self-improvement, which is consistent with what was hypothesized. There were also no differences between South and East Asians in future self-connectedness or growth mindset. The two Asian groups were then combined and compared to North Americans. Further independent t-tests were run, and results found that while the trend was as expected and Asians exhibited higher levels of self-improvement than North Americans, they did not exhibit significantly higher levels. There were also no significant differences between North Americans and Asians in growth mindset, however, North Americans had significantly higher levels of future self-connectedness than Asians, contrary to expectation. Results of mediation regressions found that neither future self-connectedness nor growth mindset significantly explained the effect of culture on self-improvement.
ContributorsShaikjamaludeen, Shaikhameedha (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Shiota, Michelle (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12