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 64
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
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
Civilian publics at large internalize death and killing in wartime as a given; after all, what is war if not fighting and dying? There exist popularized notions of “rules of war,” as put by a 2014 BBC ethics piece that accepted the notion “that soldiers must be prepared to put their own lives at risk in order to limit civilian casualties.” Here there is no denial that combatants kill and die in war. Yet in another sense, the public sanitizes the permanent reality of death and killing—it constructs careful euphemisms and erects psychological barriers that allow the perpetuation of violence without emotionally confronting the brutal reality of the battlefield. In spite of such concentrated cultural efforts at reconceptualization of death and killing, however, the soldiers and combatants who actually engage in this behavior irrevocably come face-to-face with the reality of death and killing in wartime. It is the “[i]ntimate acts of killing in war,” such as those “committed by historical subjects imbued with language, emotion, and desire” that necessarily challenge and threaten culturally-constructed sterilized preconceptions of deadly violence; still, as Joanna Bourke argues, “[k]illing in wartime is inseparable from wider social and cultural concerns.”
To this end, a war that involves not only the physical intimacy of killing but also mortal struggles between cultures and ideologies arguably complicates the extent to and manner by which individual combatants engage in such behavior. No war fulfills these criteria so cleanly as World War II—it was a conflict that cost more people their lives than any war before, and as a global conflict, it brought vastly differing perspectives of death and killing to the battlefield. World War II represented not simply a struggle for national-ideological survival (though that it clearly was), but more importantly a struggle for the retention of the self through identity.
To this end, a war that involves not only the physical intimacy of killing but also mortal struggles between cultures and ideologies arguably complicates the extent to and manner by which individual combatants engage in such behavior. No war fulfills these criteria so cleanly as World War II—it was a conflict that cost more people their lives than any war before, and as a global conflict, it brought vastly differing perspectives of death and killing to the battlefield. World War II represented not simply a struggle for national-ideological survival (though that it clearly was), but more importantly a struggle for the retention of the self through identity.
ContributorsLondono, Marlon William (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / Strand, Daniel (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
I argue that the relationship between the United States and Israel has harmed the United States, the Palestinians, and the rest of the Middle East. For the United States section, I support this argument by discussing the corruption of AIPAC, national debt, anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, NSA spying and surveillance and the effects of the Iraq War. For the Palestinian section, I support this argument by discussing how the war crimes committed against the Palestinians are done with weapons supplied to Israel by the United States. Lastly, I go over how the rest of the Middle East is harmed by this by discussing how the Iraq War has affected the Iraqis there and how the Libyan regime change affected the people in Libya.
ContributorsPappusetti, Vamsi Krishna (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Omaya (Committee member) / Rothenberg, Daniel (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
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
Within the hotel industry, customers come first. Their satisfaction drives revenue and drives the industry forward. With the updates in technology, new Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) databases are being implemented to aggregate customer reviews into a single platform that is analyzed and creates policies to help increase overall satisfaction. Hotels are ranked within all customer review sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp and the higher the scores and the rank, the more these review sites promote these establishments, and the more customers book at this hotel. Therefore, customer reviews directly affect the revenue of a hotel. A hotel with low scores and low customer satisfaction will not entice guests to book. This new era of technology and customer driven revenue is the motivator behind Hilton’s creation of the SALT database. This Satisfaction and Loyalty Tracking database helps improve loyalty within the Hilton brands.
This paper examines the overall use of CRM systems and then examines the property level satisfaction metrics that can be found on SALT. The two metrics that the individual property could have the most effect on with the lowest budget were determined to be Digital Key and Digital Check-In, which make up the Digital Platform. This Digital Platform is accessed through the Hilton Honors app, which is a loyalty program created by Hilton. There are four tiers of Honors Members within the loyalty program: Blue, Silver, Gold, and Diamond. Blue members make up most of the membership base in general, however, at the local property examined, 60% of all guests are Gold and Diamond. Therefore, the research done within this paper focuses on improving overall Digital Platform satisfaction of Gold and Diamond members who are key business travelers that bring in revenue to the specific property examine.
The research collected for this project was done through observations of guests from the perspective of a Front Desk Agent, interviews with guests, analysis of SALT scores and guest reviews, and firsthand experiences of using Digital Key at local competitors of the local property. Through these analyses, the main problems that were compiled were internet connectivity, confusing property layout, Digital Key allotment and activation, technological issues with the Digital Key and hardware at the property, Digital Check-In and room selection, and negative reception of Hilton Honors Members. The solutions that were suggested focus on excellent customer service, increased training of Front Desk Agents regarding Digital Platform and Hilton Honors recognition, adding wi-fi routers throughout the hotel, adding Hilton Honors stickers to entrances, adding digital reader maps, and having the Director of Front Office Operations ensure that they are updating the Digital Platform frequently with rooms for members to choose.
This paper examines the overall use of CRM systems and then examines the property level satisfaction metrics that can be found on SALT. The two metrics that the individual property could have the most effect on with the lowest budget were determined to be Digital Key and Digital Check-In, which make up the Digital Platform. This Digital Platform is accessed through the Hilton Honors app, which is a loyalty program created by Hilton. There are four tiers of Honors Members within the loyalty program: Blue, Silver, Gold, and Diamond. Blue members make up most of the membership base in general, however, at the local property examined, 60% of all guests are Gold and Diamond. Therefore, the research done within this paper focuses on improving overall Digital Platform satisfaction of Gold and Diamond members who are key business travelers that bring in revenue to the specific property examine.
The research collected for this project was done through observations of guests from the perspective of a Front Desk Agent, interviews with guests, analysis of SALT scores and guest reviews, and firsthand experiences of using Digital Key at local competitors of the local property. Through these analyses, the main problems that were compiled were internet connectivity, confusing property layout, Digital Key allotment and activation, technological issues with the Digital Key and hardware at the property, Digital Check-In and room selection, and negative reception of Hilton Honors Members. The solutions that were suggested focus on excellent customer service, increased training of Front Desk Agents regarding Digital Platform and Hilton Honors recognition, adding wi-fi routers throughout the hotel, adding Hilton Honors stickers to entrances, adding digital reader maps, and having the Director of Front Office Operations ensure that they are updating the Digital Platform frequently with rooms for members to choose.
ContributorsRezac, Cassandra Rose (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / McWilliams, Claire (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The end of the Cold War brought global norms of democracy and a renewed notion of national self-determination. This paper seeks to understand the political and economic influence of the international community in the definition of national identity in the former Yugoslavia and in Chile at the end of the 1980s. This paper begins with a history of Bosnia-Herzegovina to provide context for the power shifts that occurred during the twentieth century. In this section I address the popular misconception of the root of the violence in the 1990s as due to “ancient hatreds” and offer several examples of primarily political and economic—not ethnic—differences. The next section further disproves this theory with a study of the fluctuating nature of identity. Existing on multiple planes and very much subject to social environment, this section explores the possibility and strategic appeal of identity manipulation to achieve political and economic expansionism. In an era marked by legitimacy earned through democratic support, political leaders used the media to manipulate popular conceptions of identity to promote cohesion through fear and pride. These themes are addressed in the section on the history of Chile, where national identity was formed to legitimize independence from Spain. As global economic markets grew more interdependent, people became unhappy with vulnerability to international shifts and demanded individual protections. Finally, the conclusion provides a brief analysis of the role of the media in reforming economic interests as identity politics. The susceptibility of identity to manipulation in the media, by both internal and external actors, sheds light on the potential fallibility of democracy as a liberal institution.
ContributorsSpencer, Hannah Elizabeth (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / Ripley, Charles (Committee member) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Through a series of memoirs, this project explores the way familial tradition catalyzes individual identity-building. Themes explored in these flash memoirs, and addressed within the accompanying theoretical framework, include matrilineal divinity, intergenerational trauma, performance as a vehicle for identity-building, reconstruction and reconfiguration, and physicality as performance. The theoretical framework at the beginning of the project gives explanation for some creative decisions that drive the narratives and convey the themes in these stories. Chronology of stories, story choice and device use (symbolism, allegory) are explained. The memoirs all come from the student author's experiences growing up in rural Missouri, in a family dominated by women. The author is a standup comedian and actress in the Phoenix area, and saw literary storytelling as a challenging way to share a personal narrative that has informed much of her comedic and dramatic work. This series of five memoirs is the foundation for a fuller series of 25-40 memoirs that the author hopes to complete over the next several years.
ContributorsHayes, Hattie Jean (Author) / Dombrowski, Rosemarie (Thesis director) / Hull, Dan (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12