Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- Creators: Department of English
Description
Faërie exists in the mythology and literature of northwestern Europe as a spiritual Otherworld, a land of immortal beauty just tangential to our own. This project explored multiple conceptions of Faërie and their common association with things that have been lost. The pattern that emerged is one in which the Otherworld is not merely linked to lost things, but becomes a way of preserving and rediscovering them. Faërie embodies the hope that things lost live on, and can be found again.
ContributorsBell, Andrew Roos (Author) / Baldini, Cajsa (Thesis director) / Maring, Heather (Committee member) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
This creative project attempts to capture the fervor of bringing an immersive attraction from page to park by providing the different points of view of several fictitious teams—such as engineers, marketing experts, and set designers—which are involved in the creation and maintenance of a theoretical theme park ride. The specific theme park ride detailed below, tentatively titled The Once and Future Dark Ride, stands as an allegory for the majority of “dark rides” in the theme park world. Different points of view are detailed in order to give readers an approximation of the ride design process.
ContributorsMatsen, Julie Andrea (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Sublimity & The Bronte Men: An Exploration of Heathcliff & Rochester Through Edmund Burke's Sublime.
Description
The Brontë sisters, inadvertently, created two characters overwhelmingly offensive to the modern reader. However, I think it is time that we as readers diverge from the well-trodden path of literary analyses concerning Rochester and Heathcliff. By limiting these two characters to only their most surface-level qualities, and passing moral judgments on them as if they are somehow failing some expectation of moral behavior, these two characters are denigrated to the titles of “bad characters” or “bad men.” I propose a reading of Heathcliff and Rochester that transcends the confining rhetoric of good vs. bad and looks to Heathcliff and Rochester as agents of the sublime as defined by Edmund Burke in his foundational text A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful.
ContributorsWeiland, Madeline (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
This creative project is a portfolio of accessible science communication. It consists of three multimedia texts, each one written and designed for a different audience about a different topic. The first project is an article/report about the recent launch delays and cost increases for the James Webb Space Telescope, written for adults in their 40s-50s. The second project is a children’s picture book about Einstein’s theory of general relativity, written for homeschoolers in 6th grade. The third project is an educational animated video about the difference between gravity waves and gravitational waves, written for students in 7th grade.
ContributorsShafer, Christiana (Author) / Wheeler, Jacqueline (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Numerous writers construct original languages for creative or experimental purposes. Language construction can function as a tool for philological study: a way to apply and experiment with theoretical potential. In terms of fictional settings, language construction offers another outlet for expression through writing. It also creates an additional level of detail that authors can use to further enrich the world they are writing about. The goal of this project is to analyze existing constructed languages, followed by my own version of language creation, in order to better understand the process and motivations related to them. A survey of existing “conlang” examples, featuring the languages of J.R.R. Tolkien and Suzette Haden Elgin, highlights the variety of approaches and purposes for language creation. Their perspectives combine an academic background in linguistics with fictional writing, offering a unique way to study the roles of language. Heavily influenced by Tolkien’s work, my own constructed language is outlined in the final section. Considering the languages created by others, I explain my process and reasoning in order to illustrate a personal approach to the described concepts. This is followed by a series of vignettes that place the language in a philological context, featuring relevant lexical elements and history. The goal is to demonstrate how my constructed language adds to a sense of place.
ContributorsCowfer, Emily (Author) / Jakubczak, Laura (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2022-05