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Description
Too often are American superhero comics dismissed as childish or simplistic. However, American superhero comics have evolved alongside American society throughout history, and have, in many cases, made a conscious effort to represent progressive movements that have arisen within various respective decades. This thesis will analyze the progression of American superhero comics as they have evolved throughout the decades, this essay will focus primarily on the comic book storylines of DC's, The Green Lantern, throughout the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern Ages of comic book history. The Golden Age was defined by war efforts and support for World War II. The Silver Age was under heavy regulation by the Comic Code Authority and had to water down content from serious topics. Despite this regulation, Silver Age comics were able to symbolize and support or oppose social movements during their respective decade. However, the Bronze Age acted as a turning point for comic book plotlines and characterization. After the Bronze Age, censorship of comic book content was nonexistent and more complex plotlines were developed. From then on the Modern Age of comics would continue to openly explore societal movements and serve as a social commentary. To explore this change, the contents of this essay will usher a discourse on how the American superhero was used to first express American propaganda, and how, throughout the twentieth century and even to this day, the superhero was transformed into a medium that examines social phenomena such as political causes and discrimination. To further analyze and compare social movements to American comics, this will focus primarily on DC's The Green Lantern comic books and how the superhero changed throughout comic book history.
ContributorsTomlin, Andrea (Co-author) / Baily, Alka (Co-author) / Arena, Paul (Thesis director) / Stanford, Michael (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
From the time of his death in 323 BC, the life and exploits of Alexander of Macedon were continually reimagined and reinterpreted in various literary works throughout the ancient world. While modern historians prefer such authorities as Arrian or Plutarch, in Late Antiquity there emerged an amorphous collection of stories, anecdotes, and apocryphal letters now subsumed under the title of the Alexander Romance, which elaborate in remarkable detail upon Alexander's Eastern campaigns. This project seeks to examine a popular episode of the Alexander Romance: the prophecy of the Sun and Moon Trees in the apocryphal letters of Alexander to his tutor, Aristotle, which appear as interpolations in the Romance text. We will trace the various permutations of this episode, from its earliest known versions in Latin and Ancient Greek, to its medieval translations in Old English, Old French, and Arabic. Through a close philological reading of these texts, we will examine the thousand-year history of a single tale about Alexander, and see how this single literary thread unites so many different peoples and cultures which at first seem so far apart.
ContributorsMaur, Glenn B (Author) / Cruse, Markus (Thesis director) / O'Donnell, James (Committee member) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
For the ancient Greeks, music not only was esteemed for its social and entertaining value, but also because it reflected the beauty of the gods and their creations. Music furthermore “embodied larger universal principles and served as a vehicle for higher understanding.” According to Lippmann, the ancients believed that the universe “contains a harmony that controls both spatial and temporal phenomena” and “we can come to know the divine order of harmony more readily in ourselves than in the external world.” Gaining self-knowledge and awareness of one’s place in the world are significant and music is a means of gaining this consciousness. Ancient Greeks believed that music was inspired by the Greek goddesses known as the Muses. In this paper, I argue that, by gifting humans with divinely inspired music, the Muses help humans achieve this mindfulness of one‟s place in the world and attain immortality.
ContributorsSanders, Lauren (Author) / Norton, Kay (Thesis director) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / Bruhn, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
The Roman satirist Persius composed six satires and one prologue, each displaying his unique style and voice. Persius' voice is often difficult to analyze given his complex language and deliberate obscurity, but a detailed reading of his satires allows the reader glean his message. The Prologue and First Satire illustrate Persius' literary mission and values: to separate himself from his peers by innovating the satires of Lucilius and Horace in order to promote his literary values of Roman-ness, self-sufficiency, and resentful restraint.
ContributorsMorrison, Kyle Rafael (Author) / Arena, Paul (Thesis director) / Haberman, Lidia (Committee member) / Welser, Christopher (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2013-05
ContributorsPagliuca, Jessica-Lynn (Author) / Cruse, Markus (Thesis director) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Archetypes are commonly seen throughout different media such as artwork, film, or literature. Similar ideas or perceptions come together to create said archetypes. As defined by Faber and Mayer (2008), “an archetype is an internal mental model of a typical, generic story character to which an observer might resonate emotionally”. Carl Jung, famed psychoanalyst, first created this concept to describe how all human beings know of these commonalities through the collective unconscious. Today, we typically think of archetypes when looking at the development of fictional characters. Star Wars, one of the largest film franchises in the world, uses many of these archetypes in its character development. A great example of this phenomenon is Luke Skywalker, as the archetype of the Hero. Tarot cards are another form of media that also convey these archetypes, however they do so through each card’s imagery. With the use of different colors and symbols tarot cards can convey the same archetypes that can be seen in film and literature. While there are tarot decks in existence, they all use different art and art styles to depict the same archetypal messages. Within this project, I created my own version of the major arcana in a tarot deck using the imagery seen within the Star Wars saga. I then completed a comparative critical analysis of how Star Wars contains some of the same allegories, archetypes, and imagery seen within tarot cards. By looking at the archetypes of both Star Wars and the tarot we are able to gain a stronger grasp of the themes present in both types of media, film and art.
ContributorsPagliuca, Jessica-Lynn (Author) / Cruse, Markus (Thesis director) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
In this study, I will address the human rights of Roman citizens in the Late Republic, focusing on Cicero’s Ad Quintum Fratrem and In Verrem to answer the following question: Did the universalist philosophical interest in human rights, evident in Cicero, ever translate to actual, practical legal principles to protect peoples subject to Roman law from arbitrary capital punishment?
Although Romans had an analog to human rights in the lofty realms of philosophical thought, this idea was not fully developed in the practical legal sphere and did not serve to protect non- citizens from arbitrary capital punishment, as the modern perception of the word denotes. The lack of procedure to organize persecution for the position of praetor until after the end of their term allowed selfish leaders to inflict arbitrary punishments on peoples subject to the Roman sphere of influence, even citizens, without answering for their actions in court. Because praetors could not be prosecuted for their actions in office until the end of their term, laws intended to protect subjects from arbitrary punishment could be disregarded until long after those subjects had suffered their punishment and/or execution. This system failed to protect these peoples from arbitrary punishment by the praetors because the state could not reprimand them in time to save their subjects from arbitrary sentencing. Therefore, the praetors were at liberty to violate what we might consider basic human rights.
ContributorsKrainski, Emily (Author) / Sullivan, Benjamin (Thesis director) / Arena, Paul (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
"The Silver Age of American Comics, Then and Now" is an exploration of a certain period in the history of American comics. It began with the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which censored comics to stamp out any content that might incite children to delinquency. Even today, though the era has passed and the Code is defunct, its effects continue to influence how the general public understands comics. Why was censorship deemed necessary? What stories were created in response to the new paradigm? Why did it go away? What does it even matter now? All these questions and more are explored herein.
ContributorsKingery, Ash (Author) / Arena, Paul (Thesis director) / Schmidt, Peter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2021-12