UCO - Graduate Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/11244/324596
Established in 1954, the Jackson College of Graduate Studies provides access to graduate education for culturally-diverse students locally, nationally, and internationally, while supporting UCO’s mission of transformative learning through processes which maintain and enhance quality. Masters' theses are a culmination of these studies. Print copies of all masters' theses produced by UCO students are available in UCO's Archives and Special Collections.

Chambers Library is committed to accurately and respectfully describing materials relating to historically overlooked communities. Users encountering offensive or outdated terminology found on the library’s website, Central Search, SHAREOK, or elsewhere in the collection may submit a report to our metadata team. To learn more, visit the library’s Inclusive Metadata Initiative page.


Availability of Digitized Theses
Theses completed before December 2007 will gradually be made available in this collection. Chambers Library takes pride in its efforts to preserve the intellectual output of the university and has started a theses digitization project for any theses created before December 2007. UCO alumni interested in receiving a digital copy of their thesis created before 2008 may send an email to diwg@uco.edu. Please include the author name, year graduated, and degree information.

Browse

Browsing UCO - Graduate Theses by Degree Discipline "M.A., Liberal Studies"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Goddesses, dreamers, and witches: the politics of women in The Wild Hunt
    (2024) Stephens, Melanie; Vaughan, Theresa A., 1966-; Musgrove, Margaret Worsham, 1962-; Appleby, Jessica
    The Wild Hunt is a folklore motif with variants including a group of beings traveling through the night air with a central figure leading them. When we consider the motif of those who were involved in, and specifically those who led the Wild Hunt, a gendered difference becomes more evident during the Late Middle Ages. Existing studies tend to ignore the gendered context and the myriad ways women's existence is objectified, instrumentalized, marginalized, and erased in the motif. This leaves us not understanding why the motif was popular in early penitentials and the political, economic, and cultural reasons why the motif shifted in the particular way it did. This paper examines how European leaders used this motif to divide men and women of the lower classes and ensure the expropriation of women's agency for the benefit of protocapitalist accumulation of labor. I will situate women within European culture throughout the Middle Ages by looking at legal documents, church records, and literature about women and discuss those presentations through an intersectional feminist lens to explore the political cause and function of the gendered difference. When examined at the macro level, a pattern emerges which seems to suggest a correlation between the economic changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that necessitated the subjugation of women. This confirms my position that the use of the motif was intentional. Understanding exactly how women have been historically instrumentalized as a way to support developing Western capitalist structures is necessary as America's economic shift into late-stage capitalism and the concurrent disintegration of women's rights to reproductive health care remind us of similar events centuries before. Further research might include the digitization of medieval records, more complete demographic analysis, records of patronage, revealing historical biases as well as ethnographies that might reveal information about the early believers.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Mixed methods in social scientific research
    (2022) McNew, Kyle James; Russo, Andrew; Bentley, Vanessa; Copley, Leeda; Musgrove, Margaret Worsham, 1962-
    The following paper maintains that a mixed methods approach produces explanations more likely to reveal causation while maintaining generalizability. In this paper, I attempt to illustrate that both methodologies and the explanations produced by each are essential to sociology. The quantitative methods employed by holists tend to produce generalizable explanations. The qualitative methods employed by individualists tend to produce explanations that reveal causation. Methodological holists are correct that explanations need to be generalizable, but the need for generalizability does not render causality irrelevant. Methodological individualists are correct that explanations need to reveal causality, but the need to reveal causality does not render generalizability irrelevant. Holism and individualism are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, sociological explanations can benefit from the quantitative and qualitative methods employed by each methodological approach.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Saturn's sphere : astrology, mythology, and the contemplatives in Dante's Paradiso 21-22
    (2023) Taylor, Aaron Scott; Musgrove, Margaret Worsham, 1962-; Weber, Reid; Holt, Annie
    In the arrangement of souls in Dante's Paradiso, the poet places the most blessed category of souls, the contemplatives, in the sphere of Saturn, a planet generally considered to be "The Greater Infortune" in medieval astrology (Paradiso 21-22). This thesis asks and answers the question why this should be so. Scholarly literature on Dante has rarely dealt with this question in depth. Commentators since the fourteenth century have typically offered a brief explanation, and one often finds these explanations more or less expanded upon in the tradition of Lecturae Dantis. But to my knowledge, the only prolonged consideration of the nature of Saturn in Paradiso is the relevant chapter of Richard Kay's Dante's Christian Astrology, which tends to focus more on details than on the larger question. My thesis is that when fully examined the medieval associations of Saturn actually constitute an atmosphere peculiarly appropriate to contemplative hermits, and an understanding of this "Saturnine atmosphere" will enable us to read rightly both the two speaking figures of the cantos, Peter Damian and Benedict of Nursia, as well as the two lesser figures who are named as present but remain silent, Macarius and Romuald. In order to develop this thesis, I consider Dante's sources, both confirmed and surmised, in order to develop a portrait of Saturn as he was understood by the fourteenth century, employing contemporary definitions and etymologies of the appropriate terms. I look at Paradiso's intertextual relations with those authors, ancient, late antique, and medieval, in connection with the Saturnine associations they furnish. I use those results to demonstrate the nature of the Saturnine atmosphere developed in Paradiso 21-22, comparing the images and qualities of Saturn with the characterizations and images of Saturn's sphere in the Commedia. Then I consider the lives, writings, and depictions in the appropriate cantos of the four contemplatives that Dante identifies, demonstrating how they relate to the Saturnine atmosphere and associations and why the poet might have chosen each of them for inclusion in Saturn's sphere. Special attention is given to the identity of Macarius, as there are at least three possibilities and Dante does not specify in any way which one he is thinking of. I find that the medieval understanding of Saturn is truly integral to the atmosphere and events of Par. 21-22, and that there are many examples of this in the lives, writings, and role in the Commedia of the four souls in question. These findings significantly deepen our understanding of these cantos and their connection with the architectonics of Paradiso. Future research might focus in more depth on one of the four contemplatives, particularly the much neglected Macarius, consider to a greater degree the role of Saturnine allusions and imagery in other parts of the Commedia and perhaps even in Dante's lyrics, and treat more profound themes connected with Saturn and Paradiso in light of critical theory, such as the work of Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    We can't eat gender rolls: the pradox of the citoyenne during the French Revolution
    (2022) Robinson, Alixandrea; Musgrove, Margaret Worsham, 1962-; Webster, Catherine; Holt, Anne
    The citoyennes of the French Revolution were silenced by the Republic of France through codification of Rousseau's Natural sexes, and their contributions to the French Revolution remain largely unexplored by historians. Examination of arrest and execution records found at the National Archives in Paris revealed that women were arrested in conjunction with their husbands’ crimes and were excused on the basis of the fairness of their sex. Chapter 1 affirms Olwen Hufton’s conclusion that women were motivated to public unrest by men’s failures and adds that women were emboldened to act in a man’s place, becoming active agents of change. Women navigated the political system and used crowds as a vehicle to enter the public, male sphere of influence, and in private, took charge of family planning methods. Chapter 2 identifies the paradox of the citoyenne and its resolution in disproportionate legal protections for women, the femme defense. These protections meant fewer than 400 women were executed during the Revolution, compared to 17,000 men. Additionally, Chapter 2 recognizes the life and works of Madame Roland, whose failed femme defense shows that the limits of the femme defense lie in a woman’s political success. Chapter 3 outlines the contradictions implicit in execution of a citoyenne and discusses the femme des letters, Olympe de Gouges, who argued in 1791 that "women have the right to take their places on the scaffold, they must also have the right to take their seats in government." This chapter concludes that the National Assembly executed women when they posed a threat to the foundations of the Jacobin agenda; becoming a femme-homme was a crime that demanded the peine de mort. This study ultimately argues that there existed, among the revolutionary debates, an assault on what it meant to be male or female.
Use Permissions
All rights reserved by the authors. Contact UCO Chambers Library's Digital Initiatives Working Group at diwg@uco.edu for the permission policy on the use, reproduction or distribution of these materials.