In August of 2017, the Unite the Right rally surged through Charlottesville, VA, turning violent and ending in the injury 30 people. Who participates in alt-right movements, and what were the conditions of its possibility? Why is white supremacist ideology resurfacing now, and what makes contemporary white supremacy so pervasive and so dangerous? In this thesis, I forward a Lacanian psychoanalysis of the alt-right, beginning with Donald Trump, and then exploring the movement as a whole, in its relationship to the affect of belonging, the Master-Signifier of whiteness, and masculinity/sexuality as a whole. I conclude with a consideration of potential responses to alt-right violence.

A thorough understanding of the key concepts of logic is critical for student success. Logic is often not explicitly taught as its own subject in modern curriculums, which results in misconceptions among students as to what comprises logical reasoning. In addition, current standardized testing schemes often promote teaching styles which emphasize students' abilities to memorize set problem-solving methods over their capacities to reason abstractly and creatively. These phenomena, in tandem with halting progress in United States education compared to other developed nations, suggest that implementing logic courses into public schools and universities can better prepare students for professional careers and beyond. In particular, logic is essential for mathematics students as they transition from calculation-based courses to theoretical, proof-based classes. Many students find this adjustment difficult, and existing university-level courses which emphasize the technical aspects of symbolic logic do not fully bridge the gap between these two different approaches to mathematics. As a step towards resolving this problem, this project proposes a logic course which integrates historical, technical, and interdisciplinary investigations to present logic as a robust and meaningful subject warranting independent study. This course is designed with mathematics students in mind, with particular stresses on different formulations of deductively valid proof schemes. Additionally, this class can either be taught before existing logic classes in an effort to gradually expose students to logic over an extended period of time, or it can replace current logic courses as a more holistic introduction to the subject. The first section of the course investigates historical developments in studies of argumentation and logic throughout different civilizations; specifically, the works of ancient China, ancient India, ancient Greece, medieval Europe, and modernity are investigated. Along the way, several important themes are highlighted within appropriate historical contexts; these are often presented in an ad hoc way in courses emphasizing technical features of symbolic logic. After the motivations for modern symbolic logic are established, the key technical features of symbolic logic are presented, including: logical connectives, truth tables, logical equivalence, derivations, predicates, and quantifiers. Potential obstacles in students' understandings of these ideas are anticipated, and resolution methods are proposed. Finally, examples of how ideas of symbolic logic are manifested in many modern disciplines are presented. In particular, key concepts in game theory, computer science, biology, grammar, and mathematics are reformulated in the context of symbolic logic. By combining the three perspectives of historical context, technical aspects, and practical applications of symbolic logic, this course will ideally make logic a more meaningful and accessible subject for students.

The biography of J.D. Manning tells the story of the first man drafted in the United States at the dawn of World War II. Growing up, he lived an ordinary, small-town life in Washburn, Wisconsin. However, due to a clerical error, by the time he was inducted into the military, J.D. had assumed a second identity. While listed under a different name throughout his military service, J.D. decided to turn the military into a career. He extended his service and went on to Officer Candidate School before serving in the war. Ultimately, J.D. died in the Battle of Cherbourg. His story outlines the importance of humanizing war at a time when statistics and numbers tend to impersonalize such a large, historical event. J.D.'s biography provides an understanding of how even the most ordinary, typical life of a drafted solider during WWII can produce an extraordinary story. J.D. was not special. He was but one death in a body count of over 400,000 American soldiers during the war. Yet, his story teaches us that one does not have to be special to be important. Every American soldier has made a contribution to our country, yet only a select few have ever had their stories told. This biography of J.D. will add one more story to the limited collection existing today.

It is very difficult to construct an explicit definition of Jewish humor and, thus, even harder to identify examples of the use of this type of humor. In this paper, I use a literature review to set forth a list of characteristics of Jewish humor to aid in its identification and I explain the common reasons for the use of this humor. I use the characteristics of Jewish humor to aid in my identification of Jewish humor in five popular Jewish films from Argentina. I examine what aspects I believe to be exemplifying this type of humor and what this type of humor adds to the films in question. The films that I have chosen to analyze are: El abrazo partido directed by Daniel Burman, Cara de queso—mi primer gueto directed by Ariel Winograd, Relatos salvajes directed by Damián Szifron, Sol de otoño directed by Eduardo Mignogna, and Anita directed by Marcos Carnevale. Judaism is central to the plots of these five films and three of the directors (Burman, Winograd, and Szifron) are Jewish themselves. I show how the directors’ experiences with the Argentinian-Jewish community inform their use of Jewish humor. Lastly, I demonstrate how these examples of Jewish humor help to bring Judaism into Argentinian popular culture and, by doing so, allow Jewish stories and history to be told on a large scale.

Paraprosdokian is a collection of stories about all different types of lives in Phoenix, AZ. There are several stories that work together, involving lonely teenagers at punk house shows, while the rest standalone: the eclectic interactions of a waiter at a 24-hour diner, a blind fair ride operator with a propensity for accidental murder, a hapless son of a clumsy dental assistant, a literary scholar stuck in an addiction to both Kafka and pornography, a kid who learns that writing is not a formula, and a high school death that nobody cares about. Some pieces unfold parts of 21st century culture that have been knotted in ambivalence, like how men raised on pornography reconcile with intimacy, while others are as simple as trying to encapsulate the experience of growing up in what is often perceived as an artless suburbia. The project aims at mixing prose with photography to create, as Ben Lerner describes it, “a constellation of language and image”—a complete artistic product. Using the work of a local Arizona photographer, the collection complicates a reader’s elementary notion of a “picture book” by forcing the reader to view photographs beyond exposition or symbolism. The title of the collection comes from a term used in comedic rhetoric that refers to a figure of speech in which the latter part of a statement or phrase reorients one’s understanding of the whole. Under this definition, the collection seeks to amend its author and reader’s orientation to Phoenix in a quest for empathy, giving pathetic characters a chance to speak without ever sacrificing a touch of humorous joy.

My thesis provides an in-depth analysis of the Tarantinoverse, a shared universe in which most of Quentin Tarantino's movies exist. I start by talking about the relationships between characters across different movies and how Tarantino portrays them. I examine how he has some characters who are brothers and some characters who have ancestral relationships with other characters. I also observe how two characters in separate movies are the same person and that there is one non-familial relationship within Tarantino's shared universe. Next, I investigate the two distinct universes that make up the Tarantino's cinematic universe, the "realer than real" universe and the "movie" universe. In that section, I explain how he uses crossover characters, who can exist in both the "realer than real" and "movie" universes and how they represent different types of people that exist within both universes. Then I examine fictional products that are exclusive to Tarantino's shared universe. In that segment, I examine how Tarantino critiques the way other filmmakers use product placement in their movies and the way movies are used to market products. After that, I discuss how Tarantino's alteration of history in Inglourious Basterds, namely Adolf Hitler's death, affected the society of Tarantino's movies with respect to popular culture and violence. Regarding pop culture, I examine how Tarantino's characters use pop culture references, how frequently they used them, and what they reference in Tarantino's movies set before Hitler's death and contrast those with the same three aspects in movies set after Hitler's death. Finally, I inspect on how Tarantino uses violence within his movies and contrast how he uses it in movies before Hitler's death and how he uses it in movies set after Hitler's death.

One of humanity's perpetual endeavors has been to come to an understanding of its nature so as to maximize the ability of persons to acquire happiness in this lifetime as well as to live in harmony with the cosmos. This philosophic work seeks to contribute to that perpetual mission by delving into the nature of desire and seeks to make the findings of this project relevant to society by identifying contemporary ills that are related to a deficient understanding of desire. This work not only seeks to help society achieve balance in the present but also seeks to help it maintain that balance through the provision of insights and teachings that are timeless in nature, for they have relevance to all ages through their illumination of the nature of humans. This project does so by turning to the Chinese Daoists and the Roman Stoics for their wisdom in regards to desire and how to relate to it. Additionally, this project turns to Paul Tillich to help preserve whatever balance this project helps achieve as he provides a remedy to modern ills by illuminating the course that was taken to bring it to its current predicament. Passages from the Daoist text the Dao-de-jing, the diary of the Roman Emperor and Stoic Marcus Aurelius, and the correspondences of the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger found in On the Shortness of Life are interpreted in the hopes of not only providing advice on how to co-exist with desire but also in the hopes of establishing or contributing to an existing bridge that links Eastern and Western thought so that both hemispheres can cooperatively contribute to the development of humanity. This project also seeks to cultivate a desire amongst the populace to engage with philosophic works by showing that the insights they provide can be practically applied so as to develop one's characteristics that are conducive to finding that which helps one feel personally fulfilled and to achieving success in one's endeavors.

During the 1970's to 90's, scholars in the fields of Jewish Studies, anthropology and sociology (notably, Hellen Epstein, Larry Langer and Yosef Yerushalmi), developed the idea of generational trauma theory, when analyzing the trauma inflicted upon European Jewish populations during the Holocaust. Epstein argues that trauma is passed down from generation to generation, while Langer argues that the second generation interprets the trauma in their own way. Other important terms in trauma theory include liturgical time, sites of memory, historical trauma and the historical trauma response. Scholars who analyze American Indian communities, like Yellow Horse Brave Heart and Durran/Durran, readily took up this theory, applying it to the Native American experience. One area where this theory has been applied to is the Native American Boarding School experience. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficacy of applying the post-Holocaust trauma theory to the Native American boarding school experience. In order to determine the effectiveness of the boarding schools, one must analyze the boarding school experience, beginning at the philosophical underpinnings of the boarding school, and then discussing the impacts that the boarding schools had on the students and finally, the impact that this had on the second generation. However, this approach has a number of flaws, such as the differences between native communities and post-Holocaust, American, Jewish communities, as discussed in the Philosophy of American Indian Studies. The length of the boarding schools was also longer than the length of the Holocaust. The fact that Native Americans faced repeated trauma, in a way that post-Holocaust American Jews did not. The trauma also changed for both native peoples and post-Holocaust Jews, making it difficult for there to be a single response to trauma. The philosophical bases of the Holocaust and boarding schools were also different. The post-Holocaust generational trauma approach also has a number of applications to native peoples. This includes the psychological aspect of trauma. The use of terminology by native scholars. Native peoples also developed concepts like sites of memory and liturgical time. Finally, both the post-Holocaust Jewas and Native Americans have used trauma for political ends. The conclusion is that post-Holocaust generational trauma theory has some applications to native peoples, but the application is limited. A scholar must take into careful consideration the native peoples who they are working with.

Philippa Foot's theory of Natural Goodness provides a theoretical ethical framework that encompasses Aristotelian notions of flourishing and practical rationality. Foot's text provides a clear path to self-fulfillment, and her argument suggests that for a human being to flourish, they must experience happiness, actively enjoy good things, encompass human goodness, and exercise practical rationality. This thesis aims to evolve Foot's project of Natural Goodness from a theoretical model into a configuration that may be applied to everyday practical living. This project begins by detailing Philippa Foot's theory, walking through each step of the argument Foot provides in support for her ethical framework. Following, the merits of the theory are compared to other renowned ethical theories, and the intuitive nature of Natural Goodness is highlighted. It is argued that although Foot's ethical framework is praiseworthy, the theory is too open-ended in its discussion of happiness for individuals lacking human goodness to confidently apply the account in a practical setting. Due to this, I explore Foot's notion of happiness, defined as the enjoyment of good things, and I focus on the subjective aspect of enjoyment. By applying research from the field of positive psychology, the definition becomes guided into a more practical form, allowing for Foot's framework of Natural Goodness to become an applicable theory within contemporary society. Once this is achieved, and interrogatories are answered, I delve into ramifications of this new framework, and ways that individuals may increase the quality of their own lives.

This work challenges the conventional perceptions surrounding the utility and use of the CMS Open Payments data. I suggest unconsidered methodologies for extracting meaningful information from these data following an exploratory analysis of the 2014 research dataset that, in turn, enhance its value as a public good. This dataset is favored for analysis over the general payments dataset as it is believed that generating transparency in the pharmaceutical and medical device R&D process would be of the greatest benefit to public health. The research dataset has been largely ignored by analysts and this may be one of the few works that have accomplished a comprehensive exploratory analysis of these data. If we are to extract valuable information from this dataset, we must alter both our approach as well as focus our attention towards re-conceptualizing the questions that we ask. Adopting the theoretical framework of complex systems serves as the foundation for our interpretation of the research dataset. This framework, in conjunction with a methodological toolkit for network analysis, may set a precedent for the development of alternative perspectives that allow for novel interpretations of the information that big data attempts to convey. By thus proposing a novel perspective in interpreting the information that this dataset contains, it is possible to gain insight into the emergent dynamics of the collaborative relationships that are established during the pharmaceutical and medical device R&D process.